Right, let's get this shit
done. When we last left April Daniels, he was recreating the climax of
X2 but with misandry instead of mutants. Yes, Graywytch not only hates troons, but all men. This of course didn't stop her from apparently working just fine for years with male superheroes, to the point where she enjoyed the benefit of the doubt of both the city government and the wider superhero community.
We open with Danny flying fill tilt towards Legion Tower, as all the expected carnage from all the men in the world starting to die at once unfolds beneath him.
At my top speed, I can cover the distance from Cynosure to New Port in a little over twenty minutes. I never thought that would feel slow. Another pulse of the spell sweeps over me, and I grit my teeth and put myself on an upward trajectory before it becomes too much. Once again the spell makes me lose my grip, but I’m on a ballistic trajectory now and keep going up. I peak and begin the long, uncontrolled descent into a forest. At the last instant, I’m able to catch myself and get back in the air before I go smashing through the trees.
A small cabin in the woods is on fire as I pass. A woman is pulling a limp man out of the burning building. That’s all I have time to see before I’m thousands of feet beyond her.
So, clearly the spell is straight up knocking men out as it kills them. Remember that.
She did it. She really did it. Graywytch told me this was coming, and I didn’t realize what she meant. When she had me strapped down to that table in the dungeon below Cynosure, she said women can only be pushed so far before they push back. And of course, her definitions of man, woman, and push are all so fucked up it could have meant anything.
Oh, yeah, who could possibly know what Myra meant by the word
woman? Crazy bitch could be talking about a squirrel for all any of us know. And
push? Danny just burst into her home and threatened to kill her because his parents had legal representation and his lawyer's mobile-reception was spotty. Real snowflake, am I right?
It could have meant anything, but it meant this:
The flat-out murder of half the human population.
All the signs were there, and I missed it. Her neglect of her superhero duties. Her strained alliance with Garrison. The shoddy magic she performed for him—almost as if her real concern was somewhere else, on a different project.
Yeah, all those things totally add up to "kill all men." It's all so obvious.
Now that it’s happening, I can see how they all fit together: if her definition of what makes a man and what makes a woman isn’t respected anymore, she’ll simply remove men from the discussion. “Men” like me.
I love the scare quotes around "men" when we're talking about a teenage boy who used the powers of the universe to remold himself into a woman-shaped fuck-object with no uterus.
Like anyone with a Y chromosome, I bet.
Yeah, that's a pretty good definition. Shame about the women with androgen insensitivity syndrome, but still, a description that fits 99.99% of any given group is better than most.
More than three-and-a-half billion people, all dead, and then a mad scramble to figure out how to keep the species going.
So, has Graywytch considered that at all? I know Daniels is clearly writing her as a mad-dog bitch, but I can't imagine she wants her ideal all-lady civilisation to die out after one generation. When Akasha came up with basically the same plan in
Queen of the Damned, she at least specified she'd be keeping one man alive for every hundred women.
I feel like the more I tell you good readers about my taste in books, the less you'll trust my opinions.
They’ve radioed ahead to tell the NPPD to arrest Graywytch, but if the highways and towns I’ve been flying over are any indication, downtown New Port will be such a mess it will be amazing if the cops can even get to Legion Tower on foot, much less with enough firepower to do anything about this.
Why? I mean, obviously arresting Graywytch would be a good idea, but why do the police believe them now? I mean, I could see them going by what I assume are many misandrist comments she's made in the past, but those didn't seem to matter before. Again, Daniels doesn't seem to realise his characters are meant to have "existed" before the start of the story.
“Codex, are you still with us?”
His voice is weak and raspy over the radio. “Yeah. I’m here.”
I have to fight down another surge of nausea to get my next sentence out. “What do I do?”
“Find her. Stop her.”
Helpful. Also, how is Codex still conscious? I can (begrudgingly) accept Danny being more resistant to the spell because he's a tough bastard, but he's just a kid who knows some spells.
“I don’t see her. What do I look for?” And now I do vomit, a half-mouthful of acid and bile. There’s nothing left in me, but I still can’t get right. My ears are ringing, my lips are numb.
“Can’t even begin to guess,” says Codex.
“Dreadnought, she’ll be in her library if she’s anywhere,” says Doctor Impossible. “That’s where she always disappeared to when she needed to work something big.”
Luckily, Myra didn't think it might be a good idea to do her genocide ritual anywhere except the first place anyone who knew anything about her would check.
With an effort that makes my head swim I push myself back to my feet and try to get over to the elevator. Between one step and the next I forget how to walk and end up sprawled cheek-down on the floor.
The floor that I now realize is shaking with ponderous footsteps. I roll to look back over my shoulder. A twelve-foot-tall golem of concrete and rebar looks down at me, eyes like two burning points of green fire. The monster stares down at me, cocks its head. Knives edged in green-white fire begin to push themselves up out of the concrete. I can feel the heat radiating off the blades even from down on the floor.
“Oh, come on!” I shout. “That’s not even close to fair!”
Yes, it is unfair that Graywytch only starts getting halfway creative with her limitless magical power near the end. Danny asks Doc how to kill the thing, and her advice is this:
Seawater,” says Doc.
“What?”
“Seawater always blocked her. Abort the mission, get out of there.” Doctor Impossible sounds like she hates herself right now. “Once you’re under the ocean, her magic should have trouble reaching you. You’ll be safe.”
“No.”
“You just need to hold your breath for twelve hours, I can get to you!” She’s at the edge of pleading.
“Can’t do that, Doc. All those people will die.”
“We can clone more sperm, and the species will go on. There’s no reason to throw your life away!”
God, can you imagine, an entire world descended from
Danny. I'd rather scour the ocean for the bits of those poor people on that sub a few weeks back.
Does it make me a bad person that I like hearing her say these things? I don’t know. I don’t care. If I’m going to die, I’m happy to die listening to someone trying to trade half of humanity for me. But quitting isn’t an option, and she knows it.
Trust Danny to even make a heroic sacrifice weird and gross.
“Sarah, are you there?” I ask.
“I am,” she says.
I close my eyes and savor the sound of her voice. “I’m sorry I waited so long.”
“It’s okay. I should have said something.” Her voice is wavering, but she’s holding it together. It makes me happy to know she’ll be okay. “I love you. Die proud.”
But most importantly, die.
My fist tightens. One way or the other, this will be quick. Take a deep breath—
The tip of a sword bursts from the creature’s forehead with a screech of steel on stone. With a screaming shower of sparks, the sword forces its way through the golem from forehead to groin. The golem crashes to the ground in two twitching halves.
Karen stands behind it, dressed in steel armor, her wings unfurled. No, wait. That’s not Karen. She’s wearing Valkyrja’s armor, holding Valkyrja’s sword. She carries herself with Valkyrja’s posture, and when I look into her eyes there is no mistaking the ancient intelligence gazing back at me.
But Karen?
Karen is gone.
“You killed her.” I’m dimly surprised at myself. Karen betrayed me, abandoned me to be tortured to death, and still, I am outraged. Nobody deserves to be eaten from the inside out like that. Nobody.
Valkyrja shakes Karen’s head. “No. I embraced my nature. It is the way of things.”
So, Danny being born in a healthy male body like billions of other people was a great cosmic injustice, but Karen's soul being drowned out by the voice of a thousand ancestors is just 'the way of things'? Still, more selfless than anything Danny has ever done. Might've been a bit more effective if we'd seen Karen at all since the first quarter of the book, but still, points to her for trying.
“You going to kill me too, now?”
...Why would you think that? Valkyrja liked you!
A troubled look passes over her stolen face. “I have much to atone for. Please, let me begin.”
“This is another trick.”
“You are too weak to fight me. Graywytch has nearly won, and I could kill you without effort. Were I working with her, there would be no possible motive for deception,” says Valkyrja. She steps to a clear place on the floor and begins cutting a pattern in the carpet with the tip of her sword. “She has secreted her ritual away in another realm. It is a strategy I have seen her use before. I must open the way for you.”
I mean, I can't see why Valkyja would work with Graywytch. If there's no men, how would she produce new bodies for to steal?
Valkyrja looks up, eyes flashing. “I’m not dead, Danielle! This was my choice! Now is not the time to speak of it.” She steps back from the design, and with a hard thrust she stabs her sword through the barrier between worlds—the blade disappears into thin air, a silver mist billowing from the wound. Gripping her sword with both hands, she pulls the blade up and around until she has cut a rough oval in midair. Beyond it lies grass and trees and a night sky that is lit by a brilliant purple nebula.
“Win your battle,” says Valkyrja. “We will speak later.”
“I’m in no shape to fight. You want to atone? Go do it yourself.”
I love the idea of Danny trying to palm off killing Graywytch to someone else. It's unintentionally the most accurate depiction of troon work-ethic ever.
“I cannot open the way from the other side, nor keep the door clear once I leave it. I must stay here.”
“You could seal me in there.”
She nods. “I could. I won’t.”
You should.
I don’t trust her. I don’t trust this. But what choice do I have? Half-limping, half-floating, I cross into another world, and hope I’m not too late.
The wind on the other side is cool, crisp. The stars spill across a dark sky, and a luminous purple ribbon of nebular gases reaches from horizon to horizon. A glowing fog hugs the landscape in the distance. Flecks of light like campfire embers rise in swirling funnel clouds from the center of the fog bank. That had better be Graywytch’s ritual. The silver-edged portal dwindles rapidly behind me.
"Hah, sucker."
Also, if Grawytch can cast global genocide spells from another dimension, why did she have to be personally present for... anything?
There, the ritual site is just ahead, in a clearing under a full, red moon. There’s no time for subtlety, no time to check for traps or defenses. No time to find Graywytch and take her out first. I put everything I’ve got left into one headlong dive. It’s another Stonehenge wannabe. I aim myself at the biggest arch of stones in the center and get my good arm up to shield myself. In the instant before I hit, I see Graywytch lying in the grass, her robes stained with drying vomit.
Judging from the many groans I can hear in the distance, I'm guessing most of you have already guessed the next twist.
When I come to stand over her, she gets a look on her face. A look I’ll never forget. I can tell the exact moment she comes to the same realization that I have. That we’re alone. Truly alone in a way most people never experience.
It’s just her.
And me.
And no witnesses.
I'm shocked Danny's cock didn't just grow back.
So we come back to that tired old cliché: who you are in the dark is who you really are. If I go home, they will believe anything I tell them. I could say it was self-defense. I could say there was no other way. Nobody would know.
"See? If I mention it's a cliche, than it's actually clever!"
“I don’t remember when my father started screaming at me,” I tell her, and I’m as surprised as she is that this is coming out now. “But I know that by the time I was in kindergarten I was already afraid of him.”
Graywytch licks her lips. “What are—”
Shut up, or I will kill you.” She closes her mouth, and I keep going.
Danny, towering over a prone foe, giving a bitter speech about unrelated foes. Sane behaviour if I ever saw it.
He used to sit me on the couch and scream himself hoarse at me. Over any little thing. Not always the same things. Sometimes, forgetting to clean my room wasn’t a big deal. Sometimes it was a huge deal. It hurt. A lot. But nobody would help me. My mom abandoned me every time it happened. Grandma and Grandpa refused to get involved before they died. I think Mom was telling them I was exaggerating. I told a cop once, and he said to buzz off. So I grew up scared. I didn’t talk to people at school, more or less, because I didn’t know if I’d say something that would make them angry at me. And it got worse when I realized I wasn’t like the other boys. It got so much worse because this was something that I knew I couldn’t show. And I was terrified, all the time, every day, that I’d be found out. So I hid myself. All the time, on reflex. I would disappear, and when I couldn’t disappear I would try to be forgotten.
In other words, Danny is bitter he wasn't placed into foster-care... because his dad was a shouty dick. Words fail me.
“Dreadnought died. He gave me his powers. The Legion came to collect me. And for a few minutes there, you know, I thought I’d finally be safe. But then I met you.”
My jaw clenches. I have to force the words out, wet and raw. “And you took that from me. You did everything you could to make sure I wouldn’t have any place to be safe. For no reason. Why?”
"Safe"? You were being asked to join a superhero team! That's the opposite of safe! And technically speaking, Myra didn't actually "take" the Legion away from you, you refused to join, then Doc killed and maimed most of them because she forgot to update her antivirus software and didn't tell anyone.
She’s silent for a long moment. “Because—”
“I never cared that you don’t think I’m a girl, Myra!”
Bullshit. Troons can't even brook people
privately doubting their bullshit.
I shout, and she flinches. If possible, she goes even paler than she normally is. “And I never wanted to be in your club. I just wanted there to be one place in the world where I wasn’t scared anymore. Where I didn’t have to hide myself.
So, Danny didn't really want to join the Legion, he just wanted it to be a safe-safe for him, at the expense of one of its present members.
Troons, man.
Would it have killed you to just keep your mouth shut?”
"Shut up, woman."
Graywytch stays silent. She’s petrified, and maybe I should feel bad or good or something about that, but I don’t. I rock back on my heels and land heavily on my butt, my knees drawn up protectively in front of me. All those years of pain, all those memories of tight fear and blaring terror, they’re all coming back. It’s like he’s here again, screaming at me until I want to die just so it can be over. Other kids’ dads teach them to fish or to play catch. Mine taught me I was too weak to defend myself. That it was always my fault. That nobody would ever love me.
If you showed someone this paragraph in isolation, I bet they'd assume Roger beat the sheet out of Dan, or at least have engaged in like... verbal abuse outside of summaries.
Also, notice that--rather than have Danny actually confront his father about all this--Daniels just has him take his frustration out at the woman cowering at her feet.
I tremble and my throat clenches up. I’ll never be free of it. What he did will haunt me for the rest of my life.
And I hated Graywytch for letting me know that so soon.
Way too much media for young people today basically has the message "you are permanently reduced by every shitty thing that happens to you."
But I don’t cry. Not because I’m ashamed or anything—with Graywytch half-dead from her own magic, I finally realize I have no reason whatsoever to give a shit what she thinks about me.
Troons know they're lying, and the only way they can pretend to themselves they aren't is if they get everyone to lie too.
I don’t cry because I realize I don’t need to. Because they gave me their worst, and I’m still here. Dad doesn’t get to choose if I’m happy, and neither does Graywytch.
"But if someone tweets something I don't like, they should be exiled from all public life."
Graywytch lies there, statue-still. Eyes locked to me. We stare at each other for a long time. She’s got dried vomit all over her chest. I make a sweeping gesture toward the mess. “Let me guess: your spell was targeted to the Y chromosome, but you’ve never had a karyotype test.”
It’s such a left-field question that it startles an answer from her. “What?”
“Your chromosomes. You never had them tested, did you?”
So, you know the hoary old trope of every homophobe being a closeted gay? Well, waste not, want not:
Her brow furrows, and the first emotion that isn’t fear works its way onto her face. Disgust. “Don’t lump me in with you. I’m a woman. I menstruate.”
“So? Sex is just as fuzzy as gender is.
No, it really isn't. Actually, I don't think "gender" is all that fuzzy either, so maybe it is.
You might not be trans, but you could be intersex.
Troons are so jealous of intersex people, which is a bit like being jealous of people with type-one diabetes. People who have developmental sex disorders are still either male or female. In fact, most if not all types of intersex disorders specifically occur in either men or woman, boys or girls. The idea their existence somehow casts "the sexual binary" into doubt is like thinking amputees means human beings aren't bipedal. It's kind of telling that the most common effect of intersex disorders is
infertility. Having a broken arm doesn't make you double-jointed.
Most importantly, even if there were genuine hermaphrodites among the human race, Danny was never intersex. He was just a teenage boy who clearly thought he should've been born a girl because he didn't fit masculine stereotypes. Well, aside from the ones about men being violent brutes, obviously.
If you’d just looked it up you’d see there are women with Y chromosomes who can give birth. It’s not common, but it happens.”
I actually know of one case of this. Basically, there was a woman with androgen insensitivity syndrome who was lucky enough to have an underdeveloped womb. With some hormone therapy, she was later able to have a baby. However, she still didn't have any ovaries, so the eggs were from a donor. Obviously, this would've been impossible without substantial medical intervention. If anyone knows of any actually fertile, anatomically female people with a Y chromosome--who weren't like, genetic chimeras who ate a twin brother in the womb--I'd be happy to hear about them. Still wouldn't make Danny any more of a woman.
She huffs. Graywytch seems so much less impressive now. “No. Magic is dangerous. I miscalculated, is all. Standing this close to the center, it could have gotten anyone.”
I get to my feet. “Maybe. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to think about it in prison. I bet they’d even run a blood test for you, if you asked.”
"I mean, you'll probably be too drugged to the gills to remember, but you could."
er. “Get up. I don’t think I’m strong enough to carry you safely yet, so we’ve got to hike out of here.”
She looks at my hand, wary for a trick.
“For fuck’s sake, Graywytch, I’d just kill you if I was going to.”
Because if there's one thing Danny Tozer isn't known for, it's flying into out of control, berserk rages.
“We’re going to hike back to New Port so you can get arrested.That’s all that’s going to happen, I promise.”
She still doesn’t believe me; it’s etched in her face. “Why? Why spare me?”
I smile. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m better than you.”
So, Danny's not showing Graywytch mercy because of the inherent value of human life or anything, he just wants to rub her face in shit. Charming.
I don’t end up retiring after all.
Fuck.
Things can’t keep going on this way, but if I’m honest with myself, I don’t have it in me to quit. I like the power. I like the action. I love the look on people’s faces when they realize I’m there to save them. But I’ve got anger issues, and those are going to get somebody killed if I can’t figure out how to control them. That moment under the water with Sovereign, when he stopped fighting—I was so proud. Now it makes me feel uneasy to think about it. It’s just luck that Panzer was there to save him. So I’m taking a break. I’ll keep patrolling long enough for Kinetiq to get out of the hospital and take over my contract, and then I’m putting away the cape for at least six months.
Doc knows a therapist who specializes in the treatment of superheroes. We’re going to have appointments twice a week at first. Hopefully I’ll get better.
Poor therapist. Can't even begin to address the elephant in the room, or its massive, rope-like cock.
The break isn’t only for my health. Cecilia says I need to get out of the public eye for a while until the dust settles. My arrest and arraignment did a lot of damage to my reputation, and that will take time to fix. And, to be honest, she just doesn’t have enough hours in the day to be my publicist and my lawyer right now. Whatever remaining anger she had at me for breaking into Graywytch’s apartment evaporated when she got a look at just how much money we seized from Garrison. Uncle Sam took the lion’s share of it, of course, but Cecilia managed to snag ownership of Cynosure and what looks like enough money to cover the repairs as well. The rest of Sovereign Industries will be parceled out in court to Garrison’s business partners, and likely will be subject to ongoing legal disputes for years, if not decades. Cecilia says we can’t take it all for ourselves, but we can be damn sure that Garrison won’t get any of it back, either.
Wait, superheroes are allowed to claim the spoils of their vanquished foes? I'm sure this doesn't lead to any perverse incentives at all!
Speaking of lawyers, when Doc cracked Garrison’s hard drive (his password was password2), she unleashed a legal apocalypse. It turns out he had more than fifty judges and prosecutors on his payroll in one of the largest law enforcement corruption scandals in American history. That’s how he arranged to have me arrested for murder, among other things. He figured that Cynosure was safely under his control, and so he kept meticulous records of a whole range of illegal financial maneuvers, political bribery, and the occasional murder for hire.
How fucking convenient.
Graywytch is dead. I didn’t kill her, but she’s dead. They found her in her cell the morning after her arrest, without even a mark on her body. People are outraged. They wanted justice, and it’s been stolen from them. I’m frustrated too. I wanted her to see the world turn its back on her. I wanted my choice to spare her to mean something.
Oh, she wishes.
For more than fifty years, Mistress Malice was the heavyweight champion of supervillains, with over a quarter-million confirmed deaths during a six-month rampage. Graywytch made Malice’s crimes look like a liquor store robbery. They’re still counting the dead, but it’s easily the worst supervillain attack in history. The global death toll might top three million, mostly men, but hundreds of thousands of women died as well.
Not just trans women and intersex women, but cisgender women too; nearly ten thousand airliners crashed when their (overwhelmingly male) flight crews were disabled by her spell. Not to mention women who were on the operating table with male surgeons who collapsed, who were killed in traffic accidents and building fires, or any number of collisions caused by half the human species falling over all at once. Graywytch killed some of every kind of person that exists.
There were cries for justice, for punishment. Since people died in every country on the planet, there was going to be a huge fight over who got to put her on trial for mass murder, but all of that’s been stumped by the simple fact that she’s dead.
Except that I’m not sure that she is.
In other words, this entire book was so April Daniels could make a TERF the greatest terrorist in history.
Meanwhile, Charlie's been given a "full-ride scholarship and apprenticeship" by the Council of Avalon, whatever that means. Not sure how you can have a unified curriculum for magic when it's all just delusions made real by space-rocks. Shouldn't every mage operates under their own rules?
Congress has already passed a sweeping new anti-magic law in the wake of Graywytch’s attack, and they’re hoping he’ll be safer out of the country until the paranoia about magic users dies down. If it ever does.
So, nobody thought to legislate about magic shit before?
A question that has been running around in my mind pops out of my mouth: “So do you know what happened to Graywytch?”
Charlie freezes, and Sarah looks up from the pile of books she’s sorting.
“Not for sure,” he says.
“But you’ve got a suspicion.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to tell us?” asks Sarah.
Charlie crosses his room and shuts the door. “Look, you cannot repeat this, okay?”
Sarah and I trade a look. “Go on,” I say.
“I think the Council of Avalon added her to their Library,” says Charlie quietly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means they tore her soul from her body and bound it to service for all eternity. She’s as good as dead, except when somebody wakes her up to ask a question. That’s all anyone outside the Council knows about the Library, and I shouldn’t even be saying that much.”
Sarah sums up my feelings: “Holy shit.”
So, in other words, Danny sparing Graywytch meant nothing, and in fact only set her up for an even worse fate. I know from a Watsonian perspective, Danny had nothing to do with that, but clearly Daniels wants to have his cake and eat it too. It's like a way scummier version of the Margaret Thatcher scene in
Miracleman.
Valkyrja-in-Karen's body is going to rejoin the Legion, but first:
There is…a kindness I must ask from you. I have a task I must complete, and I have put it off too long. It will take time, and then I will return to you.”
“What kind of task?”
“A…ritual. A family tradition. I must secure my mother’s legacy. Until then, I cannot indulge distractions.”
“How long will it take?”
Valkyrja’s wings curl protectively around her. “About nine months.”
Oh.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” I ask. The other part of the question is left unspoken: do you want to do that to your daughter?
That's right, not only has Karen been drowned in her own head, now her body will be used to breed a future host for the parasite that did it.
“It is the way of things. It will bring me solace.”
Remember when Doc was comparing herself to a rape victim? Also, I really hope Karen and Charlie never got further than making out.
The one thing that everybody agrees on is that those damn satellites need to go. Nobody should have the power to cast a spell over the entire planet ever again. I boost up into orbit again and start knocking them down. Red Steel sends me another email, congratulating me on my victory, and stating that because his employer turned out to be a criminal and the satellites were weapons of mass destruction, that he has generously decided he will not be seeking vengeance upon me for defying his warning. I send him a fluffy cat picture in reply.
What, are you telling me Red Steel doesn't usually work for criminals?
So have you thought about who you’re going to give the money to?” Kinetiq asks me. It’s a topic that’s been hanging over our heads. They’re clearly unhappy with the sudden influx of wealth. We nearly died taking down the guy I took this money off of. We’d be well within our rights to keep it. Kinetiq hasn’t been shy about how much they disagree, and I guess now is as good a time as any for us to decide not to avoid the issue any longer.
I shrug, and regurgitate a line I heard from Cecilia: “Until the asset forfeiture case is settled, it would be premature to spend any of it.”
“Don’t dodge the question, Dreadnought.” Kinetiq leans on their cane and pivots to face me. “Who are you giving the money to?”
Getting angry isn’t going to help. More and more I’m trying to rein in my temper. “I’m thinking that we’ll keep it.” Technically, it’s going to be a group decision, but everyone has been looking to me to make a proposal. I tried to pawn the responsibility off on Calamity, and she literally laughed in my face.
“You don’t want to do that,” says Kinetiq. “Money changes people, and never for the better. Besides that, no fortune that large can exist without the exploitation of the working class—it’s stolen money, Dreadnought. Blood money. You have a moral duty to return it to the people. How you do that, what charity you choose, that’s your choice, but you can’t keep it.”
The idea that a self-professed anarchist would turn down billions of dollars and immediately fight to the death to keep it is the funniest joke in this book. Like, have you seen how defensive Alan Moore can be about his property? I'm not saying he doesn't have every right to be (though, he has screwed over his collaborators in the process, people forget that) but these people often seem to care a lot about private property when it's their own.
“It’s not go-crazy money, okay? Most of the cash got hoovered up by the Feds. We’ve only got enough to repair Cynosure, and maybe a couple million left over after that.”
“Why repair it? Bust that damn thing up for scrap.”
“What good would that do anyone?”
“What good would it do anyone to keep it?” they reply, almost before I’m done speaking.
“I was thinking we’d put up a free clinic that provides the full range of transition services to anyone who asks. Or a halfway house for queer runaways who need to start a new life away from their family.” I very carefully do not look at them when I say that last part.
“Oh,” says Kinetiq quietly.
That's right, Danny's turning the seastead into a private island refuge for "queer kids" and it'll be run by an AFAB enby. In other words, he's created a floating Tranch, but instead of alpacas, it's confused human children. I'm not sure if I want to read that Kiwi thread or not.
“I was thinking, though. It might be good to have one of us stay on the island to make sure all the kids are okay. You could see to it that it’s just not another way of throwing them into the system.”
They snort. “Lay off. You made your point.”
“So you’re okay with this?”
“Yeah. I think so. I think I’d like that.”
A reminder that Danny thinks the United States foster-care system would be better than living with his middle class family.
Professor Gothic lands in New Port after almost a month spent in hiding—it’s the first flight into town since the biggest disaster the airline industry ever suffered. The Nemesis is not quite public knowledge yet, but we think it’s only a matter of time until word leaks. Most of the world’s governments already know, and are scrambling to decide what—if anything—to do about it. The Nemesis sits on the other side of the moon, watched by Garrison’s remote cameras. Cameras Doc Impossible has taken full control over, along with every other piece of his surviving outer space infrastructure.
So now Danny's chief handmaiden controls the world's source of superpowers. Swell.
Gothic wants to send Nemesis away, which will eventually lead to all comic book bullshit leaving the world like it's the end of
Lord of the Rings. Doc and Danny don't agree, because, well, Doc would literally cease to exist and Danny values power above all else.
“And after what happened last month,” I say, “I don’t think the world would be better if the only kind of power was money. Right now, most people just have to go along with whatever the rich and their pet governments tell them. Maybe if everyone could do the things that I could do, things would be better.”
Danny's basically a minarchist: the government should only exist to enforce his delusions upon people with working brains.
“Or they could become catastrophically worse,” says Gothic thinly.
“We already have supervillains,” says Doc. “And even without them, we’d still have existential threats that we’d have to confront—only we’d be doing so with vastly reduced capabilities. Climate change doesn’t get easier just because we all go back down to the baseline. If things get too hot, we can move the rock to the L-point on the other side of the sun.”
This might be more convincing if we hadn't already established any "solution" a super-scientist comes up with is basically voodoo bullshit liable to explode if left alone for any length of time.
Doc at least finally stops LARPing being an alcoholic.
“My parents dropped their objection to my emancipation papers. So I’ve signed them and I’m free.”
Probably wise.
Doc’s jaw drops with open delight. “Kickass! What do you want to do to celebrate?”
Oh man, I hadn’t even thought about that. My tongue fumbles for something to say as I focus on not tripping while I cross the room. “Oh, uh, I wasn’t—probably not much, it’s just a formality. But um. I did have Cecilia draw up some other papers; I was wondering if maybe you’d take a look at them? I mean, if you want to.” I set the folder down on the counter next to her.
Doc wipes her hands on a paper napkin while she regards me with curiosity. “Sure, okay.” She opens the folder and starts to read, and I try to keep my heart beating. Every twitch and flick on her face seems to shout. Curiosity. Surprise. Understanding.
“These are adoption papers,” she says quietly.
Rip off the ending of
Matilda, got it.
“Yeah, well. I mean, if you don’t—look, it’s not that big a deal and, I was just thinking, so, you know—”
Doc’s face falls, and so does my stomach. “Danny, I’d…I’m honored, really. But I’m not human. I don’t have a birth certificate or a social security number or anything. I’ve got incorporation papers, and that’s it. Corporations can’t adopt people. I’m sorry.”
You'd think there'd already be laws regarding people-equivalent beings who aren't human.
“Oh.” My face feels numb. My chest is filled with lead. In between the space between hearing and understanding, between understanding and despair, I make one last grasp at it: “Can you hire me?”
Doc’s composure stumbles, quickly covered by a tremulous smile. “Yeah,” she says weakly. “I can hire you.” She sets the papers aside and opens her arms. “Hey, bring it in, kiddo, come here.”
Replacing a parent-child relationship with a corporate relationship with a piece of software is troony as fuck.
And then I’m hugging my mother and she’s hugging me back, tight and protective, and finally, finally I’m home. After a while something occurs to me.
“Hey, Doc. What’s your first name?”
She looks at me blankly. “You didn’t know? It’s—”
Okay, that's kind of funny. Post your answers in the comments. The book proper ends with Danny and Sarah professing their love for each other during an orbital pleasure flight. I'm going to spare you that horror, and instead move straight to the book's acknowledgements section:
Thank you to my agent, Saritza Hernandez, who fought for these books and helped me get my feet wet as a professional writer.
Aspiring writers who might be reading this, always remember, April Daniels has an agent, and we don't.
Thank you to Grace Li, who provided invaluable sensitivity reader services.
Sometime, I should tell you all about my brush with a would-be sensitivity reader. Bit of a redpill.
Many friends listened to me spitball ideas or answer gut-check questions. They listened to me whine and moan when I was stuck, and also to my wildly optimistic bragging when things were going well. Many friends also read early versions of my manuscripts and gave me their honest and valuable feedback. Special thanks to Erica, Autumn, Clarissa, Tor, Devin, Sara, and Cal.
Just a parade of troon names. Also, I refuse to believe these books had multiple drafts.
Thank you those special teachers who, from kindergarten on up, kindly tolerated my habit of ignoring them to read instead.
A curse be upon their names.
Thank you to my mother, who raised me, among other feats of endurance.
Okay, that one's a surprise.
So, that's
Sovereign. I could write a little mini-essay about all the reasons I chose to review these shitty books, but I'd rather give you some recommendations for better stuff:
- If you want a fun YA series involving (mostly evil) super-people, I enjoyed Brian Sanderson's Reckoners trilogy. Danny would actually make a pretty good Epic, now that I think about it.
- If you want a good superhero-adjacent thing with a trans character (God knows why) check out Kieron Gillen's The Wicked+The Divine, which I still think is one of the best comics I've ever read. Even if he'd be utterly scandalized about it being recomended here of all places.
- If you want to read good comics about young people with superpowers, try Tomasi's Super-Sons, the stone-cold classic, Louise Simonson's Power Pack.
- If you want a good superhero prose novel, look for It's Superman! by Tom De Haven, which is a fun period-piece about Superman in 1930s New York City.
- If you want a good superhero prose superhero about kids with powers, um, ask about my manuscript I guess, we're getting pretty niche at this point.
I really enjoyed doing this thread and chatting with all you good readers, and I'd like to do it again. I don't know if we'll ever get the last
Dreadnought book, but I promise, I'll be doing it the fucking week it drops. In the meantime, feel free to suggest a new book for me to read for your amusement. I'm looking for anything in the fantastical genres, that's either entertainingly bad or interestingly flawed, and is woke-poisoned, or at least aiming for some kind of social message. I'll take left-wing, right-wing, radical centrist, whatever's dumb enough.
Also, vampires. Vampires would be nice.
