Just an anxious internet person - They/He/It/Any neos - so many xeno/neo genders - Some form of Angel,deity, or eldritch/cryptic kin - artist - poet - (Will likely just be liking posts more then reblogging)
I've joked in the past about how I want an Arthurian adaptation set in one of those bits of the Middle Ages where nobody has any working infrastructure and all the kings and lords are flat broke but they're still trying to make it work, but it occurs to me that a high fantasy version of that would also be kind of awesome. The High King in his grand palace (shitty hill fort) sending his Holy Knights (a dozen guys and a donkey) on a perilous journey (a half-day's march) to face the Dread Necromancer's undead scourge (exactly six zombies). The Necromancer's immortal death-knight champion (a skeleton in a hat) comes out to meet them astride a terrible hornèd beast (a reanimated cow because they couldn't find a dead horse).
Cold take but all languages are beautiful actually. Every single one. Every single human language on earth is a collection of stories interwoven into the very fabric of the words that are spoken.
“Oh but this language sounds scary-“ have you heard a child speak it while pointing at a butterfly?
“Oh but this language sounds silly-“ have you heard someone’s grandma recite a recipe with such practiced ease it comes off as poetry?
“Oh but this language is really weird-“ and yours isn’t? Everyone’s language is weird, dumbass, it came free with your fucking humanity.
Every tongue that is spoken is a work of art. Every language a unique window into the world.
Like. Look at it. Look at this ridiculous thing. This is someone’s Mary Sue adoptable species.
“So it’s the second fastest animal on land and it’s SO fast that it outran the cheetah that used to hunt it. It can keep up with cars while running on rough ground. Its closest living relatives are giraffes and okapi! 200$ per adoptable and no changing the patterns.”
#LISTEn listen most marvel fights feel so contrived and fake and like la-dee-da-superhero#but this one was REAL and had me on the edge of my seat and still does#partially bc of the street clothes not costumes#partially because steve is fighting 1 on 1 and gets stripped of his shield quick#and he has to show like his physical combat skills#and the ACTING on both their parts.. fucking ace#esp chris evans tho like his face looks PANICKED how often do u see captain fucking america panicked??#anyway in this essay i will (tags via @asterlark)
I think it’s also very important that this is a fight in which the characters *actually interact with their environment* in a way that feels real. Like, yes, have superpowers but there’s no cartoon physics involved, no obvious sense that this was filmed on an empty set with a greenscreen and the background was added later, or that they’re filming without even the people they’re fighting being present, just ‘look over here and make a hand gesture’.
The shield gets stuck in a car, there’s that awful moment of the knife sliding along the side of the van that cues up with the mounting tension in the soundtrack. Bucky’s arm impacts the pavement and actually dents it, etc. They’re jumping over/behind the cars and getting thrown into them/into the pavement in a way that feels more visceral than just ‘whoosh there was a wire & we CGI’d in the rest’. t has a sense of real world space to it, and that adds to the feeling of real world stakes.
This is one of the few fight scenes I can recall seeing that makes a little knife look like a real threat. Like I am legit scared for Steve when that thing darts in, because he’s not wearing armor and it really feels like the WS could open him up like a can. I feel like movie fight scenes don’t usually hit that note with knives.
It’s worth pointing out that this scene WAS filmed on a actual set with actual asphalt and cars (with fall pads and stuff, but still). They really were interacting with their environment.
But as a fight nerd, there’s one other thing I want to point out about this fight, and it goes back to @mikkeneko’s point about the knife:
This isn’t a magic fight.
Yes, they’re both super soldiers. Yes, WS has a vibranium arm. Yes, Steve has a vibranium shield. But there are no magic blasts going on here. There’s no wuxia and minimal wire-work (mostly protective for the actors).
WS shoots at Steve until he runs out of bullets because that’s the most efficient way to murder him. Steve either dodges or hides his whole body behind his shield because that’s the most efficient way to not get murdered. The shield gets thrown, caught, thrown back, wedged in a car. Then it’s a knife fight. Throughout, it’s really obvious that neither of them are fucking around. WS is trying to just straight-up kill Steve, Steve is trying to not die. No banter. No dick-measuring. No quips.
This fight is brutal, efficient, and not flashy. Steve’s knife defense is textbook, and aside from that cool little flip that was almost too fast to clock, WS’s attacks are textbook. He’s doing his best to control Steve’s defense and open a hole to wedge that knife in. Steve’s doing his best to control that knife hand and keep just enough space between them that he can close those holes before WS can get to them. It’s telling that he’s paying so much attention to the knife that when WS finally gets through his guard, it’s with his empty, vibranium hand. (Still no idea why he tosses him instead of crushing his windpipe though, that was 100% movie logic.)
When Steve does that flying knee at WS, that’s not about flashy martial arts moves, that’s about brutal efficiency. Your knees and elbows are the hardest points on your body. Steve can engage in fisticuffs with normal people; he can knock out hitler over 200 times. He could also break his knuckles on WS’s face before doing any appreciable damage, and we watch him figure that out. So it’s not kung fu, it’s muay thai. It’s krav maga. Those flips aren’t for show - that’s pure Jiujitsu, the ruthless throws that are supposed to segue into joint locks and dislocations. That is the way to take your opponent apart, literally. He was trying to rip WS’s non-vibranium arm out of its socket.
That pile-driver? That was meant to break WS’s neck. A normal person would die instantly if Captain America pulled that WWE shit on them. We are into the gritty shit now. We have two extremely strong, extremely skilled men who are just trying to kill each other because the only way to win this fight is to die last, and it shows.
They scramble for position through the fight. When one move fails, they don’t bother breaking apart before finding the next-most-efficient killing move and trying that. This is what two people who are actually trying to murder each other look like - most street scuffles stay on the ground once they get there and don’t involve this much skill, but we can excuse that because it’s Captain America and the Winter Fucking Soldier. I still recognize the blocking of this fight as a real fight, not a spar. The urgency, breathlessness, the pragmatism, the messy transitions between moves as you just keep trying to improvise faster than the other guy… that’s all correct.
There’s no magic. There are fists, feet, elbows. There’s a shield and there’s a knife - the first and oldest human-made tools of war. There are chokes. There are joint locks. Not a word spoken. And it helps that they are really there - landing on cars, landing on asphalt.
No other MCU fight even comes close unless you’re including the tv shows, because that Daredevil long-shot hallway fight was pretty fucking badass too.
I want more chronic pain whump. Give me a cocky, independent character who suddenly can’t walk because a sudden rain storm aggravated their old leg wounds and now they have to lean on a friend to get home. Give me a usually stoic character shaking with pain during a flare up. Give me a character who’s finally healed having their first bad pain day and abruptly feeling like they’re back at square one.
It was very powerfull to see this in MCCI Parkour Dojo Cource 5 chat, while I was trying to cheer my friend up about the fact that with practice everything gets better.
Shoutout Etho who I have now caught multiple times helping people figure out jumps on parkour dojo. Hes trully a cool guy.
Technically a quote so this is going here, guys remember practice leads to perfection, don't give up doesn't matter what the hoby is.
Magical girl who had wanted to be one so badly but never had that magical mascot/mentor encounter so she summoned a demon to contract with instead.
It's not a dark story or anything, the magical girl is just as cute and cheery and friendly as factory standard and never loses that faith and optimism, she's just
Pact-bound to a frightening demon from the underworld instead of a cute teddy bear mouse.
Demon being viewed as weird for making a pact with a cute, cheery schoolgirl.
At every demon party where they show off their pacted there's evil, terrible, and frighteningly beautiful and then there's this teenager in a cute magical girl dress.
"I don't get you Goragog." "Listen, it's nice. Just nice! Can't things be nice? Is it a sin for things to be nice?" "No and that's part of the problem..." "You're just jealous Samantha created a "bffs forever" blingee with me. When was the last time one of your warlocks did something like that for you?" "*on the verge of tears* it's been DECADES!"
Er'trian, Harbinger of Eternal Night, Defender of the Shrieking Chasm, and Lord of Eight Furies stared at eir favorite rival in confusion.
"But it's a pact," ey said. "A deal. An exchange is built in! You can't just Bestow Magical Powers for nothing in return. So what are you getting out of this, Goragog???"
Goragog's dark eyes wept their endless ichor. A halo of eldritch nightmares flickered around his head. With deliberate slowness he turned to meet Er'trian's accursed gaze.
Metahuman with super healing powers whose entire job is that once a week they go to a nearby hospital and are put into a medically induced coma for 24 hours while all their organs and blood are harvested, and kept there until they've healed up again.
They get paid a small stipend by the Heroes Council for this, and they live off that.
No crime fighting, no obvious heroics, and they only took a Super Identity because it's technically hero's council policy. Nobody's ever seen them in a cape.
Every so often the Heroes council will release an official report to the public, and there'll be another bunch of news articles wondering how some unknown super calling themselves 'Meat Factory' somehow consistently holds the record for most lives saved across the city.
It is essential to my vision that they are not at all sanctimonious about this.
Like, they regularly act like they're getting away with something. They joke about how they get to earn money in their sleep. They show up to their hospital visits in deliberately ridiculous disguises, on the excuse that they need to 'protect their identity'.
Part of their employment contract is that they get served the same post-operation vanilla ice cream that they normally hand out on the childrens' ward. Also a sticker. Their overnight bag is covered in stickers.
A/N: Little teaser for a past life Pearl-centric Villies thing I’ve been working on. No content warnings, all canon dialogue (with some edits and cuts for story flow). - Aqua
~
Pearl is knee deep in a sand pit, digging out a spider spawner dungeon, when her ears prick at the sound of distant footsteps.
She falls still, turning her face to the wind. Two familiar scents nip at her. One is a strong, earthy sort of musk with a sharp-sweet tinge, like freshly stripped birch wood- which can only be Gem. The second one is milder and a little dusty- that ‘old jumper mixed with feathers’ smell she’s come to associate with Grian.
“Hello? Hello!” she calls, quickly climbing out of the sand pit and glancing around.
Gem and Grian’s arrival brings mixed feelings. She’s known them both a long time, and they’ve generally maintained a good friendship. If this were Hermitcraft, she’d be anticipating some light-hearted shenanigans or a consultation about a new build, maybe even some playful combat that ultimately has no consequence. But these worlds are different. She’s ended up on the opposite side of a battlefield from them before, and they’re both formidable foes in their own right. This early in the game, it’s impossible to know their intentions.
Grian hops off the overlooking hilltop, fluttering to an abrupt landing in front of Pearl. “Who are you talking to?” he asks urgently.
“Who are you with?” Gem asks from the top of the hill. Her ears rove in every direction, nose wrinkling as she scents the wind; gathering information about her surroundings while she keeps her eyes on Pearl.
It’s the most natural thing in the world for Gem to keep Pearl in her direct line of vision. Her species is technically prey to Pearl’s- a deeply buried piece of data they’re both aware of but pay little mind to. Pearl doesn’t take any offense by the way Gem sometimes stomps the ground and snorts in challenge, no more than Gem takes offense to the way Pearl’s eyes dilate when she breathes in her scent. There’s no easy prey here and they both know it.
Pearl turns her head so she’s not making eye contact with either of them, signaling no threat. “I’m just with myself,” she hums, “I’m talkin’ to me.”
Gem’s face brightens. “You’re by yourself? Well, that’s great news!”
“That’s great news,” Grian echoes. He tilts his head in little twitches and jerks that snatch Pearl’s attention. Rapid movements signal prey behavior to her wolf code, but he always stares at her head-on like a predator.
And it’s not to do with the fact that his eyes are set into a human skull. Jimmy’s an avian, too, and he doesn’t stare at her like that. He almost always views her out the side of his eye. Face slightly turned away, feathers slightly ruffled. Like a part of him is always waiting to take flight.
Grian looks like he’s always waiting to strike. And Pearl finds herself wondering, not for the first time, just exactly what kind of bird he is.
“Pearl,” Grian chirps eagerly, “I just explained to Gem, I’m tryin’ to like- I came into this series for the first time ever with a team in mind, and it’s you, it’s me, and it’s Gem. What do you think?”
Pearl’s heart skips a beat. “I like that team,” she says, her tail starting to wag low and loose. She looks at Gem, mouth falling open into a wolf’s grin. “That’s a great team.”
At the same time, she’s already reminding herself not to get her hopes up. She’s cautious out of habit. She’s learned over these games that it’s hard to find a pack, a true pack, in a world where only one of them can make it to the end. But that doesn’t stop her from wanting it. Wanting to find somewhere soft to curl up and call home, warmed by bodies pressed against her, comforted by the scents of safety and good hunting. Wanting to be wanted.
Gem smiles back at her, satisfaction glimmering in her green eyes, before she exchanges a knowing look with Grian. She pats Pearl on the head as she trots past her, and Pearl has to fight the urge to lean into it. “Good. I think so, too.”
Grian is watching them with a certain glint in his eye. “I just said- I’m gonna find the strongest members, and here we are.”
“Already found a spider spawner,” Gem says appraisingly.
Pearl ducks her head. “It’s a good start,” she amends, and then because she physically can’t help herself- “But you know everyone dies when they’re with me, right? You know that?”
“We turn up,” Grian continues talking to Gem, as if Pearl hasn’t spoken, “and she’s already proven to be the most competent player.”
Pearl’s lips press into a tight smile. None of them are strangers to tragedy, it goes hand-in-hand with these games. But if Grian and Gem want to pretend things will be different this time, want to ignore her warning, she’s happy to let them. She’ll be the sole keeper of this knowledge until its inevitable conclusion.
They fall into an easy rhythm, then. Gathering supplies, cobbling together a crude base, venturing down into the mines. All the day one things that need to be done in every new world, regardless of a death game going on. It’s comfortable and fun- if not slightly undercut by the thrum of anticipation that permeates the air. It’s as if the entire world is holding its breath, waiting for the fragile peace to shatter.
“Okay but like, socially, what’s the plan?” Grian asks eventually. “Are we… ‘cause, you know, there’s not really rules, they’re more like… suggestions.” His gaze darts between them, head jerking and bobbing, wings ruffling. “Are we just- can we just, like… take everyone else’s stuff?”
Pearl pauses. There’s a strange, almost guarded tone to his voice. Like the first slow, careful step onto a frozen lake, testing to see if it cracks. She lets out a heavy breath through bared teeth. “I mean… you’re the rulemaker,” she murmurs, reluctant to leave the shoreline.
Gem springs onto that lake, crashing through the ice with powerful hooves. “We should just go ahead and full on do it and make enemies, ‘cause everybody on the server already doesn’t like me very much.” She idly flicks an ear, unbothered by the cold. Steam curls from her mouth. “I know people don’t like me. So I think we should lean into it, we should be three villains.”
“We should just- that’s what I was thinking,” Grian exclaims, eyes flashing with excitement as he follows her in deeper. Water droplets roll down his feathers like moonlight. “We just be the villains. Like, everyone’s too scared to be the villains- I’m not scared to be a villain. You scared to be a villain?”
Gem lifts her chin, tossing her antlers back with a spray of water. “Let’s be the villains.”
Their gazes turn expectantly to Pearl. She shrinks under the weight of it. This path is one she’s walked before, back in a time of red strings and red eyes, bloodlust and bitterness. It’s not something she’s keen to return to. Not even for the temptation of another win. She can see a watery grave beckoning, and every instinct is telling her to run. Every instinct warns her against the too-hungry eyes of a deer and a bird who look upon her without fear, in affront to nature.
But they want her. And she wants to be wanted.
“Alright,” she breathes, wading into the icy depths.
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