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December 7, 2021December 7, 2021

Nexus 3, Chapter 13

Elle fired a volley of shots, then stopped. “I’m assuming our rules of engagement are that we’re to minimize casualties.”

“Certainly ours,” I deadpanned.

“Well, we did kind of drop a kinetic weapon in the middle of apparently a populace. Even if, best-case scenario, they were all bunked underground for a long winter’s nap, at a minimum we nuked their summer homes. We’re definitely the aggressors, here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That makes sense. Minimize casualties where and how you can. But I’m not risking our lives for theirs. So if you can’t shoot to corral, or even shoot to wound, you take the kill shot, no questions asked, no hesitation. You understand?”

“Crystal clear, sir. I just didn’t want to be playing footsy while you were playing a real contact sport.”

“Fair enough.” I finally had my first contact, coming up on Elle’s rear from the south. I couldn’t be sure if it was a flanking maneuver, or if the caves came up all around and they were just milling towards the disturbance from all directions- though given our numerical inferiority I wasn’t sure the difference would matter.

I leaned out too far, in part because I wanted to get as wide an understanding as possible while things were still relatively calm. The handful I’d seen were just the tip of an iceberg; they did seem to be milling, with five at the lead, but up to a hundred behind them, filling the street. “I got incoming in a big way,” I said. “Hundred total.” I fired, between the lower limbs of the creature, all of which were identical; there were five, in total, two they walked on at a time. I wondered if that meant that had five redundant heads that also functioned as limbs, or if they had five limbs with the brain in the center. The first few scattered towards the buildings for cover, buying me a moment.

“Morphology question, Bill,” I said, firing another volley, into the opposite row of buildings, to get the stragglers to seek cover, too.

“Little busy,” he grumbled, barely audible over the sounds of the torch in the background.

“Learn to multitask,” I said, firing another handful of shots, narrowly missing one of the starfish. “Morphology is basically engineering for organisms, so it’s closest to your wheelhouse. These creatures look like starfish.”

“Number of limbs doesn’t seem to be standard,” Elle cut in. “I’ve had a few with seven or eight limbs.”

“Right. What’s more likely, that these creatures have a centralized nervous system where the limbs meet in the center, or that they’re holding their brains in any one of the limbs- or maybe all of them.”

“Having multiple heads is pretty rare on Earth,” Bill started. “Basically it’s a defect in cellular division, called polycephaly. There are a handful of species that have more than one brain structure at different parts of the body, but that’s very much the exception, and not the rule. Starfish are probably the weirdest example, because they don’t have a brain in the classical sense. They’ve got neurons and a complex nervous system that seems to run along the length of the entire organism. That’s why they can regenerate from a severed limb; that’s even the preferred way for some species of starfish to procreate.”

“I don’t know that any of that helps me,” I said, firing again. They were probing, damnit it, seeing how far out they could go before I fired. That signaled some intelligence.

“You should have brought a biologist, then,” he said.

“No. It was more than I could have hoped for, as far as starfish biology is concerned. Elle, I’m not going to tell you when to shoot one of them, but when you do, keep an eye out. If you shoot them in a limb and they don’t mind, that will tell us something.”

“Right. About that. While Bill was talking, I clipped one. It was right foot. It did a partial cartwheel so it wasn’t walking on the wounded limb anymore, and kept coming.”

“Fuck. So to even slow them down we’ll have to disable three out of five limbs. I haven’t noticed any tools, yet.”

“Yeah,” Elle agreed. “Not even one of them grabbing the equivalent of a frying pan. That’s… peculiar.”

“Unless they are just gawkers, here to rubberneck.”

“Don’t say that. I’ll feel extra bad about the one I shot.”

I was about to tease her, when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. “Shit,” I said, getting behind cover too slowly. I knew before I felt it, or before I looked down, that I’d been hit. There was a bolt sticking out of my leg. “Whether or not they’re looky-loos, they aren’t the only ones here. They flanked us, building to the south of this one, second floor. Shot me in the leg with a fucking crossbow.”

“Don’t touch it,” Elle said firmly. “By the time a species developed projectile weapons, they were also likely to have connected enough dots to have some inkling of poison and disease- at least enough to know to rub filth on their projectiles.”

“So there’s likely poison and/or shit on this thing. Why shouldn’t I take it out?”

“Because removal is a whole secondary injury. If you’re lucky, they’re using a bolt that doesn’t have any fins. If you’re not, the whole bastard thing is designed to tear more on its way out.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. First aid training sort of fell out of my head there, for a second. I’ll leave it be.”

“Cover me,” she said, without giving me much time to actually prep. I leaned out, and peppered the opposing building, near enough to the two natives to keep their heads down. “And make way,” she said,” sliding behind cover as rocks and arrows thudded in the doorway behind her.

“Why are my pants getting tight?” I asked.

“I’ve had that effect on you since the day we first met,” she deadpanned, firing over my shoulder. “Tourniquet. I used a security override on your suit, to begin its tourniqueting procedures. It’s not a complete seal, but it’ll hold whatever infectious agents might be in the wound from circulating freely. It’s designed to cut circulation as much as possible without harming your ability to maneuver, at least at this level, though they can completely cut circulation in the event of a nicked artery”

“Goddamnit. I know these things,” I said. “My head’s definitely affected.”

“It’s probably too early for most infectious agents. A poison could hit this fast, but there’s also even odds that whatever is poisonous on this world is safe for us and vice versa. Shit,” she said, and I could tell from the way she was looking up that she was navigating data on her eyescreen. “Your suit must have a leak. You’ll likely be getting an alarm any second, now, once it falls far enough below spec. One moment.” She fired again, suppressing another of the starfish creatures. She put her hand to the wound, and a gel spread from one of her fingertips. She leaned around me to the other side of the bolt. “Yep, straight through. And barbed like a son of a bitch.” She sprayed more goo to seal it on the opposite side. Like an idiot, I tried to repressurize, before realizing I was going to fire her seals like bullets- only nothing happened. “Like I said, I overrode your systems. You have to let the gel set.” I felt a hiss, as my suit filled back with the normal quotient of gases. I took in a deep breath and could already think a little clearer.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Told you you should have been the one in the shuttle,” she said.

“So you and the baby could be the one dealing with whatever they rubbed on this bolt. Or so I’d have to carry you back because with a bolt through your leg you’d basically be an unmoving target.”

“I wouldn’t have got hit,” she said.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. But one of us needs to get back to that shuttle. We’re blind to half the theater.” She leaned out and fired. “You go,” she said. “I can cover you better from here.”

“Yes, but then I can’t cover you well from there.”

“Yeah, your coverage was for crap last time, now that you mention it. Now go. There’s only two of them up there, now, but if they add a third or forth- or worse, if they get someone from a worse angle, we might be hosed. In three, two, go!”

I knew better than to keep arguing with her; we were both stubborn enough we could have stayed until we were completely surrounded complaining that the other person should go. And I knew she wasn’t wrong. That was the better vantage, and with what had been my good leg injured, I was moving even worse than she was. I dove into the shuttle, landing on my side so I didn’t disturb the bolt. “This is it?” I heard Elle ask over the comms.

“There wasn’t a lot left worth taking,” Bill replied. “The spearhead wasn’t designed to survive that kind of crash. Our pod, by comparison, was still able to land. I’m still getting readings from it, and we’ll try and recall it to the Nexus, if we can recover it. Now give me your gun; I’ll cover you from here.”

“Bull. We risked our lives for that junk. I can’t lift it in my present condition, and I’m not risking it and you getting left behind because I can’t properly cover you from over there.”

“Fine,” Bill said. An instant later he broke cover, so I had to, in a hurry, suppress as best I could from the back of the shuttle. Surprisingly, he arrived unscathed. “I’m starting the shuttle.”

“You should have gone first,” I said to Elle.

“Oh, stop acting maudlin- you can’t shoot straight when you’re maudlin. I’m leaving the rifle and the extra ammo, only keeping a pistol, and going on three, two,” she broke cover.

The damned starfish were getting wise, knew just how far out of cover they could get without giving me a clean shot- and so even though I was singing whatever the hell kind of ganglia they had instead of hairs, they kept lining up their shot. Bill stepped out of cover behind me, triangulating until he had a decent shot; he couldn’t make it count, but got close enough to get one of the starfish back behind cover, and knock the other one into my scope. I took the shot, through the arm it was holding its weapon in, and it dropped it. Elle slid in beside me, a moment before Bill. “I thought you were starting the ship,” I said.

“It’s two buttons, jerk,” he said, handing me his rifle. “And you’re welcome.”

The backdoors closed agonizingly slowly, with one final bolt managing to slip through them and strike the black box in the seat beside Elle. “Uh,” she said.

“That’s not ideal,” Bill said. “But nothing we can do about it now.”

I heard a handful of tinks as weapons bounced off the hull. “Should we be worried about any of that?” I asked.

“There’s two layers of shielding,” Bill said, “the exterior, where the heat-shields are, and an interior shield to hold in gases and the like. Without the exterior we might burn through energy quick; might be a bit cold waiting for the Nexus. They aren’t likely to pierce both; you’d have to hit the same spot twice.” There was an especially loud thud, “but there’s no real upside to letting them keep trying.”

He fired the engines and the remains of the city rushed by beneath us.

As we ascended, Bill leaned back in his chair. “Trajectory was just as we modeled, which means Haley and Dave’s supposition was correct- it was dead stick, on a collision course but no longer capable of any kind of correction. That wasn’t always the case; whatever it was using for fuel got eaten through, and it’s possible it was using something efficient to limp along, maybe an ion engine using whatever solar radiation it could pull in through panels. I’ll presumably be able to get more from the black box- the uh, arrow notwithstanding.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said. “I’m composing a message to the Nexus: Drop a commbox on the world we’re leaving. We’ll leave it with a message, something to the effect that our ship was attacked, and we were trying to examine the weapon that was launched at us. We didn’t realize the weapon was going to fall on a populated world. We can’t stop their first interaction with our species from being a tragic one. But giving them some answers, a little closure- it might mean that they don’t spend the next fifty years planning their revenge on our species- or terrified we’ll come back to finish the job. As a show of good faith, include schematics and relevant tech that should help them rebuild- medical and infrastructural.”

“And what about when Pete inevitably complains?” Bill asked.

“Give our beloved HR troll credit where it’s due; I think he’ll understand this isn’t about profit, it’s about making right as a species for shit Sontem’s done.”

“And we’re not just setting them up for a date with the Interplanetary Copyright Court?” Elle asked.

“Precedent says that technology they perceived at the time as a gift can’t be used retroactively to sue a species over whatever technological evolution has occurred since. By the time the company knows anything happened here, their patents will be toilet paper.”

Bill smiled. “That might be the first time I’ve actually enjoyed being a pirate. Maybe we just need to be more judicious about screwing the right kinds of bastards.”

“Yarr,” I said.

December 3, 2021December 11, 2021

Pitchgiving 2021, part 12: Batwomen

Prologue

White text tells us this happened fifteen years ago.

Batwoman, recognizable because of her bright red hair, as a child, is sitting in the backseat of a car with her identical twin, Beth. Gabi Kane, their mother, is driving, dressed in military clothing. Side-pitch: since this is a women-focused story, but also just because it plays against type and I think it would add to the diversity of the DCmovieU, I’d suggest gender-swapping the parents. For the pitch I’ll assume we keep it as it has been, but I strongly feel that would be the better story.

“You need to tell them, Jacob,” Gabi insists to Kate’s father, who is in the passenger seat. “It’s the only way they can protect themselves.” He unbuckles his seatbelt, to lean back and talk to them. He hesitates, not knowing where to begin. Gabi intercedes. “Your father is doing important work. Bad people have been infiltrating the military, people who don’t think our country should be for all kinds of people, regardless of color, creed, or who they are.”

“Right,” Jacob takes over. “I’m heading up an investigation into those people. And because of the duty I’ve agreed to carry out, those bad people and their friends have been making threats. Against me, against your mother,” he has trouble forcing himself to say the next words, until Gabi takes his hand, “and against the two of you. And I didn’t, I haven’t known how to tell you. Because you’re too young to have to know how awful the world can be. But my first duty is to protect you, and the best way to do that is to tell you to be careful. These bad people can look just like you or me. They might come dressed in BDUs. They might talk the talk, they might even have a life of military service under their belt. But if you ever have a question, whether or not someone is safe, you ask me, you ask your mother, and we’ll tell you straight, even if the answer is we don’t know, and you need to be wary. Can I trust you girls to be on overwatch for me?”

The girls stiffen up, and tell them, “Yes, sir.” They barely get time to recognize his smile, because Gabi shoves him back into his seat, and we now see a large dump truck barreling down on them before it hits. We see broken images, as Kate goes in and out of consciousness. Gunmen in black paramilitary gear violently open the car doors. One shoots Gabi Kane in the head as she resists (feebly, because she’s groggy from the airbag). On the other side, one of them tells Jacob he was told what would happen if he persisted, and Jacob is smacked in the face with the butt of a rifle. A bag is shoved over Kate’s head, and we cut to black, and modern day.

It’s a dark, stormy night. Commissioner Gordon is speaking to the Mayor, trying to convince her that she’s going to be safe, that his men can handle, “a little weasel like Jervis Tetch.” He’s got half the S.W.A.T. team on the mansion grounds, anything short of Batman wouldn’t be able to- he stops, because two of the S.W.A.T. officers are suddenly there, deserting their posts on the perimeter. Gordon prepares to give them a dressing down, when he notices the vacant look in their eyes, and tells the Mayor to get behind him, as he pulls his gun.

We cut to the aftermath, as Batgirl and Batwoman patrol the scene, one-upping one another as they reconstruct the events from the evidence. There’s an added layer, as Batgirl is concerned about her missing father; the rivalry is mostly a distraction from that worry for her; for Batwoman, it’s very much that while she’s trained, and older, she’s also green, looking to prove herself. But we start at the point that Gordon put a bullet into the door frame. Batwoman insists he missed. Batgirl assumes, correctly, that the first was a warning shot, an attempt to roust them from their stupor. When it didn’t work, he gave each man a flesh wound. But there were more of them, other officers flooded into the room. Gordon put up a fight, trying to protect the Mayor long enough for her to get away, but that’s when Mad Hatter himself showed up (casting suggestion: Jack McBreyer, Kenneth from 30 Rock; watch him in the ’21 season of Nailed It, he’s a manic little chaos gremlin who would be perfect for the role and also kind of looks the part). Gordon was attacked by a new player, a woman, judging by the height difference, and the hole left in the drywall by her heel. Gordon was overwhelmed; blood on the scene is his type, but there’s not much of it- they were clearly trying to keep from hurting him there. He was carried off by two of the officers, along with the Mayor.

Batwoman is distracted, and she’s clearly thinking back to a different night, a different kidnapping. Text, fifteen years ago. We don’t see this flashback from Kate’s POV. Instead we’re focused on her father. He’s riding along with a police team, including Gordon, at that point a Sergeant. He’s wearing black, not his military uniform. Gordon notices Jacob is armed. “I was asked to let you ride along, but there is no way in hell I’m letting you inside with that firearm.”

“All respect due, Sergeant, if it were your little girl in there, would anything short of someone putting a bullet in you stop you?” We think it’s going to be a pissing contest, but Kane sees Gordon’s hand at his cuffs, and relents. “I’ll stay out of your way, scout’s honor. But the second I see my girls I’m getting between them and danger. I’m not failing them again.” It’s the pain in his voice that stops Gordon.

“That sidearm stays in its holster, unless and until it’s a matter of life and death. I don’t want them walking on a technicality.”

“I don’t want them walking, period- but it’s your rodeo.”

Gordon’s team kick in the doors. Kate is tied, blindfolded, propped against a wall. There’s another body, definitely dead, obscured by a hood but with a bloodied bullet hole in the head that everyone is going to assume is Beth. Gunfire erupts, with Kate caught in the middle of it, exposed out in the open. True to his word Jacob runs through the gunfire, and covers Kate with his body, taking a shot meant for her head in the meat of his arm.

Gordon hesitates for a moment, his team at a severe disadvantage with two civilians out in the open, before demanding the team deploy smoke and lay cover fire. It buys Jacob a window to lift Kate up. Her hood falls, and he begs her not to look as he runs back towards Gordon. We see one of the gunman has the police flanked, and is drawing on Gordon, when a shot rings out, and he drops. Gordon sees that Jacob is holding his daughter in one arm, and his sidearm in the other. Gordon tells Kane to get his daughter outside. For a moment, from Kate’s POV, we watch as she sees what she thinks is her sister’s body on the floor.

They return to the Clocktower, and consult with Batman over a video link. Also in the room with them are Black Bat, Oracle, Spoiler and Question (the Renee Montoya version from Birds of Prey). Batgirl thinks she’s in charge, having been at this longer and with less support. Batwoman, by dint of being former military and older, thinks she’s in charge. Spoiler’s just happy to be there- she’s only filled in for Robin a handful of times when they needed someone to double so Tim could be in the same place as Robin. Cassandra feels like she’s just thrilled to finally be on the team; she still loves Harley, but she’s crazy. A great friend, and if you can only have one person in your corner she would do literally insane things to protect you, but she’s not a role model, either. And Question is really just there because of Batwoman; they haven’t started dating, but each suspects the other is interested and they’re at that point of mutual interest.

Batman tells them they’re going to have to handle Jervis- that he and the other Batmen have been infected by the Fluoronic Man, that while he works on an antidote, he can’t trust any of them to leave the cave, so they’ll have to handle Mad Hatter. Oracle is able to hack the security cameras at the Mayor’s mansion, and from that they realize that ‘Alice’ is the one assisting the Mad Hatter. She looks, initially, like another of Mad Hatter’s automatons, until it comes to fighting Gordon- then she comes alive, and the results are brutal. They place a heart-shaped crown on the Mayor and on Gordon, before carrying them out.

Batwoman reasons that if they’re assembling the most powerful people in Gotham, there are some obvious next victims: Bruce Wayne might make the top 10, but next up is definitely going to be the Colonel in charge of the nearby military base. After forcefully making her case, Batwoman breaks away from the rest of them, to make a phone call, trying to raise her father. We start in on his phone, panning over his desk, including his name tag, including his rank. She whispers, “Pick up, dad.”

We cut to earlier, Kate, with her hair cut military-short, is wearing BDUs. She opens a door into a military office, a nice one, for the colonel in charge of her base. We flash white text that says “Ten years earlier” (though we’ll have to update that; the policy essentially changed in July 2011, on paper in September, so this needs to be set before that). She’s been summoned. Her father is sitting in the CO’s chair, and spins around. Kate says he’s not her CO. “Nope, kiddo. I’m here as a favor.” Kate assumes he means to the CO. “No. To you. Your CO isn’t supposed to ask. But the problem is, you aren’t leaving her room for plausible deniability that policy runs on.”

“It’s bad policy, dad.”

“No question. Impacts morale. Forces men and women of honor to live duplicitously. Creates fractured loyalty. But even a full-bird Colonel can’t change it- can’t even question it. I’m here, as proud father, as a man who loves you more than any other ever will, asking, please, for your sake, to be discreet.”

“I can’t. Because my dad, and my mother, raised me better. To be proud. To be honest. And I can’t be both while following that policy. So maybe I can’t be here anymore.”

“I didn’t want it to go this way,” he says.

“But still, you knew it would.” She stands next to him, and puts her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for being here,” she says, as a tear rolls off her cheek and onto his collar.

We pan across a similar office, to see some blood pooled on the corner of the desk. A hand grabs the blood, and a man pulls himself up. It’s the Colonel, wearing his military hat with a blank look on his face. He snaps to when Mad Hatter enters the room. Hatter snaps off a half-assed salute, and says he doesn’t stand on ceremony; he only cares that the military has access to the kinds of chemicals he needs.

The Batwomen infiltrate the military base. Batgirl is a taskmaster, insisting that the military can’t know they’re there, that the bats essentially have a détente with the American government, including its shadier operators like Amanda Waller- and those shadier elements in particular are just looking for an excuse to put Gotham under martial law. Depending on where we are in the President Luthor storyline, we might well mention that part of why he got so much support from the military was his tendency to elevate them as the preferred alternative to superheroes. Batwoman bristles at a lot of this, instinctively feeling like she belongs on the other side of that line- even though she’s clearly on the vigilante side, now.

They manage to arrive at the worst possible moment, as the villains make off with a stolen plane, full of chemical weapons. The Batwomen end up stealing a plane of their own to hide their identities as the military swoop in. Batwoman is able to baffle them with bullshit over the radio- with just enough military and Colonel Kane knowledge to talk them out of shooting down the plane, calling it a military requisition, one tacitly approved by Colonel Kane himself, telling the officer to call him and ask- which he should be doing before shooting down a military plane as it stands. Kate insists Barbara land the bird, now, because it bought them seconds, not minutes, and the military will shoot them down.

They scatter, and meet back up at the Clocktower later. Oracle managed to trace the tracker on the other plane; eventually it lost its mind, after it was hacked, because the tracker started flying in the opposite direction mid-air. Batwoman argues it wasn’t hacked; simpler explanation is that it’s Gotham, where impossible things just require doing a favor for the wrong kind of man. Oracle agrees to chase the box with a drone, and we’ll eventually see she was right, that it was Man-Bat who carried the tracker out of the plane mid-air. But it was already beginning a descent for a landing at a small airport outside the city. The Batwomen depart to intercept.

I think they manage to rescue all of Hatter’s kidnapped victims, but Alice has already abandoned him, having gotten what she came for, including chemical weapons and a plane. To get any useful intel, they have to deprogram Mad Hatter; see, they captured him, but they didn’t just want his cooperation, they encouraged obsession, obedience- Alice wrapped him so thoroughly around his little finger that he thought he was the one in charge, not her. Batwoman and the Colonel do the deprogramming, this not being his first rodeo with this kind of thing- in fact, he suspects and his theory is proven out that these are the same people he’s been fighting his whole career. That was why he got stationed in Gotham all these years, and why he’s resisted promotion or anything else that might take him away from the epicenter of their activity. He tells them it was easier, during the War on Terror, because the Church of Crime were basically Fundamentalist Terrorist, if their only religious precept was to do crimes. He also admits to Kate that he’s been trying to figure out for years how to apologize to her- that they contacted him before she was outed. They were the ones putting pressure on the Department of Defense to discipline her- that he was the reason she was forced out.

But there’s more to it than that. We get a montage, Batgirl followed a hunch, or really, Oracle followed Man-Bat back to his belfry, which turned out to be a Church of Crime stronghold. Batgirl drops a big, illustrated Bible down on the table. Man-Bat, when she dosed him with Batman’s curative agent, was similarly brain-washed. We get a quickie action scene flashback, the other Batwomen kicking their way through some lower-level churchies, before they take on Man-Bat. In close-quarters he’s at a disadvantage, and can’t fly, and Black Bat is able to sneak up on him and dose him before he can escape. Batgirl relates that Lykos wasn’t making any kind of sense, but he was pretty sure Batwoman had been on their radar for a lot longer than any of them realized. Batgirl opens to a page painted with a rendering of Batwoman. It’s more gothic, more theatric, also old. Batgirl, at least preliminarily, has tested the pages, and the chemicals react like it was painted more than a hundred years ago- they’ve been waiting for her, and if half of what Lykos said is accurate, they got tired of waiting, and decided to create her, instead.

Alice runs the Church of Crime (but outsiders call it the Cult of Crime). She’s essentially David Koresh, if he wanted Waco, but also if he expected to win Waco. That’s why she’s been gathering her army of cops and military men, and has been training others using them to be even more badass.

The Colonel breaks in to discuss his findings, that the Church began with white supremacists and other far-right groups, because it was where vulnerable, disaffected men were congregating. It was looking for a certain kind of moral flexibility, and encouraged those men to become police, military, anyone who could be of influence in their coming campaign.

So the finale is going to be showstopping, the Batwomen having to infiltrate, all while keeping the Batman rule in effect (no killing), because at least half of the military/police at the compound were abducted into it. Once they’ve secured the facility, the Colonel rides in with the full army, and secures them, but Alice has already gone, taken the chemical weapons she stole up in the plane for the next part of her plan. See, fully 2/3 of her agents have been returned to their former lives, and re-embedded in the military and police. She plans to activate them when the fighting starts. That’s how she plans to win. But the opening salvo is unleashing chemical death on Gotham, killing millions and making sure that the forces of order show up in force. The Batwomen take a plane up, one that Barbara can fly, so it’s Kate and Alice and the other bats on the plane. Eventually, Oracle is able to get the plane to return ‘home’ automatically, so Barbara can join the fight.

But the part that’s really a kick in the berries is Alice herself. See, she locks her and Batwoman in the hold of the plane, where the chemical weapons are, while her hench-people fight the others. She reveals to Kate that yes, they created her. They knew that a Bat needs a tragedy, but even losing her mother, losing her sister, wasn’t enough. Kate was too resilient, took too well to military discipline. She needed to be a rogue operator- so she had to be cut lose. She tells her it took years, a hundred little stumbles, a phone call here, a temptation there, a roadblock there, all to keep Kate pliable, self-destructive, angry. If they’d only known that her father lied to her all these years, it might have been easier; they had laid out her quest so carefully, and yet, Jacob refused to start her on her journey. Her sister wasn’t dead. The girl was just some collateral damage. But they had her sister for fifteen years, a lifetime, really. For years they wondered why Kate didn’t come looking for her… it was only when Alice took the Colonel that she finally learned the truth- that Kate didn’t know. This entire time they’re fighting, Kate becoming more unhinged, more angry, more brutal, closer to using lethal force. “All this time, I’ve been trying to twist the knife, without realizing I’d missed the mark.”

Kate stumbles back, Alice’s knife sticking out of her chest. “I’d started to think there was something about me, that maybe you just didn’t care enough to rescue me. Sins of the father, huh?” It’s Batgirl who manages to get the compartment open. Alice is convinced she’s won, that their prophecies state that after she cuts out the Batwoman’s heart, she’s unstoppable. It doesn’t matter what they do next- she’s already won.

“How’s our girl?” Batgirl asks.

“Woman,” Batwoman croaks.

Black Bat, who after getting shot in BoP2 has taken first aid really seriously, is seeing to her. “Stable. Heart rate’s steady, and from the sonagram it looks like the knife missed the heart.”

“Seems like trying to force your prophecy backfired.” Batgirl tosses a pair of cuffs at her feet. “You stabbed my friend. You put those on, and I’ll try to remember which side of the line I’m on.”

Spoiler, who is, still, pretty much just happy to be included, “I’m just happy for a chance to kick you.”

“Two on one doesn’t seem all that ‘right side of the line to me,’ Alice says, drawing two ornate pistols from under a large skirt. Batarangs hit her hands before she can aim them, and she drops them.

“You can still choose the cuffs; they’ll just hurt more now,” Batgirl tells her. Alice chooses instead to hit the button opening the rear of the plane.

Batgirl glances at the poison, and the two lines trailed from it to the open door.. “It’s a gravity feed,” she says. Pilot tilts this plane even a few more degrees and we’re going to start spraying poison.”

“But I wanted to kick her,” Spoiler groans. She runs out of the room. We follow her, through the body, with lots of henchpeople, a few of whom stir and she kicks back down. Then she gets to the cockpit door, which she wires with plastique and blows. Then she puts the sharpened edge of a batarang into the pilot’s throat, and tells him to keep it steady, or he’s drinking what’s left of the poison. He tells her he’d rather die than betray his mistress. She says he says that, but if she has to slit his throat, she’s pretty sure even she can keep a plane steady. Only difference is he’d be dead and Batman would scowl at her, and probably never let her be a Robin again- which she’s not sure she’s got the legs for anyway, frankly.

In the rear, Black Bat is trying to hurry Barbara along, because a few hour class from the Red Cross really doesn’t cover nearly-stabbed hearts. Batgirl fights, but what she doesn’t realize, initially, is that Alice isn’t focused on her, or the poison, but on Kate. She tears the batarangs from her hands and flings them at Kate, sticking Black Bat to the wall with one. She proves to have one more knife, and manages to get the upper hand with Barbara, preparing to stab her and saying idly that perhaps it will make a woman out of her- hoping that maybe killing Batgirl will count towards the prophecy, instead. Kate shoves her, knocking her to the lip of the plane. Kate is immediately, with a knife still in her chest, trying to help her up. “Beth. Please. Take my hand. We can fix this. We can be a family again. We can be whole.”

“The only way I can be whole,” Alice says, letting go of the door and reaching for the knife even as Kate tries to take her hand. Alice twists the knife, and Kate drops her, and she falls towards the harbor below. The plane lurches, and we watch poison start down the tube, before the plane rights itself, and our characters rush to the cockpit. Spoiler is sitting in the pilot seat, with the old pilot sprawled.

“I’m not really sure I can keep us level without hitting a building, so…”

Black Bat arrives. “Yeah, I closed the back door so the poison wouldn’t, you know, kill everyone.” Batgirl takes over flying. The Colonel calls them over the radio, and Batwoman discusses returning the plane. The military police want to take the bats into custody. The Colonel insists that they were never there at all, that it would wound morale to have it exposed that they lost chemical weapons to one of Gotham’s garden-variety crazies. Batwoman is extra cold to the Colonel as she leaves.

Later, the Colonel shows at her cave. “Best divers at the base couldn’t find her.”

“You told me she was dead.” Kate says, opening her door. He doesn’t play coy.

“That’s what I thought, at the time. The girl they mutilated, at least with her head missing, was a ringer for Beth. They fudged the blood work; fudged the DNA, too. But somehow… I still knew. I stole a sample myself, and paid to have it tested blind, at an independent lab. I tried to tell you, a hundred different times. But you found a way to be happy. I couldn’t snatch that way from you again- I couldn’t drag you back down into the hell I was trapped in.”

“We could have been there together,” she says. “And I will be blisteringly furious with you, for longer than may seem fair. But we’ll get through this like a family, too.” They rest their heads against one another. “I miss them.”

“Me, too, kiddo.”

Credits

Mid-credits scene: The Colonel pulls away from Batwoman. “But, uh, this wasn’t a social call. That, gas… I know some of your people were exposed, whether or not Batman wanted me to. But it’s spreading. I don’t know if it’s just a change in the wind, or they’re pumping more of it out into the streets. Gordon’s been trying to keep his men out of it; he lost a couple teams before they figured out how noxious it is, that it can enter through skin, air, water. We were lucky, the other day it was raining it stopped shy of the East Side, or it would be in the drinking water by now. That luck won’t hold. We have to do something.”

End-credits scene: Barbara is listening to a voicemail from her dad. “This has been a long-time coming, Barbara. I’ve turned a blind eye, pretended I wasn’t a cop, or a father. And don’t get me wrong, the city owes you and your friends a debt, a dozen times over… but we need to talk.” She hangs up the message as she enters the Clocktower. Oracle tells her the caller waited to speak to her directly.

I’m largely agnostic as to which Siren we get. Marketing would dictate we get whoever is most popular (likely Harley). Budget would likely dictate we use whoever’s cheapest, and I’d say pinch those pennies, because we’re going to need every single one of them for the next one, because it’s basically Endgame for the ladies of the DCU (and we really should spend accordingly). So our Siren (I’m just going to assume that it’s Ivy) tells Batgirl they screwed up. They thought they could stop the Fluoronic Man themselves. But now it’s clear he’s working at the behest (or at least to the benefit) of the city’s male crime lords, turning anyone who is exposed to Ivy’s altered pheromones into a violent misogynist.

Bonus: Birds of Prey 3: Birds of a Feather

The Birds of Prey (along with the balance of the Batwomen) have to team up with the Gotham City Sirens, because the male crime-lords in town partnered with Jason Woodrue to use Ivy’s pheromones against all the men in the city (I’m thinking at least Penguin, Two-Face and the Ventriloquist will be our fodder villains for this one). To complicate things, before the Sirens sit down with the Birds of Prey, Ivy made a desperate plea to Alec Holland to try and stop Woodrue… only for him to fall under the spell of her purloined pheromones. We probably start the story en media res, with Harley, Catwoman and Black Bat managing to break Ivy out of the clutches of Woodrue. This leads Woodrue to unleash his altered pheromone into the city, where all of the men turn incredibly hostile- basically normal men on the street attack them. The crime bosses use this chaos to their advantage; Batman is able to quarantine Gotham’s male heroes in the cave while he works on an antidote… all while being a pretty demented bastard all the same on their video link. This leaves things up to the ladies to fix. I think the way we first introduce this, is Harley is sneaking off from Ivy to meet with Jason Todd. Black Bat knows that, because she also knows the context: Harley feels terrible for her part in kidnapping and torturing him. She’s trying to make amends, and at the same time there’s really no one else who understands what she went through like Jason does. It starts as a two-person support group, but will grow from there.

Harley is nervous being in the back of a plane again. The last time she was in one, everybody died, and she’s having flashbacks. It’s mostly an excuse to show a montage of moments from the Suicide Squad (I figure if we build it into our mythos eventually people will watch it enough for it to become profitable- and it is a fun movie- which is why next year I’ll pitch a follow-up… but shhh). The montage ends with Flag, and we cut back to Harley in the back of the plane, a tear sliding down her cheek, “I miss Milton.”

Black Bat notices, and sits beside her in the plane, and takes her hand, “Harley, it’s going to be okay.”

“Is it?” she asks, trauma clearly having taken the wheel. “At any second Waller might kick in the door and decide to try to kill me again. And this plant dick took Ivy… I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to her.”

“I know,” Black Bat soothes, “we’re getting her back.”

“How’s our mental patient?” Catwoman asks, emerging from the cockpit.

“Still crazy after all these years,” Black Bat says. “But she’s good. Because she has to be.”

“She’s your responsibility. I’m getting Ivy out, because I don’t like owing favors. But the headcase is yours to babysit. If she goes to pieces, we may not have the space to put her back together.”

“I trust her. She’s just… her last time in a plane didn’t go so great.”

“We don’t have time for trauma. We need to jump in fifteen seconds.” Catwoman flings a parachute at Harley, and it flies past, before she raises her hand. Catwoman looks at Black Bat.

“She’s good,” Cassandra insists. “She’s rallying.”

Catwoman runs out of the plan and leaps gracefully into a leap past camera. Black Bat helps Harley into her parachute. “What if I can’t do this?” Harley asks.

“I’m pretty sure,” Black Bat glances at the cockpit, to see the stick is tied in place with a whip, “yeah, by engaging the autopilot Selena meant this stolen plane is going to crash as a distraction, so we don’t have much choice. Come on.” Black Bat takes her hand and pulls her to the door and jumps with her.

They’re buffeted by a bad wind, and separated, and Black Bat gets caught up in a tree as a patrol arrives. For a moment it looks bad. Then Harley pops up out of the grass and takes the patrol apart with swift, acrobatic efficiency. Catwoman’s already up in the tree and slices Black Bat out of her chute, and she falls with a somewhat comedic thud, before standing and brushing herself off.

“Jumping out of a perfectly functional plane is just crazy enough to be in my wheelhouse. What I meant was what if I’m not functional enough to save Ivy, to infiltrate this ‘compound,’ to be the kind of partner I’ve always wanted…”

“Harley,” Black Bat interrupts, “I love the brilliant, fucked up way your head works. But the reason I trust you, even now, with my life, is that when you follow your heart, I’ve never seen it steer you wrong. So when I say you can do this, I mean that you will, if you can just stay out of your own way. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Harley says.

“You two ever consider motivational speaking?” Catwoman asks, slinking down the tree. “Or getting your own Lifetime movie? Or maybe just starting a nationwide hug tour?”

“Ignore her,” Harley says, “she deflects genuine emotion because she’s worried if she doesn’t immediately bat it away people will understand how desperately she craves it, and to belong.”

Catwoman is not happy being analyzed; Black Bat puts up her hands. “You poked that bear.”

“Doing this for Ivy,” Catwoman says, annoyed. “Silver lining: maybe the two of you will get shot in the process.”

I’m assuming, since this is a big, ambitious swing already, that we should just montage them breaking in, taking out some guards, and rescuing Ivy, where we slow down again, because Harley wraps her arms around Ivy and kisses her. It needs to be a moment… but afterwards, it needs to not be a big deal, too (because I want them together, and happy, but if we make it too much of a thing then it’s like there’s something atypical about women finding love together… and there isn’t).

“What took you?” Ivy asks gently; she’s trying to keep it light, bantery, and not let on how scared she’s been, how much being used by Jason Woodrue has psychologically or physically taxed her, because she knows Harley has been merciless with herself, so she has to compensate by being kind.

“Traffic,” Harley says, half a laugh, half a sob.

“No crying,” Catwoman says, almost accusatory, but we can tell, too, it’s because it’s affecting her.

“In baseball?” Harley asks, raising her bat. The Sirens stomp together, as we do another quick montage (because we have so much story to get through on this one).

They get free, and we’re going to do a quick little flashback. Again, I don’t want to make a thing about them, like there’s anything odd about their pairing… but I like this moment. This is the moment it all comes out in the open.

“I didn’t look for you because you were probably the only person at Arkham who tried to understand me. I knew the tendency for a patient to put their doctor on a pedestal; I told myself you were doing a job, and doing it well, and that can be sexy, in its own right. I knew not to assume it meant anything, either about how I felt about you, or about how you felt about me.

“But then I saw you, with Cassie, and out in the world, as yourself, strong, confident, but with a heart so big and open that of course it flashed like a giant kick me sign to a monster like the Joker, but also… that showed just how warm, loving, and compassionate you were, how much you wanted for someone to love you like you love everyone. And that you could see people like us as… people. That’s a damning statement, to be sure, about our society, and the mental health profession, but you’ve always been a diamond,” she touches the diamond pattern on her right wrist, “and you’ve always deserved someone who saw that,” she kisses her.

Black Bat interrupts the story, and we reveal that Harley and Ivy are cuddling on a loveseat, while the other two are sitting in the same room. “I’m out. It’s like listening to 2 out of my 3 moms talk about making out. I’m out,” she reiterates as she leaves the room.

Catwoman sits quietly in her chair and stares.

“I had a cat like you,” Harley says. “Would just sit in the corner of my room and stair. Until I brought a guy home. Or a girl home. Or anyone else. And then, she’d lock eyes with me, and only then, she’d start to bathe.” Catwoman frowns, trying to figure out her meaning, before just leaving the room.

“I don’t mind an audience, but a part of me did want you just for myself.” I want her to have that, too, so we’re going to fade to black.

We fade back in the next morning. I don’t care who wants what, but I really want to emphasize the humanity in this moment, the normalcy; one of them is snoring just buzzsaw loud, and the other has just left a puddle of drool on the other. And even this, I know, could be filmed with the male gaze in mind- but it shoudn’t. They should look like the room got hit with a hurricane, their hair should be mussed, as little makeup as possible (I mean, the characters are usually caked in it, so I’m genuinely not sure what’s supposed to be their skin and what’s makeup), but they are frumped to a degree that even Margot Robbie (and presumably Lake Bell, because that’s great casting) look like normal human beings. Black Bat knocks on the door, and comes in, keeping her arm over her eyes. “I really, really, hate to intrude on your love nest- like, I don’t know the words in English to express how much I don’t want to intrude,” (I like the idea of her spouting something in Mandarin or whatever to prove that the words exist, at least somewhere).

Harley wakes up, and feels self-conscious, picking up that Cass expects a sexed-up Adventureland, “Yep, the air is thick with the smells of sex and sensual oils and lubricants and just,” and tries to mop up the drool, wake up Ivy, all while making the both of them look a little more put together than they were (this should be silly and fun, not for gratification).

“Okay, whoa, already way more information than I would have ever wanted to know. But before I exit, you should know… it’s spreading. Ivy’s pheromones, Woodrue had enough of them that he’s blanketing the entire city. It isn’t just our neighborhood that’s a nightmare. It’s the entire city.”

“Let us get dressed.”

“Oh, God, no more,” Cassandra moans.

“We’ll be out in a minute.”

“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?” Ivy asks.

“What, that I took a beautiful woman to bed and then proceeded to drool all over her stomach? That I was snoring so loud it bugged me even in my own dreams. That despite my days being consumed with thoughts of sex and death the entire time you were missing, once you were back, all I could do was pass out next to you?”

Ivy, again, is gentle with her, recognizing Harley’s spiraling. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I just needed you to hold me.”

“And I couldn’t even do that right.”

“The drooling wasn’t exactly what I expected. But I slept like a baby. I felt safe with you. It was exactly what I needed.”

“Yeah?” Harley asked.

“Being with someone isn’t just about rocking their world sexually. You also want to be comfortable just being with them. Feeling safe, and secure and, and loved.”

“Yeah,” Harley says, realizing how much she needed to hear that, and cuddling up against her. “I love you, Ivy.”

“I love you, too, Harls.”

Damnit. Okay. That’s on me. I promise I’m going to try and stop being so damned enamored of the two of them together that I can get back to pitching. I think the best way to get this story moving again is to take a peek at the other side of the aisle, namely the ‘good’ guys.

We watch Barbara walk by her suit in the Clocktower; she’s wearing clothes for a run. She tells Oracle that she needs to pick up an assignment from school, but then she’ll be back, and asks if Oracle needs anything. She asks for a Yoohoo (or other product placement to be paid for later).

There’s something on the air as she puts in her earbuds and puts on some music. We’re going to leave the music on for most of her run, at least until the insanity gets to be so much she silences it, and suddenly is faced to confront exactly how screwed up the few blocks she’s ran are. I figure this is one long take (but possibly with some hidden cuts, if need be). First she runs by a man who is clearly screaming at her, partially dodging to avoid specks of spittle flying through the air. Unfortunately, this is Gotham, so angry men yelling at random women on the street is a thing, and doesn’t phase her. At a hot dog cart, a man and a woman with a baby in a stroller seem to be altercating, when the man raises his hand. Barbara grabs the hook of his elbow and uses it to roll him over her back without stopping. She runs a little further, and a man takes a swing at her. She puts him down without any problem, only for another man to attack her. And a third. She puts them all down with ease, but we pull back, to reveal that this has all happened on the same block. Barbara turns down her music and calls Oracle. “Oracle, what the hell is going on?”

“You know that weird fog on the waterfront that turned any man who came into contact into a woman-hating troll? Yeah, well, it’s spread across the whole city. It’s chaos. Figured you knew.”

“I slept in. I’m going to head back to the Clocktower. Something tells me we’re going to need to handle this.”

We cut to Batgirl arriving. “So I called Batman, like you asked. He’s aware, by the way. Um… I’m struggling. I know this isn’t a typical workplace or… anything approaching a normal situation. I guess I just never imagined I’d ever hear Batman call me a c-word.”

“What?”

“And he called you, uh, B-girl.”

“Well, that is my-” she realizes Oracle means the other B-girl.

“Oh. I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

“It was more, comically surreal. But… he’s terrifying. Most of the time I don’t breathe when he calls. And I even noticed he noticed, and has tried to emote more, which should make me feel more comfortable, that he’s trying, but it’s like watching the Tin Man try to be more emotional by wearing Totos face. But it’s only right now, when I actually saw what he’s like when he’s threatening. And the idea that he could stay like this…”

“We’ll fix it.

“Almost makes me feel sorry for criminals. Not because of what he does do, but because… because of what he could do, what I now realize he might do. Gives me the feeling he is one day where they give him a shot of espresso instead of decaf from being Joker in a cowl.”

“Maybe that’s why he doesn’t drink caffeine at all- just doesn’t trust himself.”

“Really? Does he even sleep? And he still doesn’t touch caffeine? How does he stay up.”

“Obsession.”

“The Calvin Klein cologne? Does he chug it?”

“Will. Same way he’s still remaining functional, if a bit… jerkier than usual.”

“Feels like an understatement, but yeah, he’s still working, with all the other Robins, Nightwings, Red Hoods and whatevers in the cave with him. He’s isolated the compounds. Definitely bears some signatures worth being concerned over. Three names, at least trying to read between the lines; he was editorializing some, especially when it came to Ivy. But it was her pheromones. But they seemed altered, in a way that makes him suspect Swamp Thing and Jason Woodrue are involved.”

“That’s bad,” Batgirl reacts. “Really bad. Ivy on her own is trouble. Ivy and Woodrue are extinction level trouble. Swamp Thing would have been our go-to guy to help with it, but if he’s working with them, or they have him… call everybody.”

“Everybody?”

“Let me rephrase. Everyone without a y chromosome. Anyone who can help, we need on standby, or here if they can swing it”

“What about Batwing?” Batgirl doesn’t follow. “They’re nonbinary.”

Barbara sighs. “I’ll text Batman. If this goes down to the chromosomal level, it might make sense to have Batwing sequester with the rest in the cave. But if not, it’s all hands on deck.”

We’re back in Ivy and Harley’s apartment. Ivy is wearing a shirt from Arkham (yeah, like she did in the first Arkham game), and is drinking coffee. “So… I’ve been talking to some of the houseplants.”

“You, too? They only seem to want to talk to me about celebrity butts. You?”

“That’s not them, hon, it’s a voice in your head. No, the plants tell me Alec was here.”

“Alec, Alec… why doesn’t that name ring a bell?”

“He was my ex. Is sort of dead. And a plant elemental.”

“You used to bang the plant guy?” Harley asks, amused, horrified, intrigued, confused. “I mean, there’s bumping uglies and then there’s bumping uglies.”

“Harley.”

“I swear, I did not know, or I would have at least straightened up before he grew out of a few bags of fertilizer in the tub. He said it was the fastest way to get here from ‘the Swamp,’ which I really hadn’t expected to be all so literal. One of the bat people owed me a favor, got me his number, when you went missing. I thought plant guy, wearing a trench coat, he must be some kind of plant dick, and, not you know, your old plant d-”

“It was his friend who wore the trench coat. But it worked, I guess. You found me.”

“We did… just not at first. He led us into a trap. A trap for him, I think, or at least a trap for if he came looking for you.”

“Oh, no. A couple nights ago? When Woodrue’s experiments got a lot worse.”

“Yeah,” Harley says meekly. “But he did get us the lead that got you back.”

“For which I am grateful, but… do you understand what Alec Holland is?” Harley shrugs. “He is basically a plant god. Meaning, he could take my pheromones, and increase their potency. He could probably even reproduce them. That’s why Woodrue didn’t put up much of a fight when you came for me- because I was redundant. And now it’s a race against time, and we’re starting from behind.” She finishes her coffee and turns around. “How much pull do you have with these bat people?”

“Like I asked for a tour of the Batcave or for them to drive us around in the Batmobile while we made out in the back seat.”

“And they said ‘no?’”

“No back seat. The rest all depends. Are we asking to work with them, or trying to scam ‘em?”

“If you don’t at least leave the possibility of the latter open I’m never talking to either of you again,” Catwoman says, pouring herself a bowl of milk.

Ivy’s prepared. “I spoke with the city’s Economy Development Corporation, and they estimate there are half a million cats in Gotham City. I know cats are survivors and all, but what happens if jilted men decide to take their anger out on women’s cats, or worse, if my pheromones end up working just as well on male cats.”

Catwoman stops lapping at the bowl. “Can I at least steal something, when this is all over, so I don’t feel like a complete sap?”

“Sure,” they both say with a shrug.

Birds of Prey/Batwomen assemble at the tower, with the promise that the rest are dealing with a bigger threat outside of Gotham, but will be there as soon as they can wrap it up. Then they get the call from the Sirens, all agreeing to work together.

Oracle has been able to put together the records from all of their Woodrue-related locations so far. And it seems he’s been using places, money and resources from three separate crime families. Analysis of recent police surveillance has proven that the three seem to be working together, and that they need to hit all three crime bosses at once, to mop up as much of their men and resources as possible. They split into three teams, with Ivy’s team going to where they think Swamp Thing is/Penguin, Batgirl and the Birds of Prey going after Woodrue/Two-Face, and Batwoman and the other Batwomen going after the location where the pheromones are all stored to destroy them/Ventriloquist (he’s squatting on old Joker territory; he lost clout after fallout from BoP2, especially with his willingness to sacrifice his henchmen for a joke)- that meant the Ventriloquist had a lot of territory with abandoned chemical storage/disposal, perfect for the pheromones they pumped out of Ivy.

The Batwomen easily deal with the Ventriloquist, Scarface and his vanilla mooks. Then they realize there was a lot more pheromone than they realized- acres of it. Batwoman calls her father. The base is still observing chemical weapons protocols, so they’re fine, if somewhat understaffed. He agrees to help her bomb the pheromone storage (I think he loads a plane with explosives and arranges for Kate to steal it, having learned since the last movie how to fly a plane… ish- the main sticking point being her landings are still mostly crashes in the simulator).

Ivy leads the Sirens to rescue Alec. Penguin, slightly impacted by the pheromones (but having always been a dick) gets the snot kicked out of him, and realizing how ridiculously powerful Ivy is, decide not to screw with them and leave without much of a fight. The true brawl, though, is with the Swamp Thing himself. He’s still under the influence of Ivy’s pheromones, only a stronger, more robust variant he helped concoct. Thankfully, midway through the fight Ivy realizes that the Swamp Thing they’re fighting isn’t Alec at all, that he essentially grew himself a bodyguard, so while the others fight him off (badly), Ivy reasons with Alec, that he’s a good man, the man she admired, the one she fell for. She kisses him, and it brings him out of his stupor, and then some. The bodyguard keeps fighting, but some of the life has gone out of it; this is amplified by the fact that Harley, seeing the kiss, goes berserk, and will hit him in the twig and berries frequently with her big-ass mallet. Alec’s still a little influenced by the pheromones, and clingy; Ivy says she thought he got engaged, and he says that’s complicated. Ivy tells him things are a lot less complicated for her- that she found someone who makes her happy, and looks over at Harley, practically glowing. Ivy uses the Swamp Thing’s arm to pull Harley to her, and kisses her. Harley stammers that she thought… before Ivy tells her she thinks too much, and kisses her. “I do.” And they kiss again.

Finally, Two-Face’s place is where the real fight happens. One half of his mansion is overgrown. The Birds of Prey split up, Batgirl leading one segment into the overgrown side, since she’s got all the weedkilling toys, and Question leading the other up the pristine side. Question and Huntress make short work of Two-Face, before wondering where all his goons are. Both Harveys smile. Woodrue knocks Batgirl and Canary through a door, rolling into the room. Harvey tells them the reason he didn’t see a point in putting his men in harm’s way tonight was that it was going to be a bloodbath- that they were just waiting for all the guests to arrive.

At that moment, the Sirens and the Batwomen arrive. Two-Face brags to Woodrue that his timing is impeccable. As you can see, we’ve got a ridiculous cast of women here already… but things are about to go just completely nuts. I wasn’t screwing with you when I said that this was Endgame for DC’s women. Well, here it goes.

I think for the ending we bring in a big Big Bad; personally, I’d swing for the fences and have it be Granny Goodness with a team of male furies; Granny Goodness has basically been taken to task by Darkseid. He thinks her Furies need to open up to male members, that she’s been artificially holding her elite soldiers back. So she’s testing his hypothesis, by recruiting a team of men. She explains that there’s a part of her rooting for the women, because they’ll prove her right if they win, not that she could ever gloat to Darkseid. But she wants her ladies back; she was the one who gave Woodrue the necessary upgrade to be able to adapt Ivy’s pheromones.

At first, the combined Birds of Prey are outmatched. But then… those other heroines we teased earlier on, who would show as soon as they wrapped up the bigger threat… they arrive. This loops in all of the most powerful of DC’s women for a fireworks finish as they beat a team of men under Granny’s control, before all of the rest of the women show up. This list is in no way all-inclusive, and will likely swell. But it should give you an idea of who’s punching who.

Wonder Woman	Lobo
Big Barda	Scott Free
Supergirl	Granny Goodness
Power Girl	Superboy
Zatanna	Jason Blood/The Demon
Ivy	Jason Woodrue
Catwoman/Black Bat	(snatches Granny’s control rod)
Harley Quinn	(souped up) Joker, like from the first Arkham game (can really be Clayface, if that’s too silly)
Batgirl	Nightwing
Mary Marvel	Black Adam
Fire
Ice
Huntress
Mera
Jesse Quick
Natasha Irons
Artemis

Wherever possible/necessary, we can replace the menfolk with their CGI counterparts (having the Demon in a fight wouldn’t necessarily require paying Jason Blood to show; I’m all for paying him to show, mind, but I know some actors really hate showing up to film what is essentially a cameo, and it’s possible the budget on this will also be insane, so building in places where we can cut costs might be helpful).

But the women are winning. Granny is conflicted; she’s winning the moral argument even as she loses the fight. But she also knows that Darkseid doesn’t brook failure… she sees an opportunity to slink away, taking Jason Woodrue with her.

And, personally, I’d bring in at least 3 men, here: Batman, Superman, and whatever other male Justice Leaguer would be most impactful (could be Aquaman, given current box office). We start with whichever of them has the most recognizable voice, calling from offscreen. Camera pans, and we see those three, and think this is round 2 and it’s about to get brutal…. Only the men aren’t attacking. Or cursing. Batman explains that he’s synthesized an antidote, that he’s got Flashes spreading across the city administering doses.

Harley asks Wonder Woman if this means she’s in the Avengers- “I mean the Justice League, clearly you weren’t my safety squad.” Could be cute to have Ratcatcher 2 cameo, and Harley waves her off. Wonder Woman pretends not to have heard, and walks away. Harley is, for a moment, disappointed. But Batgirl is behind her. She tells her some people might look at them as minor league, but if Harley, Ivy, or Catwoman want, they always have a place in the, and before she says Birds of Prey, we go to black, and smash in the Birds of Prey logo. We quickly do the cast credits, before cutting back, immediately to the same scene.

Catwoman runs up to Harley and Ivy. “That thing I needed to do, it’s done, and we should go. Now.” She turns, and we can see she has a utility belt slung over her shoulder. It literally doesn’t matter which of the Batmen she took it from, but it’s slightly funnier if it’s a Robin and he has to hold his pants up. Batman bellows after Selena, and we cut again to black.

More credits. Then we’re on Apokalips. Jason Woodrue has seen better days. Clearly, he’s been tortured for a while. Desaad is overseeing that, but Darkseid is working with Woodrue’s figures. Desaad is becoming more concerned, that he’s been working with Woodrue’s information tirelessly, without speaking. Desaad is trying to get an answer from him, if the Antilife Equation is complete, if he’ll be able to mold the minds of men to his will. He’s not going to reply, but I would like to have him turn to camera, similar to Thanos at the end of the very first Avengers, and smile. But while that CGI Thanos looked a little cartoony, this one should be horrifying- and his smile should be a thing of nightmares. That Darkseid is happy at all should be something we’re all worried about.

December 2, 2021December 2, 2021

Nexus 3, Chapter 12

“It’s not enough,” Elle said, as we finished counting the amount of shots we could fire. I could tell she was fighting the urge to start counting all over again.

“We didn’t come down here planning to depopulate the entire landing zone,” I said with a laugh. “But it will be enough.”

“And if it isn’t?” she asked, and this time when she touched her hand to her belly it was unconscious.

“If it’s not, then there isn’t a head of security anywhere man’s set foot I would trust at my side more. We got each other through Dalaxia. Fought off an entire metropolis’ worth of space bears. Beat back a military crew that dwarfed ours. And if push comes to absolute shove, the two of you are getting the hell off of this world.”

“Don’t start thinking like a martyr again.”

“Not on Bill’s life.”

“I heard that,” he grumbled, still fighting the controls as the entire ship shuttered.

“If there’s any way I can watch our daughter grow up, I’m going to be there. And if there’s not, there isn’t a species that could keep me from ensuring at least that you will.”

“What about the Romaleon?”

“They took their shot,” I said.

I could hear the chortle Bill was badly fighting back as he said, “Isn’t it more like you took their-”

“Don’t,” I said, flicking the safety off on my rifle, which hummed to life, “after all, I’m armed.”

“Party pooper.” But then he took his eyes off the instruments to fix us both. “I’m putting us down as close as I can. Risk to the shuttle, either from gunfire or particles, at least my back of the envelope says that the difference is likely to be small. Whereas, the odds we get overrun, captured, killed, or just separated from the shuttle… we’re going to be on top of the wreckage. There’s a lot of fires still raging- the crash released a lot of energy, including heat. Whatever time you can buy will have to be enough. But the more you can buy, the better the chances we get off this rock with some answers that will save lives. But it’s her call. When she says we need to leave, we leave.”

Elle and I armed ourselves to the teeth. We packed on as many bags of ammunition as we could carry, and two pistols each, and a rifle. “So what’s the best-case scenario?” I asked Elle.

“That their society isn’t much more evolved from bears, hibernating in caves, that mostly they’re just stumbling out to see what woke them up.”

“And the odds?”

“I think there are essentially four technological epochs we regularly see. Stone tools and weapons. Metal tools and weapons. Physical projectile weapons. And energy projecting weapons. The nipple of the bell curve of species usually hovers around the breakpoint between stone and metal, with a slower taper towards energy projection. If I remember the figures, it’s roughly 25% of species contacted thusfar that had developed projectile weapons, and around 10% that had energy projecting weapons.”

“And of the latter two, projectiles are actually worse,” I said, “because there’s really no one solution that will handle all projectiles.”

“Right. You can use a densely woven fabric like Kevlar to stop a bullet. But any reasonably sharp arrow-head or bolt will slice through it like butter- for those you need interwoven ring mail.”

“And I remember sitting in on those meetings. You specifically argued that multiple layers of protection were worth whatever extra cost in manufacturing and launching, and whatever extra resources were required to get them down on the shuttles. Company scientists thought we’d have to slow either the speed or frequency of stopping at new planets- that the hit we took in efficiency wouldn’t compensate for the marginal security benefit. Kicking yourself for not fighting harder for my proposal?”

“Just aware that not doing so makes it more likely this will be the way that I die- it was always going to be ironic.” The shuttle lurched as we touched down, and the rear doors started opening.

It was a hell of a lot worse than I thought. The species might have hibernated underground, but there were definitely buildings topside, as well. Seemed like they were formed mostly of a rocky, red clay, with thatched roofs; it was the roofs that had caught and spread the most fire. I didn’t see bodies; maybe that meant that they all retreated for their equivalent of winter, and we got exceedingly lucky. Maybe they were there, if you only took the time to dig- but we didn’t have that time. The pod, or what was left of it, was sitting in the middle of one of these structures, and we were parked outside. Elle and I swept the structure; there had been a window and a door in the rear, but the impact had collapsed them both to make them impassible. That left the one door to watch, to protect Bill.

“I’m taking the structure,” I said.

“Like fun you are,” Elle replied.

“Three quick points: one, I’m Captain; two, you’re protecting for two, and three, we might not have time for you to do that little pregnant waddle if we have to leave in a hurry, so you’re posting up in the back of the ship.”

“I hate you when you’re right nearly as much as I hate you when you’re wrong.”

“Maybe you just hate me, full stop,” I offered.

“No, I love you when you’re quiet.” I didn’t point out her Freudian slip, and she walked back to the shuttle.

Bill was already carting the cutting tools to the wreckage, which looked like a barbecue turned inside out, so I wasn’t sure what all he hoped to get from it; hopefully the instruments inside fared better, but he ignored us as he walked, aside from passive-aggressively mumbling, “No, no, it’s fine, it doesn’t matter if it takes me an extra several minutes to carry all of this crap out here…”

I don’t know if Bill instinctively knew what he was doing, since it was essentially an engineering problem, but the way he angled the ship enabled Elle to cover the streets to the North and East from the rear of the shuttle, while I could mostly cover South and West- and we could both cover each other. It wasn’t a perfect position, since we would have needed at least one but likely two more to truly watch all of the angles, but under the circumstances it was likely as good as it was getting.

“If you need, you can mute me,” Bill said, “but I’m going to record what I’m seeing. Even if something prevents us from making it back, this recording might still be recoverable. And it wouldn’t hurt for the two of you to know what we’re up against, either. Outside of the pod is charred. Either it was never designed to enter atmo or it was truly dead stick and just smashed through, heat be damned. I think some of these were heat panels, but with this kind of damage it’s hard to know. If they’re based on the same designs as our pods they’re a generation or two beyond them. Access panels aren’t in the same place, and even now that I’ve found it the damned thing seems to have been fused shut- as in the heat was enough to melt screws, which have since cooled and hardened in place. But that’s why I brought the torch.”

I don’t know if he was aware of it, but he started to hum, something classical, but that inexplicably kept including measures of Dueling Banjos, and I think at one point segued into Old McDonald. “Fuck,” he finally said. “So, Good news/bad news.”

“Bad first,” Elle and I said in unison.

“We can’t leave yet. Because the good news, it’s brain is intact. They shielded the shit out of the black box, which would seem, if I’m understanding all of the linkages, here, to include both the processor and memory systems. This is going to tell us… everything. Who fired it, where from, how long it was trailing us, when it went dead stick and likely, if there are any blindspots we can exploit. Provided we can survive this, and get back to the Nexus with it and us intact, this is probably the best case scenario.” “Well that’s just great,” Elle said. “And you might want to hurry up on cutting it out. Because I have contact, and they are armed for bear.”

November 26, 2021November 5, 2021

Pitchgiving 2021, part 11: Outsiders: Hard-Traveling Heroes

The Outsiders are traveling in a Winnebago. Nightwing is grousing about how when Ollie offered to sponsor the team, this isn’t exactly what he envisioned. Ollie gives a variation of the Schindler speech, that he wishes he could spend extravagantly on the team, but he looks at the cost of retrofitting a spy plane, or even economy class plane tickets, and compares that to spending the money to vaccinate the poor in underdeveloped countries… he says it took him a long time to get his priorities straight, but he’s not about to go back to being profligate Ollie again, and ribs Nightwing that they could always ask for funding from his father, which gets Dick to stop smiling, for a moment.

It doesn’t last, as Dick’s good nature is one of his defining traits. He also takes a moment to rib Oliver about looking forward to seeing Black Canary again. Ollie admits she’s easy enough on the eyes, but we see how he really thinks of her, as we zoom into his eye, and see in soft focus, her punching bad guys and otherwise being effortlessly bad ass while beautiful. We zoom out, to see an oncoming semi, with Nightwing grabbing the wheel and swerving them out of the way. Dick offers to take a turn at the wheel, and Ollie and stands up, leaving the Winnebago coasting as Dick dives into the seat.

They arrive on the strip, and Dick asks where they’re staying. Oliver tells him to keep going. They drive past the strip. Past the casinos off the strip. They’re in a fleabag motel, with an overly boisterous neon sign declaring it the “Above Reproach Motel,” with “above” and “rep” entirely unlit. Black Lightning gets out and says that seems about right as they unpack. Arrow tells them that he rented out the entire hotel, so they have the run of the place- that Dick had emphasized to him that they needed space and privacy to plan out their caper.

“I also asked him to stop calling it a caper. But it’s been a long drive, everybody. I suggest you get some shut eye. We’ll have a briefing at 6:30.”

Huntress gives him crap about the late start. “I though all of you bat boys were up all night.”

“I probably will be. I was hoping you and I could get in some reconnaisance.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it?” At first it seems like witty reparte, but she’s actually asking (awkwardly and adorably).

“It’s been a while since anybody accused me of being a bat boy.”

“No one wears that much leather without being a bat boy.”

“I legitimately don’t know if we’re confused or flirting.”

“That’s where I live,” she says, and he stares at her a moment, before laughing.

“You had me going.” She’s confused by that. But she likes the attention, and that he’s confident enough to push past her awkwardness. Plus, she really likes patrolling.

“Wait,” she says. “Are we actually patrolling, or sneaking off to have sex… I just want to make sure I wear the right top.” He laughs, and they walk off screen.

We cut to Black Lightning, poking at Lo Mein noodles in a takeout container, sitting on the hotel couch, while talking on his cell. He zaps the TV to change channels. He’s talking to his significant other, concerned that the rest of the team are screwing off in Vegas, and he’s trying to decide between Lifetime movies. She tells him either he can zap his ass home, or they can watch a movie together. He tells her someone has to be an example to all these kids, show them how to act like a professional.

We cut to Canary and Arrow kissing, passionately, slamming against the inside of the door to her dressing room. “Not that I’m complaining, but what happened to waiting?” he asks.

“Oh, you’re still waiting,” she says, and pushes him against the door, “I just want your attention focused on what you’re waiting for.”

“Might have to change my name to Blue Arrow, you keep this up.”

“Ooh, Black Canary and Blue Arrow, I like that alliteration; and there’s the double-meaning of leaving the bad guys black and blue.”

“That is pretty good, but I’d have to sew a whole new set of tights.”

“I’m worth it.”

“Plus those Blue Beetles are very proprietary about their color- and quite litigious.”

“Tell me about it,” Ray Palmer appears, growing from a place sitting on Canary’s counter.

“Dad,” Canary says, snatching flowers from him and throwing them on the counter, “we talked about this: boundaries.”

“I didn’t mean to walk in on a Cinemax movie. I was trying to do one of my, ‘Hey, where did he come from?’ entrances.”

“Yeah, and when you pulled that on me, you got yourself a brand new set of tinitis. You’re just lucky he didn’t have his bow or he might have… bowed you.”

“Et tu, Canary?” Green Arrow asks.

“Et me,” she says. “But at least you learned to throw a proper punch, so there’s still hope for you.”

“Had a hell of a teacher.” She gives him a peck. “Who knows a thing or two about motivation.”

“You’re punishing me, aren’t you?” Ray asks.

“Pretending you’re not here- because you shouldn’t be,” she says.

“It’s about, your mother.”

“Crap,” Green Arrow says.

“I thought the trail went cold in Gotham,” Canary says, spinning to face him.

“It had. Or rather… it didn’t get cold, the GCPD kept it on ice all these years. And that’s why I could find… this.” He shows them an image on his phone of human tissue through a microscope, subtly including a footprint.

“What am I looking at?” Green Arrow asks.

“A slide from Canary’s autopsy. This is the aftermath of an aneurism. She was too good to just catch a bullet in some back alley. I never believed… she was dead before she was shot. This proves it.”

“How?” Arrow asks.

He pinches and zooms in on it, to more specifically focus on the footprint. “It’s a footprint. Given the size, and depth, it’s a woman’s size 6, she weighs somewhere in the vicinity of 125 lbs. Either she was the killer, or an eyewitness. Either way, the odds of someone standing in her brain at the same time of a spontaneous aneurism in a healthy, middle-aged woman… the odds are astronomical.”

“And what are the odds someone would kill my mother with shrinking tech, dad?”

“Not good,” he admits. “Shrinking tech is expensive to make, and mostly gets used by people on our side. I think I was the only one, at the time, operating it.”

“And who had access to your tech?” Arrow asks.

“Anyone with access to the JSA headquarters. Or a storehouse I kept in Jersey, in case that was ever compromised. I had some personal storage for a stretch in the seventies, too, in Gotham.”

“But you’re here,” Canary says, “because you’ve already run down those leads. So why are you here?”

“Because my tech runs on very specific isotopes. Specific, and rare. There aren’t a lot of places to buy them. And the people who supply them, there isn’t a one of them who doesn’t owe me a favor; I taught some of them, helped the rest, in costume or out. And there’s one in Vegas, who sold, just a day ago, to an older woman, fits the rough description, with some allowance for passage of time.”

“Older enough?” Canary asks.

“She thinks so- presuming she’s well preserved.”

“How big a favor did she owe you?” Arrow asks.

“Pretty big. She put a radioactive isotope impurity we can trace in the package.”

“I’m uncomfortable that this conversation began with a package and is ending with one.” Arrow says.

“You’re just sad that the package we’re talking about now isn’t yours,” Canary teases. “But we’ll come back to it,” she says, grabbing her jacket.

“Don’t you have a show?” Arrows asks, pointing to the star on her door.

“Not tonight. I only do an afternoon show today.”

They leave.

We do a little homage to the Batman origin, a wealthy looking couple, woman in furs and pearls, man in a nice suit, with their young son, cutting through an alley. A gunman steps out, threatening them. Nightwing drops down on him like a ton of bricks, the gun clattering noisily to the ground. Nightwing bows with a flourish, and assures the boy it’s all part of the show. A second gunman steps out from behind a dumpster. A bolt pins him to the brick wall, and Huntress lands, kicking him in the face; he remains pinned to the wall by the bolt.

They climb to a rooftop. Huntress looks like she’s pouting.

“You okay?”

“You’re asking me? You were the one who nearly got shot in the back.”

“I’ve learned that part of being a good partner is trusting people to have your back. I knew you’d be there for me.” She’s uncomfortable, physically if nothing else. “So I want you to know I’m here for you, starting with asking if you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” she says, half-heartedly, and through it we see she’s disappointed.

So does Nightwing. “I know things didn’t happen with Mandragora like you wanted. But taking him in alive, there are a lot of families who are sleeping better tonight, maybe sleeping at all, because you did the right thing.”

“You kind of made me,” she says, her disappointment on the verge of pouting.

“Not what I meant. I know you were there, at the handoff, when the Sheriff’s Department gave him over to the Federal Marshals. You had a shot, and you were far enough away I wouldn’t have been able to stop you. Mandragora may not have killed my parents, but as someone who knows that loss as well as you do, and because the other families don’t know how hard doing the right thing was like I do, I wanted to say ,’Thank you.’”

“Oh,” she says.

“Not what you wanted to hear?” he asks.

“No, it’s not that, it’s… I think I might have worn the wrong top.”

“No,” Nightwing says, and he spins her, so she lands with her back against a wall as he leans into her and says, “You’re not.” But her instincts kick in, and she has her crossbow pressed into his throat. “Unless I’ve misread things.”

“No,” she says, and for a moment she’s embarassed, before rolling him, so he lands painfully on his back. She jumps onto his lap, and says, “I just like to be on top.”

We cut back to Arrow, Canary and Atom. They’re following Atom’s tracker, but it leads them to an arena. The bouncer is definitely powered (we could do a cameo from someone like Killer Croc; Clayface might be even more fun, since Canary could get suspicious and he could tell her to call his parole officer) or just have it be a generic mook who insists “No capes on the ticket. Bids only accepted through a proxy.”

Atom says, “Look, over there, it’s a distraction!” and for a moment they all look where he pointed, but not long enough for him to do anything. Then Arrow realizes that’s his cue, notches a napalm arrow, and sets fire to a car where Atom pointed. The bouncer’s annoyed, but tells them the street is outside his purview- and if they call the fire department he won’t even call the cops on them. Then he realizes Atom’s gone.

Arrow and Canary grab something to eat at a little cafe nearby. “My fries are cold,” Arrow says, “want to make out?”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Canary says, “but knew the moment I vocalized it,”

“Think that’s my cue,” Atom grows.

“I was beginning to think you paused in the middle of the heist to take an old man nap.”

“I could nap… but no. One, I found out that they pawned my gear. I couldn’t get close enough to check the control numbers. They bought the isotope because they had to prove it was authentic for it to go on the slab, which meant shrinking with it. Two, I talked to management. Roulette. She runs the gladiator games and the auction house. She’s usually pretty strictly all about discretion, but,”

We cut to her office, where Roulette is talking to Ray. “I’m a capitalist, first. And I recognize an opportunity when I see one.” She brings up several images of Arrow and Canary together, lingering touches, maybe pecks, typical tabloid fodder, on her row of monitors, even a live feed of them at the café across the street. “I have a reality show apartment I bought, wired up with cameras. Nothing hinky; not toilet or shower cameras.” The couple stay in the apartment one night, and she can sell the hell out of access to the house cams. “They don’t have to do anything but be themselves. They do that, and I’ll give you what you need to find your mystery woman.”

Ray doesn’t trust her, but Roulette made it clear that if they don’t play ball, she’ll sell the gear to an anonymous bidder, and pay the owner in untraceable crypto, and the trail dies there. Their only other option is to try to have Atom intercept the wire transfer and trace it; last time that happened he spent a week crawling through the bowels of a crypto farm in the Philipines- not exactly a ringing endorsement of that strategy.

Canary agrees. Arrow is reluctant (maybe because he was wealthy playboy enough to have been tabloid fodder before). Atom has an idea- he can shrink down and be their guardian angel. Arrow mentions that it’s probably too late, because the sun is coming up. Atom says the deal is for the next night. As they exit the cafe, they see digital billboards are already touting Green Arrow and Black Canary sharing a romantic evening in the Snoop House. “That’s not ominous at all,” Arrow says.

The next morning they’re all gathered for Nightwing’s briefing. He glances at the clock. “We waiting for something, boss?” Black Lightning asks.

“Yeah,” Green Arrow and Nightwing say at the same time, and Dick yields, letting Green Arrow continue. “We’re waiting for Dick to start.”

“We’re waiting for the other members of the team,” Nightwing says. “And I think that’s her.” He sees a woman’s silhouette emerging out of the sun, and as she gets closer we can see it’s Donna Troy. Her iconic star pattern costume doesn’t really sell her as being a Wonder Girl before Cassie Sandmark; it might make sense to go with something like the red jumpsuit; a good mid-point might be to mix that with the Jim Lee DCNu version with the dark pants (so it’s basically a jumpsuit version of Wonder Woman’s costume). Maybe you could go for a gold-accented variant to Wonder Woman’s, kind of like her usual costume intermingled with the golden hawk armor from 1984.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “I’ve been in a holding pattern for fifteen minutes. Wally made me promise I wouldn’t land without him; the other Flashes would never let him live it down if he was the last one to arrive.”

“Foolishly, I didn’t swear her to secrecy on that point,” Wally says, suddenly beside her.

“There’s doughnuts and coffee, and bagels and just a ten pound bag of sugar for Wally,” Nightwing says. Wally runs by the spread, and half of it disappears in a blur.

“Suddenly the spread makes sense,” Canary says.

Nightwing gives his briefing. It’s very low-tech, all things considered, as far as what Nightwing is presenting… we can cut away and montage the hell out of it like the whole thing was being done by Soderbergh (alternate pitch: GET SODERBERGH- how freaking cool would that be? I imagine he’d be curious about doing that thing he do but with a much crazier budget and FX).

Nightwing tells them that three casinos off the strip have been taken over by supervillains. Ostensibly, they’ve been hired to have their likeness exploited by the casinos, and to make celebrity appearances, on the floor and at their shows. But really, they’re holding the casinos hostage. At Joker’s Wild, the Joker has rigged the air vents with his Joker toxin- if the casino doesn’t keep giving him his cut, he’ll turn everyone inside (including the held-hostage family of the casino’s owner) into homicidal maniacs, most of whom won’t survive the transformation. At the Double Trouble, Two-Face has wired up every hotel room with explosives corresponding to red or black- and that if the hotel operators cross him he’ll spin his roulette wheel, and blow half the rooms- either red or black based on chance. At The Royal Flush, The Royal Flush Gang aren’t just taking a cut- they’re taking everything, pocketing even the paychecks of the employees, and forbidding anyone with any remaining cash from leaving- if you fail a credit check they’ll let you go, but otherwise no one leaves.

Finally, the problems started when a superpowered mobster named Blockbuster collected a casino in lieu of a debt. He’s been washing the supervillain underworld’s dirty cash through the casino since. He’s also the mastermind behind the takeover of neighboring casinos- he wants to buy them, outright, but first needs the current owners desperate- so he helped organize the attacks to both drive down the price and also take a cut to help him buy at the reduced price. This is because he wants to expand, beyond the relatively respectable among the villain set, to the real monsters, the terrorists, the sex traffickers, but for that he needs more casinos to be able to launder more money. Blockbuster’s casino is a tougher nut to crack, because it’s legit- but it’s also sitting on several times as much cash as it can legitimately claim, enough that it will be bankrupt if it has to make good on what it owes to the underworld figures if it disappears.

The jobs are all complicated enough that they’re going to need all of them for each– and because if they tip off any one of the villains the others are likely to carry out their threats, they all have to happen concurrently, with all of them dropping in and out of each heist with the precision of a tightly-wound Swiss watch. Nightwing tells them he’s given Wally plans for each of the casino vaults, and has take-out from every delivering restaurant in a mile radius piling up at the reception desk to feed him while he constructs them to scale.

Wally disappears, then reappers, holding a hammer, and with some ketchup on his cheek. Donna tells him about the ketchup. “Oh, I’ve got ketchup everywhere. Moving at that speed, it’s like walking through a condiment tornado.” Nightwing tells them they have a few days, that Catwoman’s been doing some recon for him on the inside, and that’s as much time as they can safely delay before Joker’s likely to get bored and just start killing people to amuse himself.

Montage of them working through the heist stuff. Canary’s phone goes off. She’s got a show at Two-Face’s casino. Arrow goes with her, in civilian clothes. While there, they get a formal invite from Roulette, telling them a car will pick them up, in costume, after her show.

Two-Face is aggressive with Canary, and she flashes back to Black Mask from Birds of Prey, clearly still traumatized by their relationship. But Arrow is there, and comforts her enough that she puts on a brave face (pun!). Canary gets a musical number; Arrow watches Two-Face to see if there’s anything he can apply to their heist, later.

Arrow and Canary grab their ride and arrive at the Snoop House. She’s tired, and is looking forward to sleeping. “Sleeping?” Green Arrow asks, pretending he’s disappointed. She says she doesn’t trust this place enough to break wind in the bathroom, she’s not letting him as much as give her a courtly peck on the cheek. He agrees. But… there’s an expensive bottle of wine on the table. Arrow doesn’t trust it, but Canary uses a sonic cry to test the seal- the bottle is still sealed. Atom climbs through the cork, and tells Canary through an earpiece that he checked it on the atomic level- it’s clean, and it’s nowhere near enough alcohol to get three adults even tipsy- or two, yeah, he meant two, because he’s not here. Arrow is still uncertain, but Canary says she’s going to open it, and cries at the perfect pitch to pop the cork, then tells him either he’ll help her drink it or he won’t.

We cut to a bar, as the last of five bottles of beer are opened up. “This feels weird,” Wally says. “Doing this. When the last time we did this, we weren’t even old enough to do this. You know what I mean.” Donna relates that they were Teen Titans, then- or 3/5 of them were. Nightwing is apologetic to Black Lightning, for not inviting him to join the team. He tells them he’s older than them, he was like nineteen and a half by the time their team ‘debuted,’ that even if he’d wanted to join a team, he would have had only a few months before he was no longer a teen. Plus, he wasn’t much of a joiner, back then, so it’s cool.

“I was living in Italy with assassins,” Huntress adds. “Not, uh, really eligible.” Things are a little awkward, since the group haven’t been a group long, and even those that were haven’t seen each other in a while. So they decide to play some have you ever. Wally starts with he’s never made out with Nightwing, and Donna and Huntress drink. Huntress, either stewing or not quite getting the game, says she’s never made out with Donna. Wally and Nightwing drink, and they explain that the Teen Titans were basically one of those high school parties where everyone paired off and made out with everyone else- only kinkier because everyone was wearing masks, but still, pretty chaste, all things considered- since no one wanted to screw up the team by really pairing off. Which only makes things more awkward with Huntress.

Wally suggest they spin one “or several” of the bottles they’ve emptied, Black Lightning says he’s too old for “this shit,” and bounces. Nightwing realizes they all probably are, but it just means the rapport they build will be built of stronger stuff. He suggests they call it a night.

We cut to Arrow, still wearing his mask, rolling over in bed, curling into Canary. She’s wearing a wedding dress, which causes him to stir, and realize he’s wearing a tux. And they have matching wedding rings. Strewn across the very messy bed are rose petals and Polaroids of their drunken night of debauchery, including a stop off at an instant wedding chapel. Some of the Polaroids would seem to imply they’ve consummated their relationship. Arrow wakes Canary, frantic.

They freak out together, each blaming the other for things getting out of hand, as they spiral further out of hand, and they start pushing each other. Green Arrow tries to stop her early in, saying, “I don’t understand everything that’s going on here, Di, but I’m not going to raise a hand to the woman I love- I won’t be that guy.”

She has no such compunction, saying something like, ”I’m not going to let another man terrorize me ever again,” before belting him. She’s having trouble keeping him and Black Mask separate in her head. We cut to the gladiator arena, where a crapload of spectators, including some of the villains from this movie, bidding on the victor, as expensive looking fight graphics play on the Jumbotron: Green Arrow vs. Black Canary.

Canary throws him through a dresser, and out of it spill his bow and lots of green arrows. He spends a moment searching for something nonlethal, “My fortune for a taser arrow, or a knock-out gas arrow, or even a damned net,” she kicks him in the stomach. He finally picks up a regular arrow (they’re all regular arrows) and notches it. She punches the arrow in half, before punching him in the throat. “Thought you said I was getting better,” he strains.

“Better don’t mean good,” she says, knocking him out. She takes a few steps, realizing she doesn’t feel right. She tries raising her dad, saying they definitely were dosed with something- she’s not hungover, she knows what that feels like. He doesn’t respond, which confirms her concern.

The phone rings. It’s Roulette. Canary’s pissed off that Roulette dosed them and made them think they got married and had sex. She confronts her about putting steroids in the air, maybe something else, too. She cops to it, and tells Canary that Atom’s gear disappeared. But she’s pretty sure the owner took it back, and Ray into the bargain, and Roulette has another way she can find him- when he was in her office, Roulette placed a tracker on him. In her nightstand is the tracker.

We cut to Atom. He comes to, tied to a chair. He tries to shrink, but his equipment won’t work. “Oh, Ray,” she says, “equipment not working? Funny, that was how I found out about you and Black Canary, back in the day. You were a naughty boy, then, Ray. Have you been naughty now?”

“You? What the hell’s going on?” Ray asks.

The next day, Canary and Arrow talk to Nightwing. He originally was confronting them about sneaking out- and how the team need them focused. Canary bursts like a dam, telling him that her father’s in town, helping look for her mother’s killer, but he’s been taken. Nightwing turns on a dime, no longer concerned about their heists; his family were killed, and clearly he was raised in a family that is motivated by hunting family-killers. He’s laser-focused on hunting the killer with her; it is the most like Batman we will ever see him, though he’s warmer, and more personally supportive at the same time, to the degree that Arrow is a little concerned about Nightwing horning in; no one else validates his insecurity (which only makes it funnier).

Nightwing goes to the others, and brings them up to speed, how this is about saving Canary’s father and avenging her mother. “Avenging?” Huntress asks, perking up. He reiterates they want nonlethal capture; Canary wants to know what happened with her mother, not a corpse. Huntress is hurt; not just disappointed, but hurt.

They cancel the day’s practice, in favor of riding out immediately. They roll up on the safehouse Atom’s being held in.

We cut inside. Atom’s still captive. His captor tries to give him something to eat, even as we see on security feeds that the Outsiders have arrived. Atom’s preoccupied with talking to his kidnapper. “Jean? Honey, what’s going on.” She’s standoffish, but gets close enough for him to grab her, only for him to gently take her hand. “Please,” he pleads, his voice rife with emotion, “Jean, talk to me.” We see Nightwing finish picking the lock on the front door even as Black Lightning electrocutes the cameras, shorting the feed.

She gasps. Wanting him to play cops and robbers with her was the only thing that was keeping her going. “Ray, I…” She crumbles.

She’ll narrate some of a flashback. Jean loved Ray Palmer from the moment they first met. She played hard to get, before letting him woo her; part of her was worried he’d be like other men who gave up after the conquest, and the rest because she was truly worried about how much she wanted him. And for a moment, it was magical, everything she’d imagined. And then Ray joined the Justice Society, and started working with Black Canary. She was beautiful, and fit, and always walking around in those fishnets and that tight, revealing little outfit. She couldn’t compete, especially not with the endorphins of fighting for their lives. And when half their team disappeared, she especially couldn’t compete with their shared grief. Ray left her a long time before he left her. And she never stopped wanting him back. She followed him, figuring out where he kept his surplus equipment. She snagged one of his older suits- not the oldest, which he kept for nostalgia, or the newest, which he was always tinkering on, but one of the surplus ones, one he might not be sure really was missing at all.

She tried to scare Canary off several times. She gave her a handful of close calls. She leaked her identity to the police, to the papers, even to villains. Finally, she thought, maybe she could make Canary forget Ray. She went inside her mind, and started screwing with linkages, and accidentally caused an aneurism. She called Canary an ambulance, but it was Gotham, in one of the neighborhoods where the cops can take hours to show, and where an ambulance won’t come without the cops. Long before anybody came, Canary was gone. Jean panicked, and to cover her tracks, she shot Canary in the head.

It screwed her up. She and Canary had been friendly. They were rivals, sure, she was even willing to hurt Canary to take her place at Ray’s side, but did not want to harm her, not seriously or permanently. She was a broken woman when Ray, hurting over what happened to Canary, reached out. She hadn’t wanted that, but in that moment they truly, desperately needed each other. Their love, their years together, were genuine and heartfelt, even though they were built on a despicable act.

As she finishes telling her story, we realize that Black Canary has been in the room basically since the story started. Jean throws herself at Canary’s feet, seeing how much she looks like her mother, and that blurring the lines enough for her that for an instant she thinks she’s Canary’s ghost, and not her daughter. She pleads with her to forgive her- that she wanted Canary to forget Ray- she didn’t want to hurt her. Canary asks Atom, who Nightwing has cut free, what’s going on. He’s a ghost, himself, telling her that he didn’t want to introduce her under these circumstances, but this is his wife, Jean Loring. They married a year after Canary died; he just lost the will to play superhero after that; even seeing his old costumes made him weep.

“All I wanted was to be the love of your life,” Jean whimpers, collapsing to the floor.

“Instead, you killed her,” Ray says, hollowed out. “This is all my fault.”

“No,” Canary says, hugging him, “it’s not.”

“This, uh, isn’t usually the way this goes,” Nightwing says. “There’s usually more punching.”

“Yeah,” Black Lightning says, “bet that hurts a lot less.”

“So what do we do with her?” Donna asks.

“I just looked it up,” Green Arrow says, “and statute of limitations on any kind of negligent homicide is long since past.”

“Dad?” Canary asks.

“She needs help,” Atom says. “I haven’t always been the best partner; God knows, I’ll always have to wonder if any of this would have happened if I were a better man, but I won’t abandon her again. I’m going to make sure she gets the help she needs.”

This is a perhaps overly somber moment, and we need to transition out of it, but not without letting the characters heal. I think Nightwing does a little wrap-up, back at the hotel. “I think today was a good reminder, for me. Sometimes, with the Titans, we could get wrapped up in the silly, fun aspects of being us. There were times I didn’t take it seriously enough, where I wasn’t able to stop and see the human cost underneath. I’m not saying,” (and here he does his Batman voice), “We should all be more like Batman. Because we shouldn’t. I’m not even sure he should be. We all have to learn to be the best Donna, the best Wally, the best Helena-“

“I prefer ‘Huntress.'”

“The best Huntress, then. Because we still have a job to do. There’s a lot of dirty money flowing through these casinos, funding a lot of the kinds of human misery we often don’t see up close like this. And more than ever, we need to shut it down, because we know how much it’s going to hurt people if we don’t.”

We cut to Arrow and Canary’s room. He’s holding her, when there’s a knock at the door. Atom comes in, and takes over, and father and daughter hold one another. Later, Arrow brings them coffee, where they sit looking out of the balcony. She’s holding her dad’s hand, and rests her head on Arrow’s shoulder as the sun begins to set.

Montage of more prepping for the heists. Included are little moments for each of them, like this one: “Are you sure you can make the shot?” Nightwing asks. We speed through the air as Arrow fires again. There are several arrows stuck to the middle ring of a target, but none in the center, which would allow the shot to slip through the slit between the barely opened faux vaultdoor.

We do the heist montages, with just enough moments spent with each villain and their pairings to feel like they’re not just generic villains from the Oceans movies. Nightwing and Huntress take on the Joker. This one will likely be the most fraught, because Joker’s figured them out, and re-masks them amongst his henchpeople, with masks he cut from the cloth napkins used in the restaurant inside the casino. Joker gets to monolog and threaten, wondering aloud which of the ways he could murder them would hurt Batman the most, intercut with the other heists. Eventually, Joker says he’s bored, and will just transform all of them into homicidal Jokers, and tries to blow the explosives. Nightwing leans into Huntress and tells her that’s why they stopped at the Wild their first night in town, that Joker was bound to do something like this. They fight their way out, leaving Joker knocked out.

Two-Face likewise figures them out, because the Joker got a lot less morose a few days before. So he captures Green Arrow and tells him that he’s going to put his ideals on trial- that he can choose to be the new man he’s promised through his press agent, more focused on the group, or the selfish man who is going to save the woman he loves, and can walk out scott free. He’s about to answer when Wally, panting in the middle of the desert, standing on top of a large pile of explosives, calls over an earpiece to Arrow that he’s finished. Canary tells him if he doesn’t answer the question first she will collapse his lungs. He offers to let Two-Face shoot him; that losing her he would never be a whole man, but he couldn’t be either, if he let all those people die. He’d rather take a bullet himself. Two-Face flips his coin, tells him that wasn’t an option, but he’ll gladly shoot him and Canary both- that he’s always been a sucker for a tragic love story. That’s when Nightwing and Huntress arrive, and help finish off Two-Face.

The Royal Flush is the most bombastic of the three. When King tries to call the other casinos to tell them that they’ve been compromised, Donna tells him he can’t be weak in front of the other villains. Black Lightning appears, and tells her their communications are fried, and she tells King he can be as weak as he wants, then. Troy and Lightning have trouble with all five members… until the rest of the Outsiders arrive, and help them mop up.

Finally, there’s the Blockbuster. This one is a lot more straightforward, since the heroes all have to show as civilians. They manage, with Green Arrow’s shot, to block the vault open with an arrow. Then they empty the vault. Blockbuster himself, not believing they could have thwarted his security or his plans, ends up in the empty vault. He tells his assistant to liquidate everything, and get him a charter to Santa Prisca. He needs to buy sanctuary with the King Snakes, because they never cleaned their money through the casino, and therefore are the only ones who might help hide him.

Pre-Credits scene: Arrow and Canary wake up in a hotel room.

“Oliver, why am I in a wedding dress?”

“Because it looked so elegant on you I insisted we take it.”

“And why am I wearing a ring that’s heavy enough I actually feel the weight of it?”

“Ring?” he sits up, bleary-eyed. “Oh,” he says, furrowing his brow, “I suspect because it’s the match to mine.”

“This can’t be legal.”

“I believe the important question is do you want it to be?”

“Not today.”‘

“Fair enough. Though I imagine we keep landing in this position because on some level it’s where we want to end up.”

“Also because you bought some ridiculously good champagne.”

“Ridiculously good champagne notwithstanding.”

“You asking, or telling?”

“You want me to ask, I’m going to need to borrow that rock,” he says, and gets down on one knee. She pulls him up to his feet and kisses him, and we cut away.

Green Arrow is discussing with Nightwing the possibility of hiring on a Green Lantern to up their game as they’re packing up their hotel rooms. He tells Ollie that great minds think alike as John Stewart lands. “I know just the guy,” he says, since then it’s a fun mislead.

Jason Todd calls Dick Grayson, wishing he’d had a crack at the Joker. “Wouldn’t that have been two-cracks? I hear you’re all about the art of the double-tap these days.”

“You can stick to playing touch football with these psychopaths, if you want, but I’ll tell you, brother from another mother, they aren’t playing the same game of patty-cake with you.”

“I’m not usually one to cast the first stone, but there’s plenty of people who’ve used the ‘P’ word to describe you.”

“Pussy.”

“No, the other one.”

“No, I was calling you one for pussy-footing around the word: psychopaths. That’s what they are. Deranged. Unstable. And yeah, I’m on a lot less even of a keel since their Clown Prince tortured me for months. I get about thirteen solid minutes of sleep between nightmares that the bastard still has me chained up in his basement. But we’re not talking about your garden variety mental health patients, here; these are people who revel in it. Who get off on the pain they cause. Believe me, no one looks forward to the day I can hang up my guns for good more than me.” He sighs. “Look, all I really want to know is whether or not you hit him extra hard for me.”

Dick hesitates a moment. “Always. And I know I give you crap. It’s not because I want to, or-“

“To prove you’re teacher’s pet?”

“We both know that’s Barbara.”

“I think you know Barbara a lot more thoroughly than I do.”

“Boundaries, man. And I want to know you’re okay. I can’t even imagine what you went through.”

“You? Probably not. But Dad? I was the one who had to talk him down. I didn’t need that, you know, but seeing it, it almost made the whole thing worth it. To know how much we matter to him, if only for a moment. That’s screwed up, isn’t it?”

“It is. Whole family’s screwed up like that. But you don’t dress like we do and have our kind of nightlife if you had a healthy childhood.”

“Barb kinda did.”

“Yeah…”

“And from the way you’ve talked about the circus it doesn’t sound like such a bad way to grow up… you know, until the tragedy.”

“Yeah. Tragedy does always kind of screw things up.”

“It’s weird, how many of us there are, now. I remember when it was just the three of us, and you and dad were barely talking…”

“It’s still weird to me to think of him as ‘dad.'”

“It helps being tortured by a maniac. Sort of peels away the emotional detachment. But my point was we were a weird little family. A dad. And an older brother slash dirty uncle who didn’t get along with him. And now there’s I’ve lost count how many Robins. Batwoman. At least one Batgirl, with a bunch of Birds of Prey hanging around her. And most of us join or even lead teams of our own.”

“Makes sense,” Dick said. “Just a bunch of orphans trying to figure out where we belong.”

“Yeah.” Jason pauses a beat. “You hit him really damn hard, right?”

“Thought I broke my jaw, his hand, or both, for a second there.”

“You think dad would ever forgive me, if I put a bullet in him?”

“I’ve known Bruce a really long time, and I don’t think it’s about what you’ve done, Jason. I think it’s about what you’re going to do. We all make mistakes, you know? But trying to be better than you were- I think that’s what matters most.”

“Doesn’t sound like a yes, though.”

“I don’t know, man. If I had to guess, if he felt like you couldn’t help it, like you had no choice, he’d forgive you. I think if you did it because you want to, on the hope he’d forgive you anyway… then I really don’t know. What he’s built, it’s bigger than any one of us. You killing someone you could take in, that might bring the whole thing crumbling down. And even then, I think he’d want to forgive you. But this thing he built, he built it so we didn’t have to be alone. You take that from him- from all of us, and I just don’t know, man.” We cut away.

I think at the end, Ollie decides to spend a little more on the team. This is revealed from him ‘souping up’ their Winnebago, which he demonstrate by blowing the horn, which now plays ‘La Cucaracha.’ The Outsiders give him crap for this, then he says that it also does this, and flicks a switch, and the exterior transforms into a sleek, green “Arrow car.” After a moment, the inside increases, morphing to show a state of the art mobile headquarters inside, as well. Ollie plays this off as having used the ill-gotten gains from the criminal’s portions of the heists… but Dick knows how much this kind of Batman-tech costs, and Ollie cops to using some of his fortune on it. Turns out, selectively leasing tech from Wayne Enterprises and Kord Industries, given what those companies do with their profits, is another way to do good with his fortune.

November 24, 2021November 24, 2021

Relevant Review: Matt Fraction’s Hawkguy, er, Hawkeye

I promise I didn’t start this review with the intention of upselling you. It began with the best of intentions. I had read the first two volumes on Comixology Unlimited (1 and 2) way back when, then got the Omnibus for myself on the strength of that when it was on sale for 8 bucks and change. Rereading them for this review, the problem with those first two volumes, strong though they were, is they didn’t tell a complete story. It basically ends right in the damn middle, and it’s hard to accurately review Romeo and Juliet at the midpoint. It is similarly incomplete through Kindle Unlimited (1 and 2) the whole thing is available on Marvel Comics Unlimited (plus the setup issue), so there really is no pressure to spring for the fancy volume unless you want to.

Before we get into the story, a warning: I expect this series will include some of what the Hawkeye series will cover. I imagine the dialog will be less manic, and I don’t believe for an instant that Renner can be as charismatic as the Hawkeye written in here. Second, it’s good, and if you’ve a mind to read it unspoiled, you should do that first.

This is Hawkeye as he should have always been in the MCU. Full of personality, manic energy and also a self-loathing streak a mile wide; they basically stole Hawkeye’s personality and gave it to Iron Man, so when it came time to introduce Hawkeye, they made him ‘default white guy’ levels of boring. Making him a family man could have even been interesting on a team full of virgins and confirmed bachelors. But somehow that made him even less interesting, and also now harder to kill.

Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye is a flawed guy, the kind of sad sack who probably couldn’t figure out how to apply for a used car loan, let alone qualify for it, and he knows it. And I dig it. I don’t care how healthy your self-esteem is, if you hang out with Thor, Cap, Iron Man, and Hulk… there’s going to be moments when you recognize how much you can’t hack it. And Hawkeye works best when he’s that guy trying to do the job, even knowing he’d feel better if there were someone bigger, stronger, smarter, whatever who could do it in his stead. This is a Hawkeye whose feet are so firmly stuck in clay that it threatens to arrest his development permanently, but as the story progresses, you get to see him, at least in part, become the Avenger the world needs him to be.

He’s also an arrogant, selfish, self-destructive jerk; depending on your tolerance for a protagonist who hates himself, it could be hard, but for me, at least, there’s always enough humanity inside Clint to where I get it. He doesn’t want to be a jerk, but he’s that prototypical guy who can’t get out of his own way, or stop alienating his friends and loved ones, that when he’s trying to do the right thing is when he’s the biggest danger to himself and others.

The story involves Hawkeye using some ill-gotten villain loot to purchase a building at bowpoint. This building happens to be owned by the Russian mob, who own every building in a three block radius and have a large real estate scheme cooking.

The series begins with Hawkeye taking on Kate Bishop as a ward, a trainee, to help her be the best Hawkeye she can be. Kate, for the uninitiated, is a reasonably wealthy person who picked up Hawkeye’s bow during the period when the Avengers were gone, having been disassembled by the Scarlet Witch. Hawkeye’s death, in particular, was dumb, supposedly because his quiver, filled with explosives and combustibles, eschewed any basic ideas of safety (like a catch to quickly remove it) despite his working for years with some of the best designers on his planet. I… really can’t recommend it; Avengers shouldn’t go out due to what basically comes down to an OSHA violation.

But what starts as a relatively typical junior partner relationship very quickly unravels, because Clint is in no way in control of enough of his life to be an expert on anything other than hitting a target with an arrow (which Kate’s already pretty good with). She slides more into the Alfred to his Batman role, trying to save him from himself, trying to buy him time and space enough to be able to pick himself out of his self-destructive cycle, including at one point running interference with an old flame, an ex-wife and a friend/girl whose relationship no one quite has a handle on.

But she can’t save him;.no one can save Clint Barton from himself. He starts up a doomed romance with a thief, and ends up getting himself arrested helping her try to steal something to guarantee her safety, which dovetails with the central plot about Clint’s building- they’re part of the same mob he essentially stole the building from.

This same mob gets special dispensation from the Kingpin and the other members of the underworld’s upper crust to whack Hawkguy; part of the reason is, they figure if they fail, it’ll blow back on them, and if they succeed, they get a free dead Avenger.

There’s also a lengthy subplot of Kate pissing off Madame Masque by originally impersonating her to save Clint’s butt, and then having to dodge the femme fatale across a Chandler-esque detective story set in LA. It elevates Kate from supporting player to the Other Hawkeye, as the story bounces back and forth between the two of them on opposite ends of the country, before bringing them back together for the finale.

But you don’t read this Hawkguy for the plot, because the plot is just kind of the thread linking nearly two-dozen days in the life. The stories of Hawkguy just barbecuing on the roof with his neighbors, helping a neighbor survive a hurricane, or working with Tony Stark to untangle the cords on his entertainment center are where the book really grows on you. Just look at this page. It is a masterclass of economic but deep visual storytelling.

And sure, there’s plenty of heroics here to sate, as well, but where this book really is different is in the tragicomic moments between, for which David Aja’s beautiful, simplified art is the perfect companion. Now, that might sound like a slight, bit it’s not. I love hyperdetailed art as much as the next unfortunate soul to come of comics-reading age in the 90s, and most days I’d rather something approaching photoreal than impressionist. But Aja’s art is gorgeous, deftly giving you just the right amount of detail to beautifully craft the story, while making sure the page as a whole is functional art, too. I don’t really think I can explain it, so on that strength alone I’d suggest at least flipping through.

Want even more? My first suggestion would be Fraction’s nearly 60-issue Invincible Iron Man run; he breaks Tony down, from the fascist clown who largely instigated the comic book Civil War for what amounted to “Reasons” (with all due respect to his writers at the time), and rebuilds Tony as a humbler, but also still very Tony Iron Man. I’m honestly surprised; when I read Civil War I thought the damage was permanent, that I would never again be able to enjoy the monster that Stark became, but Fraction pulled it off (and it only took 5 years). If you’re looking for something a little more Hawkguy, the issue of Avenging Spider-Man (#4, to be precise) guest-starring Hawkeye gets at some of his stubborn, idiot pride (and sadness) that I think lies at the heart of him, and is worth a read. I believe Aja also worked on a Sc arle t Witch book with James Robinson, if I’m not mistaken, so that might be worth checking out, too, though I haven’t read it yet to give an impression (though it’s likely only a matter of time before I do- and I might do a review of it to pin to WandaVision).

November 23, 2021November 21, 2021

Nexus 3, Chapter 11

“I’m not sure about this,” Bill said. He was anxious, anxious enough he was fiddling with his restraints instead of locking them. “If they’re close enough for a firing solution, isn’t slowing up to check their tech just getting them closer to the target?”

“Buckle,” I told him. “We only have a preliminary scan of the atmospheric contents; we could be in for a bumpy landing.”

“Why do you think I took the pilot seat?” he asked, but he did secure his restraint. “I’ve seen your flight scores. There was no way I was letting you or Templeton land.”

I got a copy of his scores pulled up before I realized he was full of crap; he didn’t have access to either of our scores, not as head of engineering. Maybe Dave could have taken a peek, but Bill was blustering. Still, his scores were good, better than mine, and unless Elle spent a while working on her flight skills he was a better choice than her, too. Didn’t mean I had to give him the satisfaction of confirming it, though. “There’s plenty to be learned,” I said. “Like where these were fired from. If they were fired from Earth, a nearer colony, something left in the wake of the Argus or if this is the Nascent. Learning about the tech they’re using could help us deal with a subsequent shot- or even figure out if there’s a way to redirect ourselves to make it harder for them to follow. Regardless, the Nexus is coming back for us- complaining now isn’t going to change that.”

“We could tell them not to bother,” he suggested.

“And murder us?” Elle asked.

“Three people compared to, what, a thousand lives, at this point?”

“Four,” Elle said, touching her belly.

“Even if you gave that order, do you think Haley or Dave would listen to it?” I asked.

“No, and that’s why we shouldn’t have gotten on the shuttle in the first place.”

“Well, we’re on it,” Elle said. “And until we see what they fired at us, we aren’t going to know if this was a fool’s errand, so we need to stow the dissention. Because I’ll remind you, if we spend the trip down with you bitching, he has at least an equal amount of time to ride you on the way back. And incentive to keep it up even back on the ship.”

“Yeah,” Bill said, with a sigh. “Besides, we’re dropping onto an unsurveyed world, and we should be focusing on making whatever plan we can. Example- the spearhead hit with enough mass and speed to cause the equivalent of a nuclear detonation. Looks like the suits should be able to handle the fallout, no pun intended but we should keep an eye on sensors- no reason for us to open any of our systems clogging or overheating. And… goddamnit. Are you sure it’s too early to deploy an ‘I told you so?’”

“What’s the situation?” I asked, leaning to try to be able to better see the instrument panel, because trying to access it through an eyescreen would be tough without knowing which needle in his haystack was irritating him.

“Probes didn’t initially find life on this world. That’s because this species buries itself deep within caves underground, too deep for an atmospheric scan to pick up. But apparently nuking them from space has riled them up. They’re massing.”

“Nope,” Elle said, drawing his attention to several other points, “they’re staging. Maybe it’s an emergency response; presumably they’d have children and elders who wouldn’t be a part of military staging- but it could be both, security forces massing at some locations, disaster shelters in others. That means the odds of resistance go up significantly.”

“Maybe Bill’s right,” I said. “Maybe the cost of whatever we might here learn isn’t worth it.”

“We’ve already paid half that cost by losing some of our head start to stop here in the first place,” Elle said, turning her frustration on me.

“Doesn’t mean we should throw good advantage after bad.”

“I’m not chasing a sunk cost. But stop thinking with your genes, for a second. If it weren’t me, if it weren’t your daughter, it would be worth it, no question. The next one of these spearheads could hit the Nexus if we don’t use this opportunity to figure out how to stop them. It’s a good risk to take, even if you’re not keen on who is being risked.”

“She’s right, Drew,” Bill said.

“Wait, now even you are abandoning your position?” I asked, pointing at Bill. “Is it just a knee-jerk opposition to me?”

“No. She’s right, and persuasive. We’re past the point of no return on this- so we might as well try and get a return on the investments we sunk into it.”

“What’s our situation like?” I asked.

Bill sighed, and shared the environmental scans the ship had managed as we descended. “Atmosphere is thick; think midway between a hearty chicken and a heavy pea soup. Means the atomized particles are going to be denser at the point of impact. It might function as cover, or might get into literally everything and destroy, in order, our suits, our ship, our health, our futures, and any will to restrain ourselves from choking out our glorious leader.”

“So from an environmental standpoint things aren’t rosy. What’s the security sitrep?” I asked.

“Well,” Elle said, in a sing-songy way I remembered from Dalaxia and a handful of other briefings where we were dog-paddling our way up Shit Creek but she really didn’t want to be the one to put a hole in our morale canoe, “we’re up against a massing force of unknown strength, wielding unknown levels of tech. And without a commbox or even a rudimentary way of communicating with them. We don’t know if they’re coming just to see what’s going on, or if they’re going to come at us with the intention of shooting first and letting their gods sort it out. Or if they eat their still-living enemies; or hate-fuck them to death. In other words, you and I are going to cover Bill. He’s going to get whatever scans he can, or carry away whatever pieces he can to pull apart back on the Nexus. Time’s going to be of the essence, because they can probably overtake us through sheer numbers, and all of that ignores that we’re likely going to face more than rocks and sharpened sticks wielded with some degree of magnitude more complicated tactics than children on a playground.”

“And we all still think we should proceed, circumstances be damned?” I asked.

“We should,” Bill said. “And you should both know I sent a message to the Nexus, telling them exactly how fucked this mission is, and that if they don’t hear from us when it’s time to do their gravity-assisted turn to come back for us- that they should assume we’re gone and proceed without us. You’ve got about ten seconds if you want to try to send a competing message out before the dust kills our ability to get a signal out through all the debris.”

“No,” I said. “We finish the mission or they should leave our bodies where we fall.”

Elle gasped. “I can’t believe you’d say that about your daughter,” she said.

“You have never been that kind of woman- or mother.”

“Can you imagine?” she asked, eyeing the munitions cabinets while pulling on her restraints. “It’s taking every last kilo of willpower not to be counting how many shots are in the rifles.”

“You already know.”

“I know. But you count them in case some asshole didn’t refill them.”

“And I bet you’ve counted them since this shuttle last left the Nexus, too. And could probably tell me when both counts happened.”

“I know,” she said, a little deflated. “But it helps calm my nerves.”

“Well, as soon as our pilot tells us it’s safe, I’ll help you count them, okay?” I reached across the aisle between seats along either wall. She had to strain similarly to take hold of the tips of my fingers.

And if you didn’t know her as well as I did, you might not have caught the tiny little hitch in her voice as she said, “Okay,” back.

November 22, 2021November 21, 2021

Nexus 3, Chapter 10

“I still think this should have been a manned flight,” Bill said.

“And you’re one of two people who are the reason it isn’t,” Elle said, “and I will box both of your ears if either of you complain about it again.”

“Why is she here?” he whispered me, but loud enough she was supposed to hear it.

“Because I don’t trust you,” she said. “And the council doesn’t trust you. And we voted for me to be here officially, to not trust you in an official capacity.”

“You won’t win, Bill,” I told him. “All you can do is try to lose with a little dignity.”

“Is that what happened to yours?” he asked with a smile. “Years of ball-busting.”

“I can’t tell if that’s you joining in on the ball-busting, or deflecting to preserve your dignity.”

“You all know it isn’t actually easy to fly this thing by remote near the Nexus, keeping it within range of our signal but not getting close enough either to clip the ship or ricochet some rocks into our path?” Dave asked from the improvised control setup.

“My sensors indicate an incoming projectile,” Haley said over all of our comms. Most of us looked at Dave, assuming he’d flown enough off course that he’d set off some perimeter alarms. He knew better.

“Projectile?” Dave asked. “No, I see it on the probe’s sensors, now. It looks like one of our probes. I’m going to buzz it.”

Haley shared the view from the probe’s cockpit, including the HUD overlay that a pilot would see if they were flying it. The probe zoomed past the projectile.

“It’s definitely not manned,” Dave said. “No space for a human being, none of the engineering compromises you’d have to make to keep a person alive.”

“Projectile is gaining on the Nexus,” Haley said.

“Can we maneuver out of its path?” I asked.

“Not fast enough,” Dave said. “It’s going to clip us- unless- standby.” I felt the acceleration of the probe as if I was lurching forward within its cockpit. Then I saw the probe zoom forward, impacting the projectile. Suddenly the feed cut, and instead Haley was sharing a diagram, showing nearby worlds, and the three vessels with their trajectory, including the impact of the two. A projected trajectory beyond the impact put the projectile landing on world. “We need to get down there,” I said. “Right now. Dave stays, but the rest of us are going down there. We don’t have time to dink around planning a mission. We need to drop in a shuttle before we get out of range. We’re running, now!”

November 19, 2021November 5, 2021

Pitchgiving 2021, part 10: Justice Society 2: Marvelous

We start slice of life. We follow Billy Batson on a typical day as a young orphan. At one point, he daydreams, as he touches an invitation, embossed, fancy, old-fashioned, from the Justice Society inviting Captain Marvel to attend. After school, he talks with whichever of the other orphans it makes sense to bring along, mostly because I love Adam Brody, I’d make it Freddy. They start, as kids, discussing the opportunity/responsibility of being called by the Justice Society, then walk past a tree, and out of the other side stroll their superhero counterparts, continuing the conversation seamlessly.

Billy’s reluctant, but Freddy is excited, that these are the big leagues, and this isn’t like Mary hanging out with those Justice Losers, the society have been around for ages- and the old Shazam was one of them, there’s a legacy here.

We cut to the Justice Society’s hall, now returned to its former glory. Shazam strolls in, and before any of them can say anything else asks why they called his predecessor the Big Red Cheese. One of the old-timers explains, “Chuck was a kid in a man’s body, just as naïve as you’d imagine that would be. Smart, you know, wisdom of Solomon and all, but without the life experience. He spent a good ten years emulating heroes from radio serials, catch-phrases and all, squinting so he’d look like the old Fleischer heroes. I remember one time he pulled Power Girl out of the way of a falling building and she kissed him, and he turned beet red for a week; he was as red as his suit.”

Shazam, growing concerned, asks about references to him in the past tense. “Like I said. Chuck was a kid. He spent years transformed, because that was what the world needed. Then we lost half our team, dumped into the modern era, we know now, but back then… we thought they were gone. It broke him. For the first time in years he changed back. And he was still just a kid, a kid who could not handle that kind of personal tragedy; I wouldn’t be playing straight with you if I said any of us handled it well. And half of it was that we needed him, sure, but the other was he was too damned scared to change back, to have to face that world as an innocent little kid. Anyways, he decided to grow up. He still helped us, time and again, when the needs got big enough. But he got married. Think he had a couple girls. Been a long time since he said the magic word, kid. I imagine that’s why the wizard chose himself another champion. And it’s been too long since the Justice Society had a Captain Marvel knocking around.”

Billy frowns. He doesn’t like that name. He prefers “Shazam.”

Which leads to murmuring. “Like the Shaquille O’Neal genie movie?” One asks, while another says, “That was Kazaam.” And another asks if it’s like the app for recognizing a song.

Mister Terrific butts in. We’ll use this as an excuse to introduce at least the characters he mentions, with a title in the bottom of the screen for them when he mentions them. “Give the kid a break. We can’t all be named after a roller coaster (Wildcat), a 1970s prog-rock band (Flash), European folklore (Sandman), a semi-precious stone (Obsidian), or another semi-precious stone (Jade), or a color and a semi-random light-emitting object (Green Lantern). Or taking a vague descriptor and a quaintly old-fashioned gendered label (Power Girl), I guess we could suggest he go by Lightning Lad.” Stargirl makes a disapproving face (and we get to label her, too).

“I do like the rhyme-scheme of Mister Terrific,” Shazam says, “even if it does make you sound like a pro wrestler.”

“Oh yeah!” Terrific bellows in his best Macho Man voice; if Slim Jim are willing to pony up for the product placement, it would go here. Shazam says they’re all a bunch of lunatics, aren’t they, to which Terrific, again in his best Macho Man, says, “Oh yeah!” One of the ones who would have been around in the 80s asks if he’s doing Kool Aid Man. One that wasn’t, says they aren’t familiar with that superhero.

Terrific and Stargirl (because I still like the idea of the pair of them as a couple- plus I like them passing the torch of the wide-eyed POV character on to Shazam for this one) give him the tour. Terrific tells them the Society is just that, a society, one meant to last generations, carrying on the group’s ideals and legacies. The Hawks, for example, aren’t the same as the ones who were part of the team with his predecessor; they’re a pair of star-crossed lovers who reincarnate, find one another, die tragically and heroically, then reincarnate all over again- like if Romeo and Juliet could fly and had a penchant for smashing monsters with magic hammers. How even though Atom’s retired, he and his daughter, the current Black Canary, are always willing to lend a hand should anyone need it. Shazam asks how often they end up needing to call in all the reserves (with a hint that he has a few he can call in- oh yeah, for 3 we’re definitely calling in all the Marvels, er, Shazams).

Hanging around is a character related to someone wearing a costume similar to the Al Pratt Atom/Damage. The idea, here, is that Ray Palmer was the 2^nd Atom, after Al, learning from him first as a physics student, before taking after him as a hero. It was Ray who pioneered the Atom’s shrinking gimmick, though. After the disruption of the Justice Society, Ray would work with Pratt’s grandson, who became Atom Smasher, as well as his son, the original Damage, as a mentor. While Damage died in the line of duty, it was always believed he had a son, and that son eventually emerges, and is here, largely in the background as we start. He is named David Reid. He focuses his powers through a lance, but he’s also had military training, rising to the position of Lance Corporal. He’s also got a glowing eye and a robot arm; so I’m not hiding the pea, here, David Reid will eventually become Magog over the course of the next two movies, even if right now he largely hasn’t adopted the Egyptian theming quite as much (it’s a process, owing to his near-death that led to his cybernetics)

I think there are already factions forming. Terrific plays coy, because Stargirl is there… because she’s leaning towards the more extremist faction, while he feels more constrained because he’s one of the leaders, towards the more compassionate side. But the tensions are palpable, and when David asks her to spar, she gladly joins him for some pretty brutal combat, also freeing Terrific to be candid with Shazam.

“To be honest, I’m glad you’re here. The old Marvel, he, they talk about him like he was the best of us. Our moral compass, that ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ thing wasn’t just marketing copy, he knew the right thing to do, not just for him, but for all of us. He was Superman, before he ever came to the planet.”

“And why do you need that? Isn’t Superman enough?”

“Lot of these people remember a world without a Superman- and I’m not just talking that siesta he took. The big blue boyscout’s a fine example for younger, less jaded recruits, but the old timers, or the hard-cases? He’s too ideal. When you’ve got that much power, you can spare some to show mercy. When you’re just an old kickboxer past his prime,”

“I heard that,” Wildcat grumbles.

“The reason we need you more than ever, is we’ve taken a lot of hits lately. Guy out there with the robot arm? Lost it a week ago. We were lucky he’s on loan from the Army; they had an in with LexCorp. on some experimental bionics. Some of ours have fared a hell of a lot worse. Some among us, they’re starting to wonder if the best defense isn’t a good offense. Might work to a point in basketball, but you start applying that to vigilante work and you’re attacking citizens before they commit a crime, you’re shooting people because you think they’re guilty, not because you have no other choice.” Terrific is tense enough he unconsciously calls those little floating balls to him.

Shazam is amused. “Phantasm, right?” Billy asks.

Terrific is puzzled. “I’ve heard of a fan-gasm before…”

“I don’t believe I want to know the context of that.”

Suddenly the lights go out. Terrific says it’ll only be a moment before they turn over to the solar-back-ups. They get power for a moment before it blacks out again. Terrific says the back-up batteries should kick on in a moment. Red emergency lights come on, and warnings start going off, as the Hall of Justice’s residents start chattering excited. Green Lantern starts barking orders, getting them to assemble into their emergency teams. Terrific pulls Shazam aside and asks how he is with radiation. He says he got a sunburn once putting out fires in Brazil. He assigns Shazam to go with Power Girl, who will take point. There’s something wrong with the city’s nuclear plant.

Next Terrific starts talking to Green Lantern. He tells him they lost solar because the entire city has been covered by a canopy of fast-growing trees, showing him video of his surveillance being overgrown from several points across the city. Blotting out the sun is causing panic, so their first order of business is to cut down the trees, or at least arrest their growth. Green Lantern admits that he can’t handle that, because his magic doesn’t work on wood. Terrific is flabbergasted. “So a child with a miniature baseball bat is your kryptonite?” Green Lantern explains he could still stop the child directly. “Okay, but if he were wearing armor he whittled with a tiny little child pocket knife, then you would be powerless to stop him?” Green Lantern tries to pantomime as he explains he could pick up two cars, and try to pick up the child with them, like chopsticks. Terrific interrupts, “But if I got you some real sawblades, you could put those in some lantern contraption to then indirectly effect the wood, right? Flash. Stop by a hardware store.”

“Done,” Jay Garrick says, as a stack of sawblades appear next to him.

Terrific assigns Jay to lead the rest of their forces on clean up, crowd control, etc., just making sure things don’t get worse, and that Terrific will be on overwatch, just as soon as Jay gets the trees cleared enough for him to actually see anything.

Power Girl manages to get the power plant shut down; to make it slightly more dramatic, she’s exposed to enough nuclear radiation she passes out (her Kryptonian physiology will eventually convert the radiation to energy, she’s just temporarily overwhelmed), and Shazam has to carry her out. Terrific tests him to see if it’s done any damage- which, it had, but not so much that he’s worried.

Green Lantern gets the trees trimmed back, only to discover that the wood from them is alive, and starts attacking the citizens (think the brooms in Fantasia). Green Lantern’s team is in danger of being overrun, until Jay’s team arrive, and they’re able to handle the fighting.

However, there seem to be positive impacts of the growth, too; a cancer ward in the local hospital is overgrown with a rare plant specimen originally from the depths of the Amazon (and thusfar undiscovered by man). It halts the spread of the patients’ cancer, even puts some of them into remission. I think there’s a lush field outside of the hospital, on which Woodrue has the grass selectively brown to write a note, explaining he is a plant elemental and wants to help, even if his powers are… difficult to acclimiate to.

Terrific asks Specter and Dr. Fate to consult. They confirm that Woodrue isn’t a god, nor is he a true plant elemental like the Swamp Thing. He’s kind of an artificial version. Where Swamp Thing taps into the Green, and is both empowered by and entrusted as an emissary for all plantlife, and by extension, essentially the entire planet, Woodrue has basically hacked into and corrupted this power. Terrific asks if they can get Swamp Thing to help. Fate says they’ve been trying, but Justice League Dark seem to be indisposed at the moment, the Swamp Thing included, but he’ll keep trying to raise him.

Terrific puts out an offer to Woodrue, to help him with his outreach, to help channel his knowledge and skill into solutions for the greater good. Woodrue rebuffs the offer. This proves a fracture point. Magog, Power Girl and Stargirl want to deal with Woodrue now, when he’s clearly learning the ropes of nearly infinite power- that a wait and see approach may well leave them all exposed to a power they can’t stop. Battle lines get drawn, but Terrific maneuvers for all of them to slow down- that he’s taking a trust but verify approach to Woodrue- basically assuming that he is up to something, but that they need to understand what, so they can know how to stop him without losing all the benefits he brings. It’s a speech from Shazam that gets them all to agree to give Terrific space to let his plan play out.

Solomon Grundy gets reanimated. This largely distracts the Society, while forcing them to work together to stop him. It looks like Terrific is being naïve, but he secretly consults with Fate to confirm that Grundy’s revival was down to Woodrue’s dark magics, and that he’s getting stronger- really, they both are- that Woodrue made this new Grundy even stronger. Fate and Terrific together prove Woodrue’s plot, that he tainted the drinking water with algae, itself a relatively benign thing. But everyone in the city drinking tap water, showering, etc., now has that algae growing invasively inside of them. His goal is to make them into an extension of the Green, a power source that can’t be removed by the plant realm, and also functions like taking the entire city hostage, to prevent heroes from interfering with him, too. By the end of the day, his spell will be complete, and irreversible.

Even as the citizens laud Woodrue for the benefits his plants have given the city, the Society is forced to wage a very public assault on his citadel. Some of the first people to have come into contact with Woodrue (in particular patients from the cancer ward) have basically become plant/human hybrids, and savagely attack the society, proving to have some light, Swamp Thing-esque abilities.

The Society fight their way to the heart of the citadel. I think the movie ends, basically, with Terrific executing Woodrue. At the time he tells Power Girl the line was always stopping Woodrue without killing him if possible, and he didn’t see any other possible way, so he did what he had to. He admits in a mid-credits scene to Courtney that he really can’t be sure it was the right call, or whether he did it to preserve the Justice Society. She says she’s not sure that would be such a bad thing- but he recognizes the truth- that if he’s forced to compromise himself to keep the Society whole, it’s already in peril. I imagine Woodrue’s ‘death’ is pretty cool, Terrific injecting him with slightly-larger than nano scale versions of his orbs, that shred him from the inside out.

“He isn’t dead,” we hear in Swamp Thing’s rasp even before we cut away from black to see him standing where Woodrue ‘died.’ “Woodrue has become like me, no longer a physicial being, but a consciousness. I am sustained by the Green, at the behest of the Parliament of Trees. Woodrue is a contagion, a pollution, stealing strength from the plants around him. He has redoubts, wherever there is an attack on the natural; oil spills, dumped chemicals, radioactive waste. There I cannot follow; there he is safe.” “Not from us,” Power Girl says. She’s standing in front of Magog and Stargirl. Her eyes glow red when she says, “You tell us where this infection is and we’ll burn it out.” We cut to black.

November 18, 2021November 19, 2021

Princessless Pitch: The Pitch

In honor of National Princess Day, I’m crafting a pitch for a demo that doesn’t have their own princess (or several). The explainer post is over yonder: https://nicolaswilson.com/wpblog/blog/2021/11/18/princessless-pitch/

As a caveat, the lead is trans, but at the start of our story is still in the process of sorting themselves out, and at least still publicly identifying as he/him. While we, and somewhere deep down, the character, know better, it’s a tightrope, because I don’t want to, however inadvertently, misgender Taylor, so I have mostly been sticking with referring to the character strictly by name. This is still a first draft (might be second, by the time I post), but that’s the idea. Apologies, as well, for the shifting tense; for some reason my head really wanted it present, even while I fought to put it in past. Not sure why that was such a pain on this one.

Princessless: The Pitch

Typical Disney animation opening, styled kind of like the stained glass intro to Beauty and the Beast, showing a magical fairy land, castles, all in hypersaturated, candy colors. “I’ve always been a fairy princess,” cut to the present day, where a shy, dorky, everybody knows they’re trans before they do kid wearing more pink that you’d typically expect of someone at least technically presenting as male, named Taylor, is fumbling awkwardly with their locker as a tide of students flows in and out around them, “just uh, not like you’d think.” Someone bumps them, and it’s unclear if it was intentional, but someone tells them to “Keep it moving, princess.”

Taylor continues to narrate, as we see the same dorky kid’s eyes light up. The world falls away, as we zoom in as whatever they’d been feeling a moment before disappears. “Large swaths of my life were basically a fairytale.” We reverse, and see the handsome boy who caught Taylor’s eye, named Fenix, who is wearing a letterman’s jacket and is effortlessly cool as he walks towards Taylor. They kiss, and Fenix leads Taylor outside. I’m thinking Fenix should be Asian. “I found my charming prince, and he is every bit as gallant as I could hope.” Fenix opens a car door for Taylor. “Sure we can’t give you a ride somewhere?”

“Can’t,” he says with a shrug. “Got practice.”

“Yep. I know. All those feet aren’t going to ball themselves.”

Fenix kisses Taylor goodbye. “I love how weird you are.”

“I… I love you, too,” Taylor blurts out. We watch Fenix walk away, before the car starts to roll.

“So,” Taylor’s dad said, Finnegan, buzzing a little bit from the driver’s seat, “first time you’ve said that?” Taylor’s dad is a big, burly man’s man, all flannel and beard, with very kind, twinkling eyes. Think a Santa origin where he’s a lumbersexual living in Portland, and I realize I’ve just accidentally cast Nick Offerman in the roll, and you should definitely offer it to him, man.

“First time for either of us,” Taylor buzzes back.

“I remember the first time I said it to your mother, just over there,” he points to a tree that they pass on the school grounds. He pauses at a stop sign, as a tear rolls down his cheek, his hand hesitating on the gearshift for a moment, until Taylor places a hand over his.

“I miss mom, too,” Taylor says, and they hug over the gearshift. We cut to outside the car, as we see them hug through the rear windshield, as the car starts to roll. “Rolling rolling rolling,” Taylor says, before the break lights come on.

“Sorry.”

We cut a little further into their drive.

“Dad, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

“Me, too. Did I ever tell you your mom wanted a daughter? I was nervous. I didn’t know how well my job was going to pay, but she told me she wanted a daughter, and it didn’t matter if it took a hundred tries, she meant to have one. Um, sorry, son; she loved you more than breathing. I’m not saying you weren’t what she wanted, at all.”

“No, I, I get it, dad,” Taylor says.

Finnegan knows he screwed up, but doesn’t know how to set it right. “You talk to your friends?”

“Their parents said so long as you’re supervising, and making sure we don’t get into any ‘monkeyshines’ they could stay the night.”

“Nope. No monkeyshines. And we’re picking up Zene on the way home?”

“Yeah, she’s all packed up. She should be ready.”

We cut to later, Zene leading the way into Taylor’s room. I want Zene to spend part of the story in a wheelchair, but also be ambulatory. There’s plenty of people who use mobility aids part time, who might be able to get around short distances, but for longer ones need a walker or chair. Zene is from Africa (not just of African descent- since I am considering being from Africa as a separate demographic we’re trying to hit), born in Congo, raised by Muslim parents (not sure all of these will be salient story details, but they’re part of her).

“You tell him?” Taylor doesn’t even get a chance to answer before she adds, “Chicken.”

“I’m not even sure which him you’re referring to,” Taylor responds.

“You tell either of them? Or are you a double-chicken?”

“Like a chick-chicken?” They laugh for a moment, before Zene puts a hand on Taylor’s shoulder.

“You can’t cute your way out of this. You’ve got to be brave, and trust that they’ll be happy to know you better.”

“And if they aren’t?”

“They will be. They love you.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then I’ll just love you three times as much,” Zene says, and wraps her arms around Taylor.

We’ll have a quick meal, then they pick up Fenix and go camping. Finnegan gets them all squared away. He and Taylor share a tent, the other two kids get their own separately. Finnegan gets a fire lit, and stands up, with a rumpled piece of paper.

“Darra brought me here the first time we left town. It became our spot-” the kids all share some kind of unique ick face, “not like that. Just, we’d come here, and talk, and just listen. It didn’t surprise me that she wanted her ashes spread here. But she also asked that we come again, tonight. She never told me why, but she made me swear it, and put it in her will, too, that I bring our kids along. Bringing the two of you along was Taylor’s fare. But your mother asked me to say a Hebrew blessing. Always a sweet woman, she spelled it out for me phonetically, though the font leaves something to be desired.” He put on a pair of round spectacles.

He still struggled, ultimately having Taylor read it, who finished by noting, “that doesn’t sound like Hebrew.” It isn’t. We watch as a spark from the fire leaps off, rising into the air, before opening a portal in the air, one that sucks them all in.

They come to, moments later, on the floor of a cave. There’s a strange, ornate door carved into the rocks, that is not so subtly glowing white. A flying faery, about the size of a baby, buzzes about the room. Their name is Kailea. “You’re late,” they said, crossing their arms sternly. “Your mother could have brought you over any time the last year, but you waited for the last possible-” they pause, and soften, “the princess isn’t with you. My condolences. She was last here before my time, but, my father said she was… kind.”

“She was,” Finnegan said.

“But we haven’t time. The door becomes more porous with every moment. Princess, you must repeat after me.” Taylor exchanges a look with Finnegan, who shrugs. Taylor follows them in a recitation of a spell, sounding similar to the one that landed them there.

This time, Taylor said, “There were definitely some Hebrew words in that.”

“Somethings wrong,” Kailea said. They fly to bar the door, even as it cracks open. I have an interesting thought about the design of the villains: they are pure whiteness, think the inversion of the Nazghul as shadows from Lord of the Rings. When they slash, they tear the structure and color out of the world, replacing it with blank white (which they are also, themselves). One of them, looking like a stocky man in a hood with long talons shoves his way through the door right before Kailea manages to secure it. Finnegan pushes the children behind him, and picks up stick and swings it. The creature takes notice, and swipes at him, knocking all of them over and causing Finnegan’s knee to pop as they all fall in a pile. Suddenly, we hear Taylor whisper an incantation from offscreen, and the white creature turns his attention that direction, before popping like a bubble as he lunges. Kailea is flitting beside Taylor, then flies back to the door, rereading the instructions carved into it.

“Ah, I see,” Kailea said. “You’re going to have to quest, I’m afraid. The door’s instructions are quite explicit. Taylor is of the correct royal bloodline, but in this state, hardly a princess. But I know a practitioner who can help. It’s a journey, and one that must be undertaken with all haste. The machak were already able to leak into our world; and after that, I don’t think the door is truly barred anymore. But a word of warning.” Kailea flits to Finnegan; Zene and Fenix are using clothes from their bags and the stick to build a support for his leg. “Let the oaf’s lesson be your own: this is not your quest. This Kingdom is a land of fable and story. Princess Taylor is a part of and at least somewhat protected by that story; so long as you serve Taylor’s quest, you are, too. But step beyond your role, and you will be hurt, or worse.”

“I don’t think he liked being called an oaf,” Fenix remarks.

Kailea flits into his face. “Do not push me, oafling.”

I think there’s a brief, whispered discussion, Fenix wants to go, Finnegan determined to leave him and Zene behind. Taylor interrupts, and tells them they’re staying together, that there’s some protection to being in a group. Kailea makes it clear that Taylor’s proclamation carries magical weight- that going against the decree could have dire consequences. Finnegan relents; he’s not trying to be controlling, he’s just trying to be an adult in a situation that is way beyond normal parenting.

As they leave, Fenix asked if they’re off to see a wizard, should they follow a yellow brick road. No one bites, and he adds that he couldn’t have been the only one thinking it. Kailea accompanies them, and they travel until it’s dark, and they make camp. There’s some cute fish out of water things happening between Kailea and Finnegan, as the faery is fascinated by all of the modern camping gear that was sucked through the portal with them. Later, as Kailea is mooning over smores, Zene asked what their roles are, that they aren’t supposed to deviate from.

“Whatever Taylor needs. Protectors. Distractions. Decoys.” Zene’s a little freaked out by the description.

“And what are the machak?” Fenix asked.

“They want to live in a world without us. They want to erase us, and replace this with a world we never knew. Millenia ago our magic was enough to seal them away, in their own dimension, one where they could create without us. It could have been anything they wanted. But the point was never wanting a blank canvas for them; they wanted us gone. They’ve been trying to break free every since.”

A wolf howled in the distance, making most of them start. Fenix languidly poked at the fire. “Almost makes it feel normal,” he said, “that you’ve got wolves here.”

Kailea is overserious, “We do not have wolves here.”

We intercut, as the horror spreads throughout their faces, with images of pure white wolves, almost glowing due to their lack of darkness or shadow, running through the forest towards them.

Taylor asks if there’s any way they can cement their roles? Kailea explains that he knows enough spells to work the seals, and start a princess off on a quest where one’s needed, and they’re butting up against the edge of their knowledge. “But magic is about intention– giving shape and purpose to the formless through will.” Taylor tells Kailea to show them, and asks Zene if she’s kept up with her bowmanship.

Zene gives a flip reply, “That’s like asking him if he’s stopped trying to get concussions.”

“Hey,” Fenix said, “I don’t have to try.” Him playing along doesn’t endear her any more to him. A bow appears in her lap, with a quiver slung across the back of her chair. She notches an arrow and lets fly, striking the first wolf, even as rogueish cloaks weave out of the air around her. The arrow seems to pierce through the wolf, pulling color back inside the wolf as it pops. She fires another arrow, and we cut back to Taylor and Kailea, chanting. Kailea leads, asking what Finnegan’s role is. “My knight protector,” the magic works faster this time, and Finnegan manages to bash a wolf back with a shield, even as his plate armor assembles around him. Kailea asks about Fenix, and Taylor said, “My prince.”

Fenix is a little perturbed by the slightly courtly clothing that appears for him. “Feels a bit poncey.” Finnegan gives him a quizzical look. “What? I can say that.” At least, he feels that way until the a rapier appears on his belt, and he draws it. “Withdrawn.” He runs through a wolf as it lunges at him. Finnegan lunges past him, wielding a big axe, cleaving one of the wolves in half. “That the last of them?” Fenix asked.

We hear a yelp, and turn, back towards Kailea. There’s a strange person in robes standing where Taylor had been, cloaked in shadow, holding a wizard’s staff that’s most of the way to a scepter, and had been slammed through the final wolf, as color seeps into its white body. We might not be able to get to the magical transformation any quicker, but this will let us get partway there; Taylor becomes a wizard, but it’s also kind of a midway point between wizard and princess, so the robes look like a dress with a hood, the staff looks more like a scepter, and the way the hood lays it looks like long hair and a crown.

Taylor tells them to break camp; the machak know where they are, and they likely aren’t sleeping again while it’s dark, anyway. They can rest at dawn, some distance from there.

We do an establishing shot, to show they’ve stopped on the edge of tended fields, with better sight lights and vantages to watch for danger from. Later, they take turns at watch, Finnegan first. Fenix has to lean on him hard to get him to rest when his turn is up. “You’re the knight protector. You’ve got to be fresh tomorrow, because your role is keeping Taylor safe. And I think that’s both of our priorities.”

“And you’re not concerned about being a fresh prince?” Finnegan asked.

“I’m sure that’s a reference to something from before I was born, but I’m not screwing around. You’re Taylor’s shield. We all need you strong enough to lift it come the morning. I’m a prince. I think I just need to be able to kiss Taylor if there’s a sleeping spell or something.”

“And star in Purple Rain,” Finnegan added.

“Again, your cultural touchstones are as esoteric to me as Kailea’s.”

“You’re busting my chops to get me to go to bed.”

Not sure if it’s better to have Fenix whistle, hum or sing the chorus to “Electric Chair” by Prince, but it would definitely include the line, “Oh, if a man is considered guilty…”

We cut ahead, to Fenix getting sleepy. Zene takes over. “I figured if I let Taylor take watch after you, the both of you would stay up the whole time.”

“Probably smart,” Fenix said.

“You remember our pact?”

“Think it might qualify more as a threat, but you said if I ever hurt Taylor, you’d cut my eyes out.”

“That’s the pact. But I’ve got a bow, now. So I think I’m amending it to shoot.”

“I appreciate the forewarning. But you know if it’s in my power, I’d never let anything hurt Taylor- myself included.”

“I think people surprise you. So far, you’ve surprised both of us in good ways. You’re not the dumb, callous jock I took you for.”

“Am I blushing?”

“My point was, sometimes people surprise you, and when they do, sometimes you’ll surprise yourself with your reaction. Taylor deserves you- the best you. So long as you can be that, you and I are Kosher.”

“I agree. Taylor does. That’s why I’m choosing to see all of this as the misguided but sweet gesture I think you intend. I’ll get some rest, so I can be the best me tomorrow I can.”

The next day they embark. We probably do a montage of some typical fantasy problem solving, hopping across rocks in a bleak, bubbling swamp, that kind of thing.

They arrive at a somewhat sinister looking cottage. The garden is twisted and grotesque, but still natural; the plants just grow in slightly menacing shapes and proportions.

They open the door, and we see a plump, older witch in clothing that feels split somewhere between old world pagan and practical medieval. She’s a little intimidating as she runs about the room, casting frantically, oblivious to her guests’ arrival.

“Grandma Hara?” Taylor asked, confused. Hara stops, dropping a vial that lets a skull-shaped purple plume loose. Finnegan steps forward, in part protectively, but also because he and Hara always had a good, supportive relationship.

“You always had her eyes,” Finnegan said.

“And you always had her heart,” Hara said, and they embraced.

“I miss her,” he said.

“Me, too.” Hara released him, and turned to Taylor. “And you, my dear, have shot up like a weed. And I see you’ve brought the guide. This is not, I gather, a social call.”

“The incantation failed,” Taylor said.

“Of course,” Hara said, “it was looking for a princess. I knew there would be a problem; old spells weren’t woven with the same flexibility we come to take for granted… they’re like legalese, overly literal. I have just the spell prepared; I meant to meet you at the seal, but I lost track of time. Or perhaps I didn’t want to think about doing this without your mother. Everyone, I need a moment with Taylor. You’ll be safe outside, in the garden. Take what you like, but eat all you take; the garden is very particular about waste.”

Hara explains that intention is key in this spell. If Taylor is doing this to save those around them, to protect the kingdom from the machak, that’s enough. But it has to be what Taylor wants; in kind, the spell should be entirely reversible, provided, again, that’s what Taylor wants. Taylor asks for a moment, and walks in the garden with Fenix. Taylor is struggling, wanting to tell him everything, but also caught up in so much uncertainty and anxiety. Fenix turns to Taylor, and they kiss. “I just wanted to say how cool you’ve been,” Fenix said. “I have spent a lot of moments just quietly freaking out, and all of that without everything riding on my shoulders. And I’m not saying you can’t be freaking out internally, too, but you got us this far, you kept your head, and the reason I’m only freaking out on the inside is that I feel like you’re going to get us the rest of the way through, too. And it’s pretty damn cool that I’m going to be able to say my boyfriend saved the world.”

“I,” Taylor hesitated, “I think things are about to get weird, and before they did, I just needed a moment of normal, first.” Fenix rests his head on Taylor’s shoulder.

We cut to Taylor returning to Hara’s spell room. Hara guides Taylor through- this magic is deep enough, invasive enough, that it’s dangerous to work it on someone else- that’s why Taylor’s intention was so important. Taylor’s peach/cream colored robes turn pink/purple, her hood becomes long hair with a crown atop it. Taylor admits she feels funny. Hara strokes her hair, and tells her she looks beautiful, but then, she always did. Then Hara begins to pack. Taylor asks what’s going on. Hara tells her that the rest of their journey could be quite perilous, and there are many unknowns approaching- and Hara would prefer to help her granddaughter see it through. I think, with the grandmother, at least, she immediately latches on to the idea that this is the real Taylor, who Taylor was always meant to be, that she sees what only Zene has been told to this point. It’s subtle, but it also acts as a clue for Finnegan and Fenix, who stop using male pronouns or anything of the sort (Fenix won’t call her his boyfriend anymore).

If we needed the extra action scene for length (or just because it’s fun), we can have Finnegan having picked one too many pomegranates, his eyes being just a little too big for his stomach. The garden attacks, and we get a big fight scene, as the three try to fight plants to no real effect. Hara comes out, and tries to tell the garden to behave. It doesn’t respond, so, reluctantly, she starts working on a fire spell to burn the garden out and replant. She’s about halfway through the spell when the garden stops, and we see Taylor finishing off the last of the pomegranate. Hara is thankful; she’s had to burn the garden down before because someone stepped on a tomato and couldn’t eat the whole thing, no matter how much mud they swallowed.

Taylor’s mouth is still full of pomegranate seeds when she tells Finnegan, “These were always mom’s favorite.”

“No,” he says, and tousled her hair, “you were. But they were a close second.”

“How’s the dress fit?” Zene asked, circling her in her chair.

“Like a glove. Like it was made for me.”

“Magical tailoring, dear,” Hara said, “it was made for you.”

Fenix is really amused; it makes Taylor self-consciously ask what he’s smiling about. “For the first time since you put me in tights, I feel like someone else is sharing that pain. M’lady,” he says, and offers her his elbow.

“M’lord,” Taylor responds, with a shallow, and awkward, curtsy, before threading her arm through his.

They camp partway to the door, again taking turns on watch. Despite the watch, they’re awoken by the earth shaking. It’s a stampede, white beasts of many different sizes and shapes, some bull, some buffalo, elk, moose. Fenix and Finnegan get the women up into the tree, where they can be relatively safe while carving a swath through the herding menagerie with arrows and magic, while they defend the tree’s base. This takes enough time they’ll have to stop once again the next night before they arrive.

By now, Finnegan and Fenix are having some fun talking. The conversation turns to all of them being ready for things to go back to normal, and them assuming that Taylor most of all must want things to go back to normal; it’s playful, and what under other circumstances would be harmless banter, mostly about missing indoor plumbing and not having layer upon layer of uncomfortable clothes, or Finnegan discovering a whole new level of chafing possible under plate mail.

But in this circumstance, this hits too close to home for Taylor. She looks frantically to Zene, whose heart is so full for her friend but knows this is not the right time or the right way to do this- but also that there’s no way to tell Taylor that won’t let the cat out of the bag, anyway. And Taylor just bursts. “I’m really not in any hurry to go back to normal,” she said. Then quieter, deflated, “Maybe this is normal for me,” before storming away.

Finnegan and Fenix both stand at the same time, and their eyes meet.

“Do I need to protect her?” Finnegan asked, and his hand went unconsciously to his shield.

“Never from me,” Fenix said. He takes out his sword and hands it to Finnegan as a gesture of good faith, before running after Taylor.

She’s sitting at the edge of a slowly moving creek, looking down at her reflection. “Hey,” Fenix said.

“Hey,” she replied. She paused, trailing her hand delicately across the water. “So this is the part where you leave.”

“Dude,” he said somberly, “bi.” Which she hears as, “Bye,” and for a moment her heart starts to break, just a little, but she tries to put on a brave face, anyway, because she’s a rock star, and because she loves him enough to let him go if that’s what he needs. “As in I am,” he clarified, “and as in I am completely, hopelessly in love with you, and thrilled that you can live as a more authentic you.” She falls into his arms. “If that means you, a princess in a dress, which you wear the hell out of, or you, as my prince, in a pair of matching tights. You are the only part that isn’t negotiable.”

They hear the snap of a twig. Finnegan followed, at some distance. “Sorry,” he said, “ I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s okay,” Fenix said, “I’m not going anywhere. But I will give you two a moment.” As he’s leaving, he said, “Be gentle with her,” to Finnegan.

“I’ll try,” he said. “Your mother always wanted a girl,” Finnegan started. “I did, too. All that stuff that’s supposed to scare fathers, all the things I won’t know to share with them… I looked forward to learning. And we both loved you, as much as we’d have loved a daughter. We loved having a family. We loved starting it with you. And I feel like a fool that I didn’t see it, that I didn’t see you… but I do now, and I want you to know I love you even more the more of you I know.” She grabs onto him. “I know there’s a lot more to say, and in time, I hope you’ll feel supported enough to be able to say it. But for tonight, for now, you should come back to the fire.”

“One minute,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you.” Finnegan starts back, and she goes back to the creek, looking at her reflection. This is a big moment, her finally, truly, being and accepting herself as she is. She smiles at herself, before heading back to the others.

The next morning, while taking the last watch, Hara uses an enchanted bird to recon ahead. It’s this way that she discovered that a large army of machak have surrounded the door. When she shares this information, Taylor instructs Kailea to rouse the other faeries, that they might have to fight. Hara’s bird finds something else- the door will not hold- they cannot wait for reinforcements, and have to go, now.

Hara conjuries some impressive magic that provides a distraction for them to slip towards the door. Taylor’s defenders guard the door from outside the cave it’s in, while they prepare the spell. Taylor expresses hurt that she wasn’t able to renew the seal earlier because she wasn’t ‘really’ a girl before. As they’re preparing for the ritual, her grandmother takes a moment, and locates a single word on the inscription, the word for princess. She explains that the guide is too young to understand: the word he translated has often, colloquially, been translated in their tongue as ‘princess,’ but it has an older meaning, and a deeper one, “to be true, as oneself.”

Taylor asks then, why her grandmother couldn’t fix the seal herself. Hara explains, “I spent time as the Queen Mother before abdicating, preferring the quiet of my remote magic to rule. I never attempted it, because I was no longer a princess, nor even a queen. But even now, I suspect the instructions captured a dual meaning: authenticity, yes, but also the need for youth. Because as you grow, you compromise, giving little pieces of yourself away, until you’re left hiding away who you truly are from all that you’ve lost.”

Intercut with this is a great battle, Taylor’s friends and father doing what they can to safeguard the door, only to be nearly overrun, rescued eventually by the armies of the fae; they do not turn back the tide, but buy time. Personally, I’d throw in a dragon, one that Fenix and Finnegan board with a rope arrow from Zene, that they fight together.

Ultimately, it is Hara and Taylor who manage to renew the seal, tearing all of the machak back into their white void.

They celebrate with the faeries, in a big feast. Taylor asks Hara why her- why did they need women from their bloodline. Hara tells her this old magic required very specific intention, the care of a woman who loved that world but was not of it, whose connection to her home allowed her to tap into a still larger repository of strength. She posits it might have been a safeguard, to ensure that the spell could not be used in anger, could not be used to oppress, but only to protect. Or perhaps it was all a mistake, their entire family bearing generational burdens for the mistake of one of their elders. She says their family have been coming here for a long time- long enough that elements of Hebrew made it into this culture’s magic.

We cut back to the same, crowded school hallway from the beginning (this will all echo the beginning). Taylor, in more modern attire, collects her books from her locker. The same person who knocked into Taylor in the beginning is about to do it again, only this time Fenix shoulder-checks them into the wall of lockers. He turns to the bruiser’s friend and says, “Keep it moving.” Then Fenix turned to Taylor, and offered his arm. “M’lady?”

“M’lord,” she said, and threaded her arm through his. He walked her out to her father’s car. Inside, we could see Hara in the front seat, and Zene waiting in the back. Taylor slipped into the back, and it started to rain, and Fenix shrugged and got in next to her. Taylor narrates, as she exchanges smiles and looks with her friends and family. “I was always a faery princess. It took me a while to understand that, and share it with all those I love.”

And we roll credits.

November 18, 2021November 19, 2021

Princessless Pitch: The Intro

Tomorrow, 11/18, is National Princess Day, and so I’m embarking upon a Princessless Pitch.

No, it’s nothing to do with the comic book of the same name (haven’t read it, sorry). This is me trying to think up pitches for stories for Disney Princesses for demographics that have typically been left out of the usual Disney Princess game. Sure, with the Fox and Lucasfilm acquisitions, Disney Princesses now cover Alderanians and also Xenomorphs, but there are still a surprising amount of people left out. So first things first, I did some quick number crunching of people in the world without a princess, and what percent of global populations they made up. These numbers come from all over the damned place, and nothing about this process is likely to be all that scientific, anyway. I imagine next year I’ll put up a poll, asking people what they’d like to see, and if I missed anyone (which is the opposite of my intent).

Islam 20.51%

Indian 17.5%

African 17.21%

Disabled 15%

Hindu 14.23%

Gay 10%

Latino 8.42%

Middle/South American Native 5.32%

Jewish 1.88%

Trans .355%

First things first, this isn’t purely about numbers; obviously the relative power/oppression factors into who gets priority- not to mention me needing to figure out a good idea to go along with it- which will likely include culture-specific research.

For reasons that frankly irk me, this holiday takes place smack dab in the middle of November, during NaNo and in the middle of my apparently annual Pitchgiving/Pitchmas cluster. Apparently this is just contentmageddon, and if you want to see a man do an entire year’s worth of writing over the course of a month or so, just waiting for the inevitable meltdown, well, I suppose you can do that. I’ll resume regular NaNo posting on Monday.

As far as tomorrow, I’ll be posting the pitch itself… once I finish writing the blasted thing. But first I’ll do a quick run-down of the demographics the pitch is hopefully going to cover, here; and a note, that I’m only counting the demos of the princess herself, even if I hope the casts will be more representative overall. We’re not going to get this done in one movie- this is a project of years.

1. Trans

Like I said, this isn’t strictly a numbers thing. But what we have seen is a systemic, years-long crusade against trans rights, and even trans personhood, one that is steady in the US and seems to be accelerating in the UK. The most important idea behind this project is power to the powerless- at least in the area of demography. If I had more clout in other realms, I’d exercise it there, too- and I do think representation matters, both to the represented and to those who learn about the personhood of others through representation- which is why the forces of bigotry resist representation so strongly. Plus, it’s Transgender Awareness Week.

2. Jewish

The entire reason I’m breaking out these demographics is because of the asterisk involved with this one. The main character is Jewish. But, you might argue, with the addition of Princess Leia into the Disney family, isn’t she Jewish, too? Carrie Fischer definitely identified as Jewish later in life, so the actress certainly was. But we’re going by the stricter definition, here, that the character themselves needs to fill the demographic. This is the same reason that, while Princess Jasmine could be Muslim, she is never explicitly shown saying or doing anything that would make it clear this was the case, so she could also be from a pre-Islamic portion of the Ottoman Empire, or given the story’s traditions spanning from the Middle East to India, Hindu, some other faith, or even areligious. Note: I’m not telling Jewish girls they can’t consider Leia their princess, or anyone they can’t consider Jasmine to be theirs; what I am stating is that I don’t want a debate, I want everyone to have a princess of their own, one that no one can try to take away from them.

3. Queer/Gay

I would argue that the central romance is a queer one, and at least for portions, a gay one, as well. Given the ultimate outcome, it’s certainly possible to not see it as an authentically gay narrative, so I won’t, for my own tally, consider the box marked off, but it’s certainly in the mix, all the same.