LNH: WikiLull After #4.5: "Didio the Invader"

WIKILULL AFTER #4.5
"Didio the Invader"
A tale of sexy vampire continuity fixing by Jeanne Morningstar

====

[Content warning: this issue deals with fascism and a lot of 
internalized homophobia, transphobia and fatphobia, as well as a 
reference to eating disorders. It also ends with a really, really awful 
Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventure-related pun. You Have Been Warned.]

The golden-haired man was lying before Shadez Radikal, wearing an open 
bathrobe that showed his divine musculature.

All the Frogtroopers were dead around Shadez, and strangely, he didn't 
even care. He felt oddly languorous. They were all lying on the 
ground... and their corpses were all in a state of half-transformation, 
almost-shifted into cyborgs or monsters or actual frog-people. And there 
were bloody wounds in all their necks.

This man was a vampire. Specifically, he was a revampire.

He was lounging around vampirotically on the desk. His golden locks (he 
had the kind of hair you pretty much had to describe as "locks") were 
angelic, in a distinctly fallen way. He made Shadez Radikal think about 
the strange feelings he had whenever he looked at the Greek statuary he 
spent so much time admiring in a *completely heterosexual* way.

He also made him think of all the time he'd once spent roleplaying a 
vampire. Those were awful times in his life, when he'd been completely 
stuck in self-loathing and loathing of everyone and everything else. 
He'd been weak and pathetic. Eventually, he got over that; he learned to 
be tough and he lost weight--yes, he'd had to throw up every day, which 
was awful, but he was a man now. And he sure as hell didn't spend any 
time thinking about vampires. Vampires, he'd decided, were for 
girly-boys and sissy-men and Shadez Radikal was *definitely not* that.

But now that he saw this man, this vampire, who embodied everything that 
he'd once longed for and come to loathe, he saw that he was wrong. He 
saw how small he he was, how much he was still weak and pathetic and in 
fact, had just made himself worse. There was a myth, which he'd very 
much believed, that fascists and men like Hitler were Great Men who won 
over people with their force of charisma. In fact, they were small, 
boring men who got power because they gave people a chance to unleash 
their worst impulses. That was true of him and everyone he worked for.

But this man was different. From his languorous pose he radiated 
strength and raw power. His eyes were a deep abyss of hunger and pure 
control that Shadez Radikal wanted to be lost in forever. If Alexander 
the Great had been in the same room of this man he would have felt 
scared he wasn't cool enough.

"Welcome," the vampire said. "I am Didio Brando, Lord of the 
Revampires." He beckoned, and Shadez had to come to him. "None of these 
men were strong enough to bear the Change, but you just might. Tell me, 
what do you want?"

"I..." He gave a truthful answer that surprised himself. "I want to be 
anything in the world other than what I am."

Didio Brando chuckled. "Then you've come to the right place. Come to 
me." He beckoned Shadez, who could not help but obey. He stood still as 
Didio Brando took his face in his hands, and slowly thrusting his teeth 
into his neck. And then he could feel it, thrilling him with absolute 
rapture and terror, the Change...

====

"Angelique! Wake up!"

Angelique. Yes, that was her name now.

"We have to get out of here! The Raincoat troopers are coming for us!"

As Angelique woke from her languor, she slowly remembered her new life. 
This was Maddie, her old friend, though their relationship had had rough 
patches, who'd helped her come to terms with being trans. Now they were 
fighting together in a Net.ropolis that, due to the narrative gravity of 
the planet Neme.sys, had fragmented into a series of dystopian alternate 
timeline scenarios. Their block was occupied by a timeline where the 
Raincoat Corporation's experiments had worked [see President Evil], and 
Net.ropolis was lousy with zombies. Now she was part of the resistance 
movement, but in her heart she knew what master she truly served.

They ran away just as a bunch of zombies closed in on the Raincoat 
troopers and started making a midnight snack of them. "We made it." 
Maddie exhaled. "Thank god you're not an undead revenant."

If only she knew.

As Maddie led her away into the shadows, Angelique remembered something 
of her pocket. She took it out, turning over and examining it in the 
moonlight. It was a pair of shades, the last bit of her old identity.

She threw them down and crushed them under her feet.

Well, she thought, I've gone from being Poochie to being Pucci...

====

Notes:

I wrote this to patch up the big plot error I made re the Lurking 
(Re)vampire in the Pre-Final Epilogue/President Evil #6 (forgetting i'd 
already reintroduced her as Shadez Radikal) and also introduce Didio 
Brando properly in the present. I think this works well introducing the 
character before his backstory gets dropped in the Epilogue and makes 
some things make a bit more sense.

All of this is going to be followed up in The Liminals, as soon as I 
finish the Motivationquest storyline and that pesky 
flashback-within-a-flashback.

I have one more WikiLull issue in me after this, one that is maybe half 
written and will hopefully see the light one of these days. It is A Lot 
even compared to the rest of this story, so be prepared.

Jeff McCoskey came up with Revampires, and Mike Friedman and Jamie Rosen 
with the Raincoat Corporation. All the characters here are mine. Stan JJBA.