Daily Kuvira #205

He has special eyes.

At first I was kinda confused as to why no-one said anything about Jonathan’s eye situation but then I realized that people know him as the night shift doctor…

I’ve been playing Vampyr lately and despite it’s flaws I think it’s a good game. I’m currently on chapter four, so, about half-way there! Also, I just noticed that I misspelled Pippa’s name, but oh well, I’m too lazy to fix it.

Ah, but you see:

1. Any man can go out and buy one cake and spend something like US$12 on a cake, but it takes a man of true genius and cunning to steal US$480 worth of cake and not even get a police reprimand.

2. For Lex, it’s not enough that he has forty cakes. EVERYONE ELSE MUST HAVE ZERO CAKES!!!

And That’s Terrible!

There's another Worm connection in No Man's Land with Poison Ivy. As the rest of Batman's rogues' gallery carve up Gotham, she ends staking out a derelict city park and caring for a bunch of kids who were orphaned or otherwise abandoned after the earthquake. Rather than rousting her out, Batman agrees to leave her alone for the time being, provided she uses her powers to generate produce for the rest of the surviving citizens to eat. While Ivy was less than pleased about having to go along with this, she still held up her end of the deal.

In his own discussion of Ivy's history on Twitter, Exalted_Speed has argued that No Man's Land is really where the interpretation of Ivy as an antihero (ahem) took root. The connection with Worm is obvious; however, Taylor's tenure as urban warlord feels like a more refined version of that concept. As noted in the thread, the attempts to turn Poison Ivy into an antihero often stumble on both the sheer amount of carnage she's caused over the years and on with her original characterization of "vicious plant-themed Catwoman" which is still a major element in her modern portrayals. By contrast, it's much easier to offer apologetics of Taylor's conduct on the Boardwalk, since she was explicitly written to fit the role that Pamela Isely was awkwardly retrofitted to play.

Got a Worm meta question for you. I'm starting on the early parts of Taylor's warlord era - I'm about to leap into Arc 13 - and the general concept of a ravaged American city being divided up by various supervillain groups is reminding me a lot of that Batman story arc No Man's Land from the late 1990s. Unfortunately my comics knowledge is rudimentary at best, and I haven't been able to any discussion comparing the two stories, so I was wondering if I could pick your brain on the subject. Was it just convergent evolution, or was Wildbow engaging with the Batman story in some way?

I myself have only read about half of No Man's Land- and several years ago to boot- so I've got limited ability to do a direct compare and contrast. No Man's Land is absolutely the sort of status-quo-shattering, history-book-making upset that, within Marvel and DC, nonetheless always inexplicably heals and loses salience until you can barely tell that it's still in continuity. Worm is heavily informed by Wildbow's irritation with that sort of thing, so I think it's totally reasonable to view the warlord era through the lens of "What if No Mans Land had no editorial escape hatch." Alternatively, I think it kind of makes sense to view it through the lens that it's working backwards from the premise of No Man's Land- In what kind of setting would it be plausible for the Federal Government to write off a sufficiently-damaged American City? In what context would the legal infrastructure have been established for that, in what context would that even fall within the Overton Window? What muddies my opinion on this is that the general concept of a ravaged, atmospherically-apocalyptic American city torn up by superpowered gang warfare is something that's kind of just been in the water in superhero comics since the mid-eighties at least, and it was a relatively common thing to see during the Dark Age- they were choice prey for all those overpouched musclemen with their poorly rendered firearms. I'd be surprised if Wildbow wasn't at least aware of No Man's Land, but it's definitely not the only cape book from the late 90s or early oughts where you could pick up that idea from. Ultimately this leaves me unsure if No Man's Land is the specific referent or if it's just part-and-parcel with trying to do an involved, thoughtful take on what cape comics were like at the time.

Ah, “Alter Ego”, the episode where Tuvok is stalked by an alien incel who got too deep into RPing.

well life just isnt fucking fair is it humpback whale 85

Well, Madiha and Esther called me out in this episode, so here’s my thoughts on Hitoe’s fate: Thought #1: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Thought #2: Even though I’m a guy who’s never touched a Wixoss deck, even I am not immune to having my wishes turned against me in a cruelly ironic manner. Thought #3: Why do we play customizable card games? Just to suffer? Thought #4: Given how there are probably a bunch of LRIGs out there who were once human (and how I suspect Tama was one), there’s a sliver of a chance Yuzuki got her memory wiped, and as such might be a less awful person as an LRIG.

Thought #5: Even so, someone please get Hitoe off of Mari Okada’s wild ride.

And finally, I want to thank you two for plunging into the depths of animé hell to entertain us biweekly. You two are the troops in my book.

Transmediacrity Anime Club, Ep. 14: The Bomb Diggity Lives Of Selectors

Nobody can think in this show.

Topics include: Video Game Hell doesn’t do anime so we win there; these episodes of Wixoss are dire; once again, relevant trigger warning for Incest because Yuzuki sucks; foreshadowing The Scene; a quest to stop the marketing; Yuzuki marauding the streets for card duels; Ruuko overturning the tables; hey Mari Okada weren’t you hired to sell cards; Takara-Tomy what happened; does Executive Man know what he is doing; DONT LOOK AT THE WIXOSS WIKI; our whitehouse.gov petition to get fan wikis regulated; Ullith the Horny LRIG; two girls doing it; thirst for battle; It’s A Wedding; Iona strategies; Wish Crisis; Yuzuki ruining lives; Kakegurui crossover; addicted to booster packs; dubbed Akira; Guy Fawkes Mask; the First Malformation of Akira; chuuni scar; Alt Girl turn; somebody sponsor us for $15 to keep this podcast solvent; quasimodo scare; Akira ninja; elite friendship moves; the most angelic girl; we’re gonna dox Ruuko’s brother; best Grandma; impressed by my fake deep sister; The Final Duel; The Wrath of Buns Girl; my friends who spread incest rumors; peeling some beans; girls are terrible, except for my sister; The Incest Scene; cool genes bro; bio-horror dialog; Mari Okada’s intentions; we nearly quit the podcast but we talked ourselves into continuing; Madiha’s Nebula-Brained Galactic Genius Analysis; returning to Hitoe; Hitoe, situation improved, or fate worse than death? You decide!

Outro theme is “Battle – Why Not Eliminate The World?” from Selector Infected Wixoss’ OST.

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I still haven’t played the Mass Effect games yet, but these sound like the sort of things the Enterprise-D comes across in the middle of a normal planetary survey or supply run that turns into some delightful adventure about missing time, lizard aliens, and good old-fashioned space madness.

Mass Effect one is like, oddly surreal and full of little mysteries. Like you go on any planet with the mako, and you come across all sorts of stuff. Like debris from space ships, abandoned tents and rovers, and even dead bodies in the middle of nowhere??? Or a random beacon with the dog tags to some captain. Let’s not forget the mummified Salarian on some lifeless planet out in the middle of nothing remarkable space.

There’s a gas giant in a system in like Hades Gamma or Gemini Sigma or something with a moon notable for having the abandoned ship of a Turian general that served in the Krogan rebellions. All it says is that he was nowhere to be found, only a deliberately depowered ship was found. Like???? Or the gas giant with mysterious machines beneath the clouds that no one knows the origin or purpose behind.

Therum has a town of 13,000 on it for the mining, but we never see it?? The planet that’s 90% ocean also has a settlement and we don’t see that one either! In any of the games we never get to visit Elysium, even though it’s mentioned several times.

Another planet has some weird history and prothean ruins or something else super mysterious on it, and Earth universities want to study it but it’s stuck behind what could be decades worth or arguing with the council about it.

How did the Thresher Maws get scattered to so many random planets, and what they eat there??

And then there’s random outposts on these empty planets but we don’t know what they were researching?? The one planet where the mine is filled with husks, but we are never given any reason as to how they turned into husks in the mine. Or the occasional empty freighter ship orbiting a star that has some bizarre reason for it being abandoned and forgotten.

How did the pirates or scavengers get on these planets and appear in hideouts or trying to salvage some debris, but there’s no ship around? Did they get dropped off and someone was coming back to pick them up or what?? Where are the big pirate gangs based at? Some place akin to Omega or Illium or just a base on some empty planet?

Some of this confusion with logic, but most of these are like, so mysterious and I want to know all the answers.

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Avatar: Legend of Korra Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Kuvira (Avatar), Bataar Jr. (Avatar), Suyin Beifong (Avatar), Gnatha Chavran, Ailing Fengtian, And some more minor OCs Additional Tags: Epistolary, Politics and War in a Time of Revolution!, Yet another fill-in fic for B3 and B4, Inexplicable Dream Sequences Summary:

A week before setting out for the state of Yi, in a state of some minor disquiet, Kuvira sits down and recounts all that has happened to her over the last three years.

Picard: “...well, fuck me, I guess.”

I’m actually almost through the campaign right now and...man, you weren’t kidding. As I always say, if a Wolfenstein game has a more nuanced portrayal of mass murder than your story does, you need to sit back and reassess a few things.

At least the guns look neat, tho.

There’s tomfoolery brewing in Squad 7! Bigoted tomfoolery! In this episode Madiha sticks up for the little girl, struggles to drive a tank, and goes looking for a bridge. Who wins, 5 scouts, or 1 speedy girl? Check out our Patreon!