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.
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.
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.
This is great stuff, Max.
ReplyDeleteThe phrase "absolute terror" in conjunction with "a mistake called Love" reminds me of many of the themes in Evangelion, which is really about the fear of vulnerability and the difficulty people have connecting with each other (at least in my opinion). The image of the candiru along with some of the other visceral sliminess in here gave me the howling fantods, lol. I love the way this is shaping up.
The idea that The Peek sees all, but you never see all of the The Peek is freaking *great*.
One thought: Ènziramire has pointed out the power of ambiguity a number of times, and as much as I want to see everything filled out (I'm secretly a completist), I actually think that leaving some of links unwritten (like the Vision Serpent post did, though perhaps simply because those bits have not been written yet) taps into that power. I am certainly not saying that you shouldn't write those bits, but every now and then, I recommend dropping a link like a breadcrumb and never letting anyone actually write it up.
USE THEIR OWN IMAGINATION AGAINST THEM!
I occasionally play around with the phrase "absolute terror", obviously inspired by Eva haha, but I always felt like there was room to explore the idea in other ways. The "a mistake called Love" was supposed to kind of funny or corny, like reminiscent of a soap opera or cheesy romance story, but ya I mean I always say I try to play with the full range of the tragedy/comedy spectrum and obviously that piece has elements of disgust and other things as well. Obviously inspired by the Swamp Thing psychedelic sex scene in Alan Moore's run, but also like an inversion of Beauty and the Beat or other Beautiful Woman + Monster narratives.
DeleteI was happy with that little add-on to Semiurge's idea with The Peek as well, hopefully he agrees. And if there's a Control Room to the Panic Room, it's sort of a homunculus thing as well, and within the context of agoraphobia- I dunno, I don't have necessarily a specific idea but I think it lends itself to examination.
I agree with the ambiguity and leaving things unwritten idea, and I definitely don't intend to flesh everything out! I find that often the best explanations for things are when the answers still satisfy, but also open more questions than they close. Sometimes that is done by design, like Claremont was the master of that and I try to do that kind of thing in my TTRPG campaigns as well, but with decades-long superhero continuities, often just by sheer size, complexity, and continuity error, it fractally complexifies itself the deeper you look into it anyway, so I'm hoping to capture some essence of that.
I like that idea of an intentionally broken link, a blocked off unfinished corner if you will. "Use their own imagination against them" indeed :p.