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10 mos ago
Current Ribbit.
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Watch out.

The gap in the door... it's a separate reality.
The only me is me.
Are you sure the only you is you?


DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL NOW, WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED

Most Recent Posts

Venom post dropped. Wondy post is still in the works.



FUCK I loved that game.
Those of you who aren't on Discord don't need to know that Friday is indistinguishable from Monday.

I'm looking to get Frank in the mix with the following posts. The set-up is done - it's time to go kill some pedos.
SEASON ONE Sensation & Wonder
PUNISHER #3

Featuring @John Table as NYPD Officers Clemmons and Bolt


Blood was still warm on his face when Frank left the pit. Videotape clutched in one hand, he ascended the stairs like he was climbing the shore of the river Jordan. He kept walking until he was out of the building, and then breathed deep of the fresh air. It smelt like it had always smelt; like work unfinished. Pete Castiglione was behind him now, dead in the factory down in that pit, the invisible fourth corpse. No one would mourn him. Frank wouldn't miss him. Pete had been a walking cadaver ever since Frank put down his vest over ten years ago; he'd just finally put the corpse to rest. His body screamed - he'd gotten complacent in 'retirement', and now his bones and joints ached, muscle memory working on old presumptions. But rather than resisting or ignoring the pain, he embraced it. Pain drove you. Pain meant you were alive. And Frank felt very alive.

He looked at the VHS tape still in its plastic bag, clutched in his hands. Both were splattered with blood; Frank looked back up and absentmindedly wiped his palms on his jacket. Ace. Ace had sent those men, those animals, to collect whatever filth this was. The photos were damning enough; Frank hesitated to discover what was on this tape.
Something that someone didn't want to be found. Ace?
Not Ace. Ace was stupid, and a thug, and undoubtedly possessed some unsavoury chapters of his life, but he was a middleman. He was so essentially a middleman that he had made a living of it with his security firm, being the middleman between jobs that needed muscle and muscle that needed jobs. The three men had been more muscle; the tape was just another job.

Ace lived across town, deep in the hive of Hell's Kitchen. It wouldn't be a long walk.

-


Ace's block was quiet as Frank approached, the night still dark as he arrived. He stood on the street below the building, craning his neck to look up at the windows. There was only one light on, and as Frank watched he saw a figure moving within; as it approached the window, Frank flattened against the wall as Ace slid open the window and leant out, searching up and down the street. Searching for his muscle no doubt. There was a phone pressed up against his ear. Frank had to focus to listen - but his ears were sharp.

"Nah, they ain't back yet. I told you I'd call when I had it." A pause. "Well shit, if it was that important you coulda got it yourself." Another pause. "No sir. I understand sir. I apologise. The men I got were solid men, sir. I trust them to get the job done."

Ace moved away from the window and Frank lost the conversation. Instead, he stepped away from the wall and made his way to the building's entrance. The door was locked, but Ace's buzzer rang true; he didn't even question who it was. Stupid, just like Frank knew he was. The elevator was out, but 7 flights of stairs went by quickly as Frank found himself darkly eager to visit his justice upon a man he loathed. As he reached Ace's floor, Frank's heart pounded and he had to clench and unclench his fists to keep the adrenaline at bay. As Frank pounded forcefully on the apartment door with one hand, the other went to his belt, unclipping the large, heavy torch that hung there.

Frank heard the sounds of locks being un-locked and chains being un-chained; he poised himself, stanced and ready to spring forwards on the balls of his feet. The door opened an inch - maybe two - and then Frank launched forward, crashing into the door shoulder-first and bursting it open. There was the crunch of wood-on-bone and Ace was already stumbling back, reeling as he clutched a newly-broken nose in one hand and put his other in front of him to ward Frank off. Frank kicked the door slam-shut behind him and advanced, torch held high. Ace's skin paled as he recovered and recognised his attacker; there was a brief exchange of words:

"P-Pete?!"

"Not anymore."

And then Frank brought the torch down, and Ace's world went dark.


The next morning.
NYPD Detective Oscar Clemmons watched the rain roll off the windshield of the car in steady streams. A feeling of foreboding was forming in his chest, and it grew stronger the further away from downtown Manhattan they drove. Clemmons was a housecat these days. He worked Narcotics as the esteemed warrant and affidavit processor. It was his job to overlook every scrap of paper detectives filed on drug raids and make sure all the I's were dotted and T's were crossed. He went in at nine and left at six every day, Monday through Friday. He hadn’t been on the street in a long time. And he hated every minute of it. And he knew that was just what the bosses wanted.

So… why now? Why was he being summoned to Queens?

“What do you think is going on?" Bolt asked.

Walter Bolt was the closest Clemmons had to a partner these days. The much younger detective also worked the administrative desk for Narcotics. His tour of duty was a punishment instead of a semi-retirement. The goof had ‘accidentally’ shot up his squad car one night. If not for the fact his uncle was a captain he would have already be out of the NYPD and working mall security in New Jersey. Bolt would get another chance, though, thought Clemmons. He was too young, too ambitious, too well-connected to just linger at a desk like Clemmons did. For Bolt, the position was a waystation. For Clemmons it was purgatory until he finally pulled the pin.

“I have no idea but I don’t like it,” said Clemmons. “We get called up by a captain, no less, to come out to the scene. No details given. Something is up... I just don’t like what it could mean.”

“Think this is our shot to get back into real police work?” Bolt asked, his eyebrows raised. “Getting called up to the the Show, Ozzie!”

“You’re adorable,” replied Clemmons. “But the NYPD doesn’t work like a farm league, Walt. It’s an animal. It chews you up and spits you out after a certain time. It’s still chewing you… and it spat me out a long time ago and moved on to stronger prey.”

They passed over the Queensboro Bridge and to Clemmons it felt like they were passing over some invisible point of no return. Maybe Bolt was right. This seemed heavy. Seemed important. Whatever was waiting for them in Queens, it would end his days shuffling papers in a downtown cubicle.

-


“Where the fuck is his head?” The crime tech asked the other.

"It's all over the fucking place."

Clemmons could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He looked over the gruesome crime scene in the bottom of this little cellar and felt déjà vu. He was suddenly back in Brooklyn in 2008. A group of human traffickers had been operating out of a Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach. They’d done awful stuff to the girls they imported from Eastern Europe, regardless if they were willing or not. A man went in with guns and a machete and turned the place into a goddamn abattoir. Clemmons was one of the first detectives on the scene that day. He remembered the blood and bodies and the flames… along with the skull.

His skull.

And here it was again. Just like before it was drawn in the blood of his victims. Clemmons, for the first time in nearly twenty years, craved a cigarette. Something to do with his hands and mouth. He knew his hands were shaking. He was at least holding up better than Walt. The kid had to excuse himself almost as soon as they went down into the little hidden room. Clemmons had no doubt he was puking his guts out somewhere far away from this mess.

The flash of a crime tech’s camera snapped Clemmons out of it. He shook his head slightly and observed his surroundings. Three dead men, brutally killed… one headless. The pulp and blood spray around the neck stump indicated his head had been pulverized by some blunt object. A scattered collection of photographs that were… lurid by themselves. One of the dead bodies had the misfortune of having a crowbar shoved inside of it. It stuck out of the dead man’s rectum like a flagpole. Clemmons assumed the weapon that had caved the headless body’s skull in would be the crowbar.

Clemmons took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. Two homicide detective and a white shirt looked at him sideways. The white shirt was no doubt the local precinct commander. It would only be a matter of time before more members of command made their way down to the scene

“It’s him,” Clemmons finally said, swallowing hard. “The brutality of the murders, the fact that he left jewellery, the seemingly suspicious and criminal connections of the victims, and most importantly… that….”



“Make no mistake... Frank Castle is back.”


The same morning.
Axel 'Ace' Munez woke slowly, groggily, and with a throbbing headache. His face felt sticky and warm, but it was only when he attempted to move his hand that he realised his wrists and ankles were bound by thick rope, tying him securely to the wooden chair he was sat on. Panic began to set in, and his shaky gaze whipped around his apartment looking for escape. Instead, his eyes settled on the large TV that had been moved from his front room to sit right in front of him. As his vision focused, he could make out his reflection; and then the reflection of Frank stood behind him. Ace opened his mouth to yell, but was suddenly struck on the back of the head, rocking him forward and dazing him once again; Frank moved around Ace to stand in front of him, and then wrenched his back back roughly and stuffed a tea-towel into his mouth. He followed it up with a punch to the stomach, and Ace folded over again, groaning and wheezing through the towel.

Frank stood and took a long look at Ace's beaten, bloodied frame, tied tautly to the cheap chair. Then he spat, and turned around to fiddle with the TV.
"Little surprised you still had a VCR, Axel." Frank said, sliding the tape through the flap of the machine and hitting PLAY; the flat-screen 4K TV comically burst to life with assorted static reminiscent of the 90's, before an image became clear through the pixels and scanlines. Frank moved to stand behind Ace again, who whimpered slightly as what was contained within the video became clear.

It was that pit again, except this time not abandoned, instead almost bustling with figures crammed in. Mattresses were shared by two or three bodies each, and others sat in foetal balls on un-occupied areas of floor. There was a layer of grime that touched everything, and even in the dim light the skin of the captive girls glistened with sweat and grease. The video moved through this lake of woe, wading through suffering that ranged from wailing to catatonic; then a large hand stretched out in front of the camera, ghostly and surreal in its perspective, and roughly seized one of the trafficked women. She was young. One of the youngest there.

The video cut sharply. Out of the pit now; instead, somewhere outside in the dark, the ground dirt and dust. Off in the background some rippling whites made the suggestion of the moon reflected upon the water. The chosen girl was being manhandled by two men, and a sneering laugh could be heard from behind the camera, a derisive callousness lingering hauntingly.

The men began to assault the girl, and Axel turned his head. Frank seized it in a steel grip, forcing Axel to bear witness.
"No. I want you to watch. I want you to see what these men did to those girls."
Axel watched. By the time the TV cut out to a merciful inky blackness, tears were rolling down his face. It took little more convincing from Castle for the details of his 'employers' to be handed over. All that was left was the bullet.

Axel almost welcomed it.
I was mentioning to @Hillan earlier that I'm having some issues getting excited about my characters, particularly Carol. Thought I'd bring the conversation and open it up to the group. What do you guys do when you're hitting a wall? Do you work through it or do you tend to move in a new direction instead?


I hit the wall a lot, often because I plot out my characters well in advance in terms of what story I want to tell, and then find my actual product fails to live up to the narrative I have constructed in my head, either in terms of entertainment value, intended emotional impact, style of prose, or poor pacing. Either that, or I plot out 'Middle' and 'End', but don't plan 'Start'. So then when I leave myself alone to write 'Start' without plans, I flounder. Obviously the former stems from my own issues with perfectionism and self-esteem (an ongoing journey as I move towards my 30's and a more mature stage of my life and face into some ugly truths and toxic self-beliefs), but the latter is a clear objective in terms of finding a fix.

When I do hit that wall though, I tend to either shut down completely, or just sit down and force myself to write. More often than not, when I make myself write, I can break through and enter a flow state that leaves me wondering why I put it off so long in the first place.

I also tend to naturally drift towards new narratives and concepts, but I think this is less about find a way to work around the wall, and more a natural inclination/craving for novelty and something new, which is something that pervades all aspects of my life and personality for better and worse. New is shiny and exciting.
This is my sheet so that I can write about spooky monsters :)

I've signed correspondence 'Houndito Brigande' for years


The more I find out about you the more based you become. This is hilarious.
<Snipped quote by DocTachyon>

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, I find Ben Affleck to be a highly overrated Batman. But my issue with the casting has always been that I think they made a mistake by casting a well known, well established actor to play the role. When Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Christian Bale were all cast, they had maybe one or two notable hits if that. Their careers were in their infancy compared to their post-Batman notoriety. Affleck had a whole ass career of ups and downs and was a known celebrity, so it was hard to really buy him as the character without just seeing Ben Affleck in a tuxedo/batsuit.

Which is interesting, because Robert Pattinson is similarly more established at this point than those aforementioned actors. But I also think he's more of a chameleon type of actor, so he may pull it off. I don't know.

Point being, the only Batman that really counts is Kevin Conroy.


Affleck is my favourite Batman to date and the only one in my eyes who has convincingly pulled off both Batman and Bruce Wayne, rather than excelling as one and disappointing as the other.

My other unpopular opinions are: BvS was a good movie with cinematography that had me staring in wonder at shots that were straight-up comic panels and editing that had me going ‘oh shit we just flat-out finished an issue and here’s the next one’ and I haven’t seen another comic-book movie that so effectively captured the feel of a comic book.

Also I don’t like Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn but I categorically could not tell you why. The portrayal has never sat right with me and has always felt a little off and three movies later I still haven’t pinned it down.
D A R Y L
D A R Y L

"Mm-my name... my name is DARYL."
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
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C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y
C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y
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Daryl Tynon
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Possessed | BPRD Agent
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Fairfield | Connecticut | America

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S
C H A R A C T E R N O T E S
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P O S T C A T A L O G
P O S T C A T A L O G
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C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T
C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T
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March, 1989, Webequie.
Daryl Tynon goes out for a hunt after an early thaw, thinking the clearing of the weather to be an omen for coming fortune. Seventy minutes after breaking through the treeline of the forest, he is caught in a freak blizzard, unable to see his own breath billowing out in front of him. Lost in the squall, Daryl wandered for three days, unable to find his way back out of the forest and its storm. During this time, he is overcome with paranoia, and the feeling of being watched and hunted, but cannot identify, or even confirm the existence of, his unknown stalker. On the fourth day, the blizzard breaks; but Daryl is starving, dehydrated, exhausted, and slowly freezing to death. He drops to the ground, half-dead - and it is then that the Wendigo uncoils itself from the snow and the trees, and descends upon him.

April, 1989, Webequie.
Daryl awakens, confused and his mind mudded and foggy. He is hungry, and still lost - but the weather has cleared, and he slowly makes his way out of the forest to return home. His cabin is abandoned. His family is missing. There is no food. He goes back to the woods to find help. To hunt. To eat.

November, 1989, Webequie.
Webequie Indian Reserve Sheriff receives a visit from a large, red-skinned, horned man, accompanied by a blue-skinned man with gills and goggles. They have come in response to the sheriff's queries about freak snow-storms, an increase in missing persons, and a disturbing frequency of animal carcasses being found by would-be hunters, torn up and chunks of flesh missing. After a difficult night for all parties involved, Daryl is made aware of his new state of being - the latest victim of a malevolent, body-stealing spirit: the Wendigo. They took him in, and his new un-life was now to be spent in the custody of the BPRD. He would slowly lose all his memories and sense of self, his humanity worn away and replaced with bloodlust, hunger, and the cold. But the world would be a little safer from monsters than it was the day before.

June, 2000, Connecticut
Following Hellboy's abandonment of the BPRD, the Bureau finds itself suddenly bereft of its most valuable asset, and begins evaluation of its current capital to find a suitable replacement. The idea of Daryl the Wendigo is floated, and with little alternatives, the discussion moves towards how such a feral beast can be made effective in the field. In the days that follow, B.P.R.D. Liaison Agent Katherine Corrigan quietly begins recuperative therapy with Daryl - while the technical department figures out how to turn fire into a method of control.

Present.
Twenty years of psychotherapy work, paranormal research, engineering innovation and tactical training have successfully drawn the man Daryl out of the depths of the beast Wendigo. He is a successful, if unnerving, B.P.R.D. Field Agent, under the command of Captain Ben Daimio, deployed as a stop-gap against threats of an extreme physical nature. Utilising a delicately balanced feeding regime, extensive and indefinite psychological treatment, and a containment suit lined with white phosphorus capsules, the Wendigo has been soundly weaponised for the greater good of Mankind against the dark that seeks to swallow it; but how much control does Daryl retain, over the baser urges of the spirit that possesses him?

The B.P.R.D. hope to never find out - but they have contingencies should they do.

P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S )
P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S )
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With Archangel89's Hellboy having departed the BPRD, I realised there was a gap for a replacement, and wondered what that replacement would look like. Hellboy is obviously a physical powerhouse, but also a being with a lot of prophecy and mythology behind him as well, and perfectly encapsulates the theme of embracing that darkness within us, but not allowing it to rule you. Hellboy is an inherently dark creature that chooses to be a force for good. So how best to carry that theme forward with a new character?

Enter Daryl the Wendigo, whose short arc, and the BPRD's interactions with him, are sublime shorthand for the tone of the comics. An innocent man befallen of a foul fate, holding onto his humanity while it's slowly eroded away - he is as much a victim as he is a monster, desperately trying to suppress the evil that picked him merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As many here know, the Wendigo spirit is already a personal fascination for me, so to stumble upon a character that fit the mold for the concept while also being of personal interest felt like an opportunity too serendipitous to pass on.

Where Hellboy is out on his own personal oddessey, I very much want to approach Daryl with the idea of B.P.R.D. being on 'Business As Usual' mode; threats are identified, assessed, and dealt with, agents being deployed as necessary to detain, secure, or neutralise depending on the circumstances. Daryl is one in a long line of re-purposed 'assets', helping the B.P.R.D. 'bump back'. Interspersed with his assignments will be his own struggles with holding on to his humanity as the Wendigo spirits eats away at him, trying to figure how to live this new life (or if he even wants to), and crossing paths with other players as well as a myriad of weird and wonderful creatures and myths. Daryl will learn that as dreaded as the Wendigo is, it is far from the most terrible beast to wander the Earth.

Hi Maxx I really liked your Superboy run looking forward to more can't wait to see the kid bounce off other characters and for you to explore and advance CADMUS' plansokay byeeee
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