#and now he's a supervillain (?) going to fight a bunch of aliens and take back earth.

[prowlsart]

insert meme about nanomachines here

#savage worlds #ttrpg #tabletop #android #original character #digital art #hi meet roy :) he's an android made by the military to create man made horrors beyond your comprehension :) #and now he's a supervillain (?) going to fight a bunch of aliens and take back earth. #or was because we're never gonna finish that campaign oops

[johannestevans]

My Top Stories for 2023!

In case you missed ’em: these were my most popular works of fiction and non-fiction of the year!

It’s very nearly 2024, and it’s been a big year for me! 

I’ve published so many short stories and new essays, I had a great time at EasterCon and BristolCon, and have published pieces with several new (for me!) publications on top of moving into my new apartment. I’m now based in Yorkshire instead of Ireland, and that means I’ll be attending a bunch more conventions and other events across Wales, Scotland, and England as well as still going back to Ireland from time to time. 

Firstly, as a big thank you to all my supporters and to ring in the new year, I’m currently doing an end-of-2023 giveaway! Sign up here! 

On 01/01/2024, I’ll be drawing a winner of the giveaway, and they’ll receive by post / mail signed copies of my paperbacks, Heart of Stone and Gerald Poole and the Pirates, vouchers for my eBooks, some badges, and some other goodies that will be contained in the parcel. 

Secondly, I wanted to remind people who’ve had a little bonus or gifted money and want to treat themselves that as well as being able to subscribe for access to all reader-locked works on Medium, by any authors, for $5 USD, I have a Patreon where I publish almost all my works (barring those that might be against Patreon guidelines, of which there currently aren’t many), there is an option to pay annually on Patreon! 

You can subscribe to me monthly on Patreon for access to my works at £3 / £6 / £10.50 / £17 per month — there’s no difference in the benefits of these tiers, just that you can choose to support me with a subscription for what you can afford. 

If you subscribe annually on Patreon, you get a 16% discount on what you would ordinarily pay monthly, and you get full access to everything for the duration of the year’s subscription! 

With that intro done, let’s get to my top 24!

My Top 12 Fiction Pieces of 2023

January 2023 — Erotic Short: Running the Table

A trans man is the favourite pocket on the pool table.

Rated E. Cis M/trans M/cis M. 4k. Featuring consent play with a prenegotiated rape roleplay, object insertion (not sanitary, not safe, just sexy), double penetration, begging, tears, size difference, age difference, lots of anal play, belly bulging.

Jock and Phineas first appeared in Centre Pocket, where Jock initially makes the threat of the pool balls.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

February 2023 — Erotic Short: Fresh Bounty

A bounty hunter takes a young wizard to the king’s court.

1.7k, rated E, cis M/trans M! Power play with a lack of negotiation, but fully consensual enthusiasm for it, cockwarming, threatened overstimulation, D/s, implications of public use, and sex on horseback!

CW for a mention of it in dirty talk, but no animals are actually abused, harmed, or looked on sexually.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

March 2023 — Erotic Short: Purpose-Built Toy

A stretchy supervillain goes up against five huge superheroes.

3.2k, rated E. Trans M/5 alien Ms with alien cocks. There is absolutely no redeeming plot features in this, it’s just horrible unrealistic porn with lots of come inflation, objectification, humiliation, and belly kink.

There are several consent issues in this fic, where the trans guy is basically being turned into a fucktoy for these aliens without anyone asking how he feels about it — with that said, he’s really into the whole thing, and absolutely does not want to opt out.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

April 2023 — Erotic Short: Slime Breeder

An elf is used as a distraction as his party fight a gigantic slime.

3.5k. A trans masc elf getting fucked from all ends by a giant slime creature, used as a seedbed by it, then played with by his variously gendered friends in the aftermath.

Mildly to very dubious consent here, but Sam is absolutely enjoying himself by the end of it — featuring a giant slime monster, aphrodisiacs, tentacle sex, encasement, choking, oviposition and egg-laying, cumflation, overstimulation, anal, oral, and vaginal penetration, objectification, lactation, milking. All that fun and beastly stuff!

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

May 2023 — Erotic Short: The Mermaid and the Fisherman

A wanderer meets a mermaid, and the two of them work to understand each other.

This short is also available for purchase on Smashwords as an eBook, and is originally from September 2020.

7.3k, rated E, M/M. A young man fleeing home has taken up residence in an old fishing cabin on the west coast of Scotland. He is observed, very closely, by a mermaid from beyond the maerl beds nearby.

Featuring cultural differences, humour, oviposition, cervix penetration, mild chem sex from the mermaid’s aphrodisiac, some rough sex, some mildly dubious consent, stuffing, belly bulge.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

June 2023 — Erotic Short: Agony and Ecstasy

An abbot takes a stranded sailor on for… personal duties.

6k, M/M, rated E! Age difference, virginity kink, some naivety, some oral and anal, first time enthusiasm.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

July 2023 — Erotic Short: The Stasis Box

A prisoner is frozen in time with his holes still accessible for the crew of a mining vessel to use.

5k, rated E, trans M/cis M but hundreds of other people. A trans twink agrees to be involved in an experiment in lieu of his year-long prison sentence — he’s placed in a stasis box, frozen in time, with his holes still accessible for the crew of a mining vessel to make use of.

This is honestly one of the most fucked-up things I’ve ever written, it goes big on the sci-fi body horror fucky horniness.

Full consent is given throughout, the twink knows what he’s in for. Featuring medical kink, fingering, anal and vaginal fingering and sex, sensitivity, time stop, big overstimulation, mind-break and ahegao, objectification, huge come inflation, gaping, come vomiting, general degradation.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

August 2023 — Erotic Short: The Interview

A workplace roleplay with age difference and some hearty degradation.

Rated E, 4k, cis M/trans M. Younger boss/older prospective employee, pre-negotiated roleplay, degradation and humiliation, daddy kink, nipple play, PIV, riding, sex in the office, casual sex, bareback. The older man is fat, but none of the degrading language is about his body or his size except for commenting on the size of his chest — the degradation primarily is about his age and assumed loneliness.

Words used for the trans man’s body are tits and chest, one comparison to a cow’s udder; cock, cunt, hole.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

September 2023 — Erotic Short: Training Toy

A cheerleader loans out his favourite toy to the football players.

3k, rated E, trans M/many cis M. Continuing on from Stuck.

A cheerleader trains up another student to be a good fucktoy, and shares him out to local football players — featuring D/s, multiple orgasms, mild bimboification vibes, training, multiple penetration, degradation, objectification, anal, vaginal, and oral, big penetrations.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

October 2023 — Erotic Short: A Gift For the Wolfmen

A young man in a brothel is invited to join a quartet of hulking wolf-like warriors.

6.4k, rated E. Two trans men, both being gangbanged by four cis wolfmen with huge cocks.

Fantasy universe with adventurers and so forth. Featuring stuck-through-wall and grope boxes, body writing, vaginal, oral, and anal play, huge come inflation, size difference, knotting, power dynamics, virginity kink, objectification and dehumanisation, degradation, humiliation, breeding kink, body modification, mentions of lactation and pregnancy, and enthusiastic consent throughout.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

November 2023 — Erotic Short: Confession and Penance

A priest takes a hands-on approach to addressing a worshiper’s poor working habits.

11k, cis M/M, rated E! Tiernan, a manipulative workaholic who only ever relaxes during Mass services, is taken aside by Father Mullen when it all gets to be a bit too much. D/s, BDSM-approach to enforcing self-care, spanking, painplay, bit of a priest kink but it doesn’t go into that aspect too much, faith. Also some anal.

Note that by definition consent’s an issue here because this is the very definition of religious abuse, especially because Tiernan is a CSA survivor and references past CSA by another priest. Content warnings for the religious abuse and references to the CSA throughout, as well as dubious consent in other sexual situations. For all that, though, the tone is generally light-hearted and is more dark humour than dark drama.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

December 2023 — Erotic Short: Knight Tactics

An elf serves as a distraction and an exhaustion tactic for a bandit camp. By letting them fuck him.

3k, trans M/loads of cocks, assumed as cis M. Amaethon gets himself stuck in a wall so that the bandits will work out their stamina fucking him rather than fighting off the king’s guard.

Stuck in wall, free use, fully (and gleefully) consensual whilst pretending he isn’t, mild belly bulging and come inflation, gaping, exhaustion, messy and come-spattered, etc. All the fun stuff.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

My Top 12 Non-Fiction Pieces of 2023

January 2023 — Fast “Who am I?”: A Fun Game to Play with Friends

A silly fun game to play rapidly with your friends and loved ones in 2023.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

February 2023 — Our Flag Means Death S01 E01: Close Textual Analysis

Examining OFMD E1: Pilot in close detail and liveblogging/analysing the text.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon / / Read on Ao3

March 2023 — Ringing The Devil’s Doorbell: A Light-Hearted, Practical Guide

Let’s talk sex! Vulvar and vaginal stimulation for fun, pleasure, and profit.

Contents:

Preface

The Anatomy of the Vulva and Vagina: the actual anatomy of the vulva, it and the vagina’s attendant parts, and how everything fits together

On Testosterone: the effects of testosterone as a HRT treatment on the vulva and vagina in the context of sexual pleasure

(I don’t have any specific advice in regards to different intersex configurations or further genital and hormonal diversity, but that section might nonetheless be semi-relevant; there’s also some notes on vaginal atrophy that might be relevant if you’re menopausal or similar)

Stimulating the Vulva and Vagina: ringing the Devil’s doorbell, dancing about in his vestibule, and then running into (then out of) (then into) (then out o — ) his house

Additional Reading: more resources and links

Read on Medium

April 2023 — The Precarity of Subscription-Based Income

We’re basically busking online. No wonder we have anxiety about it.

Read on Medium 

May 2023 — The Straight Male Gaze on Pretty Male Gays

How does it feel when straight men want to fuck us?

A quick little intro — I went ham on this one. I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and it just gave me a lot of feelings.

Warnings throughout this piece for discussion of the film’s gore and violence, the homophobia both in- and out- of universe, sexual violence, homophobia in general. I use a lot of slurs in this one because I self-identify with a lot of them, and a lot of this piece is about the ways in which queer identity is weaponised and not weaponised against us.

Bon appetit.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

June 2023 — Passing Privilege: Through My Eyes, as a Trans Man Who Passes

Second puberty and the waves we send through the spaces around us.

On Medium / / On Patreon / / On Tumblr.

July 2023 — Yentl: A Trans Man Studying Talmud is Distracted by Gay Thoughts

Yentl (1983, dir. Barbra Streisand) and Yentl the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

On Medium / / On Patreon.

August 2023 — Barbie Isn’t Anti-Men — It’s Anti-Toxicity

Patriarchy does damage to us all, and Barbie (2023, dir. Greta Gerwig) clearly depicts that.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

September 2023 — Close Reading: A Deep Dive into the Process

An in-depth guide into applying analysis to a piece of text and extrapolating meaning.

A close reading is what we call an in-depth analysis of a piece of text, which might be in the case of fiction a short story, or for novels and novellas might be a portion or an extract from the text.

On Medium / / On Patreon.

October 2023 — Looking For 🍑🍆💦: A Beginner’s Guide to Grindr for Trans Men

Approaching Grindr (and cruising culture) as a trans man.

Read on Medium

November 2023 — As a Trans Man, Why Do Doctors Always Want to Get Me Pregnant?

I’m so tired of fielding questions about my “lost” fertility.

Read on Medium / / Read on Patreon

December 2023 — Uncling Duties

A selection of conversations with my friends’ cats, Kira and Bercow.

On Medium / / On Patreon.

#musings #original fiction #nonfiction #writers on tumblr

[yougetoneshot]

Suicide Squad: Reversal

What if team 1 and team 2 switched missions?

Focus is on Team 1: Flag, Harley, Captain Boomerang, Savant, Mongal, Weasel, Blackguard, TDK, and Javelin

Everyone lives AU

Chapter One

Flag looked around at his team and lamented his choices in life. His eyes fell on Harley, the therapist turned supervillain with a penchant for hyenas and large hammers. She was clapping excitedly at the despair of the man across from her struggling with his seatbelt.

“This thing’s a werewolf?! Yo, I don’t mess with werewolves, get me outta here!”

Captain Boomerang’s roaring laugh filled the entire helicopter as he joined Harley in enjoying Blackguard’s panic.

“Sit down! He’s not a werewolf. He’s a weasel.” Flag snarled to quiet down the situation. Blackguard was his least favorite addition to his team which was saying something considering weasel, the beast villain he’d just believed was a werewolf, was equally as useless. He’d begged Waller not to add him but she insisted his strength would be an asset despite his low IQ. At least the weasel didn’t talk.

“Get ready for the drop.” The pilot called back to Flag who nodded and ushered the others to stand as the back of the helicopter opened over the water.

“Go!” He yelled as the first of his team leapt from the chopper. Javelin, whose name pretty much encompassed his entire personality aside from the added foreign accent, hit the water first. He was followed by TDK, a villain Flag actually didn’t know anything about but trusted Waller enough that he must have some strength of benefit to the team. Savant, the forgetful genius fighter, and Mongal, the alien tyrant, jumped next. They were followed by Harley and Boomerang who made a competition over who could do the best dive. Flag had to shove Blackguard out before he and weasel jumped. As they all hit the water they heard the sound of weasel struggling against the current.

“Did no one find out if he could swim?!” Flag growled into his communicator. The team back at base remained quiet as he moved to help Savant save the unsavory beast from drowning.

“Is he dead.” Waller’s irritated tone buzzed over coms as Savant shook his head.

“He’ll live.”

An explosion lit up another part of the island and Flag furrowed his brow. “Waller-“

“It’s fine. Keep on mission, Flag.” Her tone sounded knowing so he pushed any concern for it aside. He had to trust her. What other choice did he have?

The rest of his team trudged onto the beach and groaned about being wet. He once again lamented not having a proper military team as Harley and Boomerang began convincing Blackguard he was covered in leeches. The dim witted villain was frantically and a bit too loudly checking himself for the leeches as Flag moved towards them. “Shhh! Stop messing with him or you’re going to get us all killed! We don’t have much time before a patrol comes by. We need to get deep into the jungle and make camp.” He grabbed Blackguard by the shoulder to stop him from ripping his clothes off. “There are no leeches on yo-“ Flag’s sentence halted as he spotted it- not a leech but definitely something akin to it stuck to the back of Blackguard’s neck. “Don’t move.”

“What?! Why?!! What is it?!! There are leeches aren’t there?!-“

“I said don’t move!” Flag pulled a knife from a holster around his thigh and began prying the small mass from Blackguard’s skin. The criminal howled which prompted Flag to slap a hand over his mouth. “Shut up or I’ll let this thing stay on your neck.” He finally provided enough leverage to pop the creature off of Blackguard’s neck and send it careening into the sand where it dug down into the dune like a tremor.

“…what was that.” Harley’s eyes were locked onto the spot in the sand that the creature had sunk into.

“Just a leech. Now come on, we need to get off this beach.” He waited for his team to all make it off the beach before he noticed a light in the distance.

A sharp pain in his shoulder then another in his leg sent him sinking to the sand. He heard shouts down the beach and yelled at his team to run as Harley moved towards him. “Go! Stay on mission!”

Waller echoed Flag’s order into Harley’s earpiece.

“Come on. He’s right, Harls.” Boomerang tugged her back into the foliage as soldiers surrounded Flag. “They ain’t gonna kill him, right?” Harley looked up at her Aussie pal and he tugged her down to hide in the brush.

“I dunno but we’re dead if we stay here.” He whispered into her ear as they watched Flag be apprehended.

“This changes nothing. You will still need to find the Thinker and infiltrate Jotunheim.” Waller’s voice hissed through their earpieces. “Don’t take this as some opportunity to bail. I can still monitor you from here without Flag’s supervision. One wrong move and I’ll blow your heads off. Now move.”

As Waller finished her threat, Harley looked around at the group who were all looking at her. “What are you looking at me for? Do I got something on my face?”

“I think they’re looking at you to lead us.” Boomerang whispered in her ear.

“Leader? No. Uh uh. I ain’t a leader.” She turned to Boomerang to argue in a less than hushed tone. “Boomer, I don’t know the first thing about leading a bunch of idiots!”

“Hey!” Blackguard hissed. “We can hear you.”

“Oh sorry, I meant six idiots and a lummox.” She sassed but then quickly realized he thought she was complimenting him. Harley turned back to Boomerang. “We are so doomed.”

“I believe in you, Harls. What would you do if you didn’t have a team?”

“I dunno. Probably get disguises?”

“Then that’s a start. Let’s go find some disguises.”

-

The group had little issue getting into town and breaking into a department store. Even here on this tiny island, American corporations had made their mark in the most American way- overpriced apparel.

“Alright everyone. I want you to look your most Corto Maltese-esque-ian.”

“What?” Half of them chimed in and she shook her head frustrated.

“Just don’t look like a tourist, yea?” She shooed them away to pick their own disguises. After a while, Javelin approached her in bright plaid overalls with no shirt underneath and a vibrant pink hat.

“..that is… PERFECT!” Harley clapped excited then noticed weasel next to him with a large novelty mustache stuck to his face. “Oh my, I didn’t even recognize you. That’s so good. Keep it.”

“I dunno, Harley none of these clothes fit me.” Blackguard walked over in what was clearly a child’s tshirt that hugged him like a crop top. Harley suppressed some laughter but nodded. “No. You look great. Promise.” She nudged Boomerang as he was shuffling through some AC DC shirts to find his size. He lifted his head and spotted the very tight children’s clothing clinging to Blackguard. He was less than successful at containing his laughter.

“He loves it.” Harley nodded.

“Then why’s he laughing?”

“Oh it’s just a joke I told him earlier. Nothing to do with you.”

“..oh.. okay!” Blackguard joined the other two members who were done picking their disguises.

Mongal returned in a large fluffy red dress and Harley gave her two thumbs up. Savant came back in plain jeans and a white v neck. Harley stopped him and plopped a ball cap on his head that said “World’s Best Grandpa” before giving him approval. TDK finally returned dressed like a cowboy complete with chaps and a cowboy hat. Harley had chosen checkered black and red jeggings paired with a workout top that said “would rather be sleeping” and a red leather jacket. Boomerang had finally found the appropriate sized AC DC shirt- sans sleeves as he tugged them off and tossed them aside.

Harley looked over the group one last time before placing her hands on her hips confidently. “Let’s go catch a Thinker.”

-

Outside the club, Harley briefed the group in the small van they’d stolen from a very cooperative Pepsi delivery guy. “Okay, the plan is to blend in and wait for this Thinker guy to show up. He should be here anytime in the next three hours so we gotta stay alert. That includes you.” She gestured to Javelin.

“Why do you single me out?”

“Because that devilish accent of yours could get us caught. Best if you stay quiet.”

“But-“

“No. Your voice is now a precious gem that you must protect at all costs. Not another word.”

He nodded sadly as Harley turned to the rest of the group. “Let’s go.”

-

The group walked into the club and despite having a giant weasel with them, managed to get on great with everyone there. Most of the drunken patrons thought they came from a costume party and Weasel was wearing some kind of Halloween costume. Harley had the group split up to look for the Thinker. She paired them up with Mongal and TDK taking the back door, Boomerang and Savant at the pool table in the corner, Blackguard and Javelin on the dance floor, and she took the bar with Weasel by the entrance.

After about an hour, Harley started to become bored. As entertaining as it was watching Weasel get drunk, Boomerang lose at pool twice in a row to Savant, and Javelin teach Blackguard how to do the Cupid shuffle, she was getting antsy for a fight. Lucky for Harley, a fight was walking in as Corto Maltese soldiers walked in escorting the Thinker.

“I’ve got eyes on the Thinker.” Harley nodded over to Javelin who was by the jukebox. He then pressed a few buttons and Ballroom Blitz blared through the club. “Time to party, boys!”

Harley ran full speed at the nearest soldier and slid down between his legs to pop up behind him right next to the Thinker. She gave him a smile. “You might wanna duck.” Harley grabbed the back of his head and pushed it down as Javelin nailed the soldier posted behind the Thinker with his javelin from across the room. Boomerang took out the first two soldiers and Savant used his pool stick to prevent more soldiers rushing in from the entrance from getting closer to the group by targeting pressure points on their bodies with absolute precision.

At the back door, Mongal and TDK were having a blast letting a soldier walk in only to hang them by their vests on the tall coatrack mounted to the wall and knocking them out. Weasel ran around downing all the drinks of the patrons who’d abandoned them to leave the establishment. The entrance began to flood with more soldiers until Blackguard lifted the large jukebox and hefted it at the doorway with complete ease, halting the music and leaving the room in complete silence for a few moments.

“…you telling me you coulda done that the whole time?!” Harley choked out in shock. “I didn’t know he could that- did you know he could do that?!” Harley looked around at some of the rest of the group who shook their heads. “That coulda been very useful to know, just sayin.”

“Who are you people?” Thinker questioned irritably.

“Hey!” She shook him by his shirt collar. “We ask the questions round here!” Harley began shoving the Thinker towards the back exit as the team followed. They all squeezed back into the Pepsi delivery fan with Thinker placed in the middle of them.

“Okay, Bumble Ball Head, you listen good, you’re gonna take us to Jotunheim.”

“You’ll never make it past the front door. They already know what you’re trying to do. Your little friends on the beach have already been taken care of too.”

“..wait.. there were other people on the beach? Did we leave somebody else?!” Harley began counting the group as Thinker furrowed his brow confused.

“Are you not the Americans? The ones with the shark man?”

“Wait there’s a shark man?!” Harley squealed. “You mean to tell me Waller sent another team with a shark man and he wasn’t on my team?!”

“I don’t like sharks.” TDK brought up nonchalantly. “They could bite your arm off, you know?”

“Yea but not if you was friends with them, right?” Harley proposed and TDK shrugged.

“Fair point.”

“You’re all mad.” Thinker interjected.

“Well, that ain’t nothing new.” Harley chortled. “Now, tell me about the team at the beach. What happened to them?” Harley furrowed her brows as she raised a knife. “And if you ain’t telling me the truth, I’ll start cuttin off them pegs in your head.”

“They were apprehended and taken to the capital. With the exception of the shark man who is now a delightful new subject for me to experiment on.”

“Oh, you are just a piece of work, you know that?!” Harley waved the knife at him then looked at the group. “Listen, I ain’t much of a planner but seems to me like we could use all the help we can get getting into Jotunheim. We should go rescue the rest of the team to help us.”

“If they’re even still alive. El Presidente isn’t exactly keen on Americans. He’s likely already publicly executed them by now.”

“Well ain’t you just a bucket of rainbows!” She bonked him on the head with the back of the knife before looking back at the group. “It’s worth checking to see if any of em are alive.”

“I agree.” Savant nodded. “We got power in numbers, especially if the others are just as gifted in their abilities.”

“Right, anyone oppose?”

Mongal raised her hand slowly and Harley blinked a few times while pouting out her lips. “Yes?”

“I think we left the werewolf.”

Harley looked around at the group and sure enough the Weasel was not there. “Oh, fudge!” She sighed and nodded for TDK at the back to go back inside and fetch him. He returned with an unconscious and smelly Weasel, tossing him inside the van before it drove off towards the capital.

- Stay tuned for Chapter 2! -

#the suicide squad fanfiction #Rick Flagg #Harley Quinn #Captain Boomerang #Savant #Mongal #The Weasel #Blackguard #TDK #Javelin #Rick Flag #Suicide Squad Reversal #SSR Chapter 1

[maxwell-grant]

One last one for the moment; top five superheroes who definitely AREN'T Pulp Heroes, but could be with a little tweaking?

Oof, that's a hard one. It's a hard one because, again, there ultimately isn't that much separation between the two to the point there's enough of a hard line in there to work with, but I guess the cat's out of the bag now that I've staked claims on there being differences between them.

Okay so, not counting superheroes who are deliberately modeled after actual pulp heroes, so no Tom Strong or Night Raven here. I'm sticking mainly with comic book superheroes (barring one oddball exception) since the medium separation is important), who I think could become pulp heroes with some tweaking.

5: Captain America

Sort of cheating because I already covered it here, but I definitely have to include Captain America in here, especially in the stories they actively go for a "pulp" vibe as well as the earliest ones.

Fun fact about Marvel: As Timely, they actually began life as pulp publishers. Not just pulp publishers, but specializing in some of the sleaziest, ghastliest magazines of the era, and you can bet this carried over to their superheroes. Where as DC's superheroes took inspiration from the big pulp heroes such as The Shadow and Doc Savage, Timely's superheroes seemed instead much more inspired by Weird Tales stories and Poverty Row horror films, and even in the 60s, Marvel never really abandoned their horror roots, the trick was just using them as a baseline to create superheroes. In DC, the world's first contact with superheroes begins with the world looking in wonder at a friendly strongman. In Marvel, it began with the world looking in panicked horror at a flaming monster rampaging through the streets desperately trying to not burn everything it touches. It should come to little surprise then that the majority of characters I'm including in this list are Marvel characters.

People think Captain America's first comics largely consisted of him fighting Nazis left and right, but they were actually much more often based around him encountering monsters and creatures of horror, like the above panel where it looks like Cap's staring down the beginning of Berserk's Eclipse (RIP Miura).

The early Captain America comics pretty much consisted of Kirby dipping his toe into the monster comics he'd make in the 50s which would later bleed into the 60s Marvel entourage. They even tried repackaging Captain America into a horror anthology in the 50s titled "Captain America's Weird Tales", just imagine how different the character would be today if that somehow stuck.

Imagine a world where Steve Rogers never became leader of The Avengers, never got to become the shining beacon of heroism of an entire universe, and instead, when he was unfrosted, he woke up to find a world running rampant with crawling nightmares and Nazi tyranny, and he has no idea what's become of his former sidekick. That definitely sounds like the start of a promising pulp adventure.

4: Namor

Another Timely creation. In Namor's case, he didn't so much encounter horrors from beyond imagination, as much as HE was the terrifying thing beyond us ready to rampage upon mankind, whose first on-screen act consists of the calculated slaughter of a ship full of innocents. The first true villain protagonist of comic books. Not just an anti-hero, a villain intent on wiping out the human race.

And not just a cardboard supervillain, but the beautiful prince of a race of ugly fish monsters, a momma's boy who's doing what he thinks is right by warring with surface dwellers. While Namor's become largely defined by his gargantuan arrogance, here, he's almost childlike, despite being much more brutal and villainous here, spurred on by the whims of his mother, who even acknowledges that Namor had no real reason to kill the divers but did so anyway, and now encourages him to genocide. His mom even tells him "Go now, to the land of white people!", and the very last panel of the story even states he's on a "crusade against white men".

The massacre of explorers at the hands of something beyond their understanding. A monster born of an interracial coupling. A race of fish monsters with bulging eyes, antagonistic towards humanity but are shown to have positive traits just the same. A dash of racism. There is no mistaking The Sub-Mariner's pulp horror influence.

A non-white superhuman warrior born from a Lovecraftian horror story, who gradually moves away from his villainous crusade into becoming more of an anti-hero, never truly putting aside his hatred for humanity, remaining a temperamental, unpredictable outcast, with a strong, palpable undercurrent of anger in his stories. I could very easily buy Namor as having crawled out of a Weird Tales story and I can't think of other superheroes whose origins are as steeped deeply in pulp horror.

3: Doctor Fate

Technically we already have a pulp hero version of Doctor Fate in Doc Fate, and I'll get to him separately, but even besides him, the earliest Doctor Fate stories in particular feel very much like he's a character steeped in the worlds of pulp and pulp horror who decided to put on a superhero costume and show up in comic.

He's got a similar set-up to The Shadow, from the pulp Shadow in the sense that he's a mysterious, eerie crimefighter who dwells as a presence more often than an active character and who kills criminals without remorse, always watching and waiting for the right time to strike as a a wrathful old-testament force of vengeance, and from the radio Shadow due to him using superpowers to fight crime while being accompanied by a smart, fierce love interest.

Originally, Fate was not a sorcerer, but instead a scientist who discovered a way to manipulate atomic structure, of his and other things, thus making it appear that he can do magic (although we never see his face, and he's implied to be thousands of years old, before they settled on the Nabu origin). And going back to Lovecraft, a lot of it appears in the earliest Fate stories. Fate was given powers not by a sorcerer, but an alien worshipped as a god. He barely encounters traditional monsters, but instead contends with hidden races, zombie slaves, abandoned alien monoliths, and half man and half fish creatures. Fate may have actually been the very first pastiche of Lovecraft in pop culture.

And of course we can't forget the gloriousness of Doc Fate pulling an Indiana Jones on us.

2: Wolverine

I don't even think you'd have to tweak Wolverine at all. You'd just have to get him out of the costume and Avengers/X-Men associations (although the X-Men have a substantial background in pulp sci-fi stories like Slan and Odd John, so they aren't really at odds here), maybe tone down his powers a bit and, that's it. Logan's already the kind of character who has such a varied sandbox history, whose powers can lead to so many different scenarios, that it's not a stretch at all to picture Wolverine in the usual pulp hero scenarios.

You can have half-naked Wolverine running around in the jungle with animals Tarzan-style, take him to Savage Land if you wanna throw dinosaurs in there. He's already Marvel's foremost "wandering samurai/cowboy" character which was one of the stock and trade types of the pulps. Western? Done. Samurai? Done. Wuxia? Just put him in China and add a couple extra fantasy elements. Wanna make a sword and sorcery story with him? He already comes with a bunch of knives and savagery and ability to survive grisly injuries. Horror? The MCU is crawling with them, or alternatively, tell a story from the perspective of someone who's being hunted down by Wolverine. Wanna tell a detective/noir/post-apocalypse story? Logan's right there.

Wanna have him crossover with pulp heroes? He's lived through the 1800s and 1900s and traveled all over the world, you could feasibly have him meet up with just about any of them. Logan may actually be the purest example of your question, because he's very much not a Pulp Hero, and yet, he definitely feels like a character who could have been one, at just about any point in the history of pulp magazines. He's perfect for it.

1: Wario

WAAA-okay, look, bear with me for a second here, I'm not just picking Wario because I love oddball choices and he's one of my favorite characters, I got some logic to this.

Okay so, the first question here: is Mario a superhero? While I'm usually adverse to calling characters prominent outside of comic books superheroes (hence why I'm definitely not interested in debating whether Harry Potter or Goku or Link or Frodo are superheroes), I do think it's a pretty shut case that, yes, Mario is a superhero. Superheroes don't just come in the form of skintight crimefighters, right from the start comic books have had varied types of superheroes appearing in comics and comic strips. For example, the "funny animal" superheroes are a type older than superhero comics, and they were arguably not only the most successful type of superhero of the 40s-50s era, but arguably defined trends dominating nonfunny animal superheroes, traits that predated or influenced Captain Marvel as well as Otto Binder's reshaping of Superman that defined much of superhero convention as we know it. It's part of why the question of "Is Sonic a superhero" has a very clear Yes as an answer.

So upon establishing that, yes, funny cartoon characters can be and are superheroes too, is Mario one? Well, I'd say yes. He's got an iconic uniform, he's got superpowers, he goes on fantastical adventures, he is both a nebulously general do-gooder as well as having a clear mission as protector of the Mushroom Kingdom. His adventures span multiple storytelling formats, he's got catchphrases, he even dresses up in Superman's colors and has a Super prefix iconically associated with him. Not a superhero the way we usually think of, but a superhero nonetheless.

And Wario? Well, putting aside Wario-Man who's more of a running gag than anything, Wario does just about everything Mario does. He's got all the traits that define Mario as a superhero short of a Super prefix and the selfless mission (which isn't exactly a rule). He goes around and gets into crazy adventures, he picks up items, beats bad guys, conquers the odds, and gets some kind of prize for it. He's got Mario's physical traits, and Mario's costume, and just about the same name short of a single letter. The caveat being, of course, that he's Wario, and so everything Mario is or does has to be exaggerated to gross extreme.

Mario is paunchy and strong, Wario's round and built like a powerlifter. Mario's got a friendly face and a fluffy mustache, Wario's got a massive horrible grin and jagged razors for a stache. Mario is a bit of an overeater, Wario can and will eat anything in front of him. Mario gets around with acrobatics and magic power-ups, Wario brute forces his way through everything and just rolls with whatever injuries he picks up along the way.

Mario gets fire powers by consuming magic flowers. Wario sets himself on fire and barrels around destroying everything in his path. Mario harnesses the elements or abilities of beings around him to clear obstacles and solve puzzles, Wario gets turned into a zombie, a vampire or a drunk to get the same things done. Mario befriends and rides dinosaurs who raised him from infancy, Wario piledrives dinosaurs and then uses their bodies to beat up more dinosaurs. Mario pals around with fellow heroes, princesses and friendly fantasy creatures, Wario pals around with aliens, witches, mad scientists, cab drivers, and lanky weirdos. Mario always ends his adventures joyfully leaping to the next one, Wario usually ends up either cackling in a pile of treasure or completely broke.

Mario races through plains to rescue princesses, Wario invades pyramids to hunt for treasure. Mario jumps through planets with baby stars guiding his path, Wario crashes into the Amazon jungle and fistfights the devil. You can see where I'm going with this.

If you were to take one of Nintendo's heroes to make them into pulp heroes, Wario, specifically the Wario Land Wario, may be the only one who really could do it, because in essence, he's the videogame equivalent of Professor Challenger. He's Bluto moonlighting as Indiana Jones, the weird brute adventurer for weird brute adventures where everything's off limits and you can trust our intrepid hero, who really shouldn't be a hero on all accounts, to deliver us a good time, give or take a couple deaths, scams, shams and oh-damns to complete said mad treasure hunts.

#replies tag #not pulp heroes #comic books #dr fate #wolverine #captain america #namor #wario

[kumeko]

A/N: For the Summer Lovin’ zine, where I wanted to do a light, fluffy, summer romance. With bonus Steph and Tim teasing Damian (as is their right) and Cassandra helping out where she could.

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Endless fields of unripe wheat. A cloudless blue sky stretching as far as the eye can see. The occasional house poking out of an otherwise flat terrain. Damian stared outside the car window and clicked his tongue. No wonder his father had declined to come; there were no shadows here to hide in, only light.

 “What’s the matter?” Stephanie asked, an impish smile on her face as she poked his cheek. “Bored?”

 “Of course not.” He swatted her hand away but that only made her laugh. “We shouldn’t be here.”

 “Why?” From the driver’s seat, Tim glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. If Stephanie’s smile was teasing, his smirk was downright malicious. “Scared you’ll have fun?”

 Damian crossed his arms. He would never for the life of him understand what his father saw in that fake Robin. No, it went deeper than that—what did he see in most of his proteges? Stephanie didn’t take anything seriously, Tim didn’t have the skills, Dick was too fun-loving, and Jason had no control. The only not disappointing one in the bunch was Cassandra, and Damian feared that one day the others would infect her as well. He should have gotten rid of them while he had the chance. “We should be training, Drake,” Damian replied, irritation leaking into his voice.

“An important part of training is taking breaks.” Stephanie poked his cheek again. He was going to break her finger one day. “It’s summer, school’s out, and Bruce and Dick have Gotham covered. We can have a little vacation, the world’s not going to destroy itself without us.”

 “Without you, maybe,” Damian sneered. The effect was ruined as she pulled his cheek.

 “Without us,” she repeated, still sporting that insufferable smile. “If it’s serious, they’ll call us. It’s not like the League doesn’t know where the Kent farmhouse is.”

 Damian wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Surely the most dangerous man in the planet should have his parents hidden somewhere secure, instead of having their name on file. Villains broke into the JLA all the time as it was; it wouldn’t be that long before someone stumbled upon this badly kept secret.

 “You’re wasting your breath, Steph.” Tim shrugged, his eyes on the road. “He doesn’t know what a break is.”

 From the front passenger seat, Cassandra gave Damian a sympathetic smile. She had been silent till now, more than content to just listen. Which was probably why he preferred her to the others; she wasn’t a blabbermouth like the others. “A break can help your body recover,” she offered.

 At least that was practical advice for once. Damian leaned back in his seat. “I suppose.”

 “You’re such a softie to her and Dick.” Stephanie leaned back into her seat, finally leaving him alone.

 “It’s too bad Dick couldn’t come,” Tim sighed. “He could have muzzled the brat.”

 “Well, while we’re meeting our favourite aliens, he’s got his own alien to meet.” Stephanie waggled her brows before she and Tim burst into a fit of laughter. Leaning forward, she rested a hand on Cass’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, I’ll share mine with you.”

 “Okay?” Looking confused, Cassandra nodded.

 “And Damian’s got Jon,” Tim chimed in, exchanging a look with Steph.

 Wisely, Damian kept his mouth shut. With these two, almost any response he gave would only be ammo.

 -x-

 “Damian!”

 He barely had time to turn around before Jon barreled into him, knocking him over. Landing flat on his back, Damian grunted as his breath rushed out of him. Jon had little restraint in the best of times, and almost none when he was emotional. Frowning at the mop of dark hair on his chest, he rolled his friend off. “Kent.”

 “Kent,” Tim and Steph said at the same time and he didn’t have to see them to know they were wearing identical smiles.

 “Damian!” Pushing himself off the ground, Jon shot him a grumpy look.

 Quietly, Damian muttered, “Fine, Jon.”

 The idiot duo cackled behind him and he wasn’t sure if Jon’s bright smile was worth it. Picking himself off the ground, Damian didn’t bother to dust off his clothes before hauling Jon up. “Where’s my room?” he asked, dragging Jon along as he headed to the main house. “And please tell me those two are sleeping in the barn.”

 “Nah, they’ll be rooming with Conner and Kara, just like you’ll be with me.” Jon wrapped an arm around his back, almost skipping as they headed in. “It’ll be fun!”

 Fun. That wasn’t the word he’d use for it. Perhaps he could at least sabotage their beds after this.

 -x-

 Balancing a dagger between his two fingers, Damian studied the target. It was perhaps one of the simplest targets he’d practiced with, a static bale of hay only 50 yards down. A single red x made of cardboard sat on the bale. There was no challenge in this. Still, some practice was better than none. Raising his hand behind him, Damian whipped his arm forward and tossed the dagger.

 With a solid thwack, the dagger hit the target dead center.

 As expected. Child’s play, really.

 As though to cut into his preening, Jon applauded behind him. “Wow,” he cheered, his voice deadpan. “That was amazing.” Sarcasm dripped from his words as he hovered over the ground, giving Damian the most bored look possible.

 “There’s nothing else here to use,” Damian sniped back, not appreciating the reaction. It figured this was the place the Supers called home, this land of sunlight. The Kents owned few weapons, if one could call them that. A shotgun, several farming tools, and an oddly sharp kitchen knife were their defenses of choice. Miraculously, no supervillains had dared to take over this quaint town, and he could only chalk it up to luck. Probably the same luck that allowed all the Supers to fly without a single neighbour to report them.

 Not finished, Jon leaned forward, shielding his eyes with a hand. Fake squinting, he studied the target. “That’s, what, ten in a row? All in the same spot, somehow?” The scorn disappeared from his tone and Jon gave him a thumbs up. “That’s actually really cool.”

 Cool was again not a word Damian would use but he accepted the compliment. “If I couldn’t do that much, I’d hang up my cape.”

 “Right, right.” Jon landed on the ground next to him, clapping him on the back. “And you’re doing ten more of these?”

 “I need to keep up the practice,” Damian muttered, distracted by the tingling in his back. It had been happening recently, at Jon’s point of contact, and he wondered if it was some uncontrolled Kyptonian strength running through his flesh. “Even if the practice is subpar.”

 “Of course.” There was a mischievous twinkle in Jon’s eyes. “But you’re just going to get the same result. And it’s boring.”

 Rankled, Damian pulled away. “Practice is not—”

 “There’s more fun ways to practice instead.” Jon pounced, tackling him to the ground. “Let’s fight.”

 Well, that was certainly something Damian could get behind. Flipping them over, he smirked. “You’re on.”

 -x-

 “So, Damian, was it?” Ma Kent smiled at him kindly as she exited the kitchen. The smell of cooked chicken wafted through the air, filling the dining room. In her hands was a bright, flowery plastic bowl filled with Brussel sprouts. “I heard a lot about you.”

 Damian stared at her. The dining room was empty save for them—the others hadn’t yet come back from whatever wasteful endeavours they had planned and Jon was feeding Krypto. While he had begrudgingly accepted the fact that he’d have to eat dinner with everyone, there had better not be any expectations of conversation. He had planned to let Jon do all the talking, to cover up his silence, but that wasn’t possible right now. When Ma Kent smiled at him, he reluctantly replied, “I see.”

 “Ahaha, got a way with words, I see.” Chuckling, she set down the bowl. A bowl that did not match any of plates. Actually, now that he was paying attention, none of the big serving bowls matched, all of them hideous plastic monstrosities. Noticing his scornful expression, she rubbed her neck sheepishly. “I know what you’re thinking. I used to use my good china whenever someone came, but after two dinner attacks and one food fight, I’ve learned my lesson. If the powers are out, my plates stay in.”

 “I see.” Not that he had asked for clarifications. Not that he was curious in any way, shape, or form about it.

 “You really do have only one mode.” Laughing, she returned to the kitchen. “Like father, like son. Glad the rest of your lot didn’t turn out like this; don’t think I could have handled that much grumpiness at my table.”

 “I’m not grumpy,” he muttered under his breath.

 “Man, Krypto was hungry tonight!” Jon tumbled in through the window, ecstatic. Catching Damian’s expression, he cocked his head. “What, did I miss anything?”

 Resisting the urge to cross his arms (because he wasn’t grumpy, he was stoic), Damian gave him a surly look. “Nothing.”

 Ma Kent chuckled again. “Nothing, hun. Now make sure to wash those hands.”

-x-

 The stars were bright here. Sprawled on the roof, Damian leaned back and studied the night sky above him. Without Gotham’s pollution, the milky way was visible for once. Stars glittered above him, taking advantage of the moonless night. He had almost forgotten what the night sky could look like, what it had those nights long ago when he lived in the desert, training under his mother’s watchful eye.

 An almost silent presence approached him and Damian discretely reached into his pocket for a dagger. The stranger’s hand touched his, stilling it, and he looked up to find Cassandra Cain. She offered him a smile. “It is silent here,” she murmured, sitting down beside him.

 “I suppose.” Damian glanced at her, then at the fields below. It looked like a dark sea, threatening to swallow them whole. An owl hooted, crickets chirped, and all in all, it was far quieter here than it was in the city. Just when had he gotten used to the never-ending honking? Even the smell here was different. The farm felt clean.

 “It is,” she corrected, hugging her knees. She closed her eyes, listening. “It is…not bad to relax.”

 Not bad, perhaps, but not good either. Not when there were lives at stake in Gotham. Damian wouldn’t call himself a hero, not by any stretch of the word, but Gotham was Batman’s. Gotham was his and he was loathe to let its citizens die when they under his protection. “Isn’t it?”

 “No.” Cassandra closed her eyes. Words were hard for her, action easier—perhaps one of the things he respected so much about her. When she spoke, her words meant something, they were considered and honest. “Relaxing…you can recover. Recharge. See things differently.” Opening her eyes now, she smiled at him, a waxing moon. “See what you are protecting.”

 Damian stared. He was too late; Cassandra had been infected by the others. “I don’t need to see—”

 “Damian!” Before he could finish his sentence, Jon floated down beside him. Dressed in bright blue pjs his mother had to have bought for him, Jon landed on his right. “What’re you doing up here alone?”

 “Alone?” Damian looked at his left once more. Empty. Cassandra was gone. Even if her brain had rotted, her skills remained, and he didn’t know whether to be impressed or irritated at himself. Turning back to Jon, he shrugged. “Reflecting.”

 “Reflecting on what?” Jon raised a brow before asking. “Wait, is this one of those bat-broods Dad was talking about? How you guys all go to a corner at some point or another and just sulk?”

 Speechless, Damian gaped, his jaw hanging loose. Of all the things he expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them. That wasn’t even on his least likely list.

 “I mean, I can’t picture Steph sulking, but maybe she wasn’t Robin long enough to get the broods.” Jon sat down next to him, bumping shoulders. “Or maybe you took all of them?”

 “I’m not sulking,” Damian growled, resisting the urge to hurl Jon off the roof. Not that it would do any good, he’d just fly back and be twice as mocking about it. What was it with the Kents and their presumptions?

 “Then what?” Jon’s eyes lit up and he hit his fist on his empty palm, as though he’d solved a case. “Stargazing?”

 It was as good an explanation as any. Better, actually, than his own, considering he had none. “Sure.”

 “Prepare to be amazed!” Jon pointed up, a wide smile on his face. “A city boy like you, you haven’t seen half of these stars before.”

 “City boy?” Damian scoffed. “You’re not much better.”

 “I’ve been in the country plenty of times,” Jon retorted, his mood still bright. It was like sitting next to the sun. “Besides, I can fly. Dad’s takes me up all the time to see the stars.”

 A very frivolous waste of power. No wonder Bruce worried about this family.

 “Anyways, see that star over there?” Jon leaned closer, wrapping an arm around Damian’s back to bring him closer. “So that’s part of the big dipper.”

 Of all the stars to start with, the big dipper? Really? Damian didn’t know if he should be insulted or not. It wasn’t like he was much of a ‘city boy’ himself; growing up in the desert, his mother made sure he could navigate just as easily at night as he did the day.

 He could say he had the best tutors, that he knew every constellation by heart.

 He could say that Jon was pointing at the wrong dipper, he meant the one slightly below it.

 Damian could say any or all of those things, but for once in his life he kept quiet. Jon was smiling and he didn’t always have to prove he was the smartest person in the room.

 -x-

 “So, any bets?” Steph asked, shielding her eyes as she leaned back and squinted at the sky. Despite the intense July heat, she stood away from the shade. Above them, small specks in the bright sky, were Conner, Kara, and Jon. They raced through the air, sometimes coming low enough to hear their laughter, other times they were barely visible.

 “On what?” Tim asked. Like her, he was staring up at the sky. Unlike her, he was smart enough to stay next to the barn and the meager relief it provided. Perhaps he did have a modicum of intelligence after all.

 Not that Damian would applaud him. Using a handful of pebbles, Damian started flicking them at distant targets, smirking when they hit with a satisfying thwink. Perhaps Jon could hide his training dummies and Tim could hide his weapons, but they couldn’t force him to be idle the entire time he was here. Glancing at Cassandra, who was sitting nonchalantly on the ground next to him, a pleased smile on her face, Damian was perplexed. How could she handle this?

 “The next Super. Like, it’s obvious that Cass is the next Batman, but I dunno about them.” Ignoring Damian’s glare, she finally strolled into the shade. She leaned against the barn door and crossed her arms. “It’s between Conner and Jon.”

 “So Kara’s not interested?” Tim stroked his chin thoughtfully. After humming for a few minutes, he turned to Cassandra and asked, “Who’d you rather work with?”

 Unable to handle the indignancy anymore, Damian barked, “I’m the next Batman.”

 “Sure.” Stephanie rested a hand on her hip, giving him a pitying look. “Whatever makes you feel better.”

 “Go easy on him, it’s not easy to find out that he’ll be Robin forever.” Tim shook his head sadly. “All of that time, all of mommy’s promises that’d he’d get the job, it must be crushing.”

 “What?” he squawked.

 “He couldn’t even accept that Cass is Bruce’s favourite.” Coming over, Stephanie squeezed his shoulder. “And then there’s Dick—you’re maybe third? Maybe?”

 Picking a pebble out of his hand, Cassandra flicked it at the bushes. A bird shot out of it, startled. “Either of them…are fine,” she answered slowly. “Conner, then Jon?”

 Et tu, Brutus? Damian turned to Cassandra as she tossed yet another pebble with pinpoint accuracy. He should have realized earlier that they were all after his job, that there was no one here he could trust.

 “Ah, Conner takes it on for a little before giving it to Jon.” Stephanie nodded sagely. “True, that’s also in the running.” Her hair fell in front of her as a flyby occurred and she quickly pushed back her golden locks. “You know Jon actually hangs out with them?” Wrapping an arm around Damian’s shoulder, she bemoaned, “Why can’t our baby be so friendly?”

 “It would be…weird,” Cassandra pointed out, getting up now. She patted him on the back. “He is…different.”

 “Who is?” Kara landed on the ground, her hair looking like a wild nest. It seemed being Kryptonian didn’t protect them entirely from physics.

 “Damian, but you already knew that.” Stephanie retreated before he could attack her. “What’s up?”

 Kara glared at him before smiling at Stephanie. “A race! We’ll each pick one of you up and see who can fly the fastest. So, Steph or Cass?”

 “Cass!” Stephanie volunteered, leaning against Cassandra. “I’ve had plenty of flights. It’s a sacrifice, but someone has to do it.”

 “Sacrifice.” Tim rolled his eyes. “You just don’t want to mess your hair.”

 “Both things can be true.” She stuck her tongue out.

 By now, Jon and Conner had landed as well, standing next to Damian and Tim respectively. Conner smirked cockily. “We’ve got this in the bag.”

 “Yeah, we did this every day in the Teen Titans.” Tim high-fived Conner. “It’ll be too easy.”

 “Oh, just you wait and see!” Kara stood next to Cassandra, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “I’ve practiced.”

 “We’ll win!” Jon declared, grabbing Damian’s hand. Leaning closer, he whispered, “And no matter what, you’re my Batman.”

 “Huh?” Damian tried to look at Jon but before he could, he was already in the air and the race had started.

 On that day, Damian discovered that his stomach was both stronger and weaker than he’d expected.  

 -x-

 At nine pm, it was dark. Dark in a different way than Gotham got—for all the narrow alleys and forgotten warehouses, it was never truly devoid of light. Whether it was a flickering streetlamp or the semi-blocked lights of an office, there was light somewhere.

 Here, though, in the middle of nowhere, it was pitch dark. Damian could just make out Jon’s figure sitting next to him. The others, still sitting near the barbeque a short distance away, were impossible to see. The only thing visible were the stars above, as disgustingly bright as ever. Somehow, the sky never turned truly dark, a thing he had forgotten. It had been too long since he’d been in the desert, since he’d left the city behind.

 “I’m glad you came.” Even without looking, he knew Jon was smiling. He was always smiling, always moving, always something, like his face didn’t know how not express his emotions, like his body would combust if he stayed still.

 Damian didn’t bother to reply. Leaning forward on the dock edge, he skimmed his shoe against the still waters, watching the dark ripples warp the galaxy below. The only thing rivalling the stars were the fireflies drifting lazily nearby, yellow spots against the black.

 Unfazed (and Damian didn’t want to think about when that happened, about when Jon stopped getting angry at his silence and just accepted it), Jon rested his hand on Damian’s, threading their fingers together. It was an oddly intimate sensation. Damian didn’t mind it for some reason. “It’s a lot more fun when you’re around. I wish you didn’t have to leave tomorrow.”

 This time, Jon’s stare was expectant. Damian glanced at him, then back at the fireflies. “It wasn’t a complete waste,” he muttered, a half-truth. Perhaps there was something to vacations, but he loathed to admit it.

 Jon laughed, seeing through him. “Knew you’d like it here.”

 Feeling a little prickly, Damian glared at him. “Don’t act like you know—”

 “But I’m right, aren’t I?” When Damian didn’t say anything, Jon leaned closer. “I know you.”

 Before Damian could react, Jon’s lips were on his cheek, a warm pressure that was all too temporarily. His jaw fell slack. His skin burned. For once, his words failed him and he felt like a simpleton.

 “If I knew that’d shut you up, I’d have done it ages ago.” Jon smirked, looking playful.

 “Jon!” Pa Kent yelled. “We’re making smores.”

 “Save me some chocolate!”

 And just like that, Jon leaped to his feet, dashing away, and Damian still didn’t know what to say.

 -x-

 The roof was empty when he sat on it. Cassandra wasn’t there to give advice. Jon wasn’t there, laughing as he strung together stars like they were the pearls, creating tapestries on the sky above. There was just complete and utter silence, just as Damian preferred.

 While his skin had cooled down, his heart hadn’t, and he tried to meditate. Crossing his legs, he emptied his mind. Jon’s lips had been soft. He emptied his mind. His hand was rough. He emptied his mind. Jon—

 And maybe he had been wrong before; it was too late for himself. He’d been infected by all these damnable people around him, to the point he had actually considered asking Tim Drake of all people for advice. Friendship, family, love—

 It was too late. He had all of them and as loathe as he was to let them in, he was even worse about letting them go.

 -x-

 “So.” The confident Jon of yesterday was gone, leaving a more nervous boy in its wake. He was constantly fidgeting, his eyes darting all over like he didn’t know where to look. Judging by the bags under his eyes, he probably hadn’t slept.

 Good. He deserved a little suffering for leaving like that, for forcing Damian to think about his feelings. “So?” he drawled out, relishing in the little flinch Jon gave.

 They were standing in front of the Kent’s house, in the cool morning air. For the first time in two weeks, the sun wasn’t beating down on him and Damian couldn’t wait to return to the air conditioning of the Wayne manor. Already, the others were packing up the car, leaving only him and Jon to say their goodbyes.

 Or, well, whatever it was that Jon was trying to say. Damian tapped his foot on the ground, raising a brow when Jon didn’t say anything.

 “See you later?” Jon managed weakly.

 Sighing, Damian tossed him a bone. “Even a stopped clock is right twice. This vacation wasn’t terrible, I’m not adverse to doing it again. However, we are making this up with double the amount of work when we get back.”

 Jon blinked. “You still want to be partners?”

 Damian nodded. “Yes, I thought you had superhearing?”

 “And the other thing?” Jon asked, stepping closer.

 It took all of Damian’s willpower to not step back, not even when Jon was close enough to touch, to kiss. Feeling a familiar flush on the back of his neck, he coughed and looked away. “That…that was fine too.”

 “Really?” Jon’s voice was filled with an earnest hope and Damian’s stomach flip-flopped.

 “Don’t make me repeat it,” Damian growled, feeling uncharacteristically flustered.

 “Damian!” That was the only warning he got before Jon’s arms were around him once more, his lips pressed against his own. Behind him, he heard a bag drop and of all the people to bear witness to this, it had to be the morons in his family.

 It was hard to pay attention to both them and Jon, to the pure joy that radiated off his—Damian didn’t know what to call Jon anymore. Friend didn’t feel appropriate. Whatever it was, he’d figure it out later, when they were alone and they didn’t have the peanut gallery around. Gingerly, he wrapped an arm around Jon, pulling him closer. When they finally parted to take a breath, he glared at Jon. “Did you have to do it in front of them?”

 “That’s your first response?” Jon grinned, leaning close to kiss him on the nose. Reluctantly letting go, Jon stepped back. “See you in a week.”

 “Like I’m letting you off the hook that easily,” Damian grumbled, pretty sure his entire face was red now. While he took after his mother, his brown skin could only hide so much, and unfortunately his carmates eyes were sharper than most.

 Ignoring the stares, he marched to the car and plunked himself into the front passenger seat. He was not going to deal with Stephanie’s teasing a second time around, not when she had more ammo. At least Drake would have to keep his eyes on the road.

 -x-

 The entire car ride back was filled with Tim and Stephanie singing, “Damian and Jon, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

 Damian had never been more tempted to kill.

#damijon #damian wayne #Jonathan Kent #robin #batman #superboy #fanfic #dc comics

[horrible-monstrosity]

mothermom 3 is a baaad animine

part 1: fuck these characters I thought the bit about not being able to go through a certain way because there's ants (that the player can't see) you wouldn't want to trample was going to introduce a theme of kindness and gentleness, but the game sure... tramples that early on by having your oh-so-kindhearted-and-mournable mother trample the fuck out of a sentient talking mole cricket to death right the fuck afterwards. Like, you were just talking to and playfighting with that mole mere seconds ago, and now it's thoughtlessly and meaninglessly dead, and it's supposed to be funny. And then you're supposed to forget all about it when mom dead because care and have emotions for this characters you've barely known for like one minute worth of interactions dragged out over like an hour. ok Then after bumbling along being a hollow little bag of nothing for like ten hours Lucas suddenly proves himself a detestable little cunt by just straight up stealing something he's told was a precious item, a yo-yo belonging to Porky's friend. Because, like... fuck Porky, I guess, in this geame franchise about love and heart and healing there's just this one fat kid we're all supposed to just disregard and piss and shit on and detest by default for no fucking reason just because the game narrative said so. Porky's existence was pretty weird already in Earthbound- he's apparently being abused by his fat parents, and aside from being a bit snotty and show-offy, he does at least make sure his little brother gets home safely at the beginning. He just seems like someone who needs a friend, which... actually makes Ness look like an asshole in retrospect for not just giving him some kind of help. It was kind of fine in that game because he was just a minor character, but making him some supervillain in the next game just because he was some dumpy abused kid is just... what the fuck. But anyway, whenever the plot expects us to care about Loocus and his dumb dead mom I just think about things like the yo-yo and the mole cricket and I lose all empathy. These people are assholes. You're trying to make sympathetic victims out of assholes and an asshole out of a sympathetic victim. Get your meaningless fucking sunflowers the fuck off my screen you bitch fuck

And then on the other hand there's Duster. The character who's absolutely the most deserving of empathy out of all these cunts and we're supposed to see him reembracing his shitty old life as something he should be really happy about. Like for one thing, the entire plot where he reenters the cast is stupid and makes no sense. When we hear he's at the club playing with the band, I could think of a lot of reasons for it- he could be laying low to protect the egg (seeing as how Tamzilly got pozzed and going back there would accomplish nothing), he could have just decided to fuck off and do something he actually enjoyed rather than go back to his shitty asshole dad, he could have somehow ended up far far away from the town and joined the band to make his way back home travelling with them/earn a living so he could get back. But no, before we even get to see him and see how he's acting Strong Female McDerpa Character tells us that he most definitely has amnesia. Because, like, why would he ever give up on his jackass dad and that braindead town otherwise? And then we meet him and it's exactly what we were unceremonously told it was, how rivetting. Then for some reason he decides that if he's really who you say he is he needs to... give up his life as a band member entirely to get the egg back. Can't just come with you to get the egg or until the adventure's over, nooo he needs to abandon his new life forever and ever and just go get fucked and fuck himself. fuck. let my man play guitar and also that "thiefs but good somehow because derp" shit is retarded and I hate it

Finally there's Girl Character who I refuse to even remember the name of because she's... nothing. Even her being kinda cunty about how she's sTrOnG and nOt lIkE ThoSe OthEr gIrlS is just bland. The other girls from the past two games were cute and girly and still credit to team with their strong psychic powers, why the fuck is she like this?

part 2: i've stopped giving a fuck about making this into parts fuck you What the fuck is the story of this game? You spend hours dicking around with a fucking timeskip and a ghost mansion or some shit and the game randomly namedrops the needles at some point, and then... the six or seventh chapter is just titled GUYS THE NEEDLES ARE ACTUALLY REALLY IMPORTANT YOU GUYS. Six or seven fucking chapters in, and we've barely gotten to anything resembling a coherent plot. What the fuck have we been doing up until this point again? Why the fuck do we even need the dragon needles plot anyway? Just have the main cast move from one pigmeng plot to another with things like the thunder tower, slowly working their way up the chain of command until they reach the final boss and his ultimate plan. You don't need to introduce an entire plot worth of fucking shit a third of the way into the game you fucking fuckers

The themes are a fucking dumpsterfire. Just plop some fucktarded work bad money bad bullshit in there and call it a day... Evil monkey man could have given that fucktard anything and got him to hide it in the well and it would have caused a ruckus when he came back and stole it. He could have convinced him to hide his grandma's ashes in the well- would the takeaway from that have been that honoring the dead bad? That's how fucking flat it is. If anything it just comes off as if the people of Tamzilly are just a bunch of mindkilled retards with no defence against humanity's own nature aside from shutting themselves off from the outside world entirely- the slightest contact with normal human interactions like money or having to contribute to society for a living, they all self-destruct. It's not le capitalism that made the old people home bad, it's whoever the fuck actually built it... which, if the outside world weren't basically strawmanned with the le evil pigmans and monkey abuser guy, would have been Tamzilly themselves. Which, because the strawmanning is so unbelievably absurd, makes it seem like Tazmilly is just a retarded place that somehow managed to make the old people's home this bad on their own or some shit I don't know I just can't buy it

Speaking of empathy, the game somehow manages to make the Pig Heil guys endearing even while they're actively working on the thunder tower that's cooking the dumbass town residents. Are they supposed to be abusing the electric catfish when they're cutely telling the things to hang in there and do their best? When Lucas got a jerb hustling the golems around and they managed to make it like a positive thing (the pigmangs encourage you, seemingly pay a decent wage, and even the doggo enjoys running on the treadmill once he gets into it), I thought there was going to be a tweest or at least some nuance, but the absurdity of the nice ol' piglins in the evil tower just makes it seem like it's just entirely unintentional, by writers who just have no idea what the fuck they're doing. The generic braindead modern-bad messaging and the generic brainless funny-characters-ha-ha sides of the writing clash horribly and somehow manage to mangle each other even worse than they already were.

The whimsicality is fucking dead. It's just all so forced and one-note... or, very consistently two-note in every single thing, because absolutely every single monster you meet is just two things funny stuck together. The first two games could glide smoothly between fighting enraged possessed zoo animals and weirdo people, weirdo fucking blended monsters that don't look like anything in particular, and then just sometimes the taxis that're used for decoration on roads will veer off course and engage you in battle. It's simultaneously wildly unpredictable and smoothly cohesive. And it's wonderful. But M3 is just... it leans over, shoves a megaphone down your throat and loudly informs you that "the PIGMEN have FUSED the THINGS toGETHER" and proceeds to beat you over the head with "this thing is THAT thing and THAT thing" over and over again. It's forced, mechanical, hamfisted and just not whimsical at all. And it's not just because the pigmengs aren't Giiigigigigiyasass (which could have been fixed by having them harness traces of Gig's power if that was the problem anyway), because it extends to absolutely everything- the ghosts at the mansion for example are just all absolutely fucking nothing. Like the main big bad boss is just "he's GHOST who THROWS FURNITURE and is BEETHOVEN and plays BEETHOVEN MUSIC". Because Beethoven is old thing therefore old mansion and ghosts, geddit? How fucking pathetic. Oh there's another thing, the weird aliens/conspiracy bent the first two games had is gone entirely. That's something that really helped it feel so wild yet at the same time cohesive... Actually, the game also seems to have done away with the surprise overworld sprite encounters like the aforementioned taxis. ... No wait that's right, they blew their load in the first levels with the rock lizards, which were fucking boring.

The dialogue fucking sucks. just fucking drags the fuck on endlessly for fucking ever to say barely anything, and barely anything you need to actually hear. Did Earthbound ever stop you to inform you that the TAXIS are AFFECTED by GIGUDUGDSAS like you couldn't figure that out yourself? No, they say Gigi's affected shit in a couple sentences near the beginning and let the rest of it speak for itself, pretty much. It's hard to give exact examples because I can't fucking remember any of this shit because it just slides right off my brain like ducks off of water, it's so bland and pointless. The sparrows drone on endlessly with worthless tutorial shit and then take an entire extra sentence to chirp at you and remind you that it's talking animals oh wow wacky!!!!!!! And when Duster decides he really is what you say he is he stands there going "ME IS DUSTER" over and over again like he's fucking Bimpson. You don't have anything interesting to say about finally figuring out who you really are? Okay... There's multiple fucking scenes of slow-scrolling walls of fucking text telling you absolutely nothng you don't already know except that the writers are wanking the fuck off over their own dumbass writing where in Earthbound there was like one scene of this towards the end that really just set up the emotions of the final sequences and underlined how far you'd come and shit and was a good moment of reflection and shit.

I also find it exceptionally intersting that all the people in Tazmilly before the timeskip have names and unique appearances, but anyone who only shows up after is just some generic design called "Man" or "Woman" or what have you. It feels weirdly dehumanizing towards outsiders.

This game fucking feels like the writers just fucking dumped a bunch of absolute shit down like they expected everyone to just eat it up, either because of the success of the previous games or because of the emotional manipulation the plot is laced with. The characters are all either detestable cunts or desperately need to be airlifted out into a better game pronto. And it's unsettlingly... modern in what's wrong with it. The capitalism-bad-tradition-good-mindkill-yourself messaging, the spunky female character(tm) who rubs it in your face how strongk she is (and who keeps talking even when you're controlling her while the other characters all become silent protagonists)... even the weirdly random spite towards characters the narrative has decided aren't "deserving" enough, or characters only being allowed to handle said spite and retain sympathy by cucking to it completely (Duster)... I suppose that's just a sign that these sorts of writing problems and hangups are older than that and have just become more popular/visible in recent times, but it's still really fucking weird to see.

I feel like I should be concerned that the team behind the Earthbound series also started Gamefreak and created Pokemon, though since the split obviously happened before Mo 3 I don't know how much overlap there is between staff members there specifically... seeing as how these exact same sort of writing problems have started to rear their heads in the Pokemon franchise, starting weakly in gen 6 (cough zinnia cough abandoned ship plotline cough) and absolutely fucking exploding in 7 (cough LILLIE COUHG FUCKING TAPUS COUGH AGAG V HIC CUFGH VOMIT AAGHK); I haven't yet fully witnessed gen 8 but everything I've seen of it so far looks no better, except there's no shill character (Marnie is just kinda... there), just suffering. But that's all for another post.

welp time to go watch the remainder of the game until my brain rots off

[its-jwang2017]

Part 6: As G-Dragon Says: Why So Serious?

For the past couple of years, Dark Soul and Project J followed a pretty strict routine. Once every week (or every other if there was a school-related conflict), they would kidnap Jackson, wait until Red Dragon noticed, distract said hero while they prepared for their battle, and eventually duke it out in the city streets. Sometimes Red Dragon would win. Other times, the pair would ALMOST win. It was a pretty familiar routine at this point.

This started around Jinyoung’s freshman and JB’s sophomore year at JYP Prep. On the anniversary of JB’s mother's death exactly one week into the school year, Jinyoung had stumbled into their shared room to find JB crying on the floor as tiny zaps of lightning radiated from his body like Jaebeom was the epicenter of a cloudless thunderstorm. As Jaebeom’s sobs got worse, so too did the power of his lightning and it took all of Jinyoung’s coordination to avoid getting hit as he made his way over to Jaebeom in order to act as a supporting figure for the older to lean on. It was lucky for JB that Jinyoung was the one who found him, since who knows what would have happened to Jaebeom if a normal human saw what he could do. From then on, Jinyoung and JB became almost attached at the hip. Jinyoung had finally found someone who could relate to his sucky past experience with his superpowers while JB found someone who he could always trust to calm him down from his so-called “temper tantrums” (he knew he had some anger issues, but he had also been through hell too so it’s sort of a given). The two never spoke of JB’s loss of control ever again, but both made the silent promise to be more careful from them on…

Of course, we all know that that didn’t happen.

 It was actually Jinyoung who suggested the idea that the two of them should sneak off campus at night to practice honing their abilities. The younger had noticed that both of them had problems controlling their powers after long periods of disuse; things around Jinyoung would randomly (and very obviously) start to levitate while JB started “kill” every technological thing he touched in uncontrollable shocks (JB had to buy four new phones in a matter of weeks. The AT&T people never looked at him the same).

What started out as an innocent desire to “blow off steam” every once in a while turned near deadly when JB and Jinyoung accidentally blew up an undercover cop car. They thought they had found an abandoned, dusty Ford on the side of the road but (as they’d figured out soon enough) it turned out to be an agent’s car he had evacuated after it stalled and died on him. The cop had left the vehicle in order to call for help, but JB and Jinyoung didn’t know that when they proceeded to use the car as practice for turning devices on and off with just a snap. When the car’s wiring and JB’s electric shock intermingled, the sparks created caused a …  slight  explosion and the cop was not happy when he came back to see his car on fire and two suspicious hooded delinquents standing not too far off. 

What followed was pure self defense, in JB and Jinyoung’s opinions. The cop called for backup, JB and Jinyoung ran, and when they were corned in an alley by a bunch of cop cars and angry police pointing their weapons at them, they did what anybody else would do in their situation; they used their powers to respectively shock or throw cops and/or cars out of their way, dodged back from oncoming gunfire, and raced back to JYP Prep. 

When they looked at the news report that night, they saw that they were labeled as “unknown, powerful criminals who took out an entire squadron of CPD personnel” who would be “hunted down and brought to justice for the inhuman nature of their crimes.” This is when the two laid eyes on the figure who would become their archenemy for the next couple of years… Red Dragon. With an already equipped super suit, Red Dragon was able to step out from the shadows and announce his allegiance with the CPD to try to capture the two unknown individuals. Red Dragon had stepped onto the mantle as the hero of Chicago, a figurehead that people could feel safe knowing was out there to battle the unknown evils of the world.

While JB and Jinyoung couldn’t believe that there was ANOTHER person with unnatural abilities, they REALLY couldn’t believe that another superpowered mistake had cost them their relatively “good standing” with society… again. They never got the chance to proclaim their innocence and, while they were lucky their faces were never exposed to any police or cameras, they both knew they couldn’t suppress their powers for long until it got out of control again; that was how they got into the entire situation in the first place!

So they both resigned themselves to their new labels; Since Jinyoung was attending JYP as an engineering major, he was able to access the necessary materials and equipment that the two would need to begin their new supervillain lifestyle… And the rest was history.

Even though the villains ended up losing every time, they kept returning back to their lair and plotting the next way to take over the city. At first, it was because their pride screamed at them to demand a showdown, to show the city that they were a force to be reckoned with and that they were both more than all of the hurtful things they were labelled as. After the twelfth time losing, however, it became a habit that was almost… comforting to the pair. Yes, they’d end their day with bruises, sores and burn marks that would stick with them for weeks after. But fighting the hero provided them an outlet in which to fully utilize their given powers without shame. They never had to hold back with Red Dragon and after years of hiding their “gifts” from everyone else, even going so far as to lose their blood relatives due to their abnormalities, the hero provided a welcome outlet that they had been searching for to begin with. So even though they kept losing, it was an honest loss tinged with hope for self-improvement (something they both yearned for but will never admit) and a reluctant acceptance at their status in the good-evil hierarchy.

This time… this time was different though. This time, the steady balance between good and evil was shattered, the hierarchy of the world demolished and what was left in this new, unfamiliar environment was a sense of hopelessness and grief. Because the one person, the only person in fact, that stood in the way of Dark Soul and Project J’s (admittedly ridiculous) attempts to take over the city was dead. And the duo had no idea what to do next.

____________________________________________________________

A week ago:

“This is what we wanted.” Project J said, but his tone was anything but certain of his statement. The two were back on the main floor of their “lair”, sitting side by side on their old couch, both staring off into the distance with unfocused eyes. The break in routine was so alien to them that neither could come up with a solution, both still in full uniform as if waiting for the real battle to begin. But the fight was over. They would never again stand toe-to-toe against their archenemy. 

For the first time in a long time, their workshop was completely silent. The warehouse they were in was usually bustling with activity after a big battle; the monitors would display the confrontation from different angles with Dark Soul carefully watching the videos, taking notes to improve their techniques. Project J usually took this time to make any repairs on his bots, the sound of his music and welder breathing life into the workshop. Plans/blueprints for the next attack would be drawn up and placed at one of the many tables scattered around the room, with crumpled rejected ideas littering the area near the trash cans. The remaining working bots would do their best to keep the area tidy for the two men but they’d usually end up getting in the way. This almost always led to Project J chasing after a bot with a soldering iron, Jaebeom laughing in the background as his partner screamed threats and obscenities at the machine that somehow managed to destroy a new project which it’s sensors interpreted as “unknown item. Dispose immediately.” 

But there were no repairs to be made today. No videos to monitor, no future battle plans to be made, no improvements to work on, no bots that Project J needed to reboot. Because they won. They actually won.

With his last words getting no response from the other on the couch, Project J continued on, “We’re going to have to make an appearance in the city, you know. Technically, it’s ours now… we need to start enacting  our  vision and rules to make a society that reflects who we are.” 

Dark Soul slowly began to move, sitting up from his slouched position on the couch to lean forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. Project J finally turned his gaze towards his friend, waiting and hoping the other would have an answer, a plan, even just a slight idea about their future. He would never tell the other, but Project J relied on Dark Soul for guidance and support, trusting that his best friend would come up with ideas that benefitted them both. Dark Soul was the unsaid leader of their dynamic duo, but at this moment the older looked more like a scared kid than his supervillainous alter-ego. 

Dark soul shifted and ran his hands up towards the back seam of his helmet, pressing the small disengage button on the headgear. He took it off of his head very slowly and let the helmet fall out of his hands and onto the floor beside him. Without the visor there to hide his face, Project J could see that Dark Soul looked even worse than what he imagined. He was almost sickly pale with a light sheen of dried sweat still clinging to his face. In the slumped position Dark Soul was in he looked more like a marionette doll whose strings had been cut than the strong, powerful man he once was.

“Alright… we’ll do that.” Dark Soul muttered, his voice gravelly from disuse. Project J jumped a bit, not really expecting an answer just yet. When he realized what the other said, his eyes widened in shock, unused to Dark Soul agreeing with him so quickly (or agreeing with him in general). Slowly, Project J reached out a hand to rest lightly on Dark Soul’s back in an effort to provide some sort of comfort to the obviously emotionally distressed man. He could feel the slight static electricity radiating off of the other in waves, causing his hair to stand up slightly. A shock caused Project J to jump and he quickly retracted his arm, wincing at the pain while shaking his hand slightly. 

“Don’t touch me, Jinyoung… not now…” Jaebum mumbled darkly, hands still hanging loosely at his sides as he curled into his legs, his hair hanging strategically in front of his face as if hiding his emotions from Jinyoung. Jinyoung scooted away, letting his friend have his space (and saving himself from the tiny sparks jumping off of JB’s body). The only other time Jinyoung saw his friend this… hopeless… was the anniversary of his mother’s death, and even then Jaebeom was more expressive than he was now. In all honesty, Jinyoung wasn’t quite sure what to do with this new side of Jaebeom and he hoped that, at the very least, Jaebeom would eventually snap out of his stupor.

While Jinyoung couldn’t fix the problem with Jabeom at the moment, the telepath decided to start to resolve the situation at hand. He couldn’t do anything for Jaebeom then, but he could start moving forwards to tackle their current situation. If Jaebeom needed him to take control now and steer them both through the mess that they made, Jinyoung would bear the responsibility. It was the least he could do to pay back all of the times JB had helped him. So, with one final glance at JB, Jinyoung hefted himself up off of the couch and began planning their official take over. 

This is gonna be a lot of work … 

________________________________________________________________

Present: Friday 7pm

Jinyoung and JB were back in their dorms, their lair shut down and closed off as the two tried to return back to their normal student lives at JYP Prep while also simultaneously running an entire city from their dorm room. For the past week, Jinyoung had taken over the government proceedings and had made their presence known to the best of his ability. He had put up walls of bots around the city limits to prevent people from going in or out and had other drones flying around to monitor and enforce their rulings. Jinyoung put the entire city on lockdown in an effort to keep people safely inside their homes as he tried his best to figure out  how the hell the movies made hostile takeovers look so easy?!?  The villain knew that he was epically failing at maintaining order within the community. He could see through his bots that people were scared and that things were rapidly dissolving into pure chaos but he  didn’t know how to stop it!  And the person who was supposed to be his co-leader, the one who was supposed to be  helping him make all of these important decisions, was emotionally MIA. 

Jaebum had not moved from the bed for the past week. No matter what Jinyoung did or said, JB had refused to acknowledge the other’s presence. The only time he sat up was when Jinyoung brought him food and water to eat, and even then JB moved mechanically and laid down again right after. It was as if JB had lost all of his purpose in life and there was nothing Jinyoung could do to pull him out of his funk. 

Now Jinyoung could be an understanding, caring person. He wasn’t referred to as a “mom” for no reason. But even his kindness had its limits and he was just about ready to tear his hair out in frustration for the lack of support/help he had received from his supposed best friend. Was that selfish? Maybe. He knew JB was depressed and that no amount of love or care Jinyoung could provide would magically fix that. But he was also just trying to run a damn city and he desperately needed help; help that he could (unfortunately) only get from the sad lump underneath the covers of JB’s bed. 

Jinyoung sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing his black hoodie off of his face. He hadn’t had a chance to shower or even change his clothes in the past couple of days, too busy taking care of JB and  an entire city  to even press pause for one second. His responsibilities to Chicago required constant attention and the only breaks he got he had to use to force JB to act like a basic human being. The red sweatpants and plain black hoodie he was currently wearing were basically a second skin at that point and his back and fingers ached from being hunched over his three monitors 24/7. One monitor kept flicking between different bots’ cameras so Jinyoung could keep track of Chicago and it’s happenings occurring anywhere in the city. The second was equipped with an AI that was coded to act as a “big brother'' of sorts; the AI would pull up any civilian-made search, text or call and comb through personal data to flag anything that seemed suspicious or threatening, which was really helpful for Jinyoung since he couldn’t be everywhere at once (It also was amusing to spy on his friends. He didn’t realize Yugyeom had THAT many pictures of a certain someone. He’d have to ask about Jackgyeom’s relationship again at a later date). The final monitor was solely used to keep track of and write the bots’ various codes to act as enforcers of the villain’s regime. All of this information gave him a headache, but even so he did his best to keep up with the constant influx of data. 

As he leaned back, hoping to take a quick nap-break, a sudden red emergency signal flashed on both his first and second monitor. Startled, Jinyoung quickly shook off his tiredness and pulled himself back towards the screens to see what his AI had found so alarming. A video played on the first screen while a voice message, sent only seconds ago, was highlighted on the other.

At first glance, Jinyoung thought that there was a glitch in one of his bot’s codes. It almost looked like a video of the time Jaebeom tried to use the first prototype of their shared escape hatch (it launched JB out of the room and almost broke his neck. Jinyoung still laughs when he watches JB’s look of utter terror as he sails through the air. It makes for good blackmail material when Jinyoung REALLY wants JB to do something for him).

However, upon closer inspection Jinyoung can see that the person in the video was decidedly NOT Jaebeom but Jaebeom’s crush, Jackson Wang. Who was outside. At night. During one of the most dangerous eras of Chicago’s history. After watching the other pound against the wall of their dorm, Jinyoung quickly rewinded the video to figure out how Jackson got into the situation in the first place and how he knew about the escape hatch.

After watching the (albeit hilarious) video of Jackson’s closet mishap, Jinyoung breathed a bit easier.  He looks like a scene from ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’. At least Princess Wang doesn’t actually know why the escape hatch is there... 

When he went back to the real-time feed, however, his anxiety flared back up as the camera showed a very distinct lack of one Jackson Wang. Quickly shuffling through the rest of the camera’s stationed along the perimeter of the dorm, Jinyoung could feel his desperation rising as each feed failed to procure Jackson’s figure. 

“AI Lee, find me the last known sighting of Jackson!” Jinyoung whisper-yelled, rolling up his hoodie sleeves in preparation for his computer search, his heart-rate spiking as he did his best to remain calm.  Please, let Jaebeom stay a caterpillar for a little longer… Oh god, if Jaebeom finds out about this…!

As “Lee” worked through the camera feeds from the dorm over the last couple of minutes, Jinyoung crossed his fingers and hoped that Jackson had accidentally fallen into the water or something. While the fencer was rarely ever uncoordinated, the times when he was were hilarious tales to be recounted to anyone who would listen. It wouldn’t be the first time Jackson had fallen over the pier.   At least I could get him out and back to safety easily!

Jinyoung was proven to be oh-so-very wrong when his AI brought up the data log from 2 minutes ago that silently showed Jackson walking along the grass outside the dorms. Jinyoung watched helplessly as a masked figure raced up behind the oblivious screen-Jackson and football tackled the other. The culprit definitely outweighed the athlete and easily restrained the fencer by forcing Jackson’s hands behind his back. Jinyoung watched as Jackson struggled underneath his attacker, feeling sick as he watched two more individuals emerge from the shadows and congregate around the downed junior. One of them pulled a bandana out of his pocket and shoved it into Jackson’s screaming mouth while the other handcuffed Jackson’s wrists together.  An ex-cop, perhaps?

The feed ended with the tackler easily picking Jackson up and slinging him over his shoulder. The burly guy held Jackson’s legs down and Jinyoung felt numbness take over as he watched the four disappear back into the night. Jinyoung stared at the screen in shock. Faintly, he sees the second monitor demanding his attention with the pulled-up voicemail blinking urgently. Jinyoung feels his hand moving the cursor to the play button, forgetting that the audio was active unlike the camera feeds. 

A muffled voice plays through his speakers and Jinyoung lets the sound wash over him. “Boss, you’ll never believe who I found! Me and the guys were just walking around the JYP dorms to try and scare some of those rich kids… when suddenly Jacob spots Red Dragon’s old flame! We’ve got that Wang kid! Maybe we can use him to ally with Project J or Dark Soul… I bet they’ll want him back after he escaped from them during their last battle! Either way, we’ve got an ace in the hole now! We’ll be back at base soon ( Jesus, Jacob! Get a hold of Jackson or get James to knock him out, he’s fighting like crazy!)  Uh… yeah. Ok I got to go, the hostage is being uncooperative. We won’t hurt him too much  (James, do something!)  OKGOTTOGOBYE!”

The dial tone filled the small room as Jinyoung tried to process the information he was a witness to. He was so caught up in his monitors that he didn’t even notice the once lifeless lump on the bed slowly sit up. He didn’t see nor hear the covers get flung off of the bed as his best friend  voluntarily got up from his self-imposed shutdown. Jinyoung was so focused on coding one of his bots to find Jackson that he didn’t feel Jaebeom’s silent presence behind his swivel chair. What Jinyoung did feel, however, was his hair standing on end as static suddenly filled the atmosphere around him. Jinyoung barely had time to realize what that meant before his seat was suddenly jerked around, causing him to let out a tiny yelp of surprise. The surprise soon turned into palpable fear as the cause of his sudden change caged him against the chair. Jinyoung stared into the furious eyes of his best friend for the first time in a week and he didn’t know if the furious look on Jaebeom’s face was better than the emotionless mask the other had been wearing in recent days. As tiny lightning sparks danced along the outside of JB’s plain grey hoodie, sometimes shocking parts of Jinyoung’s exposed forearms, Jinyoung decided that maybe it would’ve been better if JB had stayed emotionless instead.

JB was dressed in only his favorite hoodie and a pair of black Calvin Klein boxers that he had been solely wearing for the past week. In any other case, Jinyoung would have laughed at JB’s snaggly hair and grungy appearance. But this wasn’t any other Friday and this wasn’t Jinyoung’s normal Jaebeom.  Jaebeom rarely got angry at Jinyoung and Jinyoung would have been happy to spend the rest of his life not knowing what the full force of JB’s anger felt like. 

I guess today really isn’t my lucky day , Jinyoung thought as he cowered, tucking his arms into his chest and pulling his knees under the chair in an effort to shrink down as much as possible. Logically, he knew that his superstrength would be able to easily throw JB off of him. But he ALSO knew that enraging JB any more would be bad for everybody as the other looked about one second away from exploding.  JB’s body caged Jinyoung in, with his hands braced against the armrests and his torso blocking any escape attempts. Jaebeom’s head was still covered by his hoodie and as he lowered his head to get close to Jinyoung, Jinyoung wished that the hood didn’t make JB look so intimidating. 

Laughing awkwardly, Jinyoung valiantly tried to defuse the rising tension. “Sooooooooo… How have you been and how much did you hear?” 

Jinyoung had hoped that JB had not heard as much as he thought, but his hopes were soon demolished as JB  growled  at Jinyoung:

“Tell. Me. What. Happened.” 

Jaebeom’s voice was hoarse from disuse, but that didn’t make his command any less powerful. Quickly, Jinyoung told the other everything he knew, his voice rising an octave every time JB furrowed his eyebrows and glared at him (he wished his voice didn’t go as high as it did at that moment, but yours would have too if you were faced with an angry JB!). When he was finally done with retelling everything that had transpired to Jackson, JB’s angry chin was jutting out in full force. Usually, Jinyoung would rib him a bit about his telltale sign of dissatisfaction, but Jinyoung valued his life a lot, so he kept his mouth shut and waited for JB to make his next move.

After keeping Jinyoung hostage for another moment, JB finally shoved Jinyoung’s chair back towards his monitor’s and marched away. Jinyoung was jolted from the force of the push, but he quickly tampered down his fear and got to his feet to face JB's turned back. He watched silently as JB stalked over to his closet and roughly shed his grey hoodie, almost tearing the fabric with his desire to take off the offending item. JB rummaged around his closet for only a second before grabbing an Adidas black tracksuit, shoving his limbs into the clothing items and heading towards the door. Right as JB’s hand touched the doorknob, Jinyoung made a split second decision and quickly outstretched his right hand in JB’s direction. 

_______________________________________________________________

Jaebeom really had no idea what he was doing. He had no idea what day it was or how long it had been since he had… killed defeated Red Dragon. The past couple of days were all a blur in his mind but in the last couple of minutes, one thing became clear: Jackson was in trouble and JB had to do something about it. Jaebeom had hoped that the one upside (if you could even call it that) of Red Dragon’s death would be that Jackson could finally be free from all of the pain that the villains had brought upon him. But after his brain clocked itself back in during the thug’s voicemail, after he heard that Jackson was still in trouble and that  it was still his fault…  Jaebeom couldn’t control himself.  He felt a bit bad that his first real interaction with Jinyoung since they took over the city was him scaring the life out of the other, but Jabeom could only feel a newfound purpose driving him forwards; he had to find Jackson and he had to do it fast before anything else could happen to him. 

He was just about to race out the door after changing out of his (frankly, disgusting) clothes when he felt an inanimate power stopping him in his tracks just as he was about to turn the doorknob. A harsh tug on his left ankle knocked him to the ground on his stomach and he clawed against the floor as he was dragged backwards by his leg, getting tangled up in the comforter and clothes he had discarded on the floor earlier. When the dragging finally ceased, Jaebeom thrashed around in an effort to detangle himself from the various garments and, once freed, quickly stood up and spun around, breathing heavily as white-hot fury boiled up within him. Jinyoung’s hands were clenched at his sides and Jaebeom could see the conflicting feelings dancing behind the other’s eyes, but he was too consumed by the thought of “Jackson in Danger” to think straight.

“What the hell, Jinyoung?! Let me go!” Jaebeom shouted angrily, giving his friend a heated glare that threatened retribution if Jinyoung tried anything again.

“Jaebeom, you know I can’t. You’re too close to the situation… just let me handle it.” Jinyoung spoke calmly and evenly, his posture stiff but defiant. What betrayed Jinyoung’s level-headed exterior was the slight tremor Jaebeom saw in Jinyoung’s hands. 

JB just scoffed and turned around again, “I’ve made my decision. I’m going after him!” He stormed away but he felt Jinyoung’s power stop his feet, preventing him from taking another step. 

Slowly, Jaebeom turned around and stared at Jinyoung’s outstretched hand. His eyes slowly trailed up Jinyoung’s arm and settled on the determined face of his comrade.The tremor was defined in Jinyoung’s fingers, yet his stare remained unwavering. “Jaebeom, please don’t make me do this. You know you can’t just waltz outside and display your powers without your suit. Not only will you expose yourself as Dark Soul but you’ll take me down with you! Just let me handle it, you’re still not in your right mind… please…” Jinyoung’s voice was hard but faltered slightly at the end, “ Don’t make me fight you… I need you to think this through… please, I need your help too...” 

Jaebeom saw Jinyoung’s shoulders slump at the end of his plea and in his heart, he knew that the other was just as tired and worn out as he was. Jinyoung rarely let his walls down but during the times he had, Jaebeom always felt a tiny bubble of pride in his chest at the amount of trust and respect Jinyoung felt towards him. Jinyoung was his first real friend and they had taken care of each other countless times during the past years. Usually, Jinyoung was Jaebeom’s voice of reason, the physical embodiment of Jaebeom’s subconscious. However, Jaebeom was unable to feel guilt as he charged his hands and raised his fists up to his face in as much of a fighting stance as he could with Jinyoung’s hold over his feet staying strong. 

“Don’t make me fight you either, Jinyoung-ah. Now let me go.”

The blue glow from his clenched fists further emphasized the look of pure betrayal on Jinyoung’s face before he collected himself and brought the walls back up, a mask of indifference pinned in place. Jaebeom felt the hold on his feet lift as Jinyoung dropped his hand. “Fine. I see you won’t let me change your mind. At least take a face mask with you so nobody knows it’s you. I’ll send you the coordinates when my bot finds Jackson.” 

Jaebeom watched as Jinyoung turned his back on him and shuffled back towards his rolling chair, collapsing onto it and stationing himself back on the monitors. Jinyoung opened one of the drawers on his left and tossed a clean, black face-mask at the older. Jaebeom let the power fade away back into himself as he caught the mask right before it hit his face. Quickly stuffing the material into his pocket, the older started for the door again as Jinyoung began coding commands back at the monitors. As Jaebeom opened the door and stepped through the threshold, he turned around one last time and studied Jinyoung’s face as it was lit up by the computer screens in front of him. He opened his mouth in an effort to say… something that would explain why he had to go. But nothing ever came. Eventually, he forced himself to look away and silently shut the door, racing off towards the escape hatch to go and find Jackson. He knew he would have a lot of apologizing to do over the upcoming days to get back into Jinyoung’s good graces, but he pushed that thought to the back of his mind as he mentally prepared himself for the inevitable fight he was voluntarily running towards… 

Wow.... two updates within the week? Crazy... So remember how I said I actually had a lot of extra tidbits written but had to keep starting over and you know... writer's block? Well, the first half of this I wrote, like, six months ago but I hated it at the time and wrote three other possible paths that this story could have taken. But the other things I wrote I also hated and were a bit too angsty so I gave up. Thank god I kept the OG transcript cuz I went back through everything I wrote and realized "wait... this is actually ok" and then did my best to fix it up and TAH-DAH! Wrote all of this...

Apologies if there are any errors. Whenever I try to post on tumblr it gets rid of all of the italicized words and other commands for whatever reason.

I probably should've waited to post but now I'm back on the (Jackson + damsel in distress) storyline and I'm excited OK?! We're heading towards JACKBEOM TERRITORY Y'ALL!! Finally, am I right... Anyways like comment and subscribe or whatever the kids do nowadays

#jackbum #jackbeom #jackson wang #im jaebeom #park jinyoung #mark tuan #bambam #kim yugyeom #choi youngjae #fanfiction #got7 #stream not by the moon fools #ahgase #RIP my life

[jcmorrigan]

I don’t know if anyone here has been following the saga of my OC’s, which consists of me finally being brave enough to talk about them on Tumblr because what’s the use of guarding characters I don’t even have a manuscript for? And I wanna have fun. But mostly I’ve just been tagging fashion sets that belong to them, and as of late last night, too many prompts

I had been attempting to write a piece that introduces my villains in a SERIOUS manner by showing off the evil circus I plan to house them all in where each has a different tent they devote to an “act” that’s really their brand of villainy (dancing with deadly weapons, serving poison at the drinks garden, slaying innocent monsters for show, training horrific monsters from the deep sea), but I keep slacking on it, and I also keep adding new villains to the mix that would shake up the outline, so that’s stagnant.

But you know what I did figure out? Last night, I found a prompt that asked which of my OCs would go to Wal-Mart at midnight for fun. And my answer was that Alivain (the villainous leader, a smug young man who is not at all a Mozenrath ripoff) would take all his villain bros to Wal-Mart for a legitimate errand run, then turn around and realize they had all immediately scattered and just go “Oh no.” So here, I’m gonna introduce you to my villain squad by telling you what shit they would start in a Wal-Mart

Versafina is a weapons aficionado, so she’s gonna be looking for things that she can add to her repertoire of melee weapons. Especially small things that can fit in her hidden pockets...and not get noticed by security as she smuggles them out without paying. She spends way too long in the hardware section trying to figure out if a socket wrench is as good for scooping out eyes as she thinks.

Phantasia is busy giving herself a makeover in the cosmetics section, being the glam queen she is. She’s also opened it up for any teammates to come up to her and receive makeovers. She’s not paying for any of it either. Phantasia has also tested all the spray perfumes, then ran out of skin to spray, so she dragged Anastasios over. Anastasios is the physically oldest of the group, a rather elderly man who is about done with all these rowdy millennials (he’s just the character that’s there to say “OK Boomer” to), and he wanted to actually shop for the thing Alivain wanted except Phantasia is using him for more test perfume sprays and he won’t admit he likes smelling pretty.

Zangary is my resident monster hunter and also one of the sane men in the group and he probably ACTUALLY went to get what they came for in the first place and paid for it like a normal person, but no one noticed because no one expected anyone to actually do that. (*sweats nervously* Stoic monster hunter who wears purple and is shippable with the attractive sorcerer? I...I didn’t...it’s not the ADJL Huntsman no)

Dweixyn is lazy as hell and just found some patio furniture to collapse into and take a nap. Except she wears sunglasses everywhere she goes for the aesthetic, so the staff members who pass her briefly don’t realize her eyes are shut at first.

Belador wants two things out of life: to blow things up and to party hard. And because it’s probably not a good idea to blow up the Wal-Mart right now, he’s in the process of attempting to arrange several electronics and lamps to create a tiny pseudo-nightclub. He may also have hijacked the PA system for this purpose and is blasting techno.

Yridel is an angsty cyborg. She went right to the electronics section to see how many things she could connect to and corrupt. Eventually, she found a portable speaker through which she could just blast “Born Depressed” by Drill Queen on repeat, because it’s #mood for her, and just starts strutting around the store doing this to show off how edgy she is. Her snooty boyfriend who is usually narcissistic except when it comes to her, Lainnhartt, is following her and tossing confetti or an acceptable substitute in her wake, going, “That is my GIRL!”

Sherida is a monster who has a humanoid body, so she usually wears a bodysuit and a motorcycle helmet to pass among the general public. Well, tonight, she’s decided to take a walk in the mostly-deserted Wal-Mart with her helmet off so she can have a breather, but she came across some midnight shoppers who saw her paper-pale skin with blue veins, her lack of nose, her slit-pupil eyes, and her wide mouth full of fangs, and started panicking. So Sherida did the reasonable thing and began to eat them right there on the floor. Blood everywhere.

Lirian and Calpurniko are two teen girls - though Lirian is actually Fair Folk and has been alive for hundreds of years, but physically and mentally, she’s a teen. Lirian is a yandere and very exciteable; Calpurniko is a doomsday-device mechanic on a constant sugar high. So the two of them head right to the toy aisle to have a Nerf gun fight. Which is all fun and games until Calpurniko disappears into the hardware section for fifteen minutes and emerges with an augmented Nerf that can shoot (poisoned) foam darts at actual ballistic speeds.

Rachneira and Tomagi are also teens. Rachneira is a morbid Goth and also a variant of Fair Folk who is derived from spiders and therefore can spin webbing (and maybe has four arms? Undecided). Tomagi is an angsty sorceress who is mute. So the two of them decide to rifle through the cheap DVD bin, as kids do, and Rachneira keeps pulling out increasingly more disturbing horror films and stating in an ennui-laden tone that Tomagi should probably see them all before she dies. Then security blows by on their way to stop Belador from creating a mini-rave, they realize these kids are with the troublemakers, they turn on them, and Rachneira just webs her way up to chill out on the ceiling for a bit (as you do) while Tomagi gets angry and magically blasts the guards across the entire store, taking out several shelving units.

Diamandian puts on the airs of being a high-society man. What he is is a former manservant who killed his employer and usurped his fortune. He carries a white lace parasol wherever he goes. He heads right to the clothing section for the entire purpose of roasting every piece he finds, ripping it all off the hangers and throwing it to the ground because it’s all “Trash for the peasants!”.

Maraya is a pirate queen who is also an Eldritch Abomination thanks to an ancient tome of horrors. (Pink skin, silver or purple hair, the tattoos she previously had of nautical symbolism are now bright silver, pupil-less glowing eyes, stores a bunch of tentacles in her back.) She has a first mate, Soligeo, who has no eyes and many spidery limbs because he used the same book. Being that they’re pirates, they’re going to steal stuff, and they’re not gonna be subtle about it. They start ransacking the shelves and bragging very loudly about the fact that they will NOT BE PAYING FOR THIS. Unlike Sherida, Maraya doesn’t care so much about covering her monster exterior, and she likes scaring people for fun.

Kaxhalen is an intergalactic alien warlord (blue skin, silver hair) who acts like a stoic in the general public but is secretly neurotic and exciteable. He has sequestered himself in a fort made of bedding with several craft supplies he’s stolen to work on a therapy project.

Osmend Osmodias is a smug gambler, so he just sets up a shell game in the corner of the store and starts charging shoppers to find the hidden bean. When the guards try to oust him for soliciting, he argues that he’s not technically selling anything, and they can’t get anywhere unless they have the right charges on him.

Valencindri is this team’s token idiot and steals the toilet paper out of the men’s room, holding it up in triumph and screaming about how awesome it was that he got away with the (free) toilet paper without having to pay for it (it’s still free)!

Dr. Hope Lessness is a mad-scientist supervillain and sadist with cybernetic augmentations. She at first just starts breaking things at random to cause mayhem and monger fear, but then she hits the electronics section and gets distracted trying to wire together an iPod with a Fitbit and hook them to a drone mechanism that is somehow also a weapon. Her snarky robot companion, Mercy Lessness, makes several cracks about her attention span that she doesn’t dignify.

Orianelle is a biker witch swordswoman who likes to dress in leather shorts and tanks. She heads to the automotive section to pick up supplies to maintain her bike, but then some jerk dudebro makes a pass at her and she suplexes him into the nearest shelf, which causes an outcry. This somehow tuns into a mass brawl with Orianelle knocking ten men unconscious.

EDIT: I forgot Siersyrei on the first go. She’s a werewolf, but the joke is she’s more like a “were-human” because she defaults to acting wolflike even when in human form and refers to herself in the third person. So she’s over here literally eating dog food and looking for any sudden motions indicating prey she can hunt until Lirian shows up with a laser pointer to drive her insane.

By the time security has dispersed enough to actually be a problem, Alivain hijacks the PA system to announce “I’m going to bomb the Wal-Mart,” which is his code word to let the others know that he’s going to bomb the Wal-Mart. Everyone evacuates, and he dramatically activates a bomb that reduces the store to a column of flames as he dances in the parking lot victoriously with his back to the carnage.

Also, Zangary probably bought the wrong thing, so now they have to find a new Wal-Mart and start all over.

#my oc's #blood cw #horror cw #bombing cw #just villains being bros

[alfred-play-despacito]

Tim and his Funky Protective Gloopy Parasite AU

I will most likely never get around to officially writing this, but I’ve had it saved since December and wanted to post it... I basically rewrote the entire Venom movie to fit JayTim, okies, so spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet. Also I borrowed a lot of the dialouge too.

Tim works as an investigator for Vicky Vale. She wants him to hack some shit to find out if there’s an affair going on between Harleen Quinzel and Pamela Isley. Or take photos. He can totally do a photojournalist type thing. Or both.

Tim’s long term girlfriend Steph is an intern at Neo Eden. Tim uses her employee login to hack into the system and look at Pamela’s emails— he finds reports about using humans as test subjects for alien parasite hosts to save the environment and stop global warming. The next day, he writes a report, bypasses it through the editors and posts it on the Gotham Gazette website. Vicky calls him in, fires him.

Tim: But this is real! Something finally important! People are dying! Vicky: We’re a gossip paper, Tim, not the Daily Planet. Isley has the money to sue us, you’re lucky she hasn’t shut us down completely.

Tim is all huffy, whatever, it’s fine. He only did it as a hobby/part time job, he has his whole Drake inheritance.

Steph has his stuff out on the sidewalk when he gets back to their place. She’s fucking livid. And tries knocking him in the face with a brick.

Steph: You couldn’t be fucking chill for, like, five minutes? Tim: She’s killing people with aliens on some Save-The-Planet agenda. Steph: That was my internship! I was lining up a job there! I got fired because of you. Tim: Do you really want to work at a place that’s experimenting with aliens though?

She breaks up with him. His face is on the cover of the Gazette, fresh off the press. “Drake Heir Posts False Rumors Attacking Pamela Isley.”

Tim: So that’s how Vickey got out of a lawsuit.

Tim’s just not in the mood for anything, depressed and all that, so he dedicates himself to living an Aesthetic Mood by buying some shitty apartment in the Bowery. It sucks but he gets a small routine. Friends with the late night shift at Batburger. His neighbors suck.

Eventually someone from Neo Eden approaches him. The dude is named Dick Grayson, he’s an undercover cop that’s been working at Neo Eden as a security guard to investigate the shady shit going on ever since Tim’s article was published. He asks Tim for help. Tim says no.

Tim goes across the city to the Burnley District to see Steph. He meets Cass, who graduated from Gotham University as a med student and now works at Gotham General Hospital. He’s really bummed and decides to call Dick back.

Dick brings him in at night to see the facility. Tim takes photos and then sees one of the poor dudes from Batburger is a test subject. He tries to help the dude out but it backfires (as things in Tim’s life tend to do) and the dude attacks Tim and that’s when Venom is transferred.

Tim and Dick sneak back out (because Dick’s not dying), and Dick drops him off at his shitty place in the Bowery.

Tim: So, are you going to get fired from GCPD?

Dick’s really vague but says he’ll be okay, his boss can sort it out (meaning Bruce.)

All the weird stuff starts happening to him. Crazy appetite. A fever. Venom starts speaking to him, just single words like, hungry and food.

Deliriously, Tim goes out and finds Steph grocery shopping with Cass. He is a little rabid and is raiding the frozen food section, Venom pointing things out, and Steph is really embarrassed. It reaches extreme levels when they pass the seafood section and Tim plops into the lobster tank.

They take Tim to Gotham General. Cass tries to do an MRI test but of course he spazzes because the loud noise hurts Venom. Tim claims he’s fine and leaves.

Back at his shitty apartment, he eats a bunch of garbage and pukes. Venom starts talking to him. (Diverging from the film for this next bit) Tim is kind of just like “fuck this,” and sits down to watch some mindless tv and hopefully nap. Venom introduces himself as Venom.

Tim: What the hell are you? Venom: I am Venom. Tim: You can’t just call yourself Venom. Every superhero or supervillain needs a civilian identity. Just because you’re some alien parasite doesn’t make you special. Venom: I’m not a parasite. Tim: Oh look, Friday the 13th is on. Awesome, I’ve never actually seen the entire thing, so be quiet.

Eventually Tim has an epiphany.

Tim: I’ll call you Jason!

Tim’s neighbor plays obnoxiously loud music and Jason freaks and Tim stomps over there to tell him to be quiet. The dude says no. Jason pulls his little freaky face thing and growls at the dude. The dude agrees to turn it down.

Eventually, Ivy finds him. (Looked at the security camera footage, got a photo of his face, tracked him down, etc.) A bunch of mercs come to attack him.

Jason: Don’t open the door.

Tim’s an idiot so he opens the door.

Tim and Jason argue over putting their hands up or down. Jason wins and attacks the mercs.

Jason: Outstanding! Now, let’s bite off all their heads; heads in one pile, bodies in another. Tim, exasperated: Why would we do that?

They leave the apartment, Tim catches his reflection in the window of a car. Jason scares him.

Jason: I can replace you. I can find another host, you’re just a replacement for my last one. Tim: Listen, if you don’t like me you can just leave, okay?

Mercs and drones show up so they go on a crazy motorcycle chase which includes Jason saving Tim from dying, like, twelve times.

They end up at a secluded warehouse, Tim is fully healed.

Jason: You’re mine, Timmy. Cooperate and you just might survive. Tim: Are you going to… you going to eat anybody else? Jason: Most likely. Tim: Ugh, God.

They go back to the Gotham Gazette office but security stops Tim from getting in.

Tim: If we go back to the apartment I can hack the security and we can come back and sneak in. Jason: Where’s the office? Tim: 22nd floor. Jason: Up? Tim: Yeah.

Jason takes that as permission (and it was NOT) to crawl up the side of the building. Tim is mildly panicking. They end up at the top of the building.

Jason: It’s almost peaceful up here. Tim: I’m not a fan of heights. Jason: Your world is not so ugly after all. I’m almost sorry to see it end. Tim: Don’t drop me, I swear to freaking god, you will never get tater tots again— wait, what the heck does that mean?!

Cue the airplane. Jason starts freaking out because of the noise, so he withdraws and then Tim starts falling.

Tim: Where’d you go? Jay, where’d you go? Jay—

Jason grips on to the building.

Jason: I got us.

Tim leaves the photos of Ivy’s lab that he took on his phone on Vicky's desk.

Jason: Jump. Tim, walking to the elevator: Nope. Jason: Pussy.

Mercs are waiting downstairs for them.

Tim: Guys, you don’t want to do this, trust me. Mercs: Masks! Copy! Tim: Okay, okay, have it your way… Mask! Jason: Copy.

Steph finds them after the fight. She drives Tim back to Gotham General to do more tests. Jason tells Tim to man up and apologize to her.

At the hospital, Cass looks at test results and says Tim has a parasite. Jason gets angry about being called a parasite. Cass explains that Jason is basically draining Tim in order to live. Tim feels really betrayed and leaves.

Tim gets captured by Ivy. Once it’s clear that he no longer has Venom she wants him dead. The Mercs take him out to the middle of an abandoned warehouse to kill him. Jason saves the day. Jason kisses Tim as Steph, and during the kiss morphs back into Tim.

Tim and Jason head off to find Isley.

Jason: Riot’s got shit you won’t believe. Tim: What are our chances? Jason: Basically zero. Tim: Alright, fuck it, let’s go save the world.

There’s a big fight. (Need to think about the rocket situation because I don’t want Ivy to die.) Riot tries to rip Venom from Tim. Tim reaches out and in a moment of pure gay love, Jason reaches out too, Tim’s fingertips brush Jason and they fuse together. There’s more fighting.

Steph cranks up a speaker and the noise makes Ivy and Tim separate from their symbiotes. Ivy goes to grab Riot but Tim pushes her away. Tim turns around and is impaled by Riot. Riot grabs Ivy and they go to board the rocket. Jason latches onto Tim, heals him, then they climb the rocket. Jason cuts through the fuel line and the rocket explodes. The fire hits Jason and Tim, so Jason detaches and allows Tim to live. Tim falls into the bay.

Later, Tim is back chilling with Steph. They’re friends now. Jason is interrupting the conversation and Steph is suspicious that something is going on. Tim claims it’s nothing and leaves.

Jason and Tim walk around together. Tim tries laying down some ground rules. Mainly that they can only eat bad people.

At the empty Batburger at night, a thug tries to rob the cashier at gunpoint. Jason asks if that’s a bad guy and Tim says yes.

Jason: We will eat both your arms, and then both of your legs, and then we will eat your face right off of your head. You will be this armless, legless, faceless thing, won't you, going down the street like a turd in the wind. Thug: What the hell are you? Tim and Jason smile: We are Venom.

The cashier is like, “Okay am I tripping on too much acid, or…?”

Tim: Oh… I have a parasite. Yeah. See you later, dude.” Jason: PaRaSiTe!? Tim: Symbiote is too complicated for the average Gotham citizen to understand. Jason: Well, you’re just a depressed hermit. Tim: Take that back!

They continue walking.

Tim: So… what do you want to do now? Jason: The way I see it, we can do whatever we want.

#jaytim #jason todd #tim drake #venom crossover

[howtohero]

We recently ran a survey where we polled various superheroes to discover what they thought the worst parts of their jobs were and proud to finally be able to share our findings with you! (We would’ve had them sooner but somebody decided to take a two week nap under a bridge in schenectady {for the hundredth time, I was mugged and unconscious! Thanks for looking for me by the way!} Thanks getting back here in a timely manner!):

2% of superheroes said that the worst part of their job was the giant gelatin monsters, because they get goop everywhere and everything sticky. 11% said prank calls to their superhero hotline. “Uh… hi, I’d like to report a crime? Yeah it’s… uh… what was it again? Oh yeah! Uh, I’d like to a report a crime and it’s your outfit hahaha get new clothes you trash bag!” 15% said it was the constant pain that they are in because they made a deal with the devil and their soul is constantly on fire but that it is a burden they gladly bear if it means that mankind can be safe for even just one more day. (Dramaaaaaatic.) 27.5% said it was having their memories or friends erased or altered due to time travel shenanigans. 54.5% said supervillains.

Unfortunately, all of those people were wrong and that was a waste of everybody’s time. {Are you kidding me? I spent two weeks in a coma for this!} The worst part of being a superhero is obviously…

#200 Supervillain Teams

{That’s basically what the majority of those people said!} No it’s different!

A single supervillain is plenty dangerous on their own (most of the time) they’re only limited by their own imaginations and their access to resources. (In today’s economy and privacy obsessed cultural climate, you actually need a lot of money to steal a lot of money. It’s kind of like how you need experience in your field before you can get a good job in your field.) So when a bunch of villains put their heads together and pool their cash. Hooboy. Then you’re in trouble. In most universes, the villain to hero ratio favors the villains. This is due to a number of factors. Most people are selfish and when given extraordinary abilities, they will choose to use to benefit themselves as the expense of others. Being a villain is honestly way more fun than being a superhero, especially if like you making your own hours and pontificating in front of large crowds. Also, most villains will kill heroes but most heroes won’t kill villains. So if all of your enemies team up, or if everybody’s enemies team up, you’re going to be in trouble.

Villains are a competitive and dramatic lot, so when a bunch of them sit down for a brainstorming sess, things are definitely going to get out of hand really fast. They’re all going to keep upping the evil ante, as I will now demonstrate for you.

(Scene 1 Act 1: Int. dungeon of some sort. There are skulls everywhere, there’s an actual demon chained to the wall, he’s very sassy and does not want to be there. In the center of the room there is a table, skull-shaped of course, There are several hooded and masked figures sitting at the table. The room smells of sweat and snake venom.)

Al “Da Boss” Marconi: I have called you all here today to finally put an end to those terrible, disgusting, super fools, that keep foiling our schemes.

Assorted villains: Huzzah!

Smuggles: I say we steal all of the dinosaur skeletons from the Museum of Natural History!

Tim the Fabulous Soul Muncher: Let’s replace them with live dinosaurs!

Professor Brain Scrambler: Let’s shoot the entire building with a de-evolution ray and turn everybody there into dinosaurs!!!!!!!!!!!!

The demon chained to the wall: Uh, that’s not how evolution works. Are you dumb? Don’t worry, we won’t judge. Just let us know if you are? You seem like a real moron to me. But what do I know, I’m just an immortal being who personally tortured some of history’s greatest minds.

(And then the demon chained to the wall was the first guinea pig for Professor Brain Scrambler’s de-evolution ray. End scene.)

And that’s just when I decided to end that conversation! Real supervillain meetings go on for way longer and you end up with a plot to turn the Earth into a giant dinosaur that can then be used to eat other planets. <Hey guys quick question and I swear it’s not a big deal. But why wasn’t I at that supervillain meeting. I mean I am the only supervillain you guys personally know. Like if I were writing about, I don’t know, a meeting of the scrawny blogger club, I would definitely put you guys in it. So what gives?> Not now Brainwave. <I mean if you needed a mad scientist, I’m a mad scientist. Did you know Professor Brain Scrambler isn’t even a real professor, he’s just wearing a real professor’s skin. Which I’m pretty sure doesn’t make you an accredited teacher but whatever. Like I said, it’s not really a big deal.>

Whenever you can you need to exercise your influence to try to prevent supervillains from teaming up in the first place. Whenever you’re fighting a villain, make sure not to mention anybody else that you’re fighting. Make them think they’re the only villain in your life. If they don’t know that other villains are out there, they can’t team up with them. Also, supervillains are very jealous and possessive. So if they hear you’re fighting somebody else on the side they’re going to get very upset and seek out the other villain and tell them that you’re a dirty two-timing superhero and then they’ll definitely team up to push your car into a river or something. I’d suggest keeping supervillains isolated from each other when they’re incarcerated as well. If you keep them with regular criminals, at worst they recruit a few new henchmen, but if you keep them locked up with other super villains you’re going to have a Legion of Really Really Mean People situation on your hands. However, this often is not feasible. There are only so many prisons out there that are equipped to hold superpowered criminals. But there are a few! More than one! Which gives us some room to play around here. You should try to work with other superheroes and these prison wardens to group villains together in the same prison that you think would never get along long enough to scheme together. For example, you could probably lock up Dr. Brainwave and Professor Brain Scrambler in the same jail without running into any issues. Because they hate each other. They hate each other so much. Also, police, superheroes, whomever, if you’re looking for wanted criminal Frederick Kaminsky aka Dr. Brainwave, he’s here. He’s in our basement and he won’t leave. I don’t know if that technically makes the rest of us hostages, I’m not like a lawyer [it doesn’t] but please come and pick him up. <Awww you mentioned me, that’s all I wanted. Thanks man!> Seriously, somebody come arrest him.

If you’ve colossally messed up and allowed a vast supervillain conspiracy team up to happen right under your noses then you need to get all hands on deck. Call every superhero you know. Even the the ones you hate. Even the ones who were dead last time you checked, they might be back now. Like I said, you’re already outnumbered so you need to call literally everybody you can think of here. Every noble-hearted magical creature and monster, every sympathetic quasi-deity, aliens that you’ve made alliances with over the years, heck even the members of that book club we had you join. Everybody needs to be on their A-game for this. If not, the villains could well succeed in wiping you all out and taking over the world. And we can’t give them that kind of satisfaction.

Once you’ve got your super army assembled, you need to begin a war on two fronts. Split your group into two teams. One team to actually go and fight the bad guys wherever they might crop up to perform evil deeds. It is unlikely that every villain is going to go everywhere at once, they’ll probably split up and pull off crazy evil schemes. So if you’re part of that team, be prepared for anything. I mean anything. 50-foot tall evil pants. (If your enemies are anything like mine, they have a wicked sense of humor. Trying getting the pants to tell a lie of some sort. I’m willing to bet that it’s rigged to burst into flames if it does. Nobody commits to a bit like a supervillain.) The ground turning into acid beneath your feet. (Pack a jetpack.) A dude with a blackhole in his chest. (Bring a really big cork). Anything.

The other group needs to start a whispering campaign to destabilize this villain alliance. Any team up between supervillains is relatively flimsy and a short term arrangement at best. As soon as the superheroes are all done away with, the villains are going to begin fighting amongst themselves for dominance. So if you can get that process started earlier, before all of the heroes are killed off or turned into monkey jesters, you could cause the alliance to collapse in on itself. You and your allies should start calling up your nemeses (don’t pretend you guys haven’t exchanged contact info at some point. I saw them at your last birthday party!) and ask them what the plan is long term. Ask them if they really want to share power with all these other villains, especially since they’re all highly likely to betray them. If you get enough villains antsy about the whole thing you can cause the entire thing to collapse and then you and your super friend can round up the injured and confused villains following the inevitable civil war.

Of course, not every supervillain team is the result of a large supervillain alliance. Some supervillains simply start out as a team, possibly because none of them on their own are really a threat. These villains have no independent resources to pool so even if they’ve got outlandish ideas, they’re pretty manageable. Here’s a list of a few other types of supervillain teams:

Gangs turned supervillains: These guys were a group of criminals before they got their powers. Unlike other villain teams, they don’t have their eyes set on world domination or the mass extinction of supervillains.

Mirror Universe Counterparts: These guys are just like your superhero team, but from another dimension and evil. To get an idea of what this might look like, take a magic marker to your team picture and draw goatees on everyone.

Cults: Cults are a lot like a regular supervillain organization. The leader is usually the only true supervillain, while the rest of the followers are just henchmen with creepy hoods.

Evil armies: As we’ve mentioned, some countries are unfortunately, led by supervillains. Meaning their armies are technically supervillain armies.

Villain families: This is just a regular family who bond by dropping spider-bombs into preschools or blowing up dams. It’s actually kind of sweet. You know what they say, a family who slays together, stays together.

Hopefully you now have everything you need to combat any supervillain teams that might rise up during your superhero career. Remember, supervillain teams need to be handled and dismantled as quickly as possible. So… heh… I guess don’t waste too much time reading this extra long post. Read this before the supervillains team up! Or have a speed reader read it and summarize! Any way good luck!

#superheroes #superhero #comedy #humor #funny #hilarious #supervillains #teams #Legion of Really Really Mean People #Legion of Doom #Supervillain teams #religious cults #gangs #Al Da Boss Marconi #Smuggles #Professor Brain Scrambler #Dr. Brainwave #Tim the Fabulous Soul Muncher #sassy demons #demons #book clubs #gelatin monsters #time travel #jetpacks #blackholes

[satireknight]

TMNT S02E04 - The Mean Machines

Eye of Sarnath arc, part three of four! I’m foreseeing more failure to get the fragments, because otherwise it would be a short episode.

So the Turtles are practicing martial arts with Splinter, and getting a little too much amusement from him kicking the others’ asses. Unfortunately, Donatello comes in at just the wrong time and place, because his life kinda sucks sometimes.

In fact, getting body-slammed right in the face barely even slows the poor guy down. Leonardo catches the gadget that he was carrying in to show them, and Donatello confirms that it’s a new tracking device to find the fragments.

Michelangelo is raring to go, but Leonardo suddenly declares that they’ll need disguises. Um, you were the one walking around undisguised at the carnival just last episode. Fortunately, Michelangelo has those ready for them... monk robes and comedy glasses.

They look like members of some kind of wackiness-based cult.

But as they’re approaching the fragment, somebody robs a bank nearby at JUST the wrong moment. And of course, Shredder just happens to be nearby, also dressed in a monk robe.

The excuse for how he knows where the fragment is is that Baxter figured out its trajectory from the alien ship, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. He’d have to know a LOT of factors to be able to figure that out, even if you don’t take into account that the fragment is in a garbage dumpster and thus likely to be moved around.

Since Baxter has no self-respect, he ends up in the dumpster and finds the fragment while the Turtles are battling the bank robbers, who are armed with actual guns. After Shredder takes a taxi, Donatello cries out that it’s out of range... even though it’s just at the end of the street, and he was tracking it from waaayyyy farther away.

Baxter somehow discerns exactly what the fragment’s magical powers are, because he knows that they should hook it up to a computer. Then they’ll have “unlimited power”.... but he’s not sure what kind.

Also, Shredder is STILL trying to get Krang-senpai to notice him, and Krang still wants him to stop calling until he has a pile of corpses to show for his efforts.

Splinter pops up to tell the Turtles what they already know about the fragment, and Donatello decides that the best way to boost his tracker’s signal is just to pump more electricity through it. That’s how machines work, right? 

Anyway, he tries to hook it up to the Turtle Van, and...

Let’s just say it’s a good thing they pretty much stole that thing, because otherwise he would have voided the warrantee.

Shredder and Krang arrive at a seemingly empty building with a really douchey supercomputer in it, OMNSS.

OMNSS is kind of a dick, is so powerful he can telekinetically move things around, is arrogant, and he and Baxter immediately rub each other the wrong way. I’m headcanoning that the whole reason this building is empty is because he killed everybody in it.

OMNSS also declares that if he had more power, he could control every machine in NYC. How does he know this? No idea. One thing he can do is detect the Turtles coming in their general direction, so Shredder does his usual “destroooooooy theeeeeem!” command.

Unfortunately for the Turtles, they’re meeting April... in a construction area.

Which means now large, tough machines are being told to kill ‘em, and are doing a pretty decent job of attempting it.

So Shredder does what he always does whenever he hasn’t actually killed the Turtles yet: calls Krang up to gloat about it, so Krang can tell him to fuck off.

Most of the machines are dispatched in a fairly pedestrian manner, using things like cement mixers and a flying wrecking ball. But Michelangelo decides to get colorful with his machine kill:

Anyway all the machines are gone now, plus April’s van that... somehow got blown up. I’m not sure how. It didn’t come to life or anything; it was just sitting there, and now it’s a cinder.

April also responds to the news of machines running amuck with, “I should be covering that!”

As for Donatello, he can’t get a fix on the fragment because there is too much power associated with it flying around. Hmm, maybe the building with the blinding blue glow?

Also, OMNSS steals a bunch of robots from... a robot shop. Like, they’re sitting on a sales floor. Is that a thing that exists?

Equally baffling is the way they locate Shredder: an obnoxious robot meter-maid, which they treat as just a thing that exists in the world. Maybe in the world of I Robot, but not the one we live in. I get the feeling the writers just couldn’t come up with a way to get the characters to Point B, so they pulled something from their asses.

Shredder is also planning to use OMNSS to open a portal between dimensions, because.... I guess it can do that? Anyway, OMNSS detects the Turtles approaching, and takes over the van.

It also contains a hilarious three-in-one error: Michelangelo vanishes from the front seat, Raphael speaks with Leonardo’s voice, and his mouth doesn’t move. 

And in a probable attempt to reassure the kiddies that the characters aren’t about to die, April says maybe the dumbest line of the episode, “Do something! I have plans for the weekend!” 

So Donatello stops driving and climbs into the back of the van, hooking up his tracker to the Turtle Van to make it go haywire all over again, as he did earlier in the episode.

I’m just wondering who’s going to brake when he does get the van back under their control.

Seriously, whose foot is that? NOBODY IS IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT.

So they almost crash and die, but stop at the very last second, and Leonardo just sort of sinks down to the floor to cry, or faint, or throw up, or whatever.

And because Shredder’s attempts to impress Krang always come to naught, he calls him up to gloat just as the Turtles come into the building. So the Turtles are attacked by floor-waxers and vacuum cleaners... wait, what is that?

Insurance? What is an insurance firm doing with a grotesquely powerful supercomputer that is trying to take over a whole metropolis? Besides getting killed by it, because we never see a single living person in this entire building?

Anyway, after destroying the floor maintenance machines, they get attacked by a fire hose... which can somehow move on its own like a snake.

Fortunately while Shredder gloats over a loudspeaker, Donatello is able to taunt it into attacking him, and finishes up with the comment, “Just remember who stuck his neck out for ya.” I think someone feels underappreciated.

And since there don’t seem to be any stairwells that extend all the way to the top, the Turtles decide to take the quickest route to the top: attaching suction cups to their knees and elbows, and crawling up the wall outside. April is not happy about this.

So they get up to where OMNSS and Shredder are, and Leonardo immediately cuts the connection between the computer and the fragment. A bunch of robots swarm in and prepare to attack... only for OMNSS to make an O-face and turn off.

Shredder throws a random beaker of... red stuff at them, causing a cloud of blinding gas. Good thing that wasn’t something that wouldn’t have that effect, especially in a computer lab where such things could be very destructive. Then he and Baxter leave, presumably with the second fragment.

Oh, and what happened to OMNSS?

Yep, really.

Shredder spends the entire evening ranting about how much he hates the Turtles and wants revenge, and Baxter probably wishes that he weren’t the nebbishy sidekick to a supervillain. And the Turtles receive an epic fakeout from Michelangelo playing with a toy robot... and I’m not sure why, since there is food to be had.

VERDICT

I just can’t really like this one. Not that it’s dramatically bad or anything, but it’s profoundly meh.

I think my biggest problem with it is all the shortcuts it takes to get from beginning to end, like the robot metermaid, or Baxter figuring out where the fragment was, or figuring out what it DOES without actually testing it or anything. People just sort of KNOW things without any kind of deduction or thought put into it.

Besides that, it’s a pretty standard machines-come-to-life-and-cause-chaos kind of story that can be found in many a kids’ show. Things come to life, our heroes smash them in a variety of ways, and then they get back on their way, rinse and repeat. And the ending is a bit anticlimactic, since the Turtles don’t even fight the last round of robots.

So like I said, profoundly meh and not terribly well plotted. 

Grade: C

#tmnt #tmnt 1987 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #satireknight

[aliceproject899-blog]

Marvel characters missing from movie which you want to see.

Like most superhero movies, Captain America: Civil War is based on a comic book series, and like most comic book adaptations, there’s LOADS missing from the original story. A huge comic crossover, Civil War involved pretty much every major (and minor) character in Marvel’s universe, including Avengers cut from the movie (Thor) and superheroes you’d never have thought should even be in the movie (The Punisher). But doesn’t missing out loads of characters change the story a bit? Let’s take a look at some of the major Civil War superheroes who didn’t make it into the Russos’ adaptation and how they might have changed the outcome.

11. Wolverine/X-Men

Comic: Despite declaring official neutrality during Civil War (the X-Men have their own established plotline - House Of M - to deal with in their Civil War branded titles), Wolverine plays an important part in proceedings - investigating the events that led up to the conflict, and discovering the conspiracy at its heart. He was also a key part of the anti-registration movement, comparing Stark’s plan to the Mutant Registration Act.  

Movie: Despite Hugh Jackman making it intensely clear he wants to see Fox’s X-Men crossover with the Marvel’s Avengers, it seems he’s going to retire from the role - Wolverine 3 will be his curtain call - long before that happens. They certainly don’t show up in Captain America: Civil War.

10. The Punisher

Comic: Frank Castle is a key player in Marvel’s Civil War, despite the fact it takes him a while to get involved. Initially not particularly bothered about the concept of a war between heroes (he saw worse in Vietnam) he decides to join the fray when Stark’s side starts using criminals to enforce the registration act. He sides with Team Cap, and even saves Spider-Man’s life.

Movie: Civil War’s key themes - vengeance and consequences - fit The Punisher so perfectly, it feels like a massive waste Jon Bernthal, so brilliant in Daredevil, wasn’t on the cast list.

9. Thor/Ragnarok

Comic: During the first battle between the two sides, the former friends hold back from hurting each other. So S.H.I.E.L.D. unleashes Codename Lightning - Thor, previously presumed dead - to fight against the anti-registration army. After Thor kills superhero Goliath, significantly upping the stakes for everyone, it’s revealed the Norse god is actually a malfunctioning clone, named Ragnarok.

Movie: Thor’s missing from Civil War, presumably because it’d be an unfair advantage to have a god on whichever side he chose. However, we may see elements - evil clone? - from this plot in the upcoming solo movie Thor: Ragnarok.

8. Iron Fist

Comic: After Daredevil is arrested by Tony Stark for refusing to register his identity - a silly scene that makes the most of Murdock’s religious background - Iron Fist (Danny Rand) takes off his weird pirate costume and puts on Murdock’s leather onesie to take up the mantle of Daredevil, keeping Hell’s Kitchen safe while its champion is behind bars. No-one seems to notice the fact Daredevil suddenly has mad kung fu skills.

Movie: Iron Fist is coming to Netflix, but hasn’t landed quite yet, so it would be difficult to include him in the MCU. But would it have killed them to include a quick shot of Daredevil listening to a news report about the Sokovia Accord? C’mon!

7. Reed Richards/The Fantastic Four

Comic: Reed Richards (and, initially, the entire Fantastic Four) sides with Stark, helping him build a prison in the Negative Zone to store every superpowered hero who refuses to register. Named Project 42, before being renamed Prison 42, it’s extremely divisive - even amongst pro-registration members. Combined with the murder of Goliath, it leads to a split in the Fantastic Four, with Johnny and Sue joining anti-registration forces.

Movie: There is a prison in Civil War, but you’ll have to see the movie to find out who ends up there. Speaking of prisons, the Fantastic Fox remain at 20th Century Fox - for now.

6. Thunderbolts

Comic: Baron Zemo’s Thunderbolts were approached by Iron Man, Reed Richards, and Yellowjacket, initially to help them track down supervillains, convincing them to register in exchange for clean records. Soon, there’s an ‘Army of Thunderbolts’, including Venom, Lady Deathstrike, Taskmaster, Bullseye, Jester and Jack O’Lantern, who are guys licensed by the government to track down unregistered heroes (think Suicide Squad, but with more Venom-drool).

Movie: Only Baron Zemo survives this plot-thread in the big screen version, which is a pretty big missed opportunity. Civil War introduces a rebooted version of Spider-Man, why not chuck an MCU Venom in there too?

5. New Warriors

Comic: The New Warriors are extremely important in Millar’s Civil War, mainly because they kick-start the whole thing. During a televised take-down of a bunch of supervillains, the team fails to prevent an explosion that kills 612 civilians, including 60 children - and the team themselves.

Movie: In the film, Cap’s team causes the incident - which is much smaller than the comic, but still significant. It’d be a big ask to incorporate New Warriors into the MCU at this late stage, but, as a comic fan, I wish they’d found another way to make it work - one that doesn’t make Cap look like a bad leader.

4. Norman Osborn

Comics: Despite the fact Osborn has beenthe  villain in more Spider-Man movies than any other character, they’ve barely touched the surface of his multiple roles in the comics. From Iron Patriot, to leader of the Dark Avengers, to his role in Civil War as a major conspirator.  

Movie: I’m fully prepared to admit it’d take a 10-hour Civil War movie trilogy to incorporate every character/team I’ve listed in this feature, but Osborn’s journey is so compelling I deeply wish they’d convinced Willem Dafoe to reprise the role, even if he is dead in the Raimi Spider-Verse.

3. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones

Comic: Jessica Jones and Luke Cage - still courting on Netflix -  are married parents by the time Marvel’s Civil War comes around, and this extra responsibility causes Cage to send Jones to Canada, where registration won’t be an issue. Cage compares the registration act to slavery, decides to stay in America in protest, and waits to be arrested in his home. It’s an inspiring moment in the comics, and establishes Cage as a major player.

Movie: I can totally see why this wouldn’t work in the MCU, but still wish the Netflix contingent could have been incorporated somehow, especially Cage. Even a brief bar conversation between Jones and Cage, discussing the implications of the Accord would’ve quenched my thirst.

2. The Skrulls

Comic: Spider-Woman, Hank Pym and, uh, Jarvis - are actually Skrull sleeper agents during Civil War. It doesn’t have a major effect on the plot, but their status does lead into Secret Invasion, which the MCU may want to adapt at some point.

Movie: Marvel doesn’t have the rights to the Skrulls - it’s one of those weird crossover character grey areas (they also don’t own the concept of mutants, which is why you’ll never hear Scarlet Witch referred to as one in the MCU) - a problem that previously saw the Chitauri invading the Earth at the end of The Avengers, instead of the more iconic alien Skrulls. Like the Skrulls, Chitauri have shapeshifting abilities, so could eventually be part of a Secret Invasion movie.

1. Howard The Duck

Comic: Despite not being a superhero, former presidential candidate/inter-dimensional being Howard the Duck - AKA the Duckman of New Jersey - is still required to register. However, he discovers his rebellious lifestyle was such an administrative nightmare for the government, he was written off and no longer officially exists.

Movie: Alright, so it’s not the most essential plot-thread in the comics, but I’d give my left wing to see Howard choosing between Tony and Steve’s side in the MCU version of Civil War. The character has already been hatched in James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, why not shove him in somewhere? Is it too late for reshoots? I’ll pay!

#disney netflix marvel gameofthrones asoiaf got hbo gameofthronesfamily gameofthronesfan gameofthronesmemes gotmemes gots7 gotseason7 sansa s

[aion-rsa]

15 Marvel Characters You Never Knew Were Mutants

For a number of years, the “X-Men” were so popular that most of Marvel’s highest-selling titles were either “X-Men” or related to “X-Men” in some way (“X-Factor,” “Wolverine,” “New Mutants”/”X-Force,” etc.). It got to the point when characters began to associate with “X-Men” even if they had no connection at all. “Spider-Man” promoted itself as Marvel’s most popular non-mutant. A new “Namor” ongoing series launched by touting him as Marvel’s first mutant. Being a mutant was the thing to be for many years.

RELATED: X-ed Out: 15 Forgotten X-Men

In recent years, things have calmed down a bit, and in fact some characters that were declared to be mutants (like Squirrel Girl, Toro, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) have turned out to not be mutants. However, there are still plenty of mutants out there that people still don’t know about, especially the much rarer alien mutants. Here, then, are 15 Marvel characters that you probably didn’t know were mutants, ranked in terms of how surprising it is that they are mutants.

MOST OF THE GREAT LAKES AVENGERS

After the Avengers were seemingly killed during Onslaught, the Great Lakes Avengers, a not-quite-affiliated team that Hawkeye tried to whip into fighting shape, decided that they needed to change their name. So they picked the Lightning Rods in honor of the new group of heroes known as the Thunderbolts. Of course, they felt silly when it turned out that the Thunderbolts were criminals. They debated what to call themselves until they realized something important: they were all mutants! Therefore, they called themselves the Great Lakes X-Men for a while before going back to the being the Great Lakes Avengers.

The mutant members of the team are Mister Immortal (who cannot be killed), Doorman (who can teleport people through his body – he died and became a new agent of Death), Flatman (who can stretch) and Big Bertha (who can dramatically increase her size). Squirrel Girl used to be a mutant member of the team, as well, but she recently discovered that she wasn’t a mutant. They recently added a new member, Good Boy, who may or may not be a mutant, as well. Since they literally called themselves X-Men at one point, they’re the least surprising mutants.

DEVIL DINOSAUR

Devil Dinosaur was actually part of a mutant team, it just wasn’t any of the popular mutant teams. Devil Dinosaur, and his best buddy, Moon Boy, were part of the team of mutant outcasts known as the Fallen Angels. That team was formed when Sunspot accidentally nearly killed Cannonball during training. He fled to New York and Warlock followed him. Madrox and Siryn were sent to keep an eye on them and they all ended up caught up in a sort of gang of young mutants led by the Vanisher. They broke free of the Vanisher and formed their own team (but mostly just hung out).

Devil Dinosaur is a mutant due to his intelligence, which is close to that of a human, and possibly his whole red look. Interestingly, in his current series, “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur,” he’s paired with an Inhuman. See, this shows that mutants and Inhumans can get along!

KRAVEN THE HUNTER (#3)

A few years after Kraven the Hunter took his own life in the classic “Spider-Man” storyline, “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” his son took over the family business, as it were, as the Grim Hunter. For some reason, though, the Grim Hunter was not enough for the “Spider-Man” titles, so they then introduced Kraven’s other son, Alyosha Kravinoff. Alyosha’s mother was a mutant and Alyosha had the mutant power to be basically super-strong, fast and agile like his father. He essentially had the same powers as his dad, only his came from being a mutant while his father got his from potions.

Amusingly enough, Aloysha went through a period where he decided to become involved in producing films. This led to the mini-series, “Get Kraven.” When that was finished, Aloysha went crazy, but eventually he was replaced when his father was resurrected. His father and his sister hunted Aloysha down and killed him.

SILHOUETTE

Silhouette and her brother, Midnight’s Fire, were characters introduced in the pages of “New Warriors.” They were the daughter and son of Andrew Chord, who was the former guardian of Dwayne Taylor. She, her brother and Dwayne were vigilantes together on the streets of New York. She and Dwayne began a romantic relationship. Tragedy struck, though, when she was shot in a police sting gone wrong. She was paralyzed from the waist down. Her brother became a villain and Dwayne became the superhero known as Night Thrasher.

Silhouette trained herself to fight without the use of her legs, using braces to allow herself to get into battle, along with her mutant ability to teleport and also become a living shadow (both were essentially the same powers that Nightcrawler has). She and Night Thrasher became a couple again and she joined the New Warriors. She and Dwayne eventually broke up and she started dating his half-brother, Bandit. She was part of the superhero resistance during Civil War.

WHIRLWIND

One of the most resilient villains in Marvel history, Whirlwind has managed to stick around for decades without being killed, which is a pretty impressive resume for a supervillain. He hits that very small sweet spot in that his mutant ability to spin and create wind vortexes makes him just powerful enough to be worth consideration, yet not powerful enough that he can fight a bunch of superheroes on his own. This has made him the perfect filler supervillain, although efforts have been made over the years to upgrade him (mostly by giving him lots of blades).

Whirlwind is probably the closest that you can come to an arch-rival of the Wasp. He fought her and Giant-Man as the Human Top before taking on the identity of her chauffeur. He grew obsessed with her and even now he remains creepily interested in her. He’s one of the villains who have have served on the most incarnations of the Masters of Evil supervillain team.

SKEIN

Skein is an excellent example of how minor characters can be developed by later writers into more interesting versions of their original selves (that’s basically the calling card of the “Thunderbolts” as a title in general). Skein was the supervillain known as Gypsy Moth, who had strong telekinetic abilities, but she chose to only use her telekinesis on “soft” things like fabric. This way, she could unweave any sort of fabric and then reweave it almost instantly. While a villain of Spider-Woman in Los Angeles, she formed her own sort of sex cult.

After a number of years of being a reliable piece of cannon fodder, she abruptly decided to join up with the Thunderbolts. She changed her name to Skein and fought alongside the good guys for a few years, although it was always clear that she was doing it more because it entertained her than out of any sense of morality. More recently, she has returned to a life of crime, while keeping the Skein name. She famously unraveled Spider-Man’s costume in the first issue of “Amazing Spider-Man” following “Superior Spider-Man.”

BUSHWACKER

Bushwacker is a weird one for this list, as he made his debut early in Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr.’s “Daredevil” run as a killer of mutants. He was a former priest who began to work for the C.I.A. and it was while with the C.I.A. that his body was cybernetically altered so that he could transform his arm into a weapon. He hunted down mutants, claiming that he was paid a lot of money to kill them, but it appeared that it had more to do with some crazed obsession on his part than anything financial.

He became a recurring villain in “Daredevil” and some other titles, like “Punisher” and “Nomad.” However, in the David Lapham miniseries, “Daredevil vs. Punisher,” Bushwacker made a shocking confession. He revealed that the whole “C.I.A. gave me cybernetic implants” story was a lie and that he was actually a mutant himself! He apparently just took self-hating to a whole other level.

SHRIEK

Shriek debuted as part of the popular crossover event “Maximum Carnage,” as the “mother” to Carnage’s “father” in their growing “family” of sociopathic killers that formed the basis of that event, which saw Spider-Man being forced to team up with his former foe, Venom, to stop the even worse criminals. This was an interesting period where Venom had grown so popular that Marvel decided to invent someone so evil that Venom would look like a hero in comparison. So that way they could give Venom his own book and still have a symbiote villain.

It is unclear which of Shriek’s powers are her natural, mutant ones. She has the ability to sense people’s dark emotions and also to know how to fester those dark feelings. She has sound-based powers that let her create concussive blasts or use her abilities as a sonic scream meant to disorient and drive people mad. Some of her powers kicked in when she was trapped in Cloak’s darkforce dimension. Which ones kicked in then are unclear, but what is clear is that she’s one of the few purely evil villains out there.

MENTALLO

Like Whirlwind, Mentallo is one of those rare villains that has survived mostly unscathed for 50 years now (okay, he was once presumed dead a few years back, but that was very brief!), debuting in an early S.H.I.E.L.D. story. Mentallo is also one of the few mutant telepaths on Marvel’s Earth that is not connected with the X-Men in any way, shape or form. Mentallo often teamed up with his friend and colleague, the Fixer, to wage war on S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as take part in various other criminal enterprises.

The Fixer, though, eventually tried to reform as a member of the Thunderbolts. Mentallo, though, kept up his villainy through and through. He started off as a member of S.H.I.E.L.D., working for their ESP program before he tried to take over S.H.I.E.L.D. using his telepathy. Rebuffed, he joined up with Hydra and A.I.M. instead. He has even become a fairly high-ranking member of A.I.M. in recent years.

MADAME WEB

Cassandra Webb was born a mutant with tremendous telepathic and precognitive powers. However, she was also born paralyzed and blind. Over time, things got even worse for her physically, as she developed myasthenia gravis, so her husband built her a life support system that she had to remain attached to. She became involved with Spider-Man, using her powers to fill him in on crimes that she could not physically deal with herself. She also revealed that she knew his secret identity due to her telepathy. She was one of the first people to learn Spider-Man’s identity (and not die right after discovering it, that is).

Over time, she regained her vitality but then lost it again. During the “Grim Hunt” storyline, she was murdered and passed on her abilities to Julia Carpenter. It is unclear how she was able to pass along abilities that were hers genetically, but hey, this is comics. She was recently resurrected as part of the “Clone Conspiracy.”

ABIGAIL BRAND

Abigail Brand showed up in Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s acclaimed “Astonishing X-Men” run as the head of S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient World Observation and Response Department), a special spin-off of S.H.I.E.L.D. designed to deal with alien threats to Earth. While initially she did not like the X-Men and had no interest in working with them, her feelings changed after getting to know them, especially Hank McCoy, who she began a romantic relationship with (he reminded her of her alien father).

From early on, we knew that Abigail Brand was half-alien/half-human. However, it was not until a number of years into her history as a character, during the “Avengers vs. X-Men” epilogue miniseries “AvX: Consequences,” that we discovered that she was a mutant, as well. Her human mother was a mutant and Abigail inherited her mother’s pyrokinetic abilities. She clearly prefers not to use her mutant abilities if she can avoid doing so, which makes some sense, as she is a very skilled agent, powers or not.

TERRAX

One of the more famous former heralds of Galactus (and one of the few heralds who had no problem with destroying other worlds), the being once known as Tyros was born a mutant on his home planet of Birj. He had the mutant ability to control the stones on his world. When Galactus came to Birj to find a new herald, he chose Tyros and, upon giving him the Power Cosmic, his power of controlling the terrain grew immensely. Now calling himself Terrax, he also gained a powerful cosmic axe.

Like Galactus’ other heralds, even after leaving Galactus’ employ, Terrax was allowed to keep his Power Cosmic, so he is one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. However, he has mostly chosen to do nothing in particular with his great power. He mostly just likes messing with people and fighting. He is sort of like a cosmic-powered bully in a lot of ways.

SWARM

Swarm is made up of the consciousness of Fritz von Meyer, a Nazi scientist who served Adolf Hitler, and a bunch of bees. The bees were mutated by a meteorite that landed in South America and became super-intelligent. Von Meyer tried to take control of them and they instead turned on him and devoured him. His mind merged with theirs, though, and they formed a bee-creature around his skeleton. In the years since, his skeleton has no longer even been required to form the being known as Swarm.

Now here’s the tricky part: normally, if you get mutated by something like a meteorite, that does not make you a mutant. It makes you a mutate. However, A) bees have such short life spans that we must be dealing with multiple generations of bees in Swarm and B) even if they did not die naturally (like maybe the meteorite let them live longer), we have seen them dissipated before, so there has to be new bees involved. Therefore, by this time, they have to be mutants by now. In addition, in “Sensational Spider-Man” #9, they specifically noted that Onslaught’s mutant energy messed with theirs. So we believe that they count as mutants.

WHIZZER

This one is also controversial. We know what you might be thinking: “Wait a second, I know the Whizzer’s origin! CBR even did a list where they featured his as one of the worst superhero origins of all-time! And he wasn’t a mutant! He got a transfusion of mongoose blood!” And yes, that is true. We did, in fact, feature him on our list of the worst superhero origins of all-time due to the fact that he got his powers from getting a blood transfusion from a mongoose. That’s clearly insane.

However, Roy Thomas later explained away that origin. His new take on the Whizzer’s origin is that the Whizzer was already a mutant with super speed, it was just that the mongoose blood transfusion (or heck, the trauma of the situation period. Imagine needing a mongoose blood transfusion) kick-started the Whizzer’s mutant powers. It is worth noting that the Whizzer’s son, Nuklo, was also a mutant. So it all fits!

THANOS

Yes, the Mad Titan himself, Thanos, is a mutant. He is one of the Eternals who live on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. However, due to a genetic mutation, Thanos came out looking like a Deviant and not an Eternal. This is why he is so big and so ugly while his brother, Starfox, is normal sized and looks like a human.

Despite his freakish appearance, Thanos was accepted by his family, but even at a young age, there was something wrong with him. He was worshiping Mistress Death at far too young of an age. He grew up obsessed with her and as soon as he formed his own family, he then killed them as a tribute to his true love, Death itself. Thanos would grow up to pursue more and more elaborate ways of causing mass fatalities, with his quest culminating in him gaining possession of the Infinity Gauntlet.

Who is your favorite non-X-Men mutant? Let us know in the comments section!

The post 15 Marvel Characters You Never Knew Were Mutants appeared first on CBR.com.

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[howtohero]

#029 Alien Invasions

The universe is a vast and expanding place. Scientifically speaking it is actually “hella” vast (that’s the actual technical term for it, look it up). And (spoiler alert) we are not even remotely close to being alone in it. The Fraternity of Alien Activity, Reconnaissance and Telecommunications Enthusiasts (or, as the government calls them, FAART Enthusiasts) tells me there are approximately 2,872 unique alien species that have interacted with either Earth or representatives of mankind throughout the history of the world. The Federal Bureau of UFO Tracking, Transporting and Studying (or, as the Fraternity calls them, Federal BUTTS) refuses to give me, a private citizen, with a blog, an actual number, though they strongly implied that the Fraternity was vastly overestimating the number of unique species. But at least the Fraternity would give me a number, so as far as me, you, and this blog are concerned that’s the number of alien species. Now, while many of these alien species have proven to be friendly and have even entered into alliances with Earth, swapping resources, technology and entertainment, others are decidedly more jerkish. Every so often some warmongering (and/or bored) alien armada will swoop down into Earth’s atmosphere and try to conquer the whole planet! This happens like two or three times a decade so if you’re going to be a superhero that’s definitely something to be aware of. (For a brief overview of alien invasions see here.)

Now an alien invasion is almost definitely of greater importance and urgency than whatever other superheroic nonsense you were involved with before a UFO landed on the Washington Mall (did you know that it’s not actually a mall? Like there aren’t stores there. Not even clever Washington-themed riffs on other stores like McRonald Regan’s or Washing Tons Laundromat or Thomas Jeffer-cinnabon or the Warren G. Hardware Store.) So it’s important to just derail, forget about, or hastily wrap up whatever ongoing superhero adventures you were involved with before. Alien invasions take precedence over almost everything else, with exceptions including, interdimensional invaders, a plague that you can’t even weaponize to drive off the aliens because they’re immune and it’s super inconvenient, and probably zombie grasshoppers. So you better start doing some research on warloving alien races and past alien invasions, because when the invasion comes you need to be prepared at a moment’s notice. (Zombie grasshoppers are the most dangerous kind of zombie because they’re small, so they’re hard to spot, and also they can jump really frikkin’ high so sometimes you can’t just step on them and honestly, after dying alone and the dark, zombie grasshoppers are my biggest fear.)

An alien invasion should trigger a worldwide alliance of superheroes and other para-folk who aren’t in the mood to be subjugated by other-worldly warlords. When the fate of the world is at stake you need to put aside all petty squabbles and form an alliance between anybody and everybody who could possibly hold their own against evil alien soldiers. Sometimes that even means bad guys. You’re just going to have to deal with it. You need to pool all of your resources and information into an effective invasion repelling force. It doesn’t matter if that one guy tried to rob a bank last Thursday. He has a sub-machine freeze ray. It rapidly fires capsules that emit a freezing gas when broken. This is clearly a useful thing to have when fighting aliens. Just be chill (hahahaha) let him join the team. The first thing you should do when forming this world-super-alliance is select a leader and establish a headquarters. Normally your leader should be the most high-profile superhero, probably the leader of the largest superhero team. Likewise, the headquarters of the largest superhero team should probably be used as headquarters and mission control for this veritable super-army. This alliance is basically worthless without proper leadership and organization. It would be advisable (in fact, we’re advising it now) to try to merge everyone’s support-squads to form a massive network of superhero allies and helpers across the world.

The next thing you need to do is actually fight off the invasion. Remember, you are Earth’s last line of defense, if you fall, Earth falls, so there’s no holding back here. Also, just something to keep in mind, try to nab some neat alien gear. Steal some weapons, grab some sweet body armor, really just take anything you can carry. As a superhero it’s your right to grab as much alien stuff as you can before some government swoops in and takes it all to study somewhere. Also if you take a bunch of alien stuff you can maybe infiltrate the aliens’ mothership. This only really works if both you and the aliens you’re fighting are roughly humanoid. You’d probably have trouble impersonating an alien with multiple arms, or one with no legs that just kind of floats above the ground. Or one with three heads. Or one with two heads even. There was no need for me to go to the extreme and start talking about three heads. You only have one head. Anything more than that will be hard to mimic. I mean you probably could figure something out. Use some cleverly disguised basketballs, or grape fruits, or busts. Or get a hologram projector! Yeah, anybody with a hologram projector can easily infiltrate an alien mothership. You should just do that.

Once you’ve infiltrated the mothership, the main hub and command center of the alien invasion you need to start destabilizing anything and everything you can. Just start ripping wires out of the wall. Punching aliens. Stealing stuff that looks important. Maybe plant a few timed explosives that you can detonate remotely as convenient. Then, once things have been properly destabilized you need to STEAL. AN. ALIEN. SHIP. It’s gonna be awesome.

Hop into an alien cruiser and blast the hell out of that heavily sabotaged mothershippin’ invasion command hub. It’s someone else’s problem now. Now you have a sick alien ship. Full disclosure, most of you will probably crash it immediately and die. Which is too bad. But for the rest of you, the one’s that live and have an awesome alien cruiser. Good for you! Congratulations! Fly that thing everywhere. Even places you used to just walk to. Fun traffic law fact: You can park an alien cruiser anywhere. They don’t have license plates or registration numbers. You can’t get ticketed. That’s probably the law. And it’s not like you can tow an alien cruiser. Have you seen those things? They’re maaaaad sleek and smooth and aerodynamic and just visually dynamic, and there’s nowhere to hook it up to a towing rig. Also, like, if you’ve just saved the world from an alien invasion you’re basically allowed to just do whatever you want. Now I’m not saying you should abuse that privilege. Just abuse it enough to park your alien cruiser anywhere you want. (I feel like this entire paragraph should have been in parentheses) 

Once the invasion is fought off (and you have your sick cruiser) there comes the matter of rebuilding and recovering. The planet has most likely suffered serious losses and it is important to allow each country to begin to put the pieces of their government and societies back together. Now as far as the superheroes of the world are concerned, they should go back to doing what they do best, helping people and making the world a better place. The massive superhero alliance should be disbanded so each hero can go back to where they are individually needed so they can help people move past the fact that they were recently terrorized by aliens and that they looked nothing like the big-eyed-short-grey-cow-kidnapping aliens from the movies and the televisions. It’s honestly a big shock and a lot to take in. The supervillains who came through and helped fight off the invading force should be given a five-minute head start before being arrested for being actual supervillains. Prisoners that have been captured from the invading force should be treated humanely and not experimented on. Because don’t experiment on people, even alien people. It’s mean. Honestly, just send them home, it will at the very least garner some goodwill with the guys who just tried to steal your planet. Who knows, maybe you can even be friends someday. 

#superhero #how to #aliens #alien invasions #sub-machine freeze ray #freeze rays #team-ups #alliances #FAART Enthusiasts #Federal BUTTs #Fun with acronyms #stealing a sick alien ship #man that's the dream #presidental puns #washington mall #for years I thought it was an actual mall #because it's called a mall #so what's the deal #zombie grasshoppers #seriously think about it #they'd be terrifying

[howtohero]

Seasonal Big Bads

Tired of having to fight so many different individual supervillains week to week? Not yet ready for a longterm nemesis? Want to fight someone at a snail’s pace over a period of many months? Then it sounds like you need a seasonal big bad! 

In order to qualify for a seasonal big bad you and your friends need to begin having strictly episodic adventures. If a villain can’t be defeated in the course of a day, leave them to somebody else to fight. Fight just one, unique, villain a week. You should try to make sure that each of these adventures follow the same formula. Begin your day by stopping a regular crime. A crime that you normally wouldn’t even bother with. One that the police could have easily dealt with. I’m thinking like a pick pocket or maybe a mail fraudster. Once you’ve done that your main baddie for the day will reveal themselves. Even though you’ve fought villains stronger than them or perhaps even with the exact same powers many times before, this new bad guy will somehow catch you off guard and elude you, having successfully committed some nefarious crime like vending machine larceny or bird kidnapping. Then instead of chasing after them, which would be laughably easy to do thanks to the faster than light engine you -for some reason- installed on your super dune buggy, you need to go back to your base. Once there you can chat amicably with your support-squad, find out what interpersonal dramas they’re dealing with that particular week. Maybe your engineer is going on a blind date. Perhaps your doctor is having an icy reconciliation with their estranged mother. It is imperative that you give these stories and issues your full undivided attention. You can deal with that bad guy later, it literally will not take you longer than five minutes to deal with them when you get around to it. So there’s no rush. After you help your friends resolve their issues you can then go out and stop this new villain from committing the exact same crime a second time in one day. There will be zero significant differences between this time and the last time you encountered them. But this time you need to beat them, using your powers, which for some reason you didn’t do before. Happy endings all around. If you have enough adventures like this eventually you’ll get your very own seasonal big bad.

Seasonal big bads are the most dangerous villain you’ll ever face... until next season when you have to fight an even bigger big bad that takes you the exact same amount of time to successfully defeat! A seasonal big bad will lurk in the shadows for a while, sending out goons and decoys to keep you distracted as they slowly slowly move the pieces in place for their grand evil scheme. So, since they’re keeping to themselves for the earlier parts of the year you have to work especially hard to recognize that you’re not facing a series of unrelated lower-level villains but that you are instead facing someone with an actual agenda that goes beyond “turning into a sand monster and scaring movie fans at the annual movie-at-the-park night.” 

One surefire way to know if you’re being targeted by a seasonal big bad is if you’re suddenly facing a whole bunch of new superpowered supervillains that you weren’t even aware of before. It’s not every day that a whole bunch of new superhumans come out of the woodwork at once. Unless you live in Super-Arkansas, an invisible state in between Arkansas and Oklahoma in which the birth-rate is pretty high and everybody is born with a random superpower. But for the rest of the world any influx of brand new superhumans should raise some eyebrows. Only seasonal big bads can create superhumans en masse, or at least they’re the only people who regularly have reason to do so. If you’re too busy stopping and investigating a whole new slew of super-crimes you’re much less likely to notice that random pieces of lab equipment keep going missing from labs across the city. 

About halfway through your year though, (to be clear this is not the January-December year. Seasonal big bad cycles tend to run on a September-May year so just go ahead and circle January 27th on your calendar and say that’s the date we’re talking about) you’ll finally uncover the conspiracy and come face to face with your seasonal big bad. While on the surface they may seem like just another madman bent on world domination, like the ones you deal with every Tuesday, this one is special. This one drank like extra evil juice. Maybe they’ll have the same powers as you, but stronger. Maybe they’ll be smarter than you. Maybe they’ll actually have a long standing one-sided grudge against you because their father was a supervillain and you stopped his evil schemes by tossing him into a fish truck that was leaving the city and he was directionally challenged and was never able to find his way back to town and also he smells like fish now so nobody wants him to come back anyway. Whatever their deal is, prepare to get absolutely thrashed by them. You’re going to get the actual snot out of you. They’re going to beat you up so bad that your immune system just collapses and you catch a really bad cold and start sneezing all the time. You’re going to get completely dismantled and it’s going to be very embarrassing. But do not despair. It’s all part of the process. If you were able to win the first fight you ever had with your seasonal big bad then they wouldn’t be very good seasonal big bads now would they? 

Don’t worry though, your seasonal big bad won’t kill you. They won’t even really try. For some reason they’ll assume that if they beat you up really badly, but then leave you alive, that you’ll just give up and retire or something. I guess they don’t get just how personally superheroes take things. When a super powerful person is so used to winning, one defeat isn’t going to make them pack up and go home, the only thing that defeat will do will cause them to vow to do whatever it takes to take the person who beat them off of the board. So good job seasonal big bad, you’ve just sealed your own fate. 

The rest of your year will be spent trying every hair brained scheme you can think of to regain dominance over your seasonal big bad. You’ll clone yourself, travel through time, trigger an alien invasion even going so far as to team up with your actual long-term nemesis who is actually very jealous of this seasonal big bad for taking up all your time. You’ll train harder, recruit new allies to your cause, blast them on social media. You’ll try to steal their powers, their followers, you’ll even try to turn their own wife against them. No tactic is too dirty or unhanded in pursuit of this noble goal of yours. To get revenge on the person made you look like a real goober on national television. You know who watches national television? Attractive people. Now what are they going to think of you. Good luck getting a date now guy who got wedgied on live television by a death cultist. 

Of course though, nothing you attempt will even come close to working until May, maaaaaybe mid-April if you’re lucky. It’s almost not even worth the effort. At times you’ll think about giving up and just letting your city fall to this heinous villain. Anybody who spends an entire school year meticulously carrying out a plot to take over your city kind of deserves to win no? Only your spite and anger will fuel you through those long middle months. Thankfully, the seasonal big bad will continue to make a fool of you every time you meet so there will be no shortage of spite coursing through your veins. 

And then, finally, the final conflict will arrive. One big final scuff up between you and your allies and the big bad and their little bad minions. (Not little in the sense that they are less evil, little in the sense that they are physically shorter than the main bad guy. He’s very tall that guy.) It will take everything you’ve got to finally beat this villain. May as well even bust out some fancy new duds for the occasion. Not to mention the latest in bad guy fighting technology that just happened to take your lead engineer nine months to develop. Convenient! Well, not for all the people who died in the bad guy’s rampage. But convenient for you that the weapon was finished just in time for the grand finale! Then you’ll come face to face with the villain who has been tormenting you for almost but not quite an entire year. Finally the hour of their reckoning has arrived. You can take revenge for your past humiliation. Avenge all of those that have fallen to their villainous schemes. You’ve been training non-stop for this moment. You’ve broken several fundamental laws of both physics and also your township in pursuit of this goal. Everything from the past just about a year has been leading up this moment. 

You might die.

But don’t worry it’s fine you’ll come back. And when you come back you’ll be more powerful than ever before and you’ll be able to finally end the threat of this terrible turnip that’s been terrorizing your neighborhood. Get pumped (and get amped!) for them to say something like “No! How it can be! They’re even more powerful than I ever could have imagined!” It’s gonna be so vindicating. So awesome. You’re gonna be great you got this! Make sure you’ve got a cool one-liner planned for when you finally take care of this big bad. Something like “Ha! You have been defeated and it is I who is the one who has been the one to defeat you!” Something cool and smooth like that. Try to make a pun if you can. Then, you can just relax. Your city will be completely safe. For like three or four whole months. Then, the cycle will begin anew. Have fun! This is your life now!

(Be wary though, of the big bad switcheroo. Where you think one of the bad guys you’re fighting is your big bad for the year only for them to be unceremoniously defeated at some point. When this happens, don’t start patting yourself on the back just yet. It’s not that you’re so great at fighting crime that you were able to beat your big bad in record time. It’s very likely that some even more powerful and evil villain is going to take their place and serve as the big bad for the rest of the year. So stay alert for any like evil nieces or henchmen that seem to actively be taking notes whenever your big bad is doing things. They might turn out to be the true villain of this saga in your life!)

#superheroes #comics #superhero #comedy #humor #funny #hilarious #creative writing #seasonal big bads #seasons #big bad #supervillains #episodic adventures #dying #coming back to life #ressurection #big bad switcheroos