eye

“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.

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.

A friend of mine was having trouble making reference sheets for her characters, so I made quite a few!

I figure these could be really useful if anyone else was struggling too, so these are all F2U

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.

“What if she needs to eat souls to survive-“ No.

"So what do you get in exchange? I get eternal youth and beauty."

"Yeah, and I get all my enemies smited."

"And my guy gave me immeasurable wealth. What'chu got, kid?"

"This super cute compact! Isn't it pretty? The heart-shaped jewels are so sparkly, and the mirror is always spotless!"

"...."

"And since we're pactbound, we're basically roomies now, so I also get a cool best friend and sleepovers on weekends!"

"...."

"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.

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.

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'.

~

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.