And will I deal with the line wrapping? (No!) and will this cause this post to be
caught in the Moderation Phantom Zone? (I guess we'll see!)
Usenet is dead, to begin with. That much, everyone can agree on. But there are a few corners of it that still cling to fitful life. One of these is alt.obituaries, where the dead come to pay respect to the dead.
In the LNHQ of the city of Necropolis in alt.obituaries, five men are gathered. They call themselves the Saviors of the Net.
****off her obsidian armor.
The beat up VW bug shimmered into existence like heat haze on the Net.ropolis streets, then screeched to a halt and slammed against the wall. Victoria Arden, otherwise known as Forsaken Lass, jumped out. The sunlight was bright but gave no reflection
"Yeah," said Manga Girl. It was the first time Victoria had seen her frown since she could remember. "Any of you figure out where Merc is? The last I remember we escaped the Crossover Queen [Ultimate Mercenary v1 #7], then you dropped him off in themiddle of that Hungry Past mess and you said he wasn't part of our world anymore... [in Just Imagine, whenever we get that sorted out.]"
Masterplan Lad nodded. "At any rate," he said, "at least now I can tell where in my own timeline my stories are supposed to be taking place."
Manga Girl threw up her hands. "Let's go to a PARTY!"
A horde of dark squarish shapes appeared in the sky and descended to the earth. They were gigantic cans of Spam with googly eyes affixed on them. "Sexe boobs!" they chanted as one in harsh metallic voices as they crashed to the Earth with a mightyclang. "Sexe boobs! Sexe boobs!"
It was Arcanis, the entity in the form of a sword she'd grabbed in the Crossover Queen's Citadel she was apparently stuck with.
Victoria lumbered forward through the depths of Limbo and reached inside the Spambot, yanking out its central processor (or something), a disgusting slab of spam.
"Plot Device," said Masterplan Lad. "And I was trying to make some form of intervention. But the threads of storytelling here and now have gotten hopelessly tangled. It's even worse than Birth of a Villain."
"I archive binged all the Infinite Leadership Crisis issues when we were in the end of time.
"Hey!" Victoria playfully swatted at her, and found herself laughing. She planted her feet on the roof. "Next time, you could warn me."
"But I can fly now! That's pretty cool, isn't it." She looked her in the eye.
"OH JUST KISS HER ALREADY!" shouted Manga Girl. The two of them looked to see her standing on the roof beside them. She smiled and waved at them nervously, then leaped off into the air.
On 3/13/22 4:07 PM, Arthur Spitzer wrote:<snip>
In the LNHQ of the city of Necropolis in alt.obituaries, five men are
gathered. They call themselves the Saviors of the Net.
So.
By this point, I had gotten back into comics after being away for a while, and
started posting actively on tumblr. This was the time when there was a whole surge of queer comics fandom surrounding some of Marvel's more colorful and emotionally and narrative accessible series like Deconnick's Captain Marvel Captain Marvel, Fraction/Aja/Wu Hawkeye and Gillen/McKelvie Young Avengers.
At the same time, as soon as it crossed over with Captain Marvel, I was also drawn heavily into Jonathan Hickman's massive Avengers run. (A work I'd go on to
keep referencing later, as seen inĀ That had a very strongly contrasting feel
with the other works I mentioned--creepy, abstract and cosmic.
I began to think about the contrast in mood and what would happen if those different storylines were brought together. What happens if you crash YA's queer
hedonism into Hickmanvengers' cosmic doominess? (The answer is you get the present day twitter zeitgeist... this was kind of a forward looking story in some ways, I guess.)
Characteristically, I pulled in a loose end from an old story, specifically the
version of the LNH2 future seen in Ultimate Mercenary v1 #5. My work has a very
strong sense of internal continuity. When I want to tell some different kind of
story, I frequently repurpose something I have lying around instead of making it
up out of the whole cloth.
When I wanted a Young Avengers equivalent, I pulled in the supporting cast from
UM V1, the team now known as the Liminals. (Even though Drew had already kind of
thrown in an YA-based team.)
"Yeah," said Manga Girl. It was the first time Victoria had seen her frown >> since she could remember. "Any of you figure out where Merc is? The last I >> remember we escaped the Crossover Queen [Ultimate Mercenary v1 #7], then you >> dropped him off in the middle of that Hungry Past mess and you said he wasn't
part of our world anymore... [in Just Imagine, whenever we get that sorted out.]"
I do wish I hadn't skipped Just Imagine, and yet I kind of had to--it still feels kind of big and overwhelming, but I feel like we can build up enough momentum from our other writing that it'll get done someday.
I really did have a
problem in the past with overcommitting to things. I've been slowly getting better at this.
Masterplan Lad nodded. "At any rate," he said, "at least now I can tell where
in my own timeline my stories are supposed to be taking place."
Ahahaha, well.
Manga Girl threw up her hands. "Let's go to a PARTY!"
Referencing the famous party that wrapped up Young Avengers--which I also drew
on for inspiration with the epilogue bits of LNH v2 #50.
A horde of dark squarish shapes appeared in the sky and descended to the
earth. They were gigantic cans of Spam with googly eyes affixed on them. "Sexe
boobs!" they chanted as one in harsh metallic voices as they crashed to the >> Earth with a mighty clang. "Sexe boobs! Sexe boobs!"
This was a real spam. So was "nice boops."
It was Arcanis, the entity in the form of a sword she'd grabbed in the
Crossover Queen's Citadel she was apparently stuck with.
I don't know where that name came from or what I had in mind originally. This was one of those plot elements I kind of quietly buried.
Victoria lumbered forward through the depths of Limbo and reached inside the >> Spambot, yanking out its central processor (or something), a disgusting slab >> of spam.
This was a neat (kind of Lurking Girl-inspired) use of her powers, I should have
her do that again sometime.
"Plot Device," said Masterplan Lad. "And I was trying to make some form of >> intervention. But the threads of storytelling here and now have gotten
hopelessly tangled. It's even worse than Birth of a Villain."
Everything was so simple pre-HHS...
"I archive binged all the Infinite Leadership Crisis issues when we were in >> the end of time.
I suppose I shall have to write those issues sometime before the end of the universe then. Maybe I can do it?
Now by this time on tumblr, I'd gotten heavily into queer shipping for a while.
The big catalyst was Captain Marvel and Carol Danvers/Jessica Drew, a major narrative focus of KSD's Captain Marvel around the time of the Enemy Within storyline. This was the first time I was exposed to an in-depth, satisfyingly complex relationship between women with a deep history together that mirrored the wildly popular m/m ships I'd been exposed to, and it had a huge impact on me. This was also around the time I got heavily back into Sailor Moon, which pushed me even further in that direction.
With lesbian shipping goggles firmly welded on, I went back to my old LNH stuff
and found that Alice and Victoria's interactions were incredibly queer, as were
Victoria's reactions to the character who turned out to be the Crossover Queen.
(People being menaced by creepy domme types is an ongoing thread in my work; see
the issue I just posted.)
And, as with a lot of my stories, this was written to work with intense, complicated feelings I have and thing I feared and wanted about my life. So, this story played a huge role in being able to fully accept being queer.
Manga Girl jumping in to get Alice and Vic to admit their Feelings was also the
first time she had a major impact on the direction the series took; the second
was when she decided "The Liminals" was the actual team name rather than the title of the series.
Jeanne Morningstar gives us another 'Just Another Multi-Writer Cascade That Will Probably Never Have an Ending' chapter (#4?) (#1NOW?) Will this be The NEW Birth a Villain we've all been waiting for? Or will it somehow be more Saviors of the NET or Infinite Leadership Cry.Sig?
Usenet is dead, to begin with. That much, everyone can agree on. But there are a few corners of it that still cling to fitful life. One of these is alt.obituaries, where the dead come to pay respect to the dead.
"Victoria!" shouted Net.Access. Abruptly, she reared up on her hind wheels and transformed into a giant robot. She strode over to where Victoria was and
kicked one of the spambots out of the way, then grabbed the other and threw it at the wall.
Victoria was so overwhelmed by how cool this was that she almost got twhacked
by a Spambot tentacle.
"I'm better now. Just had to figure out what genre I was in."
She bent over and kissed her. Victoria felt a rush of warmth and life and excitement, like nothing she could remember. Of course, that didn't mean it hadn't happened anyway. She abruptly pulled away.
"Yeah!" said Alice. She laughed. "I can't believe this. My dream is coming true. Ever since I was a college freshman taking fourteen credit hours at Dave's Thomas Deluxe University, staying up late at night listening to news reports about the LNH, I dreamed about being a hero. Then I got mixed up in all this cosmic stuff and became the embodiment of crossover-ness or something
and I was just struggling to stay alive. Now, I can be a real hero. We can save the world together."
"What was the point of all that?" said Kid Remender. "I didn't come her to see people talking about their relationships."
"The Spambots," said Occultism Lord, "are the most hardy and pervasive element
of the web ecosystem. They will survive when everything else is gone. They're
the cockroaches of the internet. If the Spambots themselves are dying off, than what does that say about Usenet?"
In the LNHQ rec.room, a man sat alone. His face was covered in demonic- looking face paint and a helmet with enormous and unwieldy horns.
"Yo, Anti-Christ Lad, I get that a man's gotta monologue sometimes, but chill
down! Some of us are trying to dig some funky music over here." said a rather
zaftig young woman with messy natural hair. She wore bell-bottom jeans and a white bra that happened to be on fire. She was Burning Bra Lass, the Spirit of Feminist Vengeance, who like Anti-Christ Lad was part of the Legion of Net.Hippies, brought forward from The Sixties (tm) to the present.
"OK, that's enough of that," said a voice from the distance. A pale, dark- haired woman appeared on stage. She wasn't dressed like a net.hero, but in this room full of gaudily dressed superbeings she held herself up like she owned the place.
It was a stick of chalk in the shape of Slobbering Grue! with "I'm Chalk!" written on the packaging. She glared furiously at it before opening the chalk
and starting to draw on the blackboard.
He furiously pressed the buttons on the control panel, and a picture flashed on the screen. A picture of the being he had dedicated his life to, an obsession that consumed the core of his being. "And then you, Time Crapper, shall attain whatever inscrutable goals you seek. And I shall at long last be
free of the wretched prison in which I have for so long been trapped... THE FRIEND ZONE!
He looked up at the picture with a look of swoony devotion. He often spent several hours of every day staring at it. "AND LYDIA DEVIN WILL FINALLY NOTICE ME!"
The Crossover Queen had gathered the deadliest of her forces together in her throne room. Cyborcs, Imperial Spambots, Dire Moa, Gogmagogs, Mer-Yeti, and other creatures too numerous and horrible to mention clustered around the throne.
And at their head stood the figure who would lead the first wave of her assault on Looniearth-A. It was a teenage girl dressed in aggressively gothic
clothing. How she could move with all the belts and chains she wore was a mystery to everyone.
"Oh my god!" said one of them. "You don't know there's a Sidekickz concert? They're almost as cool as One Direction!"
"Whatever," said Merissa. "I'm as cool as *two* directions.
"I'm afraid he's right," said Irony Monger. "The only thing left to do is to destroy Looniearth-A."
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