#hark a vagrant nemesis

[adventures-in-mangaland]

As usual, Kate Beaton has a comic for that.

One of the funniest things about enemies-to-lovers ships is how they’re almost always obsessed with each other. Like if a character actively chooses to interact with another character over and over again instead of simply ignoring them? Throw darts at it all you want, but you still printed out a picture of them to hang on your wall

[cellarspider]

Since I’ve been thinking about it all morning: here. A partial introduction to my favorite villain.

In the days of yore, when I was a teenager and video game hype was almost exclusively magazine-based, I saw a kid reading a copy of Game Informer.

“Hey,” said I, “could I see that for a second?”

The kid, not knowing what they were about to unleash, handed me the magazine.

I had seen this on the cover:

I had no idea what this was, but I knew that I wanted whatever it was selling.

I found out that this was an advertisement for City of Villains, an expansion to the previously-released MMO City of Heroes. I’d never played WoW with its Alliance and Horde split, so the idea was new to me. WoW also failed to present me with anything like the vibes of the newly-introduced lead villain, Lord Recluse.

Yes, they liked this art so much they did it twice, and I’m glad they did. More below the fold on why he was so appealing for a young queer kid, for those who are intrigued.

I’ll keep this focused on a single topic for now: The intensely queer vibes that Recluse acquired over the course of the game’s plot. Keep in mind that this game came out in 2004, so the actual amount of openly queer content was very minimal. However, CoH/CoV developed a reputation as an extremely queer-friendly space, with a community Pride event becoming a semi-official yearly celebration, complete with the devs showing up as major NPCs, custom assets, and spawning in unique raids that tanked everybody’s framerate. Equivalents of this have carried over past the game's tragic shutdown in 2012, with community-run servers still staging their own Pride events.

If the art above doesn’t make it clear, Recluse had a much-beloathèd archnemesis, Statesman. If the art above doesn’t make it abundantly clear, this was always an extremely fraught relationship, with a complicated backstory that became more and more tragic the deeper you got into the game lore, eventually bordering on cosmic horror. But one thing was for certain, this was Hark A Vagrant levels of obsession over a nemesis.

The game at first seemed to backstep on that: oh, it turned out, Recluse had once been villainous life partners with a woman who went by the villain name Red Widow. She died decades ago in the collateral damage of one of Recluse’s nigh apocalyptic confrontations with Statesman, and her death left him with nothing but his obsession. So sad.

And then when Statesman died in the course of the game’s plot, Recluse spiraled into depression and nihilism that was only halted when someone managed to dig Red Widow’s soul out of storage and resurrected her.

It was always deniably presented, but the implication was very much that the two were functionally equivalent emotional anchors to his psyche, and losing both of them was something he couldn’t survive.

Also, there was that one time that the game’s Valentine’s Day event was advertised with a heart split down the middle, half Statesman’s iconography and half Recluse’s, topped with a banner that read “AMOR OMNIA VINCIT”, meaning “LOVE CONQUERS ALL”.

And that’s without getting into the first tie-in book. A prequel starting at the end of the 1920s, it was a delightfully and deliberately pulpy book, which… centered around a complicated man slowly dying of lingering health problems after his exposure to mustard gas in WWI, and his very good friend, estranged from his family for unknown reasons, who’d devoted the last ten years to caring for the protagonist, and helping him seek a cure. This has carried on year after year, even though the man’s illness has made him unresponsive to the emotional needs of others, something they both know is going to culminate one day in the two parting ways.

…And then they get superpowers, and their relationship does not get any healthier from there. But what it does gain is a surprising trans metaphor as our now-antagonist slowly metamorphoses into the spidery villain I know and love.

I completely missed this back in the day. I have no idea if it was intentional. But there’s a scene where this man looks in the mirror and sees the first signs of his oncoming physical transformation, and he likes what he sees. He has no idea where he’s going, but he’s excited for it.

…And he’s started killing people who refer to him by his former name, in the most literal case of “dead naming” I’ve ever seen.

Throughout the rest of the series, Recluse is unapologetically who he is, putting him in that category of queercoded villain that doubles as a power fantasy. He’s grown physically monstrous and loves it. He has respect from everyone around him, either legitimately for his capabilities or out of fear of what he can do to those who don’t give him his due. A new demigod who is only matched by the man he’s never stopped obsessing over. He wins just as often as he loses, and often salvages something from his defeats in ways that nobody expected.

He is terrible. And he is wonderful.

[wrestling-zoomies]

Where is the Kate Beaton, Hark! A Vagrant meme about having a nemesis. Hold on.

Much better.

[brakingpoint]

devaiden for the ship game. this is less about the "if" and more about the other questions of course haha

SHIP IT

1. What made you ship it? honestly i was a devon butler girlie since pretty much the first opportunity i had to be a devon butler girlie. idk how in my early f1 era i got into watching clips of f1 2019 and him being a douche in the f2 career mode but it charmed me instantly. i was like i love this asshole. give me more of him immediately. and then f1 2021 came out and i loved him even more just like. as an individual. i genuinely don't remember but i'm pretty sure it was the idea for reputation that made me start getting into devaiden as a concept. @glindalesbian, as the original recipient of the idea, would have to confirm or deny but as far as *i* remember it was really initially more of a devon-centric character driven concept about him putting his foot in it by being both gay and homophobic. and then it just made sense, given the limited options in braking point, to have aiden be his love interest (and, of course, the subject of his homophobia hahaha)

2. What are your favorite things about the ship? there's something SO juicy about an enemies to lovers ship that 1) is largely fuelled by jealousy on one party's side and 2) gives you the impression that one side is living out the hark a vagrant nemesis comic 24/7 and the other side is just like, vaguely exasperated. esp in braking point 1 it really feels like devon has made the conscious decision to actively devote his entire life to destroying aiden's career and meanwhile aiden's reaction to devon is largely just "oh my god not this fucking guy again". it's absolute gold

also i have... very complex feelings about bp2 & 3 but as i said to an anon earlier their friendlier dynamic and the banter they have by the time they get to bp3 is SOOOOOO good. this cutscene and specifically devon's "she--she--she--WELL GO ON" made me actually cry laughing the first time i watched it hahahaha. this is the Thesis for the friends stage of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers devaiden for me

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? considering there's only like 5 of us who ship it and most of the other 4 got here from one singular fanfiction that i specifically wrote there's really not much scope for that. i feel like some sort of accidental fandom oligarch. it's a bit daunting

[doushitemacaron]

Ahahaha any reference to the nemesis cartoon from Hark a Vagrant is a winner in my books!

https://x.com/silverlinedcoat/status/1748210002299379863?t=WqMS4v7geWLjZw0sqfxGug&s=09

Not my art

The real artist is in the link above👆 (go there and follow them in the Twitter)

[thecrenellations]

Has anyone made a version of the Hark! A Vagrant “Nemesis” comic for Mysterious Lotus Casebook yet? (If they have, good, I’d like to see it. If they haven’t, I may have to…)

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

My minor pet peeve of the day - when panels from of a webcomic get pulled out of context and turned into a meme, and passed around and parodied with no acknowledgement of the original creator or where it came from. Like I saw so many variations of "Clean all the things!" from Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half, or parodies of the "Nemesis" comics from Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant with no link back or "credit to" info. Allie Brosh's "Why I'll Never Be An Adult" task failure chart gets recreated and posted on Reddit with the exact same text retyped as a "meme" with no credit given to her at all. People take this stuff and either pass it off as their own, or as a sourceless meme.

I don't care about pulling moments from TV shows, like the "Donald Glover carrying pizza walking into a room that's on fire" meme (from Community) or the "Good for her" meme (from Arrested Development) or the Castiel love confession news format, because those are all well-known shows and the actors originally got paid. But if it's an independent creator or a webcomic, link that shit back or acknowledge the source. Support small-time creators.

If you are parodying this stuff or using as a meme with credit given, I have no quarrel with you friend, you are doing it right.

[doushitemacaron]

Right! Getting nemesis wall a la Nimona and nemesis portrait vibes from Hark a Vagrant

"I hate Alastor" but he has a wall full of pictures of him, a mug that says "fuck you Alastor" and basically screams "attention, attention" he definitely loves Alastor and his sad that Alastor doesn't love him back

[mandorways]

Why did no one tell me they made that Nemesis comic strip from Hark! A Vagrant into a drama

[rebrandedbard]

Your wish is my command @greyduckgreygoose​!

Bonus post-mountain version of ‘Lay Down Your Loyalties’

[victoriacircuits]

This is one of my all-time fav memes. So I had to.

Zurg's fucking hat in the last panel, pfffttttguahahahahaha! Like ye no, he prolly doesn't sleep in his helmet, but taking it off? That would ruin half the joke in my mind.

[loptrcoptr]

If for some reason you’ve never read any of these I am begging you to do so

Okay, but how many times do you think Taigen has read Kate Beaton’s ‘nemesis’ comics? Because I think the answer is somewhere between 5 and 5000

[rukafais]

are they, you know [mimes stabbing motion]

out of the abyss is a super fun read!! anon if you’re out there...know that you have great tastes in shady grandpas

[soiruntotheriver]

Bringing this baby back because I had the sudden thought of: What if Flint and Silver were rival captains? And the answer is ^ this right here. I mean, that third strip is literally canon.

For the new folks - Nemesis is part of the webcomic series Hark! A Vagrant drawn by the fantastic Kate Beaton. Go buy her stuff!

[hippomanblog]

With apologies to Kate Beaton. (Original comic is “Hark!  A Vagrant #327)

[originlist]

@caemthe​ сказал(а):

gives you a kissito, gives asclepius a kissito, gives hektor a kissito, gives ivan a kissito, bullies salieri, gives emiya a kissito, gives archimedes a kissito, gives lancelot a kissito, gives-

“hey, what the fu--?”