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

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Before we continue with today's hijinks, I'd like to thank Soggy Paper Straw for all the extra context regarding the literal author of our misfortune. I won't thank him for ruining every frozen drink I've had for the last two or three years, but they are as the manufacturer made them.

Despite last chapter's cliffhanger, we do not in fact begin with Danny at school, but rather a doctor's appointment. I like to imagine Daniels' editor was like "Look, hon, maybe they should actually make sure Danny's not got super titty-skittle blood clots before sending her to YA High School" but as we'll later see, I'm not sure this book had an editor.

The doctors peek in the door again. Dad took me to our family doctor, Doctor Cho, and when he finally gave in and admitted it wasn’t very likely I had a twin sister we’d been keeping secret this whole time just to fool him, he immediately retreated and called for reinforcements. Since then, every doctor in the office has been in to look at me. Blood pressure, heartbeat, height and weight. Urine sample, stool sample, saliva sample. They tried to get a blood sample, but the needle wouldn’t punch through my skin at first. For a scary moment I thought they were going to figure it out, but then I imagined the lattice again, imagined the net loosening, letting something through.

I bet this ability to conciously allow needles through Danny's skin was lifted from Superman: Secret Identity--a much better story about a young man turning into a literal, in-universe Superman rip-off. If so... honestly, I can't fault Daniels, that book was killer.

One thing that bugs me right off the bank, as far as we can tell, all the doctors tending to Danny are just normal, everyday specialists. You'd think in a world where Jimmy Olsen-esque transformations and other superpower injuries are common enough that you can lie to your basic-bitch mum and dad about them, there'd be medical professionals who specifically dealt with such cases. That's the big problem with Dreadnought's worldbuilding. It's involved enough to reduce costumed adventurers to boring civil servants, but much too lazy to feel "real."

A century later, Doctor Cho returns. He’s got three other doctors with him. “So, have you figured it out?” I ask.

“Not yet, but—” he begins.

“Welp, you tried,” I say, hopping off the examination table. “Don’t blame yourself, I’m sure anyone would be stumped, you can just go tell Dad it’s hopeless.” I start pulling my socks on.

For someone who supposedly hid their trans identity from his parents all his life, Danny sure is bad at pretending he isn't living through a TG fetish story.

“I don’t think it is,” says Doctor Cho.

“What?” I look up sharply.

“We need to get you to an endocrinologist. I think that, given the circumstances, we can skip the psychological counseling necessary to begin treatment for gender identity disorder.”

“What?”

“There are these rules called the Harry Benjamin standards of care that mandate at least three months of counseling to clear you for hormone replacement therapy, but since you were male until two days ago, we might be able to start you on testosterone shots right away. I’d need to get an opinion from a specialist, though.”

He doesn’t even know the Harry Benjamin standards have been out of date for years now. Hell, they’re not even called that anymore.

Deep Breath

If you weren't aware, the Harry Benjamin standards are what eventually became the World Professional Association for Transgender Health standards of care. A set of standards that recently completely eliminated minimum age reccomendations for all trans medical interventions in order to protect surgeons from legal action by former patients, and actively sought the advice of grown men who write erotica about castrating little boys about "eunuch identity." April Daniels wants you to imagine the people behind the standards as sober, white-coated doctors who are, if anything, far too bearish on trans medicine, when in actuality, it's basically a survey group made up of Kevryn clones and worse.

Part of me wants to laugh, and another part wants to cry, and a third part wants to scream. They butt up against each other and form a kind of tripod of misery, a stable equilibrium of horror and despair. NOW they want to treat me. NOW they want to change my gender. NOW it’s all hands on deck to consider the pressing possibility that something might be wrong with my body.

I'm sorry they didn't rush you to the emergency room the day your first pube sprouted, Danny. Really, my heart weeps. A reminder that Danny never once mentioned to any of these doctors, his parents, teachers, or anyone else whose buisness it might be that he was trans. Apparently they were just supposed to pick that up from him liking Emily Windsnap or drawing or whatever. Remember that next time someone tries telling you the critera for youth transition aren't just based on gender stereotyping little kids.

The fucking hysterical thing is, this bit is meant to be an indictment on the hypocrisy of "gatekeeping" transition for kids. But think about it. As far as these doctors can see, Danny has just been transformed into at the very least, an impossibly convincing imitation of a female adolescent by some act of superpower magic. And instead of asking "How did this happen?" "Why did this happen?" or even "Is he/she carrying the legacy virus or about to spawn a massive cordyceps horn?" they go, "Welp, time to crudely hack this kid back into a shit aproximation of a man." That's exactly the kind of rashness I expect from a "pediatric gender clinic."

Dad is tapping his fingers on the wheel during the long drive home, jiggling his knee, fiddling with the radio. Finally, at a red light, he says, “We can start the testosterone right away, probably. If this endocrinologist he’s sending us to won’t do it, we’ll just find another. But don’t worry, we’re not going to leave it at that. We’re going to figure out a way to get back your…you know.”

“My dick?”

“Don’t be flippant with me, son,” he says, staring straight ahead. He doesn’t normally call me son. “I know this is a hard time, but you’ve got to keep a cool head.”

“Maybe it’s not coming back.” For values of maybe that approach absolutely. That brief moment of panic in Doctor Cho’s office is behind me now. I need to remember nobody can force me to do anything. Not anymore. Not ever again.

You know, it might've helped if we'd see Roger do anything... shitty before this? Because so far, he's been angry at what he thought was a strange girl playing a bad practical joke on him, and hugging his son and telling him everything was going to be okay, while moving heaven and earth to try and undo what he thinks is something his son didn't want. Like, Danny seemed to hint at him being physically abusive at some point, but, you know, show, don't tell.

“Don’t say that! It’ll be fine. We’ll get you back the way you need to be.”

“Surgery is pretty expensive, Dad.”

“We have insurance, don’t worry about that,” says Dad, and I almost pity him.

I’m really pretty sure our insurance doesn’t cover reverse boob jobs and penis grafts.

Again, isn't this a world where being turned into the opposite sex or a turtle-man is a genuine possibility? Shouldn't everyone have Superdickery insurance?

And even if those were covered, these hips ain’t going anywhere. I’ve done research at the library, in moments of curiosity or despair. Transitioning from male to female, mostly, but I got curious and looked to see how the reverse works. Short version: it’s just as difficult, but in different ways.

Longer version: Both are fucking impossible, but rotdogs are slightly more horrible on average than amholes, and TIFs "pass" better mostly because there's less of them so people have less practise.

This is also a good point to note one of the sleight of hands Daniels and a lot of other trans authors employ. Apparently, Danny learned all about trans stuff at the library. That kind of conjures the image of him looking through big, official books full of Rock Hard Medical Data Supporting Gender Affirming Care, doesn't it? But most trans-identified kids Danny's age don't get their information about this from the library. They get it from shady Discords, sub-reddits, or Twitter and anime. But you can't bring that up in your mass-consumer YA book, because those spaces are clearly dodgy as fuck. So generally, you're kind of left to assume Danny came to all these conclusions in a vacuum, up to and including Correct Current Year Terminology.

Even if I started on testosterone shots tonight, they wouldn’t make my shoulders wider or my hips narrower. They might make me a smidgen taller if the caps at the end of my bones haven’t fused yet. I’m fifteen, which in this body means I’m even further through puberty than I was as a boy, but I probably still have a few inches I could grow. Puberty leaves a mark human science hasn’t figured out how to erase yet, not that it’s a real high priority or anything.

That last sentence is so first world problem, it circles all the way around to Jack Kirby's Fourth World problems.

We're then treated to a pretty boring IM convo with Disposible Best Friend. It's emimently skippable, but I do feel like highlighting this:

CombatW0mbat: sux. you gonna be out tomorrow?

Minovsky_Particle: prolly. What did we have for homework today?

CombatW0mbat: chap 6 in history, chap 4 in math, odds, and finish reading mockingbird. dunno what you had in french and chem.

Minovsky_Particle: thx

You know, I've called Danny vapid a fair bit so far, but I can't imagine a boy or girl born who'd care about homework after a dying superhero shoved their Plot Inciting Orb inside them, let alone if it changed their sex in the process.

A week later, Dreadnought’s funeral is on TV. We all gather in the living room, Mom and Dad on the couch, me sitting off to the side on a cushion the way I like to. It’s good to sit down here because I’m close enough that I feel like we’re all together like a family, but I’m out of easy line of sight. It’s safer that way.

I think this is the only time we see Danny express any affection for either of his parents.

The Legion Pacifica is decked out in mourning colors as they carry the casket from the hearse to the grave. The President gives a speech, and then introduces one of Dreadnought’s teammates, an enormous man named Magma, who gives the eulogy.

Superheroes having special formal costumes for funerals and shit is a neat idea. Though, I also can't stop picturing Magma looking like Squidward in that one episode where they turned into superheroes.

As he speaks, the guilt comes back, stronger than ever. Dreadnought is dead, and I just watched him die. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe if I was smarter or better or had done something different, he’d have survived. But no, I took his powers and went home with a big grin on my face. I’m a selfish, horrible person.

I’m a horrible person and I feel guilty as hell, but I can’t pretend the days since it happened haven’t been the happiest of my life. Every day I wake up and get excited again about what I see in the mirror. Every day I quietly read aloud, just to hear the sound of my new voice. When I see myself, I see myself. My body is everything I ever wished for, everything I told myself I’d never have. Maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I don’t deserve it. But I have it now. There’s no going back. As they lay him in the ground, I silently promise Dreadnought that someday, somehow, I will find a way to honor his memory. To earn what he did for me.

"I'm a selfish, horrible person, but look at these tiddies!" is getting old, Dan.

Anyway, enough of this teenage dirtbag, are you Kiwis ready for some real heroes? Well, tough shit, you've got these chuckleheads:

A tap tap tapping at the window. I drop from the air, feeling guilty. A man in silver and green power armor is hovering just outside my window, beckoning me to come outside.

Or, you know, maybe the Legion Pacifica will come pay me a visit before I’m ready. That could happen too.

The Legion is the cape outfit for New Port City and parts beyond. Their territory is everything west of the Rockies, north of California and Nevada, and south of Canada. They’re the most prestigious team on the west coast, and possibly the country. With Dreadnought as their anchor, they haven’t faced a serious home turf fight in ten years, and spend most of their time assisting the eternally jumbled and fractured Californian capes or working with the continent-wide Northern Union team to handle the really big stuff, like the asteroid that almost hit us last year. With Dreadnought’s dead, that might have to change.

Northern Union also sounds like a fucking bank. Or maybe a space-filling empire in a map-simulator game.

I slide across my bed and open the window. The armored figure is floating on whining jets that vent from his back and feet. Of course I recognize him, he’s Carapace. My stomach flops over.

“We need to talk,” says Carapace in a filtered, almost mechanical voice.

Carapace.

His name is CARAPACE.

Okay, here's a lesson a friend taught me regarding superhero (or villain) names. Generally, they should either be something the hero would plausibly come up with themselves and like the sound of, or be something you could believe the press or the public dubbing them. Let's go through some examples

1. Superman: Superman might be a very basic sounding name, but remember, we largely use terms like "superhero" and "superpowers" because he codified the genre, even if he wasn't the clear-cut first true example of a superhero. In universe, Lois Lane usually names him that because, well, he's a super, and he has an S on his chest. In some continuities that's because it's the symbol of Kal-El's family, or some other Kryptonian thing. Perfectly plausible, and a name I could believe catching on, which is important.

2. Batman: Now, in most continuities, Batman isn't the type to offer his name, at least not early in his career. However, he deliberately incorporates bat-motifs into his gear and even his silhouette, so it's pretty easy to imagine the name emerging from an eyewitness report or the like.

3. Dreadnought: Not a great name IMO (sounds vaguely evil, actually) and I think the logic for why the first one picked it is a bit tennous, but at least Daniels bothered to explain why he did, and it does imply strength and power. Partial credit.

Drumroll please:

4. Carapace: Can you imagining a swooning lady-reporter coming up with this? A terrified, half-illiterate gangster? Can you really see some lone genius hammering away at his bespoke power-armour thinking "Yeah, I'm going to call myself Carapace"? No, of course not! It's a shitty, boring name! I can't call it lazy, because it definitely took Daniels more than a second to think of it, but only because it's so lame it'd never be your first choice. You call a character Carapace when you're worried the kids won't get it if you call him "Green Knight." Carapace is what Rob Lifefeld calls a character ten bumps of coke into a character-creation binge, which would actually be really funny if he was a parody of a boring 90s hero, but no, he's just a bog-standard Iron Man stand-in.

Also, Carapace is what you call a boring bug hero, not an armour guy!

My fingers are clumsy as I pull open my dresser and pull out a sweatshirt. I put it on, take it off, and put it on right side out. I decide to float to the window so he won’t see my knees shaking. The night air is cold and damp against my skin, and I wobble a little in the air as I leave my house behind. This is the first time I’ve flown in the open air. I was hoping to do this in private. Carapace is hovering twenty or thirty yards away, and maybe two dozen yards above the ground. It’s an overcast night, but the clouds are thin enough that the moon’s light punches through and reflects off the silver highlights of the plate-armored woman floating next to him. It’s Valkyrja, and the moment I recognize her my cheeks start burning. Did he see the poster I have of her on my wall? Did she?

This is Valkyrja. She's Thor, but also Wonder Woman I guess? She's pretty uninspired herself, but we do find out something deeply gross about her next book, so there's that.

“Uh, hi,” I say to two of the most important people in the world. Wow. I am a dork.

I mean, what are your options? Do a funny little dance and compose them a paen?

Hello. I am Carapace, and this is Valkyrja,” says Carapace, as if they would need to introduce themselves anywhere in North America. “And you…are Daniel Tozer.” Nobody outside the Legion has seen his face. His helmet gives him a metal glare that’s hard to face straight on.

“Danielle,” I mutter.

“But your legal name is Daniel Tozer,” he says, like this is very important to be clear on and he’s a little confused. “You were present when Dreadnought was murdered.”

God forbid the superhero want to confirm your identity in relation to a murder-case. A murder-case involving one of his mates.

“What Carapace means to say,” says Valkyrja in a low, husky voice, “is we know that receiving the mantle can be an abrupt and difficult transition.” Up close I can see the pale blue nimbus that surrounds her wings. It’s well known—okay no, it’s well known to her fans, at least—that she doesn’t fly by flapping them, but by some kind of magic contained within them.

We get it, every superhero story since Crisis on Infinite Earths you know what the laws of physics are. Why don't you tell us about tactile telekinesis again?

Carapace looks at her for a long moment before turning back to me. “Yes. As a minor coming into powers within our jurisdiction, we are prepared to offer you guidance and support,” he says. “This is contingent upon good behavior, of course.” There’s something in his tone that’s hard to read through the mechanical filtering, but it sort of sounds like he thinks good behavior will be a problem for me.

“You want me to…to join the—”

“No,” he says. “We do not accept minors into the Legion at this time.”

“You would be a provisional member,” says Valkyrja as if he hadn’t spoken. “You would be welcome in our halls and at our tables, but we would assign you no duties, nor grant you a stipend.” She looks at Carapace and raises her eyebrow. “That is a fair description of the program you designed for young champions, is it not?”

“…yes,” says Carapace. He continues, sounding like he’s reading a script he’d rather not. “We encourage all young metahumans to take advantage of the opportunities we provide.”

You know, I think kid superheroes are fun, but when you turn superheroing into this vaguely military outfit, it starts to feel a bit sinister.

Danny has a lot to explain/have explained to her, so next chapter, it's off to Legion Tower. Same Kettle-Time, same Kettle-Thread!

 

[M3xus]

Danny seems to be falling into the same trap "Manhunt" fell into: accidentally making the "villain" (in this case, the father) more sympathetic than the actual protagonist. If my son came home changed into a girl and never once told me he was trans, I'd move heaven and Earth to get him back to normal, too!

Good catch on the trans terminology sleight. A lot of this "acceptance" of trans stuff by the general public becomes easier to parse when one realizes TRAs have been running a glorified Bolivian Fire Drill on everybody since day one.

 

[Next Task]

Poor Mr Daniels is getting PTSD from deadlines... because TrAnS HaPpInESs

What a fucking faggot. His work asked him to do work! By a certain time! So when his totally real PTSD kicked in surrounding doing his job but not just whenever he felt like it, they gave him more time to do it in. But he could tell that those accommodations were malicious, not out of a desire to get him to fucking do what he was paid to do! Doing him a favour wasn't doing him a favour, it was getting him to quit!

The insanity is strong in this one. As is the by now bog-standard projection and lack of theory of mind. The special sauce being the, 'All men are evil, we should punish them, I'm totally not a man btw.' posturing.

Thanks, I already hate the book and the author, and the thread is one page and three chapters in.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

What a fucking faggot. His work asked him to do work! By a certain time! So when his totally real PTSD kicked in surrounding doing his job but not just whenever he felt like it, they gave him more time to do it in. But he could tell that those accommodations were malicious, not out of a desire to get him to fucking do what he was paid to do! Doing him a favour wasn't doing him a favour, it was getting him to quit!

I feel like mentioning that while the first two books of this series came out in 2017, six years later, the third book, Nemesis, has yet to surface, despite a tentative release date in 2019. Got to love that trans work ethic. You know, say what you want about the fucking furries, those guys are creative machines compared to most troon artists.

When we last left our... let's call him "hero" for now, Danny had essentially been abducted by the League of Shit Super Names to their headquarters:

Legion Tower is a landmark in New Port. Fifty floors high, a full ten to twenty floors taller than most of the buildings around it, it stands at the northern end of the downtown core of towers along the southeast shoreline of Puget Sound. The bottom floors are rented out as office space, but nobody really knows what they do with the top thirty.

Superheroes renting out space in their lairs to office-drones is actually a pretty amusing idea, even if it sounds like a surefire way to get Chandler Bing slaughtered by the forces of the Arkham Knight. Also, I suspect the top thirty floors are occupied by superheroes. Don't ask me why, just a hunch.

The tower is a throwback to the days of stone and steel, with its almost cathedral-esque styling and art deco arches soaring to meet each other at the tower’s apex. At the top a huge balcony protrudes from the building’s east side, mirroring the one on the west. The balconies are large enough to land military helicopters, but the main thing to notice is their lack of guardrails. They’re not meant for casual loitering. They’re entryways for people who can fly.

Good to know superheroes are exempt from OSHA.

Valkyrja sets down gently next to me, and Carapace drops to the ground with a clank a little ways off. In front of a double pair of glass doors, a woman in a lab coat waits for us. Her dark hair is pulled back in a braid reaching most of the way down her back, and her steel-rimmed glasses are perfectly circular. Her cigarette tip flares, and then she says “Welcome to Legion Tower, I’m Doc Impossible. You ever had a physical, kid?”

On a team with luminaries like "Carapace" and a Viking themed chick whose name is basically just "Valkyrie" the name "Doc Impossible" almost feels... out of place. It's very.... unreconstructed Silver and Bronze Age, if you get my meaning. Not terribly creative, of course, but a lot more charming than any of the other names in this book. Funnily enough, I can't think of a hero or villain called that in any of the big superhero stables. However, Doctor Impossible was the name of the main character in Soon I Will Be Invincible, a superhero deconstruction novel-thing by the brother of the dude who wrote The Magicians. Is it possible for a name to so embody a genre that nobody uses it outside of pastiche?

Anyway, now would be a good time to go to the bathroom or nick into the lobby for a snack, because it's time for Danny to explain why mad scientist tech isn't in every Wall-Mart or Bunnings. If that sounds potentially interesting, you clearly haven't read a prose superhero novel written in the last forty years or so.

...Okay, you probably haven't, but the explanation is still shit.

Doc Impossible’s lab takes up this entire floor. The place is wall-to-wall hypertech, the super science that brings us wonders from a thousand possible futures, devices that are decades or centuries beyond what baseline tech can manage. Nobody really knows what makes hypertech possible. What’s obvious is that some people, most of whom don’t show any indication whatsoever of being metahuman, seem to have a knack with the development and manufacture of technology far in advance of what’s normally considered the state of the art. The only reason we’re not all living in space stations orbiting a neutron star or something like that is because hypertech has—well, it has problems. The biggest is probably that it’s amazingly hard to replicate, to the point where the government has officially given up trying to get mass production working. (Nobody believes them when they say that, though. The Pentagon uses as much hypertech as they can get their hands on, but it’s all custom-made gear that’s hard to replace.) At first, some hypertech developers tried to explain their work, but it never clicked with the mainstream. Experiments failed when Universities tried to replicate them, functioning devices sometimes contradicted known laws of physics, etcetera, etcetera, and so now they’re mainly a community unto themselves, studiously ignored by mainstream science, which tends to mutter and grumble everytime the “speculative technology” is mentioned. Every hypertech artifact has to be more or less hand crafted, often out of components which themselves require days or weeks of work. Reliability is a huge issue, too, since it’s all buggier than a Louisiana swamp, and if you didn’t make it yourself you probably won’t know how to fix it.

In other words, "hypertech" is clearly just props for some kind of subtle reality-warping, and not actual, working technology. Instead of firing lasers from your eyes, you fire them from a box full of loose wires and wasp carcasses, but the actual laser-making-power was inside you all along. It's basically Dumbo's magic-feather for Lex Luthor types. Maybe this seems more novel to those of you who haven't read a bunch of capeshit books, but I find it not only incredibly stock, but also quite cheap and lame. Like, what's the point of having cool gadgets if they're just superpowers in a trenchcoat standing on each other's shoulders? I also find the logic flawed. Helicopters exist, but I bet you don't own one. Cold fusion has been performed under laboratory conditions, but I bet you're still reading this on a computer powered by dead monsters. Also, this old chestnut:

Also, why not have super-scientists impact the wider world? I'd read Transmetropolitan with superheroes! It'd be like if the New Justice Team of Futurama was a whole series! I can't see how Dreadnought's basic narrative (Idiot teen gains godlike powers, is mostly concerned with their fancy new vagina) would be precluded by Danny's smartphone operating on quantum entanglement, or the rare earths used to manufacture it being mined from an asteroid. Admittedly, if there are any mad biologists out there, that might throw a wrench into things. But I don't think anyone here would object to the version of Dreadnought where Danny sleeved into a female body for a week, got bored, turned back into a boy, and got into woodwork or something.

We take a turn down a hallway and pass a room where the windows have no projections. Inside are two rows of steel pedestals topped with cylindrical glass tanks. Each tank is filled with human brains floating in a soupy liquid, all run through with wires and tubes. Some of them have big chunks replaced with what looks like a bundle of spindly circuitry.

“What are those?” I ask.

I feel like most people would react a bit more strangely to finding a bunch of brains that looked like the Borg had cummed all over them, but then, Danny also watched a man die and barely blinked.

“Donor brains. Carapace and I are working on a new kind of neurological prosthetic.” Her face lights up as she speaks. “It’s really cool stuff, actually; we’re learning how to program nanomachines to turn neurons into synthetic replacements without interrupting the continuity of consciousness for the patient. Early applications will probably be things like new therapies for Alzheimer’s or MS, but the possibilities are—”

"If this pans out, we could give the author a working imagination!"

“Okay, kid—ah, do you have something you want me to call you?”

“Danny.”

“Okay, Danny. I’ve got eight doctorates and two of them are medical, so it ain’t nothing I’ve not seen before, but I’m gonna need you to get naked here in a moment.”

“Right. Uh. Why?”

“I told you: I’ve got to give you a physical.”

Don't panic, people, we're not reading the other Dreadnought. Doc Impossible gives Danny some cherry cola laced with radioactive strychnine. Sadly, this is not an attempt to end the story early, but instead so it can act as contrast dye for an MRI. After that, Carapace interrupts some admittedly kind of cute banter between the two:

“Have you prepared your briefing yet?” he asks.

“Ya mind?” says Impossible with narrowed eyes. “We’re bonding.”

“Just get your report ready on the…situation.”

“Yeah, fine. Whatever,” says Doc. She makes a shooing motion with her hands. After a long, awkward moment of staring at me, Carapace turns and clanks away. The door slides shut.

“Did I…do something?” I ask. Oh God, what if I messed this up already?

Doc Impossible seems to sag a little. “No. It’s just…Dreadnought was really important to him. And, to tell you the truth, Carapace wasn’t super excited to learn who’d gotten the mantle. I’m sorry. You really deserve more time to get used to this before you have to deal with that kind of thing. Capes in private are…”

“Weird?”

Naturally, we never learn anything about Dreadnought 3 and Carapace's relationship. Dreadnought 3's such a non presence in this story, it makes me wonder why April Daniels didn't just have Danny swallow a tity-skittle meteor like Zsazsa Zaturnnah. I'm guessing it's because then Danny would just be an anonymous new superhuman and have to build a reputation from scratch, instead of automatically being the centre of the fucking universe.

This leads into a discussion about... Darkfist.

“That doesn’t even begin to describe it.” She gestures to a chair. “Have a seat. You know Darkfist?”

“Yeah, he’s big news in Empire, right?” I say as I slide a chair over and sit in it.

“Yep. He’s just a billionaire with a utility belt.” Doc sits in her own chair. “His ‘superpower’ is being rich, okay? Not a single real power to his name. He doesn’t even use hypertech.”

That doesn’t sound right at all. “Are you sure? The things I’ve heard—”

“Are the things that criminals tell each other to make themselves feel better about getting beaten up by a rich boy in fancy cosplay. I’ve met the dude, and I promise you he’s as baseline as they come. What do you think convinces someone with that kind of money to patrol the streets at night, going hand to hand with thugs who have automatic weapons? Are you starting to see? He’s someone we choose to hang out with.”

This barely even qualifies as commentary. It's a brainless stock joke that exists purely to tell you that Daniels knows about Batman, and agrees with your stupid Twitter takes about him. It's the Current Year version of saying Batman and Robin are gay. It's barely even relevant to the point Doc is trying to make.

“And that’s normal! It totally is, and good for you! But did you see how Carapace was still wearing his armor? He lives here. This is his home. But he’s still walking around ready to slug it out with a platoon of tanks.

I mean, is he on call? If he's called out to an emergancy, he might not want to waste time climbing back into his armour. Also, you currently have a superpowered visitor who doesn't know his secret identity. Not stripping down to his skivvies the moment he flies in through the door seems perfectly sensible, to be honest.

The whole whitecape thing isn’t a real great way to spend a life.

Yeah, in Dreadnought, whitecape and blackcape are slang terms for "hero and villain" respectively. Seems kind of pointless, superhero and supervillain are both already kind of widely used slang terms, and whitecape and blackcape aren't even that much shorter or snappier. It's clever for the sake of clever, but all it does is draw attention to its own artiface. "Get it? It's like the hats in old westerns, even if that wasn't an actual thing for the most part!" Okay, but why did that of all things catch on.

“But…I do have superpowers,” I say. “And I kinda want to help people.”

Emphasis on "kinda."

“And that’s normal! It totally is, and good for you! But did you see how Carapace was still wearing his armor? He lives here. This is his home. But he’s still walking around ready to slug it out with a platoon of tanks. The whole whitecape thing isn’t a real great way to spend a life. The normal thing to do with powers is to use them to get a job. You’ve seen aerial couriers downtown, right?”

“Of course.” Every major city has a few people who can fly that make their living zipping time-sensitive materials from one end of the city to the other. Once you get ten feet in the air, there’s no such thing as a traffic jam.

Now, this here is a cool world building idea, albeit yet another thing I think Daniels nicked from Superman: Secret Identity. So naturally, we never once actually see a flying courier, either in this book, or the sequel. Or any other kind of superpowered professional. Wouldn't Danny idly commenting on a deliveryman flying overhead have been a much more striking, novel way of showing the reader that superpowers were a thing in this world, and not just limited to superheroes and villains?

“But those are just special abilities, right? Not real superpowers?”

“Eeeh.” Doc Impossible spreads her fingers out and waggles her hands from side to side. “That line between special abilities and superpowers is something the nonpartisans came up with. A lot of the nonpartisans even have abilities which, if used to their full extent, would be superpowers no matter how much they torture the definition.

I would call the idea that people are genuinely convinced that "flying" and "flying, but you're carrying a pizza" are biologically distinct from each other moronic, but people in our world buy into "non-binary" so who are we to judge?

Because everyone assumes superpowers mean you have super enemies, and who wants to be out at dinner with someone when a psychopath in a black cape shows up and starts melting people with a death ray? So all of the sudden it’s ‘no, sir, I don’t have a superpower, I just have a special ability.’ It helps cut down on the jealousy, too.”

There’s a flutter of unease in my chest when she says this, because yeah, I went through some phases where I was very jealous of people with superpowers. But, strangely, not of people with “special abilities.” Doc Impossible seems to read the thoughts flitting across my face and nods.

I take it back, Danny at least is far stupider than anyone on our Earth.

Doc Impossible sighs and leans back in her chair. “Dreadnought was very important to the status quo.

And nothing else.

So a lot of people are going to want you to be a whitecape, but only you can decide if that’s right for you.”

“Maybe I could become a blackcape,” I say with a smile.

Doc Impossible looks at me the way you’d look at someone across an open grave.

Bad similie. Doc is being stern and angry here. Unless you pissed into the open grave, wouldn't someone looking at you from the other side of it be... sad or something?

Doc Impossible looks at me the way you’d look at someone across an open grave. “Don’t ever joke about that, Danny.”

“Sorry,” I say quickly.

“It’s okay, it’s just…we’ve all lost people to them. They’re the scum of the Earth, and don’t let any graycape tell you differently. In fact, don’t hang out with graycapes; they’re just capes who aren’t always horrible.”

"Greycape" means neutral superhuman more or less. This includes characters like Catwoman or the Punisher (okay, neither of those are superhuman, but you get what I mean) but also any superhero who does their thing without government sanction. So, you know, Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder-Woman, even Captain America sometimes. Basically most superheroes whose adventures are worth reading about.

"Someday, you might get tired of needing to know where the nearest safe house is at all times. Someday, you might be sick of needing to take vacations in disguise. You might want to buy a house and be able to invite casual friends over and not lie to them about who you are. You might want to be able to make plans that don’t involve being on call for combat duty for the rest of your life. You might fall in love with someone who can’t protect themselves from the kind of people you’re going to piss off if you put on a cape. You have a family now? They’re going to have to go into a witness protection program if you start caping. They might to have to go underground if your identity is compromised. Do you understand? It means living under siege. We’re not all roommates in this tower because we can’t stand to be apart from each other. We live here because it’s safe here. We go anywhere else in the world, except maybe to another team’s HQ, and we have to be ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.

By this logic, shouldn't all cops also have to live at the station? This actually reminds me of a problem I have with a lot of modern capeshit. Shockingly few heroes these days have day jobs, secret identities, or even normal humans in their supporting casts. While not every superhero needs to have those things--the X-Men for instance have always been off in their own little world, and that suits them fine most of the time--but I think it creates a sense of... weightlessness. Disconnect from the mundane.

Now, is everyone ready for Danny's test results?

“To start with, you’re as fit as an entire Olympics team. Fitter, actually, than any individual athlete could hope to be. Nobody has enough hours in the day to train every part of themselves to the level you’re at. You’ve got the cardiovascular system of a marathon runner, the flexibility of a gymnast, and the muscle tone of a swimmer. Your muscle density is off the charts; you weigh about a hundred and eighty pounds. Your strength and speed are beyond all human limits, of course, but even without them you’re a better physical specimen than basically anyone else alive.”

I smile. “Cool!”

Man, this really is a work of science fiction: a fit troon. I bet Danny still thinks he should compete in womens' sports.

“And here’s the bad news: if you want kids, you’re going to have to let me convert some of your blood into sperm and have someone else provide the egg and womb. You don’t have a uterus. You’ll never get pregnant.”

I’m falling. I’m falling down, down into a deep pit. And at the bottom, there are flames. I’m up on my feet before I know what I’m doing. I kick back at the chair and it rockets across the room, gets embedded into a wall behind me. An enormous spiderweb of cracks slams out across the entire wall panel, which flickers and throws random, contorted image across its shattered segments.

“Dammit!”

“What the hell, kid?” says Doc Impossible, rising.

“Sorry! Sorry! I…” I sigh. The bubbling cauldron of frustration is still there, even if it’s not boiling over. “I guess I just thought that I was finally a real girl.”

Okay, so we're not given much details about what the Plot Inciting Orb actually is, probably because that would require effort. We are however shown it basically interfaces with the underlying super-structure of the universe, and its potential is only limited by skill and imagination yada yada. So, apparently, the Plot Inciting Orb can, on the fly, reshape Danny's body on a celluar level in accordance with his desires... but it can't change his chromosones? Or craft a uterus for him? That seems a bit arbituary, doesn't it?

Thinking about it, I can think of a couple of reasons Daniels might've went with this. One... most troons don't actually want to be identical to their claimed sex. Because then they wouldn't be special. Plus, they also tend to be massively fucking sexist. Another reason I think is that modern, social justice driven literature has abandoned the liberatory power of fiction. Not in like, the "fat liberation" sense or whatever, but rather, the idea that fiction can be an escape. You have to wallow in your fucking problems all the time, even in escapist fantasy. Therefore, Danny turning into an actual woman would be "erasing trans bodies." Even though Danny's body in no way resembles any trans identified person who ever lived. Plus, Danny's fifteen. Parenthood shouldn't be on his radar for years to come, and most troons have the parenting drives of starfish anyway. It's a "problem" that has no actual impact.

Also, I'm reminded of how Kevryn sometimes claims the label of "infertile." Now, Kev is infertile--sterile in fact--but that's just because he took a bunch of estrogen and cut his balls off. When people say they're infertile, it's usually because of something they didn't choose. Danny gets to inhabit that misery without people bringing this up, because he technically didn’t choose to become an impossibly sexy demigod with no uterus.

“Hey! None of that!” She takes me by the shoulders. “You think it’s a uterus that makes a woman? Bullshit. You feel like you’re a girl, you live it, it’s part of you? Then you’re a girl. That’s the end of it, no quibbling. You’re as real a girl as anyone. And you really need to learn to express your anger better.”

“I’m sorry. Really. And, thanks.” I close my eyes and take a breath. “How did you know that was bad news?”

...Because sterility usually is?

Doc Impossible smiles gently. “This whole time, you haven’t even once asked about being changed back. It’s pretty obvious you’re transgender, Danny.” She taps my forehead. “If you were a boy up here, I think you would have mentioned it by now. The other Dreadnoughts reported that when they took the mantle, it changed their bodies into what they’d always wanted it to be. Some got a little taller, one grew back some lost toes, that sort of thing. But they were all cis—that is to say, they weren’t trans—so their bodies didn’t change to match their gender identity because it was already matching. You, on the other hand, became a very pretty young woman who, upon extremely close examination, can be seen to have a history of masculine dimorphism. Real close. Like chromosome level close.”

Okay, April Daniels, trans women are women... so long as they were turned into chicks with androgen insensitivty syndrome by plot inciting orbs shat out by dying superheroes. Also, add that to the list things we know about Dreadnought 3: he wasn't trans. So, I guess I'm not suprised Daniels doesn't give a shit about him.

Doc Impossible shrugs. “I don’t know. You’re a sample size of one, so it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions. If I had to say, I’d guess that the mantle can only do so much with what it has available to work with when the change happens. For instance, your testicles have migrated up into your abdomen and have been reconfigured to secrete estrogen and progesterone, but they don’t have any eggs, and are anatomically recognizable as testes.”

Ah, so that's why the third book hasn't come out: Danny was hunted down and killed by the cast of Manhunt.

“Oh.” Then it hits me. This ‘ideal’ new body—the magazine cover perfection, the shampoo commercial hair, even the fashionable shape of my thighs—it’s more than a different look. It’s a window inside my head. “Oh. Gross.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being trans, Danny.”

“No. I mean, why I look this way. Mom took me to a fancy bra store the other day, and there were posters everywhere of these women that, well, nobody looks like that in real life, right?”

“Except you, and a few genetic lottery winners.”

“Yeah. So my ideal self—”

Doc Impossible chuckles. “Is a photoshopped underwear model, I see.”

“I guess it sounds a little stupid to be upset over being pretty—”

“Yes! Yes it does. You think you’re immune to advertisements? That’d be a hell of a superpower, but even if Dreadnought was immune to mind control—and he wasn’t—you’ve spent your entire life swimming in the stuff.” Doc Impossible turns back to the test results—at least the wall I broke wasn’t one she was working on—and starts sliding files and images into a new folder with a few flicks of her fingers. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.

I for one am glad April Daniels is breaking the stigma around being transformed into an image of sexual perfection by a psychoactive Plot Inciting Orb. It's an issue that isn't talked enough about. Anyway, Doc gives Danny a super-suit to muck around in.

She takes me to a different part of the lab, where the machinery is all hypertech 3D printers and clusters of robot arms like giant metal spiders curled up dead. I’m wearing a charcoal gray bodysuit, still warm and smelly from the fabricator. It’s snug but flexible. Matching boots and gloves, with a separate cape that goes down to the back of my knees. The cape is longer in back, but also wraps around my chest like, well, like a mantle that covers my chest down past my collarbones. I experiment flexing my arms a little, trying not to be too obvious that I’m seeing how the cape would sit with my arms stretched out in front of me in the classic flight pose. It’s actually pretty thin material, but slick and sort of heavy. It shouldn’t bunch up, or get in the way of throwing a punch. I’m not super thrilled about the cowl. It feels constricting around my neck, not that it’s hard to breathe or move, but it’s there, and kinda bugging me. It’s open at the top to let my hair grow out, and I’m touched she included this traditionally female-gendered touch to a suit that otherwise seems to be patterned after Dreadnought’s classic uniform.

So, the idea here is that this costume is meant to be neutral: a visual indicator that Danny is neither a hero nor a villain. This is stupid for a number of reasons. One, it assumes supervillains are some kind of coherent "faction" united against superheroes rather than a motley assortment of individual criminals who fight superheroes because those guys don't approve of crime.

“You like it?” asks Doc.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s cool. But…”

“The colors, I know.” The suit doesn’t have any markings or emblems, and the grays aren’t solid but mottled with a kind of soft focus camouflage pattern. “It’s what we mean by throwaway colors. They’ll make you basically invisible in the night sky, and it signals to other capes that you’re not looking for a fight.”

Two, it assumes that superheroes and villains both have some kind of universial dress code. Also, if you don't want people to think Danny's a superhero, why the fuck would you include a cape?

“Cool.” She turns and spits her nicotine gum into another little trashcan, pops a replacement in her mouth. Those things are supposed to last for longer than that, right? “Now, let’s go get you introduced to the team proper.”

“Ah. Okay. Right.” A flare of giddy nervousness lights up my chest. I’m going to meet the entire Legion Pacifica. Like, tonight.

I can promise TERFs, but sadly nobody near as based as Teach.

 

[KID NAMED SCHWARMAPUNK]

Heh, some tranny on Sufficient Velocity also did a review of this
just some generic nu-speak gobbledygook that made me REAL fuckin sleepy.
Also, why the fuck don't we have a thread on the fruit cakes yet?

 

[Monolith]

At least Wildbow had the sense to make the troon superhero a horrifying tentacle monster (and make him work for what he wanted).

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

At least Wildbow had the sense to make the troon superhero a horrifying tentacle monster (and make him work for what he wanted).

Heh, you know, I was considering referencing Worm a couple of times, but I had no idea anyone here read that.

 

[Monolith]

Heh, you know, I was considering referencing Worm a couple of times, but I had no idea anyone here read that.

I will readily admit that the author is woke as fuck, but at least he can write a story.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

I will readily admit that the author is woke as fuck, but at least he can write a story.

His worldbuilding at least has a distinct flavour, even if it hits many of the same beats as Daniels, like the government sponsored heroes.

 

[KID NAMED SCHWARMAPUNK]

His worldbuilding at least has a distinct flavour, even if it hits many of the same beats as Daniels, like the government sponsored heroes.

I mean, Why wouldn't Glowniggers try to get their own superheroes to vaporise 3rd world dictators and remote-view people jerking off to furry scat porn?

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Clearly Keffals isn't the arch-enemy of the Farms, April Daniels is.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

You know, the last couple of chapters have been relatively heavy on the capeshit realtive to the tranny shit. I think that equation might be flipping soon.

Standing near the table is the most oddly dressed group of people you’re ever likely to meet, the holy-crap-no-kidding Legion Pacifica.

Again, that's not a name that makes me think "legendary superhero team." It makes me think "space marine chapter colour scheme you're supposed to fill in the details yourself." They're Polynisean themed or something.

These people are so famous I recognize them by their silhouettes. Valkyrja is chatting with Magma, an enormous slab of muscle in the shape of a man, with his dark brown skin and bushy black beard, and his eyes visibly glowing even from over here. He normally fights wearing a kind of circus strongman getup, but in here he’s content to wear a suit with the neck unbuttoned and no tie. There’s Graywytch; her dark robe’s hood is up and she’s facing away from me, but she’s instantly recognizable by the raven that’s always on her shoulder. She’s standing apart with Carapace, their heads tilted towards each other in quiet conversation. Chlorophyll is half-man, half-plant and wearing a tight t-shirt over his lithe green chest. He’s reading a paperback book, which is such a normal thing to do that it’s weird.

The most original name here is Graywytch, and that's only because she can't fucking spell!

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Danielle Tozer, carrier of the mantle.”

“Daniel Tozer,” says Graywytch. She’s looking at me like I’m an interloper. Her face is pale, heavy black eyeshadow standing out against almost white skin. Her dark hair hangs lank against her forehead. The raven on her shoulder tilts its head sideways and eyeballs me.

“Myra, can you at least try to be pleasant?” says Doc Impossible.

“You can call me Danny, if it’s easier,” I say, almost on reflex. Crap. Why did I say that? Impossible was standing up for me and it felt good to hear someone use my girl name, my real name

"My author's real name."

Valkyrja steps forward and bows to me.

“Uh, hi. We already met,” my mouth says before I can stop it. Someone, please. Stop me before I kill my dignity again.

“Not formally. Well met, young champion.” Okay, I’m going to honest: I’ve had a crush on Valkyrja since about the time I discovered boobs are a thing that exist, but this whole ye olde tymey talk is way clunky in everyday conversation and it’s kind of weirding me out.

That might be the most male sentence I've ever read. I've had chats with my urologist that had less dick.

Chlorophyll shakes my hand. His skin is cool and a little moist. “Hello. I’m Chlorophyll. It’s always nice to meet another queer with powers.” My stomach lurches. Oh yeah. I’m gay now. It’d never occurred to me. Now I’m wondering how obvious my crush on Valkyrja is. “It’s nice to see some trans representation in the community.”

“Ah, so uh…” I kinda trail off lamely. For some stupid reason, I’d thought Doc’s examination would be the end of it, and my transition wouldn’t be up for discussion anymore.

Oh, yeah, sure, I bet if Daniels was in this situation, he'd totally just want to go stealth and not make a fuss about being the first trans Dreadnought.

“We all know,” says Graywytch who hasn’t made a move towards introducing herself. I mean, not that she needs to, but still. “Your little ‘transition’ was caught on video.” The way she says that puts me on guard.

“What?” I snap a look over at Doc Impossible.

“That’s how we found you, but don’t worry,” she says. “We got to the video before anyone else did. Our copy is the only copy in the world.”

“Can you delete it?” I ask. “That was private.”

“It happened in public,” says Graywytch.

“I didn’t get to choose where,” I mutter. Dad’s in my head telling me I shouldn’t be such a pussy and should speak up when I’m talking. I wish he’d shut up.

Don't worry, Dan, I'm sure Null's archived it already. Probably why the site went down.

“Dan—Danny, we need to discuss some things with you,” says Carapace after we’re all seated.

Carapace might be secretly based. He proceeds to lay out the rules for a provisional membership in the Legion:

“First, you must keep your powers secret as much as possible. This is to protect yourself, and the people around you.” I nod. That seems reasonable, especially after what Doc Impossible told me in the lab. He continues, “If you are going to experiment with your powers, you will do it while wearing your suit. Get into the habit of not using your powers when you’re in civilian clothes. You never know when you’re on camera. Fly only at night, with at least one hundred feet between you and the ground except for takeoffs and landings.”

“Okay.”

“And of course, don’t commit any crimes. Don’t harass anyone. Don’t destroy private or public property. Avoid television crews and reporters. Don’t interfere with the emergency services. Don’t accept any payments for the use of your powers. If you have serious financial need, we can cover it within reason, so don’t feel pressured to make money.

"Be completely financially dependent on us and don't use your natural abilities for profit! Even though that's supposedly a perfectly normal thing for supers to do in this world!"

his is all in that guide, along with detailed explanations should you wish to know the reasoning behind the rules. Most importantly, no caping. That means no investigations, no foiling bank robberies, no looking for trouble, all right? You don’t have the training or the experience for that, and you rush in without thinking you might make things worse than they were before you arrived.”

I open the guidebook file and scroll down to the big list of rules. There’s a lot of Don’ts in it.

You know, this whole thing reminds me a lot of the MCU Spider-Man. A big appeal of the teen superhero narrative is seeing the hero fumble learning the ropes, while also having an escape from the usual strictures placed on young people. That kind of doesn't work when there's a big, government sanctioned superhero program waiting to snap them up and lay down more rules than a boy-scout troop. You know the people in charge of the MCU realised this, because they devoted an entire film to dismantling that set-up. Time to talk about the murder:

Above the table, a trio of flat holograms appears, three video screens showing grainy security cam footage of the fall of Dreadnought. The recording is jerky, the frame advancing only once or twice a second.

“The video enlightens us not as to the method of his demise,” says Valkyrja. She says video like it’s the name of an eldritch anomaly.

I fucking hate that line.

“Start from the beginning,” says Carapace. “What were you doing behind the mall?”

“I was, uh, painting my toenails.”

“Oh!” says Carapace, shifting in his seat. “And this was, even before your…empowerment.”

“Well, yeah. I’ve always been a girl.” I shrug. “That’s the way I could express it.”

You ever notice that gender theory people all sound like primary school bullies. "Painting ya nails? What are you, a girl?"

Graywytch snorts, like at a bad joke. My little flicker of unease about her grows.

See? She knows what I'm talking about.

“Did he bid you to flee?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you did not.”

“Yes.” My voice seems to be getting quieter with each answer. I hope these are the right answers. I’m screwing it all up. Just like I should have known I would.

“Why?”

“I wanted to help him.”

“You have a champion’s heart, Danielle Tozer,” says Valkyrja, and I try not to sag too obviously with relief. A moment later, a sunny glow blooms in my chest. Valkyrja gave me a compliment. Awesome.

Ah, the classic YA humble-brag, where the main character shits on themselves in their narration so people around them can heap praise without the author looking conceited.

More questions. We start going through that day step by step. Was I able to see anything about Utopia? Did Dreadnought have any particular last words he wanted to pass along? I tell them about hearing Dreadnought fall, about trying to move him under cover, and giving him water. As the video advances, they pause it and ask me questions about particular points. Little things, things that don’t make sense to me, like did I smell anything unusual. Then it happens. Dreadnought is hidden behind some concrete, and I am barely in view. There’s a flash of light, and then I collapse. My body glows for a moment, a much longer moment than I remember.

“I didn’t realize it took so long,” I say.

“That’s something that struck me as unusual,” says Doc Impossible. “Granted, we only have a single other mantle transfer on film, and a sample size of two isn’t much to go on, but your transformation took a lot longer than your predecessor’s did. I think it has something to do with how dramatic the changes were for you compared to him.”

If you're wondering if we ever find out why one of the previous transfers was also filmed, and under what circumstances, keep wondering, because it's never even hinted at. Dreadnought 3 is pretty much just a literal white egg whose only purpose was to crack Danny's.

Blah blah blah, some boring shit about Calamity and Danny's superhero name. Time for Graywytch to be mildly based:

“You were raised to be a man. Your privilege blinds you, and makes you dangerous.”

“I’m just as much a girl as you are.”

“Oh really?” She leans forward, steeples her fingers. “Do you even know how to put in a tampon?”

This is obviously a strawman insinuating that TERFs don't think infertile, menopausal, or preteen girls aren't female, but she's still kind of got a point? Danny will never have to worry about menstruation or menopause, or endromitosis, or misscarriage, or any other aspect of female physicality that doesn't involve shopping for bras. Hell, by the sounds of it, he's never going to get sick at all. Do Plot Inciting Orb Owners even age? Argurably, you could consider Danny a kind of posthuman creature whose sex is purely vestigial or aesthetic, like Kars at the end of Battle Tendency or something. It raises the question of how much of the human condition is defined by human fraility. Is Superman--a person who is practically indestructible, almost impossible to constrain, usually immortal ish, and who percieves the world on a whole different level than us--"human" just because he has a similar emotional experience?

This is of course an interesting question for a capeshit book to tackle, but sadly, April Daniels for some reason thinks moobs are more interesting than literal superpowers.

“Your own medical examination proved he has a Y chromosome; he’s even got a mutant pair of testicles!” says Graywytch, tapping a screen in front of her. “How is that not male?”

“Genetics aren’t destiny,” snaps Impossible.

True, but you don't see people with Downs syndrome indentifying their way out of it. Watch, they'll be holding up Downs kids as a third gender by the end of the year. This is yet another exhibit of why trying to use fiction to prove your points is a hopeless cause. Yeah, Danny is a way more convincing woman than any trans-identified-male who exists in reality. Conversely, Danny is a way more convincing woman than any trans-identified-male who exists in reality.

There were these pretty funny atheist YouTubers I used to watch: Hugo and Jake. Naturally Hugo is now Hannah and when they deign to upload it's usually about MAGA chuds or something, but back in the day, they'd often cover the old Bibleman show. One thing they would often point out was that it kind of gave away the game when Bibleman's only "power" was that God actually answered his prayers. Similarly, while Danny has many superpowers, his chief one is that his transition is actually a bit convincing. What does that say about real "trans women"?

“We’re being sidetracked,” says Chlorophyll. “Whether Danny is a boy or a girl isn’t the issue. What we really need to be talking about is getting Danny ready to take Dreadnought’s place, no matter what name we settle on.”

“We settle on? It’s her choice,” says Magma.

“It is the way of things,” says Valkyrja, nodding.

“There are extenuating circumstances that must be considered,” says Carapace.

“Wait, hold on, she’s fifteen!” says Doc Impossible. “We all agreed after Blackfish died that we only accept adults.

I thought that movie did pretty well?

“Sure, sure, but that’s no reason not to be making plans,” says Chlorophyll. “With the name, without the name, it doesn’t matter. We need that powerset in our deck in case we encounter a Mistress Malice level threat. Not to mention the funding we stand to lose without him. Dreadnought could justify a budget we won’t be able to match without him.” Oh. So that’s what he wants. Thank you, Mr. Queer Solidarity.

See, real superhero teams just have dudes with ridiculous wealth to help them pay the rent.

“My fortune is vast. I will make good the shortfall, if and when necessity should compel me,” says Valkyrja.

“That wouldn’t be fair,” says Chlorophyl. “You might as well announce you’ll be voting twice from now on.”

Valkryja’s wings pull in tight against her back, and she replies in clipped tones. “You already enjoy my coin. Does it sway your vote? This tower was but a dream before I—”

“That’s apples and oranges, the tower is held in trust!”

This was what capeshit needed, fucking financial spats.

“Danny, don’t listen to him,” says Doc Impossible. “We’ll get along without you if we need—”

“No. Chlorophyll is right,” says Graywytch, and a few people look at her in surprise. I’m getting the feeling these debates have expected factions, and she’s crossing party lines. “The mantle is too powerful to be left to waste. Perhaps a more suitable host can be found.”

All eyes drop on me like lead weights. My voice is small when I speak. “Doctor, would my transition stay in place if I gave up the mantle?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Then I’m keeping it.”

This is basically that one tweet about how it'd be just for a trans person to start a nuclear war for one more day of tittie skittles. Also, it might be good to bring up whether or not the Plot Inciting Orb can be passed on without, you know, dying.

“Then I’m keeping it.”

“As you should!” says Magma. He turns to Graywytch. “We’ve never set that precedent, and we’re not going to start now.”

“What makes him worthy?” she says. “Dreadnought was dying, he had no choice in the matter, no other options.”

“That makes this different than how the last three people got the mantle in what way, exactly?” Magma opens his palms questioningly. “It’s always been luck of the draw.”

Naturally, Magma isn't going to say, point out how Dreadnought 2 or 3 seemed like unlikely candidates but rose to the challenge, because that would require Daniels to give a shit.

“Maybe that should change. You heard him yourself; he only wants to keep it to be sure of being able to continue perpetrating this masquerade of his.”

“That’s not what I said!” I say.

“It’s what you meant,” she says with poison syrup in her voice.

“Her meaning was quite plain to me,” says Valkyrja. “You twist her words.”

How? How is Terf-Witch twisting anything Danny said? He wants the Plot Inciting Orb because it gives him orbs.

There’s more, but I don’t hear it. I’m falling away inside, to the place I sometimes go when it’s too loud at home. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Isn’t it enough to tell them I’m a girl? What does it really matter what my chromosomes are?

I'm the King of England. Does it matter who my mother and father were, or my religion, or my nationality, or whether or not I even like the monarchy? That feels a lot more "socially constructed" than sex.

Of course I'm not! I'm the CEO of Mermaids! And also Superman.

Uh, maybe—maybe that’s enough, Graywytch,” Carapace is saying when I come back. He sounds uncomfortable, like if he could tug on the collar of his armor, he would do it. “Your…position is noted.”

She stares at him, almost scary intense.

“You can take your provisional membership and shove it,” I say, standing up.

To be fair, "membership" seemed to be code for "Sit on your arse for three years, and we get dibs."

“But I’m keeping the suit. And I’m keeping the mantle.”

“That is not your decision to make, young man,” says Graywytch.

“Then come take it!” I shout at her. A few of them are taken aback. I don’t think they’re used to being threatened by kids, but I can see the realization sinking into them: they can’t steal this from me. I’m sure fighting them would be way harder than I expect, but I have the powers of freaking Dreadnought, and even if they won, nobody knows how the mantle transfer works. “That’s what I thought.”

I mean, she's literally magic.

Doc Impossible says something to Graywytch that sounds like it rhymes with sure a ducking bunt and there’s an explosion of yelling back at the table. I don’t stop to listen.

See, because this is a book, Daniels can palm off yelling slurs at women who don't play along onto to a "real" lady.

(It's complicated, and probably stupid)

 

[Soggy paper straw]

I am just catching up reading the story

There’s a giddy fear bubbling up beneath me.

"beneath me"? I have never heard this expression. Also "giddy fear"? Isn't YA fiction supposed to aim to improve kids' literacy?

I manage to stop cussing long enough to say, “There will be firefighters here soon. They’ll help you.”

Firefighter... that's weirdly specific. Not an ambulance, paramedic, police. No. Firefighters"

I put a hand to my heart and shook my head gravely. "You don't understand Dreadnought. I'm actually a trans-girl lesbian--"

AHAHAHAHAH- I rarely actually laugh out loud, but damn!!!

In the movies, he's... a special forces soldier, who's allowed to use a bow and arrow on the job for some reason.

Tbf I am sure that is at least partially due to the military funding capeshit stuff

I’m throwing all my crap into my bag and running next to her as she sprints for the parking garage’s rear. Around us, I can see the occasional shopper huddling behind a car,

...so there was a lot of noise. People were hiding and shit, but he was just chilling putting nail polish on?

It’s hard to tell but I think my shoulders are narrower. My pants are pinching me pretty hard around my hips.

- Of course they actually know the differences between male and female lol

Infamous villains like Kristallnacht and Doctor von Sieg didn’t even slow him down.

Why do I think this is antisemitic?

Seriously, you're telling me it took fifteen fucking years for someone with superpowers to decide to be naughty? It's like the weird apolitical, comic book version of people who think all crime will stop if we get rid of the cops and give everyone free money.

It's particularly weird because the book does not say "supervillain", but just "super criminal". So, no one with superpowers had ever committed a crime? Ever?

I’ve been half the colors of the rainbow for years now, when the greatest hero of the age fell out of the sky, gave me his power, and died.

obviously you didnt copy the whole text and skipped parts, but this still sounds a terrible sequence of events. It has been, what?, a couple of hours and he went through SO MUCH and all he can feel is "skirt goes spinny! Fuck you dad! It's not a phase"? Forget understanding what it means to be a woman, these people don't know what it means to be human.

Anyhow, I’m off to buy some bras and panties, ta-ta! Come, Mother, and show me the wonders of the tampon aisle!

That's such a weird thought for any normal person, of any age, of any sex.

My posture folds inwards. My arms cross across my stomach, and I can’t look him in the eye. I hate how I always wilt like this, but, well, it’s easier this way. Sometimes even this isn’t enough. Sometimes it pisses him off that I’m a coward.

This is fanfiction tier writing. Something characteristic to bad writers: sudden mood changes that make no fucking sense.
He mentioned he was scared of his dad, he had that thought since before going home. However he kept flipping between being giddy about buying girl panties and needing tampons that he forgot he was absolutely terrified of his dad??

“I didn’t do anything! It just happened. Dreadnought was fighting someone, and there was this flash of light, and then…I was this.” My cheeks are burning. It’s not really a lie, right? I

What do you mean "it's not really a lie"? It's not a lie at all. Are you still thinking of putting on nail polish as a defining moment for the day? Ffs

You know, Harry Potter handled this sort of thing with so much more grace.

This is fanfiction level writing. Not even good fanfiction.
I haven't read any YA fiction since, well, I was a kid. I have been thinking of rereading a book I read when I was young and now I'm afraid it is really bad and I don't want to ruin it :/
Also, anyone over 10 who reads this has some developmental disorder. That's the level of writing and emotional maturity of the characters. They are happy, then they are sad, then happy again.

Go ahead, Dad. Hit me like you mean it.

Is the dad physically abusive? Because so far he only hugged his son.

measures my foot again when we realize she’d accidentally used the men’s scale. There’s a whole wall of generic gray sneakers to choose from

Are men and women sizes different?? I know men have bigger feet, but a size whatever for men is the same for women (at least length wise, right? I think men shoes tend to be wider)

I notice the colors for these are much calmer than I’m used to seeing in sneakers. Pastels and grays and so on. Boys’ shoes want to look like they’re made of knockoff hypertech. Boys’ shoes are friggin’ ugly.

Wait. He is a teen but is surprised at how girl shoes look? He doesn't have internet? Or he never walked in a shoe store ever? Seen shoe store windows? Also, there should be also some more pink and glitter / shiny colors

“I can’t believe Dreadnought is dead,” says Mom. “You were near that?”

Are you retarded? He fucking told you. Even if you were not there, your husband was and surely he told you. You didn't breach the subject while in the car with your son????

This also makes me think - how soon after everything is this visit to the mall taking place? Because I assumed you cut the time skip - SURELY it is not THE SAME FUCKING DAY? Right?

Our health teacher made sure to show us a really long documentary on the subject, about how every little human imperfection, from pimples to scars to pockets of fat, by artists with computers before these photos are shown to the public.

I reread this 5 times. It's missing a verb, right? "every little human imperfection...by artists with computers before these photos are shown to the public"??

Here's everything we know about the man about as of book 2. He was a man, he was part of the Legion Pacifica, he did superhero shit, he was the third Dreadnought, and he died in front of Danny. That's it.

And Danny got over it pretty fast, too.

 

[Safir]

Cover's alright from a design standpoint at least.

Nah. Very generic, very midjourney v1.

A smarter author might even use it to say that a "trans girl" doesn't only have to be into stereotypically feminine pursuits. After all, there are plenty of lady athletes, and plenty of football fans are women.

And if he loved playing football, it could've lent a poignancy to his troonout because it's unlikely there's a female football team at his school. Yes, he's a girl, but no more male camaraderie. He used to be hiding his "true self" from friends and hangers-on; now, no more friends. And the girls who were into him, who he was into but didn't want to approach because of the gender issue (yeah, I know that even in a superhero book, a sympathetic ethical troon is still the most improbable fantasy), are no longer attracted.

Oh. Great. A superhero fight. Just friggin’ wonderful.

Why is he so apathetic toward his own existence that he doesn't think to run for cover?

Were their no badass planes he could've named himself for?

Another fun implication is that Daniels himself is a half-asser; he doesn't have a favorite badass plane.

Given the gender stuff, I'm a little suprised it wasn't "Latinx." Actually, this came out in 2017. Was Latinx much of a thing then?

And before that, how did he know she was a she? At least in Jaimas's letsplay the troons think to ask npcs' pronouns.

My pants are pinching me pretty hard around my hips.

Why? (I buy men's jeans because I have cyclist's thunderthighs.) Women are smaller than men, and he's a footballer who transforms into an attractive woman. His clothes should be hanging loose off him.

Also, boys' fashion, well known for being more bright and colourful than girls'.

Actually true for true sportswear (not "athleisure"). Men's: primary bright electric neon colors (red, blue, green, lemon yellow, orange, even a pink going on purple trim every once in a while), women's: secondary muted colors (dusty rose, faded lilac, turquoise, cream peach). Or, in superhero terms, the men are heroes, the women are villains.
Everyday sneakers, though? Not a chance.

Then she measures my foot again when we realize she’d accidentally used the men’s scale.

What exactly is preventing him from buying colorful "men's" sneakers?

You know, when DC comics killed off Superman for a year in the 90s, newscasters got choked up on the air. In real life.

This. The guy probably saved everyone's life several times over. The whole country should be in mourning. People should be committing sudoku or knifing each other for a place in the line to see the body.

Obligatory "the wizard game is literally Hitler"

Pretty sure JK Rowling is not anti-abortion.

You made the comparison with the superhero registery but this is literally my hero academia. A dying man hands over his powers to an unwitting boy who happened to be in the right place at the right time, powers that have been passed down for generations.

I've seen this plot device many, many times, and I've only found out about My Hero Academia from your post. This is as common in various superheroics as elves in fantasy.

I bet this ability to conciously allow needles through Danny's skin was lifted from Superman: Secret Identity--a much better story about a young man turning into a literal, in-universe Superman rip-off. If so... honestly, I can't fault Daniels, that book was killer.

I bet it wasn't. The lazy superhero "lore" shows he's not enthusiastic about the genre. Real spergs have all sorts of worldbuilding details and plot devices they're very particular about. He probably only watched the Marvel movies.
No, it's just cos the coom demands an immediate reassurance that Even The Doctors Can't Tell, and the plot (the coom, too) demands the character's superpowers must be kept in secret for now, probably to be revealed during a violent confrontation with a TRANSPHOBE.

And even if those were covered, these hips ain’t going anywhere....Even if I started on testosterone shots tonight, they wouldn’t make my shoulders wider or my hips narrower.

Now wait just a cotton-picking minute. Isn't this transphobic against pooners?
lmao just kidding, no one cares about the pooners

You know, I've called Danny vapid a fair bit so far, but I can't imagine a boy or girl born who'd care about homework after a dying superhero shoved their Plot Inciting Orb inside them, let alone if it changed their sex in the process.

When Chechen terrorists (or the FSB) were blowing up apartment buildings in my city, someone dispersed leaflets threatening to blow up our section on a particular day. Many families left; we stayed. I had Foreign Lit in the morning, so I was pacing around the apartment shouting,
TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION!
I didn't change sex, though.

Northern Union also sounds like a fucking bank.

In a better book about muh deconstructed superheroes, this could actually be good (but it would have had more autistic details, a la Watchmen).

Superman: Superman might be a very basic sounding name, but remember, we largely use terms like "superhero" and "superpowers" because he codified the genre, even if he wasn't the clear-cut first true example of a superhero.

Superman is Nietzschean. It's the greatest superhero name ever.

but we do find out something deeply gross about her next book

...wait, next BOOK? sweet Jesus...

“Danielle,” I mutter.

“But your legal name is Daniel Tozer,” he says, like this is very important to be clear on and he’s a little confused.

FUUUUUCK YOUUUUU you retarded coomer.
No, I'm seriously pissed off, because many popular writers do this, too.
HOW CAN CARAPACE KNOW TOSSER'S PREFERRED SPELLING?
Think what's happening here. Carapace is saying "DAN-yel", and Tosser corrects, "Danny-ELL", like he's a tad Hispanic.
[Hire me as an editor!]

They’re entryways for people who can fly.

Can all superheroes fly? I imagine Carapace removes his namesake sometimes.
Who cleans them?

Her cigarette tip flares, and then she says “Welcome to Legion Tower, I’m Doc Impossible. You ever had a physical, kid?”

Can she fly?

a Viking themed chick whose name is basically just "Valkyrie"

"Valkyrja" is the Icelandic spelling. I've seen it several times in entertainment, used for extra pretentiousness.

It's very.... unreconstructed Silver and Bronze Age, if you get my meaning. Not terribly creative, of course, but a lot more charming than any of the other names in this book. Funnily enough, I can't think of a hero or villain called that in any of the big superhero stables.

It's generic -- there are a lot of Doctors-something, starting with Cucumberpatch's character -- but the template is not generic enough that corporate lawyers won't come for you if you produce an exact match.

Again, there's a bigger problem looming behind: Dreadnought was not the first superhero ever, by the time he'd been exalted Hitler had a whole stable of them.
So what's the origin of superheroes? What's their place in society? If they had always existed, Earth would look very, very different. For starters they'd just rule places. Hitler'd be one. The President of the US would be one. They'd be gods. There'd be no "Norse mythology" for Valkyrja to life her codename from, it'd just be Norse history and Norse Current Year. There would not be battleships for Dreadnought to be named after!

(You know what's a "realistic" historical superhero setting? D&D.)

People in the Multimedia forum hate on Attack on Titan a lot ("lmao pigs"), but Titan actually did that well, pigs included.

The biggest is probably that it’s amazingly hard to replicate

then
That
Is
Not
Technology

Technology is replicable, but it seems like even superheroes ("metahumans") collectively don't have a "technology". From the first poast:

Dreadnought wasn’t just unprecedented, he was the harbinger of a new wave of metahumans more potent than anything that had come before. For a short while it seemed like a major new player took the stage every month or so. All efforts to find the source of this new glut of powerful metahumans failed. Atomic radiation, ancient curses, exotic chemistry, and eldritch magic—the variety of origin stories was as broad as the variety of people they happened to. Despite an aggressive search, no common cause was ever identified.

This fucking lazy coomer is giving a bad rap to us honest autists.
(A good example of what I'm talking about is that Zelazny book about spess travelers styling themselves after Hindu gods. There's even a pooner in it.)

I’ve got eight doctorates and two of them are medical

How and why? What does it mean to have doctorates if normies can't replicate her research?

But he’s still walking around ready to slug it out with a platoon of tanks.

Why are there platoons of tanks? What for?

Yeah, in Dreadnought, whitecape and blackcape are slang terms for "hero and villain" respectively. Seems kind of pointless, superhero and supervillain are both already kind of widely used slang terms, and whitecape and blackcape aren't even that much shorter or snappier.

From poast 1:

In the decade after the war, we started getting our first supercriminals. In ’61, Mistress Malice made her bid for world domination, and suddenly we had supervillains as well.

But also why capes? They don't have a superhero media tradition, they just have gods. Why would a cape be a part of a superhero's uniform through the ages? Why would there be a uniform if the powers and shapes of the characters are so disparate? Of all characters introduced so far, only Dreadnought has a cape.

Every major city has a few people who can fly that make their living zipping time-sensitive materials

Now, this here is a cool world building idea

Sounds like a bad idea tbh, except in a comedic setting with no real "building". "a few people" per major city? Flying for humans is hard; the superpower would be incredibly useful for all sorts of things that'd otherwise would be extremely dangerous and/or expensive. How many times it was that people died in bumfuck nowhere because they couldn't be located, or because a helicopter couldn't land where they were or a fire ladder couldn't reach?

We live here because it’s safe here.

Why is it safe "here"? Sounds like a nuke could easily take them all out. (Fortifying lairs and defending against teleport assaults is a real problem in midlevel D&D.)

“And here’s the bad news: if you want kids, you’re going to have to let me convert some of your blood into sperm and have someone else provide the egg and womb.

Why not his egg, too (and an artificial womb -- or, okay, a breeding slave's womb -- but they have brain vats)? It's not like his offspring are going to have birth defects, him being a perfect specimen. In fact not having recursive incest would be as unethical as deliberately having a deaf or cancerous kid.
And it's telling how she tells him to find a breeding slave, rather than just a woman in love with him and willing to have his babbies. Not to mention adoption is an option, and a tradition among classic superheroes.

You don’t have a uterus.

How come the normie gender doctors didn't catch this?

Thinking about it, I can think of a couple of reasons Daniels might've went with this.

1. "might've gone" Hire me!
2. There's an easier explanation. It's his immediate, IRL wish-fulfillment fantasy. He doesn't daydream about a radically different reality, he wrote a book in which a character gets to do what he conceivably (hur hur) could do IRL: be hot and admired, beat up terves, impregnate hot dykes.

They’ll make you basically invisible in the night sky,

Why doesn't everyone wear camo?

and it signals to other capes that you’re not looking for a fight.”

What's the society there? Do supers just roam around looking for pvp?

why the fuck would you include a cape?

I'd hate to defend the book, but it seems like it's a suit for supersonic flying and other superheroic activities. Dreadnought doesn't really need a suit for protection, but normal clothes will get destroyed fast. As such, when he's wearing a supersuit to do superheroics, it's already obvious what he is. A cape in this case could be a status symbol, to distinguish him from easily muggable DHL wagies.

The most original name here is Graywytch, and that's only because she can't fucking spell!

She's also the only one of the new batch who sounds like she can fly.

“Daniel Tozer,” says Graywytch.

A-fucking-gain: How does she know how the tranny's name was originally pronounced?
Many, many, many highly regarded books (and visual novels) are fucking terrible about the realities of the spoken word. For a sperg like me who had to work for it, this shit sticks out like a tranny in a swimsuit competition.

That might be the most male sentence I've ever read.

May I introduce the platonic ideal of maleness, Jake Alley, who writes this way all the time.

I mean, she's literally magic.

And he's vulnerable to mind control.

---

Are men and women sizes different?? I know men have bigger feet, but a size whatever for men is the same for women (at least length wise, right? I think men shoes tend to be wider)

Depends on the scheme, there are several of them, and only the Japanese and Korean schemes (and the old Soviet one) actually use something resembling length. All Anglo schemes which run single digits to mid tens are different for men and women.

 

[PoisonedBun]

I've seen this plot device many, many times, and I've only found out about My Hero Academia from your post. This is as common in various superheroics as elves in fantasy.

It's hardly a novel concept, I'm just saying that, combined with the incredibly similar hero licensing and prescence of vigalantes, having come out in 2017 at the height of My Hero Acadamia's popularity in America when the anime was really kicking off, really really makes it look like a ripoff. Maybe there's just so many hero stories at this point it's difficult to differentiate them, but I think they wanted to make MHA but Deku is trans.

I do find it funny that the main character is more concerned with their transition than the death of the world's strongest hero, or her impending responsibility of taking up his mantle. Just worrying about wanting to be called Danielle and wearing bras. Oddly realistic, that.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

This also makes me think - how soon after everything is this visit to the mall taking place? Because I assumed you cut the time skip - SURELY it is not THE SAME FUCKING DAY? Right?

A day. Like, the following morning.

Firefighter... that's weirdly specific. Not an ambulance, paramedic, police. No. Firefighters"

I almost wonder if Daniels picked firefighters because they're the only group online progs haven't declared "bastards."

AHAHAHAHAH- I rarely actually laugh out loud, but damn!!!

Aww, shucks.

It's particularly weird because the book does not say "supervillain", but just "super criminal". So, no one with superpowers had ever committed a crime? Ever?

I'm kind of reminded of how we never hear about any overtly superpowered criminals in The Incredibles, except The Incredibles is an excellent family superhero film with a relatively tight focus, and this is a lazy, if sanitisied fetish story with capeshit trappings.

obviously you didnt copy the whole text and skipped parts, but this still sounds a terrible sequence of events. It has been, what?, a couple of hours and he went through SO MUCH and all he can feel is "skirt goes spinny! Fuck you dad! It's not a phase"? Forget understanding what it means to be a woman, these people don't know what it means to be human.

I promise, I have not cut out paragraphs and pages of Danny mourning the world's greatest hero like a person with a soul.

That's such a weird thought for any normal person, of any age, of any sex.

I'm going to pretend the Plot Inciting Orb, in its infinite wisdom, removed Danny's womb as punishment.

What do you mean "it's not really a lie"? It's not a lie at all. Are you still thinking of putting on nail polish as a defining moment for the day? Ffs

If this was Infinity War, and the comestic-counter lady had dissolved into dust in front of him, Danny would probably be complaining nobody would send someone else to ring up the nail-polish for him.

Is the dad physically abusive? Because so far he only hugged his son.

I think Danny later mentions being spanked when he was younger, if that counts?

Wait. He is a teen but is surprised at how girl shoes look? He doesn't have internet? Or he never walked in a shoe store ever? Seen shoe store windows? Also, there should be also some more pink and glitter / shiny colors

I wish I'd picked up on this. It's another sign of a bad (or at least not practised) writer: forgetting that, presumably, your character "existed" before the first page. A good example is from the vanguard of genderspecial cartoonery, Steven Universe. The Gems regard fusion as a fun, affirming, overburdened allegory for everything from sex to preadolescent crushes (eww) and it's also a very useful force multiplier in combat. One of Steven's moms is literally two loud and proud lesbians in a trenchcoat. Somehow, despite these people raising him from basically infancy, Steven is not aware fusion is a thing until age twelve or so.

On the other hand, he did know what shoes were, so, I have to give it to Rebecca Sugar over Daniels here.

I reread this 5 times. It's missing a verb, right? "every little human imperfection...by artists with computers before these photos are shown to the public"??

Apparently the copy I'm sourcing text from is an uncorrected proof.

Nah. Very generic, very midjourney v1.

I didn't say it was great.

Another fun implication is that Daniels himself is a half-asser; he doesn't have a favorite badass plane.

I refuse to believe Daniels isn't into Paradox map games.

Or, in superhero terms, the men are heroes, the women are villains.

Just like in real life! Am I right, fellas?

Superman is Nietzschean. It's the greatest superhero name ever.

I was so tempted to mention that in the post.

1. "might've gone" Hire me!

Heh, I actually do have a capeshit adjacent manuscript I'm shopping around. So, you know, I'm probably barely better than this shit.

Sounds like a bad idea tbh, except in a comedic setting with no real "building". "a few people" per major city? Flying for humans is hard; the superpower would be incredibly useful for all sorts of things that'd otherwise would be extremely dangerous and/or expensive. How many times it was that people died in bumfuck nowhere because they couldn't be located, or because a helicopter couldn't land where they were or a fire ladder couldn't reach?

To be fair, Doc does mention that superhumans of various stripes are actually relatively common in stuff like search and rescue. Something like one out of a hundred firefighters apparently don't need to breathe.

Why not his egg, too (and an artificial womb -- or, okay, a breeding slave's womb -- but they have brain vats)? It's not like his offspring are going to have birth defects, him being a perfect specimen. In fact not having recursive incest would be as unethical as deliberately having a deaf or cancerous kid.

Somewhere, Kevin sighs, knowing he must add yet another fetish to his crowded roster.

Again, there's a bigger problem looming behind: Dreadnought was not the first superhero ever, by the time he'd been exalted Hitler had a whole stable of them.
So what's the origin of superheroes? What's their place in society? If they had always existed, Earth would look very, very different. For starters they'd just rule places. Hitler'd be one. The President of the US would be one. They'd be gods. There'd be no "Norse mythology" for Valkyrja to life her codename from, it'd just be Norse history and Norse Current Year. There would not be battleships for Dreadnought to be named after!

See, I'm willing to suspend disbelief about capeshit worlds not being utterly unrecognisable fantasy settings run on a kind of supernaturally enforced fedualism, but even in "soft" alternate history you should still be interesting.

I'd hate to defend the book, but it seems like it's a suit for supersonic flying and other superheroic activities. Dreadnought doesn't really need a suit for protection, but normal clothes will get destroyed fast. As such, when he's wearing a supersuit to do superheroics, it's already obvious what he is. A cape in this case could be a status symbol, to distinguish him from easily muggable DHL wagies.

Yeah, but Doc doesn't want Danny doing superhero shit in that outfit, it's just so Danny can practise flying and shit. So why include a cape, which in this world, seems to be a symbol that you are in fact a hero and villain. It should just look like a fortified jogging suit. Of course, this would still be stupid, because again, neither superheroes or supervillains have a set uniform, so for all any baddies know, that guy is actually a light exercise themed hero who's tailing them.

What's the society there? Do supers just roam around looking for pvp?

To be it sounds like they work like the Crips and Bloods or something.

Can all superheroes fly? I imagine Carapace removes his namesake sometimes.

To be fair, I assume the tower also has like, elevators and shit for the heroes who can't.

2. There's an easier explanation. It's his immediate, IRL wish-fulfillment fantasy. He doesn't daydream about a radically different reality, he wrote a book in which a character gets to do what he conceivably (hur hur) could do IRL: be hot and admired, beat up terves, impregnate hot dykes.

That's a good point.

When Chechen terrorists (or the FSB) were blowing up apartment buildings in my city, someone dispersed leaflets threatening to blow up our section on a particular day. Many families left; we stayed. I had Foreign Lit in the morning, so I was pacing around the apartment shouting,
TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION!
I didn't change sex, though.

Your capeshit self-insert story would clearly be much more interesting than this.

Alright, enough reader mail for today, let's cover a chapter. It's a short one but... you'll see:

The wind pulls at my cape as I stand at the edge of the landing balcony at the top of Legion Tower. Below me, city lights are like fireflies trapped in canyons of black ice. My heart is slamming in my chest and I’m shaking with rage. I can admit it to myself now: I wanted to join them more than anything. It was a desire I barely let myself daydream about. It felt presumptuous, arrogant.

But now it just seems naive. Nobody is who they look like on TV.

They want Dreadnought, all right. But they don’t want a tranny.

Nobody does.

That's right.

Here's where we begin indulging the great tranny passion: victim complexes. Danny has been given the hot-chick body he's probably lusted after since he discovered reddit, and the powers of a demigod on top of that, but naturally he still gets to whine about being the most downtrodden person on Earth.

The door opens, and I hear footsteps cross the landing to me.

“Danny, I’m so sorry,” says Doc Impossible.

“Save it.”

“I didn’t—that was as much a surprise to me as it was to you.”

“I don’t know those people.” I turn and glare, and it’s a good thing I can’t kill with a look or she’d be a smoking crater. “You do.”

Superman: Skill issue.

“Graywytch sprung that on me.” Doc Impossible fiddles with her cigarette, an anxious flick, flick, flick between drags. “I knew she was old school, but I didn’t think she’d go all MichFest on you.”

Wait, Graywytch murdered a lesbian couple and their son? Holy shit, why is she on the team.

You know, when I first read this and looked up the Michigan Woymn's Festival (as sympathetic as I am, God, that spelling) I was on the "trans women's" side. It seemed like the festival organisers were excluding mild-mannered, harmless people. Of course, that was back before, well, all of this. Also, those narratives I read tended to leave out that TIMs were allowed to attend Michfest for some time. They were barred because they kept flashing their dicks and openly perving on naked women and children in the shower areas, among other things. Also, Mich-Fest also allowed the young male children of attendees in--because, you know, it'd be kind of shitty for a feminist festival to barr mothers--which kind of paints a different picture, doesn't it?

So, remember what I said above about bad writers not remembering their characters are meant to have lives off-page? Well, two chapters ago, Doc went on a whole rant about how she and the rest of the Legion were pretty much involuntary roommates. Doc's known Graywytch--who's basically what idiots and the willfully ignorant think J.K Rowling is--for years at least, and is apparently well-read enough on trans shit to be familar with a fairly obscure squabble between lesbian folk-singers and men with bad bangs, but she couldn't guess she was a TERF? When they were dealing with a trans teenager?

“So you just sent her my medical file?” I shout at her. “Isn’t that supposed to be private? You don’t even know if she hates trans people or not and you tell her what chromosomes I have?”

Ah, Danny, you turned into a chick on camera. That footage is the whole reason you're on the team's radar. I don't think Graywytch would be that much more well diposed towards you if she didn't know the Plot Inciting Orb half-arsed things. Was this left over from a previous draft where the Legion didn't know Danny was trans?

Doc Impossible looks sick. “I’m sorry. That was a mistake. I—”

“Why? Why did you do that?”

“We needed to be sure the mantle hadn’t been damaged. That it wasn’t malfunctioning. Showing them it was working the same way it always had—by making you your ideal self—seemed the best way to do that. And to explain that, it seemed necessary to tell them you were trans.”

“Thanks a lot. Really. That makes it feel so much better.”

“I’m sorry. I am. Really.

It's pretty obvious that a lot of beats in Dreadnought are meant to represent the trans "plight." In this case, being "medically doxed." The idea that a person's medical records shouldn't be honest about their sex is of course, fucking retarded. Human bodies are not unisex water-balloons with tits and genitals bolted on, filled with either estrogen or testosterone. Men and women's bodies are in fact, different, and this affects countless aspects of medicine. For God's sake, it's not even safe to transfuse women's blood into men if they've been pregnant. Here, though, it's even worse. At least, from a hyper-libertarian standpoint, you could argue trans people have every right to get themselves killed by lying to their doctors. Danny, though, is essentially the host of a weapon of mass destruction, one that's vital to world security or something. Going over ever single irregularity about the transfer is just due dilligence. The safety of the planet is in fact, more important than maintaining a teenager's deception.

“Look, at least keep the provisional membership. It doesn’t cost you anything, and Valkyrja and Magma really like you. I do too.”

This just occured to me, but if the Legion is basically an extension of the police or military, to the point where they're evidentally government-funded, why the fuck were they able to offer Danny anything without consulting his parents?

An hour ago, hearing that Valkyrja liked me and wanted me on her team would probably have sent me to the moon. Right now, it feels like one of those stubby little trophies they give to the losing team in grade school soccer. “And Carapace is a good guy, he’ll come around when he gets to know you.”

“Carapace will come around when I agree not to pollute the memory of his friend.” I make sure the satchel is strapped securely closed and slip it around my chest. “Wouldn’t do to let an icky trans chick stand shoulder to shoulder with the great ones.”

Danny is such a bratty, self-centred little shit.

“He just needs time.”

“And I needed to know I could trust you. All of you.”

I step off the balcony’s edge and fall.

Wait, I get it now, this is a horror story! How can Danny join the 41% if he's indestructible.

Also, nearly everyone in the room was supportive of Danny, and naturally he uses the one person who raised an objection to chuck a wobbly. Trans.txt.

I fly. It’s easier to get home than it was to reach Legion Tower. After I stash my clothes in my room, I consider trying to sleep but my head is whirling. It feels like it’s been weeks since I left. The clock says it’s been about eighty minutes.

You know, if my son had been transformed into a girl by wandering supervillain nonsense, I'd be checking in on them a lot.

My cape snaps as I leave again, boosting for altitude. Below me the lights of my street drop away like candles off a cliff. The rage comes back, hot and thick, and I’m screaming. I’m screaming like I never have before. My voice echoes in the night air, reflects my fury back at me. It is a girl’s rage, and it is right. It is necessary.

"A girl's rage"? What, was it really passive-aggressive? That's something really annoying about trans people. They insist that men and women are basically interchangeable, while also gendering things that really don't need to be gendered.

The clouds are low and glowing orange with reflected city lights. I punch through them, up into the hard clear night beyond. The temperature is dropping quickly, and I nose over, fly for open water. I reach for more power, more speed, and the mantle answers me. My power surges—and it is my power—until the wind tears at me with feeble fingers, until it seems the world itself is scared of me, begging me to stop. I will never stop. I will never give this up.

I'll say this, I don't think even Gretch ever thought of raping the wind itself.

The rumbling pressure builds at my forehead, pushes down around my shoulders, hangs for a moment, and then explodes in a cloud of vapor. I pass through to the other side of the sound barrier, to a world of silence and pressure. My screams slip away from me, gone before they reach my ears. It seems to bottle the fury. Bottle it, compress it, make it burn hotter and brighter.

Fifteen years trapped. Seven of those, aware of my prison and screaming inside.

See, this is why you don't let kids under thirteen on the internet unsupervised.

The shelter of boyhood ended, and they called me a young man. For no reason at all, they looked at the things that felt right to me, and they took them. Even down to the way I carry my books and cross my legs. They took it. They took everything. Puberty came, and my body turned on me, too. Watching every part of myself I liked rot away one day at a time, the horrified impostor staring back at me.

People without children always seem to assume boys and girls are exactly the same before the short and curlies come in. Also, what happened to being fine with your dick, Danny?

Watching the other girls, the ones who they let be girls, head in the other direction. Every day, torn away further from myself, chained down tighter. Suffocated. Strangled.

Yeah, I'm sure all your twelve year old classmates were thrilled to be bleeding from their privates and being oggled by weird dudes on the bus.

They’ll make a man of me. Show me how to be a man. Teach me to man up by beating me down.

They never ask if I want to be a man.

They never ask us if we want to be mortal or fallible, either.

And now I’m finally free. I’m finally myself, inside and out.

So they spit on me. They’re embarrassed by me. They hate me.

For a mistake that they made.

Fellas, confession time. It's me: I'm the one who assigns babies male and female at birth. Sometimes I do it with a coin-flip, sometimes the parents bribe me, especially in China and India.

tip over, and shoot back down through the clouds. Five seconds later, the ocean slams into me like a cement wall. The water is cold, and grips me tighter and tighter still as I go down. The black is absolute. The water wants to crush me like a soda can, but it can’t. The pressure breaks itself against me. My ribs should shatter. My lungs should collapse. I hold. Effortlessly.

The sea floor rises to greet me, and though I can’t see anything, I know it’s there. I can trace the tangles in the lattice spreading out beneath me, a rolling smooth floor all the way out to the continental shelf. The mud is soft against my boots when I touch down. I can hear for miles. Whales call. Dolphins click. Schools of fish swirl and bloom.

Down here, in the heavy cold, there is peace. This scalding outrage cools and hardens to something stronger than diamond, and infinitely more precious. Resolve.

I'll say this, Daniels' prose is better than Gretch's. Not that that's hard.

The water bursts and leaps after me when I leave it, a white geyser a hundred feet tall. I push for speed. Higher and faster, until the seawater that’s left on me freezes and cracks away. Up, past the clouds and the birds, past the jets and the atmosphere. I let go of the speed and coast, floating so high the planet curves away from me in all directions. Earth is gauzy blue at the edges. There are lightning storms in Canada, and wildfires in Mexico.

"Naturally I chose not to go to Mexico and see if anyone was in danger, because I was busy sulking at the bottom of the sea like an emo Ariel."

And I see.

I see a world that is terrified of me. Terrified of someone who would reject manhood. Terrified of a girl who knows who she is and what she’s capable of. They are small, and they are weak, and they will not hurt me ever again.

If Danny really thought he was a girl, he wouldn't have to "reject" manhood. This isn't about being "his true self" it's about rejecting what he thinks being a man means. Oddly enough, I'm kind of reminded of Andrea Dworkins' husband, a gay man who wrote a book called Refusing to Be a Man.

My name is Danielle Tozer. I am a girl.

No one is strong enough to take that from me anymore.

Next time it's back to school! Luckily, it's not an elementary school in Nashville, so I think we're good.

 

[Soggy paper straw]

I'm still behind, but will finish to catch up today!

Apparently the copy I'm sourcing text from is an uncorrected proof.

Autist moment: is that a joke or for real? Daniels is such a bad author that I cannot tell if he made mistakes in the book or if you somehow acquired a not-for-publishing draft

---

One thing that bugs me right off the bank, as far as we can tell, all the doctors tending to Danny are just normal, everyday specialists. You'd think in a world where Jimmy Olsen-esque transformations and other superpower injuries are common enough that you can lie to your basic-bitch mum and dad about them, there'd be medical professionals who specifically dealt with such cases. That's the big problem with Dreadnought's worldbuilding. It's involved enough to reduce costumed adventurers to boring civil servants, but much too lazy to feel "real."

Has Danny talked about this with anyone? What are his actual thoughts about the superpower stuff? For now it has been only on having a pubescent vagina. What I am finding the biggest flaw of this book to be is how bad the characterization is. This is YA, not YoungChild, fiction. Ye the protagonist feels like an alien without a personality. Someone else earlier in the thread pointed it out too, what are his other interests beside spinny skirts and titty skittles?

“Welp, you tried,” I say, hopping off the examination table.

Sassy characters need to die. If Daniels writes any character "popping the p" of words like nope or yep, I will get really mad

If you weren't aware, the Harry Benjamin standards are what eventually became the World Professional Association for Transgender Health standards of care.

Surely Daniels will also mention the APA or ICD, the two actual diagnostic sources used by the real doctors?

A week later, Dreadnought’s funeral is on TV.

He surely talked with his parents about things in this week? He had more time to process all the changes in his body?
I am not into capeshit, but I don't think Peter Parker (the tumblr favourite FtM) waited one week to test his powers after he realised he had them?

I HATE this protagonist. No Daniels, not because he is trans *uwu*
Before- awww, we are like a happy family. Let's be happy

As he speaks, the guilt comes back, stronger than ever. Dreadnought is dead, and I just watched him die.

Now it's the time to be sad again

I’m a horrible person and I feel guilty as hell, but I can’t pretend the days since it happened haven’t been the happiest of my life.

And happy again


Daniels is unable to make his characters feel anything that is not pure happiness or sadness.

With Dreadnought as their anchor, they haven’t faced a serious home turf fight in ten years, and spend most of their time assisting the eternally jumbled and fractured Californian capes or working with the continent-wide Northern Union team to handle the really big stuff, like the asteroid that almost hit us last year. With Dreadnought’s dead, that might have to change.

In the fucking week since his death, this has never been discussed? No news story on this? No conversation with his friends about what may happen? No commentary from parents during breakfast or dinner?

This is the first time I’ve flown in the open air.

DUDE, it has been A WEEK. You haven't tried to fly in a week?? He clearly doesn't deserve any power

“Uh, hi,” I say to two of the most important people in the world. Wow. I am a dork.
“Yes. As a minor coming into powers within our jurisdiction, we are prepared to offer you guidance and support,”

Can you explain why they don't meet officially and instead decide to sneak inside the room of a 15 yo girl? If superheroes are part of the legal system, certainly they would use the front door and talk with the parents?

In other words, "hypertech" is clearly just props for some kind of subtle reality-warping, and not actual, working technology.

If there was an editor, s/he was facepalming so hard and gave up on trying to suggest reducing the use of the word "technology - tech - hypertech"

“Okay, Danny. I’ve got eight doctorates and two of them are medical, so it ain’t nothing I’ve not seen before, but I’m gonna need you to get naked here in a moment.”

I have a pet peeve for characters listing their educational qualifications to sound very smart. No one does that in real life. People with doctorates also understand it makes you an expert of a very very specific area, not a walking encyclopedia of everything

Yeah, in Dreadnought, whitecape and blackcape are slang terms for "hero and villain" respectively. Seems kind of pointless, superhero and supervillain are both already kind of widely used slang terms, and whitecape and blackcape aren't even that much shorter or snappier.

Will Daniels explain to us that it is racist? I will be disappointed if he doesn't

You’ve got the cardiovascular system of a marathon runner, the flexibility of a gymnast, and the muscle tone of a swimmer.

Tell me you don't know sports without telling me you don't know sports.

“And here’s the bad news: if you want kids, you’re going to have to let me convert some of your blood into sperm and have someone else provide the egg and womb. You don’t have a uterus. You have no womb, you have no ovaries, you have no eggs. You are a homosexual man twisted by drugs and surgery into a.... sorry, where was I? Ah yes. You’ll never get pregnant" [-obviously added by me lol]

“Your little ‘transition’ was caught on video.” The way she says that puts me on guard.
“What?” I snap a look over at Doc Impossible.

Danny boy, you never even asked them how they found you??? Or thought about it?? How fucking dumb are you? Stop thinking of your vagina and focus on what is happening

“Why?”
“I wanted to help him.”
“You have a champion’s heart, Danielle Tozer,”

C'mon dude. We know this asshole still thinks that painting his nails was the most important thing that happened that day

 

[Soggy paper straw]

Sorry, reader mail part 2

I know "YA sucks" is not an original opinion. But I also don't read YA and the little I read as a kid was more old school YA where actual authors wrote it, rather than those that learned to write on ffnet and LiveJournal.
This is abysmal. I don't even care that the character is trans, because Danny doesn't even feel trans. He just get a bodyswap, and just like that all the tension about transitioning and his family opposing it disappears. We got a resolution immediately after the problem was presented.
So far no conflict has been established, I am not seeing a learning arch for Danny to grow up and learn something. That is what YA used to be. Kids learning some important value. Here I think it will be more about Danny proving others they are wrong and he is right. Totally what you want to teach kids: adults are dum-dums that know nothing and hate you.
The comparison to Peter Parker is obvious. Peter is endearing to adults and relatable to kids. He is fun, but also has "responsibilities". There is tension between living his normal life and him wanting to do good. Danny..what about him? The powers are more for him than for others*, he goes through emotions like a bipolar schizo, he is extremely self absorbed
I look forward to read how his emotions will be presented once real conflict is introduced. I predict I will want to kill myself multiple times while reading it

*is it explained if the powers could have gone to literally anyone? If a hobo had been in that alley... drunk-addicted superhero? If the powers did not "choose" Danny, like they seem they did not, then whatever Danny does the powers ultimately did more for him than he could ever do to the world. If we assume anyone would have become a superhero and done as well as Danny (or better) in saving the world, then it is inconsequential that specifically Danny got the powers.
... from great powers, come great boners?...., come great euphoria sensations?..., coom?

---

The cape is longer in back, but also wraps around my chest like, well, like a mantle that covers my chest down past my collarbones.

fucking retard

I’m not super thrilled about the cowl. It feels constricting around my neck, not that it’s hard to breathe or move, but it’s there, and kinda bugging me. It’s open at the top to let my hair grow out, and I’m touched she included this traditionally female-gendered touch

Fuck you Daniels. First, wtf with a cowl for a superhero that's open at the top? That's a retarded cowl. Second, girls cannot have short hair, boys cannot have long hair

The wind pulls at my cape as I stand at the edge of the landing balcony at the top of Legion Tower. Below me, city lights are like fireflies trapped in canyons of black ice. My heart is slamming in my chest and I’m shaking with rage. I can admit it to myself now: I wanted to join them more than anything. It was a desire I barely let myself daydream about. It felt presumptuous, arrogant.

This is fine as a human emotion. But it should be something to build up towards. This is the first complex, human, nuanced thought this 2D character has had so far. Did he develop a brain just for this, only to go back two seconds later to "It's Ma'am!!!"??

You know, when I first read this and looked up the Michigan Woymn's Festival

He seriusly brought up Michfest in his superhero YA novel AHAHAHAH what a fucking loser LOL

“So you just sent her my medical file?” I shout at her. “Isn’t that supposed to be private? You don’t even know if she hates trans people or not and you tell her what chromosomes I have?”

But chromosomes have nothing to do with being "trans". Danny is intersex, if anything.

This just occured to me, but if the Legion is basically an extension of the police or military, to the point where they're evidentally government-funded, why the fuck were they able to offer Danny anything without consulting his parents?

THANK YOU!!! And why tf did they kidnap him in the middle of the night, making him sneak out of his bedroom???

An hour ago, hearing that Valkyrja liked me and wanted me on her team would probably have sent me to the moon. Right now, it feels like one of those stubby little trophies they give to the losing team in grade school soccer. “And Carapace is a good guy, he’ll come around when he gets to know you.”

“Carapace will come around when I agree not to pollute the memory of his friend.” I make sure the satchel is strapped securely closed and slip it around my chest. “Wouldn’t do to let an icky trans chick stand shoulder to shoulder with the great ones.”

Fucking hell dude, it has been one hour... you have shit authors that write 5 lines of dialogue and then go "I looked at my watch and saw one hour had passed"; then you have shit authors like Daniels that write a character who goes through 10 different moods and a couple existential crises in 1 hour.

My power surges—and it is my power—until the wind tears at me with feeble fingers, until it seems the world itself is scared of me, begging me to stop. I will never stop. I will never give this up.

you also waited for one fucking week to fly. Couldn't he fly with just a hoodie and jeans? Fuck you Danny. We read the part where you did nothing for a fucking week beside being giddy at your newly painted toenails

They’re embarrassed by me.

I am embarassed by how bad this monologue is. I could see a cringy teen writing that online or in his/her diary. But actually thinking that? 911? I have to report a sociopathic narcissist.

The water wants to crush me like a soda can, but it can’t. The pressure breaks itself against me.

Unless you are hundreds of meters below the surface, no, the water does not have that much pressure to pop you

"Naturally I chose not to go to Mexico and see if anyone was in danger, because I was busy sulking at the bottom of the sea like an emo Ariel."

What was the whole "I want to be with them" / "I just want to help uwu"? Yeah, right.

No one is strong enough to take that from me anymore.

If Mike Tyson said the sky is green, he would still be wrong. Just because he could easily punch me and kill me does not mean he can change reality. You cannot kill ideas.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Autist moment: is that a joke or for real? Daniels is such a bad author that I cannot tell if he made mistakes in the book or if you somehow acquired a not-for-publishing draft

For real. I originally listened to this as an audiobook (As you can imagine, the narrator totally doesn't make Graywytch sound like a literal goblin) but the mobi file I'm using for this review was gifted to me by a dying superhero. Pretty shit gift, I'm pretty sure it's what killed him.

Has Danny talked about this with anyone? What are his actual thoughts about the superpower stuff? For now it has been only on having a pubescent vagina. What I am finding the biggest flaw of this book to be is how bad the characterization is. This is YA, not YoungChild, fiction. Ye the protagonist feels like an alien without a personality. Someone else earlier in the thread pointed it out too, what are his other interests beside spinny skirts and titty skittles?

Frankly, I find a lot of YA shit is much worse than middle grade children's fiction. I read The Giver when I was eighteen or so, and it was a lot more polished and "deep" than say, Divergent.

THANK YOU!!! And why tf did they kidnap him in the middle of the night, making him sneak out of his bedroom???

To be fair, Danny was out practising flying at the time.

If Mike Tyson said the sky is green, he would still be wrong. Just because he could easily punch me and kill me does not mean he can change reality. You cannot kill ideas.

There's also the fact that Danny clearly doesn't really think he's a girl. If he would, he wouldn't be reduced to a screaming mess by one person in a room of five contradicting him. Trans people have such a weak sense of self, they need the entire fucking world to continually tell them they are what they want to be.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

So, when we last left Danny, he was glorying in his godlike power at the bottom of the ocean, raving about how his girlhood will last a thousand days! So, what is he going to do first after this revelation?

Minovsky_Particle has signed on.

Minovsky_Particle: David, are you there?

CombatW0mbat: yeah. still sick?

Minovsky_Particle: Nope. I’m coming to school tomorrow.

That's right, he's going back to public school!

Leaving through the front door is an invitation to a fight. Dad says I can’t go back to school until they’ve figured out how to “fix” me, but it’s been a week since it happened and I’m falling behind in my classes. It takes a long time to get in to see an endocrinologist, and the truth is even if we started testosterone injections tomorrow, it would take months for the effects to show. If Dad has his way, I’ll be repeating sophomore year. After last night at Legion Tower I’m finished being a good little girl who does what she’s told, so I’m going to school and showing people who I am.

You know, when someone goes on and on about how they fear no man because they have unlimited power, I expect them to like, punch an ATM open and fly to Paris, or maybe go all BrightBurn on their bullies/people who bought the illustrated editions of Harry Potter, not... attend trigonometry class.

Whatever happens, David will have my back. It’s been too long since we hung out already

At this rate, I'm expecting David to open fire on Danny as soon as he sees her.

I slip out my bedroom window, close it behind me, and drop silently to the ground. The gate in our cramped back yard—really more like a pad of cement where we’ve got a small table—opens onto an alleyway, and I follow that down to the street and then toward the bus stop. I pass up my normal stop and wait at the next one. It’s not like Dad could really stop me anymore, but it just seems better to avoid the fight until I’ve already done it. A fait accompli, it’s called, an accomplished fact. Do it fast without their permission, and then there’s nothing they can do to change it back. More and more, I’m starting to think that’s the way to live. He’s going to scream at me for sure over this, probably as bad as he ever has, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve got superpowers.

You've got superpowers, you just had a chapter long monologue about how the world was helpless before your transmaxxed might, about how nobody could take "being a girl" away from you... and you're sneaking out to go to school, while resigning yourself to being screamed at by your father. I will admit, this is pretty realistic tranny behavior.

Also, again, we haven't actually seen Roger scream at Danny. The most aggressive thing he's done so far is raise his voice at Danny when he thought he was a stranger impersonating his son. Like, I could understand Danny still being afraid of his dad after getting superpowers. There are grown arse men and women who are still afraid of their abusive parents well after the point where they can kick their arses. But it would help if, you know, we actually saw Roger be abusive. As is, he's basically acted like Hank Hill.

David is taller than I remembered—no, I’m shorter. He’s got short brown hair, glasses, a soft stomach, and big arms. When I smile at him, he blushes. He also can’t stop scanning his eyes up and down my body. Well, I suppose that was inevitable. No biggie, as long as he knocks it off soon.

A reminder that Danny reflexively used the power of the cosmos to reshape himself into the kind of chick he dreams of fucking.

“Do I know you?” he says. I can see the gears turning. He’s recognized me, but he’s not letting himself believe it. “Are you waiting for Danny, too?”


“I am Danny. This is why my dad was keeping me home.”


David laughs “No way, no. You’re like his cousin or something, right?”


“My cousins live in Empire, and they’re all boys.” As far as I know, anyhow. I suppose one or more of them could be trans, too.

Nah, they're all busy being Darkfist's wards.

“H-how the hell did this happen?” he whispers.

“A supervillain did it,” I say, dropping his arm. “Dad wants to find a way to turn me back.” We push through the side door and head to our lockers. David gets more than a few dirty looks from bumping into people in the crowd as his eyes are fixed on me.

“Um.” David sort of gropes around for words, finally settling on, “Does he have to?”

A laugh is almost out of me when I notice he’s staring at me, I mean really gawping. We go way back, and it’s a big adjustment, so I brush it off. “No, and he can’t make me. I’m going to stay a girl.”

"Still going to behave like a wanton coward in the meantime, though."

We get to our lockers, and I spin the combination into my lock. They’re cramped half-lockers, little better than what we had in middle school. I shove my bag in, take the books I’ll need until lunch, and I clasp them in front of my chest, in the distinctly feminine hold that was slapped out of me as a child. It feels right. It feels necessary.

I assume in pre-literate cultures the women hold their message poles and what-not like that.

David hasn’t opened his locker. He’s just standing there, staring at me. Or rather, at my chest.

It is suddenly obvious to me why some girls hold their books this way. Oh Jesus.

So, you were holding your books to hide the tits you... didn't have? And neither did your girl peers because they were small children?

“You’re really hot!” he blurts.

My shoulders hitch up, and I turn back. “Uh, thanks?”

His face is scarlet now. He laughs nervously, and I get to homeroom as fast as I can without flying. It’s normal though, right? I mean, as normal as any of this can get. I look a certain way, and he’s just getting used to that. David likes flirting. He’ll get it out of his system, and then it’ll be fine.

Obviously David's being set up as a gross incel shitlord or whatever, but remember, until like, less than a week ago, Danny was a "pre-transition trans lesbian." Are you telling me his reaction to Valkyrja was that much more dignified?

Anyway, it's time for homeroom role-call.

Every head swivels towards me. Inside my shoes, I’m clenching and unclenching my toes, but my face is solid, impassive. I’m invincible. I can do this. Last night, I went from the bottom of the sea to orbit. I can handle high school.

But why in the fuck are you bothering? You could be scissoring chicks or something else lesbians don't really do in Ibiza right now!

“And Danny’s still out, so—”

“I’m here,” I say, raising my hand.

Every head swivels towards me. Inside my shoes, I’m clenching and unclenching my toes, but my face is solid, impassive. I’m invincible. I can do this. Last night, I went from the bottom of the sea to orbit. I can handle high school.

“Young lady, I do not appreciate pranks in my class. What is your name?”

“Danielle Tozer. I’ve been in your homeroom all year long.”

So, you don't want your parents knowing you actually want this, so naturally, you go out of your way to offer a feminine version of your name to the teacher when you've arrived at school as a girl. Smooth.

An observation, Danielle is a pretty logical feminine translation of Daniel, but that's not the route most trans women go for, is it? Usually it's more "My deadname was Mike Franks, but my real name is Persephone Halycon" or something like that.

“Danny?” says Lisa, who sits next to me. Her face is pale.


“Hi, Lisa.”


Someone cusses loudly, and that seems to break the spell. Everyone is standing up to get a better look at me. My cheeks are warm, but I stare straight forward, and try to keep a neutral smile on my face. This had to happen sooner or later; just like with David, I only need to ride it out.

Don't pretend you're not enjoying this, Dan.

“All right, that’s enough!” shouts Mr. Macker, and eventually he wrests back control of the class. He’s gripping his lectern quite hard. “Danny, if that’s who you really are, I’m going
to need a note from your parents explaining this.”

There’s a general ripple of laughter. Of course that’s what he wants. Notes from parents make everything better. Why, if a girl can show up and report for class without a note to explain what she’s doing, next we’ll have anarchy. Where does it stop? Soon they’ll be dancing!

Daniels definitely supports "transition closets" at schools, doesn't he?

But then it happens again in first period and it’s not as fun. Second period is the same thing, and now it’s actually getting annoying. What started as something that was almost an affirmation, (everyone is noticing I’m a girl!) has now become tedious (and now they won’t get over it!). When a runner from the office comes to fetch me out of third period, I’m almost grateful. I sit next to David in this class and he hasn’t stopped staring at me. Getting yanked is a relief. This feeling lasts for about as long as it takes me to get to the office and see Mom waiting for me there.

Does Dan think this is one of those magical realist books where supernatural shit just happens and nobody asks for an explanation? A Hundred Years of Coom?

In a way, it would almost be easier if it were Dad. He would be deadly calm while we were still in the office, and then once we were in the car—BOOM. The detonation would be fast, and hard, and he’d scream himself hoarse at me. I’d know how to brace up for it, how to avoid making it worse.

But Mom isn’t like him. What she does is almost worse. The moment I stick my head in the door, she’s rising from one of the cheap chairs in a little waiting space in front of the big main desk where the school secretary sits.

If April Daniels wrote Harry Potter, Vernon Dursley would've first objected to Harry going to Hogwarts in book six.

“Danny, you shouldn’t have done this,” she says, in that savage whisper she uses sometimes. “If your father finds out, he’ll be very upset.”

If? She’s going to lie to him. She’ll pressure me to keep quiet, too.

After a moment, I realize we’re headed the wrong way to go home.

“Where are we going?”

“The mall. You need some new clothes.” With a start, I realize she’s bribing me, and worse, this isn’t the first time. It’s a ritual with us. But now something in me has changed, made it seem wrong all of the sudden. I open my mouth to say something, and then stop. The sunlight catches her cheek, and for the first time I see the whole person. Maybe it’s because your mother is always Mom to you, or maybe it’s because I was in denial, but finally it hits me: Mom is just as much his captive as I am. She’s not just the quieter parent, the more reasonable one. She’s the trustee trapped between the warden and the other prisoner.

Daniel's just realized his mother is in fact, also an abuse victim.

Immediately upon the heels of this understanding is another: I must not say this out loud. To say it out loud is to name it, and to name it is to give it irresistible power. That power will mean it can no longer be ignored. The polite fictions and convenient blind spots won’t work anymore. Something will have to change. And I know, with a certainty that fills me with dread, this is something she will not do. If I say the name of this thing he’s done to her, she will fight me. She will join him, because she’ll have to. Because she’ll have to destroy me or else admit I was right—

Naturally, he makes this realization all about himself.

“Mom, I can’t stay locked up forever.”

“You’re not going to. This is just for now.” Her voice is soft and reasonable, but she doesn’t deny they’re hiding me.

“It’s not going to go away.”

“We’ll deal with that when it comes to it,” she says, and I know this means we won’t deal with it until it can’t be avoided any longer. Which, given how practiced we are as a family in avoiding things, could mean more or less forever.

“Everyone at school already knows.”

Her knuckles are white on the driver’s wheel. “He won’t ask them,” she says, almost to herself.

Danny, if your father's as monstrous as you say he is, what's he going to do your mother when he realizes she let you out the house?

Feeling sick, and alone, and very, very young, I let her drive me to the mall. There’s a thrift store there, and she buys me some jeans. It goes without saying I am never to wear them around the house.

The Tozers are a strict nudist household.