Superheroes pt.X1: Panic Attack

Had a writeup for a different character for a Pt.2, and referenced a superhero team called Panic Attack as a part of that character's backstory, and I want to come back to that character, but I ended up becoming more interested in Panic Attack themselves. I do really like the wiki-style approach from the first one and this kind of free-associated inspiration is exactly what I'm going for (even if I mostly end up just inspiring myself lol), but I ended up doing some really good short-form writeups for them, so I'm just going to roll with that instead, maybe interchange both formats.

Superheroes pt.1: Vision Serpent

Panic Attack are superpowered individuals connected by The Panic Room, which can appear in any time or place. Members of Panic Attack all seem to have powers involving physical or psychological pain.

https://gifer.com/en/VPy8 Rhett Hammersmith (?)

The Itch

The Itch is the most brilliant person you'd ever know, if they could only think straight for a moment. But always it's there, The Itch, just underneath the skin, gnawing and crawling. The worms exist, they've been assured, it's just that no one else can see them. 

The psychic worms of The Itch evoke cosmic entropy like that moment pouring cream into coffee when the tendrils slither.

Peek (created by Semiurge)

Everybody's got an angle - Peek sees them all.

A woman suffering from agoraphobia. She entered the Panic Room, and never left. She's a sort of mission control for Panic Attack, muttering premonitions and observations while she stares into its corners, nodes of mineral intelligence crusted on and outsourced to her cheeks.

I imagine that Peek is never fully seen, only her eye or a portion of her face at any one time, from a viewslit in her Control Room.

Thiotimolina

The magical little girl shining brightly. She says in a tinny voice, "Here's an easy spell that anyone can cast, even you. A spell to flip causality itself. Malicious things may hide in shadows, but shadows are not the cause of malicious things. We make the shadows in which malicious things thrive. All it takes to defeat the malicious things is to smother our shadows; to rest and bask within the light."

Thiotimolina is a fairy of the mineral intelligence. She is an epiphenomenon of the endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline.

https://www.deviantart.com/merulagfm/art/Cyborg-Fairy-419432766

I'm gonna be honest I'm still not totally happy with how the "spell" is written, hard to balance evocativeness with logic with symbolism, maybe need to dedicate more time to polish it, but I still love the idea. 

The Man and the Monster

They embrace, a stimulating shock, an aggressive tickle, the primal fear of sitting in a tub of wriggling worms or the urethral penetration of the candiru. Squirming critters morph into butterflies fluttering in the stomach, a bloody new sensation. Beyond absolute terror, a novel awareness. A marriage of convenience gone awry, all with one little mistake. A little mistake called Love.

The Horror Frog

Broken bones, flexing phantom limbs in twisted sockets, sharp weapons cutting both ways, and other ways as well. A metamorphosis, a tadpole racing down a one way stream. A wisdom honed in a mangled form ill suited for anything else.

:= (The Walrus)

A poltergeist, an undead dream, the manifestation of a teeth-related nightmare. Temporarily assigned to haunt the Panic Room.

Superheroes pt.1(?): Vision Serpent

Despite numerous posts about superpowers, I've yet to properly make a bunch of superheroes. The Recursers and Nazarites and the various other characters in MRD and MRDVol2 and the campaign are in the vein of Superheroes, but still. I get so caught up in the worldbuilding, but there's value in having Superheroes that can be a bit more plug-and-play, so that's my intention here. You could build a Superhero universe around these characters, or adapt them for MRD, Marvel, or DC.

I'm considering making a collaborative superhero worldbuilding project if there's interest, these could be seen as the seeds for that. I was originally going to make several of these but only had time for two and only received feedback on one of them (which is a little discouraging but oh well...), so this post will just be the first and I'll maybe make it a series for the rest of them.

The idea is that they're a little more straightforward than the stuff I would usually do, and while they might homage traditional superheroes or tropes, as the sum of its parts it shouldn't feel like a Marvel or DC universe knockoff, but something original and thematically distinct, with an emphasis on progressivism and solving systemic problems vs. brute violence, reactionary action, and defending the status quo. Also a heavy emphasis on diversity, intersectionality, and globalism.

The format is reminiscent of a wiki article or those old superhero handbooks, with things like "Power Level", but instead of any numbers it's some abstract description, a parody of the idea. Some words might be bolded where those could be articles in themselves which could be hyperlinked.

The "wiki articles" should be written in a way to invoke the sense that there is more between the lines; feeling not like the cohesive narrative of one writer's vision but a living collaborative world developed by many creators over time under various corporate, economic, and creative constraints; an emergent pattern, a character arc or narrative conceit built around the noise and chaos and incoherence of a superhero connected universe not bound by the notions of fantasy or science fiction or horror or even itself.

First an Index of previous Superheroes-related posts:

Weird & Non-Violent Superpowers

Superpowers 2.0

Cantrippers

Superpowers or Mutations

Maximum Recursion Depth, or the Beginning is the End is the Beginning (MRDVol2 abandoned concept)

Three "10 Superhero Fantasy Species" Settings

100 superheroes and villains as fantasy species 

FASERIP Marvel/DC/My Hero Academia Crossover! (Play Report)

Vision Serpent

Name: Len Levi (aka Veto Sanz)

Appearance: Unassuming size, light bronze skin tone, five o'clock shadow, tired and wise eyes, casually strong posture.

Costume: Lightly armored dark green serpentine body suit with red and yellow trim. Helmet reminiscent of a crested rattlesnake with a retractable lower face guard.

Powers and Skills: Wings of Saturim (Flight; Mildly Hypnotic); "Spiral Senses"; Master of the martial art Spiral Minding; Knowledge and gadgets of Saturim science and technologies.

Power Level: Just above human in most regards, but with a certain je ne sais quoi.

Biography: Trans-Masc (He/They) Mizrahi Jewish Mexican from Mexico City. Has a Ph.D in signal processing, where he developed a prototype Inverse Frequency Oscillation Device (IFOD), which had the potential to radically disrupt the telecom monopoly MegaXCom in Mexico and revolutionize communications across the world. Betrayed by their startup cofounder Gil Peretz in a corporate espionage showdown, just as the device was about to be destroyed and Len "disappeared" in a bodybag, instead he disappeared for real, teleported to another galaxy to serve the alien god Bright Mujo.

Serving in his Wave Palace overwatching the Saturim Civilizations, Bright Mujo personally educated Len in the sciences and technologies of the Saturim and their gods, modified them with the wings and Spiral Senses of the Saturim, and trained them in the martial art of Spiral Minding, incorporating the Wings and Spiral Senses to unique effect.

After an extended stay in the Wave Palace and after developing a complicated relationship with Bright Mujo, Len wished to leave, but Bright Mujo jealously would not allow it, and certainly not with the IFOD, nor the knowledge that went into making it.

To win their freedom, Len was tasked with telling a novel story profound enough to invoke a novel dream for Bright Mujo, the god of Memory, Patterns, Learning, and Nostalgia. After conceiving nights upon nights of stories and never succeeding, Len eventually resorted to generating stories from pseudo-random equations, mathematically derived poetry skat, inducing in Bright Mujo from his memory patterns a pseudo-novel narrative of his own free association. Bright Mujo accepted this partial solution, allowing Len to leave, but keeping the IFOD and the knowledge of how to produce it.

Returned to Earth, Len's startup was acquired by MegaXCom under Gil's leadership. Assuming the fake identity Veto Sanz, Len infiltrated MegaXCom, working to set right those harmed by the corporation both as Veto and as The Vision Serpent, while systematically instigating a boardroom coup. Complicating matters, just as Len was settling back into life on Earth and hitting their stride, Saturim agents reveal themselves, on the hunt for Len on behalf of Bright Mujo, seemingly reneging on their agreement.

Hazy Sunset City

A gaseous moon, a city bathed in a hazy sunset. Skyscrapers gently bobbing on magnets and gyroscopes, a city like a lo-fi beat. A disorienting spherical geography, a recursive ouroboric horizon. A sleepy dreamy city, always dusk and always dawn, a soft vibrance, a gentle vibration, a coffee shop nightclub on a warm rainy night with a gentle breeze, a smell of ozone and herbs and tea.

Working on a bigger post but haven't finished it yet, had one more of these little ones, maybe more will come.

Soft Warhammer 40K

A world like Warhammer 40K except where the lore doesn't implicitly justify the Imperium.

I realize this is a somewhat contentious topic; I'm not judging anyone for liking WH40K- while I am no lore expert I do enjoy the setting, but I believe it is important to at least acknowledge or confront this, in much the same way that one must as far as I'm concerned confront the xenophobia of Lovecraft and how that is largely inextricably linked to his works, no matter if you still appreciate the work in itself in the end. 

Anyway, right now we're just taking that as a given and exploring the worldbuilding implications. If you disagree with the premise that's fine, but just roll with it so we can have fun worldbuilding.

At risk of alienating even more people, I asked on my server if anyone could generate art of Warhammer 40K meets Hieronymus Bosch and Jack Kirby, and Peakrill obliged with some wonderful pieces, to help bring this to life. Do I think these are as good as, or as close to the ideal of what I'm looking for, as what a human artist could make? Probably not. But I was never going to commission an artist to make these anyway.

If The Imperium is almost like a dark ages post apocalyptic take on the post Roman empire world, this would be more like a post post apocalyptic take, something closer to the more modern understanding of history or at least my understanding, that while in some ways it was a period of loss of knowledge and infrastructure, in other ways they were more progressive and functioning reasonably well just on a smaller scale. In this world, it would be like Star Trek almost, like magical philosopher explorers, encountering all the craziness out in the universe with technology they only barely understand, wonders and reminders of what they can one day become.

The space orks are like rowdy punks in some cases, or psychedelic social anarchists, the Eldar are a little uptight but they'll take you out for a good meal and even if it's just to show off just take the lunch ya know? The tyrranid are an invasive species that need to be dealt with by social environmental institutions, like Space Rangers of galactic parks and recreation.

Oh and Chaos are just space Nazis of course.

Rather than looking like a mix of grimey industry and dark fantasy, it would be whimsical and Weird and Wonderful, like Hieronymos Bosch. Eh and throw Jack Kirby in there too. Decidedly not Moebius I think that would actually be too obvious and take away from it.

In the same way that I want for instance the tyrranid to still be a threat, but the way they confront that threat is profoundly different, and I think dealing with fascism and hate and violence is still something they should have to confront and I like the play on "Law and Order" types actually just creating Chaos, that the dichotomy of Order and Chaos is often just a fabrication or means of weaponization.