bronzemettle

[bronzemettle]

I think sometimes Emma decides it's too much trouble to put on any clothes at all and just walks around all day projecting the image of her usual white bra and thigh-highs into everyone's heads instead send tweet

just feels right for her, and good for her tbh

[bronzemettle]

So your timeline stretches pretty far, ranging from the Age of Myth to the time of the Legion of Superheroes. And time travel has come up now in the histories of Donna Troy and the Captain Marvel moniker. Presumably characters like Booster Gold and Reverse Flash exist, and the mention of UNIT in the original post implies that Doctor Who exists, meaning time travel is pretty firmly entrenched in the BronzeRealms. What forms does this take? Are there any unique rules to time travel in the BronzeRealms? Are there groups that deal with time travel violations like the Time Variance Authority or Rip Hunter’s Time Masters? Are there any other regularly time traveling superheroes, supervillains, or teams? Are there threats that span the timestream like whatever it is Hal Jordan did in Zero Hour? …This might need to be broken into several posts, honestly.

Let's talk about the second part of this first, and maybe I'll come back for the rest in a Part 2 or Part 3 later. So for now, authority figures who try to enforce some conduct of time travel as their jurisdiction, and/or try to preserve the timeline from negative/excessive interference.

There aren't as many as you might think by looking at how many things the BronzeRealms covers! That's bc I've consolidated a lot of them. Rip Hunter, Jack Harkness, and Bruce G. Braxton of the USS Relativity all went rogue from the same organization. They were all Captains of Federation Timeships from the Federation Time Agency in the 3360s through 3540s. Colloquially, Time Agents.

Time Agents are by far the most likely temporal enforcers or protectors for any given would-be time criminal to have to evade. It was a whole fleet that operated basically unchallenged for almost 200 years, and that's just before the Temporal Cold War started taking up most of their schedule. They were technically still active as far as the 3620s, albeit stretched much, much thinner.

The Legion of Superheroes, formed in 4037, has a much lighter touch than the Agents, but will step in when it's most needed. And when they do, they are a force to be reckoned with. And when they're done, few people will even know there was a crisis at all. In the timeline of the BronzeRealms, they are more or less the "Happily Ever After".

The Legion of Doom is the anti-Legion of Superheroes, so despite being a little off-topic I'll bring them up anyway. A coalition of supervillains trying to subvert the timeline for their own personal gain. Vandal Savage, Reverse Flash, Per Degaton, Tempus, Epoch, Abra Kadabra, Chronos, Nimrod, various incarnations of Kang (at different times), and others. The exact roster varies from scheme to scheme due to constant infighting and directly conflicted end-goals as to how exactly they want to change the timelines.

Once, there were Time Lords. That was before the Great Time Wars (sometimes called the Last Great Time War, but... that proved kind of aspirational, kind of like World War 1 being called "the war to end all wars"). However, despite the Time Lords now being sealed inside a painting where they can no longer interfere with the timestream, time travel being time travel, from time to time someone will still encounter pre-War Time Lords who accidentally slipped through the Time Lock and will try to enforce their own long-forgotten law.

The Doctor is still here. That painting is in their study. The Doctor may be only one person (with many faces), and isn't even looking for trouble most of the time, but, they have nothing but time to happen across it and set things right. By pure abyss of age, The Doctor's presence approaches rivaling the Legion's.

Bunnyx is also only one person. But she may wield more power than anyone else here, possibly put together. Her command over the Time Vortex is so deep she can actually just shut down nearly any technological method of time travel, permanently, with a wave of her hand. However, she has sworn to non-interference except in cases of galactic extinction or greater. Her perspective even allows her to see some yet-to-come timestream alterations before they take effect, travel through most Time Locks, or revisit defunct timestreams with less (not none, but less) risk of destabilization or leakage into the current timestream.

The Legends of Tomorrow, founded by Rip Hunter, but very early taken over by White Canary (Sarah Lance), are a team who travel on the stolen Federation Timeship USS Waverider. Despite this shaky, criminal start, their relationship with Agents has progressed into more rivalry than hostility, thanks to many years of doing more good than harm.

The TVA is also a thing that was founded by Kang in one period of his life, and, because it failed, there are multiple versions of the TVA that persist after Kang's departure, all from different timelines that responded differently to the resulting power vacuum, all trying to enforce their own interests and prove themselves as the "true" TVA. You might even get TVA Hunters from competing TVAs responding to the same incidents, or responding to each other. Some of them are reformed, most are diverse shades of bad, and they all look identical on first glance. It's generally a mess and the reason they're not more of a problem for everyone else is because they kind of keep each other busy.

Kang will return (in his own post).

[bronzemettle]

If, when adding each other to your lists, either person marks the relationship as Private, no-one else besides the two of you will be able to see you on each other's lists. This is per-relationship for every person you add and every list you add them to.

You can also mark people as Private-To-Shared-On-Same-List, which means only other people both you and the other person have on that same list can see that person as their peer on it, Private-To-Shared-On-My-Lists, which means only people both you and the other person have on any list can see it, Private-To-Same-List, meaning only people on that same list for you can see their peer on it, or Private-To-My-Lists, where anyone on any of your lists can see them, or Private-To-Kevin Bacon, where you set a number of degrees of separation out from the people on the lists of the people in your lists... etc., for things to still be visible.

Of the two people who can set a privacy preference for a relationship, the most restrictive one is always the one that's applied.

This doesn't mean drama doesn't happen. It means it's even funnier when it does, bc it means our hypothetical Thor and Lady Deathstrike both knowingly decided to mark each other as Public in the Recurring Casual Hookups list.

(the Crushes list is different for the others, in that it's not necessarily mutual. Adding someone to your Crushes list is unilateral and instant, no confirmation from the other person needed, and doesn't also add yourself to their Crushes list.)

FireSt4rters

Human Torch of the Fantastic Four started a dating app in 2016 called "FireSt4rters", exclusively for superpowered or nonhuman people of any origin. Mutants, aliens, Atlanteans, gods, science experiments gone wrong... All are welcome, mask-wearing heroes or otherwise (as long as they're not just ordinary humans using body-external tech bc that's really not the same social experience and the app is supposed to be built on solidarity to the experience of being irreversibly different). (Also, if you have a legal human identity, you have to be over 21, he's not taking chances about any grooming allegations.)

He has Baxter Building geeks designing the cryptography to maintain the anonymity/secret identities of its users, so that it can safely cater to not only the publicly liked, but also some "villains", or the severely marginalized/legally discriminated.

Considering how common polyamory is among superheroes and aliens, it's built more like a full social media site where you can make posts to your own profile (think something between the site we're on now and old-timey Facebook in 2008-2010), but also has a matching feature. People have Friends lists, Romantic Partners lists, FwBs lists, Family lists, Recurring Casual Hookups lists, Allies lists, Comrades lists, Domestic Partners lists, Crushes lists, Best Enemies lists, Lovers lists, etc. all managed separately from each other and each one able to search for new matches separately too.

(I had already had this concept when I wrote this other post about which social media superheroes use for their group chats, but I forgot to include it. A lot of chatting on all sides of the aisle, Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, definitely happens on FireSt4rters)

[bronzemettle]

FireSt4rters

Human Torch of the Fantastic Four started a dating app in 2016 called "FireSt4rters", exclusively for superpowered or nonhuman people of any origin. Mutants, aliens, Atlanteans, gods, science experiments gone wrong... All are welcome, mask-wearing heroes or otherwise (as long as they're not just ordinary humans using body-external tech bc that's really not the same social experience and the app is supposed to be built on solidarity to the experience of being irreversibly different). (Also, if you have a legal human identity, you have to be over 21, he's not taking chances about any grooming allegations.)

He has Baxter Building geeks designing the cryptography to maintain the anonymity/secret identities of its users, so that it can safely cater to not only the publicly liked, but also some "villains", or the severely marginalized/legally discriminated.

Considering how common polyamory is among superheroes and aliens, it's built more like a full social media site where you can make posts to your own profile (think something between the site we're on now and old-timey Facebook in 2008-2010), but also has a matching feature. People have Friends lists, Romantic Partners lists, FwBs lists, Family lists, Recurring Casual Hookups lists, Allies lists, Comrades lists, Domestic Partners lists, Crushes lists, Best Enemies lists, Lovers lists, etc. all managed separately from each other and each one able to search for new matches separately too.

(I had already had this concept when I wrote this other post about which social media superheroes use for their group chats, but I forgot to include it. A lot of chatting on all sides of the aisle, Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, definitely happens on FireSt4rters)

[bronzemettle]

In the Captain Marvel post, you mentioned Firestorms plural while talking about Binary; who all is Firestorm in the BronzeRealms? The comics have Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch, both of whom fused with Martin Stein to my knowledge, and the Arrowverse introduced Jefferson Jackson, who *also* fused with Martin Stein. Has Martin Stein just moved from host to host as time has gone on? Who fuses with Carol Danvers to create Binary?

That earlier post can be found here.

The Firestorm Matrix is a physics formula that was developed by Martin Stein to explain the phenomenon after he and Ronnie Raymond were accidentally fused together into the first Firestorm.

Once separated, they realized that both of them had been permanently altered from the original event and would become destabilized and explode if they spent too long isolated without being able to form Firestorm. After confirming that fusing with other people wouldn't similarly destabilize them, Stein partnered with Jefferson Jackson and joined the Legends of Tomorrow, and Ronnie partnered with Jason Rusch as the new main Firestorm.

At some point, Lorraine Reilly is put through similar experiments transforming her into Firehawk so that she can fight against Firestorm. Some time later, she reforms from villainy and falls in love with Ronnie Raymond. At first, her powers seem self-sufficient, but slowly she begins to destabilize like the others, just on a much longer and more forgiving timescale. She and Ronnie fuse a few times just to reset her clock, when she can't find someone else.

When there's a falling out between Ronnie and Rusch, Ronnie re-partners with Lorraine full time as Firehawk, and Rusch deliberately subjects himself to the Firestorm Matrix so that he can continue on his own as another Firestorm, despite not having a consistent partner at the ready.

This leads to years of Rusch rapidly cycling between hundreds of different partners as needed, some of them strangers who almost seize control over Firestorm from the inside for their own ends, and some of them strangers who Rusch stays fused with for too long and partially burns out, leading to scars, exhaustion, radiation burns, and general frailty that can last weeks after he leaves them. But eventually he settles down enough to make some friends who become recurring partners for him, and they help him mellow down a little, while he also cares too much about them to overdo it and risk hurting them.

So, to summarize the current status quo, there are four "destabilized" people who can (and periodically must) initiate a Firestorm Matrix, Ronnie Raymond, Martin Stein, Lorraine Reilly, and Jason Rusch. There are three currently active heroes who use the Firestorm Matrix, Firestorm (Rusch, partnered with various trusted friends), Firestorm (Stein, partnered with Jax as part of the Legends of Tomorrow), and Firehawk (Lorraine, partnered with Ronnie).

Binary has been most often formed between Carol Danvers and Ronnie Raymond, since Lorraine's powers can uniquely continue functioning for a short time without hurting her after separating, which means Firehawk can arrive at the scene, and both Firehawk and Binary continue to fight together for an hour or two before Lorraine needs to either stop using her powers or take Ronnie back. But Carol has also formed Binary on individual occasions with Lorraine and Rusch.

[bronzemettle]

With regards to the mandated reskins of characters in the Injustice franchise, how does fandom treat those reskins? Are they just ignored as thinly veiled substitutes for real heroes and villains? Did some of the new designs surge in popularity?

For a brief recap, in the BronzeRealms continuity, Injustice exists as an in-universe fictional video game series that got NetherRealm Games sued by the Justice League, forcing them to release a major update reskinning and renaming every single character shortly after Injustice 2.

For more details, see the other post here.

To answer the question, the player base has been generally dismissive of anyone trying to use the new names who isn't directly beholden to NetherRealm and their lawyers. Everyone knows who the characters are supposed to be. Characters are regularly referred to by fans, pro players, forum posts, streamers, YouTubers, etc. by the original pre-lawsuit names. Some players might even get mocked if they primarily use the new names, taken as a sign by others that they haven't been playing very long.

One exception, though. When they renamed Harley Quinn, they picked the name Punchline. When one Joker-main player, Alexis Kaye, decided to become Joker's new girlfriend, "the new Harley Quinn", she reflected this by plagiarizing the Punchline moniker and costume from NetherRealm.

NetherRealm did not re-reskin Punchline into some third new character. They owned the copyright for the at-the-time fictional character Punchline before Alexis started poisoning people in The Joker's name. If anyone sues anyone over that name, it would be NetherRealm suing her.

This has offered the in-game character Punchline a degree of legitimacy as the only one of the "new" post-update versions of the characters to still have a real-world hero or villain using that same name and costume, and since Alexis was a serious ranked player before becoming Punchline, it's almost flipped the script, and become extremely divisive to where people calling the character "Harley" might be seen as disrespectful to the community's own home-grown supervillain who brought the game to life in a way, while people calling the character "Punchline" might still be accused of being noobs who don't know the character's history just like the rest of the characters in the game. Some forums have banned Punchline fan-art for fear of being seen as supervillain apologists, but a mod that reskinned the character back to being Harley was taken down by NetherRealm. It's really a lose-lose situation but everyone who seriously plays the game is expected to have strong feelings about it.

[bronzemettle]

Are the events of "Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" canon in the Bronze Realms?

At the very least not as-presented. I won't say that Doctor Horrible definitely exists in the BronzeRealms by default, but, I will say that, if he does, if that's a DLC module you decide to slot into the mainstream continuity, I know exactly where and how he fits into it. And it's not in 2008. Despite breaking the title and the framing device, it's in 1983. "Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Home Videos", if you will.

The reason for this change is a little idea I'm shamelessly stealing from my headmate Alex called "Megamind Vs Doctor Horrible". Megamind is mainstream BronzeRealms, and if Doctor Horrible exists, it's as his foil.

The rest of this post will contain full spoilers for both Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog, and more importantly, Megamind. For real, person who I know is still reading this post and hasn't watched Megamind yet, yes you, DO NOT click further into this post, or read the comments, tags, or reblogs. I know it's an old movie, but if you can, Megamind is worth watching fresh.

...Are they gone? We've all seen the movie now, right? Right?

Okay. Let's start by saying that anything written in orange is optional to the Doctor Horrible Expansion Content. Make sense? (Might need a better rule if this kind of distinction comes up more often in future posts...)

The Evil League of Evil doesn't exist, but the Injustice Society does. Bad Horse, even from the young adulthood (for a horse) of 6 years, quickly becomes a powerful and leading figure in the Injustice Society alongside Icicle Senior in the 1950s. Bad Horse takes the reigns on their recruitment outreach programs, researching and evaluating lesser supervillains to see who has the potential to step up with a little boost of resources.

In 1983, Doctor Horrible earns his place in the Injustice Society when he murders a local environmental protester, depowers the beloved hero Captain Hammer, and conquers about one fifth of LA to rule according to his bidding.

Now, over in Metro City, "superhero" and "supervillain" don't mean the same thing that they do in any other city. Local culture dictates that a "supervillain" (as opposed to just a villain) is a registered member of the Doom Syndicate. This isn't a team, at least not usually. It's a loose coalition of "supervillains" who have agreed to a series of restrictions and terms regarding what kinds of crimes they can commit, what collateral damage is acceptable, standards of behavior, family-friendly language, what kinds of insults are off the table, what ideologies or political stances they can't express openly... They've agreed to keep their own schemes eminently low-stakes, no matter how spectacular they might become to witness. Even if a Doom Syndicate member conquers the city, they've agreed to a certain standard of fair treatment for their subjects and a charter for how they are and aren't allowed to respond or interfere when the citizens rise up against them. And once their schemes are foiled, they have to help clean up the mess and repair the city too.

In exchange, Doom Syndicate supervillains get reduced sentencing, nicer prison cells while they're in them (The "special containment unit" serves waffles on Wednesday), won't get shot at by the police when they're not in obviously bulletproof armor or vehicles, and Metro City will not contact outside authorities or accept help from outside superheroes in stopping them.

In essence, superhero fights in Metro City are for show. It's less scripted than Pro Wrestling, but otherwise very similar. Everyone is playing to the audience and tv cameras. Everyone wants to win, sure, but they're also willing to take a dive if it'll be cool or narratively dramatic. Sure, your school or workplace might get smashed to dust sometimes, but it'll be back up in a few days, thanks to Doom Syndicate. Maybe you'll even get to throw a dislodged pipe at someone's helmet to distract them while the hero sneaks up. That sounds fun. It's all in good faith. Long story short, no-one has ever died, not even once, during an official Doom Syndicate-sanctioned supervillain scheme or the superhero fights that result from them.

That is, before 1985, when Doom Syndicate co-founder Megamind was seen apparently having murdered the superhero Metro Man.

Besides taking place in the 80s the rest of the movie plays out basically the same, with an added sprinkle of... well... Tighten isn't playing by the rules, and Megamind isn't used to real lives being on the line. But despite seeing himself primarily as a performer, Megamind steps up and saves his city, for real. So despite going back to the performance fights after that, for the first time Metro City also knows that they have a true hero who will protect them when it's seriously needed.

In 1990, the genetic Augment tyrant Anton York is elected President of the United States in a Leap Term election (a concept I know I will have to actually define eventually but not right now). The Eugenics War comes to America, and superheroes and supervillains alike, everywhere, are disappearing or being forced to retire under suspicious circumstances.

Doctor Horrible passes himself off as an Augment and betrays the Injustice Society for a position in the new rising power structure of the world, sending the other villains scattering. He catches and executes the aging Bad Horse himself to secure the trust of the Augments. He is given a regional oversight position over all of Southern California, including Metro City.

When new legislation passes that forces the Mayor's office to officially disband the Doom Syndicate, nothing really changes. People just keep playing by the rules, same as they always have, and the local authorities who are used to it just play along too and take it easy. Metro City has its own thing going on and they like it. Then Doctor Horrible comes to enforce the new order of things.

With a need for the city to perform for outsider eyes, Megamind pretends to flip again and cave to the Augment regime, and volunteers to rule the city on Doctor Horrible's behalf. This buys them time, just a year or two until Doctor Horrible notices something's wrong (or right) and comes back. But it's long enough to start preparations for Megamind's greatest scheme yet.

Megamind's plan is to surround Metro City in a giant force field, and launch it into space. Metro City will be safe from the Eugenics War. While he and Minion are keeping up appearances as the city dictators and getting the force field all set up and triple-tested to make sure it won't fail and suffocate everyone, Roxanne Ritchi is hush-hush organizing an underground to make sure that everyone is on the right side of that barrier when it goes up, giving anyone who doesn't want to be stuck in the city a chance to get out, and helping people smuggle their loved ones from different parts of the country in to be safe with them.

But both Megamind and Roxanne have a secondary scheme. Both of them are secretly planning to be on the outside of the force field when it goes up, so that they can move on to other cities and keep fighting the good fight.

They both tell Minion to stay behind and protect the other, and the city. Instead of telling the two of them that they're both planning the same protection-doublecross, Minion just does the same thing. He goes to find Music Man, and tells him that all three of them are going to be gone while the city is in space, and if anything threatens the city, it will be up to Music Man to step up and stop it, even if he only sees himself as a performer, just like Megamind once had.

So when Doctor Horrible does return and force their hand, and the force field goes up, trapping Doctor Horrible and the regime he works for out, and the city goes up, free and secure, Minion finds Megamind and Roxanne and reveals that none of them went up with it, because the three of them are a team.

Thankfully for Music Man being able to avoid a massive nervous breakdown for actually having life-and-death stakes on his shoulders for the first time, the one time someone tries to sabotage the force field, Megamind's fellow Doom Syndicate supervillains come together with some of the other lesser-known local performer-superheroes to stop it.

Meanwhile, on the outside, Megamind, Roxanne, and Minion are taking the fight elsewhere. To Doctor Horrible, to LA.

When they sneak into his lab, they're horrified to discover the corpse of a woman being preserved in a glass case hooked up to some contraption. Someone named Penny. Megamind figures out the machine is meant to resurrect her, reversing the specific radiological effects of Doctor Horrible's Death Ray (the physical injuries having been surgically repaired by LA's best doctors years ago)... but it won't work.

Megamind is hella autistic and ditzy, and fixes an equation on the whiteboard before they leave without thinking about it. So when Doctor Horrible returns to his lab, he's able to activate the machine. He resurrects Penny. At first she's thankful, and when Roxanne approaches her and offers to sneak her out, she turns it down.

But this time he has the confidence to actually talk to her. She sees his LA. She hears about what he did to Captain Hammer, to the Injustice Society, to Bad Horse, what he's done for Anton York, and what he plans to do once he can get the upper hand on these superiors too.

She murders him. Stabs him, with a fork, and doesn't stop.

Megamind, Roxanne, Minion, and Penny, who they help to escape and take on a new identity, all survive the Eugenics War, to the end. There's another whole story about how after the war ended in 1998 they got Metro City back down to earth, but for now I'll leave it said that they did, all safe and sound, and Megamind happily returned to his performances, his city, his people. And most villains, the ones who don't play by the rules, still know better now than to come to Metro City. It might be all fun and games when you leave them alone, but that doesn't make it easy pickings. After all, no-one ever figured out what happened to Doctor Horrible...

[bronzemettle]

What happens if Rogue and Parasite touch each other?

The differences between their powers don't really matter here bc the first thing that happens is they both steal each other's power-stealing powers, then re-steal their own powers back again. Once that happens they both start triple-speed draining the other using both powers at once. But they're also both burning energy to do that. There's waste in the life force loop that's been created which leaks fast. This is a bad time for everyone. Neither of them "wins" without outside intervention or breaking off the connection and fighting more conventionally (and then Rogue wins).

[bronzemettle]

Did the Atlantean sorceror Arion meddle with Power Girl’s (Karen Starr’s, not Paige/Galatea’s… though I guess there’s no reason it couldn’t have happened to her instead) memories to lead her to believe she was his granddaughter for a time in the BronzeRealms? Or has that been ironed out of her history for the BronzeRealms?

There are three Power Girls.

Power Girl, Karen Starr, from another universe

Galatea, Paige Stetler, clone imposter, chi warrior

(previous post about just those two here)

And the very real unbrainwashed granddaughter of Arion, the mermaid sorceress Karan Zal.

Zal has only rarely been to the surface world, and didn't know about either of the others when she awakened from her millennia of mystical slumber and found out the King of East Atlantis is calling himself "Aquaman" and decided to start calling herself "Power Girl".

Aquaman knew, and kept his mouth shut because he thought the coincidence was absolutely hilarious. It was years before Black Manta mistook Karan for Karen and spilled the beans, and a few more years before the two Power Girls actually met.

Galatea had already vanished into the mountains before the Mermaid Power Girl started making more regular above-water appearances, so they still haven't met.

[bronzemettle]

Does Galatea from JLU have a place in the BronzeRealms? She's clearly based on Power Girl design-wise, but she's so drastically different character-wise that just rolling her into PG seems... dishonest, almost.

Yes, they just both exist separately.

Power Girl is Kara Zor-El from another universe, who goes by Karen Starr in her secret identity. She's the CEO of StarrWare, a video game hardware developer known for making really, really good but rather niche and/or unconventional (read: uselessly technical to 90% of players) peripherals and controllers. Also she's married to the mainstream universe's Helena Wayne (a time traveler).

Galatea is a clone of Kara Zor-El created by Cadmus. She was deliberately costumed to be able to pose as Power Girl. She went rogue from Cadmus, operated as an independent villain for a time, and then fell into a deep depression and flew deep into the mountains of Kunlun. She found the mystical temple hidden in the mountain caves and trained with the monks there to control her anger, and also channel her chi. In relatively recent years she has returned to mainstream society under a new secret identity as Paige Stetler, but for the moment is largely (but not totally successfully) staying out of superhero/supervillain affairs.

[bronzemettle]

Dazzler's infamous "Thank you" interview, Gordon Godspeaks s4e3, October 2006

“Welcome to Gordon Godspeaks in our brand new 9 PM timeslot. I’m your host, G. Gordon Godfrey. Today we have with us a washed up old woman with delusions of reclaiming former glory who carries a burning resentment for everyone and everything that brought her fame to begin with. Dazzler, welcome to the show.”

“Thank you, Gordon. Humble as ever with that new show title, I see?”

“You say that like you think I picked it! You know how the marketing boys are. I have pictures of the costumes they put you in early in your career…”

“I remember, but that was a long time ago. I think we're both a decade past anyone forcing branding onto us that we don't want.”

“Heh. You would think you know better than the people who went to marketing schools.”

“...I'd missed this. It’s nice to be back in this chair after so long.”

“But are you? Back, I mean? I’ve listened to your latest two albums.”

“You don't look like you liked them.”

The audience chuckles audibly.

“Well no, but you look like you're pleased as punch about that! Look at that smile, everyone. She's glowing! …Even you have to admit, though, it’s not much like the Dazzler we all know. In fact it doesn't really sound like you at all. Why don’t you tell me who really wrote your new songs?”

“I wrote them all myself. It’s who I am now. You’re right, the old Dazzler is well and truly dead. Thank god for that, and thank you for that, Godfrey.”

“...Thank me? What do you mean by that?”

“Did I never tell you? Twenty and however-many years ago, do you remember, you invited me onto the show again, in the 80s.”

“You mean when I ambushed you into a debate with the leader of that homeschooling- ”

“No no no, I’m not talking about the times I actually came. I mean the last time you invited me. You didn’t want me in the chair, you wanted me on the stage for- ”

“Yes, for our ninth season, in December, I remember. I also remember that you turned us down. Now why would you bring that up, I wonder?”

“Because you asked me to play. And that’s when I knew my career had to die… So I killed it. And if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be starting again now.”

“You… Are you telling me you stopped performing because the people actually wanted you to?”

“Because your people wanted me to.”

“Ha! Always the political tyrant, putting your agenda above everything else. Even common sense. Sales are sales, honey, when are you going to learn to play the game?”

“We’re not playing the same game. I have enough money. I don’t need sales. What I need is to challenge people.”

“You’re saying you’d really rather be getting ambushed by parents rights activists than play for the Superbowl?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I turned them down five years after I turned you down.”

“You what? …The Superbowl?”

“It’s not just about the politics of your show’s target demographic, it’s about the age. All of you watching, I’m sorry, but, you’re old. It’s okay, I’m old too. And it’s okay if anyone still likes to listen to my old songs, but I don’t get to settle and just keep playing them forever. Not as a Mutant, not as an artist.”

“Why not? Aren’t you, by saying that, kind of calling Paul McCartney a hack for still playing the classic songs he wrote for The Beatles?”

“If you like, yes, I will say it. Paul McCartney is a hack. He was one of the greatest in the world for a time, but if you’re a musician, and the parents of adults don’t hate your new material, what the hell are you even doing? I mean really?”

“Hey Frank, we're recording this, right? You think you’re better than Paul McCartney. That’s what you just said.”

“No, I’ve never been as good as he was, but I’ve grown more than he has.”

“Grown into the gutter, and the gutter is full of garbage can lids screaming in pain by the sound of it.”

“You might not like it, but it’s making you think.”

“It makes it hard to think!”

The audience laughs briefly.

“But you’ve said so much more about my new music in the last week than you have about my old music in the last twenty years. You wanted me to play that music. You want to sit me here across from you and tell me ‘how dare you’ about my new music, and that’s where I want to be. Always.”

“So… you got an invite, from my staff, to play your old disco tracks on stage on the air, and because of that… I personally ended your career?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The audience chuckles a little.

“I’m the reason you’re making these… screaming noises now? Oh no, my producers with daughters won’t be happy about this...”

The audience laughs more.

“Yes, and more than that you’re likely the reason I came out as a Mutant!”

“Who's ending whose career, here?!”

Louder laughter, before it fades back down to listening silence.

“If I’d gotten comfortable playing the old stuff, letting people feel nostalgic for me instead of emboldening them, maybe I wouldn’t have had the courage.”

“So, about that, the Mutant thing. When did that start?”

“Before my first album launched, but you can read the Rolling Stones article for all of that. I’ve been this way the whole time, I was just too scared to say it.”

“The woman who could blind everyone in this studio with a wave of her hands was scared… Yeah, right.”

“You're right, I can protect myself, and I always will if I need to. But I'm not talking about that. There wasn’t a record label in the industry who would have signed me.”

“So you’re a Mutant now because it’s good for business. Maybe you do know how the game is played after all.”

“No, I’ve lost more fans than I ever even had, coming back and coming out wasn’t what’s good for business, it’s what was good for me.”

“Classic self-centered artist, doesn’t care what the public likes. I really think you- ”

“Yes, that’s right.”

The audience laughs again.

“...Can you stop throwing me off my script here, babe? We have other segments to get to.”

“No. Never. The moment I let people like you, and people like you out there, be comfortable around my work, when people stop confronting me on the streets and asking me to explain myself, when kids stop having to hide my albums, that’s when my career has to die again.”

“Well, maybe if- ”

“If I’m not throwing people off their scripts, I’m not making people change, and if I’m not making people change, and I’m still singing that stuff, I’m basically advocating for the status quo.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“For Mutants it is.”

“And when you just admitted you'd be willing to blind everyone here for your own self-interest, whose fault is that really? Thank you, that’s all the time we have for you tonight. After the break we’ll be talking about the disappearance of the Batman, the new lesbian Batwoman, and the decline of Gotham family values with local businessman Oswald Cobblepot.”

[bronzemettle]

So what's the deal with Donna Troy?

If you figure it out, she'll be the first to want to know!

In 2004, a teenage Diana appeared through a seemingly random mysterious time portal inside a burning orphanage, and was rescued by her older self, before helping to rescue most of the orphans.

Because there were no immediate time paradoxes, it was everyone's assumption that, at some point in the near future, she would somehow return to the past and lose all memory of having visited the future.

Months pass.

Eventually, Wonder Girl and Wonder Woman notice something really, really weird. They can't use each other's Lassos. The Lasso is woven with Diana's own life thread with the participation of the Fates themselves. It's invulnerable. It will only break when she dies and the thread is cut, and while there are many generic Lassos of Truth that anyone can use, the one Wonder Woman carries can only be commanded by the person whose thread of Fate runs through it. And... Wonder Girl can't command it.

About a year after she arrived from wherever she came from, Wonder Girl accepts that, despite having all of Diana's childhood memories, she is not Diana. She starts going by Donna Troy.

Years later in 2010, Donna joins the Legends of Tomorrow. She asks White Canary to use time travel to investigate her own origins. They travel back to the burning orphanage, and determine that it was not in fact a time portal that she arrived through, neither was it a portal to another universe, another dimensional plane, a simple spatial displacement, or really any recognizable kind of anomoly that would be expected to have another endpoint.

They do, however, while there, find out that the orphanage didn't burn down naturally. Further investigation reveals the fire was started through magic by the Titan Rhea.

When they confront Rhea, she claims to be Donna's mother to manipulate her. But eventually Donna finds proof that Rhea has no idea where she came from, and had no knowledge she would appear in that building when she started the fire. She just wanted to kill the aliens from Synriannaq who were running the orphanage.

Travelling through time again to meet the Synriannaqi couple before they died in the fire, they're surprised to find a magic mirror standing at the exact future location of the mystery anomoly that Donna would appear through. The mirror seems to project younger duplicates of the people who stand in front of it to act as temporary playmates.

However, the Synriannaqis reveal that it's not really a magic mirror at all, but just a child's toy that uses alien hologram technology to give lonely children someone to play with.

They did eventually find out why the aliens had pissed off Rhea, and that led them on another wild goose chase to track down a prehistoric sorceress named Magala, and then another mystery around Magala's murder, a bunch of other stuff...

And in the end none of it had anything to do with Donna, and the investigation remains dead-ended to this day, and far beyond. Even by the Legion of Superheroes era, no-one (and I do mean no-one) knows what the fuck Donna Troy is.

[bronzemettle]

What's the deal with the Zatara family's magic?

S'ti yllaretil tsuj cigam! Tup ruoy Caasi Vomisa setouq yawa, on yltneiciffus decnavda ygolonhcet ot eb dnuof ereh, tsuj doog dlo deniohsaf gnitsaclleps. Yretsam fo eht citsym stra! T'nia attog nialpxe tihs ot enoyna. A draziw did ti, srekcufrehtom.

hguoc coughcough

Sorry, something in my throat there. More precisely, Merlin. It's Merlinian magic.

Taking a rarely-adapted aspect from older Arthurian tales, Merlin lived his whole life backwards. He aged backwards. He even experienced everything backwards. He wasn't actually traditionally precognitive. He just remembered things that had already happened to him, which happens to be everything yet-to-come from the point of view of the rest of the world, but this also means he never held any memory of the "past", he would never be able to tell you what the conversation you just had with him was about, because to him, that's the future. He's about to have that conversation. Everything was backwards.

So, of course, when he learned to speak as a child, he learned to speak backwards. Not from our perspective. He sounds like he's speaking normally to everyone else. But, everything happens in reverse to him, so to sound like that, he is forming the sounds in reverse. This isn't difficult to him, because just like the words he says are reversed for us to sound correct, everyone else's words that he was hearing when he was learning language were reversed to sound backwards! It's how he learned it in the first place. That's just what the language has always been for him.

So if he's speaking the way he hears everyone else speak... and if everyone else is hearing him speak the same way they speak, then why does it matter that he's actually saying things in reverse, within his own personal flow of time?

Well... because he was an absolutely brilliant sorceror who invented a lot of spells and entire schools and fields of magic. And in order to cast Merlinian spells... you need to say the words the way he did.

So that brings us to the story of Arataz, Merlin's last student, and first teacher.

Arataz was the man who found and raised the child (and later, infant) Merlin in the final years of Merlin's life before his birth.

From Merlin's perspective he got a surprisingly normal upbringing of mother Zatara (because he heard the name backwards) teaching him to speak and write and walk and all those things, and then once his magic began manifesting in his teen years, he naturally taught some of it to Zatara too, until his quest finally took him elsewhere and he left.

From Arataz' perspective he met the legendary Merlin whose power was waning and learned magic from him (including how to transform his own body, becoming more genderfuid over time) shortly before Merlin lost it altogether, and then spent the next decade caring for the baby Merlin (while Merlin was learning to speak from her from Merlin's point of view).

As Merlin got younger and younger, Arataz started needing to fight off cultist assassins who wanted to prevent the infant from being born in the days to come.

But the baby was indeed "born", to an unmarried elf woman who Arataz stoppd to help on the road. However, a few weeks into her pregnancy, Arataz discovers this elf is actually a form that Loki had taken in order to steal the baby Merlin for his own ends, not knowing that she would turn out to be Merlin's mother and become stuck in this form for 10 months. Arataz continues to protect Loki from the cultists who still think they can prevent the conception, but it comes to light that one of the cultists in particular has been working against the rest in secret to help them stay alive.

Near the end of Loki's pregnancy, they happen across the Fae king Oberon (himself the son of Morgan le Fey, Merlin's "future" rival who reformed and moved to Avalon centuries ago). Unknown to either of them, Oberon is currently being posessed and controlled by Dormammu, the timeless demon of the Dark Dimension.

Knowing that she's nearing the "end" of her reverse pregnancy, Loki has been quick to bed basically everyone they meet in travels in hopes of finally ridding herself of this pesky time-inverted fetus and being able to change shape again, and "Oberon" is no exception to this pattern.

In secret, the traitor cultist (actually a banished Atlantean whose lineage includes the eldritch blood of Icthultu) who'd been protecting them has prepared a ritual grounds for the union, and magically introduces herself and an extradimensional fourth (or sixth?) parent to the conception. Dahak, The Dark One. Arataz discovered this scheme and attempted to stop it, but failed. However, the cultist's planned alteration of the timeline with Merlin as a new Deliverer never came.

Everything had happened as it always would. Merlin had always been the child of Dahak, the Atlantean cultist (and by extension, Icthultu), Dormammu, Oberon, Loki (by himself a multi-paragraph lineage but that has to be its own post), and the elf woman Loki had taken the form of. All the evil schemes were already foiled years ago by the excellent parenting Arataz had given Merlin to overcome any darker impulse of his genetic origins.

In the aftermath of the conception and the conflict surrounding it, with Merlin now... gone, Arataz just... left, leaving the gaggle of once-and-future parents to bicker amongst themselves. The schemes, the stakes, the reason for all of them being there was gone. But Arataz just missed his child.

She continued travelling, helping people wherever she found them, for many years before finally settling down in Italy to start another family. When Arataz became pregnant, his husband demanded that the baby take the mother's name. But Arataz asked that the baby be named according to how her first child, Merlin, would have heard his name.

Zacharias Zatara was born, and the Zatara family line officially began.

As the generations of Zataras passed, each child being taught Merlinian magic from a very early age, their full lifetimes from birth to death saturated with it... pecular things started to happen.

Every Zatara is just a little unfastened from the normal passage of time, in some way or another.

"The Picture of Dorian Grey" was inspired by a Zatara family member who was frozen unaging, but unable to mature or learn as a person either, for decades.

Another family member could rewind time to try things over again, but once she caught up to the present, would disappear and skip over just as much time as she'd spent looping.

Another family member spent every other day as an old man, alternating between youth and old age, only aging further on the young days, until they caught up with the old days and he died.

Luigi Zatara would involuntarily slip into trances, astral projecting centuries into the past or future, or even alternate timelines.

His son, John Zatara, could temporarily send other people or objects into reverse time for a few seconds or minutes.

His son, Giovanni Zatara, will sometimes, every few weeks, receive long-term memories in the wrong order. He'll wake up, not remembering yesterday at all, but remembering just as clearly some day 6 years from now instead. Then 6 years later he catches up with getting that first day back and finally remembers it as if it just happened.

Giovanni's first son, Zachery, mysteriously vanished on his 13th birthday, only to reappear again 26 years later to the day. Zachery's 26th birthday won't come for a while, but the family assumption is that he will disappear again in a cycle, 13 years on, 26 gone, and likely outlive all his current relatives.

Which of course brings us to Zatanna Zatara, for whom all her experienced memories are in the right order, but, her age, including maturity, is all scrambled up. One day she'll be with the Titans in her teens or early 20s, the next day she'll be with the Justice League Dark in her mid-to-late 40s. Some days she's just spending at home and doesn't need to move a lot or fight, maybe she's in her 90s, then back again when the Titans call.

It's not just changing her body. It's shuffling the chronology of her life and development as a person. All her textual memories remain "in order" according to the outside world, but, she also aged faster because she would one day spend the majority of her teens and young adulthood with the Titans. When Giovanni was raising her, she nearly skipped from 14 to 26 in just about seven months. Neither of them knew it yet, but there was a more important time in her life for all those youthful seconds to go, when she would be able to spend them with friends and peers.

Aside from some mildly awkward moments of hanging out with Batman and involuntarily de-aging 15 years a few seconds before his sons walk in, she's happy with how the family magic manifested for her. It often (but not always) tends to match her with the general age range of the people she's with who are, or will be, most important to her. So it works out. Even if the Teen Titans and Justice League are in the same room at the same time... Who'd she walk in with? Who's she gonna leave with? Who's she gonna spend the most time talking to? Who does she need to be close to, or to take her seriously? She might not know, but her magic does.

Magic does not always come with a price. That's a myth written into fairy tales to shame people into relying on the church for their miracles. Magic is rarely exactly what it seems, and can rarely be totally controlled, but it's not malicious. It's not even uncaring. And if you trust the mystic tides, they may just carry you through time itself to find friends, lovers, parents...

Trusting the mystic tides of time to connect you with the people you need, that's what Merlinian magic, the magic of the Zatara family, is.

Ho, dna I sseug s'ereht a tol fo gniklat sdrawkcab oot. ...Ni thgisdnih s'taht ylbaborp tahw eht niotseuq saw yllanigiro tuoba, thgir? Parc, siht tsop ev'dluoc neeb a tol retrohs. Ho llew. Evah a doog Gnivigsknaht enoyreve (ro revetahw tnelaviuqe lanosaes yadiloh ruoy noiger setarbelec)!

[bronzemettle]

Thunderer Hammers

Mjolnir:

The original hammer, created by Sindri for Odin, given to Thor, then claimed by Jane Foster.

You know what this one looks like.

Enchantment Engraving: - "Whosoever holds this hammer, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."

You know what this one can do.

Worthiness is based on humility (without delusion or self-villification), compassion for all things (even your enemies), the Will to do good, and a passionate, revelrous warrior spirit driven by a burning sense of justice.

Stormbreaker:

Created by Eitri at the request of Thor for Beta Ray Bill so that he could continue to protect his people when Thor took Mjolnir back from him.

A round, flat, blunt striking surface on one side, a wedge-like sharp edge on the other, and a short spike at the top.

Enchantment Engraving: - "Any who act according to the will of their people, a protector in time of need, may wield the power of Thor."

Nearly identical powers to Mjolnir, with an additional translation enchantment that allows the wielder to speak and understand nearly any language fluently.

Worthiness is based on the cause that someone holds in their Heart as they wield it, and whether the people (cannot be the wielder) that the intent is meant to benefit would also see the honor and wisdom, or undeniable neccesity, in it being done.

Thunderstrike:

Created by Eitri at the request of Odin for Eric Masterson, then wielded temporarily by Steve Rogers until the Secret Empire incident, after which it was locked away and then stolen by Kevin Masterson.

A solid, blunt, rounded, irregular pentagonal prism shape, with a slightly longer handle that has a chain attached to the pommel.

Enchantment Engraving: - "The worlds still need heroes. Overcome vice and glory and you shall strike with the might of Thor."

Temporarily modified engraving during Secret Empire: - "The worlds still need rulers. Overcome all who oppose you and strike with the might of America."

Grants very little divine or magical power, no control over the weather, only small shocks of lightning. Primarily grants the godlike physical strength and durability to the wielder.

Worthiness is based on humility, freedom from personal shame or acts that Odin would consider shameful, and selfless motivation to protect or help others. (Temporarily modified to be based on being a goddamn fascist, but it's back to normal now.)

Stormcaster:

Created by Sindri at the request of Loki for Storm. She gave it to Thor after he became worthy of Mjolnir again so that Jane could keep Mjolnir. When Ragnarok comes, will be passed down to Thor's daughter Thrúd.

Similar to Mjolnir, except with a pointed wedge on one end instead of a flat striking surface.

Enchantment Engraving: - "For those who prove worthy of the trust and worship others bestow, wield the divine magic of Thor."

The opposite of Thunderstrike. Grants primarily divine and magic power, perhaps even moreso than Mjolnir itself, but only enough physical might to comfortably wield it (still superhuman).

Worthiness requires being worshipped, idolized, or otherwise upheld as a role model, unquestioned leader, or figure of faith by others, and is based on how well you live up to that vision people hold of you.

Lightbringer:

An alternate universe Thor's hammer who was killed by Doctor Doom during Battleworld. It was secretly found after the restoration of the multiverse by Storm and Dazzler, and has been locked away since.

Almost identical to Mjolnir except in a lighter color, and with more intricate decorative engravings which glow with lightning when it's used.

Enchantment Engraving: - "Whosoever is worthy, shine unyielding with the sound and fury of the god of thunder."

Only somewhat less physical might than Mjolnir, similar magic, but grants some sound manipulation, illusion, and light/shadow manipulation powers which the main universe's god of thunder has never had.

Worthiness is based on overwhelming, bottomless perseverence ("Never give up, never surrender"), even in the face of deeds that by all reason should be impossible, because what's Right is Right to fight for, forever, whether it's achievable or not.

Warcrusher:

Created by Sindri at the request of Heimdall and given to Red Norvell to remain in Asgard and attend to the local duties of a god of thunder so that Thor would be free to spend more time on earth.

A much longer-handled square warhammer.

Enchantment Engraving: - "For the good of Asgard, until the day it burns, a loyal god of thunder you shall become in service."

Nearly identical powers to Mjolnir, plus an additional connection to the branches of Yggdrasil that allows the creation of interdimensional portals independent of the Bifrost.

Worthiness is irrelevant. Upon volunteering to become the wielder of Warcrusher, Red Norvell was mystically bound to the lifelong service of the good of Asgard whether he likes it or not.

[bronzemettle]

On one hand, having a group chat of some sort to discuss hero-ing shenanigans seems useful. On the other, using Discord or even a text group chat seems like a pretty good way for some tech company to get their hands on a whole bunch of secret identities. Do superheroes have a proprietary app for this sort of thing? Or do they have another solution?

For the JLA and Titans-related heroes, Cyborg's hacking powers render this a total non-issue. On the client end, they use the same texting and messaging apps as everyone else, with a few added bits and bobbles of interface.

On the server end, software that Cyborg set up (took him about 5 minutes) casually intercepts every message they send before it reaches any servers corporations could extract data from, redirects to a private, secure instance of the same chat/texting software (getting Facebook's total source code without authorization is about 0.02 seconds of effort for him), also redirects anyone else in the same chatspace to the same private server, then filters all the messages for sensitive info (there's ways people can flag their own messages) before hacking back into the corporate servers to re-insert a record of some messages they would expect to see as if their own servers had handled everything, so even if admins try to investigate they won't be able to tell who's using the pirated chat instance to ban them.

It's all very complicated from a human perspective but it's all happening totally automatically in real time so it doesn't really matter. The end result is the Titans just have a regular old Discord server that, as far as Discord the company is concerned, doesn't exist, but they can still invite people to who are using regular Discord accounts or chat from their accounts on other normal servers, and other apps are all similarly seamless and convenient.

The Avengers have basically an ultra-high-end spy version of Signal (the app, not Batman's latest son). At first they were just using SHIELD messaging software but after not too long Stark made his own. But the way it's set up, not even Stark has access to all the messages that are sent to anyone besides him. During Civil War he tried to shut down the whole service so the other side couldn't use it, and failed. He just made it too secure and autonymous. Unless someone has the app open and is currently looking at what he wants to see, not even Cyborg could extract chatlogs from it.

The X-Men, X-Force, and X-Factor are basically left out in the cold and forced to use a combination of regular services (some encrypted like Signal) and, when available, and only for the people who agree to it, telepathic chatrooms.

Whoever is "hosting" a telepathic chatroom isn't consciously aware of the messages being subconsciously relayed in real time, but, there's nothing to stop them browsing if they get curious, and as soon as they need to focus and use their powers on anything else strenuous or with stakes, the whole thing shuts down. But the chatlogs being stored in the literal memories of the people in them, that only prevents new messages from being sent for a while (and from being able to literally visually see it), and if the telepathic chatrooms need a new "host" to run it, little is lost in the hand-off.

Of course all of that is just about text chat. Earpiece comms are fairly standard among superheroes, so a lot of communication happens over comms voice calls/recorded voice messages, and that's its own whole topic.

[bronzemettle]

Warbird was what she went by whenever "Captain Marvel is a wanted fugitive by the Kree framed for all the space crimes in space" became an actual problem and she needed to be able to superhero while still blending in a little.

Binary only shows up in the biggest crossover events and Crises, because Binary is what happens when Carol temporarily merges with one of the Firestorms, becoming vastly more powerful than Firestorm or Captain Marvel are individually.

Billy Batson and Carol Danvers both go by Captain Marvel at one point or another. Does Batson end up deferring to Danvers and going by Shazam instead, or does Danvers take up one of her dozens of old monikers? If Batson goes by Shazam, how does he introduce himself without getting zapped back into Billy form?

Billy's never gone by Shazam in the BronzeRealms. For real, how does that even work? DC does stupid shit sometimes and we all know it.

Okay, with that out of the way let's do a timeline of the name "Captain Marvel" across heroes.

In 1940, the Justice Society of America are fighting off an attempted Kree invasion when they meet and are assisted by a mysterious man who calls himself Captain Marvel, who disappears soon afterwards.

Seeing him in action also seeds thoughts of rebellious inspiration in the mind of a young Kree soldier, who takes on the callsign Mar-Vell when he's promoted to Captain after the failure of his superiors.

In 1967, Mar-Vell goes rogue from the Kree and decides to hide out on earth, seeking out the surviving Justice Society. With their help, she transitions and starts a new identity under the name Wendy Lawson, and debuts shortly later as the superhero Captain Marvel.

In 1977, Lawson retires as Captain Marvel when she accidentally attracts Kree attention to earth again. Carol Danvers takes up the mantle shortly later, after gaining powers herself. At first she isn't comfortably with the legacy and goes by Ms Marvel, but Wendy persists that Carol should be Captain Marvel, so that doesn't last long.

In 1982, Wendy Lawson dies of cancer. The funeral is attended by a majority of the active or retired superheroes at that time.

In 1989, Carol Danvers is forced to flee earth by the rising Augment regimes (Khan Noonien Singh being the most noteworthy) when one of them causes the ecological collapse of multiple Kree star systems and frames her for having caused it, which even she herself believes, as a distraction that will successfully keep her occupied in space for decades to come.

In 2003, Billy Batson is inspired by the comicbooks loosely based on the adventures of Lawson (the same comics also inspire Jean Grey and Kamala Khan) to take on the name Captain Marvel when he gets unrelated superpowers from the wizard Shazam. In following years his adoptive siblings will join him and become known as the Captain Marvel family of heroes in Fawcett City.

In 2006, Billy Batson travels back in time to World War 2 and teams up with the Justice Society of America. He doesn't recognize the pre-transition Mar-Vell as one of the soldiers he fights against. However, working alongside actual soldiers in the Justice Society and seeing what wartime superheroing was like makes him rethink the military moniker "Captain", and afterward he starts going by CM1 instead (taking after his brother going by CM3). The press, despite his protests, will continue to refer to him as Captain Marvel for years to come.

In 2009, Rick Jones briefly goes by Captain Marvel after bonding with Genis-Vell, an unstable clone of the pre-transition soldier Mar-Vell. He retires the same year and encourages Genis to transition as Lawson had. Genis becomes Phyla-Vell and briefly maintains heroics as Captain Marvel, but leaves earth within a few months to try to build a new life and find an identity distant from the homes and legacy of Lawson.

In 2015, Carol Danvers discovers she was framed for space crimes, and why, and returns to earth, only to find the Eugenics War already ended without her back in 1998, with the surviving Augments having fled into space. She joins the New Avengers (this being the aftermath of the Avengers Civil War still).

Monica Rambeau never went by Captain Marvel... at least not in the still-extant timestream. She and multiple other heroes have memories of her serving as Captain Marvel, during the 5 years and 8 months of the aborted timestream in which "The Snap" occured. These five years were "reset" and erased by the Avengers, including Monica herself, in order to bring back the half the universe that Thanos had killed, and Monica chose to not take up the mantle again.

[bronzemettle]

It is really really funny how for everything else I want to still exist as media I'm bending over backwards and inventing time loops or saying that characters are licensing out their own likeness... But with Xena? I swapped the Indiana Jones parody out for literally Indiana Jones, and everything else about it is just canon. Xena did all the work for me!

Superhero media is pretty popular IRL. If superheroes are part of the real world in the BronzeRealms, what does that mean for the movies and games and stuff?

Some of it still exists as in-universe licensed semi-biographical media or propaganda.

There is an officially licensed X-Men comicbook published by Image Comics since 2000. It was originally based on the adventures of the original X-Men in the 60s and 70s, but it runs to this day and has fictionalized versions of many more modern events in the current generation X-Men's lives.

Similarly, Fox made X-Men movies starting in 2005 with the participation of Consulting Producer Charles Xavier. He thought both these projects would help normalize Mutants for the public to see them in a heroic light, even if executives demanded they would primarily be fighting against other "bad" Mutants for most of the movies.

Spider-Man, thanks to debuting in Pro Wrestling before he became a superhero, is a copyrighted character whose name and image are wholesale owned by someone who is not Peter Parker. Wilson Fisk bought out that wrestling company in 2006 and immediately started marketing the fuck out of Spider-Man.

Halloween costumes, lunchboxes, popsicles, a newspaper strip, multiple movie series, many cartoons (often running during the same years as other Spider-Man cartoons on different networks), musicals, theme park rides... Spider-Man is just as much of a brand in the BronzeRealms as he is in our world, and he is NOT HAPPY about it.

Marvel Comics exists as a company. It is US government propaganda. It published heavily sanitized and fluffed accounts of the at-the-time recent exploits of Captain America during World War 2, and then continued with entirely fictional stories of Commie-punching after he went into the ice.

The Justice League as an organization assists any heroes who care to do so in managing their brand. They do not partner with any one specific comicbook company, but a collection of smaller companies, Charlton Comics, Fawcett Comics (based out of Fawcett City), Wildstorm, Quality Comics, Milestone, Gold Key Comics, and National Allied Publications.

Some of these Justice League-managed brand deals have led to movies and cartoons, but not anything directly analogous to the ones we know. The 60s Adam West Batman series is culturally more or less replaced by the Fearless Ferret and Grey Ghost franchises.

After the Mortal Kombat tournament concluded in 1990, Johnny Cage got most of the earth-based participants to sign him as their Agent, allowing him to license all of their likeness rights into a fictionalized arcade game retelling the story of their adventures, which quickly became a successful video game franchise under the new NetherRealm Studios, several movies, and more.

In 2005, to go alongside the first movie, Charles Xavier approved the creation of the fighting game X-Men Vs Street Fighter. In 2008, NetherRealm Studios would make Mortal Kombat Vs Justice League, and then in 2013, a much more popular and less charitable fighting game based on real superheroes, Injustice: Gods Among Us.

These two previously unrelated projects would crash together in 2014 with Injustice Vs Capcom 3 (titled such recognizing X-Men Vs Street Fighter and Injustice 1), which later became Ultimate Injustice Vs Capcom 3.

NetherRealm would next attempt to separate from Capcom for another solo game, Injustice 2. However, now that this was becoming an undeniable franchise... the inevitable lawsuit arrived from the real world Justice League after years of being presented in game narratives as murderers, totalitarians, traitors, etc. The game was forced to release a major update renaming and reskinning the entire roster into original characters.

Capcom would return to the franchise with Injustice Vs Capcom: Infinite. Injustice 2: Monsters Never Die Edition would clean up many of the rough edges that the lawsuit-mandated updates had introduced and bring in a handful of new characters. The most recent game in the series, Injustice Vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, is a prequel that uses a retro pixel art visual style and was released in 2024.

Now we've been talking about superheroes, but the BronzeRealms is much larger than that, so let's talk about some other things that have various justifications to both exist as real things, and also be recognized as in-universe media in some way.

The Xena Scrolls, written by the Battling Bard Gavriil before she departed to Themyscira along with the rest of the Amazons, were found by Indiana Jones, and passed through various hands until they were acquired by Ted & Sam Raimi, who pitched an adaption of the scrolls as a tv franchise.

Benny Russell was a comicbook writer, artist, and sci-fi novel author in the 1940s and 1950s. Almost no-one knew it at the time, but he was psychically linked with Captain Benjamin Sisko across centuries into the future. So, when Gene Roddenberry acquired some of his unused worldbuilding notes and directly adapted them into the tv franchise Star Trek, he was unknowingly fictionalizing real future events. This same coincidence would repeat with a different collection of Benny's notes 10 years later for the series Galaxy Quest.

Now, you may wonder why, in the future, no-one starts to notice that these tv shows are coincidentally guessing a lot of real events. This is because, by an extremely convenient coincidence that most definitely wasn't assisted by the intervention of Time Agents, all historical record of the existence of the Star Trek franchise was destroyed in World War 3 and the Post-Atomic Horrors.

There are probably many other similar temporal shenanigans leading to franchises that most people reasonably assume to be fictional actually being loosely adapted from some account of real future events. There are also things like Wormhole X-Treme, a franchise that was knowingly created to obstruct the truth by presenting people trying to claim it's real as obsessive fanboys. This post is not a comprehensive list, just a grab bag of examples.