LNH: Dashing Tales #7
Andrew Perron
pwerdna at gmail.com
Sat Sep 12 09:25:36 PDT 2015
On 9/9/2015 2:53 AM, Ben Rawluk wrote:
> DASHING TALES, episode the seventh,
> "Detective Work? Detective Work!"
Detective work, you big fat jerk!
> Captain Cleanup keeps all the fixtures polished, and April takes a moment to
> check her reflection for blemishes. She feels (almost) compelled to run a
> nail in between her front teeth, but there are cameras. Being a member of the
> Legion means always being watched.
Admittedly, this is often by Super Apathy Lad or Procrastination Boy.
> She slows as she reaches the checkpoint: a glass-encased booth with Captain
> Basement sitting inside. He's thick-shouldered and small-waisted, the kind of
> clean-cut dunderhead who would never understand her poetry, his muscles
> squeezed into a purple and yellow costume he claims is patriotic, patterned
> after the flag of Great Nation of Basement.
>
> (She asked him, the first time she came down here, where Basement was,
> baffled. "You're standing in the heart of it," he said. "I have been charged
> with defending this realm." No one has been able to tell her exactly where he
> comes from, or when he arrived. No one's ever seen him above ground, and the
> Captain claims his powers waned when disconnected from his native soil.)
Ugh that's yet another idea that's so appropriate I gotta wonder why nobody's
done it before.
> She braces herself and steps through the gate.
>
> Like stepping through a plate of freezing water, the air thick with radiation
> and magic. She always holds her breath when her face slips past, like this is
> the time it kills her. "All clear," she says, inhaling deeply. She flicks out
> her fingers and looks over her shoulder at the Captain, then takes the stairs
> down into the holding cells.
Uuuuuuugh, I have to use this. <3 <3 <3
> Tonight they have Doctor Periodic-Table (listlessly counting off elements on
> the chart printed across his costume), the time-lost Waffle Queen One Million
> (from exactly one million issues of _Easily-Discovered Man_ into the future),
> Doctor F and a throbbing white light that has never quite faded (the
> mysterious reminder of Doctor Delete, Mister Understatement and Polly
> Popinjay's escape from the cells using only a plot-device).
This entire sentence is gold, parentheticals and all, but I think Waffle Queen
One Million is my favorite,
> ("It might be a strain of vampirism introduced from one of the B-Movie
> Looniverses," Occultism Kid had offered. April had stayed near the back,
> watching. "We should consult with Very Big Boy, though I don't think they're
> from compatible realities.")
Seriously, I think you might think of every possible reference. <3 <3 <3
> The vampire's head was down. He shivered. Occultism Kid had said that her
> power was like a vision of heaven that the vampire would never be able to
> hold.
So damn evocative.
> It makes her uncomfortable, sometimes, the way the older Legionnaires seem to
> exclaim everything, sometimes. They're constantly announcing their moves, and
> they speak a little louder than they need to. I'm right here, she wants to
> say, but she doesn't.
Ah, yes - characters all about externality meeting characters all about
internality. (And then there's Kid Enthusiastic, who ignores the difference.)
> There are classrooms in the LNHQ. Maybe that shouldn't surprise April; from
> what she's seen in the archives, there are always at least two or three
> subgroups of teenaged net.heroes that have been arbitrarily deemed "students"
> and sent to study with Bibliography Boy or whoever.
I feel like we should have a new student team or two. (Maybe one for LNH20?)
> "You're investigating, then?" April settles onto the edge of the teacher's
> desk up at the front of the room. The hero-boots are starting to make her
> feet hurt.
>
> Emma shrugs, not looking away from the board. She scratches a few more words
> onto the cloud and stands up back. Emma scrapes at her nose. "The big boys
> can't find anything.
Nice and procedural!
> "It's awful down there," says Marco, the first thing he's bothered to say to
> her. She wishes he wasn't so moody. He was fine the other day when they were
> eating lunch on the back steps.
They need someone around who can do some emotional heavy lifting, get these
people out of their own heads.
> She slides off the desk and circles around to stand by Emma. "So, does this
> mean you're one of us now? A Legionnaire?"
>
> "What? No. I -- there could be a story for the Netizen, if there's a vampire
> plague."
She's a Recurring Non-Super Protagonist. It's a standard archetype, separate
from any single character's supporting cast; ref MCU Nick Fury. u.U
> "There's a kind of werewolf made out of moss." April and Emma look behind,
> toward Marco. "Called Lychens. Occultism Kid was telling me." He's looking
> down at his phone, flicking at the screen with his thumb. He looks up.
> "Sorry. Emma was talking about strains of vampire. It made me think--" He
> stops.. He looks away. "Sorry, I'm babbling."
Awwwwwww. (Also PUNS! :D)
> "I'm fine," says Marco. He pushes off from the desk and fishes out a packet
> of bus tickets. "This is good. Doing some actual work. You're right, we
> should be investigating. Don't worry about me. I'm a net.hero! Net.heroes
> don't stress about break-ups and homesickness. It's all supposed to be big
> operatic death and -- and--"
MARCO ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE TAKEN CARE OF.
> _Miscreants_ is still one of the great unrealized LNH stories, and I've
> returned to it a couple times. Presume that its protagonists are continuity-
> locked at the point of escape, and the LNHQ sometimes rotates them up where
> people can see.
Definitely a Hypertext Time thing.
> I will eventually have Research Lass show up "on screen" in Dashing Tales. I
> was debating, the first time I brought her up, whether she was Research Lass
> from the Net.Titans days, a previously unknown niece carrying on the legacy,
> or some temporal distortion caused by the swirling currents of Hypertext. I
> kind of like the idea of a grizzled older net.heroine coming in and yelling
> at the kids.
Ooooo, yes, me too. <3 Older, experienced versions of previously-teen characters
are amazing and radical. And, of course, it's a standard LNH gag to play with
how some characters age while Lite is eternally on the cusp of adulthood.
> An LNH One Million is a bit too out of date to be a parody, but let's all
> take a moment to imagine what the robotic Easily-Discovered Man Lite of the
> future looks like.
Yesssss. <3 One Million was one of my inspirations for Flame Wars Final...
whiiiiich I still need to finish. ^^;
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, so behind.
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