LNH: Classic LNH Adventures #236: Just Another Multi-Writer Cascade that will Probably Never Have an Ending Part Two

[Jeanne Morningstar]

On 3/13/22 4:07 PM, Arthur Spitzer wrote:


> 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!)

Ah yes, the "posting directly from Google Groups" days. They used to 
wrap posts automatically, until at one point they stopped doing that. In 
later issues, I'd post by emailing to the mailing list; today, I use 
Thunderbird.


> 
> 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.
> 

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 in  That had a very 
strongly contrasting feel with the other works I mentioned--creepy, 
abstract and cosmic. Funnily enough, though, Young Avengers and New 
Avengers both heavily involved parallel universes.

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.) And so I threw in the 
LNH2 Saviors of the Net as the Illuminati equivalent.

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.

Which is also why...


> ****
> 
> 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 off her obsidian armor.
> 


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?


> "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.

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.) I wanted to take up the exploration of complex queer feelings 
they had in Young Avengers and push it further.

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.

[will tackle part 2 later]


-- 
Jeanne "The Dark Space Princess Knight" Morningstar
Chief Procrastinator, Commission of Ecumenical Translators

Every jumbled pile of person has a thnking part
Which wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of
--TMBG