reality_crossroads | (no subject)

Marty tilts his head as Jack explains his new mindset, then smirks. "You know, most people just call that 'optimism. . .' But I get what you're saying. It can be a shitty world sometimes, so you gotta find your good where you can." A lesson he learned well while stuck in Arcadia, even if the evil there didn't come from human nature.

"So hey, how are things going with the new timeline anyway? All those Pokemon Jeannie picked up settling in okay?"

"I'm pretty sure optimism is when you believe everything's going to work out all right. Me, I'm still in shock we've gone a whole two months of history without so much as an assault. I know it's not going to last, but I'm not going to be the one to screw it up because then I won't get to find out how long it can keep going."

"They seem happy, though it's hard to be completely sure. None of of them speak much English yet, and there are at least two I don't think will ever be able to pronounce any known human language. I can't pronounce whatever they're speaking either, so we're even there. A lot of them seem younger than we'd expected, too. There are barely enough adults to go around. As for everyone else..." and here he looks amused again, "Well, that would bring me right back to my question. Turns out good ol' Pengy's been engaged to be married since, oh, about 1987 cover date. And the old jailbird didn't even tell the rest of us! Though I can understand why. She's a nice girl... and the writers promptly realized they'd written themselves into a corner and made sure she was never seen or mentioned again." There's a scowl at that for a moment. "They didn't even have the courtesy to drop a bridge on her, though considering what happened to Jeannie drove me crazy in the not funny way... maybe just wiping it all out was a mercy at the time."

Marty shrugs. "Not much for philosophy -- you'd know better than me. And really? That's pretty awesome. I'll keep my fingers crossed you can get another month at least."

"Well, so long as they seem happy... Victor's Scatterbug is doing good," Marty reports, in case Jack is interested. "Victor named him Nibbles. He still spends a lot of time sitting on Victor's head."

And then Jack drops the bombshell about Penguin, leaving him blinking for a moment. "Penguin's -- oh, 1987? Yeah, that's definitely one I wouldn't have seen. Weird thought, though..." He scowls. "Better than killing her, yeah, but they couldn't even bother to have 'em break up or something? Maybe Penguin got stuck with a writer changeover and the new guy couldn't be bothered doing anything with the old guy's stuff. From what I hear, that happened a bunch." Then he smiles again. "Guy must be thrilled to see her again, though."

He nods, "Though to be fair, I'm not counting consensual sparring."

There's a laugh at the mention of the Scatterbug's preferred perch. "Only two of the balls had arthropods in them, both spiders... I think Gilda was trying to teach the bigger one to knit."

"It was one of those one-shot stories they use to pad annuals, so who knows. They swept it under a rug almost as soon as it happened." And a laugh and nod again. "They're a regular pair of lovebirds. Which does cause a few little problems with things as informal as they are right now... I don't suppose you'd know if there's a priest or something in the Nexus?" Because there wasn't on the island, and suddenly planning a wedding was more of a need-to-do thing than an abstract concern about whether any of the existing ones were still valid.

"Yeah, well, from what I hear, even the Nexus antiviolence field lets two people who want to fight, fight. Big difference between trying to kill each other and just trying to get some exercise in."

Marty grins. "Yeah, Victor thinks Nibbles might think he's a handy walking tree... And that would be something, wouldn't it? If she does, get some pictures."

"Ahhh -- yeah, they probably didn't intend for it to actually go anywhere, then. Still sucks." Marty shakes his head regretfully. "No, no clue. None of us are the religious sort, and when Victor and Alice got married, they just went to a registrar in Alice's universe. You don't have anybody like that out and about yet?"

"I'll try," he says in response to pictures of knitting spiders. And shakes his head at the rest. "The closest is Harvey, since he was a District Attorney. I'm not up on who was allowed to handle that kind of thing in New Jersey, but for most of us the laws don't really matter." And a lot of them hadn't mattered to them before anyway, but that was a whole other thing. "Still, now it's something we're going to have to figure out, am I right?"

"Don't ask me -- I'm not even sure who handled that thing in California, and I grew up there," Marty says with a shrug. "Pretty sure it wasn't District Attorneys, though. I guess you could at least ask Harvey -- he'd the the guy who knows the most about how the government worked, right?" Then he has a thought. "Though, you guys are in a whole new timeline -- you could just make up your own rules."

Jokester nods. "We could, and we probably will in the end. Penguin's little surprise just moved it all higher up on the priority list." He laughs and adds, "Oh, and here's another reason the writers might have backed out, other than the likelihood of her keeping the tuxedoed jailbird on the straight-and-narrow... Her name's Dovina Partridge. And she resembles either one just as much as ol' Ozzy resembles a penguin."

"I'm sure you'll figure something out. Just because I've never seen anybody who can officiate a wedding around here doesn't mean nobody like that has never shown up." He can't help a little snort as Jokester reveals the Penguin's girl's name. "Seriously? Sheesh, I guess even the writers thought that was going too far with the bird stuff... Poor lady probably gets asked all the time if she grows pear trees."

"I don't know about pear trees, but they met through the letters column of a bird fancier's magazine." Jokester shakes his head. "I guess someone finally remembered the whole 1985 Crisis thing was supposed to make things less 'silly' and decided to pretend the whole thing never happened." Jokester disapproves both on general principle (nothing wrong with silly, after all), and because - while they're still sorting out where things stand now - Penguin is something approximating a friend. Or at least someone that, even as the Joker, he'd found too interesting to kill.

He'll shake his head and smile again. "Oh, well, it's all fixed now, right? Well, the whole 'disappearing bride' and unwelcome amnesia part of it, anyway."

"Really? Okay, that's actually kinda cute." Marty's grin flips upside-down, however, as Jokester continues. "Less silly? Seriously? I know I'm a little all over the place when it comes to comics -- thanks to, you know, going from the 80s to whatever the hell we're calling the 2010s -- but I'm pretty sure there's a villain in Gotham called the Condiment King, and I know he was in one of the newer comics I read."

"Those are the most important parts, yeah," Marty agrees. "Makes you wonder just how many people are gonna end up with 'new' husbands and wives thanks to the writers pulling shit like that."

"Hey, don't forget ol Polka-Dot Man or Kite Man... Just because the writers were trying to take the fun out of everything doesn't mean they succeeded. But before all that... there's a reason having a 'thematically appropriate' name used to be considered a comic book trope. Nobody would have even blinked at the idea of a bird-fancier named Dovina Partridge back in the 50's."

He laughs at that. "Oh, given the amount of fridging thus far? I'd say it's more likely to happen than not. We're just lucky that so far none of us has ended up in a surprise case of bigamy! It's going to be fun watching Supes and Batsy try to untangle their love lives after this."

"Kite Man? I think I missed him." More comics to find on the wonders of the World Wide Web, he supposes. "And yeah, point. Probably weirder now to have a supervillain or superhero that doesn't have a name like that." A pause, then he laughs. "Like, uh, you, Jack."

"Yeah, really. . ." Marty blinks a couple of times. "Really? Okay, I know Supes has had a couple of girlfriends -- Lana Lang, Lois Lane, and I know I've seen some covers where apparently he had a thing for a mermaid -- but I thought Bats was all about Catwoman. You know, when he wasn't too busy brooding."

"Heh, yeah, Kite Man... speaking of surprises, that was one. He was a definite D-lister, but apparently a lot more famous on the other side of the fourth wall as a kid. The name Charles Brown ring any bells? Kind of makes me feel bad for shoving him off a building, but I'm pretty sure he landed in a tree. He usually did." Jokester grins and shrugs. "Hey, for all I know I did at some point... I'm still kind of fuzzy on what my name was before, well, things happened. I know all the aliases were pretty heavy on the punny. Joseph Kerr, Joe K. Stir, Jack Napier... though, funny enough, I stole that last one off one of the Red Hood gang when I caught up to them. ... Huh, maybe that's why Batsy kept thinking I was ex-Mafia."

"The mermaid would be Lori Lemaris. Supes' thing for double-L-initials is just asking for jokes about him and Lex. And I'm pretty sure he and Wonder Woman had kids in at least one timeline. And he had a few kids with Lois in different timelines. I didn't really keep count." And a grin as he continues. "Now, Batsy only had a couple kids with Selina and Talia al Ghul... Helena and Damian, respectively. But his list of girlfriends from doing that whole 'playboy billionare' thing? Oh boy... Other than those two, let me see..." He starts counting off on fingers. "Julie Madison, Vicki Vale, Linda Page, Lorna Shore, Kathy Kane... pretty sure he married her at least once, so they couldn't have been too closely related... she still had the same last name as his mother. Had a fling with Zatanna. Silver St. Cloud. Got engaged to a girl named Rachel Caspian once but broke it off. There was a thing with Nocturna - Natalia Knight - but that was mostly manipulation on her part and a custody fight over Jason Todd. Not sure about Julia Pennyworth."

He realizes he's run out of fingers and gives up counting with a shrug. Oblivious to any strangeness in having memorized Batman's romantic entanglements when he can't remember what his own name was, he continues. Vesper Fairchild ended up dead... just for the record, I didn't do it. Shondra Kinsolving ended up with some kind of psychic regression to childhood. Sasha Bordeaux got turned into a cyborg. Jillian Maxwell turned out to be a con artist that targeted rich men. Jezebel Jet... Talia killed that one, and she might have been a set-up from the start... Pretty sure he and Wonder Woman dated for a while... and, heck, that's not even counting the really obscure ones and one-night-stands. Or the whole Ultraman-Owlman-Superwoman threesome the Crime Syndicate had going on. Batsy gets around."

Edited 2017-09-30 05:34 (UTC)

". . .They seriously made Charlie Brown a Batman villain?!" Okay, now Marty DEFINITELY has to look this guy up. "The hell. . .yeah, when you do that, you lose the right to say your comics are all serious stuff."

Jokester admitting he can't recall what his actual name was gets a sympathetic look -- reminds him of how Doc was going by "Professor" back when they first met in Arcadia, because he couldn't remember his name and of course Andrew didn't give a shit. Jokester doesn't seem too bothered, though. . .maybe he figures a new universe deserves a new start. Or maybe he cares more about having Jeannie and Duela around as opposed to his name. Marty won't judge. "Maybe. Kinda sucks you just got a bunch of aliases, but. . .I guess in a pinch you could always go by J.K. Those seemed to be the most popular letters."

Marty snorts at the bit about Lex Luthor and Superman, though the revelation Supes had kids with Wonder Woman in one timeline is a bit of a surprise. He didn't think there was anything going on between them. And then Jokester starts going on about Batman's various romantic entanglements, and WOW. Marty seriously was not expecting a list that long. "Holy. . .okay, yeah, that is definitely getting around," he has to agree. "Though I guess I should have thought of the gals he'd be dating as Bruce. . .still, that's a lot." He grimaces. "Feel bad for Shondra and Sasha, though. I mean, being a cyborg might not be so bad, but getting stuck as a kid inside your own head? Pretty shitty."

"Hey, I'm as surprised as you are, only the other way around. Until this side of the fourth wall I'd never heard of that comic strip. He was just some guy with a kite obsession I'd shoved off a building a couple of times. Then Deathstroke did it when ol' Chuck didn't have his glider on, and I figured that was the end of him. Might not have been, 'cause I heard rumors of him getting beat to death later... I'll have to ask him to fill in the blanks someday, if he can."

The way he sees it, he's honestly not sure he ever had one. And if he did, well, maybe there's a good reason it's staying forgotten. Best not to risk upsetting things, especially now that he has something to lose.

"The OMAC cyborgs were nasty business, from what little I've heard of them... and another mess Batsy caused that it'll take the End Of The World to clean up. But hey, at least now there's a chance it'll all work out."

"Really? The DC universe doesn't have -- well, I guess if Charlie Brown was a real person there," Marty says, cutting himself off. "Funny that he'd be Kite-Man, though -- every strip I remember with him and kites involved them being eaten by a tree." He winces as Jokester talks about how Charlie might have met his end. "Oh jeez. . .neither way sounds fun. Wonder if the writers secretly hated Peanuts."

Fair enough -- as stated before, Marty won't judge. He and his just tend to be a little more sensitive to stuff involving memory loss thanks to Doc's experiences. But if Jokester's dealing. . .

"How did Batman cause a bunch of cyborgs?" Marty asks, before coming up with a possibility himself. "Was he bankrolling them as Bruce Wayne? I can't remember what exactly Wayne Industries was supposed to do. You know, besides provide him an easy flow of cash for all his toys."

"The Chuck Brown I remember used to crash his glider into trees, say 'rats', and get hauled off by the cops." A shrug at the rest. "Maybe someone did. Really, I should have figured he'd survive the fall somehow. We had a word for people who died falling off rooftops in Gotham. The word was tourist."

"His damned paranoia, that's how." Jokester shakes his head. "Miller's got a lot to answer for. Hell, before the worst of his 'goddamned Batman', you could actually get ol' Brucie to crack a smile now and then. And the JLA weren't into secretly messing with the memories of their own members." He shakes his head and gets back to the point. "Batsy got his tights in a twist after finding out Zatanna wiped a few of his memories on a pass from some of the rest of the JLA. He designed a satellite that was made to spy on anyone with powers, and it went and tried to pull a Skynet. OMAC Cyborgs were basically the result of some kind of virus that turned people into robot drones for the thing." He shakes his head again, and adds, "I think some of the writers either needed to lay off the drugs, or needed to be on stronger meds than they used to have me on at Arkham. I'm not sure which."

Edited 2017-10-05 03:54 (UTC)

"Okay, yeah, that sounds like Charlie," Marty nods. "Though now you've got me wondering what happened to the rest of the gang. I mean, Linus could get up to some damn near magical things with that blanket." He figures, if you're gonna make the reference, might as well go whole-hog, right? And -- damn it, that is some dark humor, but Marty can't help a snicker at the joke. I mean, when a guy's right, he's right.

"They were doing what?!" Oh boy -- Marty's suddenly glad Doc isn't with him. That's the kind of news that might cause his friend to start a thunderstorm. "Cripes, weren't they the good guys? Usually, anyway? And oh jeez. . ." He shakes his head. "I don't know what to tell you. Other than I'm glad my universe was never a comic book."

"I don't remember him ever mentioning them, not even the dog. And while I can hope it was for legal reasons on the other side of the fourth wall, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to like finding out whatever that implies." If they're lucky it just means the writers decided to blank out any memory of anyone else, like they had to Penguin after Dovina became inconvenient to plot. If not... something worse might have happened.

"Really doesn't seem like Hero behavior, does it." Jokester shakes his head. "I'm kind of hoping Batsy will at least be a little sorry about almost turning us into a bad Terminator crossover."

Marty winces. "Yeah, me -- me either." He can buy Snoopy simply dying of natural causes -- while he was a very unique dog, he was still a dog. The rest of the gang, however. . .yeah, Marty's not sure he really wants to know what the writers of Batman might have done to them off-screen.

"Hell no," he says, scowling. "And he'd better. Cripes. . .have you gotten any of the other Justice Leagues members out? Do they feel bad about screwing with his memories and kinda helping to kick-start that whole thing?"

Edited 2017-10-07 03:53 (UTC)

"Nah, so far the world population is still a bat-free list of Gotham residents, outnumbered by ex-Pokemon, and I think around three-fourths underage at that." Though it's a little hard to be sure with the non-human sapients. "Though I have the feeling, if they're not sorry, we're not going to be seeing them any time soon. There's even a system set up for that." It's one of the things that honestly sometimes perplexes him about the new timeline - the way it's actually working out so far.

"So -- a bunch of ex-supervillains, and Pokemon." Marty shrugs with a playful smile. "Worse ways to start a new world, I guess. Though, what is the system for people who are, um -- okay, I'm just gonna say it -- total dicks? I mean, does wherever you're staying have a jail?" Funny to think of the heroes behind bars while the villains run free. . .but then again, he's not feeling very charitable toward the Justice League after the bombshell Jokester just dropped.

"Depends on where they are. Or if they aren't, in a sense. Anyone still..." he waves a hand vaguely, "nowhere isn't going to be doing anything. And between there and actually out... there are some other places. I mean, when you really get down to it, technically quite a lot of us were dead at some point, and the end of the world would have done it for the rest. Let's just say there's a place for people that aren't willing or able to at least try to play nice."

"As for people already around... that's the part I still find surreal. There needs to be a word for the diametric opposite of a clusterfuck, because I'm pretty sure the current situation is it. But, when it starts to fall apart... we're living in a big stone building, and it wouldn't be hard to turn some of the interior rooms into cells in a pinch."

"Ah -- right. Heck, I bet a bunch of you were dead multiple times," Marty says, rubbing the back of his head. "Guess it only makes sense you'd come with a built-in afterlife. . .so long as there's a system." Being trapped in some sort of limbo sounds pretty creepy to him, but -- on the other hand, it's specifically for the people who would try to make people's lives worse, so. . .

Jokester's comment on the need for the opposite of "clusterfuck" gets a smile. "Got me, buddy. I'm guessing a lot of people are still in shock. Or too busy meeting up with love interests the writers wrote out. Or just want a few minutes' peace and quiet for a change." Marty knows he'd want a few seconds to just sit down and relax if he'd woken up to discover his old world had ended and he'd been thrown into an entirely new universe made of the scraps.

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((Who turns Charlie Brown into a Batman villain?!))

(Bill Finger and Dick Sprang, apparently. http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Charles_Brown_(New_Earth) )

((Those right there are DC villain names too, seriously))

Re: ((Those right there are DC villain names too, seriously))

((Nobody tell Marty there's an ongoing BTTF comic now))

(Linus's blanket may have been a symbiotic entity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_van_Pelt )

((Heh maybe -- never really realized just how fantasical the Peanuts verse was until now))

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