LNH: Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #47: Absolute Infinite Negativity

[Andrew Perron]

___ ___________________________
| |-|                           \
| |-| []                        /   #47:
| | | [] egion of               \ "Absolute Infinite Negativity"
| | | []__ [] []   []  []       / (A Flame Wars Final Prologue)
| | | [___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes \
| | |      []\ ]   [ __ ]       / Written and copyright 2012
| |-|      [] []   []  []       \ Andrew Perron
| |-|__________________________/
| |
| | The cover is a simple holofoil; dark grey with a silvery Irony Man
| | II in the position of Rodin's Thinker and the series logo in blue.
| | In the corner is the Flame Wars Final logo, a black seven-pointed
| | star with "FLAME WARS FINAL" in a stylized font, in light gray
| | outlined with dark gray.
|_|

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Drops of red swirled into a creamy yellow-white base.  Thin-sliced bits 
of fruit fell in, and were stirred with gusto.  A light powder fell on 
the surface, and it slid into the heat.  Baking, baking... finally, it 
was done.  One cut, then another, it rose to the lips, and...

Cheesecake-Eater Lad sighed.  This ketchup-mango-chai cheesecake just 
wasn't working.

He needed a break.  He hung his toque on a hook and made his way out of 
the kitchen.  The corridors of the LNHHQ had shifted since he last went 
this way, but if he just kept moving outward...

The fire door swung open, and he stood in the garden.  Some earth 
spirit or half-elemental or something had left a patch of green with 
strange, exotic plants here, and over the years, through the 
ministrations of some of the LNH's more earth-sensitive members, it had 
grown flush with verdant beauty.

The late afternoon sunlight fell in streams through the leaves of the 
trees.  Pink and purple and periwinkle flowers hung off clinging, 
climbing vines.  A babbling brook had somehow sprung up, winding gently 
through the green; Cheesecake-Eater Lad made a mental note to have 
someone take a look at the plumbing.

As he turned a corner, an armored form came into view.  He stopped, 
suddenly unsure of how to proceed. "Ah... hi there."

"Hello, Cheesecake-Eater Lad." The enigmatic new Irony Man had been 
inducted under the Miss Terious/Sir Prize Act of 1966, which stated 
that any attempt by a resigning member to nominate a new person with an 
unrevealed identity and hidden secrets to replace them had to be 
accepted.  No one knew who he was or what he looked like; not even 
Ultimate Ninja, or so it was rumored.  His armor was smooth and 
streamlined, in tones of dark, gunmetal gray and the lighter gray of 
titanium alloy, and his voice was heavily synthesized.

At the moment, he was kneeling in the garden, tending to a rosebush 
shaped like the Infinite Leadership Crisis.  His clippers moved 
smoothly, pruning deadheads and trimming branches, collecting the 
remains in a bag for composting. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, pretty good, pretty good.  You?"

"Quite well, thanks.  Has anything interesting happened?"

"Not really.  Shake-N-Bake Lass mutated into a ten-eyed walrus and 
You're-Not-Hitting-Me-Hard-Enough Lad had to talk her down."

"Mmmm, that all?"

"Yep."

"Okay."

Precisely forty-seven seconds passed in awkward silence.

"Well, then, I guess I'll be going..." He turned to leave.

"Cheesecake-Eater Lad?" He paused, looking back, and the frozen 
faceplate turned to stare at him. "Why don't people like irony?"

C-EL let a quiet sigh escape through his nose.  He turned back, 
fiddling with his mask a bit. "Well... I guess it's because they're 
tired of it."

"Tired?" It was kind of unnerving how much emotion was expressed in a 
simple tilt of the head.

"Well, yeah..." He looked around, found an overturned crate and sat 
down on it. "Okay, so..."

"The thing is, back in the day, society was a lot more straightforward.  
But the thing, I guess, is that people felt like they had to... well, 
remember the Classics Squad?  They were heroes, definitely, but they 
were... it's like, because they had to be straightforward, they had to 
ignore everything about themselves that wasn't 'hero'."

"So, because of this, if you wanted to use irony at all, you had to be 
clever, willing to stick your neck out.  And if you did, well, you got 
noticed!  You were subversive.  So being ironic was associated with 
being subversive and clever... and everybody who wanted to be seen that 
way started using it."

"And over time, more and more people picked it up.  It went from being 
a reaction against normal to being normal itself.  Heh, old story, 
right?  But as it went all mainstream, the people who weren't so good 
at irony used it for a cheap laugh, or as a way of making a point they 
couldn't support.  And the people who wanted to subvert the mainstream 
ended up having to use more and more layers of irony to get the same 
effect."

Cheesecake-Eater Lad shifted on his seat. "So, basically... it's 
everywhere, and it's gotten annoying.  Never really thought about it in 
that level of detail, but yeah... does that answer your question?"

The metal helm nodded. "Indeed.  Thank you, Cheesecake-Eater Lad."

He nodded and stood. "Well, I should get working on dinner.  Did you, 
um, need anything else?"

"No, no.  You have been quite helpful, quite elucidating."

"Ah, good.  No problem.  Yeah.  Have a good day and a nice evening and 
all!" He skeddadled posthaste.

Irony Man looked toward the setting sun.  He snipped a single bud off 
and caught it in his hand, turning it so the brown rot could not be 
seen on the pink petals.  He sighed, tossed it in his bag, and headed 
inside, leaving the bag in the cybershed.

Behind the locked door of his room, he powered down his suit.  The 
helmet clicked open, was set on the table.

And the new Irony Man said, in her rough yet distinctly feminine voice, 
"And that is why I must continue to seek her... the Messiah of 
Sincerity."

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Author's Note: Yes, this Irony Man is a fan of Socratic irony.

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, the Flame Wars Final logo is based 
on Scavenger's LNH logo, as seen at http://www.eyrie.org/lnh/ .