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Posted by Please, please, please can we put the name after the subject the way it use to be? Please??? on November 01, 2000 at 04:57:24:
[The scene: Dancer is joining the other superheroes at the Lair Mansion to mock Finny’s super-shlong when
[The scene: Dancer is in a torchlit underground dungeon decked out like a mediaeval inquisition courtroom]
Dancer: Huh? Where am I? Is this some as-yet-unrevealed power of Finny’s super-shlong?
Klan-hooded Inquisitor: Oh no, sinner. You have been brought here by our power, to face trial in the court of… the Continuity Police!
Dancer: Um…
K-hI: You stand charged with ignoring your continuity, and trying to start a new storyline while you still have not completed your previous one. Let your accuser stand forth!
[Enter Magenta St Evil, Dancer’s self-proclaimed archvillainess] Magenta: I charge the Probability Dancer with failing to continue from her cliffhanger ending where my team and I were about to destroy her.
Dancer: Well, I’d done all the funny stuff I could milk from that story, and…
K-hI: You condemn yourself from your own lips! You ignored your previous work and have committed a Byrne-class infringement on continuity.
Dancer: Hey, if I’m on trial I demand a counsel for the defence. I want Matt Murdock, or if you’re a hetrosexual male under those robes, I demand Lisa Waltz.
[Klan-hooded Inquisitor had hurried conversation with other Continuity Police] K-hI: very well. We will allow Ms Waltz to defend you. But she has to wear clothes in court this time.
Dancer: Uh oh. There goes the special pleading.
Lisa Waltz, amorous advocatrix, first lady of the LL etc: Hi Dancer. I didn’t know you were into this S&M scene.
Magenta St Evil: Your little friend stands accused of crimes against continuity. I insist that she be replaced by a proper comics superhero who acts like they should do instead of talking to the villains and being reasonable and not fighting at every available moment.
Dancer: That’s because I’m not a guy. Testosterone-soaked endings don’t do it for me. Isn’t there room in comics for other kinds of stories?
Magenta St Evil: No. I will not permit it, and mine is the power of manipulating comics conventions.
Dancer: You mean, like, having all those anorak-wearing geeks sell you their X-Men collections cheap and getting a seat near the front in the writer/artist panels?
Magenta: Not that sort of convention! The conventions of what comics should be like! I have total control over secret identities, costumes, subplots, and nailbiting cliffhanger endings!
Lisa: Oh. Well I summons my first witness, Visionary.
[Big flash of light and Vizh appears in bathrobe with toothbrush in hand] Vizh: Wow! I am so glad you didn’t summons me about one minute earlier.
Lisa: Exhibit one, your honour! Visionary has been going to finish his "Happiness" storyline for years now, but has gone on to pretend to be all sorts of other writers and publish all kinds of other stuff and still hasn’t done it.
Visionary: I’ll get to it eventually, dammit!
Inquisitor (makes note in big ledger): Thank you for informing. We will take appropriate action.
Vizh: Er…
Lisa: Well then, I summons spiffy. He’s got even more unfinished series, and he’s even got Dancer locked in a cell somewhere waiting to escape.
Dancer: I am? Boy, I am so going to kick spiffy’s ass…
spiffy (appears in mid-leap as he dodges bricks thrown by crowd unhappy with their mayor’s civic policies): Donthurtmedonthurtmedonthurtme… Huh? Where am I?
Inquisitor (makes another note in big ledger, in red): Just because many other malefactors are delinquent in their continuity does not make the prisoner at the bar any less guilty.
Lisa: Well then, what about CrazySugarFreakBoy and his goofball Gauntlet vs the Ass-Raping Ninjas? I summons…
Dancer: Er, Lisa? I don’t think this particular approach is working.
Lisa: I know, but if I keep this up I’ll be able to pull in Donar, Enty, G-Eyed, Exy, Troia, Ziles, Finny, Banjoooo, DK, HV, Starseed, nearly every hero in the Parodyverse. Then we’ll beat the crap out of these continuity guys. Er, did I say that out loud?
Inquisitor: Yes.
Magenta St Evil: Your honour, Dancer deliberately missed the combat I’d set up between her and my super-team, thus violating your continuity laws. I demand judgement.
Dancer: Look, I wasn’t about to get into a fight with villains called Manseed, Nappyrash, and the Speculum. I bet you set it up so that I’d want to do a different story instead, didn’t you? This trial is all part of your evil masterplan?
Magenta: Even if it is, it is you on trial here, not me. And when they find you guilty, I have created your replacement. (turns to the court) Behold… the Devildancer!
[Clone of Dancer but with orange dreadlocks and spikey black leather straps and thigh length boots for a costume enters the court]
Devildancer: You want blood. I’ll give you blood.
Lisa: Hmm. I wonder where she gets her outfits?
K-hI: Probability Dancer, you stand charged with ignoring comics conventions and breaking continuity. How do you plead?
[Dancer and Lisa have a hurried conference] Lisa: We demand trial by combat.
Devildancer: Against me? I have all of Dancer’s powers and Magenta St Evil’s comics conventions working for me. I will pulp you into bloody shreds.
Dancer: Okay, we’ll go one on one, but I demand we do it on a tightrope over a volcano, or it doesn’t count.
Devildancer: I can balance as well as you. I will do it.
Magenta St Evil: Goodbye, little Dancer. When you are gone your replacement will serve me and I shall rule the world.
Dancer: Don’t plan on redecorating yet.
Visionary: Are you sure this is a good idea, Dancer?
spiffy: Those spikes look awfully… spikey.
Dancer: That’s what I’m counting on.
{With a flash, Dancer and Devildancer get zapped onto a tightrope over a live volcano for the big showdown]
Devildancer: Now I slash you to ribbons.
Dancer: Oh yuck. Well, whatever you do, Devildancer, don’t look down.
Devildancer (looks down): Heights do not affect me. I am unstoppable. I have comics conventions working on my side. Plots must be resolved by mindless violence, characterisation must be two-dimensional and generic, and women must be sex objects to titillate teenagers.
Dancer: Let’s rock!
[Devildancer leaps forward to combat Dancer, but pops out of her costume because frankly leather straps just don’t hold in place that well when you’re moving and flexing. As she jumps, her thigh-spikes scratch hell out of her legs, and she gashes the side of her head with her wrist-blades].
Devildancer: Aagh! What? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh! [Overbalances and falls into volcano with a splosh and a hiss. Dancer is transported back to courtroom]
Magenta St Evil: You won! But that’s not possible. Comics convention allows, nay demands, women to have biologically impossible costumes, and to use improbable weapons without ripping themselves to shreds!
Dancer: Usually, perhaps. But in getting Devildancer to look down into that volcano way below, I induced in her a sense of Vertigo, which is a far more realistic line of comics altogether *
Lisa: My client has proved her case. I move for dismissal.
Inquisitor: The case is dismissed.
Dancer: Yay! Now we can all go home.
spiffy: Having first gloated at Magenta St Evil some more. Yah! Boo! Loser!
Inquisitor: Dancer, you may go. Now as to the charges against Visionary and the fern-wielder…
Lisa, Vizh, spiffy: Oops.
[Continuity Police be damned. This is the end]
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* Explaining the punchline to the non-comics reader dept: Vertigo is DC comics’ line of for mature readers material, full of credible streetwise characters who don’t wear spandex, and anybody with a stupid costume is going to get the piss taken out of them by John Constantine no end.
ps Thanx to HH for suggesting how to get me out of the corner Id written myself into.