#the secret society of supervillains

[jasposeyblog]

My commission of Captain Cold sketch cover by Erik Fidel

[infinityinc4ever]

From DC Sampler # 1 - and check out Infinity Inc. rushing in from the upper right!

[doctorslippery]

[a-bluedream-posts]

Talia al ghul | Gameverse by FickleMeAI

[surrender-souls]

EVERYONE IS SO MEAN TO THE CREEPER

[cigamfossertsim]

gorilla grodd: no offense intended

lex luthor: yet somehow you always manage

[nitpickrider]

To answer your question about what moral line Deathstroke has yet to cross: he's never attempted genocide. He's a murderer, but he's never attempted to kill an entire race or half the entire human species. So, he's at least better than Thanos or the Red Skull. So, that's the one moral line Deathstroke hasn't crossed yet.

Funny thing? You're actually kinda WRONG. Slade was head hitman for the Secret Society of Supervillains in the lead up to Infinite Crisis, working under the plans of evil Alexander Luthor to wipe out New Earth and replace it with the original Earth 2, Pre-Crisis. If that plan he directly contributed to had been allowed to succeed, every living being in the New Earth universe would have been directly killed as a result of his actions. Now, there's degrees of separations there, I grant. But he never actually reneged on that when it was discovered what the actual purpose of the Secret Society was, nor did he ever seem especially bothered by it

[maxwell-grant]

There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.

The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.

She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.

My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman

To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.

Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.

That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.

"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31

We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.

The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:

In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.

The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.

Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.

She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.

She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.

She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.

Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?

That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).

Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.

Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.

So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.

Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction

Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.

By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural  peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith

Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.

Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction - a literary “super genre,” which encompasses a number of different genres of fiction, each with speculative elements that are based on conjecture and do not exist in the real world.

Sometimes called “what-if” books, speculative literature changes the laws of what’s real or possible as we know them in our current society, and then speculates on the outcome.

Subgenres of Speculative Fiction

Most speculative fiction novels fall under at least one of the following genres. Some may fall into multiple genres depending on the story structure:

Science fiction: stories with imagined technologies that don’t exist in the real world, like time travel, aliens, and robots.

Sci-fi fantasy fiction: sci-fi stories inspired by mythology, folklore, and fairy tales that combine imagined technologies with elements of magical realism.

Supernatural fiction: sci-fi stories about secret knowledge or hidden abilities including witchcraft, spiritualism, and psychic abilities.

Space opera fiction: a play on the term “soap opera,” sci-fi stories that take place in outer space and center around conflict, romance, and adventure.

Urban fantasy fiction: fantasy stories that take place in an urban setting in the real world but operate under magical rules.

Utopian fiction: stories about civilizations the authors deem to be perfect, ideal societies.

Dystopian fiction: stories about societies deemed problematic within the world of the novel, often satirizing government rules, poverty, and oppression.

Apocalyptic fiction: stories that take place before and during a huge disaster that wipes out a significant portion of the world’s population. The stories center around characters doing everything they can to stay alive—for example, running from zombies or trying to avoid a deadly plague.

Post-apocalyptic fiction: stories that take place after an apocalyptic event and focus on the survivors figuring out how to navigate their new circumstances—for example, emerging after a global nuclear holocaust or surviving a total breakdown of society.

Alternate history fiction: stories that focus on true historical events but are written as if they unfolded with different outcomes.

Superhero fiction: stories about superheroes and how they use their abilities to fight supervillains.

History of Speculative Fiction

Writers have written about hypothetical events for centuries.

Speculative fiction dates back to ancient Greece when playwrights like Euripides explored alternate versions of the truth.

For example, in Medea, Euripides speculated a world in which a shamaness killed her own children, rather than them being killed by the Corinthians.

Stories like William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings are also considered speculative fiction, even though the term did not exist at the time.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream conjures a world in which characters move seamlessly through time and space in the woodland and the Fairyland;

The Lord of the Rings speculates mythical creatures that do not exist in our world.

The term “speculative fiction” was used for the first time by Robert Heinlein in 1947.

The terms was largely associated with only the science fiction genre in the late 20th century, as science fiction is a widely-read genre that contains speculative elements.

The term expanded in the 21st century to encompass more subgenres beyond just science fiction, like fantasy and dystopian literature.

Today, speculative fiction is a blanket term for the stories that take place beyond our known world.

Margaret Atwood defines speculative fiction as literature that deals with possibilities in a society which have not yet been enacted but are latent. 

Margaret got the idea for The Handmaid’s Tale from a conversation she had with a friend in the early 1980s when, in reaction to the advances of feminism during the previous two decades, a strain of cultural conversation worried over how to get women “back into the home.”

Margaret wondered what it would take to do that; what kind of regime might enact such a reversion.

In Gilead, the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, certain women who have the now-rare ability to have children are deemed “handmaids,” and are allocated to an upper class families as reproductive slaves.

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs ⚜ Speculative Biology

[nyxthejinx-rantsaboutlads]

The posts I've been seeing about Spiderman!Caleb stirred the sleeping beast within my brain, but my take is gonna be slightly different from the others.

I'm in love with the Into/Across the Spiderverse movies and I can't help but think about MC being his Gwen canon event. That's painful, yeah. You know what's worse, though? Seeing a you from another universe at the Spider Society.

Like, he sees this version of you being alive and well, and his shattered heart mends, swells, bursts and falls apart all over again. Even more knowing you're just like him, cursed by destiny and chosen to wear the mask, always risking your life and enduring your own canon events.

Then he realises.

Peter being one of the most common spider variants in the multiverse means that almost all the Gwens are either dead or meant to die. Caleb isn't a Peter, though. He's just one, and even though you're considered a "Gwen" in his universe, you are not in all of the others.

In most of the other worlds you two lead a peaceful life together. You're both alive, both unburdened by powers, responsibility and loss. No secret identities, no supervillains that threaten your safety, no running from your feelings.

The first and only variant he meets after your death was the Spidey version of you. Someone tired, uncannily familiar but at the same time unrecogniseable, someone who had to toughen up because he had left you all alone by dying in your arms. A version of you that's alive, but that's not doing as well as he wishes.

And it's all his fault.

[celaenaeiln]

What do you think of Slade and Dick’s relationship ok the comics? Dick somewhat killed his first child, was friends with his second and mentored his third so idk about you but I’d feel like Slade would have some pretty twisted feelings towards him by then even without the whole apprenticeship thing

It's weird? I can't really pin it down because Slade and Dick are kinda everything. They're enemies, allies, friends, as well as mentor and student. Dick is the one that Slade is closest to in the entire family. They're so close that Bruce actually called Dick to ask him for information about Slade.

Deathstroke (1991) Issue #7

"Dick--I need information. Tell me about Deathstroke. I remembered you fought against him several times...as well as fighting alongside him recently."

Bruce...do you need that calming tea because you're mad at criminals or because you're mad that Dick had dealings with Deathstroke?

Anyways, after Bruce hangs up on Dick, guess who Dick calls?

Deathstroke (1991) Issue #7

Wintergreen!

Who also lies to Adeline about someone calling Slade because she's mad at him.

Deathstroke (1991) Issue #7

So Dick and Slade have a tight mutual enemies but also friends relationship. And this was after joey died.

After Grant died, Slade was furious at the Titans and hated them for a while

The New Teen Titans (1980) Issue #2

He then uses this hate to plan and trap the Titans into the way of a specialized bomb but the titans escape. Afterwards comes the Judas Contract where he tries to kill all of them but fails.

However between Grant's death and the formation of Nightwing in Judas contract there's a very important scene between Dick and Slade. Even though Slade hates the Titans and blames from for Grant's passing, he still respects Dick an incredible amount. A year after Grant dies, Slade seeks out Dick individually.

Deathstroke (2016) Issue #19

So basically he finds out about Rose and the first thing he does is dump her on Dick. This ties into Dick's comic Renegade era because Dick as Robin has trained Rose when she was a kid in the rights and wrongs and how to be a good person but Slade as usual has the conscience of a goldfish so he changed his mind after he grew a little more separated after Grant's death. He now decided to push Rose into his ways.

Nightwing (1996) Issue #112

Instead of morals, he now wants Dick to teach her skills, tactics, and fighting techniques because even at his maddest moments, Slade has always respected Dick.

Nightwing (1996) Issue #80

The change from Slade asking Dick to teach Rose only his moral to teaching her his everything is a testament to how much Dick has grown from Robin to Nightwing. One of the most formidable villains ever is asking his long time enemy to teach his daughter. That's-there aren't enough words to express the weight of these scenes.

So Slade heavily respects Dick. He actually respects him the most out of the family despite what happened with Grant.

He respects Dick so much he was absolutely furious at Dick that he got himself shot and got amnesia.

How do we know this? It came out against his fight with Batman.

Batman Secret Files Issue #3

Wait, who's the great man that lost everything?

Batman Secret Files Issue #3

"You're going to got try and kidnap somebody you think I care about. So get to it. What do you think you can offer me? Why would I say yes?"

Batman Secret Files Issue #3

HE'S SO MAD THAT JOKER EXPLOITED HIS CARE FOR DICK AND HE'S SUPER MAD AT DICK AND BRUCE FOR HAVING THE JOKER FORCE HIS HAND.

He got himself involved so he could control the damage without seeming like he cares too much because he has a reputation to upkeep.

Slade really cares about Dick.

That's not to say he doesn't hate Dick at times. When Dick turned his daughter away from him, he got so furious he made a society of supervillains just to bomb Bludhaven. His rage was explosive (haha). He even used Damian to get to Dick.

Batman and Robin (2009) Issue #12

Talia gets it.

Batman and Robin (2009) Issue #12

Batman and Robin (2009) Issue #12

But at this point Dick's just like seriously? screw off.

Batman and Robin (2009) Issue #12

At this point Dick literally doesn't give a shit-he's just so done with everything.

Batman and Robin (2009) Issue #12

Going back to post Grant's death, Slade still kinda sees himself as a mentor or like an older friend to Dick.

After the JL failed to contain Deathstroke, the Titans had to step in and Slade's thoughts about Dick are so funny

Deathstroke (1991) Issue #14

More than hating each other, it's more like Slade is a nuisance to Dick and he really only acts out when he thinks Dick's taken away one of his kids. They have a really long and complex history where their stories are deeply interwoven with each other. Dick has influenced the pivotal moments of Slade's life and Slade has done the same to Dick.

This moment from their team up in the Titans (1999) comic explains their dynamic best

Titans (1999) Issue #10

Dick keeps all of Slade's stuff to study but treats him with a healthy amount of suspicion while still helping him out and being on opposite sides.

Titans (1999) Issue #10

lol

Dick is sort of responsible for Grant's death, yes, but also Dick is Joey's best friend, Rose's second parent, allies with Wintergree, and helped save Adeline. He's involved with Slade's entire family.

Yeah Slade's feelings toward Dick are pretty confusing but I guess you can think of Slade's relationship with him as Slade's hero confidant. He also feels some sort of responsibility over Dick which is weird. Their history is too tight and closely connected for Slade to ever permanently hate Dick but his bouts of rage mainly come from him feeling betrayed by Dick.

Overall, Slade just wants Dick's attention, and Dick for the most part just wants Slade to stop pestering him.

[astroboyart]

Astro Boy Reboot not dead yet; new visual unveiled at 2024 edition of Annecy International Animation Film Festival

Sources: TF1 Pro (English Google Translation), Mediawan Kids & Family (X)

Announced on June 11, 2024 at the Annecy Festival in France, Astro Boy Reboot has surfaced once again with a new visual.

This version of Astro Boy Reboot will be co-produced by Method Animation (Mediawan Kids & Family) and Shibuya Productions. No release date was given.

TFOU, a youth based TV channel in France, signed an agreement with Method Animation/Mediawan Kids & Family to develop this new version of Astro Boy Reboot which will be geared towards the 6-10 year old crowd.

It will have 26 episodes which will each last 22 minutes.

A pitch for the show was posted:

Atom is 9 years old, he plays soccer, has his small group of friends at school, bickers with his little sister Uran, and dreams of telling his friend Silica that he is in love with her. But Atom is no ordinary boy. He is a 9-year-old ultra-advanced robot and the only android capable of feeling real emotions! He hides his true nature to live like a normal child. But when supervillains threaten the coexistence between humans and robots, he must act, because he dreams of a world where everyone lives in harmony. Secretly, he transforms into a superhero to protect Metro City. To all the locals, he is Astroboy! But can Astroboy save the city without revealing its secret and thus preserve his complicity with the marvelous Silica?

A couple major figures for Astro Boy Reboot also commented on Astro Boy Reboot:

Yann Labasque, director of youth programs at TF1. "Welcome Astro Boy to the TFOU family! We are delighted to launch the development of this new animated series with Mediawan Kids & Family," rejoices Yann Labasque , director of youth programs at TF1. "A series rich in promises of action and adventure, but also of emotions through the eyes of this little robot boy with a human heart who will have to find his place in a divided society and the solutions within him. Themes with great stories to tell and great values ​​to convey.

Katell France, General Manager and Content Director of Method Animation. "We are very happy to be able to develop the reboot of Astroboy, an iconic character created by Osamu Tezuka, with our historic partner TF1 who has supported us for many years on the Miraculous franchise with the success that we have known. Astroboy is a legendary character whose values ​​such as the cohabitation of technology and nature, tolerance and friendship, perfectly embody those that we defend at Mediawan Kids & Family. This series responds to our strategy of creating a great franchise for young people and families. We look forward to bringing Astroboy back to life through this reboot, and new stories in which all children today will recognize themselves."

[infinityinc4ever]

God, I was so psyched for this storyline back in the day. Sadly, the DC Implosion ruined it all.

[doctorslippery]

[dcdreamblog]

How did supervillains during the war years fight the mystery men of the time, and not end up either being treated as Axis agents by the governemt, even if they weren't, or drafted to some World War 2 version of Task Force X?

Simply put because at the time that sort of corruption simply might not have occurred to anybody. Which sounds naive, this is the US government we're talking about but there's two different ways to explain what I mean.

(A propaganda/wanted poster for the "Injustice Society" 13 of the most dangerous and high profile villains of the era) As far as being treated as Axis agents, well that's just not how that system worked. While the first generation of costumed villains were recognized as being especially dangerous compared to the regular criminal they were considered just that, more dangerous criminals. While truly bizarre villains like Solomon Grundy or Per Degaton probably rated a higher layer of security, neither was ever arrested and held by the legal system during the war itself. More "mundane" criminals like Icicle, Sportsmaster or The Fiddler were treated as those whose means and skills made them especially dangerous not some sort of existential threat. People still got arrested and charged with crimes during the war without being labeled as Axis sympathizers . The idea that anyone who committed a high profile offense would be marked as a Nazi would just be a tad outlandish. Even to this day supervillains are charged as regular criminals most of the time because that's what they are. The vast majority of supervillains are guilty of assault, robbery, murder, regular run of the mill crimes committed via superhuman ability. As for your more specific "what if" well...Task Force X as it was constructed is illegal as hell. Yes, yes I know. The government does illegal and shady stuff all the time but every moral horizon has to be crossed by someone at some point. The idea of taking convicted criminals and using some sort of violent threat to turn them into secret agents of some internal government affair is the sort of thing that sounds beyond the pale until someone actually does it. Not to mention the technology to control supervillains just didn't exist at the time. It's not like a remote controlled explosive was going to be miniaturized and then surgically implanted in the early 1940s and any handler that was sent along was going to become an instant sacrificial lamb for whatever sociopaths you sent out with them. The government had no way to coerce them and certainly had no reason to trust them. On top of that there were no specialized government organs for dealing with superhumans at that time. the DEO wouldn't be founded for decades and Amanda Waller herself had yet to be born, much less begun working her way up in politics. The only official service that could use superhuman agents and deploy them for military purposes would have been the military itself...or the All Star Squadron. Which would have IMMEDIATELY blown up in their faces. This isn't like the Creature Commandos, a tiny gaggle of superhuman assets that could be kept totally in the dark because the Squadron had no inkling they existed. Superheroes tend to be the sentimental sort. I should know, I work in a building surrounded by the crap none of them could throw away and that means most of them checked up on the people they put behind bars every so often. If supervillains started going missing en masse (which wouldn't have needed that many of them, there were only so many at the time) then the Squadron would have started sniffing around and the Squadron infamously ALWAYS found what it was looking for no matter how far down the military tried to bury it. More than one crooked army officer found themselves dragged into the waiting arms of the free press because the Squadron happened to trip over a tiny thread left out of place. The idea just didn't work. Which is probably because the idea STILL mostly doesn't work despite what the people taking kickbacks would tell you.

[dramaticallytotal]

Aren't You Tired Of Being Nice? Headcanons: Part One

Idea Post

Superhero/supervillain au headcanons! I do love this idea, and it's one of the few I am considering for a somewhat corruption au kinda thing. Which makes sense given the overall basic plot.

• Noah's family knows he has powers, but they help him hide it because they see no problem with him wanting to be his own version of normal.

• Secret identities aren't really a thing in the superhero community (because this is based on Sky High a bit, the hero community is separate from the general public, including their schools. If you have a parent who was a hero, you immediately get in, powers, or no powers) since, once you graduate and if you decided to become a hero, you have to register with the Heroics Council. You have to register too if you are a sidekick and must register as such. Of course, villains don't register, so they are the ones with the heavily protected secret identities.

Though the general public doesn't know who a superhero is so that's the extent of their secret identity. Some heroes can choose to register, but under the confidentiality band, which does actually protect their secret identity. Many older heroes are not on this list, but many newer heroes are.

• Antiheroes are amongst those that don't register and are considered vigilantes by the Heroics Council. Noah's work as Argus makes him a vigilante despite the fact he works for Total Heroes because he is unregistered.

• Classifications (these are going in ascending order to how they are viewed in society):

Awol-lers - people with powers who refuse to become heroes, vigilantes, or villains. Someone who just wants to live as a baseline human. They are viewed the lowest as they are considered abandoners.

Baseline/Underline Human - someone with no powers. It depends on if they come from a family with a history of powers. If they have a history of no powers, they aren't treated as bad, but if they come from a family history of powers, they are often ridiculed. This is when they are often referred to as Underline humans as an insult. Not everyone does this, but many do. Mind you, this term is only used in the superpowered community.

Sidekick - Someone with powers that are either weak or not seen as helpful.

Vigilante - As stated before, an individual with strong powers (strong as in level) that is not registered but commits heroic acts.

Hero/Villain - An individual with strong powers who uses them for good or evil in basic terms.

• Character classifications and powers if they have any:

- Noah: Baseline Human (if he ever showed his powers, he would have been considered a hero if he registered.) But he is called an Underline Human by a lot of people because his family has a long history of having powers.

- Noah as Argus: Vigilante. He is helping out heroes and has done for a while, but he never registered. His powers include technopathy, and there is no name for his other power, but he's always just called it Insight. This power allows him to look at something and know how it was made and what could be done with it. If he looks at someone, he gets a feeling of how they feel like vague emotions, snippets of traits, and weaknesses and strengths. Insight helps him create and invent many things. Mainly stuff to help out his friends and TH.

- Eva: Hero, and she registered while still in school because in this au, instead of being a stuntwomen at a young age, she became a hero at a young age. She basically bullied the Heroics Council into letting her register earlier. Her hero name is Major Ursa, and her powers are superhuman strength and partial shifting into a bear. Her hands shift into bear hands with sharp indestructible claws. Her teeth become fangs, and her lower legs shift into bear hind legs. Eva is one of the heroes that is registered under the confidentiality band.

- Izzy: Vigilante/Anti-hero. She wanted to register, but the Council denied her as they said she was too unstable. She decided she would do whatever she wanted, and that means being a vigilante. Her "hero" name is Kaleidoscope, and her powers are that of illusions and mild plant and animal control.

- Owen: Sidekick. He has an iron stomach, which basically means he can eat anything and everything, but this wasn't seen as a useful power, so he was classified as a sidekick. He also has a small amount of superstrength but not enough to he classified as a hero. Noah is still really angry about that because his chubby buddy has so much potential.

- Lindsay: Hero. Her registered name is Admiral Gymnista, and she is super flexible and can pull off fantastical stunts. Much like a mix of Harley Quinn and Elastigirl/Mrs. Incredible!

- Tyler: Sidekick. His only power is being indestructible, but he's unbelievably clumsy, which affected his classification. His registered sidekick name is just Indestructible Man. He and Lindsay are hero duo, and she gets mad whenever someone calls him her sidekick. Tyler and Lindsay don't work for Total Heroes, but they do help the organization out from time to time.

- Courtney: Hero. She registered right as soon as she graduated. Her hero name is Gavel Gal, and her powers are super strength. You may have noticed that many people have this, and this is because it's a very common start power. Some people's super strength may be more powerful than others, and Courtney is one where hers is better than others. She also has Quick Thought (very inspired by Athena in Epic), where she can think so fast that time seems to move slower. Her mother is a very famous hero known as Madame Justice. Courtney also fights with a giant gavel.

- Gwen: Hero. Her hero name is Artwitchry, and her powers are her drawing come to life for a certain amount of time. She rides a broom that looks like a giant paintbrush. She can draw at incredible speeds, and this is her only manifestation of super speed. (Her broom was made by Noah as Argus.)

- Duncan: Vigilante. He had a brief stint as a villain as he was trying to rebel against his whole family of heroes. Once he met Courtney, he now is more of an antihero but is considered a vigilante because he is not registered. His name is Punk-antula, and he is kind of reminiscent of Spider Punk. His color scheme is green and black, and he can create webs naturally a la Toby Maguire. He also has venom that temporarily paralyzes someone.

- Heather: Hero. Her hero name is Her Majesty, and her powers are bee related. (I could have named her Queen Bee, but it reminded me too much of ML, and yeah... didn't want that.) Her powers are flight, sting, hive mind, manipulation, and summoning. Flight is obvious. Sting is if she gets you with a stinger, you are paralyzed with mild pain. Hive Mind isn't a power she uses often, but she can connect people to her and make them feed her information. Manipulation is where she uses her pheromones to take temporary control of her enemies and make them so what she wants. Summoning is where she summons worker bee creatures to help.

- Bridgette: Hero. Her hero name is Madame Oceana, and her powers are water-based! She can communicate with all many of sea creatures or just creatures who live in the water. She can form and manipulate water too!

- Geoff: Hero. His hero name is Party Animal, and his powers consist of turning into animals he has met, unlike Beast Boy, who can turn into any animal. Geoff has to meet an animal and physically touch it in order to turn into it later. He also has slight animal control.

- DJ: Hero. His hero name is Wilder, and he has control over animals and nature. He uses his plant manipulation over the animal as he is always worried his animal buddies will get hurt but sometimes it's unavoidable.

- Chris: Former Villain now Hero. His name is still Captain Chaos. His only power is actually Silver Tongue. He can convince anyone of anything which he used to spread chaos. He doesn't use the power that much anymore now that he's a hero but he will if he has to.

- Chef: Baseline human who's just really fucking talented at all kinds of things. He will follow his gremlin husband anywhere.

- Alejandro as Prince Charming: Hero. He is registered and everything under this name. His powers include Silver Tongue, but because it's a heavily monitored power, he calls it Charm and claims it is something else entirely, which was believed by the Heroics Council. He also has super strength and mild super speed, which is very reminiscent of Captain America!

- Alejandro as Shadow-teer: Villain. He is doing this for fun but also as revenge to his family. Specifically, his dad and José who are very famous heroes themselves. His father disowned Carlos because Carlos ended up being a Baseline Human, but his dad refused to be the father of an Underline Human. Alejandro was found out to be visiting Carlos and was punished but not thrown out of the family. This caused him to become a villain set on taking over the superpowered community in hopes of reforming it where they don't have these labels. His powers are Silver Tongue, shadow manipulation, and mind manipulation.

• There are many more, but since I mentioned them in the original idea post, I decided to add them!

• Alejandro only joined Total Heroes because he had been trying to hack their server for MONTHS! It never took him long to hack into a server when he needed information. He wanted to hack into TH for their database since it held information about past missions and future missions, hero identities, and other information that would be useful to him given TH had been thwarting minor plans of his! They didn't know hw was behind the crimes, but still. It was aggravating.

• Noah and his sister, Nila, co-own the restaurant The World On A Plate together after Noah bought the building for her as a present. She knew he planned to use the basement as a base of operations, and she was fine with that because her baby brother bought her a restaurant of her own after she had had bad experiences at her past job as a sous chef. He bought it with his money he made as a white hat hacker. Their family was pretty well off, given they are all successful, but they are looked down on in the hero community because not many of them are heroes. Nidhi, Nila, Nadia, and Neelima are all Baseline Humans.

• Everyone in the superpowered community has regular jobs in the general public unless they can afford to not work, which some can because they come from old money or something.

• Noah is simultaneously the laziest person ever but also the most efficient and determined person. He co-owns and runs and works at a very famous restaurant. He is a free-lancer white hat hacker, and he is a free-lance hero support. He has multiple contracts open, including the two contracts with TH. But he also refuses to move from his very comfy chair behind his system if he can. And his family or Owen tends to bring him meals when he is working in the Data Base.

• Alejandro hates everyone he works with at TH except Argus, but the guy is very hard to connect and talk with as he only tolerates 'shop talk' and maybe Alejandro could understand when he hears his teammates belittle the guy. Alejandro found stupid, considering he found out Argus feeds them all the information they need for a mission as well as any tech repairs, and they would be screwed without the guy. This only made him more intrigued by Argus. When he got comfortable, the guy was very witty and sarcastic and made Alejandro laugh more genuinely than he would like to admit.

• That, plus dealing with this hacker, he named Zorro, who protected the TH servers, had Alejandro having more fun than he has in a long time. He had never been so challenged!

• When he found out that the cute waiter at The World On A Plate was actually Zorro, and not only that, was in fact not just a waiter but the co-owner of said restaurant and a very successful white hat hacker he was already swooning. That was the last time he would ever believe anything his teammates claimed. He had already found him enchanting when he first saw him, and hearing he was a genius was intriguing, but to think he was a mere waiter had his interest deflate. Alejandro really hates wasted potential. But surprise! No wasted potential with Noah, and he finds himself falling for the guy and fast.

• He can't help but start flirting with him when he starts hacking the servers again and sending him gifts to the restaurant. He wants to send them to his house but he thought that would scare his zorro and he doesn't want that.

• Noah is getting reaaaaal annoyed with all the gifts sent to the restaurant until they start moving away from flowers and stereotypical shit to things he's had his eye on or things that are useful to him. He's annoyed, flustered, flattered, off-put, and done all at the same time. But if he actually uses the compression gloves while working and used the weighted blanket almost every night that was his business. (After he meticulously checked them for trackers, mics, bugs, etc.)

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