Re: LNH: WikiLull: Pre-Final Epilogue, AKA President Evil #6: A-Pack-O-Lies Now [1/2]

On 10/31/20 8:36 PM, Jeanne Morningstar wrote:
> [Content warning: this is a story about American politics so there's discussions 
> of police violence, imperialism, and the general sense of electoral hopelessness.]

Woooooo~

> Somewhere in the surprisingly extensive and spacious sewers of net.ropolis, 
> where the not-yet-named Morlock-y communes that had emerged in the wake of 
> WikiLull lived,

:D

> Forgotten Gal was chowing down on (of course) a pizza. Maddie, 
> her girlfriend, walked into their shared sewer apartment.

This is the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spinoff ever.

> "What's on your mind, gorgeous?" said Forgotten Gal.
> 
> "Just thinking about the election," said Maddie. "Or trying not to."
> 
> "Boy do I know that one," said Forgotten Gal.

Yeah. @-@

> "This looks like it could be even worse than the 2000 one, and that was a 
> disaster."
> 
> "It sure was." Forgotten Gal smiled. "You know, I was involved in the end of all 
> that."

Oooooo, flashback time

> "It's a long story. In fact, it's a cascade that never got finished."
> 
> "Another one?"
> 
> "Yeah. There are a lot of those.

Look,,,

> But I remember how it all ended. I was 
> there..."
> 
> ====
> 
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> =    = =  ===  =     : A-Pack-o-Lies
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> 
> #6 "A-Pack-o-Lies Now"

YES :D :D :D

> So, what happened so far [said Forgotten Gal] was: In RACCoon City, Net.Vada, 
> this shadowy company called the Raincoat Corporation

*suddenly, that time I read the whole Resident Evil Storyline FAQ slams right 
back into my brain* wesker nooooooo

> was experimenting with 
> something called the W Force, which drew in various weird powers like some being 
> called Pregnant Chad.

Oh god. X3

> they met their newest 
> member, the Obsidian Ranger,

Ahhhhh, the Sixth Ranger.

> and another random hero named Lion Brain

Ahhhhh, the Seventh Ranger.

> This was one of those "throw at least one new character 
> every issue" kind of stories.

LOOK,,,,,

  The Random Heroes got cornered by a bunch of
> zombie senior citizen--you know, 2000 election topical humor--

X3

> So, Lion Brain was about to fight a doomed battle against the entire Random 
> Villains (Baroness Wizard--my archenemy, Compuwarlock, Android Barbarian, 
> Lurking Vampire, Psychic Crustacean, The Living Bee, Phantom Weirdo and Super 
> Eyeball) and then suddenly they stopped in their tracks. There was some British 
> kid with an umbrella wearing a natty suit.

*applauds* Masterplan Lad! Wooooooo! Masterplan Laaaad!

> "My name is Masterplan Lad," he said. He pulled a card out of his pocket. 
> "Ahem," he said, reading from it. "My appearance here takes place before the 
> original Ultimate Mercenary series. This is the earliest currently existing 
> chronological story on my own personal timeline." He put it back in.

X3

> "I was 
> given that by my superiors. I don't actually know what an Ultimate Mercenary is. 

XD XD XD

> Also, the Writer wishes to apologize for the fat jokes in the previous chapter. 

Oh thx

> Lion Brain, who had already been pretty confused, followed him, walking down the 
> narrative pathway created by their Plot Device in the form of an umbrella.
> 
> ["How are you narrating this?" said Maddie. "You weren't there for that part of 
> the story."
> 
> "Shhhhh," said Forgotten Gal.]

X3 <3 <3 <3

> "I shunted them to another part of the storyline," said the weird British kid. 
> "The zombies and the Forgotten Villains should be keeping each other busy for a 
> while."

Fair, reasonable.

> "You look a little young to be some kind of cosmic time guardian," I said.

And a little short to be a-- never mind

> "Yes, well, er, time is relative," he said. He tugged at his collar a little. 

Adorable

> "You see, I am involved in a war spanning time and space against the enemies of 
> the Knights Temporal, a transtemporal posthuman empire called the Evolved. Their 
> goal is to use technology to transform themselves into gods..."
> 
> "So... they want to evolve humanity... and that's bad... why?" said Winter Droid.
> 
> "In keeping with common narrative tropes about posthuman entities, they've lost 
> track of their humanity and their fundamental moral values."
> 
> I wasn't so sure the guys Masterplan Lad worked for were so in touch with 
> humanity themselves, but I let him go on:

X3 These are excellent points.

> You see, in one version of history, the city Sig.ago is destroyed [The Team 
> #25--Footnote Girl]. This leads to the super-genius inventor and businessman 
> Andrew Weinstein [also from The Team], who was from Sig.ago, developing 
> revolutionary technology which serves as the foundation of their way of life. 

Ahh, yes, the Willeyverse. Excellent use of continuity.

> There are 
> only two possible outcomes of this election--"
> 
> "Only two? Really?" I said.

According to the Time Gem, anyway.

> "Only two. Either Hexadecimal Luthor wins or George W. Bush wins.

Yeah... *sigh* Yeah, that's how I thought it would be.

> As bad as 
> Luthor is, he is fundamentally a superhero-genre narrative force who can be 
> contained and defeated within a superhero genre narrative. Bush represents Real 
> World problems, and so it's far more difficult to face him within those terms. 

Oooooooh, that's good.

> Because of interference from the Real World, the balance between comedy and 
> drama in the LNH has been unstable for some time. Because of the narrative 
> imbalance caused by the events of 9/11 [see Limp-Asparagus Lad #55], the nature 
> of the Looniverse was seriously disrupted and underwent a Darkening when Doctor 
> Wiley stole the Clogs of Comedy around the same time [Journey into Irrelevancy 
> #3-4] If--"
OF COURSE

> "Enough explanation!" said undead consumer safety advocate and third party 
> presidential candidate Ralph Nadir, who was also here for some reason.

Yeah, sigh, etc.

> I thought about what Masterplan Lad had said. I didn't like the sound of this 
> Hexadecimal Luthor, and I could tell this Masterplan Lad kid didn't either. From 
> my days in the war, I remember the feeling of trying to rationalize orders from 
> on high you know are shitty.

Oooooooooh. :D Excellent point-of-view use.

> We walked through the creepy secret bunker of the Raincoat Corporation. "This 
> place looks extremely unsafe," said Ralph Nadir. "I'll definitely have to write 
> an expose of whatever it is they make here."
> 
> "What the heck *does* the Raincoat Corporation manufacture, anyway? Does anyone 
> know?" said Shining Wombat.
> 
> "Evil, I guess," said Lion Brain.

They were a notable precursor to Amazon that way.

> "Well," said Obsidian Ranger, "that'd be fun to play in a video game but kind of 
> repetitive to read in a text story."

Well. X3

> Just then we were attacked by these big, gnarly final boss zombies. We had a 
> really swell fight I don't have time to describe, and in the confusion I got 
> separated from the rest of the team along with Masterplan Lad.

X3 God dammit

> We barely managed to escape into a secret room. "Well this looks bad," I said.

There was a shiba in there, using a computer to - wait, wrong PS1-era survival 
horror.

> Masterplan Lad shook his head. "I have faith in the Writers. They'll get us 
> through. I'm fairly sure tThe universe wants us to be alone together," said 
> Masterplan Lad, panting. It would've sounded like a pickup line coming from 
> anyone else.

X3

> Before he could explain Doctor who,

Thank goodness, it would have easily doubled the size of this issue.

> "Ah!" he smiled with relief. "This is the Knight I was talking about. He was 
> using the name Daniel Marlon. He's a good friend of mine, Forgotten Gal, you can 
> trust him..."
> 
> He smiled. "I'm afraid not," he said.

*Fascinating*. :o We've seen almost nothing so far about what MPL's experience 
with the Knights Temporal was actually like.

> When Masterplan Lad and I woke up, we were tied down and manacled to metal 
> slabs. It was a familiar situation for me.

*wolf-whistle*

> He had a 
> copy of From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston he'd been reading on a table 
> beside him.

What's that :o

> Behind him was this weird, glowing tank.
> 
> There was a corpse of a god in the tank. The same one I'd killed and then pulled 
> into Limbo to make sure it was extra-dead.

daaaaaaaaaaaamn, intense

> "Ah, I see you've seen my greatest weapon," said Daniel Marlon. "It was salvaged 
> from a Ragnarok that happened a long time ago in this universe. This is the god 
> who decides the outcome of battles, who appoints kings."
> 
> "The W Force," said Masterplan Lad. "It stand for Wotan."

Daaaaaaaaaamn!!

> "I remember now!" I said. "I was sent into Limbo to stop a narrative magicakal 
> ritual carried out by Nazi sorcerers to summon an evil Nazi version of Norse 
> mythological stories to change the outcome of the war! I fought alongside the 
> original Eddic versions of the Aesir and Valkyries against the ones from Nazi 
> iconography!"

NICE. :D :D D:

> I winced at my own expository dialogue. See, as a Golden Age 
> heroine I either talk like an actual Golden Age character, if I'm lucky, or like 
> a Roy Thomas character.

X3 Oh no

> "Ah, so this is all a symbol for the resurgence of fascism, naturally," said 
> Masterplan Lad.

Oooooooh. Yeah.

> "Indeed," said Daniel Marlon. "We engineered Pregnant Chad as an incubator to 
> create a child which would hold within himself the power of the W Force," said 
> Daniel Marlon.

Wow, you managed to make sense of this nonsense!

> "How dare you!" said Masterplan Lad. "You betrayed the Knights Temporal--"
> 
> Daniel Marlon laughed. "I was sent here on their orders. I'm just doing it for 
> myself instead of for them.

GASP.

> Did you really think they'd send a novice Knight who 
> hadn't even chosen their True Name for a crucial mission like this? You were 
> being set up to fail. The High Council of the Perceptory wanted to make what 
> they were doing look heroic and honorable, sending out a young hero for a noble 
> and doomed stand, while they would make their true move from the shadows."

Holy cow. :o That's a lot, and very good.

> "Believe that if you want. They wanted me to channel the W force for their own 
> ends, but I had other plans. I'm going to write in even more people as the 
> President! Ralph Nadir! Zombie Elvis Presley! Arthur Spitzer! Howard the Duck! 
> They're all going to be President! And then the narrative will collapse 
> completely--and I will reshape it to my own ends!"

oh my fucking god XD

> He walked over to Masterplan Lad and leaned in to him homoerotically. "My orders 
> were to kill you, see, but I couldn't do it. You're just too cute. I could hurt 
> you, yes, but not kill you." He smiled icily. MPL blushed. "But now I've decided 
> I'm not taking over the universe for other people anymore. I'm doing it myself. 
> I will rule all of time and space--and you can rule with me!"

Oh my GOD :D :D :D That's amazing X3

> "No," said Masterplan Lad, jaw slack with absolute horror.
> 
> "Ah, right, ruling isn't your thing, is it? Well, you can serve me, then."
> 
> He looked like he was seriously considering it. But he clenched his jaw and 
> said, "Absolutely not."

X3 you useless sub

> I remembered all my interactions with Baroness Wizard, 
> and I was familiar with the dynamic. As confused and lost as he clearly was, as 
> much as he was beholden to the shitty ideas of the people who taught him, that 
> kid was a hero.

awwwwwwww <3

> I'm an old 
> hand at getting out of manacles, ropes, chains, eels, and just about anything 
> else you could tie someone up with. You know how Golden Age comics are, right?

X3 I very much do.

> "You're not the first person I've ever heard give a speech like that," I told 
> him. "You remind me of a guy called Adolf Hitler! And you're getting the same 
> thing he did--a sock to the jaw!" I knocked him to the floor.

YEAH! :D The good Golden Age stuff

> "Adolf Hitler?" he said. "Haven't you ever heard of Godwin's Law?"
> 
> "I don't think that really applies when you're wielding the power of a dead Nazi 
> god," said Masterplan Lad.

Another very '00s bit~

> By now Ralph Nadir, who was still around for some 
> reason,

I love that this is a running gag.

Drew "for some reason" Nilium