#regent

[snazzycrown]

So this is a thing that me and @penelopetheverytrans collaborated on, I did the doodles for the sprites and she put the video together. I hope y’all like it, makes me laugh :)

[downadura]

Concept: Danny hears his old friend Alan Barnes complain about the hit on the gala, and he gets curious enough to google this new group of villains.

Apparently, these 'Undersiders' are a group of teenage supervillains who've been active for the past few months, doing some petty crime, only recently going for larger-scale stuff, and who helped against Bakuda's attack on the city. And two of them look extremely similar in build to Taylor's new friends.

Taylor, who got these new friends out of nowhere.

Taylor, who was hurt in Bakuda's bombing.

Taylor, who has been skipping school recently.

Taylor, who started running a few months ago, and has been distant since the locker incident.

Taylor, tall and lanky, with curly hair remarkably similar to that of one Undersider.

Danny sits back in his chair, feeling like the rug has been swept from under his feet. He covers his face with his hands, and groans. Because he may not be the most attentive of fathers, but he wasn't stupid. And the signs were pointing towards only one, clear conclusion:

His daughter was Regent.

And by god, he would do whatever he could to support her. It's the least he could do, after he failed to help her before.

[artbyblastweave]

Had a long, rambling post in my drafts which I'm pretty sure has likely since been obviated by the commentary of others, but it's really interesting to me how Aisha basically picks up and carries out the remainder of Alec's telegraphed character arc after his death. Cherish shows up in the narrative when she does to remind Alec that his "fresh start" as Regent left a ton of his siblings trapped in Heartbreaker's orbit, that Heartbreaker himself is still out there; his character development over the course of the book involves becoming more and more of the kind of guy who'd eventually go back and try to resolve that in a big thematically resonant showdown. Unfortunately, as a direct result of the process of becoming that guy he gets prematurely turboexploded, so Aisha ends up being the one to sink her time and energy into resolving that dangling plot thread. And it's interesting to me because it almost reads like Aisha makes that decision thinking of the world she lives in in terms of dangling plot-threads and unfinished character arcs- narrativizing their own lives as a way of coping? I mean her last interlude is shot full of theatricality, performativity. Theatre motifs abound with the two of them in general. I dunno, there's a meta vibe to the whole thing that I'm not caffeinated enough to really try and flesh out or defend as really truly present in the text, but it feels like there's something there...

[junebugtwin]

Undersiders but Teen Titans!! Idea from this post :D

[elcuervoborracho]

To warm up today, have another genderbent Alec

[aruliart]

looking @ your worm requests in bio. could i get a little doodle of the silly little freak (alec vasil). maybe even in a gay little outfit

A selection of silly little outfits!

(Disclaimer not period accurate 2011 is too icky for meeee)

[silberzunge]

Stickies

[heatherdrawings]

Rise of the Regent

[victoriadallonfan]

I like to imagine all the Wildbow MC cast hang out together like after work colleagues and they have weird as hell conversations

[v-wind]

look what I found! I made these animations two years ago, omg

I was so proud of it

[n0brainjustvibes]

how fast can a man reach terminal velocity? and how fast can a man flee the country?

would love to say I had a big thematic meaning with the placement of the screen cracks; alas, I just thought all the versions looked cool.

[cpericardium]

[ewingstan]

I certainly didn’t appreciate it on the first read-through, but one of the biggest background characterizations of Alec is among first things we learned about him: that he painted the Undersider’s symbols onto the doors of their hideout.

The loft reads as almost ridiculous when you first read about it. Whatever you’re expecting the hideout of a bunch of hardened criminals to look like, your not expecting “the rich kid’s house with all the best video games.” It almost took me out of it; it felt like such a teen wish fulfillment of a supervillain base that I thought Wildbow must be pretty young—and didn’t really take in what it was telling the reader about the Undersider’s mindset. Because it is a teen wish fulfillment, filtered through the practicality of what cost, secrecy, and Brian would allow for. Its the derelict old building you dare your friends to go into to find some rumored amazing or horrible secret—but this building does have a secret, and its a pizza party with a sweet flatscreen setup.

For the most part, it is an especially cool hangout spot that would appeal to your average teen—and not necessarily your average villain. Taylor gets told to use the other’s civilian names while hanging out here. They wear street clothes instead of their costumes. Its built to be appealing to the non-cape side of your life, a welcome reprieve from that world. For the Undersiders who don’t have much of a real life outside of capedom, its something like a place to play make-believe. That’s part of why its so effective as an initial pitch to Taylor when she’s looking for friends and doesn’t want to be a villain, why its important for ingratiating her to the rest of them and making her backstabbing plan that much harder to follow through on. Its part of why getting her own lair, built for the specifications of Skitter the Warlord instead of Taylor the kid, represents such a big change in how Taylor sees herself and her goals. Its why there’s presumably dozens of Undersider fics of them just casually hanging out in the loft, away from any major cape shenanigans. Its why Rachel's first full appearance is her coming up into the room and breaking the bubble—ruining Brian’s pitch of sweet teen digs by bringing the violence inherent to cape life into the supposedly separate space. Because the loft is supposed to be for the Undersiders to be themselves as civilians, instead of capes.

But at the same time, everyone’s personal room has their symbol painted on their door. And the first real thing we learn about Regent is that he’s the one who painted them.

Regent did not get to have a double life. His cape stuff and his family stuff were inherently intertwined, and it was all bad. He’s arguably the only undersider to have a secret identity in a traditional, important sense: not just “you have a civilian life, and everyone’s gonna respect that its separate and not go after anything related to it,” like @artbyblastweave​ outlined here, but “your specific other identity is important, in a sense outside of just being something to target” way. People finding out who Skitter is means they know there’s an identity there to exploit—her enemies can trace her to her school, she can’t continue to go back to her old house, etc. You’d be able to get the same advantage by finding out the civilian identity of pretty much any cape. But not with Alec. People finding out who Alec is means they go “oh fuck, its Heartbreaker’s kid—” the effect is much more like finding out Taylor is Skitter, rather than vice versa.

And that’s important, because the persona of Regent is, to a large extent, his chance to live out the life he wants. Brian and Lisa both have circumstances that don’t allow them a typical childhood, and so they construct spaces to go through the motions of one. To roughhouse and play video games with friends, to plan shopping trips and visits to Fugly Bobs. They’re looking for a respite from their normal state, and that respite to them looks like civilian life. Alec is looking for a respite from his awful childhood, and that respite has a lot of the same things, but it also has the symbols and aspects of his cape persona. He draws his crown on his door, he uses his powers casually on Brian—he’s using the space to let him be Regent, in the same way Brian is pitching it to Skitter as a place where she can just be Taylor, where Tattletale can just be Lisa. This is pretty huge for understanding Regent early-on: Taylor obviously has a pretty expansive double life, as does Brian, and Lisa clearly wants to get into some non-cape-related shenanigans. We’re introduced with a clear divide between cape and civilian identities being the norm. Rachel is presented as bucking a trend, her lack of second identity making her an outlier. But if you read into Regent’s decorating choices, you realize pretty early that you can’t separate his cape identity and his current civilian idenitiy, because their both effectively the same thing: a persona where he can be something other than a Vasil.

Sheesh, now that I’m thinking about it there’s a lot to be drawn from each of the undersider’s lairs. I already talked a bit about how Skitter having her new base be a proper “villain lair” instead of “hang spot” represented a shift in perspective, and how Rachel being unable to behave the way your “supposed” to in the loft shows that she both can’t live a double life and has no interest in doing so (unlike Alec, who is very clearly interested in making a “new” life for himself with the Undersiders as Regent). But how about how Brian won’t take a room in the loft and insists on sleeping in a separate apartment he’s planning on shairing with Aisha? He obviously wants to be able to draw an especially clear line between his cape and civilian life, and doesn’t want Aisha to get involved at all. How about how Lisa’s eventual separate Coil-provided villain lair is a disguised community center she was pretending to work in, showing both that she has some interest in a life outside of capedom and that she’s inherently drawn to working with/having control over civilian culture? She doesn’t just want to hold territory, she wants to be an institution—not just someone the other capes have to play ball with, but who the mayor and civilian agencies have to go through. She separates capedom and civilianhood to an extent, but not to the same extent as Brian, and her goals are much more “civilian-oriented” than most.

I forget the specifics of Alec’s eventual Coil-base, but I know that it was a group of buildings (a campus, maybe?) with few people in the surrounding area outside of puppets—presumably not so different from the compound he grew up. But I do remember that one of the last times we see it is near when Taylor says something about his connection to Heartbreaker, and him getting upset by it. I wonder if it changes in the intervening two years, especially with Imp’s influence. I’m kinda sad we never get a chance to see it.

[travelers-gaming]

Rachel isn't included because there's no universe in which she posts online enough to get cancelled

[junebugtwin]

sketch of Regent and Imp having fun and goofing around while in costume (not pictured here: skitter putting 12000 maggots inside someones nose ect ect)

[wormbraind]

every night before i go to sleep i have a crisis about regent. it is time for me to go to sleep. oh god someone help me

edit: oopsies people actually noticed this reminder that i draw regent being fun so you can forget he’s a sex offender