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sineala · 3 years

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Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good.

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference.

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

#posts i actually wrote

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kingwuko · 3 years

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Wuko in the Comics: Ruins of the Empire, Book 1 part 2

Welcome to my series of posts discussing Wuko in the Comics. In this post I'll continue to discuss RotE Book 1. There are some... interesting moments in the second half of this comic, including a very famous line that all but confirms canon Wuko.

Plot Summary

Fearing that Guan will use violence to stop the election, the Krew decides to bring Kuvira along with them to Gaoling, hoping that she can talk him down. When they come face-to-face with Guan, however, they discover he does not intend to use violence, but will run in Gaoling’s election. The Krew decides the best solution is to find another candidate with enough public support to defeat Guan fair and square; and they decide to ask Toph to run. It is revealed, however, that Guan does not intend to win fair and square. He’s planning to brainwash Gaoling’s citizens to vote for him.

Major Plot points in the second half of Book 1

We start off right away with the Sauna Scene. Everyone looks excellent. The ladies' sauna wear is lovely. Mako and Bolin have their classic swim suits seen in season 1. Wu is literally just wearing a towel. I found myself googling saunas and steam baths to see if it’s normal to wear swimsuits or just a towel, and everything I read said pretty much anything goes as long as you are comfortable, but I do find it interesting that everyone wears swimsuits except Wu. Maybe because he does steam baths more often and he’s just more comfortable in that setting? He seems pretty confident and not at all shy. I don’t have anything analytical to say about it, I just think it’s an interesting detail, that he doesn’t seem to have any hang-ups about being nearly naked around Mako his friends.

They are discussing Guan’s militaristic movement toward Gaoling, and tossing ideas around to handle the situation. Mako not-so-helpfully suggests using force with the united forces which Zhu Li shoots down right away, not wanting to escalate the situation. Wu agrees and wants to find a peaceful resolution. Korra, remembering her conversation with Kuvira, thinks she has the answer. She proposes bringing Kuvira along to Gaoling, which NOBODY is happy about. Asami is upset because she made it clear earlier she does not want to be in the same room as Kuvira, Bolin is distressed because Kuvira nearly had him killed when he defected from her inner circle, Mako points out that he nearly lost his arm taking down the mech, Zhu Li says she invaded republic city, Asami reminds everyone that Kuvira killed her father, and Wu boldly declares that we can’t forget she ruined his coronation… He quickly reads the room and apologises (character growth?).

Korra acknowledges everyone’s concerns and points out that she truly believes Kuvira can be an ally- she was their ally when Zaheer was trying to kill her and the airbenders; and when her spirit vine weapon ripped open a new portal to the spirit world, Kuvira thought she had died and Korra believes that changed her. Bolin points out that Kuvira is very persuasive and may have a good shot at convincing Guan to stand down. Everyone is convinced and declares their support for the plan.

Zhu Li orders Kuvira’s release and Korra brings her onto the airship taking them all to Gaoling. And, I’m sorry, this frame is like, the bitchiest collective look from Mako, Wu, Bolin and Pabu. I just love it.

They initially plan to restrain her, but decide it’s pointless when Kuvira points out if she wanted to escape that she would have already. They arrive at Gaoling and there’s no sign of Guan and his army. Kuvira is certain he’ll be there, and points out that she needs to change so she doesn’t meet with him looking like a prisoner.

Korra and Wu go to meet with the election candidates. Their portraits are on the wall and it’s revealed that the candidates are both elderly magistrates who have been working in the local government for a long time. They are practically indistinguishable from each other, which causes Korra concern. Wu isn’t happy about it either, he was hoping the elections would bring in new leaders to take the earth kingdom in a new direction. Instead, it looks like nothing will change in Gaoling or the rest of the earth kingdom if things play out the same way. They are both disappointed but Korra is optimistic that this is the first election and over things will improve as they iron out the political kinks

Back in the flying machine, they give Kuvira an outfit of Asami’s that is…. Like I can’t put it into words. I’ve never seen asami wear it and that is a shame. The word that comes to mind is “Dapper”. Like is we saw Asami wearing it when they first introduced her character literally everyone would have predicted Cannon Korrasami and immeadiately said “yup Asami’s gay straight women don’t dress like that”. Slacks, a collared long sleeve shirt, with a grey vest over top. Just like, amazing. I am so disappointed we never saw Asami wear this. Someone point me to a fanart of Asami in this outfit that canonically belongs to her please.

Guan arrives and Kuvira tries to talk to him, which goes about as well as you’d expect. So she tries to appeal directly to his troops and urges them to surrender, and they all say in unison “Hail Commander Guan!”. So Kuvira decides to challenge Guan and beats the crap out of him in a punch that looks like something directly out of a WWII propaganda poster or something.

Kuvira is literally about to kill him by bending the metal collar around his neck when suddenly Asami electrocutes her with some device she had hidden in the belt she gave Kuvira.

Once Mako and Bolin drag Kuvira away, Korra attempts to reason with Guan and tells him she won’t let him interfere with the election. Guan then reveals he has no intention of interfering- he plans on running in the election! He immediately turns in all the necessary paperwork to be on the ballot. He informs the Krew that soon, all the upcoming elections will have Earth Empire representatives running and once they have power in every territory, no one will question the Earth Empire's right to rule.

They reconvene back on the airship, where Kuvira is detained in the platinum box. They explain to Kuvira that she was wrong to provoke him, but right that he is an excellent strategist. Mako then tells Wu that he should just call off the election. Wu replies “Mako, you know I love you, but I’m trying to encourage democracy. I can’t just go around canceling elections because I don’t like one of the candidates. We need to see how this plays out”

…

Yes. “Mako, you know I love you”

…

We’ll discuss that at length in a bit.

They decide the best path forward is to find a new candidate who is popular enough to beat Guan. Korra excitedly suggests Toph. Which, like, wouldn’t have been the first person to come to mind for me, but I guess she’s the only person they know who is originally from Goaling? But everyone seems on board, except presumably Toph because she doesn't like to get involved in worldly affairs… So Korra announces they will just have to convince her!!

We then cut to Guan's encampment, where he is discussing Kuvira’s actions with a Doctor Sheng, observing that Kuvira just isn’t the same, and that the Avatar has corrupted her mind. The doctor suggests they “recalibrate” Kuvira’s mind and leads him into a structure where she shows him their latest “recruits'. We then see Goaling citizens tied up in chairs with devices on their heads. They are being brainwashed to vote for Guan! Yikes!

Mako and Wu Scenes

The Sauna scene

The meeting that took place in the sauna was at the behest of Wu. He said he was very stressed out so he couldn’t miss his steam bath. I know there are lots of jokes about Wu being high maintenance because he needs his spa days or whatever, but he is in a highly stressful situation right now and we know that self care is essential to maintain one’s mental health and in order to perform one’s job well. I think this was an interesting way to weave together his seemingly superficial hobbies with his new maturity and responsibility. I really loved this scene for that (though seeing all the hot people in sauna-wear is a bonus).

Also there is a recurring thing where Mako is just offering the worst advice to Korra. He wants the United Republic, a completely separate Nation from the Earth Kingdom, to just.. March into another country and ‘enforce’ their democratic process??? Like…. If you know anything about world history and current events we know that is awful and wouldn’t be received well and would be a recipe for political instability and long term conflict. Thank goodness everyone is like Mako no. I’m pointing this out because, as much as we think of Wu as being immature, irresponsible, whatever, the reality is that he has a level head while Mako is actually giving the irresponsible solutions here. It’s a really interesting evolution from the infamous Wu meltdown scene where Mako was the voice of reason, but here things have reversed.

Also, I want to point out the moment where Wu backs down after he adds his grievance to the list everyone is giving (She ruined my coordination!), it’s kind of played for laughs but like… Wu has a totally valid reason to be upset on par with everyone else, considering Kuvira had him drugged and kidnapped…. Why wouldn’t he have said that? Well, the simple and obvious answer is- the writers wanted to make a “Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking” joke. But since us fans like to give depths to the characters that they deserve, maybe Wu is genuinely traumatized and just doesn’t want to bring it up. And maybe everyone knows he’s traumatized and doesn't want to bring it up, because no one else is like “Wu, did you forget she had you drugged and kidnapped???” They just give him a look and he’s like “LOL oops sorry should have said my thing first!!” maybe Team Avatar understands that it was a really scary moment for him and they just let him shield himself with humor.

I know it isn’t isn’t exactly a strong Wuko moment, but the bitchy look that Moko, Bolin, Wu and Pabu give to Kuvira in the airship breathed life into me for some reason. I’m loving how they look like a group of mean girls who were just badmouthing Kuvira before she walked in. I think they were having a nice bonding moment before this.

Mako, you know I love you

Ok. So after Mako casually mentions just calling off the election, Wu flat out says “I love you” to Mako. This is a line us Wuko shippers just DIE for. The full line is as follows:

Mako: I say you call off the vote, at least for now. Make it impossible for Guan to win

Wu: Mako, you know I love you, but I’m trying to encourage democracy. I can’t just go around cancelling elections because I don’t like one of the candidates. We need to let this play out.

So. Like, what the heck are we supposed to make of this?

I’m not going to dig too deep and force my own interpretations and headcanons onto you. This I love you could mean a number of different things. I just want to pose some rhetorical questions about it and the context to give us all some things to think about.

Is Wu flirting? Does Mako actually know that Wu loves him? Is this an extension of Wu’s many other instances of flirting with complimenting Mako (on par with ‘my big tough guy” while staring at his ass)? Has Wu said “I love you” to Mako before? How many times has Wu said “Mako I love you” before? Is this evidence of them actually being in a romantic relationship during this comic? Or is it evidence of romantic tension building? Is Mako just totally oblivious to the fact that Wu said I love you? Or did he hear it and his brain blue-screened from the shock of being blatantly told I love you? Has Wu just gotten fed up that Mako seems oblivious to all his previous flirtations and he just decided to up the ante? Does Mako love Wu back?!

Lots of questions. Lots of interpretations. But (as far as I remember) Mako has only said I love you to two people- his brother and Korra (I don’t think he said I love you to Asami but I could be wrong). And if you’ve read this you know that Mako’s relationship with Wu is not brotherly. We’ve never heard “I love you” from Wu toward anyone else that I can recall so I don’t think he makes a habit of throwing the phrase around lightly. Also, worth noting: Literally no one reacts to the casual “I love you”. Everyone just goes on with the conversation at hand. The next frame that we see of Wu and Mako’s faces together, Mako is SMILING at Wu.

So like, he’s clearly not uncomfortable with being told that Wu loves him. And no one else is uncomfortable with it either. So what gives? Are they together? Are they flirting? Is everyone else just like “yup Wu said I love you Mako nothing out of the ordinary here because it’s painfully obvious Wu is into Mako, let's move on, nothing to see here”?

Wu and Korra

One thing I LOVE about these comics is the friendship between Korra and Wu. During the series, Korra tolerated Wu, warming up to him a bit at the very end when he told her his plan to abdicate. But through these comics there seems to be a comfortable familiarity between them. A bit of teasing, loads of moral support, and not a hint of her (or anyone) being super annoyed by him. He also doesn’t hit on her or anyone else except Mako, which is a very refreshing character growth because it was very tiresome to watch him objectify women in the animated series.

Korra and Wu spend a good amount of time together as she accompanies him to Gaoling’s city hall. They seem very comfortable with each other, comfortable enough that the writers included a fart joke.

Korra reassures Wu when he expresses worry about the election being pointless, she steps forward somewhat protectively when Guan shows up- the entire scene with Guan, Korra is standing between him and Wu.

Basically I bring this up because I genuinely love the idea that Korra and Wu are close and friendly, that they have moved on from his cringy behavior from the series (I like to think he apologized to both her and Asami?)

What this means for Wuko

If you are writing fic or just coming up with headcanon, there are two ways to look at the scenes. Either they are in a relationship, or they aren’t. You could easily just say they are in a relationship and are being quiet about it, because they aren’t ready to be fully public, or maybe because they are still figuring things out, or they are waiting for Wu to abdicate and move back to Republic City, etc. “You know I love you” is such an easy piece of canon content to make this your headcanon.

Likewise, one could say they are Not Together right now. Pre-relationship, if you will. Maybe they’ve danced around the idea, discussed feelings without actually getting together. Or maybe they are still clueless that there is a potential for a relationship. Wu might be putting out feelers to see how Mako responds to his flirtations. Mako might be wondering if he’s misinterpreting Wu’s affectionate touches and words. Lots of romantic tension, pining, each wondering if the other one has any feelings.

I also love the idea that Wu and Korra are friends and have discussed or will discuss Mako and Wu’s feelings for him.

So, in summary, Wu loves Mako. It’s canon. It’s right there in black and white. Make of it what you will!

Next post I will discuss Wuko in the first half of RotE Book 2. Wu goes on a life-changing field trip with Korra to meet Toph and confront a swamp-vision of his Late Great Aunt, while Mako gets captured and brainwashed by Guan. Wu and Mako are not together during these scenes but there will be lots of wonderful Wu backstory along with plenty of angst potential from the brainwashing storyline.

Wuko in Turf Wars

Wuko in RotE part 1

#Wuko #Wuko in the Comics #RotE #Mako #Prince Wu

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Captain Fray: The Trash Superman

Look up in the sky! Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s... an ugly, homeless bald man cackling evily while raining trash on the city with an army of sludge monsters, shortly before getting beaten up by a group of meddling kids. It’s just dumb old Captain Fray again getting foiled by Monica’s Gang, nevermind him. He does that every Tuesday.

Monica’s Gang are arguably the most iconic of all Brazilian comic book characters, having maintained popularity for 60 years and with unmatched worldwide recognition. They’ve had cartoons, a cinematic universe of films both cartoon and live-action, plays, a long-running manga spin-off that turned them into teenagers, crossovers everywhere ranging from The Big Two’s superheroes to Osamu Tezuka’s properties (as Monica’s creator Mauricio and Tezuka were acquaintances), at least one theme park, and much, much more. Even past Brazil’s borders, where they are a cultural institution on a scale matched only by Disney, these are some of the world’s most popular characters, starring in just about any kind of adventure imaginable and then some.

However, if you go into the world of Monica’s Gang, and look for a flying man with a chest logo, a cape and impossible superpowers, you’ll instead find their greatest arch-enemy: Captain Fray (actual name Capitão Feio, which translates to Captain Ugly), real name Feioso Araújo. Who will be happy to remind you time and time again of what a rotten, no-good scoundrel he is, even if he has to pick a fight with the Big Blue himself to prove it.

So let’s talk about perhaps the most iconic “caped superhero” of Brazilian comic books, even if he’s ultimately a long, long shot from being one.

Despite the long, worldwide spanning history of the superhero, the idea of the superhero as a cape-wearing uniformed superpowered do-gooder has remained a largely American concept, as different regions have their own unique icons. The titular 4 members of Monica’s Gang have on many occasions taken the role of superheroes, and they’ve built up a massive Rogues Gallery over decades, despite not looking like the usual idea of a superhero. Monica, Jimmy Five, Smudge and Maggy, for the most part, look and act like kids, with odd quirks.

To briefly describe the 4: Monica is the pudgy, bucktoothed ruler of the group as well as the neighborhood, being super strong and more than willing to hit people who mock her with her stuffed rabbit “Samson”. Jimmy Five has a speech impediment, and he constantly schemes to take Monica’s role as leader, best described at times as a junior Lex Luthor to Monica’s Superman. Maggy is Monica’s friend with an uncontrollable appetite, and the witty and perpetually dirty Smudge is Jimmy Five’s friend and accomplice in schemes. Smudge is defined by his complete and total refusal to take a bath or even come into contact with water under any circumstances, and some stories play up Smudge’s dirtyness to the point of superpower.

It’s Smudge in particular who’s gonna be relevant to this post, because the first time Captain Fray was introduced, he was introduced as Smudge’s good-natured and humorous uncle, a comic book addict surrounded by piles of dusty comics, particularly those of Smudge’s favorite superhero, Captain Pitoco, a sort of Superman/Buzz Lightyear analogue. Eventually, Smudge’s uncle is surrounded by dust, and out of it, he transforms “back” into a former alter-ego, Captain Fray, a megalomaniac supervillain horrified at just how clean the world is, and who decides to sully it as much as possible, flying around the city spreading dirt rays and even transforming the population into pollution-fanatics. Eventually he’s defeated and transformed back into normal, only thinking he had a weird dream.

Upon subsequent appearences, Fray would acquire things like sludge minions, underground lairs and ever increasing powers (like in the above sequence where he somehow destroys a rainbow and darkens the sky with a single gesture), although he would eventually gain a Kryptonite-esque weakness to water. Captain Fray would go on to become the most reocurring villain of Monica’s Gang for the next 40 years, as the former concept of him being Smudge’s uncle was dropped and he became instead the ruler of an underground race of sludge monsters created by him, who’d occasionally come on to the surface in order to engage in supervillain plots to take over the world and spread dirt and pollution everywhere, sometimes in stories with an environmental angle, and often when the story calls for superhero antics.

Fray’s got a very standard Grinch/Captain Hook cartoon villain personality, all cackles and snarls and shaking fists at the meddling kids who ruin his plans everytime, proud of being evil and rotten, but never too rotten to the point he betrays the kid-friendly nature of the stories he’s in, nor too rotten that he can’t do something nice for a change like allow his monsters to celebrate Christmas even if it ruins his bad guy image, or begrudingly do a nice thing for Smudge.

Although for the most part, the “mainline” comics have dropped the angle of Fray being Smudge’s uncle, the two having a particular dynamic has stayed consistent still. Sometimes, Smudge is portrayed as the only member of the Gang who’s got little to no problem with Fray, even welcoming the change of scenery he brings, although he will stick with his friends, as often he’s the only one who’s got no problem being hit by Fray’s dirt rays. While sometimes Fray singles out destroying Smudge so his claim as the dirtiest being in the universe can never be challenged, he is more often depicted as having a soft spot for Smudge, sometimes considering him a pupil or potential successor to inherit his powers, and plenty of times, Smudge has done just that, although inevitably it never sticks, partially because Fray gets jealous or misses his former life, and partially because Smudge gets bored of supervillainy and just wants to go play with his friends again.

The dynamic between Smudge and Fray has led to a lot of adventures between the two, and it’s something that’s been played up in the aforementioned manga spin-off, Monica Adventures. In it, the cast’s all been aged up to teenagers, and the adventures they get into respectively have taken much more of a shonen manga edge, much darker and weirder than anything the original kid comics could get away with, although not necessarily to it’s benefit, because I could not begin to describe just how much grimdark nonsense is in those, let’s just call it the Monica’s Gang equivalent of Jorge Joestar in terms of lunacy and leave it at that (although, to be clear, even the original “mainline” comics could get very, very weird themselves). Captain Fray has been a mainstay of said manga from the start, going through a series of redesigns, including one where he turns into a bootleg Sephiroth, and one where he tries rebranding himself into a suit-wearing gangster named “Black Dust”, which nobody really takes seriously.

It’s also granted Fray a backstory: As a kid, when he’d gone to the basement to read comics, his house was buried in a landslide. Afraid of death, he was met with a milipede claiming to serve “The Serpent” (the in-universe stand in for the devil, maybe, just bear with me here), claiming it would protec him so long as it returned the favor someday. He was afterwards transferred to an orphanage, teased by kids over his lack of hygiene and liking for superheroes and nicknamed “Captain Ugly” (again, his name, Fray is just the English translation), with rumors that his touch granted disease. After the orphanage closes, he’s adopted by a nurse and gains a step-brother in Smudge’s dad.

Years down the line, and Feioso’s managed to acquire a house and make a decent living. He spends a lot of time with his nephew Smudge, teaching him how to build toys out of garbage (a habit of Smudge in the strips) and fly kites and so on. Until one day, in an update of his original story, he’s cleaning his house packed with dusty comics, and a shelf falls atop of him. The millipede from his childhood appears to recollect the debt:

"Your mission is to pollude the Earth...rot it's soil...change it's atmosphere...darken the skies with smoke...so that the sun's rays may never again hit the surface of this planet!

"No! No, please! I-I don't want to hurt anyone!"

"You think you can refuse? You think you have a choice? Do you think you can escape your destiny? Evil does not tolerate weak servants. If you don't fill your end of the bargain, if you don't pay your debt...it will be transferred to the person you love most."

"Smudge? NO!! H-How do you know about my nephew?"

"We know of all that happens. Our eyes...are everywhere."

"Smudge has nothing to do with this. Leave him alone, please...I-I'll do anything you guys want!"

"So be it...Filthy powers will corrode your soul...This is the day of your rebirth! How would you like to be rebaptized?

"The nickname I was given at the orphanage...it's perfect! Captain Ugly strikes again!"

How “canon” the events of Monica Adventures are is a question best left unspoken, since it ultimately doesn’t change anything about the original strips. But regardless of what made Fray who he is, he would spend the following decades in many, many attempts to complete his mission and defeat Monica’s Gang, to be foiled and stopped time and time again by his nephew and his friends, little more than a dumb, cartoon villain there to be smacked again and again, too dumb to quit and too mean to stop. So he was, and so he will always be.

But something interesting’s happened recently with him. As part of the Graphic MSP initiative that’s allowed creators to reinvent the many, many characters of Monica’s Gang for stand-alone graphic novels, Captain Fray’s received one in the form of Capitão Feio: Identidade, which isn’t so much an origin story as it tells the story of a homeless man with no knowledge of his past or where he acquired the superpowers that force him to be on the constant run from society, and it tells the story of how said man eventually became the infamous supervillain, despite his many attempts to be a superhero.

The comic and it’s sequel, Tormenta, acted more of a proof of concept to test whether or not a serious reimagining of Captain Fray can work, and considering their reception and the newfound love that the Captain seems to have attained in recent years, I’d say they succedeed pretty damn well. He’s ostracized for his appearence, poverty, smell and bad manners, and there’s hardly anything he can do about it because his powers make him a toxic abomination by default. He spends portions of the book trying to create living beings with his powers, and once he succeeds in creating a Godzilla-esque monster to protect him from the authorities, he ends up having to put the monster down, before getting fed up with constant rejection and promptly announcing that, if he’s just gonna be known as an ugly monster by the people, even after he saves them, he’s gonna make it a point to be Captain Ugly Monster, the most rotten supervillain they’ve ever seen.

The comic constantly grants upon Frey iconography of several of the biggest icons of comic books, from Batman and Superman to AKIRA, playing up not just Frey’s association with comic books but also the fact that he's been mired in that aesthetic from day one. He wanted to be a hero, he wanted to be like Captain Pitoco, and regardless of continuity, all that he ends up as is becoming a gross caricature of a superhero. And still, Frey owns it. He owns his grossness, his rage, his bitterness at everything that he understands to be the opposite of himself, everything clean and good and decent, and he tries time and time again to tear it down, even if he ultimately can never get far enough to accomplish his goals, or lose all of his humanity in the process.

I’ve remarked once that, to many in some regions of South America, the “traditional” superhero does not hold much appeal, and most of the more popular protagonists and icons tend to be outlaws far away from caped antics. Which is why it’s particularly interesting that, not only is the most famous caped superman of Brazilian comic books a villain, but also that, perhaps unintentionally, Fray has undergone the kind of development that most reocurring cartoon villains never get, and one that seems almost poised to last. In a current zeitgest of villain protagonists, it’s successes and failures, I could very easily see Captain Fray becoming the star of a popular film or series, one that takes a look not just at his personality and role, but also at Brazilian culture’s relationship with superheroes and supervillains. Maybe Fray as an anti-hero, trying to make the best of the horrendous powers he’s burdened with, could work.

So long as it’s not revealed that he likes dirt because his mom got pushed off a cliff by cleaning products, I could see it working very well.

#character profiles #comic books #captain fray #capitão feio #turma da monica #mauricio de souza #brazilian superheroes #brazilian supervillains #superman #monica's gang

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Tom is already rehashing some things, like too many homages to the nineties run, Zucco's daughter plot point, Beatrice had ideas for societal reform he's taking that and giving it to Dick. It'll probably be half hearted, but it stings that Beatrice left just a few issues ago and she's already completely forgotten for the sake of DickBabs or a love triangle.

Like the thing about the nineties runs is I mean, as much flack as we give various elements of them, there’s so much from that time period that was good? Great, even! Just....myself and the writers seem to have very different opinions on what the most interesting elements of the nineties comics were, oh well.

And omgggggg I’m still so mad about Bea, and its literally Shawn Tsang all over again. The writers keep introducing new, interesting characters, investing just enough time and focus into them to have us interested in them and wanting to see more.....and then they toss them aside to go back to drawing from the same well as always.

And the thing is, this isn’t even about me not really being a Dick/Babs shipper, because honestly, I’m not enjoying the Dick/Kory stuff in what I’ve seen of Titans Academy either, and for the exact same reason:

When they create new characters like Shawn and Bea, they KNOW they’re starting from scratch and need to build interest in those characters from the ground up. So they’re forced to put their best foot forward. There’s no short cut there, if you want people to care about a brand new character you have to give them REASONS to care. You have to make those characters likable, you have to make people WANT to root for them, you have to hook them with intriguing backstories that don’t feel formulaic and new angles that don’t feel just derivative of older characters, and that’s how we got stuff like Shawn’s history as a former sidekick to a villain and now running a support group for rogues trying to turn their lives around, and Bea’s work in societal reform.

But then the second they stop having the patience to build the new characters up enough that the interest in them can actually start to reach the levels that lets older characters last and grants longevity....they just toss them aside and move on....except they never really move on, just backwards. Because the problem with so MANY superhero couples, far from just Dick and Babs or Dick and Kory, is just....how lazy it seems to make so many canon writers. They just fall back on rehashing the same old tropes and just updating popular moments that resonated with fans in the past, now just recreated with a slightly more modern twist but without ever really being anything new.

Even with ships that I’ve never really been sold on in the past like Dick/Babs, I’ve always said, there’s usually nothing stopping me from GAINING interest in them.....its just....the writers have to GIVE ME A REASON TO. And so many of DC’s writers just aren’t even trying. They’re just moving parts around and pushing characters together in various arrangements like everyone’s just a puzzle piece that you can mix and match however you want......and then just basically expecting readers to be interested purely because of who the characters are, or because it hinges on a nice moment that they then milk the hell out of without ever expanding that into building actual STORY around these moments but rather just squeezing each one til they get everything they possibly can out of it and moving on to the next as though its all just about chasing the next soundbite...because it is! LOL.

And honestly, this problem extends far beyond just the Nightwing title or the Batfam or Taylor’s run or writing in particular.....its a company wide issue right now. In fact I would bet just about anything that its a matter of editorial edict, that even before Taylor started his run DC said okay here’s the approach we want everyone taking with their stories right now:

And that’s like.....its all about banking on nostalgia and the comfort of the familiar right now. I think Taylor is drawing all these elements straight from the 90s Nightwing comics, like Blockbuster and Dick having been a cop, etc, because these are the elements of past Nightwing stories that are so well known. Its the same reasoning behind why they put Tim back as Robin and so many of their new characters are just new spins on old faves like Punchline and Harley Quinn, and why they’re pushing all these older ships that haven’t been together in ages and why specific team lineups are reappearing....its because nostalgia is the name of the game for DC right now, and all their writers are just pulling together threads of classic stories that have stood the test of time, figuring anything that landed particularly well with fans in the past will sell with people here and now, and weaving these threads together and brushing over them with a modern social issues veneer.

As an approach, its basically all just about repackaging previously successful story moments and elements with just enough changes or in just new enough a configuration that readers aren’t likely to complain en masse that like “hey we literally already read all this. We’ve already BOUGHT these issues. When we were kids.” Its minimizing creative risk while maximizing monetary profit. Spend as little creative capital as possible outside of anything that’s already been successful in the past and as such is a relatively proven quantity, instead of testing new material that’s an unknown and runs the risk of falling flat and thus not being profitable.

And see, I’d almost guarantee that all THAT, that whole line-wide approach to DC’s storytelling, is because the powers that be looked at the last several years of stories and how many of THEM fell flat with readers, and decided that the problem was they’d BEEN trying too much new stuff and readers just didn’t like it. Because they WERE concentrating on presenting totally new stories and building up new ideas throughout their books.....but readers have been pretty vocal for years now about being disenchanted with most of DC’s major stories. And so DC I think looked at that and came to the conclusion that okay, people just don’t want new right now, they want the familiar.

But like.....DC’s problem IMO was never that they were trying new stuff? The reason so much of their new and original storylines weren’t gaining traction or bringing in readers and kept shedding old readers had absolutely NOTHING to do with them being new and previously unseen storylines, which makes falling back on nostalgia very much a non-solution to entirely the wrong problem.

No, DC’s problem for years has been that they’ve been all about spectacle instead of story. There’s ZERO emotional pay-off to any of their biggest plot twists or character beats, and emotion is LITERALLY what people read stories for. Its all about racing to the climactic action packed finish of every storyline and then immediately resetting everyone back to square one and jumping straight into the next big story, without ever giving the events of any of their stories time or reason to MATTER to the characters.....and if they don’t matter to the characters, our proxies that we’re viewing these stories through, then why should any of it matter to us? Why should any of it linger, dig in roots, resonate with us as moments that left an impact and that we accordingly want more of?

And again, like because I’m a Dick Grayson focused blog I’ve obviously largely been focused on how much I dislike the SPECIFIC reactions or non-reactions to so many of the major beats in his stories.....but it was spread throughout their entire line.

Bruce and Selina almost got married....but why should anyone care outside of Tom King’s title when nobody else seems to, no other characters feel anything about this, and Bruce in none of his other appearances seems the same as ever without any reminder that he just almost got married but then didn’t.....and if the characters don’t ever seem to be affected by or feeling a need to revisit or reflect on recent stories, why should we bother remembering them either?

Jason was dramatically and fucked-upily (yes its a word, I totally looked it up and everything) exiled from Gotham....and then all of that is undone in a single issue with one low-stakes awkward conversation between him and Bruce. Damian quits as Robin and goes off the map and everyone in his family is like “hey don’t we have a littler brother, I feel like we did maybe” for one panel per story arc, and that’s it. Roy’s back from the dead and everybody’s like oh hey cool instead of the kind of return we used to get like when Donna came back and everyone was like oh shit, this MATTERS, because we MISSED you....just like Dick’s death never mattered to anyone but fans of his character because much like I was just saying earlier with them not really giving me a reason TO emotionally invest in Dick and Babs’ relationship if I wasn’t already, same thing with the aftermath of Forever Evil. They didn’t give anyone else reason to emotionally invest in that as something that HAPPENED to Dick and that he was AFFECTED by....because the writers didn’t bother writing him as all that affected by it and it was just like oh he’s a spy now, all that was last year’s content, we’ve moved on, keep up.

And on and on it goes. Ric Grayson was the same problem all over again. Rinse and repeat down the line with everyone from Wally to Donna and etc etc etc.

THAT’S why DC’s stories have been falling flat. It has nothing to do with people not being interested in new ideas, characters or directions, its that’s ALL they were giving us, but it was like just reading wiki summaries of events just alongside pretty art, but no real emotional weight or substance to anything we were reading....and thus, literally nothing that we couldn’t get much the same outcome from if we just...stuck to reading wiki summaries after the stories were over, with no real need to follow along with them. For years most fans have basically just been about keeping up to date with changes in the characters’ lives, but without feeling any real need to watch those changes unfold and play out.

And so honestly I worry we’re just gonna be subjected to a company wide rehashing of old and familiar storylines, directions and character beats, but repackaged and delivered in the exact same way DC was delivering us their new stories and ideas these past years....and its basically going to have the same results, because its the same problem. They didn’t actually fix anything by switching gears, they just shuffled around the actual issue.

And DC’s just gonna be like well now wtf are we doing wrong, we were so sure this would work, everyone LOVES nostalgia right? Did we pick the wrong stories and character beats to bring back?

When really its like......it honestly doesn’t matter WHICH stories and beats they rehash, because its not about them picking the ‘right ones,’ the real keepers, the stories that everyone really WAS eager to see brought back or made new again.....

Its about like, the only reason any of those stories or beats or dynamics stood the test of time and are still familiar and well-known....is because the stories AROUND those moments and ideas gave us reason to emotionally invest in them and retain them as crucial to our view of the characters and things that would resonate and stay with us for a long time.

It was never that any of those ideas or stories were just so innately brilliant that they couldn’t help BUT linger in the overall reader consciousness...it was the fact that we CARED about what happened in those moments and stories.

*Shrugs* But I mean hey, what do I know? I’m just a dude on the internet lolol.

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agroovymutant · 3 years

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I am very invested in ‘Pietro’ really being Peter for many reasons, but I don’t want to hope too much because I will be incredibly upset if it turns out he isn’t........ however, here are my feelings on theories I’ve heard about who he could be if he’s not Peter (spoilers: I basically just say I disagree with them all and it makes more sense if he’s actually Peter, haha) and my thoughts on what’s going on with him/how he got there etc if he truly is Peter...

If you just wanna read the evidence I’ve collected on why I think ‘Pietro’ is really Peter, scroll to the final bullet point! Warning: it’s LONG!

EDIT 24/02: Kevin Feige has now stated that Agatha purposefully “recast” Pietro in order to mess with Wanda. This does not confirm that this isn’t Peter brought over from another universe but it does change some of my points on other theories slightly. I do think it also does make it seem slightly less likely that he is secretly Mephisto or someone.

EDIT 26/02: In the new episode Agatha states that ‘Pietro’ is under a possession spell, which really rules out that he could be anyone like Mephisto, Nightmare, or Chthon.

‘Pietro’ is really Mephisto or Nightmare - (EDIT 26/02: In the new episode Agatha states that ‘Pietro’ is under a possession spell, which really rules out that he could be anyone like Mephisto, Nightmare, or Chthon.) I mean, immediately I feel there are a lot of holes in the theory that ‘Pietro’ could be either of these big bads tbh. To start with, they are both very powerful beings, how would Agatha be able to control them like she is seen doing in Agatha All Along? Do we really think she’s that powerful? Secondly, why would Agatha be controlling them if they were on the same side, and why would she been controlling them to pretend to be Pietro? Seems super weird to me. Yes, the necklace could be the thing keeping him in ‘Pietro’’s body, or normalising his appearance, but why would he wanna be in this particular body? Why would he be running around doing a really poor imitation of Pietro? Doesn’t make sense to me. ‘Pietro’ does call the twins “demon spawn” (could be hinting they were created by Mephisto, who looks like the devil, or Nightmare, who is a literal demon) and he does mention nightmares to Wanda too, but these could easily just be a throwaway lines or a subtle reference to the kids being created from Mephisto’s soul fragments in the comics, doesn’t necessarily mean ‘Pietro’ is either of these big bads. If Agatha is an unreliable narrator (very likely) and she isn’t really controlling ‘Pietro’, but he is indeed Nightmare or Mephisto, why is he lurking around Agatha’s house, looking like he’s acting more as a henchman than the devastating villain he really is? Surely he would have someone else do a menial task like that? The bug on the window in Agatha’s house could very well be Mephisto, as his first appearance was as a fly, so this would make sense. This doesn’t rule out that he’s also possessing the ‘Pietro’ body/can shapeshift, but it makes it less likely imo. Regarding the mid credits, if he is either of these beings, even with her new powers, Monica will be in big trouble. She has only just gotten her powers and doesn’t know how to use them, were as Mephisto and Nightmare are both crazy powerful beings who would be able to kill her easily, and really would have no reason not to. Now, the show is not gonna kill off Monica, so how the hell would she get out of this situation if it was Nightmare or Mephisto? I don’t believe she would, which makes me think 'Pietro’’s not either of them, and possibly not even a bad guy at all, it’s just been framed that way for the cliffhanger (I don’t actually think the next episode will show us what happened after this though, my theory is that next episode will be flashback style and in the final episode we will get a Darcy/Monica/PETER team up. Here’s hoping!!!). Also...... final point. Though a bit of a silly one, I do genuinely think this...... why the hell would either of these bigs bads choose to act and dress like that?? Just seems a bit weird, idk. Overall I do think ‘Pietro’ is acting sus (maybe cause of mind control and being zapped over from a different universe) but I just think he’s a bit too childish etc. to be either of these big bads in disguise.

‘Pietro’ was created by Agatha - (EDIT 26/02: In the newest episode, Agatha confirms she cannot create beings in the scene where she calls Wanda The Scarlet Witch) Immediately I think there are a lot of holes in this theory too tbh. To start with, can she even do that? There’s nothing that I know of in the comics that suggests she can, and even if she could why would she make someone who didn’t look or act like Pietro? (EDIT 24/02: it has now been confirmed that this was just to mess with Wanda) I don’t really think she created him, but if she did he must be based on what she thinks Pietro looks like? If she really did create him, maybe he looks and sounds like Peter because she is from a different universe where this is what ‘Pietro’ looks and acts like. While this would mean that he isn’t actually Peter, it does support the idea that a multiverse including the Fox X-Men does exist, so if this is true we could still get Peter in the multiverse in the future.

‘Pietro’ is Nicholas Scratch (Agatha’s son) - (EDIT 26/02: In the new episode Agatha states that ‘Pietro’ is under a possession spell, which really rules out that he could be anyone like Mephisto, Nightmare, or Chthon, and it seems unlikely to me that she would be possessing her son, but who knows! Also, after she introduces herself to Wanda she says to Señor Scratchy “She does look shocked to meet the real us, doesn’t she?” to me this implies Scratchy is more than just a rabbit but this is just a guess.) In the comics Nicholas and Agatha are enemies and although I know the show isn’t following the comics exactly (Agatha isn’t the villain in the comics) this does make me feel as though it’s slightly less likely for Nicholas and Agatha to be teamed up and doing whatever Agatha’s doing together (not impossible though). If Nicholas and Agatha were on the same side though, why would Agatha use her son as a Pietro replacement? They obviously don’t look similar. it seems like a very strange and sloppy plan. And why would she, as shown in Agatha All Along, be controlling him if they were allies? Makes no sense. If Agatha and Nicholas are not on the same side, it would make sense that she was controlling him....... however, it would still make no sense for her to make him pretend to be ‘Pietro’ when they look nothing alike. Also, why would she even have brought him to Westview if they were not allies? In the comics he’s quite powerful and dangerous, doesn’t seem like a good idea to bring him along when Agatha would have to spend so much time focussing on keeping him under her spell. I’m not saying it isn’t possible that in WandaVision Agatha and Nicholas are allies, I’m just saying in either case I think it is unlikely that ‘Pietro’ is Nicholas. In the comics, Nicholas is banished to another realm. I think it’s possible that, in WandaVision, instead of another realm, he’s trapped inside the bunny rabbit we’ve seen in a few episodes? The rabbit is called Señor Scratchy, after all (I know that’s a reference to the devil but so is Nicholas’ name...) Another point about Nicholas in general is that in the comics he has allied himself with Mephisto. If Agatha and Nicholas really are allies in this then maybe Señor Scratchy is Nicholas and the bug we see on the window is Mephisto, and Agatha is trying to free them both from the bodies they are trapped in.

‘Pietro’ is Jimmy Woo’s FBI witness - I thought this was quite an interesting take. I was talking about it with a friend of mine and he suggested that the necklace we keep seeing on ‘Pietro’ could be some sort of FBI tracker. But Woo has seen ‘Pietro’ on the broadcast so why wouldn’t he have been like “that’s not Pietro, that’s my witness!”? My friend suggested that Agatha could have altered the witness’ appearance but if that was the case, why wouldn’t she just make him look like the real Pietro? Doesn’t make sense to me but a fun theory nonetheless (but where is the real FBI witness??). Also, with the ‘breach’ alarm going off in the background of the shot where Darcy sees ‘Pietro’ arrive on the broadcast, it seems to me that whoever is ‘playing’ him came in from outside the Hex.

‘Pietro’ is really Chthon - (EDIT 26/02: In the new episode Agatha states that ‘Pietro’ is under a possession spell, which really rules out that he could be anyone like Mephisto, Nightmare, or Chthon.) Initially, I thought this one made a lot of sense, and still think it could potentially be right but I don’t think it makes as much sense as him really being Peter. Chthon created a different dimension in which he resides most of the time. Before he left Earth for this dimension he wrote the Darkhold (which is possibly the book seen in Agatha’s basement in the new episode). The Darkhold is the key to him moving from his dimension back to Earth. Chthon is very often linked to Doctor Stranger (and Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness is where we will next see Wanda appear sooo......) After Chthon leaves Earth the first time, he falls into a deep slumber. He is eventually awoken and there’s a lot of back and forth with him coming to Earth and being sent back to his dimension and being trapped there etc. But eventually he ends up trapped in the dimension and banned from Earth, and through a loophole it turns out he can come back if summoned, via the Darkhold. (Perhaps this is what Agatha is trying to do in the show?) Now the theory that ‘Pietro’ is really Chthon comes from a comic book where Chthon resurfaces many years after his initial banishment, and Doctor Strange isn’t around to stop him. Loki finds out and disguises himself as Wanda to reform the Mighty Avengers to stop Chthon. However, Mordred (long history with Chthon) manages to summon Chthon into the body of Pietro. People think that, especially with the reveal of the book which may be the Darkhold, this is what’s happened in WandaVision, with Agatha in place of Mordred. In the comic, the Mighty Avengers injure ‘Quicksilver’ so severely that Chthon is forced to leave his body, and Vision reads a spell from the Darkhold, trapping Chthon inside it. While I can see where this theory is coming from, I’m not sure it’s right. If Chthon is involved, imo, it makes a lot more sense for him to possess Wanda. Years before Chthon possesses Pietro, he is summoned to earth with the Darkhold by Morgan Le Fay, but she cannot control him. After realising this, she traps Chthon in a fixed point, under warding, for a very long time. A lot later, he is once again banished but, before he leaves, he marks a baby as his future vessel; that baby is none other than Wanda Maximoff. Many years later, thanks to Mordred, Chthon possesses Wanda and tries to use the Darkhold to summon his proper form back to earth in a mystical circle (the Hex?). When the Avengers arrive to help Wanda, Chthon imprisons them the circle (like the Westview residents?). Beast arrives and manages to distract Chthon though, and Chthon is removed from Wanda’s body and trapped inside a doll, which Pietro and Wanda then bury. Years later, Chthon possesses Wanda again and this time she is freed from Chthon's possession by Doctor Strange (Multiverse of Madness?). Is it possible that, because of the Avengers’ Time Heist fucking with the Multiverse, Chthon was disturbed from his slumber in his dimension and is trying to get back to Earth to wreak havoc? Perhaps Wanda is somehow the perfect vessel (maybe to do with her being a Nexus being) and Agatha will use the Darkhold to aid Chthon in possessing her? I don’t really know how I feel about any of that, but after reading the Pietro theory, I just thought that, if Chthon was involved in WandaVision, it would be more likely he’d possess Wanda based on what’s previously happened in the comics and the position Wanda was left in at the end of the most recent episode.

‘Pietro’ is really Peter Maximoff - Obviously, this is the theory I most want to be true, but am hesitant to believe because of my overwhelming love of the X-Men prequels and my tendency to take bad things happening to my faves really really badly (I’m talking ‘cried every day for over a month after Loki died’ badly...). Anyway. Here are my feelings on ‘Pietro’ being Peter:

EDIT 26/02: In the new episode Agatha states that she is possessing ‘Pietro’ - would she be able to possess someone who was already under Wanda’s mind control? I’m not sure she would, so she would possibly have to have brought someone in from outside the Hex. This could support the theory that he was pulled in from the multiverse, rather than just outside the Hex in that reality and Wanda either weakened the barriers between worlds allowing Agatha to being him in from the Multiverse - possibly with the help of the Darkhold - or Wanda herself accidentally brought her in without knowing and he was found by Agatha. Also, she states she couldn’t get Wanda’s “real brother” so used this fake ‘Pietro’ under mind control instead, it may not mean anything but the term “real brother” did stick out to me. Could ‘Pietro’ be her brother in the sense that he’s her brother from another reality, so technically not her real brother? When you think about it, though ‘Fietro’ could mean ‘Fake Pietro’ as Agatha had intended it, to a viewer, it could also be a nod to ‘Fox Pietro’ - or Peter, as we know him. In the flashback scene where we see Wanda and Pietro as children, they are both played by different actors to the flashback scene when Fietro is talking about their childhood. This could just be because his memories were made up, or it could be his real memories of his childhood with his universe’s Wanda. EDIT 3/03: Yesterday, an interview with Matt Shakman (WandaVision’s director) was published on CBR.com. In the interview, he is asked about whether the finale will provide us with a firm answer on who ‘Fietro’ really is and he says: “I think there’s a strong possibility you might get a little more of Evan Peters coming up. But how that plays out, I wouldn’t want to say.” He could be talking specifically about the finale, but he could also be talking about in the MCU in general. Either way, this has made me a bit more hopeful that he really is Peter tbh.

1. So, starting at the beginning - when he first turns up. We now know that this was Agatha’s doing and, though I do feel as though she is possibly an unreliable narrator, if we believe that she was controlling ‘Pietro’ with her magic, that means he’s not Mephisto, Nightmare or Chthon just playing the part of ‘Pietro’, because why and how would Agatha be controlling any of them? This means that he’s either some random guy she’s controlling - but why wouldn’t she try to get someone who looked a bit more like ATJ Quicksilver? How did he get in there (see next bullet point)? Why does this random guy have the same hair as Peter? etc. etc. - she created him out of thin air (already addressed), or he is really Peter. Out of these options, honestly, Peter makes the most sense.

2. When he first turns up and we see what is going on outside the Hex in the SWORD facility, there are alarms going off. Darcy seems to be in a panic when she runs over to her desk and sees ‘Pietro’ on the broadcast. Why were there alarms going off? It seems like they’re the ones that go off because of a perimeter breach. If this is the case, where would this new person entering the Hex have come from? How would they have gotten in? It’s not like someone is gonna just wander into that huge red dome, is it? In the first episode where we see outside the Hex, Jimmy tells Monica that Westview “doesn't want me to [go in]” and asks her “you can feel it too, can't you? No body's supposed to go in”, a random person from outside wouldn’t just wander in, especially with all that security around. Perhaps the alarms are going off because someone has been pulled into the Hex not from the MCU reality but from the multiverse?? The Fox X-Men reality. Peter.

3. His hair - when ‘Pietro’ turns up. he has his Fox universe silver hair. By the next episode it has changed to ATJ Quicksilver’s blond. Why would he start off with silver hair if he wasn’t the Foxverse Quicksilver?? Silver hair isn’t a normal thing for a man in his 30s to have, really. So if he was a random guy being possessed/controlled I think it’s a bit weird that he just happened to have silver hair, the same as Peter. I feel the only reason it’s blond in the next episode is because Wanda’s reality is trying to make him fit in, by making him look more like the person he’s supposed to be - ATJ’s Quicksilver. But my point is basically why would he have silver hair to start with? Why not just make him blond? Surely it’s because he’s Peter? (Also, side note, is his hair silver again in the episode 7 mid credits? He has a hat on and it’s a low angle shot so it’s hard to see but I was thinking that maybe now he’s been kicked out of Wanda’s family and she knows he isn’t Pietro, his hair has gone back to its normal colour because she is not trying to make him fit in. Once again, why would he have silver hair if he isn’t Peter?).

4. The episode 5 subs - the descriptive subtitles on his first episode introduced him as the Fox X-Men version of Quicksilver...

5. He has powers - where the hell did they come from if he’s not Peter? Billy and Tommy have powers, but the twins - through birth or some other way - were created by Wanda. So their powers must come from her - either as something inherited from her or just because they’re a part of Wanda’s illusion. Where would ‘Pietro’‘s powers have come from now that we know he wasn’t created or summoned by Wanda? Can Agatha give people powers? (EDIT 26/02: seems unlikely as Agatha literally told Wanda her illusion magic wasn’t as powerful as Wanda’s) Or are his powers just another sign that he is really Peter?

6. ‘Pietro Maximoff as himself’ - this is shown in the Malcolm in the Middle style opening credits, none of the other characters have who they’re ‘played by’ listed and this isn’t something that appears in the Malcolm in the Middle opening either so I’m not sure it’s a reference. Initially, I thought it was just to try to reinforce the idea that he was Pietro even though we knew he wasn’t, and to make us even more suspicious of him (it worked on me!), but what if it was telling us that he really is Peter Maximoff. Playing himself. ‘Peter’ is obviously the English version of ‘Pietro’ and Peter was listed as ‘Pietro’ on some of the DOFP promo stuff so it’s completely reasonable to assume that in the Foxverse his real name is Pietro and he just goes by Peter because he’s been ‘Americanised’. So maybe it was a hint that the Fox ‘Pietro’ is literally playing himself, Pietro ‘Peter’ Maximoff........ He also refers to himself as ‘Uncle P’, perhaps hinting that ‘Pietro’ isn’t usually the name he would use for himself?

7. The clothes - he literally turns up in a leather jacket. Though usually a silver one (though he does wear a suspiciously similar black one, and similar black jeans too, in his Deadpool 2 cameo), this is something Peter is well known for wearing in the Fox films. We’ve seen that people who come into the Hex get their clothes rewritten into more ‘Westview-appropriate’ attire, maybe his silver jacket was deemed too bright and crazy for the little town and the era they were in. In episode six he’s wearing a silver watch, much like the watch Peter wears in DOFP. All the clothes we see him wear seem a very odd choice for someone who is maybe supposed to be the villain of the show(?). Bright blue and pink? I mean they’re basically Wanda and Pietro’s colours, maybe hinting that he is really on the ‘good’ side? His jumper in the mid credits, to me, looks very (comic book) Quicksilver-esque. Overall, his outfits just seem like something Peter would wear in this jumbled Wanda version of reality (his style is kinda ‘bright and a bit too young for him’, maybe this is just Wanda’s take on it). And I repeat, if he was Mephisto or whoever, would he really choose to wear such fucking ridiculous clothes??

8. He acts like Peter - though slightly less cute and a little more adult-like than when we last saw him in Apocalypse (I’m not counting Dark Phoenix cause he had like three lines in it so it was hard to gauge what he was like) he is still a hyperactive, sugar-consuming, video-game playing, sarcastic, immature, thieving, jokester... essentially. Which is pretty much who he was in X-Men - though, as mentioned he was a little more adorable prankster, less straight up arsehole (like he’s slightly been in this), but I think that could be put down entirely to whatever is going on with the mind control or whatever (he probably super confused with mind control making him think he is Pietro and ask the right questions, but his real personality is still shining through slightly), plus the fact that he was probably only in his mid-twenties in Apocalypse, so as a man is his thirties now, he’s likely to be a little less ‘cute’.

9. He also sounds like Peter - this is obviously just ‘cause that’s Evan Peters’ real voice but they make a point of commenting on his voice and his lack of ATJ’s accent.

10. The Parent Trap is playing at the cinema in the background - a film about twins separated at birth . I mean..... doesn’t this just hint that Wanda and ‘Pietro’ really are twins separated by the multiverse and ‘Pietro’ really is Peter?? And the twins in the film switch places? Does that not hint that Peter has switched over from his own universe to play the part of Pietro in this universe?

11. Why does Wanda trust him? She looks at him when he first arrives and obviously she knows he doesn’t look anything like her Pietro, but she still somehow ‘recognises’ him. She must feel some familiarity for him? Initially she lets him stay in her house and play with her kids. She shares a lot about what she’s been through and been doing in Westview with him... She must have trusted him to an extent, even though she was suspicious of his different look and strange personality, etc. Wanda, in the comics, is a very powerful Nexus being, so if this is the same in the MCU perhaps in their version it means she can recognise Peter as her brother even though he’s from a different reality with a different face. Also, it’s shown in Age of Ultron that she can sense when Pietro is injured (and in WandaVision Billy, who has pretty much the same powers as Wanda and a ‘blood’ connection to Vision like Wanda does with Pietro, can sense when Vision is injured), so they clearly had a deep connection. Is it possible that even though Wanda and Peter are from different realities she still has this bond with him - perhaps she can sense they really are family, and they still have this blood connection, even though they’re family from different realities.

12. The necklace - people have suggested it may be being used to control Peter. I think that’s a great theory and completely possible, but I also have another theory to add - from the clip we see in Agatha All Along, it looks as though Agatha was there using her magic to control ‘Pietro’, though it may have just been shown that way to make it really obvious at a glance he was under her control, it could also mean the necklace is there for another purpose. Thinking about Agatha’s brooch - she has worn a variant of it through every decade and the only other time (?) we’ve seen that happen is with ‘Pietro’‘s necklace. Perhaps Agatha’s brooch protects her from Wanda’s false memories. Perhaps the necklace ‘Pietro’ is wearing is, similarly, to do with memories - possibly placed on him by Agatha to give him some memories of the real Pietro’s? Or to make sure he does not regain his memories of who he really is - Peter Maximoff?

13. NO ONE KNOWS WHO HE IS - and people (Darcy, Jimmy, Monica, Vision, Wanda, Billy AND Tommy) keep drawing attention to this fact!!! Why would they be bringing attention to this if it wasn’t important?! I’ve made it pretty obvious I don’t think he’s one of the powerful villains I previously mentioned, and if he was just some random guy why would people be bringing so much attention to him? Narratively, it makes sense for him to be an important character, and with all the evidence I’ve gathered I think it makes most sense for him to be Peter. 14. I know this is a weak one, but think about the time period of the episodes - ‘Pietro’ arrives right at the end of the 80s episode, when it is about to go into the 90s. The last time we properly saw Peter in the Fox universe was in the 1980s, and in Dark Phoenix we briefly see him in the early 90s. This could mean something! Perhaps the Multiverse universes are not all aligned to the same time period, but Wanda accidently reached out for ‘Pietro’ and ended up pulling Peter into her universe because he was in the same time period her ‘show’ was currently on. 15. Left this one ‘til last cause I’m really not that sold on it but, his tattoo - now, the ‘Mom’ tattoo we see on ‘Pietro’ in episode 6 is Evan Peters’ actual tattoo. Why didn’t they get him to cover it up? Is it a hint that ‘Pietro’ and Wanda really do share a mum, just different versions of the same mum from two different realities? Could it also be a hint that ‘Pietro’ is indeed Peter brought in through the multiverse... MOM = Multiverse of Madness, after all. (I also think it’s possible the Hex is a pocket reality Wanda has created but that’s not strictly relevant to this Peter post).

BEHIND THE SCENES

16. Speaking of things outside of what we see in the show - head WandaVision writer, Jac Schaeffer, spoke about the casting of Evan Peters in an interview on Marvel's official site. In the interview she said: “We were rooting for it for so long, and didn't know if it would be possible. It was complicated to make happen.” Why would it not have been possible to make happen? Casting Evan Peters to play some random guy doesn’t seem very complicated to me. Is it possible that, when the writers came up with this idea, Disney had not yet acquired Fox? And the reason that they weren’t sure they could make it happen was because they did want to bring him in to play his Fox character and had to wait for Disney to finish the acquisition before moving forwards with their Evan Peters idea? That’s the only reason I can think of why it would have been “complicated” tbh.

17. This is a really weak argument tbh, but I thought I may as well include it anyway - around the time Dark Phoenix was due to be released, when Disney were part-way through acquiring Fox (which was public knowledge and had been for a while) - Evan Peters stated that he hoped Dark Phoenix wouldn’t be the end for his character, and said he’d be sad if it was. He went on to say "I'd want to do more, there's more to explore and shooting the sequences are more fun and just to be behind the scenes on it." Perhaps this was just wishful thinking on his part, but it is also possible that he knew that the door wasn’t necessarily closed on that character and there may be a chance for him to return to the role once Disney had purchased the X-Men (perhaps he had even already been approached about playing Peter in WandaVision).

18. In terms of promo for the show, Evan Peters has not been involved AT ALL - no interviews or anything. Obviously originally Marvel were trying to keep his involvement in the show a secret so it was a big surprise (unfortunately for them they didn’t manage this but ah well), but now that the cat’s outta the bag, why has there been no promo from Peters? I know he doesn’t do social media and I know it’s COVID times but interviews are still happening. Why has he not been called in to promote the show at all? To me, it feels like Marvel are worried about the sort of questions an interviewer would ask Peters. It seems as if they’re still trying to keep his character’s identity a secret, which means it must be important and not just some random Westview citizen - and the fact that he is still yet to receive his own character poster for the show only adds to my suspicions. (EDIT 26/02: Agatha talked about ‘Fietro’ in the new episode and seemed to very purposefully avoid mentioning who he actually was. To me, this very much makes it seem even like his identity is a big deal and it will be revealed as a major plot point in the finale next week. I mean, think about it - they’re gonna save a Multiverse reveal for the finale, aren’t they?)

19. Marvel have literally said this show will lead into Multiverse of Madness on many occasions, they have said that the events of WandaVision open the Multiverse, and we have yet to see this happen! The only mention of anything connected to the Multiverse so far was the Nexus ad. So there must be something big coming up that opens up the Multiverse. There are only two episodes left and nothing has happened that implies the Multiverse has been opened up (EDIT 26/02: one episode left! And the Multiverse still not been addressed) unless Peters’ ‘Pietro’ is really Peter. This wouldn’t need a huge amount of explaining as it’s already been set up and even people who don’t watch the Fox X-Men movies by now know he played the ‘other’ Quicksilver.

Also, side note, in Far From Home (set months after WandaVision) Fury and Hill don’t seem at all surprised that Quentin Beck is from an alternate reality. We find out at the end of FFH that they are both skrulls pretending to be Nick and Maria - who has a connection to the skrulls? Monica, obviously! Perhaps Talos and Soren are not surprised Beck is from an alternate universe because they have already been informed of the events of WandaVision opening up the Multiverse, by Monica (or possibly even through their daughter being Monica’s contact, who we see in the new episode? Just adding that in there cause it’s a theory I really like, as a huge fan of the Skrulls). 20. Marvel haven’t denied it - I know this doesn’t necessarily mean anything but I like to think that if there was absolutely no way that Fox X-Men were joining the MCU via Multiverse, someone from Marvel might actually have said this in an interview since the Evan reveal, just so people don’t get their hearts totally crushed and Marvel don’t get a load of backlash for leading fans on? Idk. Disney/Marvel Studios never actually said there wouldn’t be more films in the Fox X-Men universe after Disney acquired the rights to them, everyone just assumed. This could mean something. 21. Merch - there was a massive amount of X-Men merch released last year. Yes, maybe it was just because Disney wanted to cash in on their acquisition of the Fox movies, but maybe it was something else... There was the 20th anniversary line of Funko Pops, there were the variants for that line (metallic Mystique, Professor X with Cerebro, and YOUNG Magneto from DOFP), there was the Marvel 80th anniversary original X-Men line of Funko Pops, there was the line of Hasbro action figures from various films including Deadpool 2 and the X-Men prequel movies..... I’m just saying, a lot of X-Men merch has been released over the last year, and most of it has been based on the films. Yes, last year was the 20th anniversary of the first X-Men movie, but that doesn’t explain the release of all the prequel/Deadpool merch. If it was for the 20th anniversary of X1 then why the young Magneto Pop etc? It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it does make it clear that Marvel know there are a lot of people out there who are huge fans of the original and prequel X-Men movies, so they must know that people would love to see those characters back, played by the same actors. Perhaps Evan really is Peter, and perhaps we will get more characters from his universe in future MCU content. 22. Elizabeth Olsen’s “Luke Skywalker level cameo” - okay, so she didn’t say these exact words. She was asked if there was anything in WandaVision similar to Luke’s Mandalorian cameo (weird question tbh??) and she apparently said “Yes, I’m really excited.” Paul Bettany has also said something weird and cryptic in an interview about how later in the show there’s a guest appearance from someone he’s always wanted to work with. (EDIT 26/02: now that we’ve seen White Vision I’m pretty sure Paul Bettany was talking about himself - what a troll! But it’s so funny reading back what he said, haha. HOWEVER, Lizzie’s comment still stands.) NOW, Elizabeth Olsen is actually a huge Star Wars fan so she would know how big the Luke Skywalker cameo was in Mando, so I highly doubt it’s Evan Peters’ appearance she’s talking about, as some people have thought it might be. The Luke Skywalker cameo in Mando was, for me (also a massive Star Wars fan), mind-blowing. As soon as I saw that one X-Wing turn up, I was shaking, and by the time we got to see Luke’s face revealed I was sobbing. Evan Peters’ appearance in WandaVision, while fun, was not at all on that level (and I say this as a fan of the Fox X-Men movies above everything else). A cameo that would have that sort of effect on me, would be one that confirmed without a doubt that the Fox X-Men will be joining the MCU via Multiverse. Initially when I heard that Lizzie had said this, I assumed she was exaggerating and it would be Doctor Strange or Loki as they are clearly tied into all the Multiverse stuff as well, but when I really thought about how big the Luke cameo was and how much influence Star Wars has apparently had on Elizabeth Olsen (apparently she cried when she saw Mark Hamill at a premiere?), I thought that it couldn’t possibly be either of those characters. So now I’m thinking it must be someone that confirms the Fox X-Men are joining the MCU (Fassbender or McAvoy maybe?), which would in turn confirm ‘Pietro’ is really the Peter we know and love. Obviously this is all speculation, but that’s all that really makes sense to me from that comment. 23. Deadpool 3 has literally been confirmed, and it has all but been confirmed as being MCU - I have two points to make here: 1. How the hell does Deadpool 3 fit into the MCU when mutants have never even been mentioned before because of the licensing issues? With all the shit that happened in the previous Deadpool films (mutants AND the X-Men clearly already being established, time travel working in a completely different way to how it works in the MCU, and many other points too...) Deadpool in no way fits into the MCU as it is now so surely it only makes sense to bring him into the MCU via Multiverse? 2. If Deadpool is in the MCU why the fuck couldn’t the Fox X-Men be too??? Give me one good reason. There isn’t one.

TLDR; my theory on how Peter could have been brought to the MCU reality is:

Assuming Agatha brought Peter over - she is magic as we know - I think she summoned a Pietro from another universe (possibly using the Darkhold if that is the book in her basement, or possibly she was able to summon him easier because Wanda’s magic had weakened the barriers between universes or something) to use against Wanda and when he arrived she either 1. didn’t know he didn’t look like the right Pietro (possibly because she’s from a different reality herself, and surely a Pietro is a Pietro, right?) or 2. just straight up didn’t care/felt it was too late/too much effort to really do anything about it (EDIT 24/02: it has now been confirmed that she “recast” Pietro to mess with Wanda). It is also possible imo that Wanda unknowingly brought Peter over from the Foxverse and Agatha just happened to find him and decide to use him to her advantage (he does say he heard Wanda calling out to him, this could be the real Peter talking).

The summoning of Peter sets off the alarms we hear in the background of the shots when Darcy sees him arrive on the broadcast. Agatha is controlling Peter with her magic and the necklace is something to do with that (suppressing his memories/giving him Pietro memories etc). Wanda, as a Nexus being and someone who clearly has strong bonds to her family (she can sense when the real Pietro dies, just like how Billy can sense when Vis is in trouble), recognises him as a Pietro even though he’s not her Pietro which is why she initially semi-trusts him despite him looking different. When he’s pulled into the Hex his clothes adapt to Wanda’s reality which is why we see him wearing a black leather jacket initially - it’s been rewritten from his silver leather jacket. His hair starts off silver like Peter’s (because he is Peter) but becomes blond in the next episode - this is because he’s spending time in Wanda’s house and she is subconsciously trying to make him look more like her Pietro. When he is removed from Wanda’s household and she tells the kids he’s not their uncle his hair goes back to silver because Wanda is no longer focussing on trying to make him fit in with how she thinks Pietro should look. He has powers because he is Peter. He is being controlled by Agatha and that’s why he is asking weird questions and acting like a bit of an arsehole, but his Peter personality is still shining through slightly (his childish behaviour etc). So far, this pretty much sums up my feelings on ‘Pietro’ possibly being Peter. I know it’s clear I’ve put way too much thought into this, even though I said I was trying not to get my hopes up.......but I literally cannot stop thinking about him haha. Let’s hope he is really Peter and we’re getting the Fox X-Men in the multiverse. *

(Obviously there is another option which is that he’s just some random guy being mind-controlled by Agatha but that just seems so dumb and a waste of Evan Peters to me so I don’t even really wanna think about it tbh! Haha)

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minerstatus · 3 years

Text

Teyvat’s School for the Gifted

Summary: He's cruel, mean, and sadistic. Lumine cannot fathom why he has the followers he does, but she won't fall into his hands like the rest of them. It was unknown to her at that time how such a stance would cause the biggest uproar the schools ever seen.

This is the silly drama filled high school/college parody AU nobody asked for filled with Lumine not giving a shit and Childe trying to buy his way out of problems.

Ship: Lumine/Childe

Tags: Highschool AU, Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Jealousy, lots of side ships.

Status: 10/? on Ao3

Chapter 2

She had two options to think about after that ‘encounter’ or whatever you want to call it. Get in line like the rest of the students and eventually ‘hopefully’ her new toy status wears off and she fades into the sea of students. But that would depend on how HE acts after the dinner encounter. And something told Lumine from the way Amber and Barbara reacted to even speaking of the red headed devil he was a force to be reckoned with.

She tossed and turned in the night thinking of different scenarios for the morning.

There were boys like him back home. Maybe not filthy rich, sons of local shop owners, that acted like him. None of them possessed the same air as he did. Being able to part a sea of students just by walking has to be a superpower in itself.

Come to think of it she didn’t even find out where he was from, perhaps she should ask. The more info the better when it comes to defending herself.

She was never one to sit down and take abuse. When she was just in grade school the local boys knew not to mess with her after a few unfortunate incidents. Her mother always told her it was her blonde hair and honey eyes that made her stand out.

It always starts with them testing you. Small things to annoy you, just to see how you react. She would not be able to keep her temper down if that happened. She already had an issue with her mouth as it is.

She turned one final time in the plush bed she had been provided with. The school had made sure even the scholarship students were treated above average. It was impressive, but did little to dampen her jitters.

First day, which means new people and new teachers. Lumine was walked by Amber and Barbara to the faculty building. Razor was found sitting on a bench halfway there. It brought a smile to her face.

Razor had never left Amber’s side the entire night they sat talking. It was girl gossip that Lumine was never into, but enjoyed now that she had some people to actually talk to. Not many people are willing to come to a run-down farm for a sleepover back home. Razor himself didn’t talk much, but Lumine was observant. He sat on her bed and watched her, every action, smile, glance. Lumine was quite interested in understanding what Ambers reservations about him were. She seemed to like him from her perspective.

More questions for later.

A plump woman greeted her at the front desk. She was cheerful, but not like Mrs. Lee was, instead giving off warm motherly tones. Lumine could imagine her doting on all the students she came in contact with.

“Here you are dear.” She handed her a slip of paper with her classes.

“Thanks,” Lumine said quietly as she read the sheet. Alchemy, ancient runes, adventuring 101, history, then finally vision training. She internally laughed at the last class, perhaps they were going to rename it. She pulled on the collar of her school issued cardigan as it threatened to slide off one shoulder.

“Just head out to the academics building Mrs. Lee showed you yesterday and a student will be waiting to guide you to your classes,” The woman told her. Lumine nodded and gave back a genuine smile before turning to leave.

It was easy to pick out the student waiting for her in front of the buildings doors despite the crowds entering and exiting. It was a green haired girl nervously fisting her skirt between fidgeting with her glasses. Two small animal ears poked out from under her main of messy hair. She wore her skirt long, unlike the rest of the student body (and Lumine herself), and covered up with a baggy school issued cardigan like Lumine’s.

“Are you the one waiting for the new girl?” Lumine asked. The girl snapped out of a nervous trance and a blush covered her features.

“Ah! Y-yes,” She stuttered before taking a breath, “Sorry I get nervous easily, my names Sucrose,” she extended a hand.

“Thats a pretty name, I like it,” Lumine said as she returned the handshake. She hoped it might calm her down but Sucrose turned scarlet instead.

“I-I'll walk you to your class,” She mumbled and walked inside. Lumine followed silently, deciding the best course of action was to not embarrass her further.

She led her to a decently sized class of students with a portly teacher standing in the front. He wore robes and a ridiculously oversized wizards' hat. The site was an oddity in Lumines eyes, having only ever had exceptionally plain teachers back home. Sucrose left Lumine at the front of the class as she shuffled over to the teacher, managing to get his attention with a simple clearing of her throat. Lumine decided to inspect the chalk board instead of the students. She didn’t want to know if the red headed asshole was in here yet.

“Ah yes Lumine!” The teacher bellowed and waved her over. She stepped lightly up onto his raised platform as sucrose scurried to her seat in the front row. “My name is professor Rasmodius, take a seat next to Zhongli back there,” He pointed off into the right of the room. Lumines stomach sank at the mention of a familiar name. She dragged herself to the back of the class and slid into the empty stool next to him.

They made eye contact and she swore she could see the gears turning in his mind before he spoke.

“He’s not in this class,” He said in monotone.

Lumine choked on her own spit, “w-what?” she asked him.

“He’s not here, if that is what you are worried about,” He smiled down at her sweetly. Lumine felt her face heat up.

“I don’t care if he's here or not,” She quickly recovered and crossed her arms.

“Hm,” He put a hand on his chin, “You had the same gaze as most other new females.”

“Yes, well sorry for being nervous.”

“Perhaps I have made a wrong assumption, I apologize,” He turned his body to her, “Zhongli of the Wangsheng funeral parlor.”

Lumine fumbled a bit at his words. Was it normal to greet someone with your name and what company you hail from? She eyed him wearily for a moment then decided to screw it. Not like they wouldn’t find out if she lies.

“Lumine of a very poor farm outside of Mondstadt.”

He chuckled in a low deep tone. Lumine felt her façade falling as her heart sped up.

“Sorry, perhaps too formal?” He asked.

“You talk like you are speaking to a business partner,” she told him honestly.

“Ive been told that before, even by my friends,” He admitted. For the first time Lumine’s lips quirked into a teasing smile.

“Alright class today we will be looking into the mythical potions of Esteria! page 103!” The teacher commanded. The room filled with the sounds of turning pages.

“I didn’t get a book?” Lumine questioned.

“You will more than likely get them at some point today,” Zhongli told her as he slid his book over between them, “here share mine.”

“Thanks,” She mumbled, dipping behind her hair to hide her blush. Perhaps her friends were right, most of the group wasn’t that bad.

Okay maybe they were wrong, at least two out of the four were very very bad. She had not seen the infamous Childe today, but after alchemy Zhongli was very kind to walk her to the next class. Relieving a very thankful, yet worried, sucrose from her job.

They talked about small things, mostly how the school was going, what she thought of it, what kind of things she did back in Mondstadt. To her surprise Zhongli seemed genuinely interested in the day to day life of a poor person. He was awkwardly polite with everything, but had a sincerity to him that he wore on his sleeve.

There was just one sneaking suspicion she had regarding the man. How on earth does a funeral parlor have enough money to send their son to this school AND be the top of the food chain. Surely these boys were flooded with money otherwise the attention wouldn’t be as drastic. There were even glares tossed her way as they walked to the next class.

It was nice to have the attention, he had a smooth deep voice that sent her insides into a flurry. That was until they came upon Xiao. The boy was shorter than his tall geo counterpart and crossed his arms at their arrival. He glared at her as Zhongli added another sentence to their conversation. The words fell on deaf ears as Lumine tried to fight back a snarky remark. She had done nothing to earn this glare from him and it was irking her.

“Keep glaring like that and your face will freeze that way,” She blurted out.

“What?” He hissed at her.

“Ah,” Lumine back tracked, she didn’t mean to speak her thoughts like that, “you just look awfully peeved is all,” she decided on. He narrowed his eyes at her.

Day one, mouth already got her in trouble, nice.

They had a standoff for a few moments before Xiao conceded with a huff and turned into the room.

“Don't worry about him, he's weary of newcomers,” Zhongli said from besides her. She looked up to him for reassurance and was once again met with an honest gaze and smile.

“I-” She began to say and stopped to think about it, “I trust you.”

Even if he was lieing, what harm would come of it? She loses a friend she never even had?

Ancient runes was a snooze fest as expected. She sat next to an incredibly ordinary looking girl who should have hissed like a cat when Lumine sat down. It would have made the look she gave her less comical.

But things perked up in Adventuring 101. The class was useless to someone like her. It was basically preaching about basic safety the entire time. Don’t touch pryo slimes, they hurt. Don’t go off fighting electro monsters in the rain, that also hurts. Always have food rations and medical potions on you!

Blah.

She didn’t need this info, but it was a required class. Get a taste of everything before heading off to the college and decide what classifications you want. Stupid rules some adult made to torture the youngins.

It was fifteen minutes into the class. There was a saving grace, she had a seat next to Zhongli. He shared his book with her again and was polite and overly cordial as always. She assumed the class was full with everyone in attendance. There were a few empty desks but students could be sick or the class could have fewer students than desks.

Then HE walked in, opening the door without a care in the world, loudly. There was this beaming, disgustingly fake, smile plastered to him. A girl followed him inside, checking her makeup on a small compact mirror. They seated themselves in the empty spots adjacent to herself and Zhongli.

The teacher scolded him as he walked, but he ignored it with a shrug. His entire demeanor made her want to mop the floor with his pretty face. Just like the boys back home. She made a point to keep her eyes forwards or at the text in front of her. Not wanting to give him any ideas. There was a cold chill crawling up her spine again, he was staring.

The class continued onwards. The teacher quickly dropped the subject of publicly shaming Childe for walking in to class late. They were moving on to something at least slightly interesting she didn’t know too much about. How to read the stars and sun for location and time. It was something she never needed as she stayed close to home.

It was useful to her so she took out her notepad and began to scribble down some text out of the book as she teacher lectured. She made it a few words in before the girl next to Childe giggled in that high pitch way girls do when they are trying to impress a man.

She dared a side glance over to the table and noticed the girl enamored by him. Getting a full view of the back of her head as Childe whispered sweet nothings to her. He sensed her gaze and looked up, making eye contact. She went back to her work before the girl could turn, clearing her throat.

He was testing her; she could feel it. Between yesterday's stare down and this there was no mistaking it.

“Something wrong?” Zhongli asked her in a low whisper.

“Just a little difficult to get work done with so many distractions,” She growled.

“You will grow accustom soon,” He told her. She laughed quietly at his choice of words. Someone needed to remind him he was still a teenager.

The entire period passed with flirtatious whispers and laughs flying.

And not, one. God. Damn. Time, did the teacher say anything to the two culprits. Although something told her Childe was the true mastermind behind the distraction. She tried her best, she really did, but Lumine was never great at keeping her temper in control. Not when it came to completely asinine males making a side show out of a class.

Her pencil lead snapped on her paper.

“Shit,” she whispered.

“It seems you have snapped your lead,” Zhongli murmured. She refrained from calling him captain obvious. There was a chuckle to her right, this time clearly mocking and directed at her, she herself snapped. She turned and with pin point accuracy threw the pencil at her tormentor. The eraser bounced off his forehead, sending the object into an unknown destination in the room.

The smile fell from his features and they traded deadly glares. The girl sitting with him was busying herself cooing over him asking what's wrong. Oblivious to the events that just unfolded. Zhongli of all people fucking laughed.

She turned her glare into a smug grin reading ‘what are you gunna do about it? now shut the hell up’ and turned back to her work. She leaned back and crossed her arms.

“Well played young lady,” Zhongli whispered to her.

The option of fading into the background had vanished.

#chilumi #genshin impact #genshin childe #genshin lumine #genshin fanfic #childe #Lumine #genshin impact fanfiction

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salarta · 3 years

Note

What don't you like about Lorna's characterization in X-Factor?

Thanks for asking!

I believe in transparency, so before I get into that, I want to provide a little background on the point of view I’m coming from that influences my opinions.

I was opposed to Lorna being on X-Factor when it was announced. There was already a lot of bad blood and history for me with Marvel as a result of these past few years especially. I won’t exhaustively detail all of it, but the bottom line is, I was already in a place of having a low opinion of current X-Men comics in general.

Then when it was announced she would be on X-Factor, not even as the leader but just as a team member, that immediately grated on me. She’s been buried and sidelined for so long, and now she’s not only right back on the same title yet again after 30 years - that’s a second wave fringe title - she’s not even leading it, or doing other, more meaningful things outside it simultaneously.

Then I saw the interviews by X-Factor’s writer at announcement, which immediately gave me a couple red flags. One, the writer couldn’t seem to say a single thing about Lorna besides essentially “Magneto is her dad and Havok is her ex.” Not even about trauma, of which Lorna has tons of it. Yet she had no problem acknowledging trauma as an important story point for other characters. Two, in trying to form her opinion of Lorna, she said she talked to a couple friends, one of which she said put the Lorna x Havok relationship in a “new light” for her. Meaning she was limiting her fan input just to a couple people she knows and whatever biases those two have, at the exclusion of all others.

That’s my background. Before a single issue dropped. Now let’s get to the things I have problems with since it’s started getting published.

And I do welcome people correcting me if I’m incorrect about details of the book. Being wrong happens. The only true path toward a better future for Lorna is honest assessment.

My biggest problem with X-Factor’s characterization, as a whole, is that it completely disregards important parts of her history in the way she should think and act, and instead treats her like a blank slate.

This is clearest in X-Factor #4, the issue during X of Swords where Rockslide dies. Lorna is a survivor of the Genoshan genocide. We saw how deeply that wounded her. We outright saw her experience of being hailed as a sovereign princess by the people of Genosha, followed by those same people begging Lorna, specifically, to save them. Only for Lorna to be unable to do so, and unable to handle all the death and carnage and pain around her (note these pages are in order of her experiences, not publication order).

After the Genoshan genocide, we saw how not only did she survive this, she had those moments replaying constantly in her head and all around her until the other X-Men dug her out of Genosha’s ruins.

She suffered immensely from what happened to her. So much. But by the end, after dealing with the strain and trauma for so much time, she started to settle into a role from that experience somewhere in between Xavier and Magneto - which is extremely appropriate, considering her very first appearance in comics was all about her struggling between the “good of the X-Men” and the “evil of her father’s blood flowing through her veins” (as it was incredibly simplistic at the time).

This is the Lorna that came out of her hardships with Genosha. The one who felt the weight of those deaths and took them on to a point of being ready to fight for mutant rights.

In spite of this, Marvel has been ignoring the Genoshan genocide concerning Lorna’s history for 15 years now. Refusing to acknowledge it at all, as they let Jean fight Cassandra Nova on its ruins, and let Storm act outraged about its dead, and let Axis exploit it for Red Skull while Lorna’s written as off doing something completely unrelated.

The problem noted in the paragraph above is not X-Factor’s problem alone. It’s a running problem across all of Marvel.

But where X-Factor differs and is far, far worse is that X-Factor #4 not only completely ignored this event in her history. It had her behave as if she had no concept whatsoever of death and loss, had never received the development she did from the Genoshan genocide.

For over 15 years, Lorna’s been wiped from the Genosha story even though she went through the genocide and had served at Magneto’s side (before learning she was his daughter after all) during his rule. Not once in any of that time did Marvel allow the deaths of millions crying for her specifically to save them to impact their treatment of her. It’s been as if she suddenly no longer gives a damn about them.

But one mutant she doesn’t know at all dies nearby and she has a complete breakdown, running around unable to figure out what to do with herself, getting yelled at by her father to make the prophecies come out and later on wishing she could just disappear and stop being a part of anything at all?

That is not Lorna. Or rather, maybe it could count as Lorna from the 90s before Genosha ever happened. But it is absolutely not post-Genosha Lorna, the woman who endured the pain of millions dying all around her and came out of it a woman ready to fight through that pain.

Perhaps if this story acknowledged and incorporated the Genoshan genocide, did an incredibly good job justifying her behavior through that and making it all make sense, I would feel differently. But as it stands? This is an insult to everything she’s endured.

Which gets me to my other big complaints about this book. It doesn’t ACTUALLY acknowledge anything about her history at all.

This is where fans of the book will say “Oh X-Factor acknowledged Giant-Size X-Men when she built the base” and things like that. No. The book has only vaguely hinted at that history, which is very different from truly acknowledging and using it. The few times the book does this, such “acknowledgments” last for exactly one panel, and you have to be a real hardcore Lorna fan or long-time reader to have any chance whatsoever of seeing those statements as callbacks to her past. If you’re a casual reader, Lorna’s comment to Krakoa before creating the base could just as easily be read as that Lorna and Krakoa used to date and had a really bad breakup.

I’ve been asked before what would count as acknowledging her past. So here’s an example. Instead of the vague hinting with Krakoa, Lorna could’ve explicitly said something along the lines of “Hey, remember when Storm and the others helped me launch you out into space?” That would have been enough for a casual reader to know the amazing feat she did, its importance relative to current Marvel events, AND that she has a history with major known names in the franchise.

But as written? It’s just a silly little joke of a character who’s apparently never done anything notable or interesting “before now.”

Aside from these problems, I’m not keen on what has over time appeared to be a running theme of “Lorna is stupid” on this book. It started with this simple “joke.”

An important note: this panel is out of context. It looks worse by itself, but I have since been corrected by a reader that what happened before this was Northstar trying to charge in, Lorna trying to stop him, both getting caught in this trap, followed by Rachel’s quip. And they do have a history from before X-Factor. They were on the same team, Starjammers, in the late 00s to early 10s.

If this was the only case I had, I wouldn’t be bringing it up. It’s fine taken in isolation. There’s a question of why Lorna’s the sole target of the quip when it was Northstar’s fault, and a problem that people could easily misremember this in the future as Lorna taking the blame. But a single moment is no big deal.

But then we have the scene from X-Factor #4 above where Magneto’s written as yelling at her, putting her down for not being able to get the prophecies out. Lorna even explicitly calls it a “fitting humiliation” during that story.

And then we have the most recent issue. Where Siryn outright calls Lorna dumb as the story has her act in a way that makes her being called that appropriate.

In other words, three times now, Lorna’s been presented as the object of ridicule. As a failure who isn’t able to make plans, think ahead, or handle these stresses that come her way. In essence, it’s wiping out the development she received not just from her experiences on Genosha, but also from her time as leader of All-New X-Factor. Would YOU expect this character, as presented, to be at all capable of leading her own team some day? Or of leading people in a movement, harkening back to when she was called the Queen of Mutants both post-Genosha and when she was initially revealed and Magneto was believed to be dead?

My expectations of X-Factor before it started releasing issues were low, as stated above. But as it’s been releasing issues, it’s just been confirming my worst thoughts about Marvel and how little they think of this amazing character who’s been through so much and never receives her due.

All it’s doing is exploiting her to sell the book and promote everyone else on it. That is my straightforward assessment and opinion of the book. None of the stories or moments truly address anything Lorna’s experienced. The initial story was about Aurora, setting up Northstar as the leader, and forming the team. The Mojoworld story was about Shatterstar. X-Factor #4 was about Rockslide and his death. The latest story is about Siryn.

And it’s great for all these other characters that they’re getting all this care and attention that they often don’t get. But it doesn’t have to come at Lorna’s expense. If she’s going to be on the book, it has to actually give a damn about what she’s been through and how it’s shaped her, and openly acknowledge her too often forgotten past spanning 52 years.

I am not saying X-Factor taken as its own thing is bad. I’m not saying it treats any of the other characters bad. I’m saying it’s bad for Lorna, and she’s better off not on it even if she doesn’t get to join the new X-Men team.

I will end off on a bit more of a positive note for people who happen to like this book. There are a couple things I do like about it.

I like the creative usage of Lorna’s powers in building the team’s base, and in having the prophecies encoded in electromagnetic signatures. Those are an excellent way to show she can be and do other things besides “bend spoons,” and she’s not just “Magneto with boobs” as far as power usage.

I also like that the book does not have a sexism problem in its treatment Lorna. Past treatment of Lorna had this problem in a big way, as demonstrated by this awful as fuck cover from X-Men Blue.

And I partly like the very last few panels of X-Factor #4, in that Lorna gets to do some public speaking among mutant colleagues. I loathe the treatment leading up to it, and I think it could’ve been much better if it followed the vein of one of the variant covers of Lorna holding up a sword in front of an army as if urging them onward to battle as a warrior queen would. But it was still better than okay.

But those few good bits do not in any way make up for the bad as I’ve seen it in this book.

#polaris #lorna dane #x-men #marvel

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morepeachyogurt · 3 years

Text

a sky full of stars (and she was looking at her)

Word Count- 2.8k

Pairing- Penemily

Summary- Penemily highschool au where they are paired up on a English assignment! Based on this post.

Part 1 of my, maybe we’re from the same star, series

Read it here on ao3

Tw’s- very small mentions of substances, minor swearing

A/N- this is the first installment of a series based on my yearning posts, and my first time writing romance/3rd pov, I’d love some feedback!

It’s hard to miss Penelope Garcia. With her bright clothes and brighter personally it seems like the sun shines a spotlight on her. Her golden hair is like a halo around her, she looks like an angel, and perhaps one of these days Emily will get the courage to talk to her beyond small talk and group presentations. She’s pulled out of her thoughts when the shrill bell rings, too loudly for her tastes but this whole building seems to scream at her, so perhaps it’s fitting.

Ms. Blake starts to talk about ancient poetry. The greats from the time periods before everything got so complicated. English is not Emily’s favorite class but somehow Blake’s class is more or less interesting, is it because she’s a milf? Maybe, who’s to say. As the class nears its end, she announces, “Alright, as we close out our poetry unit, we have one last assignment that hopefully at least one of you will enjoy, it’s a group project where-” immediately two hands go up ready to ask the question that always gets asked when a group project is announced. “Before you ask, no, you aren’t picking your partners, I am,” a collective groan comes out of about half the class. Emily isn’t too mad about it though, she doesn’t have many friends, especially in honors English. JJ barely passes English as it is. She’s all alone here, so she’s glad she doesn’t have to suffer through the awkwardness of trying to find a partner before everyone else does and ending up with the one kid who she’s pretty sure has been high the entire year and likes to leer at her in the hallway. “For this assignment, you’ll have to analyze one famous poem, from whatever time period you’d like, and write an essay about the poet’s intentions. If you’d like extra credit, which I know for a fact some of you need, you can do a reading of the poem in front of the class or do a drawing that represents it. Any questions?”

The classroom fills with questions of ‘when is this due?’ And ‘this sucks do we have to do this’. Emily however, is distracted by one very colorful girl in the upper left corner of the room, her spot in the back lets her admire the view without being caught, which tends to make it difficult to pay attention, but well, some things are just more fun than others. Her attention is drawn back to Blake when she hears her name followed by Penelope Garcia.

Oh shit.

On the one hand, this is exactly the opportunity she’d been looking for to ‘make her move’ so to speak, on the other, she’s terrified of making a fool of herself. Emily realizes that she’s been sitting for a bit too long when Blake stops talking and the rest of the class has already paired off. She catches Penelope’s eyes and tries to fight the blush of her cheeks. The sound of her docs hitting the linoleum is a bit too intense for this setting, she prefers their ‘clunk’ when it’s a crowded room, and she can walk like she owns the place. Emily sits down at the desk adjacent to Penelope and gets ready to ruin her chances with her.

“Okay! Hi! I’m Penelope! Which you already knew because Ms. Blake announced it, but it’s polite to introduce yourself to people so I thought I would do that now which I’ve done so I’ll stop talking now!”

Emily can’t help but giggle a little at her rambling, she doesn’t want her to stop talking quite yet, her voice melodic to her ears.

“So, I’m not big in poetry, I’m more of a comic book gal if you catch my drift, so I was hoping that you had some thoughts?” She drags the o in hoping and trails off waiting for Emily to fill in the blanks. It takes her a second too long because her brain is short-circuiting but she manages.

“Yeah okay, um, I’ve read some Sappho back when my mother was stationed in Greece? That could work?” she hopes bringing up Sappho wasn’t too obvious of her intentions, but it was all she could think of. Sappho had a point when she said ‘Sweet mother, I cannot weave – slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl’

“Yeah okay! Cool! We’ve got like 3 minutes left of class, would you want to go to Bricks and Beans after school to work on it?”

“Uh yeah, yeah, that, um, that sounds great! I’ll meet you in front of the school?”

“Yep!” She pops the ‘p’ and Emily thinks she can’t possibly get cuter.

Emily’s walk to lunch has never been quite this mix of excitement and anxiety as it is now. Hopefully, JJ will be able to make sense of what’s happening because the wires in Emily’s brain are very much twisted.

“Okay, I’m telling you it’s not a date,”

“Yeah I know it’s not technically a date but come on. I personally have never asked my group project partner to a coffee shop before. She obviously likes you.”

Jennifer Jareau has been blessed with the right combination of looks that ensures she never had to wonder if her crushes liked her back. Emily wishes she had that special brand of confidence, but it’s simply not realistic, the number of openly queer girls at school is small, the number of them that would be interested in her? Even smaller.

“Look I’m not going to be the loser that gets my heart broken all right,” she steals a fry off of JJ’s tray before her hand gets smacked.

“Ugh I’m so bored here, promise me you’ll at least try. I need some new drama around here and you two would be so fucking cute.”

“Fine. On the condition that when* it goes south you’re buying me ice cream.”

Emily’s day goes by slowly and all at once. Hours turn into years turn into seconds and before she knows it she’s awkwardly standing outside the building waiting for Penelope to meet her.

When she does, Emily’s pulse quickens ever so slightly in her presence. It’s annoying as hell.

“I was worried you were standing me up,” a futile attempt on Emily’s behalf of trying to seem calm, cool, and collected.

“What! I would never, I’ve been looking forward to getting a macchiato and hanging out with you and Sappho all day! Coolest ladies from recent history,” she has to try and stop herself from getting too excited at Penelope’s words, they don’t mean anything, she’s just some loser that she has to work with to get a good final grade in the class. A means to an end, disposable.

“I don’t think Sappho counts as recent history but thank you, ma’am,” ma’am? God, what is she doing, this is going to go south faster than the time she tried to wear ripped jeans to one of her mother’s stupid dinner parties. To her surprise, her stupid comment is met with a giggle on Penelope’s part.

“Why thank you darling,” she replies in a phony southern accent that makes them both crack up, “Lead the way.”

Bricks and Beans is the staple coffee shop where all the high schoolers hang out after school or work during college. The owners are a sweet old couple in their 70’s who seem to be reliving the past with the vintage decorations. The pair settle into a table in the back, a window next to them showing off the highway. Emily is tasked with buying the coffees and Penelope rattles off her order filled with things Emily’s never even heard of.

“Okay, I’m pretty sure the barista is laughing at me now but here is your sugar coffee with whipped cream,” she says as she slides into her seat, placing down the coffees on the minimal free space left.

“My savior,” she says, fake swooning, “Okay so, Sappho? That’s the lesbian right?”

Emily answers with a snort before actually replying, “Yeah that’s the lesbian. I’m sure Blake will love it. I’m like, 90% sure she’s gay.”

“Single English teacher who loves Oscar Wilde? Yeah, I get it. My gaydar is spectacular by the way.”

“Oh yeah?”

She nods.

“Um, yeah, okay how about this poem:

‘and in your song most of all she rejoiced.

But now she is conspicuous among Lydian women

as sometimes at sunset

the rosyfingered moon

surpasses all the stars. And her light

stretches over salt sea

equally and flowerdeep fields.

And the beautiful dew is poured out

and roses bloom and frail

chervil and flowering sweetclover.

But she goes back and forth remembering

gentle Atthis and in longing

she bites her tender mind’”

“That’s gorgeous,” Penelope had a dreamy look in her eyes, like seeing a beautiful sunset for the first time. Except, instead of a sunset she was looking at Emily, seeing her, like for the first time, “I love when artists talk about the stars,” she leans back on her chair and looks up as if she’s looking at a constellation and not an off-white popcorn ceiling. Her collarbones are exposed and Emily feels like a 17th-century peasant pining over exposed ankles, “There’s just something about the stars ya know? They’re so far away, but sometimes it feels like we’re there with them. They twinkle at us and at each other,” she pauses to make eye contact, “maybe the greatest love story is in the sky,” there’s a beat too long, Emily doesn’t know how to respond to that comment, it’s hard to follow art without ruining it.

“Or maybe I’m just a sad sap for romance.”

“No!” She gets a of couple heads turned her way, the exclamation too loud for the environment, “I mean no, I get what you mean, they’re beautiful. Sometimes at night I go on my roof just to stargaze. It’s so peaceful there,” it’s now or never, “you should do it with me someday.”

“I’d love that,” it’s almost bashful, the two of them hoping the underlying meanings of their words are being shown, lest their hopes not be conveyed and come shattering down like a falling star.

The sun slowly sets as they work on interpreting the inter-workings of Sappho’s mind. The drinks run out so Emily buys them both hot chocolate, extra whipped cream and chocolate chips for Penelope. When she takes a sip, the whipped cream sticks to the side of her face.

“You got some whipped cream on your face,” she gestures to the offender in question. The blonde tries and fails, to get it off.

“Did I get it?”

“No, it’s more,” after some failed attempts, and the failure of Emily’s common sense, she decides to just get it off herself. It feels too intimate too quick, they both freeze, Emily’s hand inches away from Penelope’s face. Their eyes lock, scared brown eyes met soft blue ones and just for a second, there is peace in between their beating hearts and hands. Emily quickly brings her hand down and mumbles an apology.

After three hours they call it a night, Emily now the proud owner of Penelope’s phone number. On her drive home, she wonders if she’d done right, and she wonders if she’d done wrong. If she was clear about what stargazing meant to her. A branch into her world, her safe space. To share the dark night sky with something is to share your soul with them. Even JJ didn’t know about her nighttime viewings. Did Penelope feel the same way? The shared smiles and small laughs pointed yes. But Penelope was Penelope and Emily was Emily. How could an angel love a human? Why would it sacrifice its virtue for the danger of love? If Penelope was pink and Emily was dark green, could they mix and make something beautiful or would they both end up a ruined brown?

Dinner is tense as always, she does not share anything with her mother, she does not want to. They tiptoe around each other hoping that they won’t step on each other’s toes and crash. Emily retreats to her room the second dinner is over and opens a window. She loves that it gets dark earlier now. The fresh fall air trumps that tacky of scented candles that fill the house in a futile attempt to make it a home. She opens her laptop to finish the concluding paragraph of their essay. She allows herself to be lost in the words of another in order to avoid her own problems of love and belonging. Her phone rings. It’s her problems. They chat with careful conversation about their project and finally, it is finished. It looks good actually, or at least, to Emily it does. It’s not going to win them a Pulitzer, but they’ll get an A.

And then, “Hey.”

“Hey?” They’ve been on the phone for a half an hour, she’s not sure why she’s being greeted all of a sudden.

“Does your offer to stargaze still stand? It’s nice out tonight and, I don’t know, it sounded nice?”

“Yeah of course! Do you, um, do you need a ride or?”

“Nah I got my license and good old Esther. I do need your address though.”

“Oh yeah, I’ll text it to you. Who’s Esther?”

“My car! She’s a lovely thing thought she needed a name. I’ll be there in say, 15 minutes?”

“Sure. Bye Penelope.”

Holy shit.

Okay, she’s got 15 minutes to both have everything ready, but also seem completely casual about the fact that her crush is coming over to stargaze on her roof. The ambassador is long retreated either in bed or into her office, so she shouldn’t be a problem. Emily grabs a couple of blankets for them to sit on to avoid the chilly breeze and a bag of popcorn. She brushes her hair and touches up her eyeliner, not that it’s really visible in the dark, but it helps her feel confident which she’s desperate for at the moment. Her phone buzzes with a text, *im here!!!* It reads. She takes a deep breath before very slowly opening the door.

“Hi,” she whispers, the wind carrying her voice, but it’s just loud enough for its recipient. She closes the door

“Hi! So! Stargazing? That’s fun, I’m like, really excited it’s been a while since I’ve done something like this,” she somehow makes a whisper seem filled with enough energy to power a flashlight that Emily definitely should have brought. They make their way to the intersection where the hill meets the rooftop, and they only trip once, on a stick, but together they stay upright. Emily throws the blankets on the roof and climbs up on the chair before throwing her body on the roof. With her help, Penelope makes her way up after a couple of tries. By the time they lay the blankets out and are sitting down, they’re both practically crying from laughter, her nerves from earlier disappearing slowly.

The laughter fizzles out, and they’re both left staring at the stars. Penelope apparently is an expert of both astronomy and astrology so Emily’s ears are blessed with the sound of her voice. Like sunshine on a sweet summer day. She thinks that Penelope and her are like the sun and the moon, both beautiful, and complementary. Emily’s gaze shifts from the constellations to Penelope’s side profile. The stars shine almost as bright as her, and she can’t help but watch her instead. She can see the stars in her eyes, perhaps they were always there, but they’re more visible now looking in their reflection.

“God they’re beautiful,” Penelope says in awe. Like she can’t believe she’s blessed with the presence of the stars when really it is the stars who should have the honor.

“Yeah, yeah they are,” at this point she’s openly gazing at Penelope. When Penelope turns to meet her gaze she thinks she’s been caught, that it’s over and this night will be one for the ages in terms of beauty and heartbreak. Slowly, a hand makes its way to her cheek, cold like the air around them, but it somehow manages to set her skin on fire.

“May I?”

Emily nods and then they are lips on hers, it is sweet just like her. She’s being kissed under the starlight by a girl who deserves only beauty. Perhaps her dark green can be the field by the sunset of Penelope’s pink in the painting they make together. They do not have to mix, they can simply be combined to create something stunning. They can simply be. They pull apart slowly, and looking into her eyes, Emily thinks that the stars in comparison are simply dull. There is nothing as bright and beautiful in the world as the eyes of your lover.

Tag list- @royalpenelope @scandinavian-punk @kermitsaysgayrights

#penemily #Penelope garcia #emily prentiss #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fic #let me know what y’all think!!!#lucy’s fics!#mine!

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mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune · 3 years

Text

I Decided To Watch The Walkthrough Of Deltarune Chapter 2

I was really happy that Chapter 2 was finally ready, but because of reasons... I wasn't able to play it, I mean I wanted to.

but whenever I clicked on it, it ended up showing that small blue message. saying that it might put the PC at risk.

I don't know if I should try to play it or not, maybe nothing will happen and it will just play the game with no problems.

but that message did pop up before,

when I wanted to play that Undertale Kissy Cutie fan game.

the Undertale Don't Forget Fan Game, it works just fine.

those two games didn't have that blue message pop up,

when I clicked on them.

so something must be causing it to happen,

I want to know if it will be okay to play those games.

if others have been having the same problems, but were also worried about playing it because of the blue message.

maybe someday they will have a update for those games where that blue message wont pop up and everything will be fine.

also I wonder if my seeing Toriel as a off-white purple colors, might of been a trick of the eyes...?

what I mean is, that maybe it was....I don't know.

also ya know like the Pie Was Canon, cause someone's fan animation ended up predicting what was gonna happen in Deltarune.

turns out that Kris really did eat the whole pie. and by the looks of it, from what I have seen in the walkthrough of Deltarune's Chapter 2.

I think that one of the Comics of Deltarune, might of predicted the future......

well Semi-Future.

so what happens at the school in Deltarune, is canon in the game.

of course there are still some differences from what happens in Chapter 2

and the AU-Comic.

maybe it is me that thinks that a comic predicated what was going to happen in the very start of the Chapter 2....

it took some hours, but I was able to finish watching it.....still wish I could of played it.

but like I said, that blue message that pop up made me decide not to at the moment because it says it might put The PC at risk.

so I'm not sure if it really would, but I don't want to risk it.

so I still have chapter 2 of the game, but I just can't play it right now sadly.

I got to say that the romances in the game was sure interest...

can't wait to see the ships.

well with any hope, all the chapters of Deltarune will be on a Nintendo Switch Game Card someday, maybe in a few years.

hopefully the Cuphead Game will be on a game card too, I still haven’t beaten that game sadly....I really need to try to get one of my family to be my player-2

so that I can maybe beat the hard bosses.

yeah know, Cuphead and Mugman should have common sense not to go into a casino that is run by the Devil.

well them and the debtors, the debtors should of had some sense not to make a deal with the Devil.

I wonder if it’s weird to have thoughts of flipping off the Grandpa Watchers and Nephilim.....?

or the whole having thoughts of flipping off the Devil himself too...?

and in case there is any confusion, the “Watchers” were Angels....

well I think I would have it in my right to do a double flip the birdy off of them...

for some odd reason a little bit of the song “it’s my life” pop into my head just now....

guess you could say history repeats itself lol.

I mean, if what those mortal men wrote about it is true....

but it is likely one of their fibs.....maybe?

the song it’s my life, it’s by Bon Jovi.

as soon as that song pop into my head, I just had to listen to it.

even though I might not be able to play Chapter 2 for a while because of the issues that prevent me from playing it.

I did enjoy watching the walkthrough of the chapter 2.

it was worth watching it for hours, plus I was surprised by what happen in the start of the chapter 2....well it happen when Kris went to school and there was something that happen there, which reminded me of well Paper Trial.

I do plan to read more of it on here, of course there is still differences.

but a certain thing that happens at the start of the Chapter 2,

reminds me of it but I wont say what....but what happens in that game that reminds me of Paper Trial, also reminds me of the The Pie Is Canon.

cause of that fan animation that had Kris saying that they were going to eat the whole pie, and it turns out the Chapter 2 Trailer shows that they did in fact eat the whole pie.

so The Pie being ate by Kris at the very end of Chapter 1, is 100% Canon.

if there was fight between Susie from Deltarune and Cuphead from the Cuphead series.

I think Susie would win, at least I think she would.

plus Cuphead would have to be out of his mind to pick a fight with Susie.

I’m also starting to wonder if Asriel (the one from Deltarune)

might be a bit of a perv...? ^_^;;

if that book he borrowed from the library is a clue and him NEVER returning it.

well, I say it is possible.

Flowey: Has He Have No Shame!?

after finishing listening to it’s my life, I started to listen to some other music.....I’m listening to Equestria Girls songs now.

the magic of friendship is a wonderful thing, but like Sunset said before....

it can be turned into something else, and with how most of the problems in Equestria was solved by turning the “Bad Guys” to stone,

instead of just talking with them and trying to understand their point of view...

I think Sunset and her friends are a bit more better in reforming the bad guys.

I know that not all bad guys from a movie or cartoon or video game series

can be redeemed, that is because they are too far gone or have been really dark from the start.

but sometimes a villain, is just a tragic villain who has been hurt by someone either physically, psychology and or emotionally......or all of the above.

it might not be very easy to heal from the wounds.

it might even make you, not as happy as you use to be.

and when you see a picture of how happy you seem before,

you can just tell that the you that is now, isn’t as happy as the you that is in the picture.

does that make sense...?

but you might still have happy moments and still be okay, and at some days

I don’t believe it is good or right for a Hero or Main Character,

to cross a line when it does not need to be crossed.

like making Magic the scapegoat, and having it be destroyed.

I mean Star Butterfly’s family had been the ones to misuse the magic,

so the magic itself was NEVER the problem....it was her family that was the problem because of their misuse of it.

and Cozy, Tirek and Chrysalis could of been reformed if they were spoken to and asked why they were doing it....I still think the “Magic of Friendship”

did cause Chrysalis some trauma, and that is why she broke out of the feeling good bond she was forming with Tirek and Cozy.

I get it, she was hurting, what she’s been through made her distrustful towards friendship and the ponies that took her family away from her.

even if she does have trauma, she might still care about Cozy and Tirek deep down.....well that is what I believe anyway.

cause in a way, those three are a adoptive family and they need each other.

what Discord, Celestia and Luna did to them,

I will not agree was the best course of action.

at least in Steven Universe Future, they solved the problem with Steven the right way....and like it was pointed out in that video I mention from Youtube.

the problem started at the VERY beginning in the Steven Universe Series.

even if Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet love Steven,

they still Semi-Neglected him, but not as much as Greg had.

and the video did point out some very important facts.

all the stuff that happen in Steven Universe, was going to erupt in time....

and when it did, it started to in the Steven Universe Future.

we can’t pretend that there was nothing wrong with Steven,

or like after he got back from space and after the whole Lars dying and coming back to life....

Connie didn’t try to see that Steven was trying to act like everything was fine,

and she shouldn’t just make it about herself, yes she had a right to her feelings and to wanting to be there for Steven, but Steven had been through a lot and he was hurting too. it is still good that they made up at some point.

and it is good that Connie finally figured out that there was something wrong with him, and they ended up as boyfriend and girlfriend at the end of Steven Universe Future.

maybe there is a lesson in both Steven Universe and Steven Universe Future.

if we re-watch Steven Universe, we might can see why he ends up the way he does in Steven Universe Future and how it ended up causing him extreme emotional pain that would at some point make him view himself as Monster to the point of transforming into a type of Gem-Kaiju.

it took everyone of his friends and family, to get through to him and give him what he needed, for them to hug him, and to be there for him when he was at his lowest.

Steven was at his lowest, it is possible the breaking point might of started at the first episode of Steven Universe Future or maybe in the Movie...who knows.

but at least he is seeing a therapist, he did say that he is seeing one now.

we can’t pretend the problem that Steven was having, didn’t first start at the early series....we just need to try to understand that it was going to break him past the breaking point and that it was gonna become too much for him.

even if Pearl, Garnet and Amethyst did technically live with him

(and Amethyst became mature enough at some point to comfort him a bit more, and not just act like the teasing older sister.)

they still were half the cause of what happen to him, even if they made sure to help him with his gem powers and with other stuff.

they still ended up not taking care of him when he needed it.

and he might of thought it was normal, at least until he learned later on in Steven Universe Future, that it wasn’t.

even what his Dad did wasn’t okay, I get that Greg’s relationship with his own parents wasn’t perfect, but he is just as bad as them.

yes there could be reasons why Greg never got his way,

like one of the theories being that one of his parents had very sensitive hearing and couldn’t take really loud music.

another theory I have is that Steven might of went to go live his Grandparents when he left Beach City.

even if his Grandparents could be disappointed with Pearl, Garnet and Amethyst, they might still see them as a bit more responsible than their son Greg.....who could end up having their full disappointment.

Greg ended up with so much money, and yeah he could of still treat himself.

but he could of send Steven to the hospital, and even hire a tutor for Steven.

but no, he doesn’t do that at all.

and we know what happen in Steven Universe Future

when Doctor Maheswaran points out some very important facts to Steven.

and Steven ends up getting really mad at his Dad, which I don't’ blame him for getting mad, plus the wreck wouldn’t of happen if Greg had stop being so insensitive to Steven’s feelings of wanting to have what he had and took for granted.

Greg only made things worse, with his talk of “freedom”

and even the whole “Gem” thing....

being a Gem, is only half of who Steven is.

and all his life, he was made to think he was only made to be like a replacement for his Mother....and even question what he is for, like with the whole Nora episode.

I still love Steven Universe, as well as the Movie and the Steven Universe Future.

even if it takes myself and other fans to finally realize that Steven’s problems didn’t first start in Steven Universe Future, BUT in the first series.

and over time during Steven’s childhood it was only getting worse.

we want to believe that Steven’s life was perfect in the first series,

and the bad times he had in most of them, he got through with a smile on his face with no problems at all.

who knows what the next show will be that Rebecca Sugar will make next,

but I know I wouldn’t mind seeing what comes next, just got to keep a eye out.

also you know how I believe the Darkners from Deltarune

are Tulpa, and from what we see in Chapter 2,

the new Darkners we see in it, are also Tulpa

and there are many different type of Tulpa.

well, I can’t help but wonder if Chara might be a Tulpa.

it is possible that the Red Soul in Undertale and the one in Deltarune,

are one in the same and are Chara.

and when the Player meets Chara after a Geno-Run....

they are really meeting them inside of Frisk’s Head.

I think it is possible that in Undertale, memories have been rewritten by the Man Who Speaks In Hands.

and the human that Prince Asriel befriended and became family to,

wasn’t Chara......but Kris.

with no soul, the Chara-Soul was placed inside the empty body that was buried under the bed of flowers.

that is possible, but it might just be a theory that might not end up being true.

unless it is....well I do have a theory that Undertale will be one of the chapters.

if that happens that means Crossover, or not....it is just a theory after all.

it be really awesome if that turn out to be true.

a future Chapter having a Crossover between those two games would be really interesting.

I think it might be possible that the two games could be cleaved worlds, once being one in the same before splitting and breaking apart.

we can think about what was originally going to be in the original version,

as the original world before splitting into Undertale and Deltarune.

Chapter 2 was Awesome, well even if I could only watch a walkthrough of it and I couldn’t play it because of what I spoke about before in this....

but I hope that I will be able to play it sometime.

but for now, I am happy with just watching it until I am able to play it myself.

#deltarune chapter 2 #deltarune theory #undertale theory

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taiblogcomics · 3 years

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History and Hurt Story

Hey there, spicy elevators. Ready for more season 10 zebra adventures? Let's jump on in to the next My Little Pony comic on our shelf~

Here's the cover:

Ah, Zecora Homecoming. I guess next issue will be Zecora: Far From Home, and then Zecora: No Way Home, right? Also, that font look familiar? You might know it, like I do, as "that Jurassic Park font". Funny thing is, if you actually download that font, it's usually called "African". Way to stereotype, guys. Otherwise, a competent cover with a slightly ominous feel to it.

Interestingly, we open with a flashback (and a reference to Batman #1) detailing Zecora's childhood. Oh boy, this is what you all came to see, yeah~? Zecora is the Twilight of her group, it seems. She's a bit more open to new experiences, though. When a ball bounces past her, she puts down her book and joins Marini's friend group. Two zebras, two kelpies, two abada. History echoes, if not outright repeating. They even played Ogres & Oubliettes together, as a LARP group. Oh no, they're all nerds~

However, one school lesson, their teacher (a purple zebra named Ms. Alegre) gives them a lesson about magic. Kelpies and abada are magical, but zebras (being the local equivalent of earth ponies) are not and have no magical destiny. This gets under Zecora's skin a bit, and she proposes to her teacher that she'll be the first zebra to learn magic. And so, like Twilight Sparkle many lands away, she descends into the world of books. She spends all her time reading about different kinds of magic, and eventually discovers the legends of Mage Meadowbrook, the earth pony Pillar who used nature as a kind of magic.

Zecora shows off her discovery to her friends, also demonstrating her capacity for rhyme. See, magic spells work best in rhyme, so she's vowed to always speak that way to give rise to magical ability. Marini shows concern that maybe getting too deep into magic may not be a good idea, especially when it may not even work, and Zecora snaps at her. It's the one thing she really wants, so if her friend can't support her, why is she even hanging around? And back in the present, it's revealed this is a flashback she's been relaying to the sympathetic ear of Applejack. Applejack comforts her, but also suggests that since it's been so long and that they're on a quest from the princess of friendship herself, maybe it's time to bury the hatchet.

The pair rejoin the rest of the group, who are showing off their abilities. Rockhoof has dug out a well, with Medley Brook's help in locating the water source. Meanwhile, Tempest Shadow interrogates Medley about kelpies' weaknesses (electricity and evaporation, mostly). She quietly relays to Applejack that she could subjugate this village in an hour, she just needs to say the word. Tempest's crabby attitude throughout the story is one of the major highlights. And speaking of highlights, Marini reveals that she's the mayor of the town now, and she'll be giving everyone a tour~

The tour goes relatively well until they happen by Zecora's old family home. Marini was her next-door neighbour, and it's clear she's still rather hurt that Zecora left without so much as a goodbye. The pair begin arguing, and Marini shares her perspective on the previous flashback. The way it looks to her, Zecora became obsessed with magic. She put aside her playdates just to seek it, and when she finally thought she might have a way, Marini tries to let her down gently in case it doesn't work. Zecora points out that having magic is the one thing she really wanted. And Marini replies that that was obvious. Magic was what she wanted, not friends. Ouch.

Zecora replies that it's not that simple, that the rest of them treated her poorly afterwards. Medley Brook would make fun of all the rhyming, and Crystal would freeze the ground when Zecora was near. Crystal's excuse is that she's hard to get along with in the first place. She was actually kind of brokenhearted that they were no longer having fun together, so she took it out on Zecora. She's about to say more when the ground starts to rumble ominously. Marini snaps into action, sending Dust Devil out to warn the edge of town. When Zecora asks what's going on, Marini tells her to stay out of it. They've fended off this thing before, and before she can elaborate, a giant monster bursts out of the ground.

This is a grootslang, which is a big wiggly lizard thing that tunnels through the earth. And while Marini wants Zecora out of the way, Zecora has her own support team. The group quickly preps a cauldron and gathers ingredients, while Zecora mixes a spell of some kind. Within moments, they have a cauldronful of a mysterious liquid, which rapidly bursts into flame when Zecora spills it on the ground. The sudden flames cause the grootslang to recoil, and it's driven off completely by the timely appearance by Prince Abraxas himself.

Abraxas thanks the group for their help, surprised to find that Zecora was the one to cast the spell to make the grootslang retreat. Alas, he cannot stay and hear about her knowledge of potions, because the grootslang doesn't attack only once. He must be off to the next village before nightfall. Applejack approaches and offers her group's services, and he directs them to a desert temple the creature is said to originate from. He's never explored it because he's always giving chase. So Applejack and friends will do so instead. But they won't be alone: Marini and her friends are also volunteering.

Well, first of all, congrats to My Little Pony for 90 whole issues. That’s damn impressive, especially for a licensed comic based on a cartoon. I hope they can continue the momentum and pass 100. Not a lot of licensed books get to go on after the show they’re based on ends.

Now then: Zecora’s backstory is very interesting. It’s a bit of a parallel to Twilight, except Twilight was always a loner and Zecora had a friend group she then abandoned. Neither side is really in the wrong, either. She sees her friends as unsupportive, and her friends see her as chasing an impossible dream. That’s how these things go a lot of the time: both sides can be in the right and still both be hurt by the others’ actions.

I kind of understand why they made Zecora’s rhyming an actual learned behaviour rather than an innate ability (if all zebras talked that way all the time, it’d be hard to write dialogue), but it kind of ruins the mystique of it for me. Ah, well~

Next week, we’ll journey into the desert and get to know Zecora’s school chums even more~

#comics #reviews #My Little Pony Friendship is Magic IDW #Taiblog #Zecora #Season 10

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ahhsokka · 3 years

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Star Wars: Light of the Jedi — Review

Reading Dates: 08/16 - 08/18/2021 Word Count for Review: 1880

TL;DR: This is a must-read for the High Republic era. It mostly feels like exposition for follow-up projects instead of its own story, but it is still a good book and an enjoyable read. Main criticism is that we get too much information for one book. Important to note that the Jedi are cool.

INTRODUCTION Welcome to the era of the High Republic, a golden age of peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy. Charles Soule authored this first installation for the project: Light of the Jedi. We follow a brand new cast of characters in the galaxy as they navigate the immediate aftermath of the Great Disaster and the rise of the Nihil, the villains of the High Republic project. In this review, I’ll give a vague and brief summary of the book and then dive into my compliments and criticisms of it.

SUMMARY PART ONE Part One focuses purely on the Great Disaster, beginning with the event that caused it and ending with a last-ditch effort by the Jedi to save the entire Hetzal system. Billions of lives are on the line, and the countdown until impact clock at the beginning of each chapter reminds us how close everyone is to death. Soule introduces us to the main cast of characters that feature not only in this book but also in the whole of the High Republic project. Some of these new faces include Avar Kriss, Loden Greatstorm and his Padawan Bell Zettifar, Nib Assek and her Padawan Burryaga Agaburry, and Chancellor Lina Soh. Brilliant technician Keven Tarr, the Hetzal government, and a fleet of Jedi work together to keep peace on the planet, blow up debris, and save lives. By the end, the overwhelming sentiment is “it could’ve been worse.” Although casualties in the Hetzal system were kept to a minimum, the people of Ab Dalis were not as lucky—twenty million people were killed without a shred of hope for salvation.

PART TWO Finally, we meet “the big bad”—the Nihil. A ragtag group of marauders led by three Tempest Runners and their Eye, Marchion Ro. Throughout Part Two, Soule briefly dives into the history and organization of the Nihil, how they become a powerful group after they first received ‘the paths’ from Ro’s father, and where they are headed from here following their own involvement in the Great Disaster. As Marchion Ro attempts to gain more power within the Nihil, the Jedi and the Republic are working on two main problems: solve the mystery behind the Great Disaster and make sure it never happens again. Towards the end, a third task is added to that list: bring down the Nihil.

PART THREE Now that the Republic knows about the Nihil involvement in the Great Disaster, they focus their attention on snuffing the group out and maintaining peace in the Outer Rim before the opening ceremony of Starlight Beacon. While transporting a flight recorder that is instrumental to learning more about the Great Disaster, a fleet of Republic ships encounters the Nihil. Tempest Runner Kassav Milliko was sent by Marchion Ro to intercept the fleet, but he was vastly underprepared for their numbers. Although he was essentially being sent to battle as a sacrifice, Kassav led his warriors in the dirtiest fight the Republic had ever seen, killing many of their troops. Despite their efforts, his entire Tempest perished. The Republic successfully opens Starlight Beacon, but they do so with the knowledge that a great threat could be waiting around the corner.

COMPLIMENTS I would like to make it very clear that I enjoyed reading this novel. Charles Soule was handed a tall task in opening up an entirely new era. He had to make it compelling enough for readers to stay engaged with the story he was trying to tell while also building up the setting of an unexplored time period. Some planets and concepts will be familiar to fans, but for the most part, the structure of the universe is different from what we’ve known. Although I have some criticism for this book, I believe that Charles Soule and the rest of the Project Luminous team successfully created this new era. I want to know more about the characters and what the universe was like for people at this time. We only know of the galaxy at war; what does it look like at peace?

By far, my favorite part of Light of the Jedi was, of course, the Jedi. The way that the Force is perceived by each individual—as a song, a forest, and an endless ocean—is so beautiful. (Whenever Avar Kriss would mention the song that she hears in her head, I would get chills imagining it.) The bond between Padawan and Master was well done and seems to be a common theme not just for this story but many others in the High Republic project (for example, the High Republic comic by Cavan Scott). Loden Greatstorm and Bell Zettifar are by far one of the most fascinating pairings. Burryaga, a Wookiee Jedi, and his sensitivity to the emotions of others saves the lives of many people and will be a fascinating character to follow in the future (mainly because we so rarely see Force sensitive Wookiees). The High Republic is truly when the Jedi are at their peak; they are the light; there is no other interpretation. (Although I fear that will change as we learn more.)

We are all the Republic. Chancellor Lina Soh is a breath of fresh air from the Clone Wars politics that fans are used to. She clearly loves the Republic and makes decisions which she believes will only benefit its future. It seems that many of the people she works with also hold the same ideals, and I genuinely am excited to learn where it all goes wrong. As horrible as that sounds, only a couple of centuries later, we get Chancellor Palpatine and the Galactic Empire, so clearly something went wrong—what will Lina Soh sacrifice for peace, and how does it go awry?

As for the Nihil: Marchion Ro is honestly terrifying. Soule clearly spent a lot of time developing this storyline to turn the Nihil from being a disorganized group of thieves and murderers to essentially becoming a crime syndicate. Ro almost feels like Maul in his planning skills and adaptability and his cruelty and temper. Obviously, Maul is one of the most beloved Star Wars villains, so I wonder if they used him as a template for Ro. Without their Eye, the Nihil are quite rowdy and kind of dumb, which made them less threatening, in my opinion. They make many mistakes, are selfish, and basically have no impulse control (at least the ones we interact with the most). Initially, that was a criticism, but the rise of Marchion Ro most certainly makes it clear why the Nihil needed to be like this. They aren’t threats until they have a cut-throat, meticulous leader at the helm.

CRITICISMS My biggest criticism is that we know too much as readers. There’s no mystery or puzzle for us to figure out alongside the characters. We understand the story for the most part and have to watch it play out as expected. Although I felt for Captain Hedda Casset and was glad to read her story, I wish that we got it later in the book, or maybe we heard about it through the flight recorder (which didn’t play as big of a role as I expected). The flight recorder acts as a metaphor for most of the book in that way. Something that we’re told is important, but it doesn’t feel that way by the end.

The Great Disaster was horrific, for sure. Billions of people died, and that will be felt for years to come in the galaxy. However, once again, it didn’t feel that way while reading. The Jedi coming in and saving the day and successfully preventing the deaths of an entire planetary system, although an excellent introduction for the Jedi Order, took away from the impact of the event. Even the way it was handled afterward felt clinical and detached. Keven Tarr was the one exception, in my eyes, who conveyed the urgency in solving the situation, but his point of view was unfortunately rare.

This metaphor applies to the Nihil as well. We know so much about them that their intrigue is gone. The most important beats of their recent history with the Eye has already been revealed. The fact that they did start out as a small-time gang who are just now evolving into something greater is exciting, but I personally would’ve liked to see that in a separate story. Peeling away the layers of a villain is much more interesting than getting most of the information immediately. In the grander scheme of the High Republic narrative, the Nihil had the best introduction to explain why they are threats. However, Light of the Jedi as a single story in that narrative suffered as a result. The villain didn’t feel like a villain.

To round it all out, there are a lot of characters. I honestly recommend using some memory trick to remember the names (personally, I grouped or paired them together). One great part of this book is that it doesn’t shy away from death, but at the same time, that made it difficult to get attached to characters. Either I didn’t get to spend enough time with a character and their companions, or I actively didn’t get attached to a character because I didn’t know if they were important enough. As a result, the losses weren’t felt as much. I understood that it was a significant loss, but I didn’t feel it. (Big spoiler) The death of Jora Malli is an example of this, and the only reason I felt anything was because of Master Sskeer’s reaction.

That may be a criticism that only I have, and honestly, it’s pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Charles Soule did a great job introducing this era. I can still say I enjoyed reading the book, and at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

CONCLUSION Ultimately, Light of the Jedi sometimes feels like an exposition-heavy Marvel movie. Not bad at all, just a different story structure. It’s a stepping stone for other stories in the High Republic era. I have already read some other High Republic content and all of it benefited from the information in this book. This is ground zero, an absolute must-read for the High Republic. However, it sometimes is just too much information. I certainly enjoyed learning about this era, and I’m looking forward to reading everything else, some of these stories and characters could’ve been introduced later on, in my opinion.

But hey, I’m not a fiction author, so I definitely don’t know if any of my thoughts or ideas would’ve made a better story. This is honestly a best-case scenario for the first work in this universe. I wasn’t confused while reading, and even though I didn’t get attached to all of the characters, there were indeed some that I immediately latched on to (cough cough looking at you, Bell and Loden). All in all, it’s exciting to have brand new characters in a different period. I love the Skywalker saga—it’s our origin as Star Wars fans—, but this is a massive universe, and it’s good for everyone’s mental health to explore other parts of it.

Rating: [ 7 / 10 ]

Note: Hello! This is my first proper book review. I’m obviously still trying to get the hang of it, so if you have any constructive comments, please drop a note; it’s appreciated. :) I’m trying to fly through all of the current High Republic content so that I’m ready for the new stuff, so expect more reviews, among other things that are in the works. Thanks for reading!

#spoilers light of the jedi #star wars #the high republic #star wars the high republic #light of the jedi #light of the jedi review #book review

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