#when he says old people I wonder if he includes atomic samurai

[velmashaircut]

Flashy Flash talking as if he isn’t half of those things…

[punmonster]

man, some of the dreams i have are so vivid and fleshed out that they do make me wonder if im seeing an entirely different world

especially the one i had last night. it would take a book to describe. it was full of horrors.

most of the time i was on this bullet train. the insides were, i can't remember the word, but it was designed for military use not civilian use. none of the comforts of carpets and plush booths. there were grates on the floor, handrails, boilers, small rooms where a booth might be.

the head of train was constructed using the latest technology and it was used basically everywhere. it had a name, but of course i dont remember it. but i can remember the form of the word, so let's call them "grind engines". it was shaped like a huge rusted corkscrew, covered by a cap to give the train a normal appearance.

the technology itself worked in such a way that it could cause massive bloodshed and torment. it was like an atom bomb without the explosion. i don't know how it was a torment nexus or what evil it was capable of, but i could feel pain sheaving off it, onto everything around it.

the same technology was used for /television/, in ways i again did not understand.

an entire country was being used as like this squid/hunger games reality show. and an ancient samurai who used to live there now worked as a backstage employee. there was a part of this dream i cant remember, but he was able to cut his ties with the company. before doing so, he locked in the death rates to a channel. it was at least 1 million. and the number was a live update going up. everyone was very, very angry, because in this world, this was considered a crime.

i cant remember the name of the show, but i'm going to name it "scarlet roulette".

one of the higher ups in my train, a man with a black beard, a blue hat, and a blue jumpsuit with yellow highlights said this: if someone hated scarlet roulette, that was a dog whistle that they hated grind engines.

as he said that, a man who looked like he was from that country, kneeled and prayed in a crook beside a boiler. it was part of his schedule. he wore brown clothes, had black hair, and wore a smooth round hat with no brim. it stopped at the niche of his ears. there was a pain my chest and it became clearer what kind of world this was when the higher up gave him a sour look and dragged him away. i didn't see him again. he didn't even look scared when it happened. it a 'hey man hows it going, hey what are you doing' look.

there was also an elderly female soldier named Irene. she was the leader in one of several hired army groups, mercenaries basically with army construction and aesthetic. she had pink tinted hair. before she grew old, it was black.

after a prisoner escaped from her group, another one escaped from our's. so our two groups met up and had icecream? like everything was right in the world while we discussed finding the prisoners.

in our group, we had some kind of immortal soldier guy. irene locked eyes with him and tried to ignore our party, but he called her over and tried to include her. he looked young, and she was very old. she looked sad, but smiled. this was the heartbreak of having given your years to someone who couldn't grow old with you, i suppose.

the only reason i remembered her name out of all this is because "Goodnight Irene" is a song in my music library. funny how i really did see her in my dreams.

the show runners for scarlet roulette thought they had a way to fix their bad publicity. it made no sense but this is a dream so whatever.

they sent out an agent in techy fighting gear and he started attacking the grass at the top of this important hill. the hill had parts that would light up like simon says and he would dance across them in some kind of combination. the death counter skyrocketed. it made no sense.

he hired people who lived in that country to help him. people covered in injuries and bandages, who were victims of this giant game. their leader was a woman with her face completely bandaged. she wore beautiful blue earrings and had long black hair. she gave orders like she could see and speak clearly. they were promised better lives. they attacked the hill with flame throwers.

two red flowers sprouted on the edge of the hill. as a third red flower sprouted, they begged the hired soldiers to take the flower to their son. they begged several times. but instead of a soldier plucking the third flower, it was the foreign agent that was sent to kill three hill. he did not look like he had good plans for it.

the two remaining flowers screamed, twisted up, and turned into a woman made of bright yellow magma whose face was inlaid with anguish. the dream cut away from this to the show runners. they said the agent made the volcano erupt. they seemed upset by this.

there is a lot else that happened, but the other memories are too faint to relay.

the red flowers had many red, flat petals, enough to hide the bulb. i tried to look it up but i couldn't find quite the right result. dahlia or chrysanthemum are the closest i can get right now.

[maxwell-grant]

One last one for the moment; top five superheroes who definitely AREN'T Pulp Heroes, but could be with a little tweaking?

Oof, that's a hard one. It's a hard one because, again, there ultimately isn't that much separation between the two to the point there's enough of a hard line in there to work with, but I guess the cat's out of the bag now that I've staked claims on there being differences between them.

Okay so, not counting superheroes who are deliberately modeled after actual pulp heroes, so no Tom Strong or Night Raven here. I'm sticking mainly with comic book superheroes (barring one oddball exception) since the medium separation is important), who I think could become pulp heroes with some tweaking.

5: Captain America

Sort of cheating because I already covered it here, but I definitely have to include Captain America in here, especially in the stories they actively go for a "pulp" vibe as well as the earliest ones.

Fun fact about Marvel: As Timely, they actually began life as pulp publishers. Not just pulp publishers, but specializing in some of the sleaziest, ghastliest magazines of the era, and you can bet this carried over to their superheroes. Where as DC's superheroes took inspiration from the big pulp heroes such as The Shadow and Doc Savage, Timely's superheroes seemed instead much more inspired by Weird Tales stories and Poverty Row horror films, and even in the 60s, Marvel never really abandoned their horror roots, the trick was just using them as a baseline to create superheroes. In DC, the world's first contact with superheroes begins with the world looking in wonder at a friendly strongman. In Marvel, it began with the world looking in panicked horror at a flaming monster rampaging through the streets desperately trying to not burn everything it touches. It should come to little surprise then that the majority of characters I'm including in this list are Marvel characters.

People think Captain America's first comics largely consisted of him fighting Nazis left and right, but they were actually much more often based around him encountering monsters and creatures of horror, like the above panel where it looks like Cap's staring down the beginning of Berserk's Eclipse (RIP Miura).

The early Captain America comics pretty much consisted of Kirby dipping his toe into the monster comics he'd make in the 50s which would later bleed into the 60s Marvel entourage. They even tried repackaging Captain America into a horror anthology in the 50s titled "Captain America's Weird Tales", just imagine how different the character would be today if that somehow stuck.

Imagine a world where Steve Rogers never became leader of The Avengers, never got to become the shining beacon of heroism of an entire universe, and instead, when he was unfrosted, he woke up to find a world running rampant with crawling nightmares and Nazi tyranny, and he has no idea what's become of his former sidekick. That definitely sounds like the start of a promising pulp adventure.

4: Namor

Another Timely creation. In Namor's case, he didn't so much encounter horrors from beyond imagination, as much as HE was the terrifying thing beyond us ready to rampage upon mankind, whose first on-screen act consists of the calculated slaughter of a ship full of innocents. The first true villain protagonist of comic books. Not just an anti-hero, a villain intent on wiping out the human race.

And not just a cardboard supervillain, but the beautiful prince of a race of ugly fish monsters, a momma's boy who's doing what he thinks is right by warring with surface dwellers. While Namor's become largely defined by his gargantuan arrogance, here, he's almost childlike, despite being much more brutal and villainous here, spurred on by the whims of his mother, who even acknowledges that Namor had no real reason to kill the divers but did so anyway, and now encourages him to genocide. His mom even tells him "Go now, to the land of white people!", and the very last panel of the story even states he's on a "crusade against white men".

The massacre of explorers at the hands of something beyond their understanding. A monster born of an interracial coupling. A race of fish monsters with bulging eyes, antagonistic towards humanity but are shown to have positive traits just the same. A dash of racism. There is no mistaking The Sub-Mariner's pulp horror influence.

A non-white superhuman warrior born from a Lovecraftian horror story, who gradually moves away from his villainous crusade into becoming more of an anti-hero, never truly putting aside his hatred for humanity, remaining a temperamental, unpredictable outcast, with a strong, palpable undercurrent of anger in his stories. I could very easily buy Namor as having crawled out of a Weird Tales story and I can't think of other superheroes whose origins are as steeped deeply in pulp horror.

3: Doctor Fate

Technically we already have a pulp hero version of Doctor Fate in Doc Fate, and I'll get to him separately, but even besides him, the earliest Doctor Fate stories in particular feel very much like he's a character steeped in the worlds of pulp and pulp horror who decided to put on a superhero costume and show up in comic.

He's got a similar set-up to The Shadow, from the pulp Shadow in the sense that he's a mysterious, eerie crimefighter who dwells as a presence more often than an active character and who kills criminals without remorse, always watching and waiting for the right time to strike as a a wrathful old-testament force of vengeance, and from the radio Shadow due to him using superpowers to fight crime while being accompanied by a smart, fierce love interest.

Originally, Fate was not a sorcerer, but instead a scientist who discovered a way to manipulate atomic structure, of his and other things, thus making it appear that he can do magic (although we never see his face, and he's implied to be thousands of years old, before they settled on the Nabu origin). And going back to Lovecraft, a lot of it appears in the earliest Fate stories. Fate was given powers not by a sorcerer, but an alien worshipped as a god. He barely encounters traditional monsters, but instead contends with hidden races, zombie slaves, abandoned alien monoliths, and half man and half fish creatures. Fate may have actually been the very first pastiche of Lovecraft in pop culture.

And of course we can't forget the gloriousness of Doc Fate pulling an Indiana Jones on us.

2: Wolverine

I don't even think you'd have to tweak Wolverine at all. You'd just have to get him out of the costume and Avengers/X-Men associations (although the X-Men have a substantial background in pulp sci-fi stories like Slan and Odd John, so they aren't really at odds here), maybe tone down his powers a bit and, that's it. Logan's already the kind of character who has such a varied sandbox history, whose powers can lead to so many different scenarios, that it's not a stretch at all to picture Wolverine in the usual pulp hero scenarios.

You can have half-naked Wolverine running around in the jungle with animals Tarzan-style, take him to Savage Land if you wanna throw dinosaurs in there. He's already Marvel's foremost "wandering samurai/cowboy" character which was one of the stock and trade types of the pulps. Western? Done. Samurai? Done. Wuxia? Just put him in China and add a couple extra fantasy elements. Wanna make a sword and sorcery story with him? He already comes with a bunch of knives and savagery and ability to survive grisly injuries. Horror? The MCU is crawling with them, or alternatively, tell a story from the perspective of someone who's being hunted down by Wolverine. Wanna tell a detective/noir/post-apocalypse story? Logan's right there.

Wanna have him crossover with pulp heroes? He's lived through the 1800s and 1900s and traveled all over the world, you could feasibly have him meet up with just about any of them. Logan may actually be the purest example of your question, because he's very much not a Pulp Hero, and yet, he definitely feels like a character who could have been one, at just about any point in the history of pulp magazines. He's perfect for it.

1: Wario

WAAA-okay, look, bear with me for a second here, I'm not just picking Wario because I love oddball choices and he's one of my favorite characters, I got some logic to this.

Okay so, the first question here: is Mario a superhero? While I'm usually adverse to calling characters prominent outside of comic books superheroes (hence why I'm definitely not interested in debating whether Harry Potter or Goku or Link or Frodo are superheroes), I do think it's a pretty shut case that, yes, Mario is a superhero. Superheroes don't just come in the form of skintight crimefighters, right from the start comic books have had varied types of superheroes appearing in comics and comic strips. For example, the "funny animal" superheroes are a type older than superhero comics, and they were arguably not only the most successful type of superhero of the 40s-50s era, but arguably defined trends dominating nonfunny animal superheroes, traits that predated or influenced Captain Marvel as well as Otto Binder's reshaping of Superman that defined much of superhero convention as we know it. It's part of why the question of "Is Sonic a superhero" has a very clear Yes as an answer.

So upon establishing that, yes, funny cartoon characters can be and are superheroes too, is Mario one? Well, I'd say yes. He's got an iconic uniform, he's got superpowers, he goes on fantastical adventures, he is both a nebulously general do-gooder as well as having a clear mission as protector of the Mushroom Kingdom. His adventures span multiple storytelling formats, he's got catchphrases, he even dresses up in Superman's colors and has a Super prefix iconically associated with him. Not a superhero the way we usually think of, but a superhero nonetheless.

And Wario? Well, putting aside Wario-Man who's more of a running gag than anything, Wario does just about everything Mario does. He's got all the traits that define Mario as a superhero short of a Super prefix and the selfless mission (which isn't exactly a rule). He goes around and gets into crazy adventures, he picks up items, beats bad guys, conquers the odds, and gets some kind of prize for it. He's got Mario's physical traits, and Mario's costume, and just about the same name short of a single letter. The caveat being, of course, that he's Wario, and so everything Mario is or does has to be exaggerated to gross extreme.

Mario is paunchy and strong, Wario's round and built like a powerlifter. Mario's got a friendly face and a fluffy mustache, Wario's got a massive horrible grin and jagged razors for a stache. Mario is a bit of an overeater, Wario can and will eat anything in front of him. Mario gets around with acrobatics and magic power-ups, Wario brute forces his way through everything and just rolls with whatever injuries he picks up along the way.

Mario gets fire powers by consuming magic flowers. Wario sets himself on fire and barrels around destroying everything in his path. Mario harnesses the elements or abilities of beings around him to clear obstacles and solve puzzles, Wario gets turned into a zombie, a vampire or a drunk to get the same things done. Mario befriends and rides dinosaurs who raised him from infancy, Wario piledrives dinosaurs and then uses their bodies to beat up more dinosaurs. Mario pals around with fellow heroes, princesses and friendly fantasy creatures, Wario pals around with aliens, witches, mad scientists, cab drivers, and lanky weirdos. Mario always ends his adventures joyfully leaping to the next one, Wario usually ends up either cackling in a pile of treasure or completely broke.

Mario races through plains to rescue princesses, Wario invades pyramids to hunt for treasure. Mario jumps through planets with baby stars guiding his path, Wario crashes into the Amazon jungle and fistfights the devil. You can see where I'm going with this.

If you were to take one of Nintendo's heroes to make them into pulp heroes, Wario, specifically the Wario Land Wario, may be the only one who really could do it, because in essence, he's the videogame equivalent of Professor Challenger. He's Bluto moonlighting as Indiana Jones, the weird brute adventurer for weird brute adventures where everything's off limits and you can trust our intrepid hero, who really shouldn't be a hero on all accounts, to deliver us a good time, give or take a couple deaths, scams, shams and oh-damns to complete said mad treasure hunts.

[aforrestofstuff]

What would happen at an s-class slumber party? Including Saitama I guess. Like who falls asleep first, who plays games, etc

I got these two asks like, literally ten minutes apart and idk what prompted all of these sleepy time curiosities pertaining to the S-Class but I am HERE for it. I’m gonna put them together into one masterpost because they’re roughly the same thing lol. Thanks for requesting stuff y’all! 😄💖

I was having trouble thinking of a possible scenario that could explain why the S-Class would even want to be in the same room together for more than 30 minutes, let alone have a sleepover. The best I could come up with is Sitch paid them all a handsome sum to sleep in the Hero Association lobby and stand guard because there’s an S-Class threat hit squad on the hunt for his executive ass. And, being the cheap-asses that they all are, they took the offer.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s get crackin fellas:

Tornado of Terror: She’s grumpy as all hell to be here (even though she got paid the most), so she just falls the fuck asleep and tells everyone to wake her up at the first sign of trouble because she thinks she’s the only one who’s capable enough to deal with it. She brings a pillow, a blanket, her jammies, and a teddy to sleep with. If anyone dares to open their mouth about Sir Stuffers then she’ll gladly explode their head.

Silverfang: Volunteers to take first watch, but because he’s an old shit he falls asleep 20 minutes into his shift. He doesn’t bring anything to sleep with because he convinced himself that he has the willpower to stay up all night but Charanko “accidentally” mixed melatonin into Silverfang’s tea before he left for the mission so now he’s passed the fuck out and not waking up anytime soon.

Atomic Samurai: Same as Silverfang: thinks he can stay up to stand watch and falls asleep 10 seconds into his shift. Except, he doesn’t need to be poisoned to accidentally fall asleep because dealing with his disciples is a triple full-time job and as a result, daddy Kami is always ready to pass the fuck out at any time. He’s basically a narcoleptic past 8pm. To sleep with, he brought a ratty-ass pillow and a bottle of night juice (saké).

Child Emperor: is nocturnal and completely fine with staying up all night, so he’s on watch the whole time. Although, the sound of candy wrappers makes it hard for anyone else to sleep and as a result, everyone is ready to punt this kid by 3am. He shows up in gym shorts and a t-shirt because what’s the point of getting dressed with these hooligans and spends the whole night hanging out with Zombieman. Although, he did bring a sleeping bag and pillow just incase he wants to take a power nap.

Metal Knight: Shows up in a power suit like this mf in Pacific Rim. Everyone thinks he’s just controlling a drone remotely but Sitch told him if he doesn’t show up in person then he doesn’t get the money, so he’s sitting in this tin can the whole time and trying his best to stay awake (he passes out by midnight). He’s also in his underwear. Idk why that was worth it to mention but there you go ❤️

King: Mentally on the verge of a breakdown at the thought of spending the whole night with these jackasses but shows up anyway because he wants that PS5 and is willing to do anything to get it. He gets there in his jammies, sets down his pikachu sleeping bag, and falls asleep without saying hi or offering to take watch. Everyone thinks that he’ll wake up naturally at the first sign of trouble and finds it really impressive that he fell asleep so fast, but he really just passed out from hyperventilating so hard. He would normally be perfectly fine with staying up all night because he’s a gamer and he does it all the time anyway, but anxiety really do be like that sometimes.

Zombieman: Is nocturnal like Child Emperor when he wants to be, but can also fall asleep in .2 seconds on a bed of nails. He’s perfectly fine with staying up all night because he constantly does it when following leads on a case and doesn’t bother bringing anything to sleep on. In fact, he shows up in full gear because he’s mildly paranoid and he wears it all the time anyway, it’s basically a second skin by now. He spends the night playing cards with CE and taking occasional sips from a flask to calm his nerves. They also take turns telling spooky ghost stories by the light of Zombieman’s lighter, to which he pretends to be scared. When he wants to smoke, he does it by Bofoi’s machine because fuck that guy.

Drive Knight: Forgot to change his Duracells the day before and falls over the second he walks in the door. Everyone thinks he’s a lazy ass for falling asleep so soon but he’s actually in a robo-medical emergency.

Pig God: is perfectly fine with staying up all night because, as I’ve said on multiple other hcs, he’s a hardcore gamer and being nocturnal is basically second nature. However, like Child Emperor, the sound of him constantly eating in the dark has everyone ready to jump his ass by midnight. He’s dressed in his pajamas as well, and they’re so big that they share the clothing measurements of an actual humpback whale.

Superalloy Darkshine: Falls asleep by 9pm on the dot every night and knows it’s pretty much impossible for him to stay up all night so he shows up in his Bedtime Thong(tm) with a sleeping bag and kindly asks everyone to wake him up if there’s trouble. Nobody listens but he pretends they do. He also brings a “small stash” (actual grocery bag filled to the brim) of protein bars to snack on incase he gets hungry in the middle of the night and offers a few to everyone, to which they decline (ultra-vegan keto-friendly gluten-free sugar-free flavor-free protein bars taste like actual garbage). And because he drinks a swimming pool of water every day (gotta stay at peak physique, yo), he gets up at least 12 times in the middle of the night to pee and he pisses so loud for no reason that it sounds like there’s a waterfall in the next room.

Watchdog Man: Carries his human-sized doggy bed in with his mouth and falls the fuck asleep without even announcing his presence. Nobody even notices he’s there. Sitch forgets to pay him.

Flashy Flash: Is fine with staying up all night to stand watch because he had to do it so many times in the ninja village anyway, but fuck me if he isn’t pissy about it. He shows up in full gear because, like Zombieman, he wears it so often that it’s basically a second skin at this point. By 2am he fucks off to take a shower because being in the same room with these people actually makes him feel unclean and he doesn’t leave the bathroom until the sun starts to rise. His hair, however, looks twice as shiny.

Genos: Shows up, points his arm cannon at the door incase of possible intruders, and doesn’t move for 12 hours. He brought Saitama along because why not and mr caped baldy greatly regrets it.

Metal Bat: Shows up in gym shorts with his bat, a blanket, and a pillow and fucks off to the corner of the room to brood. He takes watch for a few hours in between power naps, and sleeps with his phone .2 inches away from his face incase Zenko calls. When she does, he wakes up at the speed of light and loudly answers the phone like there isn’t at least 7 other people sleeping within close proximity to him. It’s never for an emergency, she just calls like 3 times into the night because she had a bad dream or she’s wondering how he’s doing. But regardless of what it is, Badd is ready to run all the way home and be with her. He just took the job because he wants to buy her a bigass gift with all the money he’ll be receiving.

Tanktop Master: Same as Superalloy, except he snores like a motherfucker. He doesn’t need waterfall piss to keep everyone up because this mf sounds like a lawn mower. He shows up in his Tanktop Pajamas (which is basically just a Tanktop with pajama bottoms) and takes watch in between power naps, to which he sleeps on a Tanktop Sleeping bag (just a regular sleeping bag, there’s literally nothing different about it) with his Tanktop Pillow (also just a regular pillow, literally nothing special about it).

Puri-Puri Prisoner: sleeps naked. Dick out.

Saitama: Gets bored as hell by 10pm and tries to wake up King so they can play video games together on his gameboy that he smuggled in, but the poor bastard is OUT. Saitama tries to sleep, however, he forgot to bring anything to sleep on so he tries to roll up his cape and use it as a pillow but, alas, he gets a neck cramp so bad that he actually almost starts to cry.