TwiLyghtSansSparkles

I don't know how pleased my parents would be to have a Revelations-spewing fire Epic as a son-in-law. I think they'll be happy with you, though.

Kobold and I are related?

What name would you give to the apparently-a-thing-now Twi/Obliteration ship? More serious question, if you could say one thing to any fictional character, who would you choose and what would you say?

As did I.

And people wonder why I'm hesitant to use the Spanish I learned in high school. While working retail, I'd get a lot of shoppers from Mexico, so I learned fairly passable Spanish. But I'm far from fluent or confident, so I'd speak English whenever possible. I'd rather say what I need to say in a language I know how to speak than risk saying the wrong thing in a language I'm not fluent in.

Nice! Which ones?

Yay! There probably are better things than getting a haircut you love, but that's pretty great.

I'm happier than a paper clip at a private school during finals week!

The most irritating kind. *coughEragoncough* Which one is that?

I'm happier than a wooden spoon at a spelling bee!

Thanks, Edge. I think the fact you consider consequences as a factor is the biggest strike against your characters being Mary Sues. Mary Sue authors (or Suethors) tend to handwave any negative consequences for their favored characters and react very harshly to any insinuations that their favorites have any flaws at all. Oh, you want weird? The Spanish word for butt is "Pompis." My Spanish teacher seared this into my memory by telling her class that when she and her sister watched football, they'd try to see which players has the best "Pompis." He does make that trench coat look good.

My big test is consequences. If the negative consequences for their actions are handled realistically and not glossed over, then I don't think you have to worry about Mary Sues. So Sam, Vondra, and Revolution are good. Oh, please. He'd try to kill me, which isn't exactly conducive for romance. If he were to face his fear and remove the corruption, however….

Well, let's apply a quick consequences test for them…. Sam: Is unabashedly snarky and snide toward Epics. While it managed to land her in Funtimes' favor, it also made her a thorn in Lightwards' side, to which he retaliated by killing and zombifying a family friend and holding her mother prisoner. There's also the chance that if she turned her snark on Funtimes, Funtimes could turn on her. Vondra: Treats Epics in the Guard harshly, but fairly. His attitude has caused no small amount of friction between himself and Arsenal, hinting at a future falling-out with drastic consequences for The Dalles. Revolution: Also snarks to Epics like Lightwards, which so far has brought her no major personal consequences, though this could be attributed to the fact that she has no family and no friends in the city.

Since Epics dress impractically, improperly, or inappropriately as a rule, I think his hat is very much appropriate for the setting. (I don't put much stock in those tests, though. They tend to diagnose the symptoms, rather than the cause, which is having a character be an idealized version of yourself, or one who accentuates certain traits you happen to like and suffers no consequences for their actions. If Lightwards had overcome his corruption, only shot criminals who were worse than Epics (because there are so many of those just lying around ) and was treated as misunderstood and hated for no reason, he'd be a Mary Sue.) All righty, then….mmm….I think I'll need more time to think about this. Not only are there so many characters I want her to meet, but I'm running on not very much sleep right now.

*hug* *pug*

Hurm. One character of mine, or one character period?

Oh, believe me, I know how that feels.

Step one: Shoot cherries at Lucentia. Step two: Let Lucentia complain about Funtimes. Step three: Attack her with something a bit more permanent while she's distracted.

There weren't any in the previous two blurbs, either. I think Brandon wants to save them for the narration.

I don't think there's any need to feel dumb. If I read one YouTube comment, all of a sudden I have to read them all. It's like…it's like the blatant hatred and idiocy is a train wreck of words, and I can't look away, no matter how horrible and sickening I find it.

And I'm guessing her personal hygiene habits keep her from stinking.

I wonder what this means for the overall story. I know that cover art isn't obligated to tell us anything about the story itself, but the US cover of Firefight—with its flames rather than something smoky and purple to befit her powers—actually gave an important hint toward Megan's weakness. Does this hole in reality hint at Calamity's origins, or does it hint at a possible ending for the series? Or maybe the artist just thought it looked cool.

My first impression was of a supernova, but a hole in reality works too.

It unnerves me how well Shiny has apparently thought this through.

Um, everywhere I could? I'm not terribly familiar with London, save for all the touristy things every single movie shows, so I'd just see whatever I could. I'd check out all of those touristy sights, but I'd probably also spend a day or two just exploring. I think you learn the most and see the most that way. I geek out a bit every time I look at it. I believe the morality of Kingdom Come is as complex and murky as its purpose required. The story behind the story—and what spurred me to read it in the first place—is that the comic was written as a deconstruction of Dark Age antiheroes and a reconstruction of Silver Age heroes. According to TVTropes, deconstructions and reconstructions serve similar yet opposing purposes. A deconstruction takes the original apart to demonstrate everything that doesn't really work about it; a reconstruction acknowledges the points made in the deconstruction to put the original back together and make it stronger than it was before. Dark Age antiheroes began with comics like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns—harsh deconstructions of Silver Age heroes and the morality they upheld. Those stories created new superheroes or stripped old ones of all the pomp and glitter they'd worn for decades and presented them to the audience as neurotic, murderous, hypocritical psychopaths. It's uncomfortable to read, partly because Miller and Moore make some excellent points. For Batman to function as he did in the Silver Age, he could not have been a kind man in real life. For Doctor Manhattan to take on godlike power and learn to use it, he would have had to abandon essential components of his humanity. I believe those deconstructions were not only landmarks in the history of comics and superheroes, but essential to both. Of course, there were two enormous problems with Watchmen: The Comedian and Rorschach. Moore intended them to be symbols of everything he despised, but some fans….wound up….liking them. I dated a man who not only named Rorschach as his favorite superhero, but unashamedly identified with him and even dressed like him. (Notice that we're not dating anymore. It's not that I have a problem with men who wear trench coats or dusters, because I actually find them attractive; it's more that Rorschach is…well, if you've read the comic, or even the TVTropes page, you know what I'm talking about.) Entirely against his intentions, those two kicked off the Dark Age of comics, characterized by "heroes" who carried big guns, talked tough, and often had no problem with killing. This brings us to Kingdom Come. With that comic, Waid and Ross intended to take apart the Dark Age and put the Silver Age back together—in other words, to show all the problems with Dark Age antiheroes and make Silver Age heroes viable again. To do this, he had to make the two work together in a story. To take down a man like Magog, who wouldn't turn back from killing until he'd accidentally murdered millions, Superman had to be angry. He had to be violent. Magog and other antiheroes of his ilk couldn't be stopped by the Big Blue Boy Scout; they could only be stopped by an avenging angel who would threaten murder of UN representatives who did something he deemed unconscionable. In that respect, I think Superman's actions enhance the morals of the story. I read the moral as "Dark Age antiheroes don't work, they never worked, and we cannot continue holding them up as our role models without heading for disaster." In Kingdom Come, we are given that world, and it is a bleak world indeed. It is a world where not only have "heroes" killed all the villains and turned on one another out of sheer boredom, but a world that can only be put to rights by driving Superman—the most hopeful hero DC Comics has to offer—into a despairing rage. On a similar note, I do think Magog's actions bring up a point Silver Age—and many current Modern Age—heroes refuse to acknowledge: Sometimes, mercy does more harm than good. Killing the Joker rid the world of a menace who had made a career out of escaping from prison to terrorize the populace. However, his actions gave the world's antiheroes permission to kill indiscriminately, which led the world toward disaster. I believe the intended message in the Joker's death was that mercy toward unrepentant killers does cause problems, but are we prepared for the consequences of declaring open season on them? In having Magog kill the Joker, I sensed Waid was advocating a middle path between the two extremes of always killing and never killing. He didn't tell us what that middle path was, but I believe he intended to get audiences thinking about what that middle path could look like.