Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 4, Episode 12, “Slaves of the Republic”

A fun whump aesthetic: a character being helped out of heavy plate armor

Is it done fast, blood-slick fingers pulling at straps and hastily undoing buckles, the pieces thrown carelessly aside to be picked up later, time is running out and they need to get all that metal out of the way to treat the wound underneath?

Or slowly, gently, telling the character that shh, they can rest now, they've done their part and done it well, others will take it from here?

Harshly, on a captured enemy knight, forcibly stripping them of first their weapons and then their armor as they're fighting back tooth and nail, to put them in chains afterwards, vulnerable without their armor in the light, sweat-drenched shirt and arming jacket and breeches they wear underneath?

VADERWANNNNN🔥🔥🔥

[MASTERPOST]

A lighting study turned Jaskier turned lettenhove!Jaskier. The poor boy is pretty banged up by now.

Nice! Love the visceral feel of the sleep deprivation and the fight choreo!

X-men First Class WWII AU.

We got: -Charles as a British Airborne Medic -Erik in a German SS Officer (wearing one doesn’t always mean he’s part of it) and there’s hint of Logan, yes~? whether he’s in a friend or foe’s position.

This piece was suppose to be 2nd prompts for X-Men Reverse Bang but at the end i decide not too, since i’ll be very busy on April-July and the theme is kinda depressing….TAT

and well, i did a little research for the uniform, but if there’s mistake then please forgive me coz military uniform is kinda new to me:3

now if u excuse me, i need to start doing commissions n pending charity artworks~

Bright Star (2009)

Amazing art from « Sanctify » webtoon

"Do you remember dancing like this at our graduation from the academy?" The villain asked, rotating the hero in a slow waltz.

"Don't bring up old memories. Not now."

"Close your eyes, darling. Listen to the music."

"I have to help them."

The villain's grip tightened.

"You can't. Neither of us can. Just stay with me."

Prompt courtesy of @the-modern-typewriter from her amazing Patreon!

The hero clenched their jaw, eyes locked just past the villain's left ear. Around them, no one dared stopped dancing, or eating, or conversing as the secret police swept through the ballroom, removing the hero's co-conspirators with brutal efficiency. 

"That's not true," the hero whispered. "These are your people. You can stop them."

The villain shook their head, daring a glance up at the throne. The tyrant was smiling as, one-by-one, the villain's elite operatives dragged their quarries away, their trademark white uniforms now spotted and splashed with red. "It was all I could do to get your name off the list," the villain said quietly. "That was more than I should have done." 

There was a scream, cut off with the crunch of baton on bone. The hero almost broke but the villain hung on. Luckily it went unnoticed as other nobles and honored guests faltered in their attempts to ignore the abrupt disappearance of dancing partners, the rivulets of blood gumming the soles of their shoes and the hems of their gowns.

The villain shot a cold look to the operative in question. Disappointingly sloppy. There would be discipline later.

"Please," the hero whispered. They were trembling in the villain's grip. "If you ever held any affection for me, I am begging you -"

"You're begging me?" The villain dug in their nails viciously and the hero gasped. Good. "I've begged you for years to put aside this stupid, childish rebellious streak," they breathed in the hero's ear. "What were you thinking, getting involved with these - these - "

The hero's eyes flashed. "Idealists?"

"Amateurs," the villain said. "You're terrible at this game. Lucky you, to have me to fix another of your mistakes." 

The song came to an end at last and the hollow-faced ton of the court applauded. The surviving dancers bowed raggedly to each other. The villain's bow was flawless and quick, their hand tight on hero's wrist as they escorted them from the floor. 

From the throne the tyrant caught the villain's eye, raised his glass with a wink and a cruel smile. The villain inclined their head in obeisance and pulled hero from the ballroom.

"I told people there was still some good in you, some part of you that was just playing the long game," the hero said through gritted teeth. "I was wrong. You're a monster."

The villain shrugged. "A monster holding your life in my hands. You realize that, right? All the evidence I made disappear? I can bring it back."

The hero shot them a furious look that wasn't nearly as frightened as it should have been. Gods, they really had no self-preservation instinct at all. "Blackmail?" they hissed. "I know you know I have no money, no influence. What do I have that you want?"

I want you safe, the villain thought but didn't say. "Your reputation," the villain said. "For honesty."

The hero jumped as four white-clad operatives melted out of the corners around them. "[Villain]...?"

"My people here will escort you to my home, where you'll be safe. We'll discuss your new responsibilities in the morning," the villain said, taking hero's coat from one of the bodyguards and settling it on hero's shoulders themselves.

"My responsibilities...?"

The villain twisted the fabric sharply to pin the hero's arms under the wool, until the hero looked up. There was the fear. Finally.

"You work for me now, [Hero]," the villain said, as the strains of the next dance started up once again in the next room. "Long live the King."

Prompt

They say when bears appear, Opossums will play dead, regardless of whether that’s the best way to survive. They simply fall to the ground and pray that the bear is not hungry. 

And as Villain draws closer, I can’t help but feel a certain kinship with the Opossum. 

But of course, what they say, isn’t always true. Opossums, when scared, enter a catatonic state - not out of choice; not out of strategic thinking - they simply fall to the ground, every muscle paralyzed. They do not recover until at least an hour after the danger has passed. 

That must be why I can’t move, even as Villain brushes the hair out of my face, even as he speaks.

“I wonder… How long you’ll pretend to be asleep.”

Call me a coward, but I clench my eyes shut tighter. It seems to be the only thing I can make my body do, even as the soft leather of the villain’s glove traces across my eyelids.

The last battle cries - crunches of metal, screams for mercy - are far away and fading fast. I can hear the sounds of the forest again; the rustle of wind in the pine needles, the burble of the creek. I try to focus on those sounds as the last thing I’ll hear, the last memory I’ll take with me into the Halls of Paradise. If I’m found worthy, after this last failure of nerve.

“It’s called arcane paralysis,” the villain says. There’s a creak of leather and a jingle of chain mail, a small grunt as he sits himself down. “Don’t they teach you about it at that fancy academy? It’s what kills most battle mages in the end.” The timbre of his voice changes - he’s taken off his helmet. Another rush of fear goes through me. Whatever is about to happen, it isn’t going to be quick. “You lose control and give too much of yourself to the spell, there’s an untimely collapse, and then - abandonment. Your allies sweep on to victory or retreat and leave you behind, awake and helpless, to be burned or frozen or dissolved in your own magic. Or, if you’re unlucky, to be found by the enemy.”

He tilts my jaw up. Water trickles over my dry lips. I swallow. It’s that or drown. And - I can’t help it - I open my eyes.

The villain is a person. I’d known that, of course, but it’s still a shock to see a face looking down on me in concern, instead of that demonic snarling helm across the blood and smoke of the battlefield. To realize it’s a human, not a monster, who has caused so much death and suffering.

“There you are,” the villain says with a kindly smile. He wipes my lip and takes a deep swig from the water skin himself, leans his elbow on his knee and gazes out at the battlefield below us.

“There’s a chance you may not come back to your body at all, mage,” he says, running a hand through his own hair, damp with sweat. “They say even the ones that do come back are never quite the same. Though whether that’s arcane transformation or the betrayal… hmph.” His gaze flicks back to me, his eyes golden in the sun. “But I have a good feeling about you. You’re not the giving up type, are you?”

A hail rises from the field below, “General! Uh, I mean, my lord. My liege!”

The villain sighs, shoots me a long-suffering look. “Well. No rest for the wicked, eh?”

He jams that terrible helmet back on, slides his arms under my knees and shoulders, and lifts me as gently as a child. Suddenly four feet off the ground, I can see the battlefield - the broken bodies, the circling crows, and the deep, ugly trench of destruction burned straight through both sides, from my feet through to the enemy pavilion. My final spell.

I let out a moan, wrench my head away.

“I know,” the villain says softly, voice echoing hollowly inside the steel of his helm. “A heavy price. But I think you’re going to be worth it. I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time.” He turns us away from the scene of blood and death, starts walking down the hill. “At any rate, no matter how this turns out, I promise you that this is the last battlefield you will ever see.” He pauses to tilt his face down at me. I can hear the smile in his voice behind that awful metal visor with its snarling bear design. “I give you my word, mage. As your Emperor.”

Yep, totally. Not like he’s having problems walking, or is showing clear signs of exhaustion or anything.

SOMEONE FUCKING SAID IT

Added thought: You realize that out of all of the Avengers (including his own brother) only the Hulk was able to do any real physical damage to him.

He got blown up by both Phil Coulson and Hawkeye. He was thrown out of a skyscraper window (do you realize how thick those windows are?) by Tony’s suit. He got his ass kicked by his big brother (who is also a demi-god and physically stronger). Not a single one of those events caused him any real physical harm. Not. A. Single. One.

It took the Hulk to draw blood, to bruise him. And even after that, he was only banged up a little. (Consider how capable he is of walking next to Thor at the end of the film.)

Why do I bring this up? Because it is clear that he is significantly worse off physically at the beginning than any other time in the film—including the Hulk-smash. There is no question that wherever he came from, he was going through physical torture (and I’d wager mental torture, too).

In these frames and in the scenes from the lab there can be no question Loki had endured torture, both mentally and physically. It’s hard to understand why Marvel never fleshed out Loki’s experience in exile, even just a sentence or two between the brothers. Something. The only backstory Loki’s character was given throughout the five films was Branagh’s vault scene, as far as I remember.

I think Feige intended Loki to be a simple 2 dimensional villain.  I seem to remember an interview with Joss Whedon where he said he pitched the idea of Loki as the antagonist in The Avengers.  Both Branagh and Whedon saw Loki as more than a mere one-off bad guy.  Tom took the role and ran with it, thanks to both of those directors, making Loki as integral and important a character as each of the Avengers.  We’ve all seen the articles that Loki was set to die in TDW but the early viewing audiences objected so Whedon was called in to add additional scenes to TDW and Loki LIVED.  

If you look at all the MCU villains, both before and after Thor 1, most of them have little or no depth and are killed off in their respective films except for Vulture in Spiderman Homecoming and Killmonger in Black Panther.  My personal opinion?  Because of Tom’s portrayal of Loki and the reaction to Loki by fans we finally get, in SH & BP, fleshed out “villains” whose motivation for their actions is, at the very least, somewhat understandable and arouses sympathy/empathy from the audience.

With all this said, I still long for a Loki film that fills in all the blanks and answers the questions many of us have had since Thor 1.  I imagine each of us could compile a list of questions at least a page long.  As far as I’m concerned, Feige & the MCU left us, the audience/fans, unsatisfied.  They got theirs, boat loads of money, and we got Loki dispatched as if he was nothing more than an annoying insect.

Ok, so I recently rewatched The Avengers, and I intended for it to just be a casual half viewing/half partially listening while doing something else. That changed the first time Loki came on screen.

No, actually. It changed about 2.5 minutes after he came on screen when I finally looked up from my embroidery or drawing or Sims 4 or whatever I was doing and had to rewind because noticed something. He looks terrible. I mean, seriously, his hair is greasy, his eyes are so shadowed they look brused, he’s walking like he’s in pain, and, what caused me to look up in the first place:

He stumbles, he looses his balance, Selveg has to help him walk.

It’s worth noting that the last time I saw this movie was about a year after it came out on Netflix, I think I was nine.

So, instead of working on whatever I had meant to do, I got sucked into the movie. My momfriend instincts activating by degrees every time Loki comes on screen. He’s tired, he’s hurt, he looks like he hasn’t slept or bathed in months, he looks worse than the depressed, anxiety-ridden teenagers I go to school with every day. His boss is actively threatening him with torture, he cries multiple times throughout the movie, including when he stabs Thor. Another thing that occurred to me was that I had recently read something that talked about how the directors confirmed the fan theory that he was under the scepter’s influence during the movie. There is a mind-controlled, half-dead Zombie of a supervillain wondering across the screen and the worst part is that nobody else seems to notice.

TL,DR, I spent the entire movie deeply concerned about the supervillain and wondering why no one else is noticing how awful he looks.

Julian

Whumptober 2020 - No. 2: In The Hands of the Enemy 

Game of Thrones 2x07 - Jaime Lannister is captured by the Starks and is chained and collared

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

I will stay with you