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

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

The flat-out murder of half the human population.

I liked this story better in Justice Leauge Unlimited where Hawkgirl couldn't think of a better defence for men than "If Men didn't exist, who would I fuck? I'm no carpet muncher!"

“We can clone more sperm, and the species will go on. There’s no reason to throw your life away!”

How did this bitch ever get on a Super Hero team? "Don't risk your life to save others, we can just make more."

The tip of a sword bursts from the creature’s forehead with a screech of steel on stone. With a screaming shower of sparks, the sword forces its way through the golem from forehead to groin. The golem crashes to the ground in two twitching halves.

Damn, we brought out an entire-ass Golem just for him to get one shotted before he does anything. And then proceed to have the most non-climax climax because we gotta wrap this shit up.

I don’t trust her. I don’t trust this. But what choice do I have? Half-limping, half-floating, I cross into another world, and hope I’m not too late.

Why is Danny so distrustful of her? Karen was the one that betrayed him, Diet-Wonder-Woman was pretty honest about this process and, as far as I can remember, has no choice in the matter.

“I don’t remember when my father started screaming at me,” I tell her, and I’m as surprised as she is that this is coming out now. “But I know that by the time I was in kindergarten I was already afraid of him."
Graywytch licks her lips. “What are—”
Shut up, or I will kill you.” She closes her mouth, and I keep going.

Oh my god, Danny, how do manage to make every encounter the most pathetic pussy shit?

“I never cared that you don’t think I’m a girl, Myra!”

It's literally been 80% of your bitching about this character, but sure.

"Would it have killed you to just keep your mouth shut?”

I don't care that you don't think that I'm a girl, but I care that you don't think that I'm a girl.

I don’t cry because I realize I don’t need to. Because they gave me their worst, and I’m still here. Dad doesn’t get to choose if I’m happy, and neither does Graywytch.

I'm still here... Eternally seething and crying about them, but I'm still here and they haven't affected my happiness one bit!

Whatever remaining anger she had at me for breaking into Graywytch’s apartment evaporated when she got a look at just how much money we seized from Garrison

Fucking how?! You're not sueing him, it's not any money you originally owned, how the fuck are you entitled to any of his money legally? In a better book, you would have had Danny actualyl accept that spokesperson deal before he found out Garrison's entire plan, sign a contract and then retroactively use that contract to say Danny is entitled to some of Garrison's fortune for breaking contract or some shit as some sort of irony.

Graywytch is dead. I didn’t kill her, but she’s dead. They found her in her cell the morning after her arrest, without even a mark on her body. People are outraged. They wanted justice, and it’s been stolen from them. I’m frustrated too. I wanted her to see the world turn its back on her. I wanted my choice to spare her to mean something.

Our hero everybody! "Damn it, I didn't spare a helpless, dying villain just so I couldn't be a smug shithead about it!"

Yeah, all those things totally add up to "kill all men." It's all so obvious.

If only Danny had ever thought to check Graywytch's twitter hashtags.

So, has Graywytch considered that at all? I know Daniels is clearly writing her as a mad-dog bitch, but I can't imagine she wants her ideal all-lady civilisation to die out after one generation. When Akasha came up with basically the same plan in Queen of the Damned, she at least specified she'd be keeping one man alive for every hundred women.

I mean, we're in a high tech Super Hero world, you're gonna tell me reproduction is gonna be an issue? Doc even says later that they can just make clones from DNA.

Helpful. Also, how is Codex still conscious? I can (begrudgingly) accept Danny being more resistant to the spell because he's a tough bastard, but he's just a kid who knows some spells.

This is when it's revealed that Codex is actually a FTM transexual.

How fucking convenient.

Well of course, everything in this book is founded in convenience to help Danny avoid struggling or grappling with anything.

Rip off the ending of Matilda, got it.

Ah yes, I love the strong, parental bond formed between Doc and Danny in how they... Existed in the same scene a lot.

Aspiring writers who might be reading this, always remember, April Daniels has an agent, and we don't.

Don't remind me.

Also, vampires. Vampires would be nice.

Is it too cliche to recommend the House of Night series? Written by a mother-daughter duo, takes an axe to all Vampire lore (and vampire book authors too), cringe dialogue turned up to the max, hates religion, main character is one of those "I'm like 1/12 native and bought a funky necklace from a gift shop, so I'm basically a full on tribe member" girls, one of writers is most certainly a lesbian deep in the god damn closet, throws all the diversity of the early 200's at the screen, it's obsessed with excusing what is basically rape/slavery and is determined to tell you why every mythology that ever existed was created solely by the patriarchy to villainize women!

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Is it too cliche to recommend the House of Night series?

How the fuck did I forget House of Night? Fuck it, we're doing that next.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

How the fuck did I forget House of Night? Fuck it, we're doing that next.

In relation to Dreadnought, House of Night also has 'abusive' parents where the Father never seems to be more than rightfully disturbed by the terrible shit happening to his step-daughter despite how much the character insists he says horrible shit off screen and the mother doesn't actually do anything, but is basically treated as worse and is constantly shamed for staying with the man and tolerating his religion.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/house-of-night-the-quest-for-cringe-continues.169360/

Hang up your superhero capes folks, and bust out your opera clothes.

 

[Cnaiur urs Skiotha]

Holy shit what a lame ending. The final scene with Graywytch is just the troon author being like "but what if my 'muh intersex' argument against bioessentialism could literally kill TERFs". It's such a creepy, unheroic ending: the protagonist looming over the female antagonist, who is already defeated by her own carelessness and rendered powerless offscreen just before the climax, and taking the time to threaten, lecture, and finally assert moral superiority over her. It's really too on the nose, I think if I were writing about an awful misogynist AGP super as a parody I would hesitate to include a scene like this. Danny doesn't even DO anything to defeat Graywytch, she is undone by her own wrong opinions about gender and sex, essentially. Danny just stands there having the right opinions and letting other characters do the work, namely Valkyrja this time.

Valkyrja is probably the most interesting part of this series just as a fantasy concept: a continuing chain of being stretching back from antiquity, but one which reduces any one member of the chain's individuality (or does it?). I agree with Iridium that there are two readings of Valkyrja, one pretty horrifying and one much less so, but it seems like both Daniels and Danny want to view her only through the cosmic horror interpretation. To which I say we can't really know what being Valkyrja is like or if Karen is truly reduced by the change, so why is Danny so insistent on dictating someone else's lived experience and denying the validity of her choice to radically change her mode of being? Sounds pretty fuckin transphobic to me.

Also can I just say, Prof. Gothic is absolutely right. Superpowers, magic, and hypertech are all incredibly dangerous, have already led to the death of millions, and will almost surely kill millions more if not humanity as a whole. If they're all being caused by one magic space rock, and if it's possible to destroy or redirect it, that's pretty clearly the move. But of course established supers won't want to give up their power, even (especially) the woke ones. What, you expect them to sacrifice something for the safety of the common person? Danny would have to go back to being a teenage boy!!! Yuck!!! If Danny can't be a perfect fuckdoll with internal testicles the world wouldn't be worth living in! Prediction: the climax of the third book will be Danny flying into space and using the lattice to prematurely remote-detonate the nukes on Prof. Gothic's rogue Nemesis-busting spaceship (unauthorized by the neoliberal state and the superhero-industrial complex). Actually Danny can't do anything useful himself so an AFAB side character will need to do it.

Great thread Whitekettle, looking forward to this vampire series!

 

[Kosher Dill]

Late, and most of the salient points have already been hit, but...

“I don’t remember when my father started screaming at me,” I tell her, and I’m as surprised as she is that this is coming out now. “But I know that by the time I was in kindergarten I was already afraid of him.”
Graywytch licks her lips. “What are—”
"Shut up, or I will kill you.” She closes her mouth, and I keep going.

We literally just had a scene where they lampshade the whole "supervillain monologue" thing with Garrison, and now Demon Danny is doing his own. Wonderful.

Her brow furrows, and the first emotion that isn’t fear works its way onto her face. Disgust. “Don’t lump me in with you. I’m a woman. I menstruate.”

“So? Sex is just as fuzzy as gender is.

I confess I can't think of a more perfectly fitting ending for this than yet another didactic troonsplaining monologue.
The whole "Y chromosome" thing is bizarre though. Graywytch's moon goddess Wiccan magic has to check your chromosomes? I thought her issue was always that Danny isn't really part of the Eternal Feminine or whatever. How did she know the Plot-Inciting Orb didn't physically remake Danny into an XX 100% woman who menstruates and all the rest? This is clearly another case of working backward from the desired twist ending, but not thinking it through with what came before.

For more than fifty years, Mistress Malice was the heavyweight champion of supervillains, with over a quarter-million confirmed deaths during a six-month rampage. Graywytch made Malice’s crimes look like a liquor store robbery.

And we still don't know what those crimes were or why she committed them, or why she switched from doing that to pursuing machine-god immortality. These books set up endless Potemkin villages and then knock on the doors.

Professor Gothic lands in New Port after almost a month spent in hiding

Wasn't he in transit for this entire book?
The Airport Adventures of Professor Gothic probably would have been more entertaining than what we got.

The Nemesis sits on the other side of the moon, watched by Garrison’s remote cameras

Wait, the Magic Space Rock is literally right there? I thought it was just a magic woo-woo quantum observatory up there on the moon. If having the rock all the way out there in space was enough to create superheroes, shouldn't the whole world be one huge and terrifying ayahuasca trip with Nemesis permanently parked right next door?

I... look, whatever, the book is over. Thanks W-K-S for being our tour guide to this insanity.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

How did she know the Plot-Inciting Orb didn't physically remake Danny into an XX 100% woman who menstruates and all the rest?

Doc shared Danny's medical exam results in the first book.

The whole "Y chromosome" thing is bizarre though. Graywytch's moon goddess Wiccan magic has to check your chromosomes? I thought her issue was always that Danny isn't really part of the Eternal Feminine or whatever.

Ah, but you're not thinking like Daniels. In Daniels' mind, Danny's a woman, and always has been, so if Graywytch just told it to kill all men and boys, he'd be exempt, even if he hadn't been warped into a mockery of nature's perfection beforehand.

Speaking of stupid magic, it occurs to me. Charlie said that the power blocking collars worked on Garrison, even though they were based on his powers, because the spellwork negating itself would violate some kind of causality. Graywytch's spell meanwhile targeted herself as well, so it stopped working. Convenient.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Doc shared Danny's medical exam results in the first book.

I... Jesus, she really did.

“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.

For all that troons go on about "dysphoria", having your bizarre mutant biology flashed onscreen for a bunch of strangers should've been a bigger deal than this.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

For all that troons go on about "dysphoria", having your bizarre mutant biology flashed onscreen for a bunch of strangers should've been a bigger deal than this.

Danny did give Doc shit for doing it, but that seemed to be more about her invading her privacy. Normally I'd agree, but given how unusual the whole situation was, I think it was more justified than in other cases.

 

[LoverofPi]

Seawater,” says Doc.


“What?”


“Seawater always blocked her. Abort the mission, get out of there.” Doctor Impossible sounds like she hates herself right now. “Once you’re under the ocean, her magic should have trouble reaching you. You’ll be safe.”


“No.”


“You just need to hold your breath for twelve hours, I can get to you!” She’s at the edge of pleading.


“Can’t do that, Doc. All those people will die.”


“We can clone more sperm, and the species will go on. There’s no reason to throw your life away!”

You know when would have been an amazing time to mention that? On the flight over the ocean so Danny could grab a bubble of seawater with the lattice or some shit.

“I don’t remember when my father started screaming at me,” I tell her, and I’m as surprised as she is that this is coming out now. “But I know that by the time I was in kindergarten I was already afraid of him.”

You know, given it's literally only Danny who ever seems to think of his father as scary, and we know Danny has berserker rage issues... what if Danny has literally always had them and his dad was the one restraining and chewing out danny when it was happening, even as a child? Maybe that was why he wanted Danny to try out for football, to work off some of the unchecked rage and aggression in a place where no one should be able to be hurt because of all the padding.

 

[cerulean hydra]

I don't know if Doc's name was posted and I just missed it, but I'm guessing not even Daniels was enough of a hack to actually make it "Doc".

Instead, I'm guessing Daniels is just enough of a hack to make it a name that starts with A to make her initials AI. Alice, Malice without the M, seems like a potential contender.

Or, fuck, I hate that I thought of this: April.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

If any of you check out any of my media recs, I'd love to hear what you thought of them in the thread.

 

[Echo_Ender]

This was a pretty amazing topic. It felt like more of a villain origin story than a superhero story.

The MC saying "I know you guys need superman. And I don't want to be superman. But I'm keeping the powers because they make me a totally hot girl, so fuck you" is pretty much peak Troon logic.

Nothing the character did, said, or even thought seemed the least bit like female thinking. Never thought his way out of a problem, all attempts at social manipulation failed horribly, no trying to look pretty/cute to get out of trouble.

Just masculine, brute force. Powering through every problem and developing new upper limits and powers as the plot demands.

He is indescribable
But pretty much... he's a vaguely science-themed superhero who's like 7 or 8 feet tall, lives in space (with no civilian identity), and can do anything. Most of what he does involves breaking up cabals of mad scientists and foreigners bent on world domination, and then inflicting terrifying ironic punishments on them with his magical rays.

Stardust comics follow a strict, amazing structure:

1. Stardust looks from his observatory and spots villains planning a dastardly scheme.
2. The villains talk about their scheme. Stardust hears all this and does absolutely nothing.
3. The villains successfully pull off their scheme, often leaving cities in ruins, scores dead and planets lifeless.
4. Stardust then shows up on the scene and uses his magical powers to capture the villains and subject them to cruel and ironic punishments.
5. His work done, Stardust flies off, doing absolutely nothing to help anyone the villains hurt.

And it's fucking amazing. Especially when coupled with the art that really is so shit that it loops around into amazing.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

You know, it occurs to me that the reason Dreadnought 3 has failed to materialise is that there really isn’t any more story to tell. Danny is now a respected national hero, he’s got a sexy bisexual girlfriend and a robot handmaiden for an adoptive mother, has access to millions of dollars, and his parents are out of the picture. Graywytch is worse than dead, and Danny’s allies control the world’s source of high strangeness. All his friends’ arcs are essentially complete. Because of the nature of the Space Rock, there’s literally no mysteries left in the setting, besides maybe the previous Dreadnoughts and the nature of the Plot Inciting Orb, and those are such non-factors in the story, I’m not even sure we’re meant to be curious about them.

There’s nowhere else for Danny to go. The sensible thing to do would probably be move onto another project, or do a spin off about Calamity where she dumps Danny and spends the entire book shooting hippies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if April Daniels was spending a lot of time staring at a blank page. I’ve been there. It’s not nice, and I don't even wish it on authors I dislike.

Godspeed, Daniels. I want more crap superhero novels.

 

[Kosher Dill]

There’s nowhere else for Danny to go.

Well, he still hasn't rebuilt the Legion with all-new, all-queer members.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Well, he still hasn't rebuilt the Legion with all-new, all-queer members.

Eh, Kinetq's NB, Calamity is bi, Prof is probably asexual because computer, I'm sure you could make an argument for Karen if she ever comes back, and Codex... well, according to the progress flags black people are inherently kweer.

Still, do want to see the Dreadnought version of Justice League Unlimited

 

[Alexander Thaut]

This was a pretty amazing topic. It felt like more of a villain origin story than a superhero story.

The MC saying "I know you guys need superman. And I don't want to be superman. But I'm keeping the powers because they make me a totally hot girl, so fuck you" is pretty much peak Troon logic.

Nothing the character did, said, or even thought seemed the least bit like female thinking. Never thought his way out of a problem, all attempts at social manipulation failed horribly, no trying to look pretty/cute to get out of trouble.

Just masculine, brute force. Powering through every problem and developing new upper limits and powers as the plot demands.


Stardust comics follow a strict, amazing structure:

1. Stardust looks from his observatory and spots villains planning a dastardly scheme.
2. The villains talk about their scheme. Stardust hears all this and does absolutely nothing.
3. The villains successfully pull off their scheme, often leaving cities in ruins, scores dead and planets lifeless.
4. Stardust then shows up on the scene and uses his magical powers to capture the villains and subject them to cruel and ironic punishments.
5. His work done, Stardust flies off, doing absolutely nothing to help anyone the villains hurt.

And it's fucking amazing. Especially when coupled with the art that really is so shit that it loops around into amazing.
View attachment 5459323

If anything, the MC would be a pretty fun villain if you were to tweak some things. I'd totally be interested in an American Psycho-style spin on this where they just show the MC committing atrocities nonchalantly while just having their fucked up internal dialogue be unsettling.

Granted, I don't think we'd ever get that.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/cringe-side-quest-4-battlecry-by-emerald-dodge.183681/

We may not have Danny, but we do have... this thing.