#niche-pastiche

[rad-roche]

Is your fic posted on AO3? o: I'd love to read it!

you certainly can, and it is!!

[asymmetryestablished]

pspsps hey Perona and/or Mihawk enjoyers, I finally posted chapter 4 of my how-many-gothic-romance-tropes-can-I-make-platonic fic (and you should go read it)

it’s got everything — platonic post-timeskip Mihawk-and-Perona dynamic, spooky weather, a haunted-ass gothic castle, the works. I just posted chapter 4 of 6, and the next chapter is where things pop off, so now’s a great time to get invested

(and if you like it feel free to check out some of my other works bc I have a platonic MiRona problem and too much time on my hands)

[artbyblastweave]

Spider-Verse, and fanmade spider-sonas in particular, reinvent the same issue you run into whenever you're trying to come up with a name for a Superman pastiche, which is that in the absence of the character they're derived from, in a universe where they're the first to ever do it, every single one of those guys would most likely just name themselves Spider-Man or Spider-Woman. And even if they do try and come up with something more creative than that, they're gonna stop well before they get to any of the extremely specific niche Spider subspecies. You'd have like two billion people calling themselves The Tarantula

[ewingstan]

If you had a chance to recommend (real-world) superhero comics to the Undersiders, which comics would you recommend and why?

Oh, good question. Its been a minute since I was really into comics (I gotta figure out how to reactivate my Marvel Unlimited account), but I think I have enough background to come up with some good picks.

Lotta good options for Taylor. My first thought is to give her Ewing's X-Men Red (aka "the main reason I need to catch up on Marvel comics"), since a superhero story that focuses a lot on gaining and maintaining societal power and the work of governing as a leader in a super-community seems like it would appeal to the Warlord of the Boardwalk. Plus a lot of it is "kill the previous leader in a way that ensures you have a popular mandate," which I'm sure she'd be a fan of.

If we're talking Taylor at the start of the story or younger—well, I don't know if it makes sense to give her runs of the character she's most a pastiche of, but maybe something that fits the Spider-Man niche could still be appealing for a young down-on-her-luck aspiring hero? I could see her getting something out of the Simone or Ahmed Ms. Marvel runs, for instance.

(While Watchmen might seem like the natural pick, I'm pretty sure she'd lose a lot of enjoyment just from picking out all the ways Veidt's plan was obviously gonna fail for x y z reasons. Also dark deconstructions of superhero worlds would probably seem too familiar to her world for her to enjoy it.)

If Taylor would be interested in comics statecraft, Lisa would probably be more interested in comics spycraft and intrigue. Ewing's S.W.O.R.D. would probably scratch the same itch for her that X-Men Red would for Taylor (and Storm dramatically blowing off Doom would probably satisfy her after all the ulcer-inducing negotiations with Accord.) I might also give her Ewings New Avengers and USAvengers runs (look this is gonna include a lot of Al Ewing recs, get used to it early) if only because I feel like she'd enjoy how Roberto gets characterized in those comics. Magnificent bastard solidarity.

If we're giving comics to Brian, we already need to work past his defensive avoidance of anything that seems too childish, so I don't think we're getting anything pre-dark ages. That said, he famously thinks "looking mature" means "sick-ass skulls and leather jackets," so his idea of maturity might skew a bit into McFarlane territory. Ultimately though I think he'd be most comfortable with something where he could plausibly say "this isn't just a comic, it's actually a well-respected piece of literature." I'd want that to mean Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing, but it'd probably actually mean The Dark Knight Returns.

As a dark horse pick, I'd give Brian some early New Warriors or Ewing's Contest of Champions, if only because Night Thrasher feels so close to what he wants his vibe to be (dramatic black leather ensemble with a very 90's idea of cool, unflappable expert strategist who pulls his weight despite a powerset with limited applicability, died horribly and came back much later for weirdly impersonal reasons) while also being just ridiculous enough to make me want to see his reaction.

Given Iota's commentary on Alec's pizza habits, I'd think Alec would most be a fan of something intense and bombastic and not mind if its often repetitive. I'd almost say Berserk would be a good match for him, but parts of that that might actually be triggering for him. Maybe some other ultra-violent longrunning work; I haven't read Fist of the North Star but it seems like a safe recommendation; various X-Force runs could work if we're sticking with Western comics.

Rachel really doesn't seem like someone who'd have much appreciation for any aspect of comics. The best bet would be something visually spectacular in a way that could be appreciated on its own, and a plot that's interesting taking issues on their own and not just as part of ongoing runs. I could see Ewing's Immortal Hulk as fitting those criteria; her power gives her an artist's appreciation for Bennett's horrific depictions of the Hulk's transformations (even if praising Bennett for anything feels in poor taste).

Ewing's scripts for each issue of Hulk are clever in a way that I feel Rachel could find entertaining; they don't require an attention she couldn't keep up, but also aren't simple to the point of being condescending. Plus, the thematic focus on "what can and can't be solved through unspeakable acts of destruction" would feel familiar in a way that's less frustrating than normal comic tut-tutting about how obviously we can't attack these guys (plus the greater willingness to say "oh yeah unspeakable destruction definitely is the best way forwards here" would be pretty satisfying).

I feel like Aisha would have more patience for comic tropes than a lot of the other undersiders, (I could see her enjoying the original Fantastic Four run), but at the same time she'd probably enjoy something a bit more complicated and out-there. Ewing's Rocket might be appealing as heist-focused mini, and I feel like the mix of melancholy and absurdity would appeal to her. Rosenberg's Hawkeye: Freefall would work for similar reasons, though replace "melancholy" with "simmering rage."

Morrison's Doom Patrol and The Invisibles both have characters Aisha might relate to for the whole "society largely ignoring or wanting to go away" thing. Plus they both have big weird ideas she'd appreciate, Richard Case's art works well with her aesthetics, and they're both seen as "respectable" series to the point that she might like peppering in references to them in alongside Jules Verne jokes.

Huh, I just realized that Aisha and Brian both ended up chasing an appearance of being mature and somewhat surface-level and off-putting ways. Brian "trust me I'm a normal adult man" and Aisha "I've compiled spider-man quips for every work in the Western Canon and will get frustrated when you don't get them" Laborn, the "something ain't right about that kid" siblings.

(I will say that Morrison's Doom Patrol has some weird black stereotypes so if anyone wants to pitch me on a similar work without Morrison's occasional racism I'd be curious).

I'd give Rowell's run on Runaways to Sabah, if only because "somewhat antivillanous found family group of teens that mostly don't have to worry about anything besides relationship drama" sounds like a nice escape for her. Closer to what she wants the Undersiders to be like. Also, I feel she'd enjoy Kris Anka's focus on fashion in his art.

I don't have a lot to go off for Lily. I could see some of the more recent Captain Marvel runs appealing to her sense of true-blue militant heroism. Ayala's New Mutants or Ahmed's Black Bolt might help combat her whole "villains are ontologically evil" thing, at least to a certain extent.

[dynasoar5]

you're such a unique artist and i love all your work so much, it means everything to me as a furry. like these technically impressive digital paintings that are often spot-on pastiche of venerated art movements, focused entirely on overtly fetishistic (as in niche/erotic) subjects. its a combination that absolutely demolishes any shame i feel for my own interests. i think it's also the perfect demonstration of the collapse between high art/"low art" that is so vital to the furry fandom. sorry if this is a little weird to hear as the person who makes all this art, but i think about your portfolio this way all the time so i thought i might as well let you know, lol

thank you so much for the kind words. I love knowing what people think about my work and the context around it! 🦕💖💖

[grenade-maid]

Man, I think what makes me so sad about Guilty Gear is just knowing that there won't ever be anything quite like it. The cultural soup that spawned it just doesn't exist anymore. The edgy 90s counterculture boom can't really be replicated. Doom is something you run on thermostats and microwaves, Mortal Kombat is something your brother's friends played in college, spiked leather and heavy metal are things anyone might be into, arcades have been dead longer than they were alive, everyone is aware of JoJo. Everything that was shocking, transgressive, and exciting then is now pretty normal (if still beloved--nay, more beloved, even). They even made a new Matrix movie about this feeling. And the thing is, there were a lot of fighting games tapping into the same things as Guilty Gear was. They all died in obscurity, and Guilty Gear is the lone survivor, carrying the DNA of a cultural moment but unable to propagate, being the last of its species. Sol Badguy is a perfect protagonist for it, in that sense.

At the end of the day, there's just no real analogue. The genre of musclebound blood soaked anime it was drawing from like Fist of the North Star, Bastard! and Ninja Scroll don't really exist anymore. Rockstars of the hotel thrashing middle finger waving hard drinking hard partying variety don't really exist in the same way, either. Very few recent album covers would make for good stage backgrounds. There isn't really an "underground" subculture or counterculture--we're all just in different niches that are one online search away from each other. Nobody has to "introduce" you to metal, you don't have to know a guy, just look up a few whole discographies and listen on your commute. Fighting games themselves are a firmly established genre with it's own self selecting population--in the 90s it was pretty common for basically anyone to casually try a few rounds of Tekken or have some version of street fighter at home. That's not really the case anymore, and, as such, fighting games need to be designed differently and more thoughtfully than they used to be.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!None of these are bad things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But it does mean that any attempt to do something in the same vein as Guilty Gear will necessarily be a pastiche. Hell, even Guilty Gear itself was pastiche by the time of XX. This isn't a bad thing either--I'm loving Little Goody Two Shoes, for example, which is the most lavish and loving throwback to 90s shojo and 00s RPG Maker horror games. But it would still be different. Because even the most loving reference or recreation, even the ones that surpass the quality of the originals, can't replace the spirit of expressing something quintessential to your current moment, whatever that moment is.

The moment that I cherish cause I grew up in its shadow is long gone. I don't know if there's anything in the current moment that could speak to me in the same way. Most of my favorite all time games, manga, anime, etc etc all came out in the last few years, so this isn't about old shit being better. I guess most of what I love that's currently being made just didn't lend itself well to riffing on in the same way. Unfortunately, high passion rock operas screaming your feelings just lend themselves perfectly to kickass games, and those aren't in vogue like they used to be. And, ultimately, on a strictly personal level, I'll never be 15 again, being shown the sickest shit I've ever seen before a D&D game for the first time.

[wisteria-lodge]

Just finished chapter 16 of Prisoner of the Phoenix and absolutely loved it, I'm not invested in any Snape ships at the moment but PotP is getting me into Snupin deep and very fast. You mentioned in one ask you answered about it that Lucius is sort of an anti-Dumbledore figure especially in a story from Snape's POV... Can I ask you to elaborate on that? It's the first time Ive seen Dumbledore be compared to Lucius as opposed to Voldemort or occasionally Gellert. Thanks for indulging in this ask in advance and to you and @niche-pastiche for sharing your lovely fic!!!!

Lucius and Dumbledore have perfectly inverse morals, so they're fun to put next to each other. Lucius (and Narcissa) would burn the world to keep Draco safe, but Dumbledore would absolutely sacrifice Harry (and Ariana) in service of the Greater Good. That is so central, to both characters.

(Book 3 and 4 are honestly kind of a dark period for Dumbledore: he knows that Harry is a horcrux as of book 2, because he knows the diary is a horcrux and that Harry can speak parseltongue, and that's really all he needs to put the situation together. But he can't come up a plan to help Harry survive until Book 5. Until then, he really does think he's sending him to his death.)

There are a lot of other little ways Lucius and Albus reflect each other. Lucius likes to pretend to be this scary dark wizard, when in reality he's just... not. Not a true believer, not especially competent. Just looks the part. Put him next to Dumbledore, who acts eccentric and bumbling, but in reality is so scary. I've always thought that if Dumbledore, the character on the page, was framed as villain he'd come across like Gus Fring from Breaking Bad. Like that's the type of person he is.

So in a story where Lucius and Dumbledore both have a hold on Severus' psyche, I like giving them completely opposite responses to things. Dumbledore wants Remus as a weapon or a tool, Lucius just wants to keep him safe. Dumbledore wants to keep Severus isolated, Lucius is constantly inviting him places and showing up at his door. Dumbledore is friends with Mad-Eye, Lucius is terrified of Mad-Eye. They both represent a different possible future for Severus.

[alysvolatile]

It's finally done!!! Here's the finished copy of First, Do Not Harm (Garak/Bashir, DS9) by @niche-pastiche and @wisteria-lodge!

While I'm not at the cover title stage yet, I think this fits the story quite well - I stuck with an unpreposessing cover (black for the Obsidian Order, navy for Julian) and flashier endpapers. After all, "plain, simple Garak" wouldn't be much of a spy if he called attention to himself, would he?

I used Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's "Ta Bouche (Your Mouth)" for the frontispiece, and I set the text in EB Garamond - a very conservative choice for an absolutely filthy (affectionate ❤️) story.

(Forgive the pages, I got too excited to share this and didn't want to wait until they settled.) I had a great time with the Glossary, and I added the QR codes as a fun extra bit! (Follow them on tumblr if you haven't, they're delightful.)

Once again, a HUGE thank you to the authors of this lovely story for writing such a well-realized novel, and for getting me into Deep Space 9! And if you haven't read the story yet, why are you still reading this post? Get to it! ❤️

[mashamorevvna]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤️

(@femmeharel) thank youuuuu to the both of youuuu 🥺🥺🥺

also *voice of a person who has only written five fics* damn, however will i ever be able to select five fics, just five of my beautiful children while leaving the rest out in the cold. (unserious way to say i dont have to sophie's choice my children, so might as well rank them instead)

babygirl numero 1: "it would not be i any longer (it would be we, it would be us)" stricly speaking, my worst stats-wise and the most niche but i love it so dearly. will never not plug my minthara de winter fic bc it is everything i would want to read: crazy psychosexual drama; gothic pastiche; unwell people making ill adivsed decisions. one day it might even be finished too!

babygirl numero 2: "you've a gift for hating (you should know, you're the expert)" the lion in winter-esque adversarial relationship between my two strongest character fixations for bg3, how could i not love it dearly. also extremely proud of the fact that i do, after months, still think the setup and the chemistry just work and are believable. hardest part of writing for non-existant pairs

babygirl numero 3: "I wish the hand of god would come and relieve me of this way" just really love how well i pulled the selene&isobel simmetry here. sincerely incredible result on my part

babygirl numero 4: "the world is not enough (but it's a wonderful place to start)" triangulation of desire: the fic. love it very dearly, it was my first fanfic after something like three years and it still holds up. very bataillean.

babygirl numero 5: "Appel du Vide" really proud of how i challenged myself at writing smut, which im not super interested into and not very good at it besides, and to do it as fucked up as i wanted. incredibly offputting sex, love it tremendously

[princesscolumbia]

Ranma 1/2 Thoughts, Meta Edition

I have consumed...a lot of Ranma 1/2 content.

I mean, this is kinda what happens when you're a repressed transgirl who discovers the manga a year into a marriage that you got into to "fix" being trans and be "a real boy" in a desperate bid to fill the hole that you wouldn't learn for two decades could only be filled by living as your true self.

I've encountered precisely four (4) types of Ranma 1/2 fans in that time:

Transwomen who see Ranma as their idealized expression of the gender experience ("I'm not like this because I want to be, it's a curse. A curse that gives me a smokin' hot body and HUGE tits! But it's tooootally a curse, for realsies! I'll find a cure any day now, see how hard I'm looking? I'm trying sooooo hard to find a cure...")

Transmen who see Ranma as their perfect representation of their gender experience ("I'm a guy, damnit! This body...it's a curse! I hate it and I want nothing better than to be cured, but all sorts of Life Bullshit keeps getting in the way!")

Lesbians who kin either Ranma (butch NB lesbian) or one of their love interests (Akane - comphet closetted butch lesbian, Shampoo - Strong, smokin' hot bad bitch who goes after what she wants, Ukyo - transmasc coded genderfluid NB)

Completely clueless nimrods who miss the FUCKING POINT and are only into the show for the martial arts and think it would be better if Ranma got cured and they stopped having funny stuff happen.

(In case it's not obvious, IMHO the last group are the worst parts of the fandom and need to Go Away. Most of the toxic stuff that exists in R.5 fanspaces is because of this group of assholes which includes the incels that think everything would be better if Ranma just did stuff that's questionable from an ethics and morality perspective and chased after Shampoo because she's the closest thing to a Barbie-doll these closet fascists can allow themselves to fantasize about playing with, completely ignoring that she's a complex character that's a subversive pastiche to the Japanese racist stereotypes of the 1980s.)

I'm not kidding when I say that in the early days of the public Internet (before Facebook and Twitter ruined it for everyone), Ranma 1/2 was the SINGLE largest fandom by a MASSIVE stretch. I once checked my math on this by going to Fanfiction.net (before the massive purges) and brought up the Big List of All Fandoms and right there at the top with a MASSIVE number of fics was Ranma 1/2 by a HUGE margin. It took three fandoms (Star Trek, Doctor Who, and I believe Naruto if I'm recalling correctly) to have their combined total number of fics exceed the number of R.5 fics on FF.net...and that was JUST FF.net. There was an entire separate index (The Penultimate Ranma 1/2 Fanfic Index) that had the single task of listing, not even curating or reading or reviewing, ONLY Ranma 1/2 fanfics. Not fanart, not commentary, no RP blogs or chat transcripts or whatever, JUST fanfics. And only about half of those linked to FF.net, meaning that if you dig up the archives you'll find at least 60% of all fanfics that people had managed to index in the Ranma 1/2 fandom are missing because they were never properly archived and just...faded from the Internet as the public servers and places like Geocities started disappearing. You can find teasing, tantalizing hints of larger works that all we have left, like scraps of ancient papyri revealing a quote from a missing book of the Bible, are single chapters backed up on niche sites that managed to get spider-crawled by Archive.org, but many great works are just...lost. (There's an ero fic called "Playing with Water" that was SUPER hot and featured elements that we have tags for on porn sites but didn't really have proper words for back in the day...but even back when it was first being written finding the thing was hard...and today? Nearly impossible.)

(If you wonder why I'm such an absolute RABID advocate of AO3, this is why)

For me, Ranma will always be the transfemme coded genderfluid hero that we needed in the late 80s and early 90s. We were on the tail end of the AIDS pandemic, and just like COVID-19 there were a bunch of assholes who used it to ride to power and marginalize queer folk. It was easier to do with AIDS, of course, given the absolutely massive numbers of queer cis men and transwomen who contracted it and died. (Sidebar: the reason "L" comes first in "LGBTQIA+" is because it was the Lesbian nurses who were the caretakers of the Gay men who were dying in numbers large enough to be counted as a tragic statistic instead of a mere tragedy) and while the world was starting to acknowledge (again) that gay men was a thing that existed and they weren't actually trying to corrupt the youth, what we now call "transgender" was still listed in the DSM as a mental disorder that required treatment to "cure." According to the cultural majority in damn near every field you can imagine, the Gender Binary was the only way to exist and if you didn't fit neatly into one or the other then you were Damaged™ and had to be Fixed™ for The Good of All People™ (but specifically so cis-het-white folks, usually men, could feel comfy and not be confronted by things that made them feel icky and might have cooties). It's a truism that's treated as a joke that transwomen get into coding and wind up doing IT work in such massive numbers that between us and the furries we ARE the foundation of the modern Internet. And into the fanspaces packed to the brim with closetted AMAB transwomen who hadn't yet had their egg cracked came this plucky martial artist that gets to swap their gender with a splash of water but somehow still winds up the best of the best, the finest martial artist of their generation. (Goku can suck it, Ranma would turn the Kamea-meha right back on the over-muscled, braindead loser with a food fetish and still make it home in time for Kasumi's dinner)

I'm no sociologist, anthropologist, behaviorist, whatever, but I suspect that the reason Ranma Saotome spawned such a large fanbase so early in the modern Internet's history was specifically because the series created a safe space where people could talk about gender issues with a degree of separation that helped strip away the stigma surrounding feeling like you were in the wrong body.

I get why people like the martial arts aspect. I mean, Ranma kills a demigod. This is NOT something to sneeze at. I also understand the transmen who latch onto Ranma as a kin because I get the feeling like you have no control over what your body's doing and you're going through your days in existential dread of what might be dragging you further and further away from what you always knew was right and correct about yourself. It's a terrifying thing and here's someone who (esp. the anime version) IS a guy trapped in a girl's body.

For me, though, and for a LOT of transwomen out there, Ranma is transfemme. And, yes, canonically Ranma states right near the end of the manga that they're both and they kinda forgot about the 'cure' when they had to pick between that and the really important stuff and that they're okay with being fluid ('cause water, gettit?!) about their gender and it's a damn shame this was the 80s 'cause a continuation might wind up showing Ranma embracing being both...

BUT, and this is a transfemme thing, I know, if you continue the parabolic arc of Ranma's character development, the logical conclusion (for us) is that she eventually decides that she's a woman and just lives in her "cursed" form the majority (or all) of the time.

And yes, this is because that's the transfemme story arc. In the manga in some distant part of the multiverse that peers into our universe and for some reason decides to make me the MC (god, that must be a FUCKING BORING manga by our standards, I weep for those fans), my story arc is the gradual progression of uncracked, closetted transgirl to transitioned out and proud transbien mom. At one point I swapped back and forth between gender presentations because it was safer for me to appear in some spaces as the male that they thought I was. Now I would prefer to die before being forced to go back to pretending to be a man again.

Ranma has the choice, and good for them. Until the Kaisufuu is permanently destroyed, even if the "curse" is locked, they have the option of going one way or the other based solely on their own, personal desire. I can't say I'd be comfortable with that option being available. In that theoretical manga where there's a reboot that gives me a condition like Ranma's, I'd probably wind up destroying the equivalent to the Kaisufuu just because of the threat to my mental wellbeing it presents.

So it's not a stretch to imagine Ranma making the same choice. She's a woman now, she has the life she never realized she wanted because she never had the choice so didn't know she was allowed to imagine it, but now she's happier than ever and why would she ever go back to that struggle of being a guy that only ever brought her pain and challenges and heartache?

[transgenderer]

"presumably people are still doing sculpture in the style of the ancient greeks, or the renaissance. like the skill isnt lost." The skill is kind of lost, though, isn't it? I mean, you have competent sculptors who work in the classical style, but are any of them remotely as talented as Bernini or Michelangelo? writing songs in the style of the Beatles doesn't mean you're as good as the Beatles, and even if you do write a good pastiche, the president won't give you $1,000,000 for it... It's niche

hmm. yeah this is a good point. except that like, we also display like, anonymous ancient greek sculptures in museums! even in really fancy museums, like the met! these COULD be made by supermasters i guess. but i feel like PROBABLY there are people making ancient greek style sculptures that are as well-made as those. theyre just not old. i mean. i guess said museums also display sculptures for which there is basically no claim of skill, just oldness. maybe my point is just "art musem" and "history museums" are not very distinct categories. which is. kind of obvious i guess

[artbyblastweave]

Hi! I've been reading a lot of your thoughts on superheroes, and wanted to ask you a question if that's okay.

I've always been interested in the genre, but lately I've gotten frustrated with how "safe" the entries play it. No matter what, there's always a Justice League, a world built on superscience, and most "importantly" of all, a Superman. I wanted to ask if all of these things a required for a superhero story, and if so, how far can they be stretched while remaining within the genre?

My conjecture is that from a bunch of directions, it’s a legibility issue. 

Long swaths of rumination under the cut.

The superhero genre, out of all genres, is one of the most self-referential; it’s subject to an exaggerated, snowballing and self-reinforcing instance of the Mount Fuji Problem, as laid out by Terry Pratchett:

“J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.”

Superman is Mt. Fuji. 

Superman is enormously popular. The first modern superhero, the one the rest of them are patterned on or in conversation with. In the early days, a lot of superheroes were just naked attempts to cash in on Superman, to the point of IP slapfights (This is how DC acquired the rights to Shazam/Captain Marvel.) In the interregnum period caused by the Wertham Scare, he was one of the only superheroes that survived and saw continuous publication. As a result of this bottleneck, superheroism is a genre monoculture; all characters conceived of as “superheroes” are only a couple of creative generations removed from Superman. All of this gives him- and characters patterned directly on him- an outsized influence in both the public and authorial perception of what a “superhero” looks like. 

So fifty years down the line, when you’ve got creatives crawling out of the foxholes to try and make some superhero things that are new and innovative or parodic, a few things start happening:

Number 1. Superman is Very Legibly a Superhero. Superheroes, up until the MCU boom, were pretty niche in the mass market; a lot of pre-MCU films (and actually a lot of MCU films, this is my perennial beef) are structured in a way that makes it seem like they’re apologizing for daring to be superhero properties. Note the aversion to code names, the costuming choices made in the X-Men films, the irony poisoning. Superman was one of the exceptions to this, (Others being Batman and Spider-Man;) he’s too iconic. He’s one of a handful of characters who’s clearly a superhero and nothing else. (I’m going to return to this point later.) So if you wanted to invoke superhero at a glance in a mass-market property, making them have costumes and/or powers like Superman (sometimes with hints of Batman) was a fast way to communicate this. As the number of works that do this increase, the gravity of the bias swells because of the pool of precedent- the likelihood that your audience has seen not just Superman, but numerous parodies of Superman. (I was friends with a woman once who knew almost nothing about Superman beyond the fact he existed, but upon being told the broad strokes of his backstory, said, “oh, like in Megamind!”)

Number 2. Superman attracts the interest of Creatives and Iconoclasts. This is the non-cynical take on the above; Superman’s outsized presence in popular culture means that inevitably, a lot of really competent writers are exposed to him, grow up with him as one of their blorbos, and rotate him in their head non-stop for years until they’re finally in a position to write something. The Superman pastiches in Astro City and Irredeemable and Supreme Power and Invincible and Jupiter’s Legacy and The Authority and BNHA and Powers and on and on and on- they’re in there because the writers wanted to tell a story about superheroes, sure, but more specifically they want to yell their hot takes about Superman, who they love, out to the world. And many of these stories are thoughtful and reflective of the human condition or whatever, and so the canon of “Oh my god you have to read this” superhero works, inevitably start to contain tons and tons of Supermen pastiches. (And Batman pastiches; he’s subject to a similar dynamic.) The effect is reinforced.

Number 3. Even in niche or fan-oriented superhero works that don’t suffer from the above-described marketing pressures, familiar character archetypes are useful shorthand that lets you get to whatever novel point you’re trying to make faster. This applies to Superman, who I’ve focused on up until this point, but this is also a good point to start talking about one of the other things you mentioned, the Justice League. 

In Invincible, the Guardians Of The Globe, world’s premier superhero team, are 1-to-1 pastiches of the classic Justice League Lineup. I own the ultimate collection in which Kirkman explained that choice; beyond the fact that they were very powerful heroes, and that it was very very bad for the world that they were dead, the actual nature of the Guardians was immaterial to the story. All things being equal, it therefore made the most sense to him to just piggyback off pre-existing comic book fan affection and reverence for the JLA, because his editor was breathing down his neck to get the actual story moving after the six issues of relatively low-stakes adventure that Kirkman had insisted on in order to make the reveal hurt more.

Strong Female Protagonist is (was?) a webcomic about the world’s most powerful superheroine sliding into semi-retirement after neutralizing all the superheroic threats and realizing that her actual toolbox with which to enact lasting societal change is pretty limited. There are a lot of powersets you could give to the most powerful hero in your setting; a lot of aesthetics you could give her; actually, by making her a woman at all you’re already breaking the mold. But there’s utility in starting somewhere bog-standard so that everyone’s on the same page when you start doing the social commentary.  

Black Summer is a story about John Horus, the most powerful hero in the world, deciding that the only way to stay consistent with his commitment to evenly applied justice is to execute George Bush for War Crimes, explain why he did so, present the evidence, and ride off into the sunset; his five surviving teammates are then left holding the bag as a pissed off military closes in. The most powerful hero in this case is pointedly designed to look more like Magneto than Superman, but the seven-person team dynamic is clearly meant to broadly invoke that of the Justice League; this gives the readers somewhere to start when picturing what the team dynamic looked like before it collapsed, and it makes the ways in which the group is really obviously not at all like the Justice League pop.

Superhero story which are about someone needing to replace the world’s greatest superhero? Often rely on this fan-legible shorthand. (BNHA, Dreadnought, a couple others.) Stories in which the most powerful hero died as part of the backstory and left an imperfect world for the survivors? Often rely on this fan-legible shorthand. (Welcome to Tranquility, Renegades, etc.) Stories about the kid of the world’s most powerful hero trying to live up to their expectations? Often make use of this fan-legible shorthand (Sky High, Hero, etc.)

Extend it to other individual superheroes. You want to critique the economic injustice implied by superheroism, or the ways in which it would physically and socially destroy you? It’s efficient to invoke Batman or Iron Man, quintessential billionaire powerless capes, and go from there. You want to examine the hellish existence of the working-class teen superhero? Efficient to invoke Spider-Man and go from there. You want to examine the uphill battle of the female superhero in a male-dominated field? Efficient to invoke Wonder Woman and then go from there.

When you can simultaneously save time and creative energy AND demonstrate to your audience that you know the genre canon, the shared referents, the in-jokes- why reinvent the wheel? 

The effect is reinforced.

Number four. In works that are about a more unconventional or unique superhero, A tertiary Superman-figure can be a useful genre signifier.

So, the obvious rebuttal you could provide to everything I’ve said so far is that the superhero genre is obviously, comically, massively more diverse than just Superman and copies of Superman. You can make a superhero based on almost anything, intersecting with almost any genre. This is, in fact, the key to the genre’s longevity; the degree to which “Superhero” is such a nebulous genre category that you can cram basically anything into it and have it work. You can remix it forever.

However, this is a double-edged sword; while a superhero universe can accommodate literally anything, many of the resultant “superheroes” are superheroes purely because they exist in the context of a superhero universe; they stop existing as such if removed from it. Blade is a superhero, but the Wesley Snipes Blade films are not really framed as superhero films. Doctor Strange, extracted from the rest of Marvel, could just be an Urban Fantasy property. Green Lantern and Nova and Captain Marvel could be yoinked out and reframed as participants in the Space Cop flavor of Space Opera. Context-scrubbed Thor could be high fantasy. Context-scrubbed Hulk could be a monster movie. Context-scrubbed Guardians of the Galaxy becomes Space Opera. Ant-Man wasn’t originally a superhero; Hank Pym debuted in a one-shot horror/adventure comic about a scientist who nearly gets killed fucking around with a shrinking formula and an anthill, and then he got retooled when Marvel realized superheroes were coming back. Logan was a fantastic film but like many X-men films it divested itself from the framing of superheroism as much as it possibly could. On the opposite side of things, you could take a property like Buffy The Vampire Slayer- generally not viewed as a cape thing- and slot it into the Marvel or DC universe without having to alter anything. If someone like Shepard from Mass Effect, with their armor and future-weapons and/or their biotic powers, crash landed on Marvel or DC Earth, they’d transmute into a superhero just by virtue of who they’re now standing next to when shit starts going down. (This is the backstory of at least three superheroes, probably more.) Superheroism is incredibly fluid. It’s incredibly modular. It’s incredibly contextual.

There are a handful of characters, though, for whom this isn’t true; as I mentioned above, they’re superheroes and nothing else. They’re the platonic implementations. Batman is one example; the most grounded and gritty version of the character ever put to film still couldn’t get around the fact it was about a vigilante in a bat costume beating up the mob. Superman is another; It’s basically impossible to make a Superman film that downplays the iconography, the power, the social position and license of the superhero.  The social position and license are huge parts of this!

So, if you’re gonna write a story about a unique superhero- a superhero with a cross-genre origin, or an unconventional aesthetic, or really esoteric powers- a way to keep your story anchored in the genre is to include a Superman-style figure or a Justice-League style organization as a tertiary presence within the worldbuilding, in order to make it 100 percent clear to your audience what lens they’re supposed to view this story through, and to emphasize the contrast posed by your esoteric cape. Worm does this, juxtaposing a protagonist who controls bugs and thus has to fight like a maniac for every victory against an all-powerful Superman-analogue who exists in the background of the setting (although he swells in narrative importance in the back half.) Another example is The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang, which is a comic about a Chinese-American vigilante in the 1930s who, due to a poorly worded pact with a spirit, becomes invulnerable to bullets and nothing else; a more traditional Superman Analogue called “The Anchor of Justice” exists in the background of the setting, only getting a couple of speaking lines, and is mainly used to demonstrate the double standard society applies to superheroism when someone other than a white guy starts doing it. Incredibles does this as a background gag, with the sheer number of heroes in Edna’s “no capes” montage who were clearly trying to fill the Superman niche but continuously couldn’t cut it.  Valiant comics did this. Wild Cards I think did this. City of Heroes I think was doing something like this by having prototypical flying-brick Statesman as an NPC while all the PC heroes were (by virtue of being PCs) significantly more diverse and outlandish in powers and presentation. There are other examples of this juxtaposition trick that I’m not thinking of.

So, what are some works that don’t do this?

Here’s a non-comprehensive sample of works that unhook themselves from the standbys;

First off, The Marvel Universe. I think I’ve talked a few times about how the Marvel superhero community is pretty heavily dysfunctional, disjointed and fractious in comparison to the DC superhero community; The Avengers are an absolute shitshow in comparison to the Justice League, as individuals and as an organization. It’s easy to forget due to their total conquest of contemporary pop culture but Marvel was churning out unconventional cape after unconventional cape for years without stepping on DC’s toes; for a long time they were the answer to this question. Any time that Marvel has played at adding a Superman analogue to the setting, it’s usually in the context of pointing out how radically different the setting would work if there was a number-one top-tier hero like that running around.

Heroes, the first season at least, is heavily in conversation with traditional superheroism without actually featuring any of the aesthetic markers within the show itself; no costumes (because supers are simply too new as a widespread phenomena to have the institutional backing for that) no obvious Superman figure (one power per person) and the handful of cast members trying to behave like superheroes are explicitly doing so because of the existing cultural referents of fictional superheroes; by the end of season one nobody has made it all the way to the finish line in terms of costumes and codenames.

Absolution, a comic miniseries by Christos Gage about a superhero who snaps and starts playing Dexter, using his versatile forcefield powers to emulate dozens of different murder weapons so that the killings can’t be traced back to him. The setting is aggressively and deliberately street level, with almost no obvious character analogues, a host of novel powers, and “superheroes” that are universally incorporated into police departments as superpowered SWAT teams. However, the books politics are noxious; it seems that the author’s objection to the police is that they don’t kill enough people. But I bring it up because it’s visually clearly a superhero work while still having a strong aesthetic aversion to all of the tropes you specifically mentioned.

No Hero by Warren Ellis, which is about a superhero team created in the 1960s by a counter-culture chemist who stumbled upon a psychedelic drug that provides superpowers. The team is, in universe, very visibly attempting to carve out an aesthetic identity independent from that of traditional superheroes, brutally fighting crime in varied combinations of gas masks, latex, and evening wear; the group is also tiny, due to the team’s founder being rightfully paranoid that the government is going to jump on his secret recipe. It’s also an incredibly visually horrific book. Body horror galore. 

Uber by Keiron Gillen is an alternate history in which World War 2 was fought by super soldiers, developed initially by the Axis and then by an increasingly-panicked America and Britain. The project of the comic was to repudiate the idea of the superhero as an individualist figure who can overcome anything through grit and moral righteousness; in the words of Gillen, it’s a comic about how Galactus is going to beat Spider-man, every single time. In keeping with this, the superhumans are fairly cookie-cutter (developed in batches down known lines of research) the outcome of superhuman fights are determined purely by which of the two superhumans were better made, and as military projects the “heroes” are named using the same conventions as battleships (USS Colossus, HMS Dunkirk, etc.) 

Watchmen is an interesting situation. The one powered hero, Dr. Manhattan, is mainly used as an exploration of Superman’s geopolitical impact- the effects of the most powerful thing in the world being an American agent. But in terms of actual origin and aesthetic Manhattan is primarily in conversation with the Marvel Stable; a lab-accident origin, space-age energy powers, presence within the setting’s second wave superhero resurgence rather than having gotten in on the ground floor. That one is picking and choosing recognizable elements in order to do a bunch of different things at once.

Most of these tie back to the Mount Fuji thing; the absence of immediately recognizable figures in these works are, due to the volume of precedent, themselves a very pointed and noticeable choice. Sometimes even a choice the characters themselves are making within the story. And this presents a challenge to any capefic author who deliberately eschews familiar archetypes because they’re sick to death of them; go too far out of your way to excise Superman from your story, and you run the risk of just providing implicit commentary on his ubiquity instead. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

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One last note; you clarified in DMs that the “super science” you were referring to was that of the crop of pulp heroes; Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Phantom, et al et al. I think something different is going on here from everything else I’ve been going on about. When superhero settings incorporate these proto-heroes, it’s part in-joke and partly a nod to legacy; these were the characters immediately preceding Superman and Batman, the prototypes, the incubators for a lot of ideas and aesthetics that later superheroes would take and run with. Many 1930s-1940s superheroes are visually the “missing link” between the two genres; examples of this include The Spirit, The Sandman, and The Green Hornet. In superhero settings that are built “from scratch” outside of the big two, with a setting history that stretches back before the 1930s, it’s therefore common to incorporate a few figures patterned along these lines as a form of tribute. The flip side of this is that the archetype is also very easy to attack and parody; many of the pulp “men of science” were predictably tied to very yikes-inducing ideas about race, gender, and so forth, and thus if you want to criticize the basic assumptions of heroism, one way to do this is to take the archetypes at the root of the genre and then make them period-appropriate jackasses.

I’ll cop to being significantly less informed about this last bit, and thus significantly less confident in the conclusions I’m drawing about it; I’m therefore going to refer you over to @maxwell-grant, who’s very into the pulp hero side of things and can probably give you a more informed perspective both on how the science hero types informed the development genre, and the varying degrees to which they’ve hung around as both objects of tribute and parody. 

[sumeria]

who in riverdale would be the most compelling main character, other than archie- and why?

imo cheryl blossom but it would cease to be riverdale as a universal pastiche and almost exclusively a gothic horror x sabrina the teenage witch x buffy vibe. like the problem is when you make anyone but archie andrews, all-american boy, every boy ever in fact, the main character, you lose access to the fact that american comics contain every genre within them and lose yourself to a specific niche. detective/crime, old hollywood/mafia, gothic horror/teen supernatural, gang thriller/writer about writing, etc.

archie andrews = archie comics and under archie comics all of these genres exist. therefore we cant have anyone but archie as the protag unless you want to completely change the genre and tone. this is a question that is purely subjective based on someones preferred genre fiction

anyway yeah cheryl blossom bc i love gothic horror and i love hysterical women and a series focused on gothic horror and witchcraft sounds wonderful. i loved penny dreadful so im approaching it with that mentality

[spn-fanfic-reblog-writes]

WIP TITLE TAG GAME

@leatafandom This is the third time I’ve tried to make this damned post. Lol! @staff (tumblr) keeps eating my post even though it tells me it is saving my draft. Anyway, here is my list.

Please feel free to ask any questions about any of the docs by file name either by comment, reblog, or ask. Thank you!

Winchesters A Life in the Hunter House

(Hades — Tartarus) The Empty’s Daughter

#99 prompt

#99.2 prompt

A Father’s Daughter

Alec M x Reader Crush

Alec x Reader 2

All around me 2.0 (Slow Burn)

Alpha Angel Cas x Omega!Witch!F! Reader

Alpha! Dean x Omega F!

Alpha Dr Castiel Alpha Dean sinus problems true mates

An Angel’s Unexpected Companion

Angst Reader Hurt/Comfort wHappy unexpected ending

Ao3 2023 Kinktober

Ao3 Romancing the Hunter

Ao3 Xmes Exchange Quicky 2023

Ask Request 2024-02-28 Beau x Reader

Ask Request 2024-05-31 Sam Wesson x Gabriel

Ask Request 2024-06-12 Billy Butcher x m/ftm

Ask Request 2024-06-13 Dean or Jensen x Older F! Reader

Ask Request 2024-06-29 Sam x Methos

Ask Request 2024-07-02 FicFacers 2024 (Oct due date)

AU - BDSM Dom Cas Switch/Dom Dean x Sub Fem

Bankers, Fairies, and Foreclosures, Oh my! (From @writing-prompt-s)

Being a sex god isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Blood in Heaven and Hell - Alex Drabble - Making a boring chore a little more fun together

Blood in Heaven and Hell - Boredom WIP

Blood in Heaven and Hell - Disassociation 2

Blood in Heaven and Hell - Timestamp.2 Horror Movie

Burning Up

Destiel Date Night

Destiel Rabbit Moth Love Story

Domestic Destiel #? Glowy Angel seduction

Dragon Cas x Dean Plot (Giant and Pet meme)

Falling in love with Angel ORIGINAL

God-made Nephilim Rescues Castiel

Guardian of Humanity scene Drabble

Guardian of Humanity journal and scene

Heat

Ignoring the Alpha’s Voice

Ignoring Their Omega

Imagine Dean comes home after a bad day. (from @harmonity-vibes)

Nephilim of Stone

Post 15x19 DestielxAlex

Purpose

Rough time with your mental illness 2.0 (from @imaginethatsupernatural )

Scent Out, Make Out

Sick Stubborn Reader x Angel Cas

Soldier Boy x Flirty Reader

Spn Fairy Tales: The Ugly Duckling, a Destiel story (inspired by @fledglinginatrenchcoat-blog)

Spn poly Drabble 2023-08-30

SPNBB…

Sugar Daddy Horseman Death x Lucifer

Tell Me No Lies

Tell Me No Lies 2.0 (Nightingale Witch)

The Angel’s Mate 2.0

The Fluffstiel Bang 2024 — Story

The Fluffstiel Bang 2024 — Story 2.0

The Omega

The Packless, no longer less —Bad Day (Becoming the Pack Alpha's Mate)

The Packless, no longer less SERIES

The Virus ORIGINAL

They don’t know when to quit

Trigger Warning

True Mate A/B/O DestielxAfab

Two Men and the Virgin

Warming Him Up

Winchester!Sister x Castiel

I’m gonna go a step beyond because I can. I am going to advise WIPs in my TUMBLR DRAFTS too. This will include the date, title or inspiration, and pairing if I have one.

Jul 2 - Moth to A Flame, Soldier Boy x F!Reader

Feb 29 - “Could you tell me another story while we drive to our destination, (Y/N)?” from @imaginethatsupernatural

Aug 20, 2022 - Angel!Castiel x Hunter!Reader (GN)

Jul 15, 2022 - Sub/Switch!Bi!Dean Winchester x Sub!F!Reader x Dom!Bi!Castiel

Just realized I didn’t tag anyone. Lol! Of course, no pressure. Only if you have time. 😊 ❤️❤️❤️ @luci-in-trenchcoats @zationao3 @riley-phoenix @lotus820 @impala-dreamer @spnexploration @destielshipper4cas @sharkfish @niche-pastiche @wisteria-lodge @naughtystiel

[canmom]

catching glimpses of the international fandom of the Mechanisms is so weird to me. because they were a fixture of quite a niche scene in London - you’d see them play at pubs, or events like Nine Worlds (short-lived UK con for nerd shit with a social justicey bent - in retrospect, it went about as well as you’d expect, but I was naive back then). i went to some of their gigs, and it was fun, but there was a bunch of audience interaction type stuff I wasn’t entirely clued in about - it was clear that most of the people who went were people who went to a lot of Mechanisms gigs and quite probably knew them personally. big overlap with the sort of cabaret/bi cuddle pile type scene, anyone remember ‘Lashings of Ginger Beer Time’ lol.

and what they do is such an unabashedly nerdy thing, like the typical structure is to take a theme - fairy tales, Greek mythology, etc.; then reinterpret it in a grimdark scifi context - grand space opera, cyberpunk noir, space western, Lovecraftian horror - and assign various members of the band to assume the roles of the characters in the story, find some small corner for the Mechanisms themselves to appear and be nihilistically violent, and then the songs are... well, I don’t know about all of them, but definitely a lot of them are pastiches of existing songs. in Once Upon A Time (In Space) we have for example Our Boy Jack is to the tune of Bella Ciao, No Happy Endings is Korobeiniki - and you’re kind of expected to pick up on that I think!

anyway don’t get me wrong I love concept albums that tell a story, that’s one of my favourite genres of music, so I actually really quite like the Mechanisms. but it definitely feels like they’ve broken containment lmao.

anyway at much that same time I became good friends with Maki Yamazaki (Dr Carmilla), who originally created the Mechanisms as a backing band in the first place, so I mostly get her side of that split. which adds an extra dimension. bc it’s like “oh yeah, Maki’s old band”.

meanwhile the average fan’s encounter is like... so as I understand, one of them starred in a really popular podcast or something? The Magnus Archives. and at some point fans of that caught wind of this older project and brought all the same fandom machinery with them. so years after the band broke up, they now have a bunch of people making fanart and writing fanfiction and writing big old meta posts on tumblr, mostly coming at it from that angle. they’re getting really into it, it’s fascinating to observe a slice of that via @arianwells. also makes me feel really old...

[wisteria-lodge]

As an older hp fan who hasn't been in the fandom for a while, it's so cool to see someone writing thoughtful fic still! I love tpotp! It always makes my week!

I've read a ton of old snupin fic but nothing recent. Do you have any recs for long snupin fic (wip is okay) that was published in the last year or so? I trust your taste and think your fic is proof that new content can shine just as bright as the classics!

Thank you for the lovely note!

Unfortunately, I don't really have any recent long Snupin recs (although I'll definitely add on to this post, if I find something good.)

Snape/Lupin... it's kinda a retro ship, and the fic I was looking for didn't seem to exist, and so now we have Prison of the Phoenix and I'm honestly glad other people like it too. One of the early comments was "Checking for Snupin updates like it’s 2005," and like, fair. Sirius/Lupin is SO ubiquitous, and has been for so long, it kind of is *the* Harry Potter ship, and Snape has had such a weird and interesting journey as a character in terms of canon, fanon, and canon ret-cons.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this project is that my co-writer @niche-pastiche and I had very different opinions on Snape, back in the day. They were kinda a snape girlie and I very much was not, so it was really interesting to unpack those old responses, reconcile them, and come up with something that's hopefully interesting. I love that you used the word "thoughtful" - that's exactly what I'm going for.

I read a lot of Wolfstar back in the day, and I *was* a Sirius fan (unlike Niche.) So he's been another interesting aspect here. He keeps showing up, and definitely not as any kind of straightforward /villain/ mostly because I think it can be kind of boring and reductive when fics treat exes that way. This project absolutely made the Severus appeal click for me, and it made the Sirius appeal click for Niche.

A lot of the popular recent stuff with these characters is also Marauders Era, and for this one at least, the fun is engaging with and putting a different (critical) lens on the books-as-is. And you don't get as much Marauders Snupin, although do I think it would be fun. My pitch for a long Snupin Marauders era fic would probably be... Severus invents the Wolfsbane potion early. Like maybe he spent sixth year just feverishly working on it as a trauma response. And then you go into how that would shift the existing dynamic in year seven, when Severus is still Severus, but now he has this skill that Sirius, James, and Remus REALLY value.