META: Re: How 'bout those fanfics. Wow!
kie...@aol.com
In article <6i978n$5...@veenet.value.net>#1/1,
ha...@blarg.net.SPAMSHIELD (Hawk) wrote:
<< As for Laersyn, I was underwhelmed by "Devil's
Due". In many areas of the story, the violence
seemed to be there just to be violent. It somewhat
read like the author was a mad (as in insane, not
upset) child who just wanted to wreck havok on
everything. While I understand that that's part of
Laersyn's appeal, that kind of story never did
anything for me, even in my most pissed-off
moments. If you like gore, though, Laersyn is not to
be missed. >>
(poking my head up via DejaNews, hi all) I have to
say real quick, for the record, that Hawk is only
partially right. Laer is perfectly capable of some
beautiful work, practically TOO romantic and
flowery if you ask me. ;) Here's the scoop, folks:
"Devil's Due" was actually born while I was deep in
the throes of madness while plotting out "No Way
Up." I was firing off random ideas at Laer (we
carpool and co-write IRL) and we got on the subject
of why bad guys are so lame in the MU. Why?
Because of course the good guys always have to win
in the end. (But we LIKE bad guys! Foul! Unfair!)
That got the two of us off on the subject of a
roleplaying game that Laer had once been in, under a
very good (and very sadistic) GM who pitted them
against the Marauders (my babies! ;) and actually
showed the baddies at their best potential. Laer & I
agreed that the Marauders had the potential to utterly
wipe out the X-Men if they were allowed to act
intelligently for once...and thus Laer's wheels began
to turn...
"Devil's Due" IS extremely gory, true. And it isn't for
everyone, I agree. But it was done that way
completely on purpose, to show that it COULD be
done, NOT because that's the only thing Laesyn can
write or because it turns him on or something. ;) I'd
like to humbly draw you guys' attention to his first
two chapters, which contain a sizeable heap of quite
adorable, quite un-violent characterization for the X-
Men. Storm and Wolvie have a heart-to-heart, Joseph
and Rogue get cozy, Quicksilver gets prodded out of
his depression by a stranger at the supermarket, Luna
is just plain adorable, Gambit sulks around the
mansion, Jean dances delicately along the edge of
adultery...and all this from a man who'd a) had never
written or read another fanfic before (except mine --
I'm training him well, ney?) and b) had dropped out
of comic-
reading right after Inferno and only had my post-
Onslaught issues and my own trivia-packed brain to
work off of. Heck, he used to be more of an
Avengers reader than an X-Men one, too. Like it or
hate it, "Devil's Due" is a hell of a piece of work
IMHO, all things considered. ;)
Hawk: I'm not saying this because you said you didn't
like it -- that's cool, you don't have to, your opinion is
reasonable and sound, no sweat, no objection! I've
just heard so many different opinions on what lies
behind that particular story that I thought now would
be a good time to set some matters straight. Laersyn
isn't a homicial maniac. He just likes to play one
online. :)
.-=K=-.
PS: Hey, Chinook? I caught your comments about
"No Way Up." (((HUG))) Thank you so much!!!
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
Aleph Press
kie...@aol.com wrote:
: That got the two of us off on the subject of a
: roleplaying game that Laer had once been in, under a
: very good (and very sadistic) GM who pitted them
: against the Marauders (my babies! ;) and actually
: showed the baddies at their best potential. Laer & I
: agreed that the Marauders had the potential to utterly
: wipe out the X-Men if they were allowed to act
: intelligently for once...and thus Laer's wheels began
: to turn...
My problems with Devil's Due were twofold: one, on the personal level, I
absolutely hate futility stories. You fight, and struggle, and in the end
you get destroyed and it doesn't mean a damn. I can enjoy tragic stories
when the tragedy comes from a flaw within the protagonists that suffer,
and not because God decided to whomp on them that day. But that's
entirely personal. In Real life, futility happens. Good people get wiped
out by evil people. It's realistic-- maybe that's why I don't want it in
my fiction, but I can't complain about it. :-)
My biggest problem, though, is that some of the X-Men's fates made no
sense. Okay, we all know what an obsessive I am, so take Joseph. He gets
taken out because Riptide eeventually manages to punch wood through his
force field. Unless all the Marauders are wearing deguassing equipment
and electrical grounds, it wouldn't happen. Magneto's first serious
manifestation of his power, when he was far more clueless about it than
Joseph was, was to electrocute at least 20 and possibly more people in a
radius around him. Joseph went berserk in his very first appearance, and
has done so since he joined the X-Men. It is simply not at all plausible
that he would sit there, fighting defensively, while Rogue is dying next
to him. Regardless of whether or not he is Magneto, we have ample
evidence that *he* would electrocute every Marauder within his visual
range (and since we're ta;lking about Riptide and harpoon, neither of
whom are likely to be immune to massive, massive electrical discharges,
they're dead.) if it was down in the tunnels (I seem to recall him and
Rogue fleeing the tunnels, but I haven't read the story since its first
appearance), he's surrounded by metal. Riptide and Harpoon wouldn't even
have had the opportunity to take out Rogue. And I seem to recall
Scalphunter being there... well, he wears metal armor. Duh.
I'm not saying smart villains *couldn't* take Joseph out, but the way
they did it, and the fact that they suffered no casualties doing it, was
unrealistic.
Then there's Jubilee's fate. Emma Frost is good friends with Sean
Cassidy. He dies, and she doesn't sense it? She lets her student simply
leave and run back to the X-mansion, when Sean has just been murdered by
parties unknown, parties that *might* be gunning for her students as
well? Frost is not that stupid.
Mystique's killing of Xavier is unrelated to the rest of the story, and
pointless. Mystique got over her problems with Xavier a very long time
ago. What should have been done here was that Xavier should have been
killed by a Marauder. Perhaps Malice possessing Mystique. However, I saw
no clear evidence that this was the case. (Again, it's been a while since
I read this, and I read it at work, so maybe I missed something...)
And Scott. You should not be able to touch Scott's eyes. Remember that
eyes move, and Scott's blast comes out of *all* of his eye, not just the
edges. If you attempt to angle a scalpel underneath an eye, it is
impossible to prevent that eye from rolling far enough to see you, and
what Scott can see (even in peripheral vision) he can blast. This could
be fixed by making the blades ruby quartz, but that wasn't established.
So, to me, it wasn't about "what if the Marauders were really smart?" It
was "what if the author has decided that the Marauders are gonna kill the
X-Men?" It's an excellent piece of writing, but something this intense is
going to come under intense scrutiny, and what-iffing (and yes, I plotted
my very own sequel, too-- probably won't get around to writing it, now
that the real thing's being done, but who knows?), and I felt that the
fact that there were pretty much *no* Marauder casualties (maybe Prizm
died, but he always does :-)) was unrealistic. Especially since these are
the exact same Marauders the X-Men have been up against before; the new
X-Men are all likely to have been in Danger Room simulations against the
Marauders, programmed by people who fought them the first time, while the
Marauders have never been up against some of the newer people, nor have
they had access to people who have been. Not that Danger Room simulations
are as agood as the real thing, but the conflict seemed way too
one-sided. And the really, really wonderful characterization the story
started with just made the whole thing seem more like an exercise in sadism.
I don't want to bash the story. It was very well written in most senses.
Outside of some of the combat pieces, the characterization was spot on.
Some of the Marauder methods of killing people-- the monofilament agaisnt
Quicksilver, for instance-- were realistic and plausible ways of killing
that character. But for personal reasons I found it really, really
disturbing-- which I *think* was the intent-- and that leads me to
nitpick the plot to a much greater degree than I'd do with anything else.
--
Be good, servile little citizen-employee, and pay your taxes so the rich
don't have to.
--Zepp Weasel
Alara Rogers, Aleph Press
al...@netcom.com
All Aleph Press stories are at http://www.mindspring.com/~alara/ajer.
F Barnett
Alara wrote
al...@netcom.com:
>Especially since these are
>the exact same Marauders the X-Men have been up against before; the new
>X-Men are all likely to have been in Danger Room simulations against the
>Marauders, programmed by people who fought them the first time, while
the
>Marauders have never been up against some of the newer people, nor have
>they had access to people who have been. Not that Danger Room
>simulations are as agood as the real thing, but the conflict seemed way
too
>one-sided. And the really, really wonderful characterization the story
>started with just made the whole thing seem more like an exercise in
sadism.
>I don't want to bash the story. It was very well written in most senses.
>Outside of some of the combat pieces, the characterization was spot on.
I also basically felt the same way about the story as you did, Alara.
But while I definitely agree with you about the fact that in my opinion
nearly all the X-Men (I definitely would have included Storm, Gambit, and
Rogue in your list of ones that fell too simply considering what was
going on around them and what they can do with their powers) were too
easily killed, I also have to admit to thinking the characterization was
not "spot on" as you say as well. You like Joe/Magneto yet I found him
simple minded and shallow in the story. I found the rather "instant"
*Rogue falls for Joseph just because he can touch her* of little depth as
well. I wished her dead at that point anyway because she's lost so much
of multi-facets that use to be Rogue (Not that I don't feel the same way
when Rogue's made to do this in other fan fictions or that Marvel hasn't
done a good job of that as well). Storm had no brains (speaking of
electrocuting people) and Scott seemed out of it. Jean got a little
something more in her character but the rest of the team also seemed to
have rather simplistic in their feelings to me. So I have to agree with
Hawk that if you are into gore this story is for you but for much else it
never brought me in or made me care. It was a story where the villains
win and that made it different but without that I don't think it would
have ever been given the notice it's gotten. It was a well put together
story in terms of flow, and establishing it's goal, but very little in
the off time or battle really was "spot on" to me.
That said I also understand that wasn't the purpose nor was the writer
possibly all that familar with the characters. The writer was more than
able to do what he set out to do in terms of setting up the story and
pulling out the conclusion.
Take care,
Faith
Datastorm
kie...@aol.com wrote in message <6idcq1$et1$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
I have two things I'd like to say about Devil's Due, which is indeed a quite
well written story.
#1) Chapter two simply must go down in the annals of fanfic history as
containing some of the most touching, moving vignettes I've ever read. The
scenes in which Pietro read to his daughter and Beast played with Trish in
the snow were so excellently written, so alive, that it's hard to believe
exactly how extreme a turn the story took in its next installment.
#2) Cyclops hitting someone with a full-force, unrestrained optic blast
would not knock the air out of them. It could punch a hole through a
mountain. Joseph for some reason unable to control the metallic components
of his enemies? When faced with an adamantium crowbar he vaporizes it
instead of driving it through Blockbusters head? Colossus punching people
to absolutely no effect whatsoever? These things, unfortunately, detracted
from the quality of the story. Had the X-men been depicted accurately
combat-wise, their deaths would have been a lot more believable.
It actually came as a little bit of a letdown, following the incredible
introduction. Still, I fully intend to read the next thing of Laersyn's I
see that comes along. Chapter one and two were wonderful beyond belief. I
only wish I could write personal interaction that well. ;)
Aleph Press
F Barnett (ZML...@prodigy.com) wrote:
: I also basically felt the same way about the story as you did, Alara.
: But while I definitely agree with you about the fact that in my opinion
: nearly all the X-Men (I definitely would have included Storm, Gambit, and
: Rogue in your list of ones that fell too simply considering what was
: going on around them and what they can do with their powers) were too
: easily killed, I also have to admit to thinking the characterization was
: not "spot on" as you say as well. You like Joe/Magneto yet I found him
: simple minded and shallow in the story. I found the rather "instant"
: *Rogue falls for Joseph just because he can touch her* of little depth as
: well.
Well, we've argued this point, frequently. At the point in the X-Men that
this takes place, which presumably is after the Shi'ar adventure did not
happen and before OZT did not happen, there was every evidence that Rogue
*was* interested in Joseph-- yes, later it was revealed that she still
loved Remy, but the writer hadn't seen that issue yet, since it hadn't
been written. She wasn't falling in love with Joseph just because she
could touch him-- the Z'noxx chamber would have llowed her to touch
anyone she wanted. It didn't run off Joseph's powers, it affected hers.
And Joseph was mostly thinking about the fact that he was in love, which
doesn't make a person shallow, or single-minded in a bad way. it's to be
expected. I liked the fact that they were *not* hopping into bed
together, but taking it slow-- after all, Rogue has never had a chance
for casual touching, hugging, necking, or any of that, and jumping right
to sex seems like it would be setting her up for disappointment.
I wished her dead at that point anyway because she's lost so much
: of multi-facets that use to be Rogue (Not that I don't feel the same way
: when Rogue's made to do this in other fan fictions or that Marvel hasn't
: done a good job of that as well). Storm had no brains (speaking of
: electrocuting people) and Scott seemed out of it. Jean got a little
: something more in her character but the rest of the team also seemed to
: have rather simplistic in their feelings to me.
I don't remember Storm, so I couldn't say. I liked the portrayal (before
the killing started) of Bobby, Warren, Betsy, Quicksilver, Joseph and
Rogue, and those are just the ones that have stuck in my head after all
this time.
So I have to agree with
: Hawk that if you are into gore this story is for you but for much else it
: never brought me in or made me care. It was a story where the villains
: win and that made it different but without that I don't think it would
: have ever been given the notice it's gotten. It was a well put together
: story in terms of flow, and establishing it's goal, but very little in
: the off time or battle really was "spot on" to me.
I agree that it would never have gotten as much notice if the villains
hadn't won, but that isn't a bad thing. There are a *lot* of stories
where the X-Men have some pleasant down time and then there's a battle.
What made this one original was that they lost the battle. It would have
been a good story if they hadn't lost, but it wouldn't have gotten so
much notoriety, because very few equally good stories *do* get that kind
of notoriety.
F Barnett
Alara
al...@netcom.com wrote:
>At the point in the X-Men that
>this takes place, which presumably is after the Shi'ar adventure did not
>happen and before OZT did not happen, there was every evidence that
Rogue
>*was* interested in Joseph
Interested, yes. Fully in love, no. That seemed to happen (in this
story and many others) instantainously once they could touch and that's
always my problem when it happens. There is no real build up or depth to
make it more than that, nor how Rogue deals with all her feelings in a
realistic, intelligent and understanding manner. There is never conflict
or concern. The problem isn't that she falls in love with Joseph, but
how she gets there. However, as I didn't feel that was what the major
objective for this story was, I didn't let it seriously detract from my
enjoying the story.
I do like the story for the most part for the context it was written in.
The points you brought up about the ease of some of the characters'
deaths was indeed the most distracting part of the story. I was just
pointing out that I didn't feel all the characterization was indeed "dead
on", and being an old long time Rogue fan as you are a Magneto fan I tend
to notice her more (although I have to admit a long time soft spot for
the real silver haired one as well).
>I liked the fact that they were *not* hopping into bed
>together, but taking it slow-- after all, Rogue has never had a chance
>for casual touching, hugging, necking, or any of that, and jumping right
>to sex seems like it would be setting her up for disappointment.
I definitely agree with this. The one part of the characterization of
Rogue I was very pleased with.
>I don't remember Storm, so I couldn't say. I liked the portrayal (before
>the killing started) of Bobby, Warren, Betsy, Quicksilver, Joseph and
>Rogue, and those are just the ones that have stuck in my head after all
>this time.
There was little to remember about Storm. Some of these others were fine,
I still thought rather simple but fine. I do have to agree with you
specifically on Quicksilver though. I tend to forget him since I
consider him forgettable as a character, but now that you mention it, he
was very well done.
>I agree that it would never have gotten as much notice if the villains
>hadn't won, but that isn't a bad thing.
I didn't say it was. Being different can have a lot of advantages, and
was impressively used in this story as all the discussion proves.
Although there are others, the story deserves kudos on that fact alone.
Take care,
Faith
Link
On Fri, 1 May 1998, Aleph Press wrote:
*snips*
> Then there's Jubilee's fate. Emma Frost is good friends with Sean
> Cassidy. He dies, and she doesn't sense it? She lets her student simply
> leave and run back to the X-mansion, when Sean has just been murdered by
> parties unknown, parties that *might* be gunning for her students as
> well? Frost is not that stupid.
Frost is not stupid, but it's just bad timing on Jubilee's part. She
ran off to Xavier's mansion in the middle of the night, the night before
the news of Sean and Theresa's death and Charles's assassination reached
the X-Men. So there's really nothing Frost could have done to prevent
Jubilee's demise. Just dumb luck.
*snips*
> I felt that the
> fact that there were pretty much *no* Marauder casualties (maybe Prizm
> died, but he always does :-)) was unrealistic.
Check again. There were casualities on the Marauder's side.
(Of course, it's hard to tell with all the cloning. Some of them
died twice if you include the sequel.)
Cyclops managed to wipe out Sabretooth (at least bad enough that they
had to carry out his remains.)
Wolverine did very well and knocked off two: Scrambler and Vertigo.
Bishop was the one that got the popular Prism you mentioned above.
Lastly Cannonball blasted Riptide into a wall.
Roger Larson
On Fri, 1 May 1998 22:22:05 GMT, al...@netcom.com (Aleph Press) wrote:
>kie...@aol.com wrote:
>: That got the two of us off on the subject of a
>: roleplaying game that Laer had once been in, under a
>: very good (and very sadistic) GM who pitted them
>: against the Marauders (my babies! ;) and actually
>: showed the baddies at their best potential. Laer & I
>: agreed that the Marauders had the potential to utterly
>: wipe out the X-Men if they were allowed to act
>: intelligently for once...and thus Laer's wheels began
>: to turn...
*grins*
>
>My problems with Devil's Due were twofold: one, on the personal level, I
>absolutely hate futility stories. You fight, and struggle, and in the end
>you get destroyed and it doesn't mean a damn. I can enjoy tragic stories
>when the tragedy comes from a flaw within the protagonists that suffer,
>and not because God decided to whomp on them that day. But that's
>entirely personal. In Real life, futility happens. Good people get wiped
>out by evil people. It's realistic-- maybe that's why I don't want it in
>my fiction, but I can't complain about it. :-)
>
Oh well. I think the Men and Women Who Wear X have had it coming for a
long, long time. Let's be honest -- when was the last time an X-er was
seriously inconvenienced? O:ZT (what a farce...)? I, for one, loved
Devil's Due.
>My biggest problem, though, is that some of the X-Men's fates made no
>sense. Okay, we all know what an obsessive I am, so take Joseph. He gets
>taken out because Riptide eeventually manages to punch wood through his
>force field. Unless all the Marauders are wearing deguassing equipment
>and electrical grounds, it wouldn't happen. Magneto's first serious
>manifestation of his power, when he was far more clueless about it than
>Joseph was, was to electrocute at least 20 and possibly more people in a
>radius around him. Joseph went berserk in his very first appearance, and
>has done so since he joined the X-Men. It is simply not at all plausible
>that he would sit there, fighting defensively, while Rogue is dying next
>to him.
Witness the New Mutant years, when Magneto was consciously holding
back as much as he could, because he didn't want to kill
indiscriminately.
Now we've got Joeneto. He knows he's got phenominal power at his
disposal -- the people he's been coming to know as friends and
associates are being picked off one by one. He's alone with Rogue, who
he feels strongly for.
He didn't, in that time-frame, know what he could do. He has no idea
of his upper bounds, and how to keep that kind of power under control.
So if Joe cuts loose, Rogue dies. Or the tunnels collapse and kill
everyone.
I thought Joe's death was fairly well handled.
Regardless of whether or not he is Magneto, we have ample
>evidence that *he* would electrocute every Marauder within his visual
>range (and since we're ta;lking about Riptide and harpoon, neither of
>whom are likely to be immune to massive, massive electrical discharges,
>they're dead.) if it was down in the tunnels (I seem to recall him and
>Rogue fleeing the tunnels, but I haven't read the story since its first
>appearance), he's surrounded by metal. Riptide and Harpoon wouldn't even
>have had the opportunity to take out Rogue. And I seem to recall
>Scalphunter being there... well, he wears metal armor. Duh.
>
Without cooking Rogue or Team 2?
Without knowing a bleeding thing about how to _really_ control his
powers?
>I'm not saying smart villains *couldn't* take Joseph out, but the way
>they did it, and the fact that they suffered no casualties doing it, was
>unrealistic.
>
Enhh. YMMV.
>Then there's Jubilee's fate. Emma Frost is good friends with Sean
>Cassidy. He dies, and she doesn't sense it? She lets her student simply
>leave and run back to the X-mansion, when Sean has just been murdered by
>parties unknown, parties that *might* be gunning for her students as
>well? Frost is not that stupid.
>
You're right, she isn't. But Frosty doesn't have the constant mental
links to all her Gen-X kiddies like Xavier did to the X-Men. And since
Jubes isn't a telepath, and was in the psychic equivalent of a charnel
house many times over, what's to sense?
>Mystique's killing of Xavier is unrelated to the rest of the story, and
>pointless. Mystique got over her problems with Xavier a very long time
>ago. What should have been done here was that Xavier should have been
>killed by a Marauder. Perhaps Malice possessing Mystique. However, I saw
>no clear evidence that this was the case. (Again, it's been a while since
>I read this, and I read it at work, so maybe I missed something...)
>
Enhh. This did strike me as odd, but I took it as a festering
resentment sort of thing. Mystique did for a long time hate Xavier for
taking her daughter Rogue away, and that's NOT the sort of thing one
ever forgets.
And Mystique's a fairly cold-blooded killer -- she had, IMNAAHO,
resigned herself to not being able to get any sort of revenge while
Rogue was around Xavier, and while he had his powers. But wait, now he
doesn't have his telepathy anymore, and he's being held hostage,
powerless and alone.
A perfect opportunity for a shapeshifter.
>And Scott. You should not be able to touch Scott's eyes. Remember that
>eyes move, and Scott's blast comes out of *all* of his eye, not just the
>edges. If you attempt to angle a scalpel underneath an eye, it is
>impossible to prevent that eye from rolling far enough to see you, and
>what Scott can see (even in peripheral vision) he can blast. This could
>be fixed by making the blades ruby quartz, but that wasn't established.
>
All Arc cut was the optic nerve and the connective tissue around his
eye -- IIRC she didn't cut the eye itself. And Scott's blast DOES NOT
come out of his optic nerves.
>So, to me, it wasn't about "what if the Marauders were really smart?" It
>was "what if the author has decided that the Marauders are gonna kill the
>X-Men?" It's an excellent piece of writing, but something this intense is
>going to come under intense scrutiny, and what-iffing (and yes, I plotted
>my very own sequel, too-- probably won't get around to writing it, now
>that the real thing's being done, but who knows?), and I felt that the
>fact that there were pretty much *no* Marauder casualties (maybe Prizm
>died, but he always does :-)) was unrealistic. Especially since these are
>the exact same Marauders the X-Men have been up against before; the new
>X-Men are all likely to have been in Danger Room simulations against the
>Marauders, programmed by people who fought them the first time, while the
>Marauders have never been up against some of the newer people, nor have
>they had access to people who have been. Not that Danger Room simulations
>are as agood as the real thing, but the conflict seemed way too
>one-sided. And the really, really wonderful characterization the story
>started with just made the whole thing seem more like an exercise in sadism.
>
I personally loved it. I liked the fact that the villains, all of whom
have quite deadly powers and mindsets, didn't have to hold back to let
the heroes win.
It was refreshing and honest to see the X-Men get nailed for their own
stupidity. And, if you'll remember, Scalp said/thought that they had
trained for years for that, and had changed their fighting styles, to
accomplish their mission.
Much like the X-Men do to them, eh? Turn the tables, see how the shoe
fits.
>I don't want to bash the story. It was very well written in most senses.
>Outside of some of the combat pieces, the characterization was spot on.
>Some of the Marauder methods of killing people-- the monofilament agaisnt
>Quicksilver, for instance-- were realistic and plausible ways of killing
>that character. But for personal reasons I found it really, really
>disturbing-- which I *think* was the intent-- and that leads me to
>nitpick the plot to a much greater degree than I'd do with anything else.
>
I didn't find it disturbing at all. Then again, I'm a confessed
villain junkie (ask Indigo, she'll tell you). I like to see them win
once in a while. Quite frankly, the X-ers have it far, far too easy.
>Alara Rogers, Aleph Press
>al...@netcom.com
Erik Larson
Aleph Press
Roger Larson (lar...@erols.com) wrote:
: Witness the New Mutant years, when Magneto was consciously holding
: back as much as he could, because he didn't want to kill
: indiscriminately.
: Now we've got Joeneto. He knows he's got phenominal power at his
: disposal -- the people he's been coming to know as friends and
: associates are being picked off one by one. He's alone with Rogue, who
: he feels strongly for.
: He didn't, in that time-frame, know what he could do. He has no idea
: of his upper bounds, and how to keep that kind of power under control.
: So if Joe cuts loose, Rogue dies. Or the tunnels collapse and kill
: everyone.
In a similar circumstance-- his daughter has just died, he's surrounded
by enemies, his wife is present, he has powers he has *no* control of or
understanding of-- Magneto electrocuted about 20 people. Joseph would
have berserked. Yes, he might have ended up killing Rogue. Yes, he might
have ended up collapsing the tunnels and killing everyone. In fact that
would have been an interesting twist, having Joseph berserk and kill
about half the X-Men *himself* in his attempt to take out the Marauders
who have just killed Rogue. It doesn't matter. It's completely out of
character for Joseph (witness UXM #327 and 344) or Magneto (witness
Classic XM #12 backstory), who at the time Joseph was supposed to be an
amnesiac version of, to hold back under such circumstances *even if* he
does not have control of his powers, there are friendlies present and
cutting loose presents a risk to them.
Both Joseph and Magneto have a habit of erring on the side of action.
Which could very well get the people they were trying to protect killed.
Now there would have been a death I could have believed in-- if Joseph
had berserked, collapsed the tunnels, killed the Marauders he was after
and also Rogue and several X-Men, and then realized what he had done--
and when one of the surviving Marauders comes for him, he doesn't even
fight back. But for him to fight defensively out of fear of his own power
is way out of character-- not just for Mags but for Joseph himself, both
before and after he joined the X-Men.
: Without cooking Rogue or Team 2?
: Without knowing a bleeding thing about how to _really_ control his
: powers?
Didn't stop Magnus from frying the people he held responsible for the
death of his daughter, with his wife right there. And he knew much, much
less about his powers than Joseph does.
: Enhh. This did strike me as odd, but I took it as a festering
: resentment sort of thing. Mystique did for a long time hate Xavier for
: taking her daughter Rogue away, and that's NOT the sort of thing one
: ever forgets.
: And Mystique's a fairly cold-blooded killer -- she had, IMNAAHO,
: resigned herself to not being able to get any sort of revenge while
: Rogue was around Xavier, and while he had his powers. But wait, now he
: doesn't have his telepathy anymore, and he's being held hostage,
: powerless and alone.
: A perfect opportunity for a shapeshifter.
It's not Mystique killing Xavier I object to, so much as it's the remarkably
coincidental timing of it. Mystique kills Xavier *just* around the time
that Sinister has decided to dispose of the X-Men, without the two being
connected in any way? At that point the strings the writer is pulling
become very, very obvious.
And, well, it really *does* seem to me like she's gotten over it. She and
Rogue have reconciled and made happy. She hasn't lost Rogue anymore. And
Xavier has made Rogue happier, and has given her a better life than
Raven, for all her love, could provide. Rogue was miserable and insane
when she went to Xavier. Now she's strong and, well, not happy, but
happier. It seemed very strange for Mystique to decide to do this, and
absurdly coincidental that she'd do it so close to the killing of the
X-Men by Sinister.
: All Arc cut was the optic nerve and the connective tissue around his
: eye -- IIRC she didn't cut the eye itself. And Scott's blast DOES NOT
: come out of his optic nerves.
Unless she went through the bone, she could not get *into* the connective
tissue and optic nerve without going in under the eyes. And I've
experimented with this. You can't angle something such that it would go
in under the eyes without making it visible, and therefore exposed and
vulnerable to eyes that project beams. Scott could simply have looked
sideways and fried her hands off.
: I personally loved it. I liked the fact that the villains, all of whom
: have quite deadly powers and mindsets, didn't have to hold back to let
: the heroes win.
: It was refreshing and honest to see the X-Men get nailed for their own
: stupidity. And, if you'll remember, Scalp said/thought that they had
: trained for years for that, and had changed their fighting styles, to
: accomplish their mission.
If the villains are going to be portrayed as vastly more intelligent than
they ever are in the comics, I think the heroes should be as well. You
could "nail the X-Men for their own stupidity" with original villains,
but if you're going to use canonicals... well, canonically the Marauders
are also dumber than that. So upgrading the Marauders' smarts, and not
the X-Men's, doesn't strike me as honest.
Now maybe what I'd like to see is a fic where the heroes and the villains
are *both* smart... and the heroes still lose. I mean, no, I wouldn't
like to see it because I don't enjoy stories where the heroes lose
completely. But I'd enjoy it more, because it would feel less like the
characters were being idiots, more like they really did fight as hard as
they could and as intelligently as they could and they still lost. A lot
of Devil's Due *does* read like that. For instance, as I said,
Quicksilver's death seemed perfect to me. He *would* run right into that
trap. On the other hand, killing any version of Magneto by pounding on
him, as he holds back and fights defensively because he's afraid to cut
loose, just isn't possible. The character berserks when pushed too far,
we know this. There are smarter ways to kill him. Scrambler would be
*awfully* useful, given that Joey has basically no real fighting skills
outside his powers. Vertigo could bring him down. Sabretooth's got a
better shot at him than Wolverine ever had, not having adamantium, and
Wolvie's tagged Magneto a few times. Scalp could have rigged a sniper
rifle with high-density plastic bullets and shot him in the head from
real far away. (I harp on this one example because, as the character I'm
obsessed with, his death is the one I was most going, "No, no, you idiot!
This isn';t even in character for you! Why don't you do this?" Other
people may have their own favorite examples.)
: I didn't find it disturbing at all. Then again, I'm a confessed
: villain junkie (ask Indigo, she'll tell you). I like to see them win
: once in a while. Quite frankly, the X-ers have it far, far too easy.
I don't mind seeing the villains win if it isn't through the heroes being
uncharacteristically easy to take down. That's no more entertaining than
the villains being uncharacteristically easy, and having the heroes
cakewalk through their battle with them.
--
Be good, servile little citizen-employee, and pay your taxes so the rich
don't have to.
--Zepp Weasel
Alara Rogers, Aleph Press
al...@netcom.com
All Aleph Press stories are at http://www.mindspring.com/~alara/ajer.
Gary Johnson
Aleph Press (al...@netcom.com) wrote:
:and before that, someone whose name I foolishly snipped wrote:
: : I personally loved it. I liked the fact that the villains, all of whom
: : have quite deadly powers and mindsets, didn't have to hold back to let
: : the heroes win.
:
: : It was refreshing and honest to see the X-Men get nailed for their own
: : stupidity. And, if you'll remember, Scalp said/thought that they had
: : trained for years for that, and had changed their fighting styles, to
: : accomplish their mission.
:
: If the villains are going to be portrayed as vastly more intelligent than
: they ever are in the comics, I think the heroes should be as well. You
: could "nail the X-Men for their own stupidity" with original villains,
: but if you're going to use canonicals... well, canonically the Marauders
: are also dumber than that. So upgrading the Marauders' smarts, and not
: the X-Men's, doesn't strike me as honest.
"Devil's Due" is enviably well-written in parts, but the point of the
story is to kill the X-Men, not to kill them in plausible ways. The
X-Men's strategy is so obviously bad that there's no way Cyclops should
have done it. Walk into an ambushed room without looking for claymores or
guarding against them? Walk into an ambushed room without first linking
up the entire team? Walk into an ambushed room when he isn't even
sure who's in there? It may have been the Marauders, the Nasty Boys,
*and* Malice, for crying out loud! Even if Cyclops is having a bad day,
his perfectly intelligent team-mates *aren't* going to worry about such
things? Hmmm.
Once that happened, my suspension of disbelief was broken. Later events
(e.g. a seriously injured, dying Iceman trapping people in blocks of ice
and not snap-freezing the fluids in their bodies; Storm not once using
her powers to protect her teammates from Riptide or channel lightning
through assorted Marauder's heads) didn't help.
: Now maybe what I'd like to see is a fic where the heroes and the villains
: are *both* smart... and the heroes still lose.
And in my opinion, the Marauders are the best group for that *because* of
Malice. She could wreak tremendous havok as Iceman or Colossus, to choose
two X-Men who would have difficulty resisting being possessed by her.
Without Malice, the Marauders depend too much on Vertigo and Scrambler to
defeat powerful opponents: "Devil's Due" would be a much stronger story
if the X-Men took that into account before walking into a room which might
be mined and in which Vertigo can disorient everyone before Arclight drops
the roof on their heads.
Yours,
Gary Johnson
Ruby Lis
>Unless she went through the bone, she could not get *into* >the connective
tissue and optic nerve without going in >under the eyes. And I've experimented
with this.
You've _experimented_ with this?
Aleph Press
Ruby Lis (rub...@aol.com) wrote:
: >Unless she went through the bone, she could not get *into* >the connective
: tissue and optic nerve without going in >under the eyes. And I've experimented
: with this.
: You've _experimented_ with this?
Yeah, I took a pen and pressed it to the outside of my eyeball, imagining
it to be a scalpel that was supposed to go underneath, and trying to get
an angle where it could (if it were a scalpel) go under my eye without me
being able to see it. It isn't possible.
My own reputation is fairly bad, I admit, but no, I didn't actually cut
out anyone's eyes with a scalpel to test this. :-)
(And no, it didn't hurt. I didn't press very hard, and my eyelids were in
the way, so it wasn't like I was actually touching my eye.)
--
Be good, servile little citizen-employee, and pay your taxes so the rich
don't have to.
--Zepp Weasel
Alara Rogers, Aleph Press
al...@netcom.com
All Aleph Press stories are at http://www.mindspring.com/~alara/ajer.
Ruby Lis
: You've _experimented_ with this?
>Yeah, I took a pen and pressed it to the outside of my >eyeball, imagining it
to be a scalpel that was supposed to >go underneath, and trying to get an angle
where it could (if it >were a scalpel) go under my eye without me being able to
>see it. It isn't possible.
Someone has waaaaaaaayyy too much time on their hands.
;-)
b...@acpub.duke.edu
Lemme guess, finals time?
Mac
I'm huggin' ya, but I'm hittin' ya
I have to agree with kie...@aol.com. "Devil's Due" was a pretty awesome story.
Granted, it depressed the hell out of me, but I thought the author was right on
the money with his characterizations of the various X-people. Gruesome, yes,
and to be avoided if you don't like that kind of stuff. However, it was nice to
be on the edge of my seat, for once not knowing who would live and who would
die. As kielle says below, the opening chapters provide some wonderfully true
and honest portrayals of our fave X-men interacting with each other.
-The Mad Typist
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7250/
>That got the two of us off on the subject of a
>roleplaying game that Laer had once been in, under a
>very good (and very sadistic) GM who pitted them
>against the Marauders (my babies! ;) and actually
>showed the baddies at their best potential. Laer & I
>agreed that the Marauders had the potential to utterly
>wipe out the X-Men if they were allowed to act
>intelligently for once...and thus Laer's wheels began
>to turn...
>
>
>"Devil's Due" IS extremely gory, true. And it isn't for
>everyone, I agree. But it was done that way
>completely on purpose, to show that it COULD be
>done, NOT because that's the only thing Laesyn can
>write or because it turns him on or something. ;) I'd
>like to humbly draw you guys' attention to his first
>two chapters, which contain a sizeable heap of quite
>adorable, quite un-violent characterization for the X-
>Men. Storm and Wolvie have a heart-to-heart, Joseph
>and Rogue get cozy, Quicksilver gets prodded out of
>his depression by a stranger at the supermarket, Luna
>is just plain adorable, Gambit sulks around the
>mansion, Jean dances delicately along the edge of
Brooke
effective. =) Certainly beats stabbing yourself in the thumb with a
pencil...I once did that in Calculus (accident) but I managed to spend
all of Calculus and a good chunk of English in the nurse's office. =)
-Brooke