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pluckyredhead · 2 years

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Character Profile: Jennifer-Lynn Hayden and Todd Rice (Jade and Obsidian)

It’s time for another character profile, just in time for HankTodd Weekend! This time it’s a twofer, because Jennie-Lynn and Todd are twins, and doing two separate profiles for them would get really repetitive. Which means this is gonna be a long one. Sorry...or you’re welcome?

CONTENT WARNING: Child abuse, sexual assault, ableism, self-harm, and suicide.

Like Todd’s bestie Al Rothstein, Jen and Todd first appeared as members of Infinity, Inc., a team made up of the children and proteges of the original Justice Society of America. Specifically, they barge into a JSA meeting and announce themselves to be the children of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. His reaction will never stop being hilarious to me:

“I seem to dimly remember having sex once...but I can’t quite...”

In fact, none of the three are sure exactly how this happened. Neither Jen nor Todd knew they were adopted or had superpowers until recently. Jen had an idyllic childhood in a middle class suburban home until one day the weird green birthmark on her palm started to glow:

Then she abruptly turned green, at which point her parents confessed that she was adopted - and oh yeah, she’d had a twin brother in the orphanage, but they couldn’t afford to adopt two babies, so...sorry, Todd.

[Side note: it was later retconned in that Jen actually lived in an orphanage until middle school-ish and her powers manifested when she was molested by the janitor, but we’re going to ignore that because it makes absolutely no sense with the rest of her backstory and was just added to be gratuitously edgy.]

Todd, meanwhile, had a significantly less idyllic childhood, growing up in a working class family with an abusive alcoholic for a father. Eventually his mother walked out on them, taking Todd’s younger brother and leaving Todd behind in an act of truly phenomenal cruelty. Todd became the only available target for his father’s anger, but lucky for him, his powers manifested just in time:

Yeah, his dad kind of left him alone after that.

Jen and Todd are opposites in pretty much every way: she is bubbly and extroverted, and everyone she meets likes her immediately, while Todd is painfully introverted, pessimistic, and paranoid, with a tendency to lash out defensively at the slightest provocation. They adore each other instantly despite this. (There is a LOT to say about the frankly classist and ableist assumptions being made about what kind of upbringings lead to what kind of personalities, and even some good old-fashioned anti-Catholicism - Jennie’s idyllic family is Protestant, Todd’s abusive alcoholic father is Catholic - but we don’t have time to unpack all that dot gif.)

Their powers are also opposites: Jen is essentially a Green Lantern without a ring, and if you’re keeping track, YES, that DOES make her one of the most powerful characters in the entire DCU, and NO, DC has never noticed, because she’s a girl! It’s fucking infuriating!

Todd’s powers are a bit more complicated: he can turn into a shadow form, above, which can change shape, pass through walls, and fly. He’s connected to a realm called the Shadowlands (more on that later). He can also sense evil and force a person to see the evil side of their soul, which fucks them (and Todd) up severely and can even drive them insane.

Jennie and Todd also have a low-level psychic connection, which they use to find each other upon discovering that they adopted. Due to Jennie’s powers, they assume (correctly) that their father is Alan Scott. But who is their mother?

Well. Oof.

Their mother is a woman named Rose Canton, who has an evil personality that she can’t control called the Thorn. Rose fell in love with Alan and married him under a third alias, but when Thorn emerged and tried to kill him, Rose realized he would never be safe while married to her, and fled into the night. When she discovered she was pregnant, she ultimately gave the twins up for adoption.

She finally reconnects with them after they’ve joined Infinity, Inc. Thorn emerges and tries to murder Alan, Jen, and Todd:

(Yes, Todd’s costume is in fact HILARIOUSLY SKIMPY when he is powered down.)

Rose manages to kill herself in order to protect her loved ones from Thorn. It’s extremely upsetting.

But for Jennie, there are compensations: early in the II run, she starts dating her teammate Hank, aka Brainwave, Jr., the psychic son of a supervillain. They’re very cute. Todd, um. Doesn’t handle it well:

HI, THAT’S WEIRD. YOU’RE ALL BEING WEIRD. PLEASE STOP BEING SO WEIRD ABOUT THIS.

I TOLD YOU TO STOP BEING WEIRD!!!

Okay yeah, that’s not Jen, that’s Todd’s girlfriend Marcie, who is secretly a supervillain who can cast illusions. But like...why did she think this was the move? The vibes in Infinity, Inc. headquarters must have been so yikesy.

Anyway, Marcie eventually manages to cause the death of the team’s leader, Skyman, and Infinity, Inc. disbands. It’s all extremely sad.

Jennie and Todd disappear for a few years outside of the occasional cameo, but then Todd and his II teammate Al join the Justice League! I’ve written about this relationship in depth before, but basically: this is where Todd started to be written as very clearly queer, even if it’s not stated in so many words. (Though looking at letter columns from the 80s shows that fans had been asking for this for years.) He is actively, visibly, canonically pining over Al, but when Al asks him about it outright, he reacts angrily and defensively:

(No, Al doesn’t need him to put a label on it. They hug it out. It’s nice.)

This is also when Todd starts struggling with his mental health, although it’s couched in extremely over-the-top, comic book-y ways:

Al, I recognize that you are an optimist, but that isn’t depression. Bless your big dumb heart.

This all comes to a head when Al finds Todd attempting suicide, although luckily (?) Todd is so disconnected from reality at this point that he’s attempting to stab his shadow form to death, which...isn’t possible. Al insists that Todd see a therapist, but Todd freaks out when the therapist turns out to be female and refuses. Luckily (again, ?), Todd’s extreme decline in mental health turns out to be largely due to a crossover even in which the legions of Hell have been unleashed on Earth and the presence of so much evil is basically doing literal psychic damage to him thanks to his powers. Once the demons are vanquished, he goes back to his usual pessimistic but manageable equilibrium, at least for a few years.

During this era, Jen was appearing in a book called Blood Pack where she was training a team of superheroes called Blood Pack who were starring on a reality show called Blood Pack. It was exactly as awful as that description sounds.

Anyway, both books ended, leaving the twins without a publishing home, though Jen quickly became a supporting player in Kyle Rayner’s Green Lantern book. Basically, she gives up on acting and decides to become a photographer instead, inexplicably, and also decides to move to New York, so Alan suggests she move in with Kyle. Because the Scott family is all lightly unhinged, neither of them says anything to Kyle about it, which means he arrives home to find a strange green woman in his shower:

Kyle, being an enormous pushover, lets her stay. Even though Todd shows up a few minutes later and attacks Kyle for “taking advantage” of his sister. Again, the Scott family? Not normal.

Further proof of this comes a little bit later, in the godawful Green Lantern/Sentinel: Heart of Darkness miniseries, when Jennie abruptly vanishes. Kyle tells Alan, who attacks Kyle about it (SCOTTS, WHY) before taking him to the...private asylum where he’s been incarcerating and basically torturing Jennie’s ex-boyfriend Hank??? I mean, Hank has become a villain since the Infinity, Inc. days, but it’s still a grotesque human rights violation which we’ll get into in the Hank profile, but which Kyle takes in stride for some bonkers reason.

Alan suspects Hank has abducted Jen, but Kyle’s like “No no, he’s obviously very busy being tortured, let’s go.” At which point Todd shows up to murder Hank, like you do.

“Medical torture is fine, but killing? I’m mildly disappointed in you, Todd!”

Todd’s erratic behavior turns out to stem from the same thing as Jennie’s abduction: the Starheart, which is basically a powerful sentient meteorite that’s the source of Alan’s powers, and thus, indirectly, Jennie and Todd’s. Todd, Alan, and Kyle are transported to what’s basically a Starheart dimension, where the Starheart, speaking through a possessed Todd, is like “These twins are my kids and I want them, fuck you Alan”:

The Starheart drains Alan of power, which leaves him suddenly dying of old age (even though running the numbers on this makes him about 80 here, which is elderly but not “you immediately DIE” old). In order to save her father and brother, Jennie accepts the Starheart’s offer of power - but then pumps that power into Alan, saving him and breaking its control over all of them. This also leaves her without any superpowers, because women should always have to sacrifice their power to save the men in their lives! Also she and Kyle are going to start dating soon, and he obviously couldn’t date a woman who was his equal. BARF. This miniseries is sexist and ableist and makes every character in it unbearable - Alan is medically abusing Hank, and none of the others care??? Throw the whole comic away.

Anyway. Kyle and Jen start dating. They’re cute!

Cute!

They date for a brief time, then break up, then get back together for a much longer time (a good three or four years). He gives her a spare Green Lantern ring for a few issues, then it disappears, then he tries proposing with a second GL ring like four seconds after they get back together, and she’s like “You’re so sweet. No. Gimme the ring, though.” Both times she has a ring, Kyle proceeds to extremely condescendingly train her on how to use it, as if she hadn’t had those exact powers for a decade before he debuted. ARGH.

Meanwhile, things were...less rosy for Todd. In that he was lured to the dark side (literally) by the Golden Age villain Ian Karkull and covered Milwaukee in darkness. You know, like you do.

Todd is specifically gunning for both his adoptive father, Jim Rice, and Alan, blaming them both for his troubles. He eventually winds up killing both Karkull and Jim Rice before vanishing into the Shadowlands, much to Alan’s dismay.

This storyline is also the first time Todd is given a specific, real world diagnosis: Alan says that Todd “inherited his mother’s schizophrenia.” I am absolutely not qualified to judge whether or not someone, even a fictional character, is displaying symptoms of schizophrenia, but from the (admittedly minor) research I’ve done, they include paranoia, delusions, irritability, and depression, all of which Todd has demonstrated almost since his debut. The symptoms would also have manifested right on track with the typical timeline for men, in Todd’s early to mid 20s. However, I suspect that’s just a lucky coincidence, and Geoff Johns chose schizophrenia because it was a “scary dangerous” mental illness and because of Rose’s multiple personas. Sigh.

A little while later, Todd teams up with more supervillains (Eclipso, Mordru, it’s a whole thing) and tries to destroy the world. This time Alan manages to talk him down:

(Please note Alan describing Jay and Joan’s inability to have children as “failing.” ALAN IS A TERRIBLE FRIEND.)

Anyway, Todd swoons into Alan’s arms at this mediocre profession of fatherly love, and the threat is over. And luckily, none of it was Todd’s fault at all, apparently!

“He was possessed so it’s fine I guess” - how Geoff Johns has resolved every heel turn he’s ever written. It’s still better than “his mental illness made him evil.”

Over in Green Lantern, Kyle briefly became the godlike entity Ion, which enabled him to reignite Jennie’s natural powers:

She’s Jade again! Hooray!

Shortly after this (and after Kyle gives up the Ion powers), Kyle’s teenage assistant Terry is beaten severely by gay bashers. Kyle is so deeply upset by this that he decides to leave the planet for a while until he hates humans less, and Jen agrees to go with him.

However, after a few months in space, Jen gets homesick and decides she wants to go home. Kyle stays in space, and is basically completely incommunicado, and Jen, desperately lonely, eventually starts dating another guy. Kyle’s...not thrilled when he gets back, to say the least:

This is complete character assassination meant to make us feel bad for poor betrayed Kyle, but like...he abandoned Jen for months. Even if she’d wanted to break up with him before dating this other dude, how could she? She had no means of contacting him! I’m not saying this is Jen at her best, but I am saying that it’s sexist writing and I hate it.

Anyway, they break up, obviously, but that doesn’t mean Jen is without a book, because she promptly joins the Outsiders! She doesn’t get to do a lot, plotwise, but she does eventually kick Nightwing out of the leadership position and take over for reasons of he’s being a dick:

Fuck yeah! (Roy continues to be the actual leader because he’s Judd Winick’s favorite, but it’s a nice thought.)

Meanwhile, Todd shows up in the supporting cast of Manhunter, dating a Los Angeles ADA named Damon Matthews:

Todd suddenly coming out in this very sweet, low-key way was a very big deal - queer characters were still extremely rare in the 2000s, and fans had been asking for this for 20 years. And look how happy he is!!! Yay Todd!!!

Of course, said happiness literally only lasted for a single issue, because the very next month, Jen was killed in the Rann-Thanagar War Infinite Crisis Special, of all things. You could not pay me to care about the plot of this but basically she goes to space and is zapped to death by giant hands made out of energy. IT’S DUMB, and this is even dumber:

The power was Kyle’s all along! Girls don’t get to have power, even if they’re born with it! They get to die tragically in their ex-boyfriend’s arms and then be cradled by their sad dad while the power that wasn’t really theirs is used to turn Kyle back into fucking Ion again! I hate everything about this, I hate it so so much.

Todd, of course, is very sad. Then he turns into an egg. Really:

That’s Alan holding him. The JSA doesn’t know it’s Todd, they’re just like “What’s up with this egg?” It turns out to be part of a convoluted supervillain plot to use Egg Todd to power a doomsday device and the whole storyline is idiotic, but this aspect is very funny to me so I’m sharing it with you. Todd later refers to it as “the crucible of my egg time.” It’s incredible

Anyway, Jennie came back about four years later at the end of Blackest Night, when a bunch of random dead heroes are resurrected for...reasons. She idles around in space for a bit before inexplicably crashing to Earth encased in part of the Starheart. This causes the Starheart to take control of Alan and turn him evil, and also merge Jennie and Todd into one being:

The JSA and JLA team up to defeat the Starheart and Jennie and Todd are...de-merged...but they can’t be in close proximity to each other or they will merge again, which Todd is extremely histrionic about. I don’t know how DC managed to bring back the weird incestuous vibes with these two when Todd doesn’t even like girls, but they did! Also, this had something to do with Swamp Thing somehow? Sure.

Anyway, Jennie winds up joining the JLA after all of this, while Todd stays with the JSA/Alan’s new alien kingdom he built on the moon (don’t ask), but it’s all moot because shortly afterwards, the New 52 came along, and Jennie and Todd were wiped out of existence.

See, the New 52 JSA was young and sexy (and garbage), which meant Alan was too young to have adult children. So presumably to make up for erasing a gay character, DC made Alan gay instead! And then LITERALLY IMMEDIATELY killed his fiancé! Truly a shit sandwich all around.

(There is a version of Obsidian in the New 52, who shows up only briefly. We never learn his real name, so we don’t know if he’s still called Todd Rice, or if he has any connection to Alan. He’s now Black (and a professional criminal, because no one at DC in the early 2010s thought about the problematic implications of anything for even two seconds before they wrote it down)...at least in his first appearance, because he is miscolored as white in every subsequent appearance. And he’s definitely supposed to be Black, because someone is racist to him in that first issue, so...yeah. The New 52 has so much to answer for.)

The version of the JSA people actually like was restored at the beginning of last year, which means that Jennie, Todd, and the crusty old version of Alan returned pretty much exactly as we left them a decade before, with Todd still dating Damon and everything. DC was smart enough to keep Alan gay, and we got a lovely scene of him coming out to his kids (well, officially - he’s clearly already discussed it with Todd before this):

Awwww I love them.

And that’s pretty much it! The whole family appears in Infinite Frontier, but nothing that happened there was super significant for them, and they recently showed up with the rest of the JSA as part of Dark Crisis. Hopefully DC will continue to use them, but it’s hard to say when they have SO many characters to choose from. For example, Alan and Todd had a very sweet story in the 2021 Pride anthology, but didn’t even appear in 2022′s because there are so many newer and/or more prominent queer characters to feature instead. Which is a good thing, mostly, but...I want to see this messed up family more!

Anyway, that's Jennie and Todd! Stay tuned for a Hank profile very shortly, and some HankTodd fic from me this weekend!

#todd rice #obsidian #jennifer lynn hayden #jade #character profiles #meta

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true-blue-sonic · 5 months

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actually, are you still doing the writing ask game by any chance? i'm feeling kind of down and wondering if i could ask for 😍 and 🥰

Sure thing, I hope you'll feel better soon!🍀

😍 published lines or a section of a fic that you loved writing?

Normally I pulled out a specific chapter of New Beginnings for such an answer, but we got a new one here!! It's from Flufftober, Kiss For Good Luck:

~~~~~

Silver’s hand presses against a particularly nasty bruise on Espio’s chest, the chameleon’s own drifting up to clutch it close and tenderly intertwine their fingers. He must remain positive; none of the Emeralds have been touched by evil so far, their friends distracting Eggman’s forces in the rest of the area and Sonic still holding out above them. And besides, the issue of the Emeralds being so in reach can be resolved easily enough... Espio can think of only one reason why Sonic would send them down, once he learned Silver and Espio were here.

“Silver,” the chameleon murmurs, thumb brushing over the other’s dorsum. “It is up to you, too.”

His beloved freezes, just for a moment. “You think Sonic wants me to turn Super as well? It’s that bad?”

“It doesn’t matter if he wants you to or not, we know you can. And I would say two superpowered beings fighting against that massive robot and all its cronies stand a better chance than just one. Sonic sent the Emeralds towards us for a reason,” Espio hums back. It’s as if the Emeralds agree, with the way their shimmer only becomes brighter as he and Silver draw near. Espio’s eyes squint by instinct, so luminous is their glow, even more strongly when contrasted against the pure destruction around them. And even if the ninja knows he cannot do the same as Sonic and Silver and Shadow can, he can still revel in the overwhelming power of miracles that having all seven gem together elicits onto the world.

His beloved’s fingers tremble as they reach for the radiant stones, alongside the hitch in his chest. “They call to me...!”

Espio can feel it, too.

And thus he knows what Silver must do.

“Then go,” he murmurs, letting go of his beloved’s other hand so Silver can hold both of them out towards the gems. So the hedgehog does, a hesitant step flowing into a more certain one into a full leap, and Espio fights to keep his eyes open against the glow of light that floods the psychic’s fur as the Emeralds spin around them both. It burns, it is too bright, but he can’t look away until the light has died down again into a warmer, gentler glow...!

Super Silver turns around, floating just a bit above the ashen-black soil, his smile radiant in a way the Emeralds could never be.

“Es. It’s so nice,” follows in a whisper. And Espio can understand why; any injury that had marred Silver’s beautiful form has disappeared, and from what he knows from Sonic, any exhaustion has left for a temporary boost in energy. Exactly the thing they need in this long, arduous battle.

With a nod towards his beloved Espio readies himself; there is no way Eggman won’t have noticed a new superpowered adversary on the battlefield, though Super Sonic is keeping the madman and his various creations busy enough up in the sky. “Up with you, then,” the chameleon adds, ever practical. Every second spent here is a wasted one, even if the way Silver’s pelt burns in gold and light red eyes stare at him with so much love makes it hard to even speak.

“I’ll be careful,” his beloved murmurs back, a shimmer of his psychokinesis nuzzling against Espio’s cheek. “Promise me you’ll be too.”

“I doubt Eggman will have much interest in what is happening on the ground after you join the fray in the sky.” But still, Espio presses his finger against the spark of power and smiles. If there is one of them who needs to be careful, it is him; Silver is all but untouchable in this state, they both know, yet his promise of being careful is exactly what the chameleon needs to hear. “Of course I will be too, tenshi. If there is anything, I will call for you.”

“And I’ll be there before you know it,” Silver beams, the tips of his boots brushing over the ground and making small blades of grasses and tiny golden flowers rise up wherever they touch the scorched earth. Turning his back towards Espio the hedgehog draws a deep breath, fists balled... before he freezes, head flicking around and red eyes peeking over his shoulders. “Kiss? For good luck?”

And Espio can’t help it; he laughs, because Silver is so adorable and innocent even despite the might and power more grand than the largest stars rolling off his whole being in waves, and the chameleon opens his arms for the other with no hesitation. Scorching heat and burning love hit him like a meteorite, and Silver’s hands dig into the back of his head as Espio’s fingers press themselves into golden fur and their lips mash together so hard it makes Espio’s body reel, for a moment that could well be eternity.

Burning.

Electrifying.

So much, all around him, bliss and infinity.

So much power he holds in a tender embrace, turning his whole world gold and bringing everything that has been lost here back to life, and so much love Silver feels for him and he feels for Silver.

Espio figures the only reason they break the kiss is because of a very impatient “Silver, get over here!” from high above, the younger golden hedgehog’s eyes shooting up guiltily.

“I think Sonic needs me,” gets mumbled against Espio’s mouth, the chameleon drawing his head away away with great regret. They are absolutely wasting time with this, the heavy thuds and gashunks of robots that must have evaded their friends slowly but surely nearing their position. For Silver or the Emeralds, possibly both; his beloved has a task to fulfil now, and Espio knows he will do so marvellously.

“Then go,” the chameleon repeats, overheated hands pulling themselves out of Silver’s raised tuft of fur and smoothing out his beloved’s prickly quills by instinct. “I’ll handle things here.”

A final kiss gets pressed to his brow, making his scales tingle and burn. Any injury on his own body has all but faded away, a quick look-over reveals alongside a quiet laugh from within his embrace. “For good luck,” Silver grins... before drawing a deep breath and pulling away as well, and Espio has to shield his eyes after all as golden light floods his vision anew and his beloved blasts up towards the sky, where the first golden spark is already madly dashing around Eggman’s giant robot with black smoke wafting from it at multiple places. With a second spark of light joining, Espio is certain the battle won’t last long anymore, nor will it end in Eggman’s favour; but until then, he himself has a promise to fulfil here on the ground to give his beloved all the support he can provide.

Espio spins on his heels and grabs his kunai, and robot after robot falls in an endless sea of golden flowers.

~~~~~

🥰 a fluff WIP snippet

From Flowers In A Desolate World (my desire to change this title is growing by the day); it's not one hundred percent fluff, but it features a very happy Silver, and I feel like it counts as well.

~~~~~

Eggman Nega was gone.

Silver had no idea how long he stood on the grassy grounds of Quartz Island, just staring up at the sky. The blue sky, dotted with a white cloud here and there like how he loved to see it so, the purple-expanse-turned-blue where the glowing swirls of a portal to another dimension had spazzed and jolted before fading away into dazzling sparks. With behind it the one person he hated and detested more than anything else trapped at the mercy of the monster that would have ruined this whole world, neither to ever be seen again.

Because of him.

He’d always known. He had been certain he could put a stop to this disaster, that the world of his future that had suddenly become a ruined inferno could be rescued, that his second trip to the past would be a success. It went almost exactly like how he had imagined it, in the little time he had spent thinking it over while madly rushing back in time towards Eggman Nega and this tiny island; he would put a stop the madman and the Ifrit and find a way to ensure neither could ever come back, to prevent the world from ever needing to suffer under their tyranny again.

And that had gone just perfect, and now a bright, dazzling smile graced Silver’s muzzle and got shot towards Espio beside him, and the sun was shining and the sky was blue and Eggman Nega was gone.

“What are your plans now?” the chameleon calmly spoke up, fiddling with some bandages to wrap around a scrape the Ifrit had inflicted on him. Espio had been such a huge help, the one thing Silver hadn’t expected but which had turned out to be precisely what he needed. Though, for his question the hedgehog had no answer, and thus he shrugged.

“I don’t know- well, I must go back to my era and see if it truly is saved.” But of course it was, there was no other option. “Really, thank you for your help, Espio. I’m going to miss you,” Silver added, the buzzing feeling of elatedness and delight in his chest only growing at the other’s fond chuckle.

“You are injured too, you know. I cannot in good conscience let you go back to your own era without at least offering you some hospitality in mine.”

Hand rubbing behind his head shyly – most people in the future behaved alright enough, daily mishaps aside, but everyone in the past was just so kind and welcoming and open-minded in comparison – Silver hummed. “I mean, it feels... irresponsible? To just go sight-seeing here? My duty is not over yet; I must return to the future and see if it is a happy one.” But that did not take away that a part of him did really want to stay, just for a while, to see how things were different between the two times and enjoy the company of the one friend and few acquaintances he had made here some more...

Espio raised one eyebrow, almost comically, and before he knew it Silver was laughing. “Okay, okay, I’ll stay here for a bit longer,” the hedgehog conceded. “But only because that’s what you want!”

“I reiterate my earlier statement,” the response came, Espio’s tail flicking over to the vast expanse of the island behind them. “Sonic and Tails are going to the Chao Garden here, if I am not mistaken. How about we join them, and travel to the mainland together afterwards? I am certain they would love to get to know you in calmer circumstances. We have much to talk about, after all.”

“We do. And I would like that,” Silver agreed, the world outside him glowing in the light of the setting sun as he took a step away from his last memories of Eggman Nega and the Ifrit. And another, and another, Espio calmly walking at his side and Silver barely able to stop himself from skipping and bouncing like a child. So much ahead of him, making him even more excited and bolstering his resolve only further with every breath he took. First this island, then this world. First the people here, then everybody else. First recover, then go back to the future.

With new people here in the past to carry in his heart and mind, who had promised him their friendship, and a soaring flutter of happiness went through Silver’s chest once more. Because for a moment, everything had seemed to go wrong, but then had gone so, so right instead.

Because of him, because of him, because of him.

#thanks for the ask! ^-^#silver the hedgehog #espio the chameleon #espilver #blue's writing

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lightns881 · 2 years

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so how would siblings work in the EM universe? you said that mundies and metas come from dna experimentation and alien radiation, which was passed down generations (idk i cant really remember) but does that mean siblings will always have the same powers? ik from dream and drista, powers won't always show up in both siblings. but IF they did, would they be the same? idrk how genetics work lmao

actually, that's a good question. how do powers form in kids? is it like a recessive gene that both parents need to have in order for it to be passed down? or do you only need it from one?

how do you even know that you're a mundie? it was mentioned that julie was excited to see what powers she'd have, but how did they know she was a mundie before her powers presented?

can someone have dormant genes? can people with dormant genes have their powers unlocked?

what determines which powers you get? are there specific genes for different powers, or is it all just chance?

has there ever been a case where someone (besides deltas) obtained multiple powers from their parents? or do the two different genes just cancel out?

if both of your parents were mundies, would you be more powerful than a mundie whose parents were regular humans?

is there a meta gene?

are there any dominant genes? maybe that's why metas are so rare, bc mundie genes are dominant to meta ones?

are genetics related to how powerful you'll be, like do they affect how much delta energy you have?

can parents only have one EM child? because there have been no mentions of EM siblings.

god i sound like a science geek but i love learning about the origins of things, even if theyre fictional.

also, this is kind of a funny question, but what was aether's legacy? like not the fanfic lmao, but the actual person. what was her legacy? i feel like aether was kind of a big part of the last installment, but we never really got to learn that much about her. is george her legacy??? is he going to learn something about her and unlock some new secret power that and become 10x more badass? idrk how that would work out though because their villain isnt some evil superpowered bad guy, it's just some politician and discrimination.

i always had a theory that psyche was like the avatar state. instead of psyche being only YOUR consciousness, it's also every other previous metapsychic's consciousness. and that's why they're so powerful, bc they can call upon the power of everyone before them. that would be kinda cool ngl. still wouldnt make that much sense given the storyline, but cool nonetheless.

also, do the bergman defenders wear any suits or masks? i would assume they do to conceal their identity, because there's no way they're pulling off all of these operations with their faces completely exposed. no wonder they haven't been stopped, the authorities are so incompetent. wait, are their identities a secret? or are they just all wanted criminals?

omg back to the sibling thing, imagine a pair of meta siblings, that would be so fucking epic. i know cc!george mentioned having a sister, so imagine there was another Notfound metapsychic running around. BRO IMAGINE THE TEAMUP THAT WOULD BE SO COOL

can psychics link up their powers telepathically? i can't stop envisioning them joining their powers together. like imagine george, an OP telekinetic, linking up with callahan, a master telepath. ahsjfjsndjd they would be unstoppable. LE GASP IMAGINE CALLAHAN TEACHING GEORGE MORE ABOUT THE TELEPATHIC ASPECT OF HIS POWERS, THAT WOULD BE SUCH A GOOD BONDING MOMENT FOR THEM. also i just love callahan and i wanna see more of him.

what exactly are masters? are they just mundies who happen to have more raw power than average? like are you born as a master? or can you train yourself to become one? i always assumed you could just train yourself to become a master, but maybe that's not the case???? i know that type III pyschics are telepaths, but you also emphasized that callahan was a MASTER telepath, so is there a difference?

is george considered a master? bc from what we've seen, george hasn't really explored the full potential of his powers. like ofc he's super powerful, but that's not what being a master is (at least not by my definition). masters are usually defined by their level of proficiency in whatever trait they posess, not necessarily how much raw power they have. ig some masters could be more powerful than others depending on their level of raw power. like there could be a type I psychic who's a god at telekinesis but can't do telepathy. or a type III psychic who's a master telepath, but their telekinesis is really weak compared to their telepathy. i feel like george hasn't really become fully proficient with his powers yet, he just has A LOT of raw power. i suppose he wouldn't really need to become a master though, bc he's powerful enough as is.

I'll start off by saying that Extramundanes resulted from a mutation hundreds of years ago to an undiscovered "dark" gene in human DNA called EXM-13. There are special circumstances that "activate" this gene, but the gist is that it's related to Delta radiation (a type of radiation that was first observed in meteorites and other space material). Delta radiation is harmful to people without the EXM-13 gene and to those with an "unactivated" EXM-13.

To be (or to become) an Extramundane, you must have an active EXM-13 (I won't delve into "becoming" lore but it's related to how EMs were created). People with active EXM-13 genes require Delta energy to survive. EM bodies generally produce this on their own, and the more powerful an EM, the more Delta energy they are able to produce. EMs unable to produce Delta energy develop what is called Delta Deficiency Disorder (D3), and although some low-level EMs who do not require so much energy can manage to live receiving Delta treatments for life, most are unable to. This is why D3 is such a deadly disease that is predicted to "wipe out" EMs in the future, at least of what we know thus far.

EMs generally pass down their EXM-13 gene to their children (it isn't a super rare gene or anything), whether its active or inactive is another question. Two EMs are more likely to birth a child with an active EXM-13, but figuring out if its active is hard to do until the child develops their abilities and starts producing Delta energy on their own. For someone like Julie, whose parents are both EMs, it is likely that she will, too, have an active EXM-13.

A human and an EM can also birth an EM, but the possibility decreases down the line. Power levels highly depend on genetics, but the longer the bloodline goes on, the less powerful EMs are. But, of course, there are exceptions.

In uncommon circumstances, two humans can birth an EM child. This is because, as I had said before, the EXM-13 gene is pretty common. What is uncommon is for it to be active. Whether it's because they have an EM in their family or because they had a bit of residue Delta energy left in their system from the old days when things were crazy, an EM can be born out of two human parents. This is the case with George, Sapnap, Dream and Techno. It works the same vice-versa. It's uncommon, but two EM parents can birth a human child.

The word "Master" is a bit of a misnomer. Masters aren't necesarilly EMs with skilled abilities, they are EMs with a very high level of power. Every class has Masters. For Elementals and Bios, every type has Masters. There is technically only "one" type of Psychic, but they are separated into the three powers generally observed. Type 3 Psychics, Telepaths, and Master Psychics are different names for the same thing. A Type 3 Psychic is a Master, and it meants their abilities range all the way up to telepathic abilities.

Powers are for the most part influenced by chance, but if you have two Elemental parents, you will probably be an Elemental. Same with power levels. Power levels are more related to genetics, but it can also be by chance. Like George whose parents are humans but he turned out to be a power bomb.

You can have EM siblings, there just hasn't been any portrayed in the story, I don't think. But I do have an old story about twins with Elemental powers and a random cat girl (I had a phase, okay?)

Since I'm now fairly certain the original Extramundane will never see the light of day, I'll be less secretive about it if it's something y'all are interested on (it's pretty basic tbh). There are seven originals (for the funsies, if I remember correctly, their names were Wendy, Chase, Cai, Nathan, Katie, Jennifer, and Lucy/Lucifer (I had another different phase, okay?). Wendy was the founder of AGE. These seven are generally cited in the history books. But really? There were eight. Wendy had a twin sister, Evelyn, who was also an EM, and she was thought to have died. Evelyn was the first Psychic. She was also my favorite character (short for: she went through a lot of crap). In Book II of the original series, Evelyn goes through a bit of an identity crisis but because she had super-mega-OP-it-should-not-be-allowed kind of power, her mind develops Psyche, and as it turns out, a traumatized still-a-child-inside adult can really project a lot of her hurt into the world. She's basically the villain of the sequel, and she does a lot of messed up things even though she had done very good things before. There's actually very small references to her and the rest in Chapter 3 of Aether's Legacy.

But anyhow, it's awesome when I see people take interest in world building lore because I remember having been so excited back when I first created this universe :D so thank you!

#aethers legacy #elysium #ama #extramundane

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moonchild-things · 1 year

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Chapter Three: Shun Kaido, AKA The Jet-Black Wings

Summary: Being a psychic is not an ideal life, at least for Saiki Kusuo. Didn’t you read/watch The Disastrous Life of Saiki K to know that? Still, this isn’t about him, not really. Instead, let’s focus on his one and only friend, Akari Watanabe, who is also quite abnormal. You might not believe that Saiki would actually have a friend, but that’s what fanfictions are about, right?

Word Count: 2515

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WALKING TO SCHOOL IN THE MORNING WAS a tad bit more annoying than usual which was due to the fact that a blue-haired, eighth grad minded boy had joined the pair of superpowered teens on their walk. Unfortunately, there was another weirdo who had latched themselves onto Kusuo and, by association, Akari. Unlike Nendo, Kaido Shun wasn't completely stupid which meant that Kusuo could read his thoughts, which he wished wasn't true. All Kaido ever thinks about is how he's the "Jet-Black Wings'' and about the Dark Reunion, an evil organization after him. It was extremely annoying.

Akari didn't mind Kaido all that much, as long as he didn't go on and on about his secret power and his destiny. He was tolerable to a degree. Though he was just like everyone else who never noticed her and mistook her for a shadow. However, she did find amusement from his reaction to when he did notice. She found it quite cute.

Now, Akari sat in her seat all the way in the back of the classroom, completely unseen by just about everyone, including the teacher. It was in the corner of the class almost completely in the shadows which Akari appreciated so much. No one bothered her when she wanted to take a nap in the back of the class or if she was annoyed. It was a little piece of paradise for her. Something that Kusuo envied quite a bit.

"Hey did you hear the news?" An unnamed male student asked, grabbing Kaido's attention from across the room. "A poisonous snake is on the loose!"

Another student, a boy with boring brown hair gasped, "Seriously? That's so dangerous!"

"Are you sure it's loose?" Kaido walked up to them, as cool as he could with his school jacket around his shoulders like a cape. He had a faux sense of confidence around him that only ever comes out when he acts as his hero persona, Jet-Black Wings. His fantasy went as far as him wrapping up both of his arms every day in red bandages to "keep his powers from overtaking him" or something silly like that. The mind of an eighth-grader, I'm telling you. "Sounds like another Dark Reunion's lie. But they can't fool the Jet-Black Wings! Someone must have released that snake!"

"Wait a minute!" A third unnamed and unimportant student shouted, "You know who did this?"

"Did this Jet-Black Wings dude do it?" The other boy asked in confusion.

"No!" Kaido called out, "I'm the Jet-Black Wings! A secret society called the Dark Reunion is behind it! And this is the first step in their Human Sorting Plan!"

'Dark Reunion!' The other students thought to themselves in shock before rolling their eyes and walking away from the self-proclaimed superhero. 'Never heard of them. What a waste of time.'

Kaido just scoffed lightly at their dismissal of the dangerous secret society. He slides over to Kusuo with his arms crossed, trying to pretend like he wasn't upset at the other students ignoring him. "I guess it's up to us superheroes. Right, Saiki?"

'Whatever.' Kusuo rolled his eyes, 'Of course, he doesn't know I'm actually a psychic. It's all just part of his fantasy.'

'At least he can talk to you,' Akari huffed and pushed some of her hair out of her vibrant eyes while still sitting at her desk across the room. She gazed at the pair with a small bored uptick of her lips. 'He can barely even form a sentence when he does notice me.' Akari doesn't like having attention on her, though there are times that she would like to be treated as a normal person. A simple "hello" or "how are you?" from someone could go a long way. The only ones who do that are the Saikis, her own family, and Nendo, which is nice and all, but she would like to have someone other than them acknowledge her without her having to go out of her way to get them to see her. Though when Kaido does see her, he is unable to speak to girls and it is so painful at times. However, Akari found it entertaining and cute at times.

"Saiki, tell me what you think. I don't like this one bit. That snake, which I have named the Murder Dragoram Snake, is probably no ordinary snake!" Kaido said passionately, still going on about his fantasy narrative about him being a hero.

'That's quite the dramatic name.' Kusuo commented which caused Akari to giggle softly across the room.

Kaido continued, "This Murder Dragoram Snake is probably a dangerous monster created in a top-secret Dark Reunion lab."

'That's all speculation.'

"It's up to us." He said heroically, "We must save humanity from..."

Suddenly, another student burst through the door, cutting the "Jet-Black Wings" off, "Hey, they caught the snake!"

Kaido froze. A different student sighed in relief, "Thank goodness! Where was it?"

"In front of the gate. Apparently it was nearly dead," he explained.

'No way!' The Jet-Black Wings mentally gasped, 'Could there be others with powers like our own out there? Is my theory about Watanabe-chan true!'

Kusuo eyed him with agitation in his violet irises, 'You're what about Watanabe?'

The students continued to discuss the now nearly dead snake. "Why was it almost dead?"

"They say some elementary school kids were messing with it."

Akari cringed at the mental image of a couple of young kids using the poor snake as a whip. A horrible and painful way to go, humiliating as well. Kusuo did the same with a raised eyebrow, 'Who knew the Murder Dragoram Snake was so weak?'

"Guess the Dark Reunion isn't a threat after all." A student called out to Kaido who seemed to be hurt that his fantasy had broken slightly.

"Careful, now!" A boy called out sarcastically, "This is a secret society we're talking about!"

A girl laughed along with the teasing, "Watch yourself or you will be sorted."

Kaido huffed and made sure that his eyes were hidden by his hair. Akari frowned at the sight. "Go ahead, laugh while you can. It's the calm before the storm. They're coming for us. I tried to warn you..." It was obvious that he was trying to keep the tears from coming out of his baby blue eyes. Sure, Kaido could be a bit much and quite childish, but there was no need to bully him over it, Akari thought. It was a harmless game that he liked to play with himself, he wasn't hurting anyone while doing it so Akari thought that he should be left alone. As much as she hated dealing with people and being noticed by them sometimes, she didn't like seeing their feelings hurt like this.

She finally stood up from her shadowy paradise and glided over to her psychic friend. Her small figure weaving through the desks and other students who shivered as a cold wind brushed over them. She crossed her arms and tilted her head. 'He's going to cry, isn't he.'

'Yup.' Kusuo simply answered.

Akari sighed with a small, sad breath, 'I almost feel bad for him... almost.'

Kusuo was then struck with a premonition and suddenly stood up abruptly from his desk. Akari watched as he started to walk out of the classroom with a raised eyebrow. 'We should go too.' He barely looked in Akari's direction but knew that she would come with him. She truly is a shadow the more you think about it. Always in the background sticking to places where someone could barely see her and hiding behind the pink-haired psychic like he was a wall and following him in nearly every step he took. Why couldn't he have been blessed with the amazing power that she had? The little to no effort that she put into being completely inconspicuous was a trait he envied.

'Huh? Why?' Akari mentally asked as she followed after her one and only friend like a lost puppy. They walked towards the bathrooms where Kusuo walked right in. Knowing that she couldn't be seen walking into the boy's bathroom, Akari turned herself into a shadow and slipped through the door completely unnoticed as she followed Kusuo into a stall. Now, she didn't usually do anything like this. So don't think she is some kind of pervert or anything! There was no way that she would ever abuse her powers to do something as idiotic and disgusting as this. The only reason she ever did this was when Kusuo told her to follow him in there which was not as often as you might think. Please, we all know that neither of them are like that perverted medium that has yet to show his stupid face in this fanfic.

So now, Kusuo sat on the toilet seat while Akari hovered in her shadowy form on one of the walls of the stall. Her glittering yellow eyes were the only real visible attribute to her which gave her quite a menacing appearance. In this form, her eyes seemed to sharpen in a seemingly dangerous way. The narrowed yellow eyes appeared to be those of a cat as they glowed through the waves of shadows that rolled off of her. If someone were to see her like this, they may think she was some kind of ghost or demon. The only one who didn't fear her like this was Kusuo. Though that was because he was far too overpowered to be frightened by a shadow manipulator who could barely cause anyone harm.

She gazed down at him as her form gracefully floated against the wall. Her sharp eyes watched as her friend crossed his eyes behind his glasses and used his clairvoyance to see what was happening in their classroom. The yellow-eyed shadow wasn't exactly sure what was going on in her classroom, though she suspected it was bad from the distant screams coming from down the hall.

Kusuo watched as the students in their class screamed and freaked out about the snake that was now slithering around the floor. He couldn't help but feel a little bit of satisfaction at the fact that they were being tormented after bullying Kaidou. Kusuo didn't care all that much about how Kaidou was treated, however, he knew for a fact that Akari did. So he knew that he wouldn't hear her complain about this all that much after school. As much as he tolerated Akari, she became a tad bit more annoying when she was angered and complaining about something. 'I saw that whole thing coming thanks to my powers.'

'What's happening?' Akari mentally asked him as she stared at her silent friend. She had no idea what was currently happening and was quite curious.

Kusuo uncrossed his purple eyes and glanced quickly up at her, 'There's a snake in the classroom.'

'Oh, really?' She asked in surprise as her invisible eyebrow raised. 'Quite strange how there happened to be two snakes loose at school.'

Akari still had no idea what was happening and Kusuo had yet to narrate to her what was occurring. It was slightly frustrating, she should have just stayed in the classroom. Not like anyone would have noticed her anyway. The one thing she did notice was the sound of Kaido crying in the stall right next to them. If it was one thing that Akari hated the most, it was people crying. It was such an uncomfortable thing to witness someone crying, in her opinion. She never knew what to do in that situation. A few moments pass with nothing for Akari besides the fact that the horrid crying from Kaidou had stopped.

As far as she knew, chaos was still ensuing in their classroom. Though at the moment, Kaidou had just courageously stepped in front of one of his female classmates to protect her from the snake that had lunged at her. Akari watched as Kusuo's eyes flashed brightly, signifying that he was using his powers for something. For what, she didn't know. Once again, she was stuck in the dark in this situation, and this wasn't the kind of dark that she liked.

Kusuo eventually stood up and started to exit the stall to leave the bathroom. Akari followed after him with her figure flowing against the floor and walls. When they got back in the hall and made sure there was no one around, Akari reformed back into her physical form and looked up at her friend with wide eyes. 'You took care of it?'

The pink-haired psychic sighed. He already knew what she was thinking at the moment, he didn't even need his mind-reading for it. Just because he was forced to "help" people from time to time, didn't mean that he considered them friends in any regard. Akari herself was probably the only person that he could possibly consider a friend. Though even then he still wouldn't say it out loud. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye as they entered back into their classroom. The students were still celebrating the miraculous lighting-like powers that Kaidou may or may not have possessed to kill the snake. 'As far as everyone else knows the Jet-Black Wings took care of the snake.'

Akari knew that as much as Kusuo liked to say he didn't care, he always does something to contradict that. He usually ended up helping someone he deemed annoying in some way or another. He looked after people who he would say that aren't his friends. He's just too tsundere to admit that he has actual friends. 'Hmm, and for some reason, you say you don't care.'

'Care about an idiot like Kaidou?' Kusuo's eyebrow twitched at the notion she was trying to insinuate. 'Of course not.'

Akari just giggled. The hauntingly pleasant sound just ticked off Kusuo a little bit more already hearing her thoughts about how she doubted him. It didn't matter, because he doesn't care what happens to these people. They were just annoyances that he had to suffer through on a daily basis. He only looked out to make sure that they weren't harmed so that there weren't any problems that could arise from them getting hurt. There was no way that he did any of this because they were friends or because it upset Akari to a degree. It's not like he cared how she felt about things like this. Why would he?

Later in the day, in their next class, Kaido now sat lazily in his seat with a smug smirk on his face. He had already been causing a bit more trouble because of his new confidence in his "powers". Their teacher stood over the blue-haired boy with a scowl, "I'm not liking this new attitude of yours, Kaido."

"Watch your tone." Kaido said sassily, "Unless you wish to be hunted by the Judgment Knights of Thunder."

"Counselor's room, now." The teacher ordered him, to the poor boy's dismay.

'That guy is hopeless.' Akari and Kusuo thought in unison while shaking their heads at him.

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#saiki #saiki k #saiki no psi nan #the disasterous life of saiki k #saiki k fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #anime fanfiction #anime #the shadows tales #OC #ocs #multiple ocs #male!oc #male oc #female oc #female!oc

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sunkern-plus · 2 years

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okay, the MAD GEAR GANG (because it’s gonna be written like an old 60s comic but...tbh i’m gonna write it like a chris claremont style comic but Scripted) is a group of SUPERPOWERED FREAKS, mainly YOUTHS, led by POLITICIAN AND BELGER FOUNDATION MEMBER BY DAY, JEDIDIAH BELGER.

he is a POWERFUL TELEPATH, who has the ability to READ MINDS, TRACK PEOPLE USING HIS MIND (basically like professor x being able to go into people’s heads and see where they are because he’s in a wheelchair and can’t move, i don’t remember if niles caulder is able to do this though), TELEKENETIC POWERS, and MORE. but nobody knows he’s a telepath because he has to keep his FREAKISH POWERS he DEVELOPED AT A YOUNG AGE to COMPENSATE for his birth defect in his legs and feet that leave him unable to actually walk, and nobody even knows that he has the MAD GEAR GANG as a POWERFUL CRIMESTOPPING VIGILANTE FORCE of YOUTHS that he SENDS OUT ON MISSIONS to stop CRIMES IN SECRET.

the MAD GEAR GANG was made because his opponent, and lifelong friend and rival MICHAEL “MIKE” HAGGAR did not make some good decisions in his first term as mayor. in his first term as mayor he did not, as belger suggested, advance disability rights and justice in metro city, and did not, again as belger suggested, solve the poverty problem in metro city especially among marginalized youths. but people finding out MAYORAL CANDIDATE JEDIDIAH BELGER also created the MAD GEAR GANG, a VIGILANTE ORGANIZATION OF SUPERPOWERED FREAKS, would not be for good publicity because one of haggar’s NEW electoral promises is to “legislate against people with superpowers” because of course every superhero story has to have a tony stark “let’s ban people with superpowers because banning an entire group of people ALWAYS goes well” type.

so the first SUPERPOWERED FREAK he meets is abigail, a 21 year old man who’s dropped of college to work odd jobs (and do the occasional criminal activity) to pay for the removal of his pituitary tumor which is slowly killing him. he also, conveniently enough, has the power to GROW and later SHRINK to incredible sizes when he feels threatened. he goes over to belger’s estate, intending to rob him because...to be fair, when you’re broke and disabled in metro city, some rich sucker’s gotta pay for it. belger senses him coming because of his PSYCHIC ABILITIES however, and decides to put the boy to a test. he decides to form the MAD GEAR GANG with this young SUPERPOWERED YOUTH right then and there...IF he can withstand his PSYCHIC DEATH TRAPS. (meaning, making plates fall and making him hear his voice in a spooky scary way.)

abigail proves his courage, all without using his superpowers, and makes his way to belger. belger is like, “well done, SUPERPOWERED YOUTH! i know you came her with ill intent, but i mean you no harm! i actually am doing a favor for you!” abigail thinks he’s trying to psych him out, so he’s like “feh, what kind of SILLY OLD MAN is gonna psych me out with his jedi mind powers?” or however chris claremont would write a 21 year old with a pituitary tumor who had to drop out of college who’s also committed criminal activity before. belger, sensing he has POWERS BEYOND THE HUMAN’S IMAGINATION, decides to drop a heavy object on abigail. abigail suddenly GROWS TWICE HIS NORMAL HEIGHT and CRUSHES THE VALUABLE OBJECT IN HIS HAND OUT OF FEAR!

belger may have wasted a priceless heirloom from his mother (and is kicking himself for thinking he’d break that), but with the discovery of his first SUPERPOWERED YOUTH, he offers up a question of a lifetime: “abigail, in exchange for the money that you desire...i want you to join the MAD GEAR GANG, a SUPERPOWERED VIGILANTE GROUP i made up to fight the forces of evil from the shadows, because the people who need people like us most also fear us the most.” and abigail, thinking of all the times people have treated him poorly because of his gigantism and his migraines and his seizures and the times his mother ran out of insulin because she was poor, shakes his hand on it. “hell yeah, brother! i’m gonna be the best superpowered mutant freak you could ask for, jedi dude!”

and this is how the first issue ends, because i don’t know who is going to be in it (besides belger as the mission control, abigail, poison (most likely as the leader), hugo, roxy (as the heart of the group), and probably a couple other characters i can’t think of). along the way, they meet occasional ally and sometimes enemy ROLENTO, who is a FORMER VETERAN OF THE GULF WAR who can’t tell who is FRIEND OR FOE, CODY TRAVERS, a young man who tries to pursue justice, but GOES ABOUT IT THE WRONG WAY, and the spunky journalist LUCIA ISABEL-MORGAN, who MAY HAVE SUPERPOWERS HERSELF.

...screw this this idea is so fun and self indulgent that i HAVE to follow up on it. all my BEST fanfictions are this self indulgent so this one will probably be so good

(also it’s completely set in metro city so no usual characters like dan, seth, sakura, blanka, ryu, ken, chun li or juri in it)

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hermitcraftheadcanons · 3 years

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Hermitopia AU Masterpost 1 [COMPLETE]

This is a gathering place for the events of the Hermitopia AU, as well as art and writing resulting from it (art and writing listed at the bottom). Please read the AU introduction and rules here before submitting! Feel free to join the discussions on the HCHC discord server!

(Disclaimer/PSA: All points are asks contributed by the community, the mods take no credit for the ideas within them)

If you would like specific credit in the masterpost, please sign within the text of the ask! (A dash and a signature at the end should do.) Asks not signed will be treated as anonymous.

Summary posts:

Not all elements of plot and character will be summarized, but here are a few basic things you may want to be familiar with before submitting an ask! (Unless you are purposely aiming to create an [ALTERNATE] idea for a Hermit)

1 - Starting positions and each Hermit's powers (based on the submissions from Day 1)

Summary post 2 - Interpersonal connections (based on Day 1 and 2 submissions)

Make sure to check out the second masterpost here for more up to date information, including newer art and writing!

Asks:

- (copied ask) [summarized mod comment]

- Hermitopia | Scar was experimented on by Cub. He gained dangerous powers and wings that resemble a dragon’s, but he keeps both hidden. Unless someone makes him angry. He has no idea who gave him his powers. Eventually he and Cub decided that they wanted to control things beyond their corporation, so Scar ran for mayor. (there are things to fill in but im lazy) [Scar assumes he got the powers in an accident during research. He enjoys having them but has no idea that they were intentional.]

- Hermitopia AU team ZIT is a superpowered crime-fighting trio!

- owing to a very particular set of guidelines he put in place, Joe can now copy powers if he sees them in use and can reverse-engineer how those powers are used. needless to say, this is massively overpowered in the right hands.but it got worse. at some point, there was an... incident... on ConCorp grounds, something to do with a mass amount of entities causing time dilation -- and Joe was caught in the thick of it, unable to be rescued for a while.the problem is, he got out by piecing together how the time dilation worked.needless to say, Joe... has a ridiculous powerset. so he chooses largely not to use his powers anymore unless it's absolutely dire or petty enough to shrug off as a random occurrence. nobody needs to know that one of the most powerful Unaffiliated in the city is standing right in front of them... especially not ConCorp.

- doc was a former high ranking employee of concorp before he volunteered for an experiment and it went horribly wrong. since then, the company has tried to erase any evidence of his existence. doc is now seeking revenge for all that the company did to him and is determined to tear it apart

- HI ok follow up asks will be sent later when my thoughts are coherent but concept: cleo has like super messed up healing powers where she can make healing go Too Far. also i pin her as unbound, considering, like, everything - shovel-shuffle

- So, his power was meant to be super-regen, right? except things don't always quite go to plan. Someone volunteered for the powers surgeries and is arguably dead. Etho is a name shared by the many many clones that developed themselves out of the leftovers. They're not quite individuals, not quite a hivemind. Any one of them has no fear of death because the others will continue, but they all act independently around their overarching goal. (which I won't snitch about) - DragonKay

- Bdubs was a hero. Key word? Was. He climbed the ranks through the government, he was a loyal and dutiful member of society, and he used his plant manipulation powers to subdue evil-doers without hurting them. But he’s always been a friendly guy, and he couldn’t help himself—talking to the Unrestrained, especially those in custody, was interesting! ...but it’s a slippery slope to walk, being friendly with the enemy and not sympathizing to their cause. Nobody knows where he is now, but there are rumours of a vigilante with similar abilities, and his three compatriots, two of whom he helped escape from ConCorp... They call themselves the nHo. - slimetek [Bdubs deserted Concorp while helping Doc escape after his experiment went wrong]

- Concorp managed to make a device that allows animals to speak or translate their thoughts into writing. This means that the good old mayor Scar has a certain cat giving some advice on how to run the city.

- Iskall is an assasin/mercenary against their own volition. An accident they'd rather forget almost killed them, and in exchange for their freedom and free will they got to live as a cyborg. Though its hard to forget with the implant that covers their eye and the limb of cool metal hanging at their side - @ghastly-ghostie [Iskall works for Concorp off-books, bound by the debt owed to them for the life saving experimental modifications]

- so I think grians original powers could be like cloning, but something goes wrong and the clones are different people. as a result of the duplication process, some funky magic rocks are made. the clones decide to take most of the funky rocks and run off, leaving grian with one rock that gives him some new abilities and the clones' rocks give him others. also uhh mechanical wings bc yes. so grians plot is him trying to find them while also causing problems on purpose. infinity stones. update to my grian ask from earlier, I had better ideas: the rocks are old like magic things that grian finds before the cloning and ends up collecting, but his clones snatch them - simplyskipper [some of the alternate Grians are aligned with different factions in Hermitopia, while the locations of others are farther or unknown]

- Hermitopia- Impulse has solid-light powers. He has golden crystals implanted in his hands, which he can reflect light through to solidify it into all sorts of shapes. This can be used to make barriers, projectiles, and much more, though more detailed constructs take more time.- @mleemwyvern

- Hermitopia AU Poultry man is a well-known chaotic neutral leaning towards good, as a one of the unrestrained.

- I think Team ZIT should be a little be wild card-y, that's how they act after all! [they are employed by the government for standard crimefighting, but they don't always take Scar's word at its intended meaning and often play a bit on the chaotic side when given instructions]

- [Hermitopia AU] False is an antihero/vigilante type who's specialty is not defined by powers or the such, but just... the absolute skill of being able to dual wield two (more sci-fi era) short swords. Maybe someone upgrades them to be "enchanted" (electrical, fire, etc. something that tech could do well probably). She's willing to be paid-for-hire, but if you go past her moral line she's also willin' to backstab you. -- @cheshire-vex [she's a free agent who sort of drifts between Concorp, the government, and whoever else will pay her on a job-by-job basis]

- Hermitopia impulse has more connections then one may think. He has ties to people pretty much everywhere, for reasons unknown. There is a 100% someone will come and greet him wherever he goes. [the greetings are usually friendly]

- Hermitopia Au! Keralis is a hero who most people wouldn't expect to be too skilled at fighting. His power is similar to hypnosis so he has no need to get very physical. Yeah, that changed when some bastard villain decided to attack his friends shop. [that incident caused his employer Scar to realize his untapped potential for protecting people and assign him to a few more high-stakes jobs]

- Hermittopia!TFC was one of ConCorp’s first experiments and as such his powers are a bit less...refined then the others. He has geokinetic powers, allowing him to psychically control rocks and other earthen materials. He used to be one of the VEX programs top graduates, but has since parted ways with them for unknown reasons and now operates his own plans of keep crime in Hermitopia under control. -lechairpourriedegrianri [he is considered Unaffiliated and both Concorp and the government largely leave him to his own devices, since he is helping to keep the city together]

-Wels doesn't have powers. He does have a super-suit made of fire and heat resistant carbon fibre (like the material used for the space shuttle) and has a built in hologram projector. One time, he used the hologram projector to project an image of himself, which everyone thought was a clone. He didn't have the heart to tell them otherwise. (AKA everyone thinks Wels has powers but he doesn't) -Silverwolf53 [he got the suit in Project VEX]

- To follow up on the Impulse ask- Team ZIT are a space-themed superhero team. Government-aligned, at least for now.Tango has meteor-like powers, he can shoot fire from his hands and feet and often uses this to propel himself at high speeds. Zed has gravity powers! He can increase or decrease the density of any object, to the point of making small black holes. They all have space-themed costumes, and it was probably Zed's idea. - @mleemwyvern

- TFC was the first participant in project VEX

- Grian was an attempted success. It fixed some problems with Etho's unintended cloning, but at the same time created some problems of its own, seeing as the clones appeared to have a life of their own.It's fine, though. It's probably fine

- I would say Grian is unrestrained, a bit like Etho, Chaotic in his own way. Does not activily Try to hurt people, but does mostly what he wants for fun.-Ciara

- Xisuma is a civilian- he has hero friends, but despite all their teasing he’s never wanted to go through VEX training. But in the night, the unrestrained Void walks the streets [Void is a symbiotic creature made of nothingness that uses Xisuma's body as a substitute physical form]

- Bdubs was such a good man... he could be trusted to look after Doc, couldn’t he? Somebody had to oversee him, somebody who was reliable and would never, ever consider betraying the mayor and ConCorp...They let their guard down, and Bdubs got curious. Bdubs made a friend.And then they lost him.- Slimetek

- The hels hermits are considered evil by default. How do you spot these clones, how could you protect yourself? Well in the past it was a lot easier, just look for their red eyesNowadays contacts exist but that doesn't stop people trying to call the police on tango, calling him a hels. Hes netherian, they have unnatural eye colours and their iris fills the entire eye, hes not evil but if people keep doing this hes gonna be!

- Beef woke up from his brain surgery to receive telepathy powers, took one look into the mind of the overseer, and noped put of there as fast as he could go.He's on very public record. After all, the mind control he may be capable of is a very convenient explanation for anyone who turns against concorp... ~DragonKay

- Hypno can’t control minds.They say he does. It’s why he’s named Hypno, after all.In reality, he can’t control people like that... but he can control what they see.Your best friend might look like your greatest enemy. A pit of lava might look like solid ground. A 100-foot drop might look like a step down.It’s a good thing he’s a hero, and a good thing he keeps his true powers hidden beneath a guise of low-level hypnotism. There’s no telling what he could do if they let him go. [he works for Concorp, helping to protect VEX trainees from people trying to harm them before they get a chance to finish the program, as well as keeping other resources safe]

- The 9th Street Incident [referring to an earlier Impulse comment] was a friendly greeting. That particular version of Etho just thought that drawing weapons would be a friendly greeting for Impulse, but Tango and Zed seem to disagree

- They still don’t trust Bdubs. He was with the government for a long time, and things are hard out there on the run. Besides, they don’t know what he got up to there. ConCorp could have any sort of information on him, something that might scare him back.Bdubs understands this. He doesn’t want to go back. He’d hate to go back....but they think he will, and maybe there’s something he’s not telling them. An ace that ConCorp has yet to play.- Slimetek

- Mumbo works for concorp as an engineer specialising in robotics, most recently taking on the task of maintaining Iskall's cybernetics that somehow they just keep damaging. Iskall assures him they're just.. very clumsy. So far Mumbo hasn't caught on.

- Ren's power is that hes a werewolf, but he only found out when he was in his late teens with his childhood friend Iskall. He still feels guilty about it, he did kill his best friend afterall. Or so he thinks.He's lived off grid ever since, too overwhelmed with grief and guilt to rejoin society. Most assume he's dead too - @ghastly-ghostie [Ren dropped Iskall off to Concorp as a last ditch effort, running away before he could see whether they took his friend in or not. They did, starting Iskall's plotline. Iskall told Concorp about Ren's abilities, triggering a panic in the Concorp ranks at the fact that Ren is a superhuman being created by some force other than their own project]

- Where does Void come from? The same place all powers come from.Little did they know, something survived the crash and has taken a human host. Maybe it's not the only one...No, that place is not Concorp. Concorp's original goal was to develop technology by reverse-engineering from a crashed alien spaceship. These aliens did gene-editing the way some people do nose jobs, so they adapted that technology, too.~DragonKay

- i've already said a bit about it in the discord but i have hermitopia cleo brainrot. joe being there was able to save her by giving her the regen powers along with her puppeteering telekinesis power. anyways cleo is presumed dead, sent by concorp into a mission as fodder basically until zit could arrive. but now there's is one (1) bitter undead vigilante against concorp that is presumed dead

- Stress’s name has a few meanings in relation to her. Whenever she gets too angry or /stressed/, she transforms into the StressMonster, a monster that feeds off of other people’s stress to become more powerful. Luckily, the monster is rarely seen, but does terrible things when she is. She’s one of the most feared creatures in Hermitopia. Stress hates her and tries her best to hide her from her friends, but it can backfire sometimes. - @guster-animations

- to follow-up on Joe being presumed dead: remember the time dilation incident he was stuck in? ConCorp figured it was best to cut their losses and not try to send anyone in to rescue him -- it would be a pointless mission. so they abandoned him, quietly announced that he had died in the line of duty, and put the affected area under high security clearance in order to prevent any future accidents. they figured he was already dead. and Joe figures, given that they up and abandoned him, maybe it's for the best that they continue to figure just that. he changed his last name to "Hills" -- a joke about the biome containing the time anomaly -- and otherwise proceeded to stay under the radar. he still uses the time dilation area as a base of operations, sometimes; it's very useful to have a hideout that people physically cannot get into/out of without his direct assistance. is he nursing a grudge, coming up with some convoluted scheme to get back at the paramilitary group for abandoning him? or does he just want to live a relatively normal life off the grid? who knows. that's the Joe [REDACTED] Hills difference. -@betweenlands

- False has some big scary power that is almost Eldritch she just happens to prefer a sword and doesn’t really care for who she works for as long as they’re paying... (they don’t need to know of the power that had harmed the ones she loves the most)

- Keralis once encountered Void sulking around where Xisuma worked. So fearful for his friend’s safety, he used his power on Void and told him to go away. Apparently the charm is still active, because if Void spots Keralis anywhere, he’ll turn tail and run. No, it’s not because he’s scared. Absolutely not.

- Grumbot serves as a sentient supercomputer created by Mumbo for Grian. Grian is using Grumbot for... various activities, all of which harmless, but a certain evil clone [Helsknight] has reverse engineered the technology. Concorp would like for Mumbo to give them the tech, but mumbo stuck some eyes to the computer, got emotionally attached, and refuses to give up his baby boy.

- When Impulse hears his friend/colleague Bdubs has been "taken over" by the mind-controller [Beef], he wants to go on an off-the-books mission to rescue him! Just giving up like they were told to isn't in his nature.Of course the rest of ZIT are with him. Heroes save people! It's what they do!~DragonKay

- Hermitopia is a mixture of sleek futuristic and cyberpunk in terms of style. It really depends on where you live and work (ik this doesnt include any hermits but whatever) - @ghastly-ghostie

- I wonder if Cleo's overactive healing powers affect herself and if any injuries she receives immediately heal over like wolverine or deadpool

- Ren used to be friends with Cleo too, but then she died. Strangely enough, she died on the same day that Ren killed Iskall. Ren’s lost all his friends. It’s hard living in isolation when there’s no one left that even cares about you. (Unless— no, that’s impossible.)

- I was thinking about Biffa, like you do. And Biffa would totally be some robot that was created by Project VEX in its early stages, however they realised fast that it was easier to use humans and give them powers, maybe its not their strong suit with robots. But Biff went sentient and glitched and was scrapped so hes just out there doing his thing. Hes a wildcard and plays for which side he wants at the time, sometimes he'll help or sometimes hes the one causing trouble. He looks pretty similar to a android like in Detroit:Become human but hes a bit uncanny and eerie, maybe its the eyes or the blood red armour. Powerwise, he's got more strength than a human does, mainly because he isn't limited like others are. try not to get punched by him, it'll hurt! [He's convinced Concorp will destroy him if they find out he's alive and Unaffiliated] -lucodak

- Going off of my thing about hermotopia impulse having friends everywhere....this may include the nho. Okay, they beat him to a pulp on one of his solo patrols once, but theey felt bad n patched him up! He has to keep it a secret. He brings them dinner alot. And checks in on them.

- Beef is the perfect cover-up for Bdubs’ desertion. ConCorp doesn’t want any other employees getting bright ideas, now, do they? Nor do they want employees getting nosy and trying to figure out where Bdubs went. They don’t have to tell people what Beef’s powers are. They just release that he developed powers after brain surgery, and a rumour that he was spotted lurking around before Bdubs suddenly betrayed ConCorp... and people draw their own conclusions. -Slimetek

- xB is pretty sure he’s supposed to be evil.I mean, that’s what sentient AIs usually end up being, according to a quick internet search. And yet he’s... not. Or maybe he’s just on the wrong side. - Slimetek

- Yes impulse is friends with the nho....what he doesn't know? He's....easily susceptible to hypnosis. Very easily.......Of course, after impulse is basically a very tired n warm cuddle bug, so, cuddle piles tend to happen after all information is spilled. He must've fallen asleep at their apartment again! Whoops! But it's okay.....they take good care of him if he does! [Beef is using his mind reading ability on Impulse without his knowledge, to make sure that he hasn't spilled their location and to predict the government's next moves. He feels slightly bad about it but feels that it is necessary for the nHo's survival.]

- So far, Grian has only ever encountered two of his clones, NPC Grian and Robot Grian. Technically three, if one were to count Ariana Griande. Grian doesn't really, but some do. [Ariana Griande is a popular musician in Hermitopia who is building a career using the magical stone of voice enhancement she recieved through the cloning process]

- To handle the two Grumbot issue: the one working with Helsknight can be Jrumbot, a legion of robot drones meant to work as Grumbot’s physical form that ended up being hijacked by Helsknight and turned against ConCorp

- There...aren’t a lot of “normal” animals left in Hermittopia. ConCorp took one look at the animals populating the city and decided that, hey, they could make some improvements. Species after species, they modified their behavior, appearance, internal structure, whatever they could fix, tweak, or add. They were just improving their lives and the lives of the citizens of Hermittopia, after all, but the new animals quickly outcompeted the old for resources and habitats. And if it makes it easier for ConCorp to stick a camera in one or two of them, or set up robotic animals to keep a better eye on the city, no harm, no foul, right?(Bonus: there is one (1) singular cat left in Hermittopia, resulting in a spy movie-style heist where two teams of Hermits attempt to “rescue” the cat simultaneously. The cat keeps wandering away from both teams. Shenanigans ensue)- Adonis [the cat is Jellie, who orchestrated the competition between Team ZIT and Cleo and Joe for her own entertainment, getting away from both parties in the end]

- The Leak:Not all mutations are the result of controlled experiments! If some alien tech got away from the crash site, concorp never would have picked it up. It might have got into nature, not as refined as they made it in the labs but causing little changes here and there. Ren may have become a werewolf from being bitten by a mutant wolf~DragonKay

- Impulse is able to use his powers to create illusions or male things appear invisible! Sort of. After all, light dictates what we see. It takes a lot of focus, though, so it's not that practical. -@rayveewrites

- The one thing Hels wasn't able to steal was the cloning technology, hence his hostility with Concorp -- he needs the cloning device, because how else is the void going to get a body of their own? - SilverWolf53

- *glances at the hermitopia werewolf ask* okay but what if the same mystery people who made ren into a werewolf also created jevin, and maybe Etho? idk if either of them have been given any hermitopia headcanons yet lol. but im sure the same people who made a werewolf could make a sentient slime (or perhaps rescue one) or make... whatever etho is. [Since the "second organization" is an incorrect assumption believed by Concorp, Jevin was created when he came in contact with a waterway contaminated by The Leak. Concorp assumes he was created by an opposing organization and not by accident, and therefore would like to bring him in along with Ren.]

- hermitopia - mumbo and grian were friends back when cloning experiments were still happening (or . as friendly as you can be with someone who's treating you like a lab rat), but after everything went wrong and grian escaped, mumbo has his memories wiped nd thats why he's trusted w iskall's stuff? bc he inherently remembers working on high-level things without knowing where he learnt it - muscle memory, yk?anyway massive angst with grian maybe recognising mumbo, but not the other way round, and trying to rekindle their friendship? and that's where grumbot comes in? -gin [Mumbo's memory was wiped so that he would forget the deadly purpose of Iskall's cybernetics, which he was working on at the same time as the Grian project in the background. Mumbo does not remember creating Grian's mechanical wings or Iskall's arm and eye, and he has no memory of either individual previous to "meeting" Iskall as the person assigned to his repair and upkeep.]

- Etho doesn't so much have powers as he is powers. All the powers the ‘original’ had went into creating him; now he just exists, as whatever sort of being he is. Not a human one, that much is obvious. ~DragonKay [Etho has no powers beyond the hivemind and his training, due to the error in the experiment that caused the clones]

- Mumbo started the button as a joke. A nonsense social expirement to see how much people want worthless signs of status. Unfortunately things got out of hand, and violent too. But hey! It's not his fault that the five special anomalous stones were misplaced into the prize dispenser! It was just chance that they fell into the hands of the clone of the worst gremlin in the city! Don't fire him! [He was not fired, but Cub was Decidedly Unhappy with him for a good long while]

- Void mostly trashes ConCorp facilities- trying to figure out if any of his siblings survived the spaceship crash, but occasionally he’ll pilfer from a bakery, because X is a health nut and Void just wants a gods damned cookie [Void very much dislikes unseasoned chicken]

- If the Stress Monster gets too big, too dangerous, Cleo is sworn under oath to Stress to zap her with her healing powers. Cleo doesn’t like to do it, overhealing a stressed Stress makes her so calm she gets knocked out for a couple of days, but Stress can take a small comfort in the fact that at least one person out there can stop her

- Ooh with the self healing Cleo she'd be able to develop a small amount of super strength, with how the mind keeps from going full throttle because it would destroy the body once she gets over it it's hysterical strength whenever she wants [it is quite painful, but a good backup plan]

- Being a hive mind of disposable clones that can spawn new copies at will, it can sometimes be hard for the Etho Entity to remember that it is indeed a big deal for other people when they get hurt. This can make him come off as callous to those around him, placing him firmly in the "villain" category in most citizen's books, but he really doesn't intend any harm!

- Grian used to be tall, but then the cloning happened. With each clone they stole a little bit of his height making him the short man he is today. He needs to capture those clones and get his height back. [Grian isn't entirely sure how to accomplish this, but he's dead set on trying! He misses being tall!]

- While Grian was perfectly fine with Ariana Griande living her own life, he did insist on one thing.Her "older brother" getting backstage access whenever she was on tour. He's very proud and supportive of her and her music career.

- Mumbo is perfectly content working in tech, watching the other hermits get up to crazy shenanigans. Except of course, there was that one time he was out testing some new gear and accidentally saved a crowd from some villains... and there were all those times after too...But hey! It’s not his fault that people like him, and he certainly isn’t going to get caught by Concorp during his after hours activities. [Mumbo considers himself an accidental hobbyist, not thinking he has the nerve or the skill for proper hero work. Time will tell if he's right about that or not...but unfortunately, he probably is. This should be fun.]

- There’s still some people overseeing VEX, even over Cub. They’re the ones that push Cub to do certain experiments or to scrap one. They’re the ones to give Cub the decision for Iskall’s life debt. Scar was under them too for the longest time, but eventually he wanted out. Cub still wanted in. They were still in the right, right? That’s what they tell him. He’s starting to doubt it. [Cub is way too invested in everything he's built to even think about going rogue now, but he does resent and occasionally question the judgement of his superiors increasingly as his project begins to fail more and more often. He also fears that Scar's shift in career will be seen as a betrayal, rather than as a tactical attempt to gain the company influence in the government.]

- Been thinking about the impulse + nho asks and just,,, what would happen if concorp/the government found out? It cant be good with interrogation/hypnosis on both sides (incase you cant tell,, the brainrot got me as well) (apologies if this is a mess im excited) [Hypno is assigned to set up an illusionary conversation to make Impulse reveal nHo location to Concorp and government agents while thinking that he's actually talking to the nHo in a random encounter]

- The one mind Beef can't read is Etho's. Their hivemind is just too weird for him to comprehend. If he ever tries to listen in, it sounds like just a bunch of static from an old TV.

- for hermitopia au!: Out of most of the heros, the most reckless may be team zit. sure they tell themselves they'll plan out missions but it's hard when they share a braincell and tango just runs in. impulse and zed share a look everytime and have to run after him to make sure he doesn't get too hurt or overwhelmed by the enemy. in their defence its hard to plan ahead against an enemy when you dont know what they are thinking.-lucodak ["You might not have known what they were thinking, Tango, but we'd generally like you to know what you're thinking!"]

- i bet ConCorp really wants to make it out like theres some secret shady organization creating all these people with mutations, rather than their own operatives deserting and their own failure to contain dangerous chemicals... whether its malicious coverups or just ignorance to the fact they messed up, wonder what would happen if that sort of thing came to light...? [If they found out that the unintentional superhumans were a result of the poorly-contained crash site? Cub would lose his job...maybe worse. If Cub found out (and he hasn't, yet) he would do everything in his power to keep that information from his superiors.]

- (paraphrased) Impulse accidentally walks in on heroes and agents breaking down the doors of the nHo's hideout and confronting them. Scar claims that they did so on information Impulse himself provided and thanks him for his service. Impulse, feeling confused and betrayed, resists Hypno's attempts to illusion him back to Scar's side and flees the scene with the nHo, knowing very little other than the fact that he doesn't want to be manipulated by the government any more (and still not knowing that Beef has been reading his mind)

- Impulse may have been labeled a traitor. But do you really think that Impulse, secret rebel, starting to learn how dangerous and corrupted Concorp really is, wouldn't let his best friends know about the danger they might be in? I think Team ZIT is more loyal to each other than to the government. - @mleemwyvern [ Impulse's first stop after escaping with the nHo is to find a place to secretly meet Tango and Zedaph and tell them about the way he was tricked. It takes a lot of explaining and a lot of trust, but they eventually decide to believe his claims and are left with a choice: will they openly go rogue and become a target along with Impulse and the rest of the nHo, or are they better off using their established image and reputation to keep an eye on the government heros' movements from the inside?]

- (two asks combined, paraphrased) Ren runs out of supplies and decides to head back into the city, confident in his ability to stay off the grid after so many years of experience and such a long time away. Once there, he runs into Doc, and they hit it off quite quickly. However, the more Ren talks the more Doc realizes - with his ex-Concorp knowledge - that Ren matches the description of Iskall's main target exactly. He warns Ren, who is then faced with the knowledge that Iskall is alive and assigned to kill him...so many questions and so many tears to follow...

- Why did Hermitopia start needing heroes? When the Unrestrained started to appear, if course. Why did the Unrestrained start to appear? A question asked a little less. When did the VEX program start? When did they start taking more risks? When did they stop caring about certainty and safety and shift towards trying to push boundaries they weren't ready to? People can be so enamoured with the concept of superhuman abilities, something bright and glorious and good- and perhaps they could have that too- they don't ask all the right questions. It's all an elaborate game of damage control, don't let the flashy heroics fool you, they've made mistakes, terrible, terrible mistakes, and now there are villains running loose with powers they fooled ConCorp into giving them. Are they villains? Are they victims? Does it matter? They're causing problems. [Project VEX has developed into a solution to its own problems, a self perpetuating cycle...one that Cub, as a businessman, is very familiar with. It's what keeps the wheels of industry turning. It's what keeps innovation creeping forward. It wasn't intentional, not this time...but if it keeps his project alive, he'll take it.]

- One time, Jevin had narrowly dodged being captured by Concorp. He was laying low in the forest out of town, when he had a run-in with some sort of wolf creature. Thankfully, claws and teeth couldn't exactly hurt him anymore, so he just played dead until it gave up.When the moon set, the wolf-thing slowly transformed into a human being. Ren was horrified at the thought he'd lost control and hurt someone- again- but Jevin assured him he was fine. Jevin got the feeling that the werewolf needed a friend, and Jevin himself needed a place to stay for a while... -RayveeWrites [Ren and Jevin are not currently in the same location, but they each have a means of contacting each other for help if needed]

- Worm Man wasn't a well- known super, but plenty of people have noticed that he seemed to vanish at the same time Team ZIT first started active duty. Those people have also noticed that one of the members has a very similar power set to WM.Officially, that's just a coincidence. Officially.-RayveeWrites [Zedaph was trying to get some unofficial practice while still in training in the VEX program]

- A common misconception is that Bdubs conjures up his vines from nowhere. He can't.Like any plant, his vines grow from seeds. They grow unnaturally fast, when Bdubs wills it, but they have to come from seeds. Where do these seeds come from, you may ask?Well, a long time ago, Bdubs ingested some strange fruits. Somehow, in wild defiance of human biology, the seeds contained in those fruits worked their way into his muscles and germinated. Some of the roots worked their way into his brain and fused into it; the rest spread through his muscles, grew beneath his skin, coiled around his bones. Thanks to the way the vines connected to his brain, Bdubs is able to command the vines, and their magic, at will.The vines produce seeds; some stay in his body to replace the old ones when they die, and most work their way into a pair of 'seed pods' in his wrists. Bdubs provides the nutrients, the energy; the vines provide the seeds, the magic. As an extra bonus: if the vines were to be totally removed from Bdubs' body, he would be at best extremely weak, and at worst dead. The vines have grown into his muscles, to the point where they've essentially replaced them in some areas. It's fortunate that they connected with his mind so early on, otherwise he'd be dead. -RayveeWrites [Concorp developed the fruit, and the fact that Bdubs is evidence of the unlikely success of that experiment makes them all the more angry at his betrayal]

- A lot of excellent xB information (it's too long to copy but please read it it's very good)

- Iskall has exactly one (1) failed assignment. That assignment? The kill or capture of Stress. Stress and Iskall have been, or should it be were now, friends for a very long time, since before Iskall even met Ren. So one can imagine the stress this causes Iskall, to be told to kill his one remaining friend that he knows is alive. Of course, this stress is quite enough to to Stress's Stress Monster into one it's strongest yet seen forms, allowing for Stress to then get away. (1/2)(2/2) Of course, Con Corp doesn't- and can never- know the true reason that Iskall cannot kill or capture Stress. If they knew, if they subjected Stress to the same hell he's in- no, that cannot happen. So Iskall hires False to protect Stress, to interfere whenever they send him on a mission for her. Luckily, False is good at keeping secrets when she wants to, and this one she'll keep. But as far as Con Corp knows, Iskall has severe stress and trauma from being a cyborg, and that's why he fails. [This all adds up to a monumental waste of Concorp's time and money, which also results in False getting payed, so all parties involved are happy except for Concorp >:)]

- Impulse would take a bullet for his teammates, and he knows they might be about to take one for him, keeping him updated on what's going on government side of this... slander. Still, Tango and Zed are great actors, and if he didn't know better, he might be a little worried they would *actually* be hunting him down in the name of justice [Tango and Zed are now being sent on missions to retrieve Impulse, which they must pretend to lose believably. They occasionally overestimate their friend's abilities and give him a few more close calls than he'd like, but overall the ruse is holding up.]

Writing:

- Wels, Hels, TFC, and Grumbot

- Bdubs Concorp promotion and desertion

- Joe Hills in his time dilation hideout

- Etho clones, ZIT, and the nHo

- Keralis and Void

- [ALTERNATE] Reveal of Impulse's situation with the nHo

Art:

- Impulse suit design

#hermitcraft #hermitblr #hcraft #Hermitopia AU #masterpost #long post #mod Shade

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thefandomcassandra · 2 years

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Hello, saw you like talking about psychonauts, so i was wondering if you ever thought about Otto's hall of brains, being a psychonauts 3 antagonist? i imagine all those psychic brains silent forming a hive mind powerful enough that they begin altering the real world into something that makes sense to them or they try to get revenge on their former colleagues and otto for whats been done to them, with rogue brains trying to help raz and teach him new powers.

(Once again, ADHD strikes and I wrote this over several days so apologies if this is a little scattered hhh)

Oh boy the idea of the Brain Frame being some kind of fucked up hivemind is neat, but unlikely.

Aside from the whole "these are the backers" thing, I think that most of the brains in the Brain Frame are actually as ethically sourced as human minds can be, yanno? Barring the unsorted minds (John Doe, Abby Normal, Amalgamate Brain, and Heptadome Harry), they probably were asked for their consent and/or signed that posthumous NDA (any adult agent would actively read the whole contract if they’re gonna work for a government position) so I don’t think they could or would hold any animosity towards their colleagues or Otto.

Barring that little thought, you also have to take into account how degraded Helmut’s sense of self and memories were after twenty years of being without his body and he’s supposed to be a very strong psychic. It’s safe to say that the whole Brain Frame might just be empty psychic vessels. Brains with the potential for psychic powers but no ego or will. Like computers, almost.

Now if some kind of...fucked up superpowered psychic with maybe a hivemind thing going on with bees--think like an Evil Cassie--decided that those brains were a good way to get back at the dreaded Psychonauts (heaven forbid)? Then you have what essentially is a bunch of RAM for a psychic-supercomputer. One psychic, hundreds of minds that have the capacity for incredible individual psychic abilities, and a dislike of the Psychonauts? Horrifying.

I do like that the patch put a psychoseismometer in Otto’s lab because the purpose of them is to collect ambient negative psychic energy and refine, store, then vent it (though the venting has to be manual, as per Gisu’s sidequest). It means--to me anyway--that Otto was worried enough about the mental health of the brains in the Frame (and maybe himself) to put a psychoseismometer in his lab, nearby, to prevent what happened to Lucy from happening to other people. It’s...it’s sweet and a lot of forethought. Awful, terrible forethought.

But also the idea of Raz collecting powers like a continually expanding rolodex of specialties is very fun. Little dude doesn’t have a specialty save that he’s flexible and a circus boy lol.

Sorry if that kinda stepped over what you were proposing but it was an interesting thought. Got me thinking about how like...man, psychic powers is just wizard magic, huh? If you can think it, you can do it. (Like how, in Broken Bridge, I conceptualized Cassie’s motivational speech as her being able to use her psychic skills to allow her words to manipulate the world around her in a literal way.)

#the sheepy answers #anonymous #psychonauts #psychonauts 2 spoilers #this was a genuinely interesting idea #unlikely but also i got to think about a mindflayer like hivemind of psychic brains and one powerful asshole controlling them #wild and fun

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kaypeace21 · 3 years

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I have a question. If El is hypothetically an alter of Will’s, how is M**even (don’t want to show up in tags) happening? I think I’ve read somewhere of someone discussing this theory saying that Will might have used his powers to bring her and other alters out into the real world?? I apologize if you’ve already answered this

Yeah -that was in my theory. In my DID theory HERE I specifically said EL (along with almost all of Will’s alters) escaped into our world. The Duffers reference Xmen and charles xavier (professor x) in every season of ST. Professor x’s son had DID and his alters escaped into the material world as tangible people (and were terrorized and forced to integrate back into 1 personality- by the shadow phoenix * cough ‘shadow monster/mindflayer’ from s2). The shadow phoenix is the ‘cousin’ of the ‘dark phoenix’ reffed by Will in ep 1 of ST. And the dark phoenix is a fire god (Will the wise) that is reincarnated in human form- one of the dark phoenix’s forms was also thor (god of thunder/lightning). And Will has fire/lightning powers.

And maybe a coincidence but the avengers/thor ragnarock was on the movie list (and in new avengers comics ) scarlet witch’s mutant son William, nickname billy (code name Wiccan-like a wizard) - is gay ,has lightning&fire powers and can alter reality. His powers don’t manifest till highshcool and he using his lightning accidentally against a homophobic bully. Reminds me of the s4 movie skyhigh or how Harbor played d&d as the wizard kenny kaboom whose fire powers manifested at 14. Billy’s been possessed In the past - even spit up a slug to fight the posession of the demiurge (in d&d slugs are used to possess humans/turn them into mf,which Will spit up). He accidentally opens a portal to his world allowing the inter dimensional monster “mama” out (cough demogorgans are called “deep father”.) He Temporarily became the evil ‘demiurge ‘ (master of all reality/god of creation). And his boyfriend snaps him out of it-it’s essentially the gay version of “the dark phoenix saga” where scott snaps jean/dark phoenix(fire powered character) out of their possession. In a diff arc- Billy gets trapped in the void he created and Teddy finds him and their love gets Billy to finally master his imagination powers and bring order back to the multiverse.someone also questions whether teddy (Billy’s boyfriend) was subconsciously created by billy . Teddy has an existential crisis but later says he doesn’t care one way or another cause he loves Him. Later Billy assures him he didn’t create him cause even in his wildest dreams he couldn’t imagine loving someone like teddy , saying it’s “impossible “ to have created him. Their love saves the universe on multiple occasions. Teddy is the one who snaps William out of his trance and posession and gets him to fulfill his destiny to bring balance to all realities /dimensions that are intersecting- and people joking call Billy the “messiah.” Reminds me of Will, byler (and some movie inspos).

Also William has a twin brother tommy . They were twins separated at birth... but not related by blood but by reincarnation. (symbolically el being Will’s alter)since both tommy & el have a lot in common.Tommy had been locked up , and was being tested and experimented on with the goal to make him into a living weapon. The team was able to locate him in a high security detention facility for superpowered juvenile offenders. They release him from his cell, and Stature almost immediately noted that Tommy and Billy could be twins. Tommy cynically and cruelly began attacking the officers and fleeing doctors. In a different story arc , Tommy was seemingly dematerialized by an entity .But, Tommy reappeared in the now dematerialised monster’s place . Tommy also temporarily moved in with William’s family .

Even wonder woman (El) had a twin brother named Jason (who she was unaware of). He had a boyfriend (lgbt), had electorkinesis like Will. And the 2 twins shared a psychic bond. Jason was raised human but was supposed to be the “true chosen one."And so there was some secret resentment there on his part, initially. And we all know how El is atryu and Will is Bastian. ( In s3 they ref neverending story). And that ties to the fake messiah (atreyu/el) vs normal human- being the chosen one with imagination powers who accidentally caused everything plot twist(aka Will).The link mentions all the parallels between el/atreyu and will/bastian.

Also, Hawkinsschoolcounselor mentioned how the s4 character victor creel May be a ref to victor creed (x men character) . A mutant who was poor and had an ab*sive alcoholic dad who would tie and beat him to a bed and call him a demon for his powers. Reminds me of Will’s excorcism-and some movie inspirations with ab*sive dad. So I think maybe the Duffers are x-men/mutant comic fans . So it’s possible various stories were inspo.

I explained more of the evidence in the ‘did theory’ (hyperlink at the beginning ) so I’d just re-read it . :)

#will byers #el hopper #stranger things #did theory #x men /marvel inspo

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smokeybrand · 3 years

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The Cape and The Cowl

A friend of mine posted a meme questioning who would win a fight between Doctor Doom and Batman. My gut reaction is to say it’s real bad for Bruce but, as i thought about it more and more, i kind of feel like its not so cut-and-dry. There is a lot of nuance that needs to be considered between the two characters rather than just a “smash the action figured together” scenario. Of course, there is the surface stuff like how would they interact generally? What would the catalyst be in order to incite said conflict? Why would Doom even see Bruce as a threat? If you think about it objectively, an all things are even, to Vic, Batman is just a crazy person losing his are on crime in a raggedy ass city. Victor von Doom is a the reagent of an entire country with a GDP that rivals some superpowers in the MCU. Like, the USA has diplomatic relations with a blip in Eastern Europe, because Doom has the military power to wreck he US in open aggression. Latveria will lose in a prolonged conflict, that’s just a question of resources, but that little country would absolutely inflict upon the US in a slow bleed. Imagine the War on Terror but with competent leadership and actual, discipline, military strategy. Why the f*ck would Doom care what the f*ck is going on out in Jersey? More than that. the similarities between the two characters is staggering.

We all know the origin of Batman. We’ve seen that sh*t how many times now? It’s like getting a new Spider-Man joint and having to watch Uncle Ben die all over again. It’s trite at this point but so essential to the character, we need a refresher every time Bats shows up onscreen. That trauma informs everything he is, as it would if you watched your parents gunned down in cold blood as a child, and then laid with their still warm corpses for however long until the police came. What a lot of people don’t know is the origin of Doctor Doom. Being a villain, Doom rarely gets his motivations explored outside of some megalomaniac Dr. No type f*ckery. However, Victor von Doom is a person. He started out life as a happy kid and learned to be Doctor Doom, just like Bruce learned to be Batman. Doom is actually a refugee. True, Doom was born an aristocrat, but Latveria was overthrown when he was still young so he was never able to be raised in that level of opulence. His mom was also murdered before he was ten years old. Just like Bruce, Doom experienced a horrific truth that would color his world perspective for the rest of his life. Doom would eventually find his way to the US as he was brilliant. Like, unheard of intelligent and it would be his exposure to the US lifestyle, after years of conflict and struggle, which would make him realize how easy life could be if someone just did what was necessary. And then Reed happened.

Reed Richards was, is, a fulcrum in Vic’s life. They have a relationship similar to Batman an Superman but the opposite. Whereas Batman values Clark’s perspective because it helps him keep perspective, Vic finds Reed to be absurd. He sees Reed for who e is and doesn’t understand why no one else can. Reed Richards is a reckless, excitable, short-sighted, glory-hog. He is. If you read the character with any semblance of realism, you’d see that. Ho many times has Sue comments on how she and the rest of his family, take a backseat to science? How many times has Reed, himself, sacrificed a relationship or to, in service to the solution of an equation? Doom saw all of that in college. Reed represents the structural issues of the world and it frustrates Vic to no end. In some continuities, the genesis of Vic going full Doom rest on an accident Reed commits because of that shortsightedness. It goes a long way to checking Reeds ego and he does become a better person for it, but it was at the cost of scarring Vic for life, both physically and mentally. Yet another example of the system, ruining Doom’s life.

Bruce, after his trauma, has kept a strong support system. First and foremost, since day one, he had Alfred. Doom had no one. Bruce then built a family, adopting all of the children and surrounding himself with love. Doom’s one true love died and was dragged down to hell. We know this because he punches out Mephisto whenever he can. Also, his mom is down there, too. Bruce eventually met Diana and Kal, becoming fast friends and life long confidants. Outside of Catwoman, I think Diana makes for the perfect romantic partner of Bruce and that is shown in several continuities. Reed just reinforced Doom’s disgust with the machinations of the world, eventually further degrading Doom’s tenuous hold of his ability to trust in others, by psychically maiming him. The negative impact Reed had on Doom’s life is f*cking profound, man. I’m not saying Doom should have taken it as far as he did, but it’s hard to argue against trying to kill a dude who had ruined years of your work, destroyed you reputation, and physically maimed you forever. That doesn’t seem wholly outrageous to me. I think it’s called justifiable homicide? The only reason Doom stopped trying to murder Reed is because Valeria was born. Valeria became the first person Doom felt real affection for, since the death of his wife. I think Morgan le Fay could be another, but that might have just been a time-space booty call. Valeria Richards and her relationship with he Uncle Doom, is what gave Vic the strength to be better. Bruce had that love his entire life, even immediately after his darkest day. Doom went decades without it.

Up until Valeria was born, all Doom had was his time spent as a destitute street rat, struggling to survive, to inform him about life and the world at large. That brazen cruelty for sure emotionally crippled him in a lot of ways, I'm not even going to start to defend his arrogance or superiority complex, but trauma does that. That's why i think Bats would eventually come around. They've both seen the absolute worst of the world and, in a lot of ways, go about righting those wrongs in the same way. If you pay attention, and the writer is worth their salt, you'd see that Latveria is an autocratic socialist paradise. Latverians are among the most literate, healthy, and happy people in the 616. Jobs are plentiful and crime is almost non-existent. Mans even cured cancer, which he made available to the world, if those people choose to make the trip to Latveria for treatment. The world of 616, at large, likes to paint Vic as this evil despot but, if you interview a laymen of Latveria, they’ll sing his praises. Most people forget that, before Doom returned for his birthright, Latveria was a whole ass occupied state. Think the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Latveria was basically falling into doorknobs for Symkaria and pretending that they weren’t in an abusive relationship. Doom showed up and changed all that. It was a bloody f*cking conflict, for sure, and i am certain Vic committed war crimes, but the end result was a free Latveria with a strong international presence. Doom is a hero to those people but a villain to other nations because of how he rose to power and, more importantly, how independent he made hi country from the world system. Doom did what was necessary to free his people, a march too far for Bruce and that’s why Gotham is the way that it is.

People who don’t know the character like to paint Vic as ego-maniacal villain, and that was valid when comics were just "hero smash bad guy", but we've grown beyond that. Every pop culture interpretation of Doom, outside of the comics, has him as this stoic, arrogant, asshole, dictator bu that’s just not an accurate portrayal of how Doom is in a modern capacity. Vic is definitely an autocrat but he’s no dictator. He can be cruel at times to specific individuals but he is generally benevolent to his people. He doesn’t portray himself as a strongman but he does let it be known he’ll nuke anyone or anything if it means furthering his overall goals which, currently, is the safety and security of Latveria. His country isn’t a police state and his people are free to do as they please but their is a line, just like everywhere else in the world. Doom just has a shorter one and enforces that with extreme prejudice. I’m not going to sit here and say everything is great in Latveria, it’s definitely not, but it ain’t so hot in 616 America either. How many Civil Wars have they had? What about that whole tidbit with Hydra Cap? There is nuance and gray nowadays, areas that both Bats and Doom comfortably call home. Batman is, objectively, not a pure hero. He is, at best, a chivalric anti-hero and similarly, Doom is more of an anti-villain than the mustache twirling, boogeyman, mastermind pop media portrays him to be. Batman and Doom are basically the same person, with the same motivations, only Doom is willing to go much, much, further than Bruce; A difference in method you an attribute to their respective upbringings.

If Doom had the same support system as Bruce, he’d create miracles. We’ve seen glimpses of that throughout the years. Dooms last run culminated with him essentially obliterating an entire universe where he had the support necessary to build a proper utopia. Our Doom couldn’t fathom the choices made by this variant Doom because of how broken he is. If Bruce was alone in his formative years like Victor, he’d commit atrocities. We’ve seen glimpses of that over they years, too. There are various narratives that explore just such a tragic turn of events, explored in the Death Metal series of books. Dawnbreaker immediately comes to mind. Bruce and victor are the same side of the same coins. It's literally a crap shoot as to which side of the alignment chart either leans. And as if to inform my point further, we just recently had Joker War. That book went a long way to exposing the absolute necessity of raw force, in order to properly “save”Gotham. Joker was able to completely dismantle that entire city by attacking the machinery put in lace to make it run. He effectively proved that The Batman was part of the problem and would never be the solution because Bruce doesn’t go far enough. He puts out fires but never address the sparks which start those blazes. He doesn’t go far enough. He never will. His code won’t allow him to. But Doom can. Doom did. Honestly, if you really want to keep it real, what is Bruce's endgame? What does a healthy Gotham City look like? It looks a lot like f*cking Latveria.

So to answer this question outright, i don’t think they even fight. The way this hypothetical was set up had three rounds: the first being a standard donnybrook, the second being prep time, and the last being god mode. To be perfectly honest with you, it wouldn't make it past the first round. If i had to say, with pedestrian or normie level understanding of he characters, Doom sweeps all categories. For Round one, Doom’s armor trumps all of Batman’s gadgets. For Round Two, Doom has more resources at his fingertips for prep. For Round The God Emperor Doom exists. He created several realities and killed a few Beyonders. Batman sat in a chair which gave him access to all the wisdom in the multiverse, and realized there were three Jokers. Doom all the way. My informed opinion as someone who adores both these character more than most would have me think there wouldn’t even be a conflict to begin with. I think they’d investigate the inciting catalyst, meet in person with intent to attack if necessary, size each other up until one of them made the proposal to just talk, they'd converse, and the fight would end with both of them walking away from each other with begrudging respect. Doom would admire Bruce's will and Bruce would understand the necessity of Doom's position in the world because, if you can make it make sense, Bruce will usually agree. Batman, for all of his shortcomings, is not naive to the world. He’s seen the same darkness as Doom. Doom, for all of his pompous arrogance, understands the struggle to maintain faith in those around you, even if that noble aspiration is misplaced. Bruce is one bad day away from Doom and Doom is a decades worth of days from being Bruce. They mirror each other and i think they’d see that, taking each other as cautionary tales before becoming collaborators. I don’t see them ever really becoming friends but i don't think they’d ever be true enemies.

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