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Cinnabar looked behind her briefly as the villagers scrambled away from their now-burning house. The Grimm inside of it weren't getting out to hurt anyone soon and in times like this, that was all that mattered. "Evac 1, what's your status?" Cinnabar called into her scroll, resting in a special indent in her left gauntlet, slightly battered from the physical and fire damage that the fight had caused, but working all the same.

"This is Evac 1. We're full and moving out." The answer came as she saw the plane lifting up and flying back towards Shade and the safer parts of Vacuo. Moments later two more planes followed suit, their pilots identifying themselves as Evacs 3 and 6 respectively.

Cinnabar nodded as she strode along the street, Volcanic Storm in her hands as she moved to take a stand against the Grimm that were pouring in from the now thankfully deserted end of the village she was meant to be defending. Volcanic Storm roared as scorching flames leapt out of it, creating an immense wall that disintegrated the first few Beowolf's that tried to charge through it, leaving the rest of them at bay until they found a way through, or round.

In the background Cinnabar heard two more planes take off, although she didn't pay attention to what was being said through her scroll and her comm link as half a dozen Griffons flew over her flame barrier. Switching targets, she altered Volcanic Storm's mode, now firing balls of fire into the air at the flying Grimm. With no fuel to sustain it, the flame barrier dissipated, letting the land-based Grimm she had been holding off start to thunder towards her.

Retreating as fast as she could, she didn't need to look to know that the Grimm we getting closer. Swerving to her right, she leapt into one of the few houses that wasn't either destroyed or on fire. Racing up the stairs as she heard the Grimm smash through the walls and windows into the lower floor, Cinnabar managed to burn a hole through the ceiling of the second floor until she was able to haul herself up onto the roof. Lifting Volcanic Storm so that it was aimed straight up in the air, she fired three shots of fire straight up, watching as they exploded above her. At the signal the final Evac ship took off, as a smaller aircraft moved towards her position.

Battling on the roof top was not Cinnabar's preferred position, but she fought there all the same, Volcanic Storm lighting up Grimm after Grimm as they tried to fling themselves at the Huntress. Soon her own fire was supported by her team mates on their ship as it flew towards her, before a figure stepped out of the shadow created by a Ursa that was in mid leap up onto the roof itself. While the Ursa was surprised at the human appearing beneath it, the human calmly pulled out his weapons, stabbing the two daggers into the Ursa and watching it disintegrate as he moved towards Cinnabar.

"Thanks Russ, you here to bring me home" Cinnabar called out, as her partner moved to watch her back as the two of them made a stand on the rooftop.

"Yep, couldn't have you dying on us Cinn" Russ replied, as he stabbed at any Grimm that got too close. Without any warning he looked up, before taking a hold of Cinnabar's arm before using his semblance to shadow step off the rooftop as a Griffon tried to land on them, depositing them both safely in the hold of their own ship.

Cinn shook off the weird feeling of having been effectively teleported through space as the ship blasted off back towards Shade Academy, roasting a few Griffons in its wake. Sliding down the wall, she smiled as she looked at the rest of team COPR, they were bruised and tired, but they'd raced against time and Grimm and had saved the villagers, even if the village itself was slowly going up in flames. As far as they were concerned, their mission was complete.

I like the setup here. It's a simple difference of preferences, but it tells us just enough about them that they seem like distinct people with distinct personalities. It's also just enough of an excuse for two siblings to have a lighthearted little contest like this, and the way they handle it shows that while the relationship between them may be competitive, it's also friendly. For such a short piece, that's a lot of character development, and it's good stuff.

Structurally, it could use some work. First, when publishing online and not using indented first lines for new paragraphs, please double-space between paragraphs. This makes for much easier reading.

Second, I'm a little confused about exactly what happens after "He also recognised where they were: nearly at the RC." At first, I didn't realize the door he goes through there is not the RC door, though admittedly that's because I don't expect doors between hallways, so I read it wrong. I don't think there are usually doors between hallways in HQ, though...?

Later, Edward gets to the RC door apparently ahead of Kat, but Kat is "still a bird and waiting for him to open the door" as though she got there first. You say she can manipulate time, so what happened there? Did she cheat and get there first (in which case that needs to be acknowledged)? Or is it just misleading phrasing? {= )

~Neshomeh

This is the second of the Marvel films I watched with my brother this weekend. Once again working off of notes I took during the movie. Spoiler warning for Thor: Ragnarok.

This kind of feels like they decided to throw Thor into the Guardians of the Galaxy setting/tone, and I don't much like it. The past Thor movies felt more like a high fantasy sort of tone, especially during the scenes set in Asgard. Raganarok barely spends any time there, and instead throws Thor more into comic relief sorts of settings and situations, with a lot of aliens with rather silly accents that don't really fit. They did do a good job of conveying that change, especially with the opening pop song, but it feels like a pretty lifeless way to send Asgard out of these movies for good.

I did like that opening scene, as the Ragnarok demon guy (Serta?) with his hordes of generic monsters almost felt like Marvel self-parodying a lot of their previous bad guys. It's funny that such a boring and ultimately unthreatening villain is treated so flippantly by the soundtrack, and pushed into a mostly meaningless intro scene. Of course, the fact that this character actually turns out to be a MacGuffin of sorts to defeat another villain later makes this even funnier. I liked him using Mjolnir to hold the dragon still as well. Even though we technically saw him do the same to Loki in the first Thor, it's somehow even better with a dragon. And of course, it's one of Mjolnir's final acts of combat . . .

The Actor Who Plays Odin and Whose Name I Should Probably Have Learned By Now Because He's Really Famous and Really Good looked like he had a really fun time playing Loki! It does seem kind of weird that when Thor starts overtly threatening "Odin," no one tries to stop him or even protests. Then again, Loki was hardly trying to keep up the Odin act at that point, so maybe a lot of Asgardians had figured him out by then, but knew they couldn't risk going up against Loki?

I have mixed feelings about Hela. I find her criticisms of Odin and Asgardian culture to be interesting (I love the stained glass falling away from the ceiling to reveal Odin's older history—gosh, Phase Three really liked tearing down father figures, didn't it?), and I really love that her motif is blades, even including her crown. Her constant barrage of limitless blades is a really cool and threatening fighting style. But at the same time, she's set up to be so unstoppably powerful that it's her combat threat that makes her boring, rather than her personality. She destroys Mjolnir seconds after appearing on screen, takes out two of the Warriors Three with basically no fanfare, and kills the third after just a tiny amount of fighting him. I'm glad Lady Sif's actor was busy filming something else, or we probably would have lost her, too. I did enjoy seeing Thor and Loki standing together to fight her without any real discussion, after everything Thor had to go through to get Loki to cooperate in Thor: The Dark World.

I love that Loki finally got his for-real redemption moment at the end, even though he had been ready to betray Thor one last time in the ship dock. He still made the right decision in the end, and wound up saving his entire people as a result.

Minor stuff:
-When Doctor Strange showed up so early in the beginning, I thought he was going to have a larger role in the movie, but it turned out to be a fairly short sequence. Oh well.
-The Valkyrie's theme music was really cool.
-Despite not liking the more whimsical tone of the film, I was very amused by the Grandmaster having what amounts to a theme park ride to introduce new combatants to his planet, complete with the hilariously out-of-place instrumental cover of "World of Pure Imagination."

—doctorlit didn't take any notes about the Hulk, it seems

"Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?"

So my brother made me binge the remaining Phase 3 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yesterday and today, so that we could see in theaters today, since he's home from college for the week. I am even more woefully far behind on the connected tv series, which annoys me, but whatever. Since I had to watch three movies in a row without time for a review in between, I have pulled a Tomash and taken notes on the two I watched at my parents house. First up is Spider-Man, or as my brother's phone autocorrected it while we were texting about movie plans yesterday, "spooderman."

Spoiler warnings for Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

I think I'll start with the villain. Firstly, I love that they even used the Vulture for this film, as he really isn't one of the better-known Spider-Man villains outside of the comics. He made a good, down-to-earth villain to match Peter Parker's inexperience, and the generally more mundane setting and tone of the film. I love that his rise to villainy is fueled by the events of existing films: The Battle of New York, the Triskellion, Ultron in Sokovia. The physical clean-up efforts are something that tends to get glossed over in superhero films, but this film turns it all into a plot point. I love the eight-year time jump in the early scenes of the film, because I literally didn't realize immediately that we were supposed to be looking at the same lab. Goes to show how so much alien technology can teach a team of construction workers in a manner of years, and how far they can advance that tech themselves. The line, "They keep making messes, we keep getting rich" ties in with the concept behind the Sokovia Accords in Civil War really well. You really feel a lot of sympathy for Vulture by the end, too, seeing not only how much he cares for his family (not unusual for villains nowadays), but also the fact that he comes to respect Peter well enough when he learns his identity to not only give him an out, but even to protect his identity after he gets imprisoned. It shows that villainy was never his goal or focus, and with nothing to be gained from getting revenge on Peter, he just doesn't.

I love the opening, and how it leads us from the information we already know about Spider-Man from CA:CW into the more present time period. First, I loved the light orchestration of the theme song from the old cartoon. The little flashbacks to the airport showdown in CA:CW, and seeing Happy again after being absent since Iron Man 3, were really cute. The cell phone, showing how many messages Peter has sent with no response, show not only the passage of time since the airport battle, but also how frustrated he must be feeling by now. I also liked the montage of simple, straightforward heroics Peter gets up to in Queens, showing his inexperience, and how different the conflicts he encounters are from the things the Avengers deal with.

I love the fact that after the point where Iron Man takes Peter's suit away, the tone of the movie completely changes for a while into a more typical teen movie. It also leads to such a hilarious way for the villain to discover the hero's identity, overhearing his daughter's conversation on the drive to prom.

All throughout the movie, I kept thinking to myself that the quiet girl was absolutely the best character in the movie. She's way smart and funny, and very ready to be critical of the world around her. I didn't understand why the movie was pairing Peter with Daughter Toombs, but of course the reveal that Best Character is actually "MJ," though not Mary Jane, explained why they set her up to be so important and likable.

String of random little things I liked:
-All the background characters in the school I felt were very realistic for a high school setting, though the tendency towards negligence in the teaching staff got a little over-the-top at times.
-Peter saved the deli owner's pet cat in addition to the owner himself.
-After crawling through his bedroom window onto the ceiling, Peter closed the window behind him with his foot.
-The corny Captain America PSAs, and how the teacher acknowledges he's a wanted criminal at that point. At least we know he was doing something besides exercising in between being thawed out and the beginning of The Avengers! (Still his original WWII era costume.)
-Iron Man's comment about the "churro lady" shows that he actually has been paying attention to all of Peter's communications, just not responding. I don't think Peter himself caught this, though.

And now presenting, some criticism from my brother! First, this gem: "It's too bad people don't look up in this movie." And he's right. There are an awful lot of scenes where, yeah, Peter's on a rooftop, but it's still very brightly lit, and it seems like other characters really should be able to see him from where they are, but they just . . . don't.

Also, some airplane criticism! (My brother is taking flight training courses in college to become a commercial pilot when he graduates.) First, the scene where Peter grabs the front of a turbine, and the turbine slips backwards and hangs out the back of the cowling (the tube containing the turbine). My brother said this doesn't work, because there should be a metal shaft straight up in the middle of the turbine that connects it to the cowling, and should have blocked it from coming out in one solid chunk like that. He also said the scene where Peter steers a plane by attaching webbing to the rudder and pulling on it is wrong. It's the ailerons attached to the back of the tail that cause horizontal turns. Turning the rudder would instead have made the plane start to plummet downwards, albeit at a steep angle.

—doctorlit does whatever a spooderman can

"I thought you said you didn't have any spoilers." "I thought you said you didn't have any spoilers." "I thought you said you didn't have any spoilers."

That goes with my theory that the prequel trilogy are to some degree cheesy kung-fu movies.

Unless Neshomeh wants to run the next one...?

On one hand they look awesome at first glance, and I sure think about them that way (Duel of Fates certainly didn't spoil anything). On the other, I saw some critics actually going through them in slow motion to analyze them... Results are people actually not trying to hit each other during the fight with their exagerated moves, leading to an excessively involved choregraphy, and not an actual fight. The LEGO video game is an undeniable strong point though.

(Fun (maybe) fact: the critic who made the video where I saw that said he would critic the prelogy without saying bad things about Jar Jar... And he actually ending up praising him as one of the only actors actually trying to play seriously their character.)

Passwords is 'Now what?' (with question mark, yes)

https://pyx-3.pretendyoure.xyz/zy/game.jsp#game=46

But at least we got great music, some wicked fight scenes, and a really fun LEGO video game out of them. Oh, and that Weird Al song.

Which I celebrated by finally beating Jedi Ourcast on Jedi Knight difficulty without cheats. Didn't plan to finish it on Star Wars day, just a happy coincidence.

I do like the Star Wars movies, even the prequels to some degree. My point about the hype is that the reputation of Star Wars has grown so big that they can't live up to it. George Lucas's sf-western-kung-fu-wuxia-samurai-experiment-in-myth-making is not really the same as the Star Wars of modern legend. I think that's why the prequels aren't so well liked.

This, except substitute Lung for Lizord.

(Her missions may partly be why, btw. ;) )

Send the pupper many hugs and kisses for me!

And ooo, good luck with PKH! Once I'm done with exams (... and then come back from my chorale's trip to Europe that starts no longer than five days later), you can consider me a volunteer for betaing! :>

I have a bad habit of posting and then looking for the context.

I guess that's it, then: I'm officially an oldbie. How odd.

And yes, PUPPER. He's amazing. He's a really sweet dog, who thinks he's a puppy (or a cat or...look, I called him a zoo once. He has a lot of different animal traits). The one problem with him is that he sheds a lot; other than that, he's the absolute best of good boys. And it's not like he can help the shedding.

As to missions...Partially Kissed Hero. Yup. Since claiming it, I've read the whole thing, written something that's probably an outtake (there was the catharsis of an agent taking House points disguised as a teacher. It was nice to write), noted down a whole bunch of ideas, and have the opening mostly down. I say 'mostly' because it's undergone a small series of rewrites, the most recent of which happened because PKH officially became a Legendary and the dialogue needed to reflect that. So yeah, it's coming along! It won't be finished for a while, I expect, but that's the main mission I'm engaged with right now.

I also want to rewrite my first ever attempt at a mission (with my Permission agent pair, even), but I expect that'll go slower since I don't want to drop PKH by accident. There's also the mission in which the Sato kids are rescued: Karen DuLay and I are continuing to work on that. It needs an ending and then a reworking, since we started it quite a while ago and it also began life as a Tumblr RP. I still like a good chunk of what we've got, though.

Apart from that, I've got several interludes in the works: one just needs me to finish editing it and check in with the betas, another features the Reader and Kozar for the first time in a while, and...I'd swear there's at least one more floating around that I'm currently working on, but I can't think what, apart from a slow-moving Plort thing. All of this will show up at some point, anyway.

Thanks for asking!

~Z

I enjoyed every moment of it. Thank you. That's the kind of battle I'll quite happily lose everyday, the ones where you but all your energy into it, not because you want to be the best, but because you want to have as much fun in it as possible.