Dreadnought: The Quest for Cringe - White-Kettle-Shufflepunk reads a trans YA superhero novel

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

But I thought he would get better if he spent enough time skinny-dipping in active volcanoes though. I'm guessing he's made of living rock or something and he can be "re-molded" in case of severe injury. Shouldn't he still be on the mend and planning to return to active duty sometime?

I'm pretty sure Daniels forgot. Or decided having a Legion member who wasn't a robot LARPing alcoholism was inconvinent to the reddit mod takeover subplot.

 

[Kosher Dill]

a robot LARPing alcoholism

Come on, that's hardly fair.
She's three robots LARPing alcoholism.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Engines screaming, the jet pushes off in a cloud of dust and heaves itself into the sky. Inside, Codex is handing out more antisuppression field amulets. It looks like he got a deal on cheapo trinkets at a discount store, because they’re all pewter crescent moons or unicorns or stars. There’s some long explanation about the Laws of Similarity and Contagion that I don’t really follow, the important part being that they are duplicates of the sympathetic charm he made for me to wear when I was in jail. With these charms on, Sovereign can’t shut our superpowers down. Doc stopped glitching out when she put one on, and now there are three or four of them glued to the computers that run the tilt-engine. The best part is Charlie figured out a way to reverse the protective effect with a simple act of symbolism—when worn under our clothes, they protect us from the power suppression field, but when the chain the charms are hung on is used to tie someone up, they can nullify powers just like Garrison, even if they would otherwise be immune to it. We all take three or four and stash them away.

Not sure why we're bothering with all that when Charlie could literally kill or disable Garrison at any moment if he so chose. It's such an odd set-up. Charlie--who's a teenage hobbyist--is able to reverse engineer and invert the work of an older, more experienced practitioner in under a week, but doesn't even raise the possibility of using the gaping chink in Garrison's armour he explained in great detail earlier.

It's stuff like this that makes me skeptical that this book was actually edited. Properly edited, not just glanced over for typos. Any editor or beta-reader worth their salt would've just told Daniels to axe the bit about being able to cast spells on Garrison via the collars. The only narrative purpose it appears to serve is to make it clear that Graywytch is planning to betray Garrison, because for some reason April Daniels hates surprises. If he wanted to foreshadow that, all he had to do was have Doc or Magma or anyone else who actually knew Myra express confusion at her teaming up with people almost as politically opposed to her as Danny is.

Also, speaking of Doc, now that we know that she isn't in fact a marvelously sophisticated piece of software, but rather a mad dream animated by magic space rocks, what's going to happen if and when Utopia passes away? Will she just pop out of existence? While we're at it, I'm not sure why Doc has anything to fear from "badass hackers" when she's not really a computer program. Surely Utopia seizing control of her would be more like the rabbi putting a scroll in the golem's mouth?

“Legion One to ground, we have taken off,” says one of the Docs from the pilot’s seat. She, like her duplicates, is decked out for battle.

After Doc made such a big deal about not hampering herself with the trappings of humanity, why is she physically piloting the tilt-engine instead of interfacing with it directly?

The "Legion One" thing just shows you how pointless the whole legal usurpation subplot was. It'd be one thing if they actually drove Graywytch out of the tower and used its resources to fight Garrison, but no, all that bullshit legalese was just so they could justify using the name amongst themselves. The tranny-brain at work, people.

Negative, pilot! That call sign has been deactivated pending review,” snaps an audibly shaken ground controller. “Return to ground immediately! I don’t know who you are, but you need to file a flight plan like everyone else.”


“Sure thing, buddy,” grumbles Doc. Her hand flies over the console, creates with a few tapping motions a crisp manga-styled drawing of herself giving the viewer the finger before attaching it to an email and sending it to the New Port International air traffic controllers. Then the Doc sitting in the copilot’s seat switches the radio off. No way we’re wasting any time on paperwork. No way. People are dying.

Which is why you willingly spent two days in Guantanamo county-lockup indulging your matyr fetish, and before that wasted time creating a legal excuse to use a shitty super-team name.

Other than a brief snap of relief and a tight hug, Sarah and I didn’t have much time to check in with each other before Calamity took charge and ordered everyone into the jet for an immediate takeoff. Doc had barely finished debugging the more advanced hypertech components inside before we were pushing out of the hangar and into the sky.

Okay, how do the interactions between dampening field and hypertech actually work? So, Doc's both a person and a piece of hypertech, so I guess the necklace stabilizing her makes sense. But what about stuff like the tilt-engine? Did they need to hang Charlie's charms all over it, or does Doc wearing one mean anything she built or designed can function, at least after she's whacked it with a wrench or something? If so, wouldn't fixing Doc have required them to give Utopia a charm? Or are the rules different for constructs with consciousness?

Curled up in a leather seat, watching the world snap by at four hundred miles an hour just a few dozen feet below us, I struggle to get back into the mindset of Dreadnought. All I can think about is that courtroom. The shock on their faces. How terrified they were of me. And how much I had enjoyed doing the thing that scared them so much.


I’m a horrible person. The world shouldn’t have to rely on someone like me. They deserve better.

This is the character-arc equivalent of drag. Going through all the motions of character development, but not actually making your protagonist reconsider their beliefs or change their behavior.

“Look, I’m not really comfortable getting that close to MANPAD Island again,” says Doc, pointing at something on the tablet she’s sharing with Calamity.

Calamity rubs her nose with frustration. “Well if the EMP doesn’t work, we’re going to need to insert somehow, so…”

Why are we attacking the island? Surely it'd be more prudent for Danny to head back into space and trash the rest of Garrison's satellites? Then you'll have... almost every superhuman in the world backing you up, instead of however many sets of shitty jewellery Charlie can whip up. They don't even know Garrison's on the island. For all they know, he could've flown up to the fucking moon-base.

I'm guessing Daniels doesn't think this an option, because he seems to think Danny is an actual space-shuttle, and not capable of effortlessly moving at multiple times the speed of sound in any direction he wishes.

They quietly go round and round, proposing and rejecting a half-dozen different plans. That’s what does it, that’s what fixes me. During the handful of seconds we had together before we piled into the tilt-engine, Sarah told me that her mother was walking across the house when the power suppression field slammed down; she’s currently stuck halfway through a wall, still alive, but in agony. Even as worried about her mom as she is, Calamity is still doing her job. If she can suck it up and keep going, then so can I. People are dying. This isn’t the time to mope.

Another reason you should be in fucking space. I'm not sure how this is meant to work. As I see it, there are two main models of intangibility. The first is that the atoms of whatever you're phasing through move to let you past, and the second is the other way around. Your atoms maneuver through the space between the ones in the wall. If Sarah's mum does the first thing, it'd be like the plaster or brick has formed a perfect seal around her body. I imagine that'd be extremely frightening and uncomfortable, but I'm not sure why she'd be in agony. If she does the second thing, she'd be dead.

Also, I still want to know how people like Calamity are affected by this. Nothing she does is physically impossible, and are rooted in pretty mundane aspects of her anatomy. Did she suddenly get flabby arms before she put the charm on?

I am Dreadnought. I am undefeatable.

Except by anyone with a taser.

They came after me because I’m the one who scares them.

Actually, they came after you because Garrison wanted your powers, and apparently forgot he just give them to himself with his "give myself superpowers" machine.

Because they knew I was the most dangerous.

I mean, I guess that's true.

Well, they were right, and I’m going to prove it to them. A smile grows on my face. Tomorrow…tomorrow I might retire. Take my savings and buy a little cabin out somewhere, hide away from the world so I can’t hurt anybody. But today?

Please don't buy farmland.

Today I’m going to beat some motherfuckers ’til they cry.

Wasn't that the entire problem?

“Knock it off, we’ve got business to discuss,” says Calamity. “With Doc’s help I bugged Cynosure last time I was down there.” I have a flash of memory of her tossing handfuls of mechanical roaches as we ran from Garrison’s goons. “Good news is, we’ve got a notion about where the ritual room is.”


She taps an icon and brings up a grainy black-and-white image of a miniature indoor Stonehenge that looks like it was taken from inside a ventilation duct. In a separate window, aerial photographs of Cynosure have a red circle highlighting where the spell room is—deep in the heart of the big mansion suspended between the three towers, it seems.


“Bad news is they’ve stepped up security since our last visit.” Calamity taps another icon and more windows pop open, showing heavily armed and armored figures patrolling walkways, guarding doors. “By our count they’ve got at least sixty goons in full gear.”

Where's that army of super mercenaries I was promised?

“We’ve IDed them as heavy response teams from a private military contractor called Silver Mountain,” says Doc. “All of Silver Mountain’s heavy response teams, in fact. These guys are bad news. Lots of ex-Delta Force operators, former SAS, French GIGN, so on and yada yada. They do a lot of work in Mexico and parts south; really anywhere people are shooting but the media isn’t covering. They’re not going to do much against our heavyweights, but myself, Calamity, and Codex really need to take them seriously.”

Is this like how some people are "marginalised" but they're all anyone talks about? Because I promise, there's plenty of media about violence in South America.

“So what do they have that could be a problem for Dreadnought and me?” asks Kinetiq.


“Tough to say,” replies Calamity. “Princess Panzer has been pretty aggressive about setting up defenses. She’s installing and reconfiguring new automated weapons systems by the hour. ’Course she’s got the attention span of a goldfish, so most of them don’t stick around for much longer than an hour, but that only means we don’t know what to expect. It’s hard to tell what her gear does, but we had best be wary.

Okay, I'm unclear how Panzer's powers work. Is she neurologically linked to a bunch of weapon platforms, or does she have the power to conjure them from nothing, like if Ted Nugent was a Green Lantern?

“As for the rest of his metahuman staff,” she continues, “Thunderbolt’s still in the penalty box from last time we paid these fellas a visit—” Another grainy photo, this one of Thunderbolt on a bed in Cynosure’s infirmary. Kinetiq grunts with satisfaction. “—or at least he was until about fourteen hours ago when they wheeled him out to parts unknown. Graywytch was pretty messed up last time we danced, but we haven’t had eyes on her since we rustled her grimoire. Codex says she could do her part of the game from a long way away if she had to, but isn’t in any shape to fight right now. And Red Steel should still be in the hospital.”

Wait, what happened to Graywytch? I thought Danny just choked her out?

“If he’s not, he promised not to interfere as long as I didn’t go after the satellites again,” I say.

Wait, what?

"I not let you attack my employer's secret weapon, but I will let you attack them directly."

What kind of fucking logic is that?

Calamity looks up, surprised. “You’ve been talking to him?”

I nod. “As far as killers-for-hire go, he seems pretty nice.”

Troon logic at its finest.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Aww, shit, pressed send too early.

The shit you get up to,” says Calamity with a chuckle. “Anyhow, we know for sure we’re going up against Panzer, and if Garrison hired Red Steel, he might have hired more free agents to bolster his Silver Mountain troops.”


Codex speaks up. “Are we sure about that?”


“We haven’t seen any,” says Doc, “But Cynosure has some powerful counter-surveillance equipment, and my roachcams are programmed to self-destruct to avoid detection so we’ve only got three or four left. And we can’t discount the possibility that they’ve brought in more metahuman mercenaries.”

Again, they can manufacture supers! Why aren't they doing that?

“Listen,” says Calamity, “I know it’s cheesy to go on about freedom and democracy and all that noise. God knows I’m an ornery, cynical cuss when it comes to that sort of talk. But that is what we stand to lose here today. Garrison said it straight out—he wants to end equality. He wants to kill democracy. His world is a world of blackcape dictatorships. If he gets a monopoly on superpowers, nobody will be able to stand up to him. Nobody. We don’t win today, our grandkids won’t even know what voting was.” Her eyes get hard. “We win this fight, end of story. Dying’s fine, but we ain’t losing. Anyone got a problem with that?”

I don't even have a joke for how fucking unaware that speech is.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Okay, how do the interactions between dampening field and hypertech actually work? So, Doc's both a person and a piece of hypertech, so I guess the necklace stabilizing her makes sense. But what about stuff like the tilt-engine? Did they need to hang Charlie's charms all over it

I'm guessing they do have to put charms on everything made of hypertech, like they did with the airplane computers and Doc. "If it couldn't work without space rock magic it needs a charm" is reasonable enough.
I'm pretty fed up with every challenge being trivialized. Bail? Here's ten million dollars I found in my couch cushion. Powers shut off? Have this necklace I got from Claire's. Archrival still on the loose? Nah, he's just chillin'.

Meanwhile: RIP Utopia. Speaking of whom, if you know what Nemesis is, isn't it a terrible idea to turn yourself into a hypertech robot? Why try to set yourself up with machine-god immortality if the space rock is just going to fly back out of the solar system and leave you as a glorified telephone switch?

While we're at it, I'm not sure why Doc has anything to fear from "badass hackers" when she's not really a computer program.

I assumed the hackers were just trying to locate and shut down their death-ray launch base.

If Sarah's mum does the first thing, it'd be like the plaster or brick has formed a perfect seal around her body. I imagine that'd be extremely frightening and uncomfortable, but I'm not sure why she'd be in agony. If she does the second thing, she'd be dead.

It works the same way as reaching in and grabbing Danny's beating heart without killing him or fusing your hand to his ribcage. Which is, "complete bullshit".

Today I’m going to beat some motherfuckers ’til they cry.

Seriously, if there was ever a time to pull a redemption out of your hat, this was it. Have Danny say "I've got a lot to think about, but right now truth, justice and the American Way need me and I have a duty as the world's most powerful superhero". Or something - but no, we're still stuck in the rage-goblin mindset, except this time it's directed at an acceptable target.

Wait, what happened to Graywytch? I thought Danny just choked her out?

Didn't he crash her through a bunch of bookshelves too? I assume she took a rather solid beating given that she's probably not "super" in the physical sense.

"I not let you attack my employer's secret weapon, but I will let you attack them directly."

What kind of fucking logic is that?

I think they're going for "My contract was only to defend the satellites and I'm the kind of mercenary who sticks to the letter of his contracts".
He's not going to get many more contracts if he makes a habit of selling his clients up the river though.

In a separate window, aerial photographs of Cynosure have a red circle highlighting where the spell room is—deep in the heart of the big mansion suspended between the three towers, it seems.

So why are they planning some huge brawl with Garrison's goons when they can just cut two suspension cables and turn everyone in the mansion into paste?

Garrison said it straight out—he wants to end equality. He wants to kill democracy.

Excuse me, who just literally gave the finger to the civilian air traffic control authorities and didn't get a squad of fighter jets on their tail? It's obvious that as committed as the super "heroes" may be to their various LARPs, when push comes to shove they'll all just might-makes-right their way on through. Democracy is already just a little broken-winged bird in a cage made of magic rocks.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Welp, caught up just in time to catch the climax.

I know these are YA novels, but damn does the prose feel rushed. If it's not an internal monologue about Danny complaining that people aren't clapping hard enough for him displaying the barest minimum of human decency, or him repeating 'I know it makes me a horrible person, but...' for the fiftieth fucking time, then we're bullet-pointing this shit. What? You think we should slow down and let any of these big character moments or big revelations sink in? You think we try to give any weight to the highs and lows of the story? Nah, we ain't got time for that. The biggest offender is that moment in the first book where Utopia reveals her motivation and that a potentially world-ending event is heading for Earth and the scene just treats it with the impact of your friend telling you about someone cutting them off in traffic, and then it doesn't really come up again until Utopia's explaining how it factors into her plan to put humanity in the matrix.

Though, to be fair, no amount of time is going to give weight to any of these scenes when the story refuses to actually build anything with these characters. Are we supposed to care that random super heroes, who our entire knowledge of consists of Danny wanting their autograph back during the convention, are helping the villain? Is there supposed to be some kind of hype around Danny fighting Red Steel because it was once mentioned he fought the first Dreadnought? Does it mean anything for Karen, after what, about two/three chapters of screen time, to betray Danny?

How do the satellites work exactly? I thought the whole point of the Nemesis Rocks' power was that it was all sight based. And how do they have footage of Danny breaking into the tower the first time, but not of the second time where he tries to kill Based Witch? What was the point of setting up Professor Gothic being important if he can't even book a decent enough flight to get back to the story on time?

Anyway, you're doing Gods' work, Kettle.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

Meanwhile: RIP Utopia. Speaking of whom, if you know what Nemesis is, isn't it a terrible idea to turn yourself into a hypertech robot? Why try to set yourself up with machine-god immortality if the space rock is just going to fly back out of the solar system and leave you as a glorified telephone switch?

Actually, while I guarantee you that the author wasn't this clever, that actually does check out. It's established that a major part of Utopia's plans was to replicate her hypertech with mundane counterparts. She could have been planning to eventually transition to machine-god immortality done the hard way without any need for magical space rock help.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

You know, in a world where Nemesis is, presumably, a natural phenomenon, is it the only one? Like, might it be that there's a Semiconductor Space Rock at just the right distance from Earth right now, and if its orbit decays, all computers will suddenly stop working, or it might get too close and we'll get an AI singularity?

Also, I'd like to get a recap on what is actually going on with the amulets and sattelites at this point. From what we have been told and have no in-universe reason to doubt; Garrison has a short-range power nullifying power. Garrison has talismans made by GreyWytch which can either project that power, or suppress it, and he's also got sattelites which can broadcast that power enough to cover the world, so Garrison has just turned off the powers of everyone except the people with either GreyWytch's amulets, or Codex's bootleg amulets. We do not know how the amulets are made, how Codex can create new super-powerful sympathetic links to Garrison, or how in general the idea of "If you can get a sympathetic link to someone, you can just nullify their powers." is meant to work.

But if GreyWytch can make an anti-Garrison amulet because she's got a link to him, can she make an anti-Dreadnought amulet? Can she just take the blood she's got on her knife from stabbing Calamity and kill her from long range? We've seen that Garrison can apparently stuff supplemental healing factors into people; what the hell does it matter that someone was beaten down when you can't see the body?

I feel like we're just leading up to Danny having an unsatisfying roffle-stomp over Garrison's elite and powered forces before beating him up, and that the reason I can't get my head around what is supposed to be driving the shifts in events is that the author doesn't care either, and this is literally just to give Garrison a Master Plan to be foiled, and for Danny to be the one to do it, but if that was the case, why not just make it so that the Orb was hard to suppress and Garrison wasn't sure he could block Dreadnought by proxy, and needed him contained for the plan to work, because no one knows exactly how Dreadnought's "Respawn, LOL" power works and killing him might just mean you lose track of him for days, hours, or less? If you're going to make Danny Most Special, why not actually do that?

Man, I really want to see something cool. Like, what if Garrison meets Danny and tells him that he's got a bunch of hypertech doomsday devices scattered over the world, including the power supply of his own island base, which requires his own careful regulation of its output to stop it going supercritical, incinerating everything within horizon distance and tsunami-ing everything past it, and that he's had to stop focusing on it to get the satellites working, so if Danny does defeat him, then his victory will come with the immediate deaths of everyone within a few miles of the Pacific? Can we have Garrison have revealed the hollowness of the whitecape community, and have several of Danny's allies turn on him from promises of wealth and power (both literal and political), because almost all whitecapes just did whitecape stuff because the government gave them some money and recognition and Garrison can now wave a tastier carrot and bigger stick, on top of being able to buy out a lot of baddies as well?

But, of course, Garrsion doing either of those, or anything else with a hint of tactical planning, would be far too effectual for a Assigned Villain At Birth designated punching bag like him. I'm grimly curious to see how this whole debacle wraps up, to see who gets an unsatisfying ending and who is literally forgotten about, but at this point, we have no reason to think that Garrison can put up even token resistance to the least-powerful of the Dread Gang, so I'm not exactly biting my fingers over the climax.

But hey, the books have surprised me before (and if I think really hard over both of them, I can probably even find a place they surprised me positively), so let's see how this all wraps up.

We are wrapping up soon, right? We're not going to have another third of the book after this that's all about reclaiming the Legion name and getting GreyWytch's own accusations dismissed with prejudice and declaring the Alt-Right a hate group subject to dismemberment on sight, are we?

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

I'm grimly curious to see how this whole debacle wraps up, to see who gets an unsatisfying ending and who is literally forgotten about, but at this point, we have no reason to think that Garrison can put up even token resistance to the least-powerful of the Dread Gang, so I'm not exactly biting my fingers over the climax.

I mean, he has the overwhelming advantage of being able to give his men and himself any super power he needs, the plot just needs to give him permission to use it's own established plot points for once.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

It's kind of amazing. Both sides have been handed instant win buttons, but neither of them seem to realise.

We are wrapping up soon, right? We're not going to have another third of the book after this that's all about reclaiming the Legion name and getting GreyWytch's own accusations dismissed with prejudice and declaring the Alt-Right a hate group subject to dismemberment on sight, are we?

Oh, honey, you ain't seen nothing yet.

 

[SamTheEagle]

I've spent a little over a week now reading this thread, and it's been a joy. Thanks for sharing all this, Kettle, and thanks to everyone else for the added commentary. I only have two things to bring up.

1) I can't get over Calamity comparing her non-lethal bullets to hitting someone with a baseball bat. From what I understand, baseball bat murders are pretty consistent in that two shots to the head will crack someone's skull open. So I guess Calamity just needs to make sure she doesn't double-tap anyone.

2) Something I enjoy about capeshit is the costumes. A big part of the appeal for the MMO City of Heroes was the character creator, not just for myself, but seeing what other players came up with. Normally I'd recommend an author not give us nitty-gritty details about a character's clothing unless its plot/character relevant, but I make an exception for written capeshit. I was let down we only got bare minimum details on the Legion's outfits, but I guess since they weren't long for this world, it didn't matter in Daniels' mind.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Man, I really want to see something cool. Like, what if Garrison meets Danny and tells him that he's got a bunch of hypertech doomsday devices scattered over the world, including the power supply of his own island base

Actually, isn't there likely to be a lot of hypertech that just got turned into doomsday devices when the satellite flipped on? Is there really no country that's using hypertech power plants or weapons systems that are now melting down? No tin-pot dictatorship that outsourced command and control to "Project Cybersyn 2.0"?
For that matter, Garrison's own daughter is absolutely dripping in hypertech weapons. He'd better be really sure that the amulets work and that she doesn't knock any amulets loose in her kawaii ADHD frolic.

But if GreyWytch can make an anti-Garrison amulet because she's got a link to him, can she make an anti-Dreadnought amulet? Can she just take the blood she's got on her knife from stabbing Calamity and kill her from long range?

You'd think that after keeping Danny as a lab rat for a week, she'd have enough material to do any kind of voodoo she wants, now that you mention it. Why even bother teleporting into prison at all?

Something I enjoy about capeshit is the costumes. A big part of the appeal for the MMO City of Heroes was the character creator, not just for myself, but seeing what other players came up with. Normally I'd recommend an author not give us nitty-gritty details about a character's clothing unless its plot/character relevant, but I make an exception for written capeshit. I was let down we only got bare minimum details on the Legion's outfits

I think the character who got the most costume details was actually Graywytch, just so Danny could mock her fashion sense in his internal monologue. Danny himself just wears standard-issue skintight superhero spandex in Dreadnought's colors, Garrison wears techbro casual, and... I dunno, Calamity dresses vaguely like some sort of cowboy? The rest, who knows?

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

2) Something I enjoy about capeshit is the costumes. A big part of the appeal for the MMO City of Heroes was the character creator, not just for myself, but seeing what other players came up with. Normally I'd recommend an author not give us nitty-gritty details about a character's clothing unless its plot/character relevant, but I make an exception for written capeshit. I was let down we only got bare minimum details on the Legion's outfits, but I guess since they weren't long for this world, it didn't matter in Daniels' mind.

You don't know how hard I'm resisting posting the art I've had done for my capeshit series. The power-leveling would make Vegeta's eyepiece explode.

For that matter, Garrison's own daughter is absolutely dripping in hypertech weapons.

Still unsure whether she's a cyborg commanding an array of drone weapons or conjures weapons like a proper magical girl with a gun fetish.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Still unsure whether she's a cyborg commanding an array of drone weapons or conjures weapons like a proper magical girl with a gun fetish.

I actually had been thinking "regular little girl whose dad bought her a LOT of destructive toys".

Speaking of magical girls though, I'm downright surprised that a troon-penned series doesn't have any Sailor Moon knockoffs running around - particularly if they already crossed the weeb barrier to bring in kaiju.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

I actually had been thinking "regular little girl whose dad bought her a LOT of destructive toys".

Though, Garrison did mention she got kicked out of private school for "having powers" but Daniels might well want us to think Garrison is full of shit there. That's the great thing about Dreadnought, everything is so half-assed and glossed over, we can all be right!

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Our first inkling that this fight isn’t going to go as planned is when Princess Panzer shoots us out of the sky.

This is a level of dumb, "quirky" narration not even the MCU could dream of.

The Doc in the pilot’s seat shouts in alarm a half-second before her upper body gets mulched into gloopy, white android gore by an antiaircraft cannon.

At least me and Daniels can agree that Alien was a fantastic film.

A hypersonic slug punches through the glass canopy, tears out the back of her seat, and blasts right through the cabin and out the back of the tilt engine. The exit hole in the rear of the cabin is about nine inches to the left of Calamity’s head. The blast pressure of the round combines with an explosive decompression to suck every lungful of oxygen out of the jet as the whole thing wobbles and noses over toward the ocean. An instant cacophony of alarms and sirens is all but drowned under the roaring of the wind, but I can still hear the two surviving Docs shouting at me to get out of the jet and into the fight. Everyone else is stunned unconscious or headed that way. We’re still twenty minutes out with the counter-radar running at full power—we weren’t expecting to make contact yet.

I'm shocked, too. This is the first time the villains have been anything like proactive.

Even now, I sometimes freeze up at the start of a fight, and this one has begun so abruptly I have to force myself to get out of my chair and start heading back to the sliding doors. From a long way away I note that Calamity is pale, slouched in her seat, blinking slowly as I step across her to the cargo area. She’s bleeding freely from one ear.

No disrespect to Calamity, but maybe bringing someone whose only powers are "parkour" and "guns that aren't as good at killing people" against a group with their own private army and the ability to manufacture as many real supers as they want. There's a reason Daredevil mostly fights gangsters and not Hyperion, put it that way.

Codex is flexing his fingers like they’re new to him, like they’re the most important thing he can think of.

Poor Charlie. This whole trip wouldn't even be needed if he was allowed to realise the implications of his own exposition. Also, why is Charlie even coming along? He's made it very clear he's not a battle-magician. At least the raid on the tower actually required some magical knowledge.

We’re all a little shell-shocked, and so for some reason I fixate on Kinetiq’s spray paint bottle rolling across the floor as the jet’s dive grows steeper.

Banksy being Kinetiq would explain a lot. Daniels has a weird way of sucking all the energy out of high-impact events. "We're all a little shell-shocked"--it sounds like he's addressing a primary school assembly after the fire-alarm went off. Danny heads outside to try and stop the jet from crashing.

Just as I’m about to grab the wing and set it right, a flare in the lattice warns me of another incoming round. With a burst of speed, I get out in front of the jet and guard my face with my arms. The sabot round clips off my shoulder like a chisel from God, a radiating burst of pain that makes me gasp in surprise. It continues past me and blows the wingtip clean off—better than another round in the cabin, at least.


“Get the jet back in the air!” I shout through my comm link as I power down hard to where the shots are coming from. The ocean is miles below, a glimmering steel floor waiting to greet us at terminal velocity.


“Flameouts in both engines! Avionics are gone!” says Doc. “Hydraulics are gone!”


Between shepherding the tilt-engine to a safe water landing and taking out Panzer, I’ve got to leave something important undone. Without time to think, I choose to take the fight to the enemy and leave the rest of my team on their own for now.

I'm not surprised Danny picks beating up a twelve-year-old over saving her friends.

At this altitude, Doc should have enough time to figure something out before they smash into the ocean. That’s what I tell myself as I’m passing through the sound barrier, twisting up and out of the way of another round aimed right at my nose.

Didn't Doc explode? I'm pretty sure all the clever ideas in the world won't help you when your engines are busted and you don't have any hands.

As I close the distance, Princess Panzer comes into view. She’s standing on some kind of gleaming, silver platform that hangs in midair. Next to her is a long-barreled cannon chased with gold filigree and cranked way up on a gimbal to trace my flight path. Sensor bulbs glitter like gems as they fix and refix my position. It fires, and though the range is shorter now almost by half, I still have enough time to twist away before impact. Panzer really is just a little kid, I guess. She should be shooting at the jet so I’d have to let myself get hit, but I guess she’s not that thoughtful in her tactics yet. Lucky me.

"Lucky me" could be the subtitle of this book. Even the villains who aren't twelve years old seem to think like they are.

What she lacks in strategy, Princess Panzer tries to make up for with pure aggression. She throws out her arm in a dramatic gesture of command, and her cannon glows with an eerie inner light before refolding itself into a triple-barreled chain gun that immediately begins vomiting tracers at me. Panzer sprays the sky, puts up far too much lead for me to dodge away from all of them, and the ones that connect hit like stinging hammers. Already the tender spots from a week of bad fighting are waking up, registering complaints.

Okay, I really want to know, is Princess Panzer an actual super, or is she just Princess from Powerpuff--

Daniels totally just took Princess from Powerpuff Girls and made her more kawaii, didn't she?

Up close like this, I can sense her personal force field generator going into overdrive as shrapnel spangs and bounces off her as she falls, arms windmilling with some desperate, useless reflex. That’s why I have no hesitation whatsoever about kicking her in the head as hard as I can. Princess Panzer rockets away from me and down to the waves, cartwheeling into a series of tall white splashes across the surface of the ocean.


I should go down and finish it. Get to grips with Panzer and smash whatever hypertech gizmo is giving her all this artillery, or if it’s something innate, try out Codex’s magic handcuffs. That’s the smart play. But when I look up, the tilt-engine is still nose-diving back to Earth, a noxious ribbon of smoke behind it.


Sarah is on that plane.

I really wouldn't trust my child's safety with hypertech with how fucking glitchy it apparently is, even without the global space-rock embargo right now.

“Legion One, I’m coming to get you,” I say into the radio and hope I’m making the right call. Taking a deep breath for focus, I reverse course and blast into the sky.


“The jet’s toast, we’ve got to bail,” says Doc.


“Nothin’ doin’!” snaps Calamity, and my heart nearly pops with relief. “We ain’t dead yet!”


“Give it about forty seconds and check again,” says Doc. “In the meantime, stow the lip and put your goddamn parachute on.”

Sometimes, even Sarah is as retarded as everyone else in this.

“Uh, hello, can you hear me?” says Codex over the radio. “Kinetiq has a concussion. I don’t think I can get them into a chute in time.”

It was made pretty clear early on that Kinetiq's a woman, so it kind of amuses me that nobody messes up her pronouns--especially Charlie, who's known her for less than a week--even in the middle of a plane-crash.

“Dreadnought, can you catch the jet?” says Calamity, cool as September rain.


“On my way!” Wind pulls hard at my hair and squeezes my shoulders as I leave the sound barrier far behind me.


“Doc, fix Kinetiq. Other Doc, get those avionics back.”


“Calamity—” Doc’s voice is strained. Calamity might be the shot caller, but Doc is the oldest and most experienced. If there’s going to be a mutiny, now’s the time.

This is such a tranny-janny thought.

Also, again, weren't the controls destroyed when the anti-aircraft cannon hit them? Anyway, plane-shit, plane-shit, plane-shit.

The weight of the tilt-engine settles on my shoulders, and I start pushing it into a gentle curve back to horizontal. We’ve still got a few hundred feet of altitude to burn and I don’t want to hurt anyone inside with a hard-G turn. “Tell me if I’m going too fast.”

“Faster, turn us faster,” says Codex as the jet continues hurtling to Earth.

“How’s Kinetiq doing?” asks Calamity.

“It’s not fair that I have a hangover,” says Kinetiq. “I didn’t even get drunk first.”

Figures not even a concussion could give us a respite from her.

“What does that do to our ROE?” asks Kinetiq. ROE stands for Rules of Engagement, another one of those little things that bleeds into cape culture from the military.

Because you are the military!

Where a cape stands on what’s become known as the Killing Question has a bunch of really big implications about where they stand on a lot of other political issues within the superhero community.


Calamity is silent on the radio for a long moment. “Listen up. We’re not lookin’ to kill nobody, but these are hard men, and they ain’t gonna roll over only because we ask nicely. If it’s them or us, we pick us. Don’t hesitate. We clear?”

Isn't this the kind of discussion you have before you start falling from the fucking sky?

We’re clear,” says Kinetiq, sounding more and more alert with every moment. Whatever Doc did to push aside their concussion seems to be working, but I wouldn’t want to bet on them getting out of bed for at least a few days after this is all over. Hypertech medicine is cool, but it’s not that cool.

In fact, it works exactly as the plot requires it. See, it looks like there's actual stakes, because Kinetiq might have to rest-up off-page for a few days.

“Number one, do not drop us,” says Calamity. “Kinetiq, can you fight?”


“Try and stop me.”


“Sit the hell down,” says Doc. “You’re not good to go for at least another ten minutes.”


“You want to fight Panzer, be my guest,” says Kinetiq. “Otherwise, I’m going.”


There’s a lot of cursing and grumbling as I heave the aircraft hard over again, another powerful lance of energy zipping past and leaving floating green ghosts in my vision. Apparently Doc has no more objections after that, because a moment later the hatch opens, and Kinetiq tips out into the sky.

And no, as far as I can remember, this isn't set-up for Kinetiq fainting or something from over-exertion.

“Doc, get those engines back online,” says Calamity. A few moments later, they come wheezing to life, and with the extra boost we make good time to Cynosure. The battle between Kinetiq and Panzer falls further and further behind us, until it’s finally just an occasional flicker beyond the horizon.


A few miles out from the seastead, a dozen white smoke trails leap towards us from the roofs of all three towers. “Hoo boy, here it comes,” says Doc. Small hatches on each side of the tilt-engine’s fuselage pop open and eject a fizzing blizzard of flares and chaff to either side of me. I don’t need to be told to lean hard over and yank us onto a different course. Anti-air missiles hiss past us to the left and right. Nearby airbursts slap me with blast pressure and scour the hull with shrapnel. The armored blister mounted on the chin of the tilt-engine pops open, and Doc’s particle cannon swivels out.


“I choose me,” she says a moment before it starts hurling cobalt fire at Cynosure. The top floor of the nearest tower is obliterated in a cascading series of explosions. A huge black and red cloud rises into the sky while plumes of shattered glass fall from the tower like pollen. Please tell me there were no civilian staff members on those floors.

"The Gang Does 9/11."

Doc cuts the engines as we soar between the towers of Cynosure. There’s one of those strange moments of quiet that you get between bouts of violence during a battle as I bring us down onto the lawn surrounding the mansion suspended between the towers. The ocean breeze tugs gently at my cape and hair, the air salty, damp, and clean. The grass is a deep, healthy green, clipped to a tight, even height. As the side hatch hauls open and everyone jumps out of the stricken jet, I can’t stop wondering what it would feel like to lie out here on the ground with Sarah.

Coooom.

I take to the air as the ground team disappears into the cloud. I’m angling forward to go ruin the machine-gunners’ day when a bolt of yellow lightning thunders out of the clear blue sky right in front of me. The flash clears, and Garrison floats in front of me. He’s wearing the most blunt, obvious, I’m-here-to-rule-you-peasant supervillain getup I’ve ever seen: a black bodyglove with a white cape that’s got the huge flared collar and is edged with gold—he’s even wearing a circlet, an actual literal crown.

Daniels seems to have deep contempt for any super-suit that isn't basic as fuck.

“Dreadnought. Why aren’t you falling to your death?”


“Because you’re not actually the smartest person in the world, Garrison,” I reply.

Which is a bigger insult than usual, because everyone in this book is a fucking idiot.

“You may call me Sovereign.”

“I’m gonna call you Dingus.”

As one or two of you may know, my protagonists are much younger than Danny. Like, still in the single-digits. I like to think I can do a decent job at child-dialogue (again, one or two of you may disagree) but I don't think any of them have yet managed a comeback that lame. Also, I really suspect Daniels was playing Mass Effect when he wrote this.

Here’s the thing: supervillains have a greatly exaggerated reputation for monologuing when they should be fighting. In the real world, this doesn’t happen too often. But it does happen. It happens just enough to keep the myth alive, and I’ve got a feeling that Dingus here is going to be one of those special capes who simply cannot escape the lure of tradition.

A lot of Dreadnought feels like The Incredibles without the charm, heart, or wit.

So even as he’s wrinkling his nose at my disrespect (Can I not see that he’s wearing a crown? Where’s the genuflection, the subtle terror? Kids today, honestly!) I continue: “You stole Thunderbolt’s powers.”

Not a question. Not even an accusation. Bait.

Beneath us, Calamity’s grapnel fires out of the smoke. It finds purchase just above the window where a machine gun is spitting fire, and she comes zipping out of the cloud. A moment later she’s kicked her way into the window, and the gun falls silent. Doc is taking turns with herself to lay down covering fire for Codex as he takes advantage of the lull in the fighting to sprint up the grass. His leg wound from the other day still forces him into a hopping limp, but adrenaline is a powerful fuel. I see all this in the lattice without turning my head, and my chest unclenches fractionally.


Garrison shrugs extravagantly. “When he came into my employ, he should have read the fine print. In a way, it’s your fault. If you’d simply agreed to be my spokeswoman, a lot of unpleasantness might have been spared. But no, you rushed the timetable, so now we’re doing things the ugly way.”

Why the fuck did Garrison need to steal Thunderbolt's powers? Now, let's be charitable and suggest that maybe you can only give someone who already has powers new ones by draining them from another super. Weird rule, but whatever. However, we already know Garrison's people can create new supers, and decide what powers they'll get. Rather than drain a loyal ally, why not grab a random homeless person or whatever, give them the powers you want, and drain them?

He’s not really into it enough yet. His eyes are still darting around, still expecting a shift in bodyweight to clue him in to an attack. But he should be throwing punches by now, and he’s not. I only need to wiggle the lure a little bit more: “I like the ugly way. The ugly way works for me. It’s about to suck for you though, I’m not gonna lie.”


Sovereign chomps down hard on it: “You’re too late, you know. We’ve broadcast the press package already. People will be dancing in the streets for me now that I’ve gotten rid of all the supervillains. Order is preferable to chaos, even the peasants understand this—” And then Sovereign makes a truly adorable noise, a sort of grunt and a squeak at the same time, when my fist smashes into his solar plexus hard enough to crumple steel. As he rockets backward from my first hit, I stay with him, and my second fist cracks a nasty hook through his jaw, snapping his head over, spinning him ’round just in time to meet my first fist again as it comes the other way.

The question of whether having superpowers be controlled by one central authority is worth a world without supervillains is probably worth debating, so naturally Garrison only raises it near the end, basically as set-up for a joke.

The first rule of combat is to get in the first shot.

The second rule is that cheap shots are the best shots.

I really like the second rule.

Rich boys can’t fight.

Most of military-history says otherwise. As it turns out, having enough money to afford good food, training, and equipment, often translates into pretty good fighters. Also, is Danny even good at fighting? From what we've seen, he mainly seems to rely on his raw strength and berserk violence.

This isn’t going to take long. There’s no way he—


—except that I am now soaring end-over-end, the sky and the world tumbling about me, and there’s an incredible pain in my throat, and all I’ve got to explain it is this ephemeral flashing image of a wicked punch snaking in through my guard. When I catch myself in the air, Garrison is right in my face, and the world shrinks down to a frantic defense against punches, kicks, headbutts, and more. My rhythm has gone right out of my mind, and now I’m running on equal parts improvisation and desperation.

Okay, maybe sometimes it pays to read ahead before writing a put-down.

Another segment of drywall I was using to haul myself to my feet cracks and crumbles under my grip as that rage I need so much finally arrives. I’m gonna feed you your teeth, old man. Maybe I haven’t figure out how yet, but you’re going to a hospital one way or the other.


“Kinetiq, how’s it going?” I ask through the radio link.


The roar of wind is heavy on the other end. “Little busy right now.”


“Bring the fight over to Cynosure.”


“What?”


“Get over here.”


“Not a—shit!” A high-pitched keening sound, and then several detonations. “Panzer’s not surrendering; I can’t get close without going full power.”


“Don’t bother with surrender. Bring her over here, and then put her down hard.”


There’s a long silence. Or maybe not that long. Time gets funny when people want to kill you. “Danny, she’s twelve.”


“If she’s old enough to fight, she’s old enough to lose.”

You'd think this would be a bigger deal. Think about it. The whole point of this book is supposedly Danny dealing with his rage issues, and how they impact his conduct as a superhero. Conceptually, that's a pretty decent hook for a thoughtful superhero story. As I see it, the basic conflict for any superhero who gives a shit is balancing the capacity and willingness to do violence with meekness, in the Biblical sense of the word. Not being a wimp, but the qualities of kindness and forbearance that keep superheroes from being mere blunt forces of destruction. In my right hand is mercy, in my left hand is strength.

In a way, Princess Panzer would be kind of a perfect "late-game boss" for Danny. Having to take down a legitimately dangerous opponent without doing them great or permanent harm. A true test of his virtue and skill as a superhero. Instead, we just Danny off-handedly telling the non-binary "fuck dem kids." I'm not really sure why Princess Panzer is in this book? Maybe Daniels just felt the need to beat on someone who "was allowed to experience girlhood" or whatever?

Calamity cuts in over a background of gunfire and Doc Impossible’s screaming profanity. “Gotta agree with Dreadnought here. You don’t have to kill her, but this ain’t the time for kid gloves.”


“Shit. Fine. Shit,” says Kinetiq.


I leave the tunnel with as much dignity as I can. How the hell is this guy punching so far above his weight?


“Oh, I forgot to mention,” Sovereign says with a sneer I’m sure everyone loved in high school, “I’ve got three black belts.”


Oh.


Well, poop.

Dear God, Daniels, you're allowed to swear.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Every time it says 'Sovereign' all I can think of is David Bowie from Venture Brothers, which just makes me want Garrison to win more. In fact, all worldbuilding titbits about heroes feels like someone trying to imitate Venture Bros' satire of such systems with none of the passion and understanding that makes it work.

What was Danny's plan here? He keeps describing his actions like he's trying to bait Garrison into a trap or distract him until something can happen, but all that happens is he... Punches Garrison like he could have done at any time. What, does he think Garrison can't dodge and spit insults at the same time?

Danny is gonna murder a kid because her father dared to be capable of landing a hit on him; I believe it.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

Right. So, Team Garrsion was able to intercept the jet 20 minutes out, but they only sent Princess Panzer, with no backup, and after she loses, Garrsion waits nicely until Team Dread gets their rickety-ass plane all the way to the island and opens fire before engaging himself?

OK, let's take the dumb in order. The plane getting hit; not the worst. Of course only the disposable duplicate got hit, of course everyone else is fine. I don't see throwing shade on Princess Panzer; were it not for the idiotic fucked-up power scaling, Dreadnought would be the only person who matters, so focusing on him makes tactical sense even he weren't directly drawing aggro.

The real dumb is both the whole "Is mutiny time?", and the lead-up and follow-up. It was a perfect example of how nothing matters and everything is mouth-noises. If the super-smart engineer tells me that the plane is a loss and we need to bail out, then I don't look cool and commanding for overriding her because Black Disabled ranks higher than MPD Fake Sexual Assault Survivor on the progressive stack. I look dumb, because presumably if a super-engineer says that plane is going down, she knows more than me. If she doesn't know more than me, why the hell am I trusting her wack-ass magic rock gadgets?

What we needed there was a difference not of knowledge, but priorities. Like, if Calamity countermanded the order to bail out in order to steer the crashing ship at Princess Panzer's platform, drawing her fire and giving Dreadnought the opportunity to punt her in the head and then have Dreadnought carry the plane the rest of the way until the second crash sequence, then you've got both characters being built up; Doc for getting the tech answer right, and Calamity for making a high-pressure call and making it pay off, and for it being plausible that she'd risk the plane and everyone on it (including herself) to save Dreadnought for both personal and tactical reasons.

God, the Killing Question bit was slimy. It needed someone to answer Calamity's statement with "So, we're killing them, then." And then we could have had a cool follow-up like "Only if we have to-" "As many as we have to. We're killing them. We don't have a way to stop Garrison's power other than killing him, and people are dying right now because of it. We're killing them."

Because they absolutely fucking do jump straight into gratituous violence for no discernible tactical reason on that random tower, and then they get even whinier about it over the whole Princess Panzer thing later. And fuck, if this story doesn't have the spandex-on-head retardedness castigate a villain for monologuing before punches have been thrown, and then have Dreadnought try to have a whole fucking separate conversation in the middle of a life-or-death fistfight. Yeah, that really invests me in the idea that Dreadnought is giving his all into this fight.

So, why the hell isn't Garrison using lightning more? Also, and I kind of hate to bring this up because this is probably the first time idiocy has been used against Danny, Danny should be winning this fight. He should have already won this fight. I absolutely do not believe that mundane martial arts, which put a lot of focus on stance and poise and using your entire body to deliver telling blows, have more than the vaguest bearing on fights between flying supers with tactile TK. Every concept of leverage and controlling angles of attack and fucking stances have gone out the window, and Garrison has had, what, a week max since he's gotten these powers? No, Danny being a berserk goblin and having been doing that for months should absolutely be the trump card here in meaningful personal combat experience. Hell, I'm also pretty sure that I'd bet on the survivor of a hundred street-fights over a thousand (or three-thousand) sparring matches. I do not buy that Garrison has beaten near-peers to death in life-or-death situations, or that he could have honed that skill-set and mindset without anyone noticing.

I absolutely agree with the above analysis of Princess Panzer and what she could have been, but this incredibly ugly story wants to give permission for its 'heroes' to use lethal violence on a 12-year-old girl, and it's going to puss out on embracing any kind of consequences for that. Why the fuck isn't Daddy cocking his head, saying "Excuse me." dashing off, and reappearing moments later holding Kinetiq's head in his hands? Build some fucking heat for your villains! Show some goddamn stakes! And if this story isn't going to have a moral center, then why not take that opportunity, have Danny accept his actions and damnation, have him fly off and similarly casually kill Princess Panzer, and then defend himself from a suddenly-berserk father, and let Danny be able to win that fight because he's had much more experience being a rage-goblin than Garrison?

Also, because I'm now super-aggravated, are we going to see Garrison use those super-martial-arts skills to attempt a sweet disarm and yank some of Book Wizard's amulets off of people? Come to that, is there a reason why they bought him? If he goes down, or gets compromised because Garrison invested in some basic-bitch mind control, isn't that complete game over?

Fuck, at this point, it's not even that both sides have an I-win button, it's that both sides have multiple let-me-not-be-retarded-and-take-a-logical-action buttons they are avoiding with absolute assidiousness, and the story doesn't even pretend to care about anything but fake peril and fake emotional tension.

What was Danny's plan here? He keeps describing his actions like he's trying to bait Garrison into a trap or distract him until something can happen, but all that happens is he... Punches Garrison like he could have done at any time. What, does he think Garrison can't dodge and spit insults at the same time?

Because this book was written by a degenerate, that thinks that social dominance implies physical dominance. The point isn't actually to win the fight and save the day, it's to make Danny look cool, and showing how absolutely cool and above it all Danny is matters much more to the author than building a real fight scene with actual stakes and tension.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

I absolutely agree with the above analysis of Princess Panzer and what she could have been, but this incredibly ugly story wants to give permission for its 'heroes' to use lethal violence on a 12-year-old girl, and it's going to puss out on embracing any kind of consequences for that.

The most baffling problem of the 'We're gonna fuck up the little girl' set up is the framing. It isn't made out as them making a messy decision because they can't afford to fuck this up, or something stupid done in the heat of the moment or just being a necessary evil of the situation; it's literally Danny, our god damn hero, gets pissy that Garrison is able to hit him back and immediately orders to lure Garrison's daughter over so he can cripple her ass. And we know this isn't leading to any actual point on Danny's rage issues because those issues have squarely been discussed/explored through the lens of him just being more brutal than necessary, not that the reasons for him going off the handle are questionable.

It's not helped that the tone bounces between whatever emotional state is needed for the quirky punchlines. It goes from berserker rage that Garrison got a hit in and calling for blood, to immediately going 'Ah. Shit.' to the reveal that Garrison has some actual combat experience.

I know our author here has little self-awareness, but jesus christ, how do you write that out and not think "This might be a bad look..."

 

[SamTheEagle]

A lot of Dreadnought feels like The Incredibles without the charm, heart, or wit.

I love The Incredibles, but I hate how many "No capes!" smartasses it's created. As lame as the costumes are, though, I'll give Daniels credit for including capes.

“If she’s old enough to fight, she’s old enough to lose.”

Why do I have the disturbing feeling the rough draft said, "Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed?"