#but ultimately the queen of hell revives them so they can continue to save the universe from total destruction so. theyre fine. probabbyl | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

piermanwalter · 4 years ago

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Thief’s Apprentice: Magical Beings

Note: I mean magical beings in the sense that every being in a discrete group is magical. For example, a human or a wooly mammoth or fig tree can all be mages, but it doesn’t mean all humans, wooly mammoths, or fig trees are mages. All of these beings are mages. The World was once populated with magical beings, but after they all mysteriously died while turning human, there have been very few magical beings on The World. However, disease, soul experiments, and mass prayer have caused humans to become magical beings again.

Revenants

There are about a hundred million revenants on The World.

We already know about revenants. A plague turns vertebrates into necromancers after they die, who come back to life as a walking corpse. Revenants have no physical senses. Revenants feel the emotions they felt as they died the strongest. The longer you had the plague, the saner you will be after death. Revenant souls regenerate quickly and grow continuously, becoming huge enough to allow them to perform powerful magic without consequence.

We have taken a very revenant-centric view of The World so far, but there is so much other shit going on.

Ambient Creatures

There are countless trillions of Ambient Creatures on The World.

The World was once covered with Ambient Magic strong enough to support large creatures through magic alone, but they have shrunk almost to disappearing. Some believe the loss of Ambient Magic coincides with the mass extinction of magical creatures, but there’s no proof of this. There are still a few patches of Ambient Magic scattered throughout The World, but they collectively take up less than 100 square miles and are too weak to support anything but small and simple creatures.

In the last few hundred thousand years, some previously nonmagical animals have evolved to take advantage of Ambient Magic. All beings with souls can absorb and make use of Ambient Magic, which only amounts to feeling slightly more emotionally stable. However, this is enough to sustain some beings, like the flatworms, which eat nothing and lazily float about, needle snails, which eat and behave like normal snails but have the ability to shape iron sand into spikes using Industrial Magic, and lambent butterflies, which use Light Magic to flash and turn invisible, but revenants don’t see using light anyway so it literally does not matter. When removed from Ambient Magic, ambient creatures will lose all magic ability, and in some cases, die quickly. There are many species that are indistinguishable from nonmagical species, but when they are placed in Ambient Magic, start performing powers. Some of these species are found nowhere near Ambient Magic. How did they get there? Maybe it’s the Ambient Magic that moved.

Parts of Ambient Creatures can be used to make powerful magic items because they evolved to store a specific type of magic.

In Veilheim, the Ambient Creatures in the Magical Grove outside the city are seen as further proof that invertebrates are Perfect Forms.

Vampires

There are about fifteen thousand vampires on The World.

120 years ago, Dr. Hanna Ferse, an infamous Gore Mage from Hapsburg, was able to reverse engineer the original plague-transmitting neuroleprosy bacteria into something she hoped would save humanity from plague. It sort of worked. Vampirism renders its bearers immune to plague, but vampirism is arguably worse than the plague. Instead of turning the dead into necromancers, it turns the living into gore mages. Given that vampirism still draws upon The Necromancer’s magic, this has terrifying implications as to The Necromancer’s true power. While being a vampire prevents plague, being a plaguebearer also prevents vampirism. Vampirism only infects humans. Interestingly, mages, wizards, and other people with unusually large souls are immune to vampirism.

Vampirism is transmitted by bodily fluids, has a ten hour incubation, then in one hour turns bearers into vampires while they are still alive. If bearers don’t deprive themselves of water and eat salt past the point it’s physically painful, they will die. Their bodies have been modified to function best when very salty, but they still have the same survival instincts as humans. A healthy vampire suffers from constant thirst, but if they drink too much of anything with a lower salinity than blood, they will get sick and die. Vampires can also die in all the ways a human can die, such as starvation and bleeding. Vampires are also very dense and quickly sink in all bodies of water. Being in contact with freshwater for too long will cause mass cell death and their skin to slough off. Vampires also get very stiff and develop a grainy pallor as more of their bodies are replaced with salt. Many vampires get strokes and kidney stones and go blind because of high blood pressure, and also their blood is so thick with salt crystals it starts cutting into surrounding tissue. Being a vampire sucks because you need to turn into a cured ham or else you die. Hampires.

Why haven’t vampires overrun and destroyed The World like revenants did? The most obvious reason is that they are weak and fragile compared to revenants, but the most important reason is incubation time. Living a normal life for a few years, a plaguebearer can infect many people, who in turn infect many people, and none of them know they have the plague. Entire continents can unknowingly become saturated with plaguebearers. Meanwhile, an accidental bearer of vampirism only has 10 hours to unknowingly infect someone before suddenly dying. The plague can also be carried by all vertebrates, living or dead, while vampirism bacteria can only survive in living humans.

Vampires stop aging and are sterile. Vampires also have ever-growing souls like revenants, but not as fast. You’d think newfound Gore Magic abilities would help vampires alleviate their salty pain, but no. If a sane newly dead revenant screws up Death Magic and burns half their soul to pull their arms off, the revenant can sit around and contemplate their mistakes until their soul regenerates and they can put their arms back. If a newly turned vampire screws up Gore Magic, they die. Few vampires are lucky and privileged enough to survive more than a few months and master Gore Magic enough to elevate themselves above basic humanity, usually by guidance from other vampires and/or incidental medical knowledge.

Despite all this, Dr. Ferse used freedom from plague and promise of magic powers to convince some Hapsburg nobility to become vampires, who then used their practiced good health, magic, and plague immunity to advocate for the widespread use of vampirism to combat the plague. Gehenna heard about this and was initially interested, but then saw what agonies vampirism rendered unto the poor and uneducated general populace, who were used as snacks and test subjects by the nobility, and decided stopping a painful infectious disease with another painful infectious disease is stupid as hell.

After Dr. Ferse and many others were killed in an eradication campaign, the few surviving noble vampires were able to leverage old family allegiances and secure their survival after proving they could use Gore Magic and their own bacteria to sense and drink all infectious fluids from a plaguebearer during incubation. The plaguebearer dies in the process, but their body is no longer infectious. This doesn’t work for plaguebearers once they show symptoms.

Vampires were allowed to live as long as they kept their own numbers low and contributed their skills towards eradicating the plague. Nowadays, Gehenna views vampires like cats. They carry disease too, but they also reduce the numbers of other disease carriers, so it’s more convenient to let them live.

Although vampire killing and gorging sprees are ultimately good for the people of Beringia, many still fear vampires for obvious reasons. Sometimes vampires are driven mad by pain and thirst and start attacking indiscriminately. Some vampires lie about plague outbreaks to kill and eat uninfected people. Other vampires powertrip and infect people without caring for consequences. Other vampires look terrifying, with bloodshot eyes, salt-crusted ulcers, and gouty crystals bursting from their joints. Also most vampires are rich aristocratic Hapsburgers with their perverse decadent foreigner ways. Hamburgers.

Controversy rages throughout Beringia over whether the fine stranger who arrives in the middle of a plague outbreak and sleeps all day while mysterious piles of corpses show up overnight in the street or the white-clad masked soldiers who arrive in the middle of a plague outbreak and start shooting and burning people are more cool and sexy.

Compared to revenants, who have been on The World for 700 years, vampires are very young and are always discovering new things about themselves. Some vampires can shapeshift to hide their salty deformities, become unrecognisable, or mimic other people. Some vampires are immune to all disease, not just plague. One amazing thing that may be enough to justify salt hell is when they die, as long as their heart is intact, vampires will come back to life on Dark World Day. Before this was discovered, some dead vampires were buried and had to starve to death over and over. Dr. Ferse was found like this.

Hapsburg has a regular court and royal family, and also a Vampire Court established 80 years ago to deal with vampire internal affairs. Dr. Ferse was the first Vampire Queen after her revival, but was ousted 5 years later by the second and current Vampire Queen Hecata, who believed that Dr. Ferse’s aggressive promotion of vampirism and callous treatment of the common folk are what led to the persecution of all vampires. Dr. Ferse is still around, but no longer has serious political influence and instead secretly publishes a lot of forbidden Gore Magic literature for secret students of forbidden magic and miscellaneous edgelords. You may assume that Pontiff Rubedo modelled himself on Dr. Ferse’s teachings to become a murderous freak, but he hasn’t actually read any of her books. While he may be indirectly inspired by vampires, that’s just how he is.

The Hapsburg Vampire Court used to be a puppet state, but as the regular Hapsburg Court steadily declines from inbreeding-induced insanity, deformity, and genetic disease, the balance of power is shifting towards vampires. Although vampirism is still an upper class disease, the Hapsburg Vampire Court leveraged their newfound power to responsibly infect and educate a lot of regular Hapsburgers to form the Hapsburg Vampire Navy. Not only is vampirism useful for fighting plaguebearing pirates, vampire sailors don’t need to carry drinking water or alcohol or most types of food, because they trained to use Gore Magic to prevent vitamin deficiencies and can drink seawater.

The Hapsburg Vampire Navy provides an alternate method of oversea transport from Gehenna’s well-armed and well-regulated sea travel monopoly. Hapsburg became very wealthy from increased trade and leasing ports to landlocked countries at huge prices, and is the first and only country to reclaim its coastline from Gehenna.

Relations between Hapsburg and Gehenna are not good. Aside from the back-and-forth coastline control, Gehenna still needs to marry into Hapsburg royalty despite them being the biggest source of unprecedented and spectacular new genetic diseases and they are really annoying to deal with in general. Vampires are still treated with suspicion at best and like rabid animals at worst, largely due to propaganda spread by Gehenna 100 years ago they have since put super half-assed efforts in dispelling.

Despite mutual bad blood, when Gehenna announced their expedition into plagueridden Surenia to stop the source of new revenants, Hapsburg volunteered half of their Vampire Navy under the thinly veiled threat that the age of vampire dominion would begin if Gehenna failed. Gehenna used most of the Hapsburg Vampire Navy attachment to make up for the loss of troops in Beringia, and anchored some of them near Surenia to euthanise and purify returning plaguebearers. After a lot of arguing, only one vampire was allowed to set foot in Surenia.

Vratis Constantin was a peasant in northwestern Fire Escape, the sole survivor of a village that got attacked by Vampire Queen Hecate in one of her thirst rampages. Going off dubious vampire legends, Vratis became a local hero by killing ancient revenants that emerge from the soft peaty Fire Escape ground. Through sheer willpower and blind ignorance, Vratis became nigh-indestructible from Gore Magic and also learned how to use Light Magic because of misinterpreted stories of immortal vampires materialising from shadow (they were actually dying and instantly reviving on Dark World Day).

Upon hearing of a Vampire Court in Hapsburg, Vratis left to join his people. His presence was a shock, since it offended the noble vampires that some Fire Escapee asshole was not only able to survive, but also surpass many of them with no assistance. Queen Hecata defended him, since he was a magical curiosity and technically an heir to the throne since the Queen infected him. Queen Hecata stuck a noble title on him and treated Lord Constantin like a son, and he waged war against rival vampire families on her behalf.

The rest of the court hoped Lord Constantin would get overwhelmed by court politics and get killed and/or disgraced. Instead, he developed a ruthless and bombastic outward persona to prevent others from reading his intentions while building a network of informants from servants, and was single-mindedly and unquestioningly loyal to the Queen. This presented a potential succession crisis, since most of the court would refuse to serve a foreign King, but Queen Hecata didn’t have any reason to disinherit him and all “accidents” and deliberately unwinnable battles haven’t worked yet.

Queen Hecata disinherits him, but promises the Hapsburg Vampire Court will recognise his new title as Vampire King of Veilheim if he succeeds. Lord Constantin knows he was sent to Surenia to die, but still believes he can get back in the court’s good graces by succeeding where Dr. Ferse failed. He hopes to liberate the people of Veilheim by giving them vampirism to fight back against their evil necromancer overlord and his mindless revenant slave army. After a life of alienation and watching himself turn into a heartless bloodless undying monstrosity, Lord Constantin believes he finally found a kindred spirit in Prince Train Noise, a faceless voiceless syphilitic monstrosity. Prince Train Noise hates Lord Constantin because he became disgusting and alienated himself on purpose.

Living Saints

There are about six thousand Living Saints on The World.

If a soulless object like a statue of a saint is prayed to long enough, it begins accumulating tiny scraps of souls from its worshippers. Some worshippers begin to hear the whispers of ancient prayers being repeated back to them. With sufficient emotion matching the general vibe of the souls in the statue, some of the soul fragments can leave the statue and die to perform miracles. This motivates people to continue praying and the statue continues to accumulate souls.

If many people are praying to help others, the statue will become selfless and benevolent. If many people are praying to help themselves, the statue will become selfish and perform the bare minimum of miracles to keep them praying. If people are praying out of desperation, the statue becomes terrified and helpless. Mass prayer is a gamble. You could generate the emotion to perform great miracles, or you could fill the statue with your own fears and doubts and render it powerless. Very rarely, the souls in the statue become self aware and realise with every miracle, they come closer to death and with every prayer, they lose more and more of themselves in a sea of pleading voices.

When someone dies in a church with an unhappy saint, all the souls in the statue enters their body and revives them as a Living Saint.

Living Saints have gigantic souls and the same incredible magical power they had as a statue, but because the soul fragments are not in their original bodies, their souls can’t regenerate. Living Saints are physically human and eat and breathe and age like normal. Living Saints are most powerful and self-assured when they first rise and steadily grow weaker and less assertive until they run out of soul to sustain a human body and die. In that sense, they are the opposite of revenants. Sometimes the soul of the original person is still there, and once all the other souls are used up, the Living Saint returns to being a normal human. Praying to Living Saints doesn’t do anything because beings have defences to stop other souls from getting into them. These defences only drop during death, which is how the Living Saint came to be in the first place.

Historically, there have been very few Living Saints, but as Beringia turned to centralised religion to cope with mass death and plague hell, and then later to cope with oppressive and terrifying regimes that formed to combat mass death and plague hell, Living Saints are becoming more common, to the point where some giant cathedrals have entire choirs of Living Saints. Fortunately, attempts to engineer the creation of Living Saints by killing people in churches rarely work, because you can’t be sure if the Saint is unhappy enough to leave, the time between consciousness and death is too short for all the souls to move in, and also the injuries or poisons sometimes end up killing the Saint again.

As per their original function, Living Saints are unquestioningly obedient towards clergy and people they vibe with. Regardless of how charitable they are, Living Saints love attention and being surrounded by people. They are also famously good listeners. Living Saints tend not to have a set personality and instead behave like the owner of whatever piece of soul is being consumed to keep them alive at the moment. Many churches glorify their Living Saints, and most Saints are happy to be there, but as you may expect from souls desperate enough to possess a dead body, some Living Saints are not only unhappy with being statues, but also unhappy with being worshipped or serving the clergy or even religion as a whole. Naturally, the church tries to suppress Living Saints when they do this. Most Saints are too powerful to fight directly, and can only be defeated by the opposite of prayer. A lot of people curse the Living Saint for days on end until enough of their souls die, then the Saint either becomes obedient or dies completely.

250 years ago, a mass Living Saint rebellion led by Saint Korz, patron saint of war (oops), caused the formation of Hasc, an independent democratic republic of Living Saints and Living Saint equalists located in The Holy Pentacle in the middle of the four most religious countries in Beringia: Sacra, Benedicta, Suspensia, and Termina. Gehenna used to be the fifth country in The Holy Pentacle before it left to do its own thing. The original Saint Korz is long dead, but worship of Saint Korz is so widespread in Beringia that there’s always at least one Saint Korz who survived their journeys to Hasc, so Hasc is always well-defended. The current Saint Korz are an elderly Alexandrian woman who got elected as Minister of War and a 7-year-old Bourbon boy who goes to school and isn’t even remotely involved with the military.

The church would prefer if Hasc was routed and all the Living Saints there returned to holy service, but nobody can do anything because Gehenna, the bulwark against plague, wholehearted and aggressively supports Hasc and its endeavors for Living Saint liberation. Why? Living Saints are a new source of heritable mages that aren’t already super inbred by centuries of royal marriage. Becoming a Living Saint doesn’t make a person have more magic potential, but a Living Saint can only form in someone with huge innate magic potential. By modern times, every legitimate Gehenna royal is descended from at least three different Living Saints.

There is much debate in non-Hasc non-Gehenna society on whether marrying and having children with Living Saints is admirable or abhorrent. Some believe that because Saints are holy, the children of Saints are also holy. Others believe that Gehenna is contaminating their royal bloodline by marrying whatever random peasants and vagrants and students who died in a church. Some Saint marriages are in direct contradiction to canon, especially if they were a martyred virgin of legend or actual historical celibate monk. There is also an issue with personhood, since it can be argued that a Living Saint isn’t a real human with an intact soul.

Imagine being a villager praying to your local saint every day, but then one day, she leaves by possessing the body of a girl who fell off the church roof while playing. Everyone is very sad from the combined blows of the girl’s death, losing the epicenter of your community, your prayers going unanswered, and feeling like you are unworthy of the saint and it’s your fault she left. You keep praying to the silent statue, but it isn’t the same. Years later, news comes in that the Living Saint is alive and well and fucking the Pope.

Living Saints are basically unheard of in Surenia. The more a society accepts magic, the less likely for Living Saints to form. Mages can sense the fragments of human souls in religious items, and worshippers who are aware of this tend to lose faith, or treat prayer as purely transactional instead of genuinely believing they are communing with a higher consciousness. A statue being prayed to like a person is more likely to become a person, and vice versa.

For example, a saint statue in Albany is fed with prayers like:

saint marta please please please make osten propose to me I can’t wait any longer hello saint marta I am seven years old and prayer book said today is the day to pray for a good husband I would like a good husband but not too soon maybe when I am ten years old my husband is angry with me again may we have enough money for both a lavish wedding, a new house, and taxes by the end of the year sweetheart is out there somewhere I will find him and finally be happy I ask this of you even though this task is impossible even for god my husband has the plague he’s all alone in the plague house everyone else sees him as dead he can’t die he can’t die he can’t die he can’t die if I am the last person he remembers will I die next I tried throwing darts at books I tried growing onions in a grid but I still don’t know the name of my true love saint marta at least reveal the first letter to me I need to know how do I make him stop drinking I am so scared daughter moved to a new town to be married and I miss her so much may saint marta protect her i am now old and ungainly husband says he loves me but I need peace of mind saint marta give me a sign is it a sin to abandon my children I need to leave I can’t stay here anymore saint marta our marriage is blessed thank you please take these almonds. i am frightened of strangers i am frightened of dancing i will never find someone to love me on my own saint marta help me

The souls in this statue are thus very likely to develop into a real consciousness that is highly motivated to leave.

Meanwhile deity statues in Veilheim are fed with:

MAY ALL WHO USE MY POWER FLOAT AS HIGH AS THEY DESIRE

i am not very magical but if i pray more maybe Floating Goddess will be biased i will float more

Floating Goddess stores a combination of Death, Gore, and Industrial Magic. Those of us who are more prosthetic than flesh and bone may have difficulties floating so I will give the Floating Goddess more Industrial Magic.

who the fuck put the bathroom on the top floor of a building only accessible by Floating Goddess

The souls in this statue know they are here to serve as fuel for others’ prayers so they won’t leave.

Due to divergent cultural developments, sane revenants are magical beings that are only common in Surenia and Living Saints are magical beings that are only common outside of Surenia.

Living Saints can’t get vampirism because this loser knockoff disease can’t deal with many souls at once.

Interesting things happen when Living Saints get the plague. After the normal giant bruise upon infection, the plague has to recognise every piece of soul, raising the incubation time from five years to so long that the Living Saint dies before plague symptoms start to show. In this time, the Living Saint could have infected countless people. Because there is no soul left, although the body is a plaguebearer, it will not come back as a revenant. If the original soul is there, then the incubation period starts from the beginning and the person is affected by the plague as normal. Once they die, their soul immediately balloons to its original size as the Living Saint.

Usually after death, a revenant takes several hours to several weeks before moving, but a Dead Saint’s soul is so huge that upon death, the body is flung about erratically and torn to pieces under its own necromancy, as well as causing indiscriminate damage to its surroundings with its secondary genre of magic. A Dead Saint will uncontrollably destroy everything nearby with magic until its body is reduced to paste, spreading infectious fluids everywhere in the process. Woe betide you if a Dead Saint breaks free and starts splattering down the street.

This is a huge controversy between Gehenna and the church. Gehenna believes all plaguebearers should be killed and burned, while the church believes killing a Living Saint is an unforgivable sin. It can be argued that a plaguebearing Living Saint can live in a way that doesn’t infect anyone, but there is always the risk of a Dead Saint. Ultimately, the church justifies its own cursing of rebellious Living Saints and mercy towards plaguebearing Living Saints because the plague unrelentingly damns people no matter what and the ultimate sin is disobeying the church, while Gehenna supports Living Saint liberation and burns all plaguebearers because the plague is a bacteria that you get as consequence of your own negligence, and disobeying the church is the most practical thing to do at this point.

Life in Veilheim seems so simple in comparison. Succumb to plague and let the city take care of you. Die happy and achieve eternal life as a revenant.

#thief's apprentice #worldbuilding #graphic injuries #religion #long post

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thedcdunce · 5 years ago

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Amanda Waller

“I don't care. I'm not part of the law anymore. Kill them.” - Amanda Waller

Real Name: Amanda Blake

Aliases:

Black King

Mockingbird

White Queen

Gender: Female

Height: 5′ 1″

Weight: 200 lbs (91 kg)

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Black

Abilities:

Espionage

Firearms

Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced)

Indomitable Will

Intimidation

Manipulation

Political Science

Tactical Analysis

Universe: New Earth

Citizenship: American

Base of Operations: Washington D.C.

Marital Status: Widowed (Joseph Waller; husband)

Occupation:

Government Agent

Politician

First Appearance: Legends #1 (November, 1986)

Abilities

Espionage

Firearms

Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced)

Indomitable Will

Intimidation

Manipulation

Political Science: Amanda has a degree in political science.

Tactical Analysis

Origins

Amanda Blake grew up in the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green area of Chicago. At the age of 18 she married the 20-year-old Joseph Waller, and they quickly had a large family together. Her first child was Joe, Jr., then Damita, then the twins Martin and Jessie, and then her youngest child Coretta. Their lives were a financial struggle, and they relied on social programs, but they were happy. Joe, Jr. was set to go to college on a basketball scholarship until he was killed in a mugging gone wrong. Damita was raped and murdered in an alleyway on her way home from church. They knew who was responsible, but the police could not get a conviction with no witnesses. Her husband Joseph Waller set out to kill the rapist "Candyman" and both men shot each other dead. Amanda swore that the streets would take no more of her family. She worked hard to put all of her other children through college, then she put herself through college and earned a political science degree. Amanda decided to go into politics, and she approached democratic congressional candidate Marvin Collins to become his campaign director. Collins was elected thanks to her efforts, and he took her to Washington as his aide. Amanda discovered the old Task Force X files while searching through old bills, and asked to revive the Suicide Squad under her direction.

The Agency

The Agency was formed by Amanda Waller to serve as a small, quasi-independent branch of Task Force X. Valentina Vostok brought former NYPD Lieutenant Harry Stein into the Agency as an operative. Amanda Waller later promoted Stein to the command position and demoted Vostok. Harry Stein would later re-organize the Agency and name it Checkmate.

Legends

Amanda Waller rebuilds Task Force X, and its former leader Rick Flag is assigned to work under her. Flag argues with Waller about her agenda, and Waller says the only thing she cares about is his ability to follow orders. Nightshade is the second member she recruits, as an undercover operative. Her first target is Brimstone, and she has a team of scientists analyze the monster for weaknesses. Waller puts together a new Suicide Squad lead by Flag with members including Blockbuster, Bronze Tiger, Captain Boomerang, and Enchantress. The criminals are offered pardons in exchange for their service, and fitted with explosive bracelets that will detonate if they disobey orders. Her team destroys Brimstone at Mount Rushmore. Blockbuster is the only casualty, despite her expectations that all of them would die. Waller tries to keep the criminals in custody, but Flag insists on honoring their deal and releases them. Captain Boomerang is captured by G. Gordon Godfrey, and threatens to expose the Suicide Squad unless they rescue him. Amanda gives them orders to silence Captain Boomerang by any means necessary. Flag insists on solving the problem non-lethally. Waller later presents her case to President Reagan, and thanks to this success he decides to let the team continue on a provisional basis.

Suicide Squad

Waller sets her team up in Louisiana's Belle Reve prison, under the care of warden John Economos. Simon LaGrieve and Marnie Herrs conduct psychological profiles, and warn her that the entire team is emotionally unstable, but Waller is unconcerned. Waller briefs the team and sends them on their next mission, destroying the terrorist group Jihad in Qurac. Waller authorizes Doctor Moon and Karin Grace to mindwipe the traitor Plastique. This infuriates Flag, and Amanda agrees that it is wrong of her. Belle Reve is attacked by the Female Furies of Apokolips, and Waller is unable to stop them from taking her prisoner G. Gordon Godfrey. They are asked to take down the racist vigilante William Hell, and Waller insists they discredit him instead of making a martyr for the "white power" movement. President Reagan has Waller send the Suicide Squad to arrest Firestorm, under the leadership of their incompetent NSC liaison Derek Tolliver.

Waller argues against the team going on purely political missions, but they are sent to rescue imprisoned author Zoya Trigorin in Moscow. LaGrieve worries that Amanda is suppressing anger over her family deaths, and counsels her to channel it into something productive. Amanda confronts Derek Tolliver for sending her team on the irresponsible Moscow mission, and Tolliver replies that her team was expendable. She punches him in the face, and tells him that this does not mean their lives can be thrown away like garbage. Flag has a breakdown following this mission, and Waller relieves him of command duty.

There is a political summit during Millennium, and Waller has an inter-agency rivalry with General Eiling. Waller sends her team to destroy the Manhunter temple with a bomb, and does not tell them they are all expected to die in the explosion. Batman infiltrates Belle Reve and threatens to expose the Squad. Waller stands up to Batman and talks him down by threatening to expose his secret identity, using the fingerprints of Matches Malone. Flag impresses her in the fight against Batman, and she reinstates his command. Waller is forced to send Rick Flag on another mission she politically disagrees with, rescuing Hawk in Nicaragua. She sends the rest of the team to kill drug czar Xavier Cujo. Nightshade argues that an illegal assassination is murder, and Waller replies that it is justice. Speedy tells her that this did not fix anything, and she only created a power vacuum. The Agency is reorganized by Harry Stein to become Checkmate, under Task Force X. Amanda Waller becomes their boss.

Rick Flag disobeys Waller to rescue their operative Nemesis, who was stranded in the Soviet Union. Waller is so angry that she has President Reagan send Justice League International to stop them. The JLI's publicist Maxwell Lord threatens to expose them, and Waller intimidates Lord with violence. Senator Cray blackmails President Reagan and the Suicide Squad to help his reelection campaign. Waller is forced to work under Derek Tolliver, Cray's aide, or she will be fired. In a moment of weakness, she confides in Bronze Tiger that everything has gone with her idea since the start. Amanda reveals that Bronze Tiger was supposed to be the leader, and Rick Flag was imposed on her, which she believes is because of racism. Despite this setback, she regroups and leads the team to save the world from Doctor ZZ. The Jihad returns to attack Manhattan, and they deliver an ultimatum demanding Waller's team be handed over. Waller orders Rick Flag not to intervene, and he disobeys her, so she tells him to do the job right this time.

Waller's inability to deal and compromise with her people led to the departure from the team of Nemesis, the death of a US senator and thereby indirectly to the death of Rick Flag Jr. Nonetheless, the team remained loyal to her, often choosing to side with her instead of the government. It was ultimately revealed that the reason that Amanda Waller even kept the heroes such as Nightshade around, was in order for them to act as her conscience. Over the course of her first run with the Suicide Squad her actions became increasingly erratic as she fought to retain control of the Squad. This was heightened by the public reveal of the Suicide Squad, and her being officially replaced, although her 'replacement' was in fact an actor, and Waller remained the team's director. Even that secret would eventually be revealed and Amanda Waller would be put on trial. During this time, the Squad also became involved in an inter-agency conflict in a crossover between the Checkmate and Suicide Squad titles called the Janus Directive. She eventually found herself serving prison time for her pursuit of an organized crime cartel based in New Orleans called the LOA and killing its leadership, using Squad operatives in the process.

The Squad's rebirth

Waller was eventually pardoned and released a year later to reorganize the Squad as a freelance mercenary group at the behest of Sarge Steel to deal with a crisis in Vlatava, Count Vertigo's home country. Afterwards the Suicide Squad performed a variety of missions, but were ultimately disbanded when Waller became disillusioned with her life.

During the course of her renewed tenure with this team, Amanda Waller became closer to her operatives, even accompanying them on their field missions. This allowed for her and her team to bond more effectively, although she retained her dominant and threatening personality.

Shadow Fighters

Around this time Amanda Waller would organize many superheros to confront the villain Eclipso. Again she would confront Sarge Steel. Her first attempt at a team did not go well as most of the them were brutally murdered. Her second attempt with a much larger team had much more success.

President Luthor

She would eventually rejoin federal service, initially as Southeastern regional director for the Department of Extranormal Operations, and eventually got promoted to Secretary of Metahuman Affairs as a member of the Luthor Administration. Luthor would use her as he saw fit, one of the few who could.

Checkmate

In the wake of being jailed briefly for her alleged connections to Luthor's illicit activities whilst in office, she was released yet again and ordered by President Jonathan Vincent Horne to take command of Checkmate in the wake of the O.M.A.C. Project debacle as a placeholder "Black King" until the United States and United Nations could decide what to do with that organization.

One Year Later

In the revamped Checkmate series, Waller is shown to have been assigned by the UN to serve as Checkmate's White Queen, a member of its senior policy-making executive, although she appears to have her own agenda, blackmailing Fire into committing murder on her behalf during Checkmate missions. Waller's assignment as White Queen has her commissioning the imprisoned Atom Smasher to organize a new Suicide Squad to attack Black Adam.

As leader of the reformed Checkmate, Waller has continued to use morally ambiguous methods to achieve her agenda, ranging from secretly authorizing a "take no prisoners" mandate in an attack on a Kobra stronghold, blackmailing Beatriz da Costa, a former assassin, into returning to her old murderous ways, and executing a female Kobra operative herself when she foils an assassination attempt. She later used the Suicide Squad to round up dangerous criminals and metahumans as part of Operation: Salvation Run, an unauthorized plan to exile various supervillains to another planet, later revealed to be a part of the Apokoliptian Empire. When Waller's colleague found out about the Operation, they forced her to resign as White Queen, though she managed to retain authority over the Suicide Squad.

Task Force X

After her resignation from Checkmate, forces in the US Government recommissioned her as the overseer and director of the Belle Reve metahuman prison and the leader of a new Suicide Squad known as Task Force X due to deeming her teem as a necessary asset to the US Government.

Fun Facts

Amanda Waller's sister Mary has said that she was raised Baptist, which means Amanda was as well.

#Amanda Waller #amanda blake #black king #mockingbird #white queen #agency #Checkmate #D.E.O.#deo #d.e.o #Shadow Fighters #Suicide Squad #task force x #u.s. government #us government #dc #DC comics #thedcdunce

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sueboohscorner · 6 years ago

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The 100 Ep 510 Recap "The Warriors Will" #The100

This episode was thrilling, and I didn't see the twists coming at all, but like any good twist, everything that happened made perfect sense and derived from the characters. I went into the episode expecting to see Gaia fall in the arena and probably Indra too, just hoping desperately that something would happen to save Indra at the last minute. I could never have seen it coming that Monty would be the hero Wonkru deserved. I also didn't see it coming that Octavia would go full Roman emperor and decide that it's okay to become the villain if your people no longer treat you as a hero!

And no lie, I miss Octavia. Blodreina is a nightmare of a person, and I loved Octavia, for all her faults, for four+ seasons (her ascent to Blodreina was the last we saw of her). I see a lot of fans bitching online, and I suspect that what it comes down to is that they loved Octavia too much to accept this version of her, so they're angry at the show. I've been there, where a direction the creators took a character made them so fundamentally different from the person I thought they were, I disconnected from the overall experience. The 100 is beyond that for me; I am fully invested in the world of the show, and I believe the changes they make have always been explicable and internally consistent.

Just as you could see the seeds of Finn's instability long before he gunned down a village, and the clues that Bellamy didn't trust Grounders as much as his loved ones did long before he joined forces with Pike, and the signs of Jasper's fragility long before he started acting overtly suicidal, Octavia's rage, insecurity, and need for unconditional approval have been laid in as fundamental character traits from the beginning. What we're seeing now is the end result of someone whose worst instincts and basest needs were not merely indulged but encouraged for a very long time, and now suddenly. The same people who eagerly followed her are turning their backs, triggering all the fears of abandonment and rejection she has nurtured throughout her life, and her reaction is proportional to how long and how fully her needs had been met till now.

So with the reaction out of the way, let's cover the action!

Clarke and Madi have gotten well away from Polis while Madi continued to sleep off her post-Ascension hangover. When Madi awakens, she's royally pissed that Clarke has spirited her away from her people, because the spirit of the Commander has increasingly taken hold--that will continue throughout the episode, and it's good to watch Clarke lose her confident certainty that she's in charge here, much as we watched Abby experience in Season 2. Madi is also experiencing the memories of past Commanders in her dreams, and the revelation that Becca was burned at the stake possibly tells us why the chip is called the Flame in the first place, as it was presumably all that remained of her after.

Clarke also dumps out the worm eggs from the Rover, for some reason leaving them in a wriggling pile rather than setting them on fire or something...seriously, I would have found some way to destroy them rather than leaving them there to grow into nightmare creatures, but Clarke isn't great on long-term planning these days.

The closer Clarke and Madi get to the valley, the more heated their discord becomes over what to do with the Flame. Clarke keeps making moves to take it out in Madi's sleep, and Madi ultimately promises Clarke that in order to keep her from ascending all over again, Clarke would have to destroy the Flame. Because that means killing what's left of Lexa, that's a no-go for Clarke...but I fully believe that if she didn't have a personal connection to an element of the Flame. She wouldn't hesitate, any more than Abby hesitated when demolishing the radiation test chamber or interfering in Clarke's attempt at ascending, because Clarke is an overbearing mother from hell. It's a coincidence of competing for self-interest that stands in the way of her maternal instinct to stand in the way of her "daughter's" growth and power.

When they reach the valley, Madi gets another demonstration of Clarke's limited range of concern: McCreary and his goons are killing a bunch of Wonkru defectors, and Madi feels the Commander's impulse to rush in and save her people, but Clarke holds her back. Madi knowingly reminds Clarke that Abby is a defector, too.

Major badassery points to Madi for slitting the throat of a McCreary underling rather than letting him talk or possibly find a way to escape while promising to be useful.

They sneak further into the village and find Abby passed out on the floor by her pill bottle. But how she got these pills? That's a fantastic scene!

This season's MVP guest star, Mike Dopud, delivers another stunningly creepy performance this week, as Abby summons him via neck collar shock (his underlying tone of menace as he implicitly threatens her never to do that again is chilling) to beg him for help getting a fix. McCreary cut her off, and she's in such withdrawal that she insists she will literally die without more pills...who knows how true that is, but her need is evident regardless.

Vinson returns later with a plentiful supply, and he brightly says he knows what's it like to need things as he indulges his own need--the desire to rip a couple of dudes' throats out with his damn teeth!

Abby's subsequent overdose may be partially a result of taking too much after waiting so long to have any, partially the response of emotional horror after what she's just witnessed.

But that's it for the valley, so let's move on to Polis! We came into the week with the knowledge that one or even two major characters would die in the area. The deadpool greatly favored Bellamy to be last man standing, but no one was ready to lose Indra. No one except Octavia, who chooses Bellamy.

Octavia first goes to Indra, begging for help to find a solution that will allow her to maintain absolute control over Wonkru without carrying out the sentence according to Wonkru tradition. Indra points out there's no other way, it's Octavia's own fault, and by the way, I'm going to kill your brother first, so my daughter is certain to survive, so the hell with you.

So Octavia goes to Monty and asks him to convey a message to Bellamy about Indra's weaknesses, and he's like, Nope, this is your fault and your problem, and anyway, you can choose to change your entire plan because of my dope botany skills that will save Wonkru without having to go to war!

Then Octavia gives in and talks to Bellamy herself, and it's one of the greatest scenes of the series. She reminisces about one of the many times he put her safety above all other concerns back on the Ark, and she begs him to kill Indra and Gaia so he can survive. The emotional weight of their relationship is so powerful, so beautifully carried by these two brilliant actors who have built their connection over the past five years.

Rebuffed by Bellamy, the final rejection, Octavia goes away, slices open her arm in the exact place Bellamy once cut himself to protect her and uses the blood as her warpaint.

It's arena time, and Bellamy holds out as long as he can, trying to be a conscientious objector, but survival instinct kicks in, compelling him to fight back. The battle is intense, and Indra is getting a number of good slashes in, but Gaia changes the game!

Gaia picks up a spear and prays to the spirit of the Commander as she hurls it straight at Octavia! Bellamy's instinct to protect his sister is ever-powerful, and he knocks Gaia off balance, causing her aim to go foul.

In this moment, Octavia has the opportunity to end the fight, execute Gaia for attempted regicide, and pardon Bellamy for his act of saving her life, then exile Indra because she'd definitely never forgive Gaia's death...but of course, that's not what happens. Octavia just pretends not to be rattled by this near-death moment, tosses the spear back into the arena, and commands the fight to continue.

But here comes Monty, the hero we needed, the hero we deserve! He bursts into the arena with proof of his success growing new plants, and he announces to Wonkru that Octavia is lying to them! They don't have to go to war--it's not their only chance at survival, and she knows it because he's shown her how he's revived the hydrofarm! They could stay and survive and use the same technique to recultivate the land outside over time.

This revelation is all Wonkru needed to turn against their Red Queen (many of them were at the tipping point anyway, because they wanted their new true Commander to take her place!). Monty and Bellamy are heady with the joy of stopping this nightmare, but they quickly grow worried when no one knows where Octavia has disappeared to.

Their search is short-lived because a fire alarm tells them exactly where she is and what she's done. She's set the hydrofarm ablaze, destroying any hope for the future that didn't involve following her into war. Even Miller looks disillusioned with her now.

But hey, it worked...for her selfish purposes. She has deprived them of any other option besides carrying out her initial plan. The rations they have now are the last food they will ever have unless they can take the valley.

A dispirited, morose army marches out of Polis, and there's only one thing keeping them from murdering Octavia at this point: She's an incredibly strong warrior, and they can't afford to sacrifice an asset like that. Which brings us back to the heart of the series in a neat little way--The 100 has always valued people based on one thing: Are you helping your people survive, or bringing them closer to death?

10/10 (I'd give it an 11 if I could. Can I?)

#The 100 #The CW #Mike Dopud

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mermaidsirennikita · 7 years ago

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September 2017 Book Roundup

Undoubtedly, I read two standout books this September: Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust, a sometimes-macabre retelling of Snow White (with a feminist spin) and Mari Lu’s Warcross, the story of a girl, a tech mogul, and a virtual reality game that can make or break your future. On to October--I’m going to try to read as much spooky stuff as possible.

This Is Not The End by Chandler Baker. 3/5. In the near future, a substance called “lifeblood” has made it possible for people to be resurrected even years after death, revitalized and fully healed. Laws restrict how many “resurrections” people are allowed and when they can resurrect someone--you can only resurrect one person, and you can only perform the resurrection on your eighteenth birthday. Following a terrible car accident, Lake has lost her best friend Penny and her beloved boyfriend Will. Not only is she--mere weeks from her eighteenth birthday--torn between which to resurrect; she also has already promised her resurrection to another person. This was a very quick read for me, and I found it compelling and at times moving. So many different issues are tackled--are resurrections ethical? Should people be held to promises they made--and in Lake’s case were pressured into--years ago? Hell, Baker even goes after the ethical arguments surrounding assisted suicide and the disabled. The problem is that while I understood the logic of why only one resurrection is allowed per person (population control) I couldn’t understand why someone could only have a resurrection done on their eighteenth birthday. Sure, I see why only legal adults can request resurrections, but why is the request time such a short window? More concerning was the fact that there is a romance in this. Yes, a romance between Lake--a girl who just lost the boyfriend who’d been her best friend before they dated, a guy she fantasized about marrying someday--and some other guy... weeks after said boyfriend died. I can understand having sex with someone while grieving, but this felt more like we were supposed to see Lake beginning to fall for someone else. I’m not saying that can’t happen, but it distracted from Lake’s story and the themes surrounding it.

Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney C. Stevens. 2/5. Billie is a preacher’s daughter in a small Kentucky town. She and her best friends--collectively known as the Hexagon--have been tightly-knit for years. But everything changes when Billie finds that Janie Lee and Woods, two of those friends, have feelings for each other. And Billie might just have feelings for both of them. “Dress Codes” is about figuring out gender and sexuality in a John Hughes sort of lens. Stevens does have a really distinct voice, and some turns of phrase were beautiful--while others were, in my opinion, a bit overwrought. A bit too forced. Billie and her friends just didn’t think or speak in a way that seemed recognizable to me as teenager-y. And while I was touched by the story, in a sense--it was also quite boring. I wish I’d loved this, but I just didn’t. I think many people would, it’s just not my cup of tea.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust. 5/5. This retelling of Snow White takes on the dual perspectives of Nina, the “wicked stepmother” and Lynet, the cossetted princess. Nina’s side of the story takes place from past to present, telling the story of a girl with a heart of glass--assured by her father, the alchemist that replaced Nina’s rotting heart to save her life, that she is incapable of love and being loved. Lynet is her stepdaughter, the spitting image of her mother, protected by her father, and made of literal snow. Fate has pitted these two women against one another, despite their love for each other. Time will tell if they will fulfill their destinies. Pitched as a feminist fairy tale retelling, this book will disappoint you if you’re looking for knife-wielding assassins and monologues about how women are meant to rule. I love that it didn’t have any of that. This story is made of subtler stuff, its beautiful, sad prose focusing on the relationship between Nina and Lynet, and how they’ve not only been forced into roles they don’t want to play by men--they’ve been turned into the antagonists in each other’s stories... by men. Poetic and beautiful and not without a dash of romance--one of them featuring wlw at that--this is a must-read if you love gently dark fairy tales that will hurt your heart. (Even if it’s made of glass.)

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart. 2/5. I’ll be honest, I skimmed this for the most part. As someone who hasn’t seen or read The Talented Mr. Ripley, I’m told that this is basically a gender-flipped version of that, following teen criminal Jule... or is she??? The thing is that this is a story told in reverse-chronological order, and even though I figured out the twist very early on, how we got there was so confusing that I didn’t even want to figure it out.

Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh. 4/5. In the near future, beautiful women who’ve died young are cryogenically frozen and temporarily “awoken” for five minute sessions for men who want to talk to them--typically, men who can afford the $9,000/5 minutes fee that comes with these “dates”. If chosen to be the brides of these men, these “bridecicles” are revived permanently--making them desperate to do whatever they can to be chosen. This story focuses on three people: Mira, a bridecicle who’s been frozen for decades and longs for her lover, Jeanette; Rob, a young man who falls in love with bridecicle Winter after accidentally killing her; and Veronika, a dating coach who can’t seem to find love in this connected world. This is a sad, occasionally funny story about the perils of a world in which we’re so connected through technology that actual human technology is difficult to find. It’s not super unique in that respect, but the bridecicle concept is both fascinating and grotesque. I couldn’t put it down. With that being said, the romances in the book were a bit lackluster for me, and I at times wasn’t sure about how Veronika’s perspective connected into things. Still a really good, thought-provoking read.

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. 2/5. Thanks to a service called Death-Cast, everyone is given 24 hours (or so) notice on the day of their death. Teenagers Mateo and Rufus have just found out that they are going to die, and though strangers, meet up through and app called Last Friend and decide to live out their last day together. Just... I don’t think Adam Silvera and I are going to be friends, y’all. First off, this world is pretty much ours aside from the weird death service, and there was really no explanation as to why everyone just took this service at face value. Sorry, I really feel like we’d fight that. Also, Rufus’s dialogue in particular was cringe as fuck. It was so uneven--he’d use slang and I got the impression that Silvera was going for “impoverished gang kid talk” with him but then he’d have a whole paragraph of dialogue in a manner totally inconsistent with “I’m in mad love with this dude” or whatever. And there were so many other points of view when Rufus and Mateo’s were the only ones that really mattered. Like, points for diversity, but nah on everything else.

Warcross by Marie Lu. 5/5. Hacker and bounty hunter Emika Chen is, like everyone else on Earth, a fan of the virtual reality game Warcross. As poor as she is, she hacks into the game--and in a desperate moment, steals an item that would fetch the money she needs on resale, using a glitch to do so. This catches the attention of Hideo Tanaka, Warcross’s billionaire creator, who flies her to Tokyo and offers her a job (that pays 10 mill, by the way): she needs to enter the Warcross Tournament--a major event--as a player and secretly act as his bounty hunter, searching for the unknown--and dangerous--Zero, a mystery to even Hideo. So this is hard to describe but damn is it good. Emi is a character who has an unlikely resume but it actually seems plausible in the context of her life and her world. Same goes for Hideo, who is probably one of my favorite characters to come out of YA this year. The stakes build as the novel does--and as Emi grows close to Hideo, which, like, obviously she was but fuckyeahI’mintoit. It’s super fast-paced, entertaining YA and I honestly enjoyed it more than Lu’s Young Elites series, which I loved in the beginning but was ultimately disappointed in. So. Hoping the rest of the series lives up to this book!

One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake. 4/5. The second in what is now a four-book series, One Dark Throne continues the story of triplet queens Mirabella, Katharine, and Arsinoe. Where Mirabella was once the clear frontrunner to be the next crowned queen, recent events have revealed that it could be anyone’s game--though the fact remains that the winner must kill her sisters. Arsinoe hides her true gift from almost everyone, pretending to be a naturalist still; Mirabella deals with having her world rocked, and questions her relationships with her sisters; and Katharine, called the “Undead Queen” grows increasingly unstable--and powerful--after her near-death experience. I can’t say that One Dark Throne was quite as compelling as Three Dark Crowns, as it was a very talky book. Furthermore, Mirabella, one of my favorites of the first book, was a shadow of her former self. Arsinoe is clearly poised as the protagonist of the sisters, but... I don’t dislike her, but I don’t find her compelling either, and I don’t care much for her friends Jules and Joseph either. They’re so typically good. Katharine is worth reading the whole book for--you never know if she’s mad or aware of some truth nobody else has caught onto. Furthermore, she has the best romance in the book--taking the form of her fraught relationship with Pietyr, a boy she loves and hates. While I still love the concept and the world and Katharine and all the poisoners really, and this was a good book, I think everyone else needs to get on my girl’s level.

There Is Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins. 3/5. New to the tiny town of Osborne, Nebraska--and hiding from a dark past--Makani lives with her grandmother, is trying to ingratiate herself her new friends, and pines for school outsider Ollie. Then kids start getting murdered, in shocking ways. As Makani struggles to avoid being next, she grows increasingly afraid of her secret being revealed. This book has been compared to Scream, and while there’s sex and blood, Scream it is not. I mean, it’s basically one of Perkins’s romance with some murder thrown in, and it disappointed me because I wanted so badly to be impressed with the genre shift. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but like... just that. It wasn’t the genre. Shit--I thought that at least the mystery of the killer would be good, but it wasn’t. It kind of shocked me to read the author’s note about Perkins spending six years researching this and workshopping the book, and--not to be mean, but while it was entertaining, that effort did not show.

The Merciless by Danielle Vega. 1/5. Girl goes to new school. Girl makes new friends. New friends suggest performing an exorcism on another friend. And so on. I thought this would be fun gore, and while it was gory, it was... not good. So bad, really. The book was incredibly basic and boring, and took the least interesting turn regarding the exorcism possible. I hated it.

#books #book recs

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