Darkness Rises And Light to meet it

and bonus

But they helped me to rethink the ‘I didn’t expect the fall in love with anyone’ scene.

daisy and garth have so much chemistry and i know that the writers are doing something with them bc that scene in ep 5 when he got closer to her and she got all nervous???? garth did that like 5 seconds before the commanders started leaving that room. he deadass just got close to her bc he wanted to. then when she's asking how he's going to get out of his marriage with becka and he explains that he never expected love in the way she's referring to, all while his eyes flickered between her eyes and lips?? there was a vibe and daisy felt it too, that's why she had to look away. and then ep 9 when his voice and eyes go all soft because he was worried sick for her???

fast forward to 2025. we're adults now, and so tired of asking where that golden future we were promised is. we've seen too much of humanity's wars, oppression, death, our own greed and selfishness, a frikkin pandemic for heaven's sake. our youthful optimism has been replaced by a hope fragile and barely alive; we don't feel the same reassurance that the bad guys will lose because there have been so many times in real life that they've won. we know now that heroes are not just 'good people.' so what is a hero?

enter the thunderbolts, a bunch of self-proclaimed losers with terrible pasts. they've all messed it up: killed people, abandoned loved ones, been abandoned by loved ones, seen too much to ever completely stop suffering and done too much to ever be looked at in the same light as the inherently good heroes of the past. they can't stop themselves from being sarcastic dumbasses. they seem irredeemable. they feel irredeemable. and yet that is exactly what we need.

because when it comes down to it they choose to be heroes. they see people in danger and they step up, even though it's hard, even though it's not natural to them. they throw themselves into the battle because that is what they have always known and they'll be damned if they sit this one out when they finally have a chance to do something good. they look at one another in their pain and hopelessness and say i know, me too, so let's figure it out together, even though they follow that up with i still hate you btw, you're still a dumbass because that's how we say i love you these days. they show us, jaded and struggling, that you don't have to feel good to do good--that you are good anyway, that you are more than what you have done or felt or been, that there is always a hope for tomorrow. there's a reason the plot is a great big metaphor for mental illness and self-worth, a reason redemption flows through the veins of that film.

no because i’ve noticed that too. i’ve only written one paddy fic myself and honestly part of the reason i haven’t written more is because there’s a very LOUD minority of people in that fandom who are weirdly hostile toward fem!reader fic because paddy is gay in the show

which like…yes. i am aware. fork found in kitchen but also the “fic” in fanfic exists for a reason. people are literally just playing with fictional scenarios and having fun. nobody is claiming canon suddenly changed because someone wrote a reader insert

and i do understand wanting more representation/diverse content in fandom spaces, i genuinely do. but at some point people need to realize that the solution is contributing the stories you want to see instead of constantly shitting on what other people enjoy creating for free