Morden Man

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

The rate that @Bounce is posting is making me a little worried about him.

Someone go check on him and make sure that he's remembering to eat and drink.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Live action TV-wise, Marvel's Daredevil is not only my favorite comic book show, it's up there among Breaking Bad, Fargo, and Game Of Thrones as one of my outright favorite shows of all time. Half the reason I want to write a 13 episode Batman show is to basically ape the tone of Daredevil.

@Master Bruce

The first season of Daredevil is great but I think the quality of pretty much all of the Netflix shows has steadily declined with time. Either that or the Netflix-mandated thirteen episode structure has led to real pacing problems that has really detracted from my enjoyment of them.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

So this is the mountain that I die on.

So be it.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Here's a (completely non-mandatory) suggestion for everyone.

Once you've been accepted and you've posted in the IC thread, it would be helpful if you would edit your applications in the character tab to remove the "sample" section and replace it with a post catalogue. That way all of your posts are all in one place and easier to read in succession for those that are either catching up on the game or researching for a potentially-related character sheet.

As such:

Post Catalogue:

1. New Frontier in Ruins
2. The Marquis of Death
3. Doom
4. 4th July
5. A Reed Moment
6. Enter: Guy Gardner
7. Interlinked
8. Magic Beans

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Guest Quarters, Pegasus Helicarrier

With their interviews concluded the Fantastic Four had finally been afforded the luxury of shared quarters. It was for all intents and purposes a small apartment. If not for the gruel-dispensing machine in the kitchen, Johnny might have been fooled into thinking they were in New York.

He laid on his back on the couch and watched on while Ben paced around the living room. He had been seething ever since he returned from his interview with Gardner. For the most part Johnny’s had gone off without a hitch and the ginger SHIELD agent had been fairly accommodating. He’d even brought Johnny a root beer when he asked for one.

Ben’s seemed to have gone slightly worse.

“It’s not right, Suzie,” Grimm said for what felt like the fortieth time.

Sue nodded her head understandingly from beside Reed at the kitchen table. “I know it’s not right, Ben, but you have to calm down.”

“They covered the whole damn thing up like it never happened. Can you believe that? It’s like we never even existed.”

Johnny rolled his eyes. Was he meant to care that some other world’s Fantastic Four had bit the bullet before having their lives turned over by cosmic rays? He’d watched his whole world torn apart by Darkseid, seen friends die at his hands, why would he think the four of them were immune from death? They was nothing special about them.

They could die just like anyone else. Perhaps they should have died there with the rest of their world instead of stranding themselves here.

“They weren’t us,” he said to Ben dispassionately.

“They might as well have been,” Grimm fired back. “What if it had been the four of us? You think our SHIELD would have dealt with it any differently? Cos if you do I’ve got some magic beans to sell you, Matchstick.”

Johnny bristled from the couch. Once upon a time he would have taken a comment like that in his stride. The past month had changed that. He could feel his temper rising – and his temperature rising with it – but a calming look from his sister Sue helped him check it.

Reed had stayed curiously silent throughout the conversation. Had he known already? There was no way someone of Reed’s intellect couldn’t have figured it out. He’d spent the best part of a week hobnobbing around with Doom and he hadn’t asked that question? It was hard to believe.

As he so often did in times of need, Ben looked to Reed for answers.

“Say something, Stretch.”

Reed’s sigh betrayed his indecision on the subject. Normally the Fantastic Four could rely on their fearless leader to provide moral clarity in these moments but the truth of the matter was that they had never been in a moment like this before.

It was uncharted territory – but not the kind that they had built their career on discovering.

“At the risk of sounding detached: Johnny is right. We have to remember that this is not our world, Ben. We don’t know what lead to SHIELD’s decision. If Victor von Doom is on the side of the angels in this world, who knows what else is different? Who knows what perils SHIELD has to face on a daily basis? That doesn’t quite excuse covering up four deaths to avoid a public relations headache but I don't think we can afford to rush to judgement here.”

Ben’s struggled to hide his revulsion at Reed’s facilitation.

“I think all that time spent with Doom in Latveria has rubbed off on you,” Ben said with a disapproving shake of the head. “Because there’s no way the Big Brain that I knew would be alright with this kinda thing. But then again, the Big Brain I knew would never have got us stranded here in the first place.”

At that, Reed, Ben and Johnny erupted into a wholly avoidable argument. The three of them were talk over one another so loudly that they could barely hear one another, let alone themselves. Sue tried to interject to calm the situation down but they paid her no attention.

A second time Sue tried to prise the men apart but found herself again treated like a spare part. This time it was Sue’s temper that frayed. She had finally had enough of being treated like she existed in Reed, Ben and Johnny’s stratosphere. Two large hard-light structures in the shape of giant hands pulled the men apart and pushed them to separate ends of the apartment.

“Enough,” Sue shouted. “I have tried to allow the three of you the time and space to deal with your grief in your own way but the bickering and the snide comments have to stop. We’re meant to be a team.”

Guilty looks adorned the men’s faces.

Reed nodded acceptingly, as if Sue had revealed some truth that he already understood on some level, while Ben scratched his head nervously like a child that had been caught in the middle of some misdeed.

Johnny approached his sister slowly and offered her his arm. “You’re right, Sue, we’re a team.”

She took it and nestled her head in her brother’s chest. She saw Ben and Reed walking over to them and slowly felt their arms wrapping around Johnny and herself in a group hug.

“No, we’re more than that,” Reed said tenderly. “We’re family, Johnny.”

It was a rare moment of affection between the four of them. Since Darkseid there hadn’t been the time to appreciate one another quite like this. Perhaps on some level hearing that their counterparts from this world had perished had affected them more than any of them cared to admit.

Perhaps they were just all in need of a hug.

Out of the corner of Johnny’s eye he spotted a tear rolling down Ben’s cheek. “Are you crying?”

“What?” Ben said as he drew away from the hug defensively. “No, I’ve just got something in my eye, you little rat.”

Sue punched her brother in the arm. She was about to complain about his ruining the moment when the four of them were almost knocked off of their feet by the Pegasus lurching without warning. After a second or two of listing the Pegasus corrected course.

Ben looked at Reed vacantly. “What was that?”

Before the scientist had a chance to answer there was another great blast. This time the Pegasus’ alarm system began to blare. The Fantastic Four’s quarters went into lockdown and metal coverings lowered over its windows and doors. Outside they could hear the sound of SHIELD agents running through the corridors.

Johnny called to his sister as he pointed at the coverings. “Can’t you go through those or something, Sue?

“Invisible, Johnny, not intangible,” Sue said, almost distraught with belief that her brother still didn’t understand her powers after all these years. “The clue’s in the name.”

Johnny fake-laughed obnoxiously and then gestured to his sister and Ben to stand back. Without a shout of his trademark catchphrase, Storm burst into flames. His breathing became laboured as he tried to channel his bottled-up rage to feed his flames.

He was on the cusp of unloading on the coverings when they rose at the last second.

“Whoa, whoa!” Guy Gardner held two peace signs up to Johnny as he entered the room. “Easy there, Pyro-Boy, I’m the one that gets to decide whether or not you end up in Area-51 with the rest of the intergalactic refugees. You don’t want to piss me off.“

He looked around the room. The furniture had been scattered about by the Pegasus being thrown off course.

“I like what you’ve done with the place.”

The blaring alarms and SHIELD agents sprinting around behind him didn’t seem to phase Gardner at all. He was every bit as sure of himself now as he had been facing down Ben Grimm in the interrogation room. Were it not for the alarms it would have been hard to tell the Pegasus was under attack.

Reed placed a panicked hand on Guy’s shoulder to shake the nonchalance out of him. “What’s going on, Gardner?”

“Ah, yeah,” Gardner said as if he had genuinely forgotten. “We seem to have a bit of a situation on our hands.”

Reed’s voice was firmer this time – more direct.

“What kind of situation?”

Guy laughed the laugh of a man recounting a story he felt a great sense of pride in that knew he wasn’t meant to. It was clear as the laugh left his lips that he understood that the blame for what was happening lay solely at his feet.

“The kind that involves an angry sea god wanting to tear you in half for sleeping with his cousin and not calling her back.”

He pulled a tablet out of his back pocket and pulled up some CCTV footage from the outside of the Pegasus.

Wrapped around one of its engines was a huge purple tentacle reaching from the depths of the sea beneath it. SHIELD agents were peppering the tentacle with bullets to no effect. Most worrying of all were the two figures walking patiently up the tentacle.

It was Namor the Submariner – King of Atlantis – and Namora.

“Where is he?!” Namor screamed until he was purple with rage. “Where is Guy Gardner?”

The Atlantean smacked his hands together and a wave of force flew towards the camera. It shorted out and the screen turned to static. He looked up from it at the Fantastic Four sheepishly. “So what do you say? You help me out with this one and I’ll put in a good word with Nick?”

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

The problem I see is that you have no way of knowing who is readings your posts, who is skimming, and who is skipping over them completely, so you may PM someone who isn't even in your "target audience" (for lack of a better term). Hence why when I asked for feedback on Kai-ro's story, I did it in the OOC so that anyone who may have an opinion could chime in and I wasn't making assumptions about who was reading them. Plus, often times I read something and don't have a strong opinion about it. So I know that, just because I do read a post, doesn't mean that I'm going to have a lot of constructive feedback for it.

I did get a reply by private message, rather than in the OOC post, so there is always that. People could ask for feedback, so that we know who is seeking it, and the replies could be PM'd.

@Bounce

There we go, that certainly seems like a good compromise.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

So, a friend who shall remain nameless has told me that some of you see me as "intimidating" and don't feel like you can come to me with any questions, issues, advice, insert thing here. Don't feel like that. I'm a nice guy. Like, seriously.

@Byrd Man

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Let's not turn the OOC thread into a procession of critiques about one another's posts, shall we?

Ultimately we're all here to have fun. If you want someone's opinion about what you can improve upon, ask them via PM. Not everyone is comfortable with having their writing publicly assessed and I'm concerned about the atmosphere it might create for them to have to wade through critiques of other people's writing.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to read every post.

It's completely natural to prioritise the posts that interest you, so I wouldn't beat yourself up about not reading everything all at once or skimming over some posts because everyone does it. One of the nice things about playing in games like this is that you can look back, having read the posts that were initially interesting to you, and take the time to read some of the work that perhaps wasn't instantly relevant to your character or your posts and find some real gems in there.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Here's where I'm at with the Fantastic Four without revealing too much.

We know at this point the fate of this universe's Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben. What we don't know yet is how the NF Fantastic Four's presence in this world is going to change the things and people around them while they search for a way home. I have a lot planned out and my plans are probably slightly more far-reaching than some because NF Fantastic Four aren't Year One so I feel like I can throw a little more at them.

Either way, I want to use their search for a way home to deconstruct the idea of Marvel's First Family somewhat, investigate each of its members individually as characters, and create some waves that will have consequences that will reverberate around the universe a little and turn some traditional relationships on their head.

I tend to write way, way ahead. It's both a blessing and a curse. I get the certainty of knowing the story I want to tell is well underway – and I'm not too reliant on other people – but it does also limit the possibility of interaction. That's the bargain you strike when you decide to write ahead, I guess.