LNH: Dashing Tales #7

[Andrew Perron]

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.