The Mezzanine

Not fic, but headcanon:


When Twitter is just starting to take off, someone in the US government makes official accounts for each member of the Freedom Five. The idea is that they could use their Twitter accounts to promote the Freedom Five and all the awesome heroism that they're doing.

Tyler Vance actually uses his for its intended purpose. @FF_bunker posts updates about various notable fights they've been in recently, and villains they've been battling, and charity events that they'll be making an appearance at.

Paul Parsons certainly intends to use his like this too. But self-promotion seems too self-important, and rather showy, so instead @FF_legacy posts about AMERICA and FREEDOM and OUR BRAVE BOYS ON THE FRONTLINES and so forth. If the Freedom Five ever rate a mention, it's only because they're shaking the hands of "the REAL heroes, bravely fighting fires in downtown Chicago".

Meredith Stinson spends most of her tweets getting into internet arguments about science and facts. Her phone will allow a new post approximately every three seconds, which gives her time to get work done between tweets. It's quite something to post a badly-researched "fact" on Twitter and check your feed one minute later to discover that @FF_tachyon has sent you twenty replies, each pointing out in detail how bad you are at science.

Maia Montgomery posts only photos, usually of people in underground parking garages, or back alleys, or other isolated situations. Photos are captioned with the name of one person pictured, and usually their job description. (One tweet includes a photo of a man being handed an envelope, face partially shaded, with caption "Greg Wallis, assistant to the Mayor".) Some photos are entirely captionless – and readers of @FF_the_wraith are left to figure out who's in the picture, and why.

Ryan Frost doesn't see the need for Twitter, really – until, one day, he corrects someone else on the subject of Louis Armstrong. Then... he never really stops. And @FF_absolute0 becomes known as a place to discuss 20th century music history.

Devra Caspit makes over fifteen Twitter accounts. Then she uses them to troll the Freedom Five's accounts – especially Tachyon's. Whenever they realise it's her, she posts from @FS_Unity with a score of how many tweets it took them to catch on.

I'm currently getting entirely too fannish about Sentinel Comics.

Which…

Okay. This requires some backstory.

Once upon a time – approximately ten years ago – two guys got together and decided to make a card game with superheroes kicking arse. But they realised that, laws being what they are, they couldn't, for instance, make a game with Superman and Batman fighting Lex Luthor, or with Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four battling Magneto – at least not without being thoroughly sued. So, instead, they created Sentinel Comics.

As in:
- they created a fictional comics line by the fictional company Sentinel Comics
- they created a rich backstory of eighty years of comics history
- they created dozens of superheroes and supervillains
- they created the backstory of each hero, and each villain
- they created epic universe-shaking events
- they created a bunch of alternate timelines
- they created a whole lot of comic book art showcasing different events from the comics

…and then they created a card game.

I'm not really into the card game. But I am a roleplayer – and when someone mentioned the new Sentinel Comics RPG (which looks really fun), I was very interested, but also very frustrated, because they kept referencing people from the comics that I'd never heard of.
So I tracked down… The Letters Page.

The Letters Page is a podcast in which the two creators of Sentinel Comics sit down and talk through the backstory of each of their comic book characters. And I am rather obsessed with it. Every day, I sit down and play Stardew Valley, and listen to people talk about fictional comic book characters from non-existent comic books, and get more and more invested in the fictional stories happening in these comics that I can't read BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST AT ALL. I want to read these awesome comics, dammit! They're so much fun!