I usually feel like such a hypocrite critiquing diversity and ability to depart from conventional aesthetics in art, I'm well aware my fashion and toy training poisons everything I try and do, but some of the things modern comics put out are so egregious it doesn't even feel like throwing rocks in a glass house. It's like throwing rocks from a house made of those thick blocks of frosted glass. House made of cheap plastic. It's gonna break eventually but I have to throw a lot of rocks first
The funniest part of the absolute universe is forcing artists who have clearly never seen women as people to try and conceive of what it looks like when their superhero waifus weigh more than 30 pounds and actually have muscle mass
Like on the one hand in a just world we would just not release covers that hypersexualize women and don't accurately capture their design. On the other hand it's so funny to see the uncanny valley people born from the bargaining stages of people clearly trying to find workarounds to drawing a real world woman with muscles
"um maybe the big arms can look ok if they go alongside a huge rack/huge ass. I can be forced at gunpoint to give a woman thicker arms but if you ask me to add ANY flesh to their waist I'm gonna blow up this building"
I really genuinely think they need to pull the Frank Cho cover from circulation, between the literal Thin Blue Line graphic he added to removing Babs's cornrows/hair texture/facial features, but it is still funny to see this guy revert back to beginner levels of anatomy and stiff posing
Like I've never found his work particularly dynamic or compelling but you can just tell he was asked not to make her a blow up doll and completely gave up
The funniest part of the absolute universe is forcing artists who have clearly never seen women as people to try and conceive of what it looks like when their superhero waifus weigh more than 30 pounds and actually have muscle mass
Like on the one hand in a just world we would just not release covers that hypersexualize women and don't accurately capture their design. On the other hand it's so funny to see the uncanny valley people born from the bargaining stages of people clearly trying to find workarounds to drawing a real world woman with muscles
"um maybe the big arms can look ok if they go alongside a huge rack/huge ass. I can be forced at gunpoint to give a woman thicker arms but if you ask me to add ANY flesh to their waist I'm gonna blow up this building"
The funniest part of the absolute universe is forcing artists who have clearly never seen women as people to try and conceive of what it looks like when their superhero waifus weigh more than 30 pounds and actually have muscle mass
Like on the one hand in a just world we would just not release covers that hypersexualize women and don't accurately capture their design. On the other hand it's so funny to see the uncanny valley people born from the bargaining stages of people clearly trying to find workarounds to drawing a real world woman with muscles
Reread that one scene in the bank arc where Tattletale bluffs about her powers being psychic and had the vivid image of her using Reigen’s hand mannerisms…
my pitch for aisha joins the wards world that i think could MAYBE THEORETICALLY happen (as opposed to polysiders world in which the sky is green) is brians misogyny & protectiveness of aisha gets the best of him and hes like NO you cant join the undersiders im the leader youll be in danger youre my sister absolutely not etc etc. and aishas obviously like you cant tell me what to do. ill just follow you around. stupid. and then theres like 3 big siblings power fightttt b2b that i think kinda all go nowhere. meanwhile their dad (who was with her when she triggered and presumably knows about her power) is like……securityyyy (prt) my daughter has weird powers. and then like. clockblocker shows up to recruit her (bc sophias sophia and vistas still freaking post leviathan) and aishas like….you know what FINE! ill join the wards! and brians like FINE! and then brian flips to wanting her with the undersiders with maybe some lisa interference but aishas already digging her heels in even though digging her heels in is mostly her sticking around with the wards to fake seriousness and mock them and be nosy. so aisha joins the wards alongside weld and fletchlette and chariot LOL. missy has a super bad first impression i think. theres probs some sort of envy there off rip that aisha is treated less like a kid. but then aishas gets back from patrol like hey check it i got parian to make me a plushie of weld with a stop sign fused to his arm. also lily is so condescending can we trade her for parian you think. and missys like isnt she so annoying. and they first bond over complaining about lily. thats my truth for one of like 3 ways aisha as a ward works i think. has to connect to brian somehow obvs. also
THANK YOU FOR PLAYING TOUYS WITH ME! I can't even fully go against Polysiders Sky Is Green world on these posts because truly Wards Aisha is like a Sky is Aquamarine Teal world. Like it probably technically can happen but if we get Dinah Alcott to run the numbers on it we're into the really small decimal points of a percentage. But I still think it's a fun thought experiment also I'm answering your anon in two parts because I wanna talk about what kind of groundwork you'd have to put out to create a world where Aisha joins the wards here but then on the second ask I also want to talk about Aishas different relationship dynamics with the existing wards.
And also I talked too much read more be upon ye all
So anyway groundwork wise you're definitely super correct about Brian needing to be deeply involved for anything following in the narrative to make sense. The thing about Wards Aisha world is that it's actually not super difficult to make a world where you convince her that the risk/reward of being on the PRT is more beneficial than being against them. What IS super difficult is convincing her and Brian that being separated from each other and on opposing sides is at all a good idea.
Like throwing spaghetti at the wall here but worlds where Aisha thinks the Wards is a better idea than being a villain: She observes how often Brian gets stabbed and hurt while being an Undersider and Clockblocker can convince her that being a Ward is significantly safer - Wards Aisha. Calvert decides he wants Imp on the hero side for whatever reason so he makes sure she's involved in some situation where to keep herself or some other kid safe she has to act violently and then she gets caught in a Sophia situation where she has to align with the PRT or go to jail, then as Coil makes sure the Undersiders can't move to help her - Wards Aisha, albeit not for the long term. Honestly just a world where Aisha is able to have an honest conversation with Piggot could probably tip her over to the Wards side. Piggot mainly just wants to keep capes from consolidating power and being able to use that to oppress civilians, and while Aisha hasn't been on receiving end of that axis of oppression she has been for most other types. The honest pitch of "work with us and make us look good at press events, don't use your powers to take advantage of people, and we'll pay you a yearly salary and give you your own apartment and freedom like we did for Fletchette and it will be safer and a more stable long term situation than anything the supervillains could offer you" could work on Aisha. Not sure Piggot would ever respect Aisha enough to have that honest conversation as opposed to just throwing the typical indoctrination points at her and assuming it would work. But if she did she could convince Aisha to sign on.
The thing is is that in most worlds where Aisha tells Brian "no I actually seriously want to be a Ward over an Undersider" his reaction would be to just go with her. Brian is really bad at figuring out what Aisha is thinking or what she needs most of the time, but the one situation he gets really good at it is when he realizes she's close to running away. In those moments he's usually able to reel himself in and find a compromise so that she doesn't just disappear in the middle of the night. Because the Laborns are not just siblings but they are also friends! They enjoy each other's company even though they also annoy the other more than anyone else on the planet ever! They actively want to hang out and be on the same team together the problem is they just don't want the other one to be hurt or in danger and these two desires conflict with each other.
In order for them to fully separate I think there has to be some kind of extenuating circumstances that are making them hanging out actively bad for them. Ironically this is where Polysiders actually helps because as I have said before, a world where Aisha is asked to join a friend group that is actually a romantic relationship with everyone except her including the only member of her family she trusts is uniquely bad and terrible for Aisha Laborn and her specific mental health and wellness. And then presumably because the sky is green in this world the polyamorous relationship Brian is in is actually serving him and a good thing for his mental health so leaving it for his sister would be bad. So here the Laborn siblings would need to be separated for their own personal growth. Other worlds where this could happen? Not sure. I think your suggestion of Brian just getting super overprotective, maybe Aisha got genuinely super hurt early into her first outings as an Undersider, and refusing to let Aisha out of the house if she's not wrapped in seventeen layers of bubble wrap could get bad enough they need to be given Tattletale mandated time apart.
You can also use your power as the mad god in charge of the rules of whatever AU you build to write in one millions coincidences that prevent Aisha or Brian from ever being given enough information to fully figure out the other one is on the opposing team until it's too late and they're trying to covertly squabble about what the other one is doing without anyone else at the bank heist noticing they aren't really fighting. Realistic no, but funny yes. In order to make my own Wards Aisha world make sense, beyond writing it as a comic story forced by imaginary figure heads that want her to be on a team with Vista, I also imagine they just tweak her backstory to put her in the right place at the right time to get recruited. If Aisha has a slightly more stable living situation, her mom is a little bit more of an active parent or she's able to find actually a halfway ish competent foster placement in Brockton Bay, I think there could be a world where Brian is still determined to get her out but Aisha is actively opposed to him sacrificing parts of his life for it. Like he says "I'm going to drop out of in person school and enroll online so I can get a salary job to support us" and Aisha tells him to "absolutely do not do that mom has been fine this month"
So then in that world Brian is putting in an active effort to hide his Undersider isms from Aisha who would be against it (but also still doing it because Brian is also motivated by a desire for his own freedom and independence this is an important Brian Laborn fact) and when Aisha has a trigger event (pre endbringer attack because imaginary comics authority wants a longer loft era run) she doesn't tell him at risk of triggering his overprotective streak again. And then just relying on Aisha having interesting enough adventures with Vista, Sophia, and The Guys that the audience doesn't care that Brian is a statistical height anomaly and Aisha should immediately be realizing that the 6'8 shadow villain is her brother
Anyway I have no idea if this even answers your ask I hope I was able to engage with the ideas you suggested and not just info dump my own I just got very excited about talking about Wards Aisha. I quite like the reverse Taylor situation you put her in of "well maybe I just join the wards to gather information. Oh wait I'm kind of friends with them now. Oops" your Aisha Wards dynamics are good and they need to let me out of work so I can answer the second half of your ask
fun thoughts! made me think what could get Aisha to join the Wards myself. the big hurdle seems to be getting Aisha and Brian on separate sides, so using some ideas you mentioned...
i like to keep powers and trigger events generally the same for AU stuff like this, so in this hypothetical world where Aisha triggers before Leviathan but after Brian joins the Undersiders, she still gets surrounded and nearly attacked because Brockton Bay just isn't a great city to be in. before this, she could have noticed Brian moving slower and correctly figures out he got injured as a cape, so that's weighing on her mind in lieu of all the stress of living in a city post-Endbringer attack
she tells Brian she has powers like in canon, but because Brian recently got injured himself he's not eager for her to join the team and things ramping up for the Undersiders only enforces that line of thought. tensions are rising between the two so Lisa steps in with a plan supported by the boss-- have Aisha join the Wards to act as a spy like Coil does with Chariot in canon. go full in on the reverse Taylor as mentioned above. to convince Brian, Lisa says it'll be safer for Aisha and she can provide them with more information on how and when the heroes operate. to convince Aisha, Lisa says it'll be safer for Brian by telling her it was a hero who injured her brother, so as a hero she can keep her teammates from going overboard. she could also free the Undersiders if the heroes capture them or if it's a rival gang targeting them then Aisha can be a direct line for hero backup. Coil can also use the lure of having the Undersiders and Wards conveniently stumble into situations where there is an E88 presence forcing the two to work together and get rid of a common enemy. it works out for him because it's more opposing forces off the board and a spy inside the PRT, and it works for Aisha and Brian because it gets rid of E88 resources while giving them situations where they can work together
and i understand the separation is a big deal for them and i agree, but there was some degree of Aisha wanting her own space from Brian in canon, complaining how he can be overbearing and the 'dad' of the team and wanting her own territory. with Coil's plan, there's opportunities for them to work together as capes and because the heroes don't know about her connection to Grue, she can still hang out with her brother as civilians. their relationship might turn out better because the PRT will be required to deal with Aisha's home life rather than Brian and an overworked social worker, so there's less stress there. even if the PRT aren't doing a good job with finding a home, she can go hang out at Brian's place, the loft, the Wards base, the Protectorate base, back to her parents if absolutely necessary. it'll gives her options outside of making it on her own, so Brian doesn't have to worry as much with her running away
then as time goes on and Aisha makes friends with Sophia and Vista and the others, there can be a fun dynamic of Aisha working to get Sophia to chill out with regards to Grue and then Grue sucker punches Vista. this actually helps Sophia relax more towards Grue because i think she would find it funny. Vista then takes over the rivalry in Sophia's place, partially fueled by hearing some of the prior conversations between Sophia and Aisha, which leads to Aisha distracting her to buy Brian time to escape the loop-de-looping city Vista has made to trap him. i think Lily could bond with Aisha over sibling and PRT stuff if she's sent over to Brockton Bay. one of the things Lily wanted from the PRT was an investigation into her estranged sister's death and never got it, which i think would really resonate with Aisha. Lily could also help her deal with unsatisfactory PRT homes because she kept bouncing between them herself. there's Kid Win Chris and Weld if you want to draw parallels with their disability accommodations, maybe some strife if Aisha steals his tinker tech for the Undersiders but that may be too risky for her to try with cameras and trackers in the tech. i don't see much going on with Dennis or Dean tbh, unless you want to do a Cauldron plot by having Aisha pick up on Dean lying about his trigger event, but there would have to be a reason for him to talk about it (maybe trying to close the distance with a new teammate by opening up about himself?). Browbeat could go the opposite direction of Sophia in that he's scared of the Undersiders because them beating him was the reason he stopped trying to be a solo hero and joined the Wards
i don't know about any interactions with the Protectorate members. could be more antagonistic conpared to the Wards if they want to move her to another city. could be a thing of Las Vegas wanting other cities' Stranger capes, offering favors in exchange for her to the department in general or to Armsmaster personally because his career is stagnating
Oooo I love this a lot!!!!!!!!!!! I feel like getting Lisa and Coil/Calvert on the planning side of things helps a lot in making the situation that much more believable.
My Wards Aisha Relationship Chart Below
I also think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to Aisha and her relationship to the Wards. She and Sophia begrudgingly get along due to being the only two people who Get It, she and Vista are at each other's throats because Vista takes things seriously and Aisha laughs out loud when Brian punches her in the face.
I also think you are so so right about Aisha and Lily. I think they actually get along significantly better than in canon with them both on the Wards actually. It's really hard for main canon Lily to have any discussions about morality or the failings of the PRT with any of the Undersiders because she has so much built up resentment towards them for the part they played in her life falling apart. Like I think she logically knows it's not their fault that Echidna exposed Cauldron and the PRT fell apart, and Parian chose to dabble in villainy, but I think that logical awareness just makes her more pissed off about how much she feels like it's their fault. Main canon Aisha can point out how the PRT never did much to help when she spent her childhood harassed by the Empire but Lily is coming from such a defensive position that I don't think she'd be able to even really listen and process what Aisha is saying. She'd probably go straight into some canned propaganda line about how the PRT could focus more on that problem without people like the Undersiders forcing them to spread their resources out. Which naturally shuts the entire conversation down. But when Aisha is coming to Lily as a fellow Ward, Lily would be much less defensive and be able to just genuinely empathize with Aisha and her concerns about the PRT.
Like you mentioned Lily also has her own Aisha like backstory and I feel like Aisha might be able to bring out the side of her that thinks "yea I'm not really personally bothered by it any more because I like my life but it is kind of crazy I was only given all these resources and able to help my situation when they realized I could hurt endbringers. Like yea I'm over it now but when I look at you and Vista and realize how young you are I realize how bad it is for adults to give me all the privileges in the world just to make sure I'm more likely to be interested in volunteering to fight Godzilla." (<-girls who are not over it voice) And this is a very fun situation to put Lilys in I think.
I'm so glad you mentioned Browbeat because he and CarlosAegis are the ones I have the least amount of knowledge and guesses of. They appear in so few chapters and I need to reread them to get a sense of the dynamic but I really like where you are going with Browbeat being a little bit scared of her because of her getting along with the Undersiders.
I think Dean and Aisha is just a comedy show waiting to happen. Deans emotion powers give him all the advantages Lisa and Alec have of being able to understand Aisha in ways nobody else can but Dean shrimply does not have the life experience needed to make sense of the data he is getting from his powers. He seems like he makes an effort to reach out to the more outcast Wards (tries to be friendly with Amy, Im pretty sure in Vistas interlude she is trying to be nice to Sophia because she's trying to emulate Dean in addition to what the therapist said) and Dean was also nice to Vista and tried to be a helpful mentor figure for her. All to say I think Dean is actively trying to be friends/mentor to Aisha and so frequently he is putting his foot in his mouth trying to give her generic therapy speak advice about Your Emotions Are Valid and getting confused when he can visibly tell he is making it worse. If he lives in this world he's also the one most likely to catch on to Aisha's real alliances but I'm not sure he would actually turn her in to the PRT. He'd probably tell Clockblocker and Aegis, maybe Vic if he thought she'd be chill, and that could lead to fun dynamics as well.
I think that Aisha and Dennis Clockblocker actually get along super well. Dennis is willing to break rules and question authority and also make stupid jokes in basically every situation so I think Aisha actually enjoys working with him and thinks he's cool. Clockblocker is interesting because in a world where Carlos and Dean live I think he's mostly just Chill Guy who's fun to patrol with for Aisha, but without those two he becomes a bit more involved. Dennis is interesting because I've always viewed him as someone who never wanted the leadership or responsibility of running the Wards (I think this is textual but I haven't reread anything in a minute). He's used to following Triumph, and after his graduation it seemed like Dennis's plan was to follow Aegis or Dean until he graduated to full PRT and had a new team leader. When they both die badly during Leviathan he gets Weld and Lily in the exchange student program but aside from the fact they (and also Sophia) eventually ditch as well, they're still newcomers and Clockblocker post timeskip/how we see him through Vista seems to have taken a personal responsibility into looking out for Kid Win and Vista as the last trio of the OG ENE Wards when everything went to shit. It would be interesting to stick Aisha into the middle of that dynamic because Aisha textually hates men getting overprotective of her but Dennis is one of the few people I think who could be chill enough about it for it to be ok. In a way I think he's kind of similar with Kid Win and Vista as Aisha ends up with the Heartbroken. A sort of "I'm not your dad and I can't tell you what to do but PLEASE do not get yourself killed I will literally have a second trigger event"
Chris Win is I think probably the most straightforwardly just friends with Aisha. I always do my own little spin on them in that I tend to imagine my Aisha focused AUs as loving parodies of specifically the teen drama superhero stories (Young Justice TV, first season Invincible, Gen V, Teen Titans) in which part of appealing to the younger audience is dialing up the interpersonal relationship drama over detective intrigue or complicated fight scenes (if I ever wrote an Aisha timeskip fic I'd do this tone on purpose to give Aisha's narration its own flavor separate from Taylor and Victoria) so part of me wants to learn on the ambiguity about Aishas time skip relationship and say that Vista AND Kid Win had a crush on her. And also I think that Kid Win is very Kid Flash coded and giving him the "AUGH I can't believe I had a crush on a devious trickster. She must be using mind control on me" arc after Aisha goes back to the Undersiders all while Aisha is just standing there like "hey. I absolutely did not". Kid Flash did this to Raven (and she did mind control him but disregard that) and I think it would be funny if Chris Win did this too.
Also re: your tags I definitely agree. I don't think Aisha would ever be on the Wards long term, especially if things go to hell in Brockton Bay like they do in canon. She'd be back on team Undersiders the second Brian decides he feels like joining Taylor in fighting the Slaughterhouse 9, and even if Lisa and Coil can convince her not to, the second Coil is gone Aisha is officially ditching and probably bringing Lily with her. But I also think that's fun because in this world we might actually get to focus on the leftover Wards reactions to being ditched by Lily AND Aisha and how their dynamic with the Undersiders changes as a result. If they all decided fuck it Wards and Undersiders is in costume business we're all gonna hang out as civilians anyway, I don't think the PRT would be able to stop them at that point. And all the complicated Side Switching happening in Brockton Bay would also make it way more complicated when Taylor says I TOO WOULD LIKE TO SWITCH. Or pre Coils death if Aisha has any feelings about that time Taylor almost kills Triumph and really upsets her kind-of friends. In general Wards Aisha is probably way less sympathetic to Taylor which changes her dynamic with the Undersiders too.
follow up to my last ask: aisha joining the wards in basically any scenario is kind of the equivalent of those kids who join JROTC to get the physical education credit while mocking everything constantly. i knew like four of them in high school and none of them are aisha at all but like. spiritually kinda similar. like wards aisha keeps popcorn on her belt for when shes patrolling and takes it out to mock sophia or lily like. half of the patrols they do together
YAY WARDS AISHA WORLD PART TWO
Thinking about how Aisha interacts with the PRT and other Wards members edition
Ok so I actually think that in general as a Ward Aisha isn't trying to push buttons and test boundaries with her jokes as much as she does in the Undersiders. Her jokes are usually multi purpose, she enjoys rage baiting people but she's also testing limits to establish what's safe and who has a chance of snapping and hurting her. There's a horseshoe style graph of Aisha jokes where she makes them most with people she either feels very safe with (Vasils, Lisas, Rachels, Taylor at the very end) or people she doesn't trust at all and is subconsciously trying to boundary test (PRT, Coil, Cherie). So I think that while Aisha is super annoying to the Clockblockers and Sophias of the team, on either end of the horseshoe spectrum, people like Piggot or other adult staff might see her at her most serious as she's very aware of where the boundaries are and the consequences for overstepping them. I've seen people (well one person. Not a lot of Wards Aisha discussions around) suggest that Aisha would likely be similar to Clockblocker in specifically building an image to fuck with her team and try and stretch the limits on what the PRT finds acceptable. I actually think Aisha, depending on the circumstances of how she became a Ward, would be more cautious of the PRT than CB and assume she wouldn't get the same leeway thus playing nice with her image team when they tell her she can't be named Imp because Imp is taken.
I think when it comes to how Aisha interacts with the other wards (this is my favorite part of putting her on the wards team) there's an interesting tension created in the fact that she has a lot in common with most of them and would probably get along well BUT she's not indoctrinated in the same child soldier propaganda and couldn't be. Like I think Aisha really likes the Wards and wants to be friends but also resents/looks down on them for not noticing how bad the PRT sucks or the giant Sword of Damocles they all have over their heads at all times.
Excepting of course for Sophia who I think is Aisha's most interesting potential friend/frenemy on the team. Because Sophia's the only other person there who knows how this works "Do what the PRT wants or else they'll find a way to put you in forever jail until they need you for a crisis" But Sophia is also so ideologically opposed to everything Aisha believes. Aisha wants to be kind to others to break the cycle of cruelty she lived through, Sophia wants to make the cycle of cruelty a competition that she can win. So trapping them together is a real unstoppable force vs immovable object situation. Sophia hates that Aisha lets herself look weak but can't actually bully the kindness out of her. And Aisha hates that Sophia is such an asshole but can't fully hate her because she's too empathetic to the situation Sophia's coming from (aka the exact same background as Aisha did). But also because it's the Wards and everyone else is so deep into the propaganda they can hate interacting with each other as much as they want but it's still the least annoying patrol partnership either of them have. Truly I genuinely believe that with time Aisha Laborn could save/fix Sophia. I think Sophia would start to get attached to her against her will over their patrols. Probably just in time for the inevitable Timer Until Aisha Joins The Undersider runs out and Sophia ends up betrayed.
I think with the other non Sophia Wards Aisha would be a weird floater between the older kids and the younger ones. Characters like Clockblocker and Lily are more willing to engage with questions about morality or acknowledge some of the shortcomings of the PRT than Kid Win and Vista, but also they still probably see Aisha as more of a mentee/child than they do as a peer whose autonomy they're good at respecting. Like Aisha is still getting shooed away or having her eyes covered when Glory Girl and Gallant are kissing and Clockblocker wants to make a joke about shielding the innocent children's eyes. It's something that drives Aisha and Vista both crazy and does endear them to each other but when Vista tries to convince Aisha that running power classification flash cards with her is actually a super important part of being a Good Hero and Good Person Aisha is using her power to walk away immediately. Kid Win is more laid back about that, and also has ADHD as a relatability point for Aisha so they'd probably get along decently well. But he also seems like he looks up to Armsmaster, and I can't imagine Aisha thinking anyone who thinks Armsmaster is cool is a genuine candidate for a long term friendship.
But also idk because I think what's quite fun about Aisha on the Wards team is that it could unfold in a lot of different directions and interesting ways. With the right villains of the week at the right time Aisha could completely give up on Sophia and latch on to Kid Win as her best friend instead. Maybe she overhears Gallant talking to Panacea and decides to investigate that drama as a side quest and ends up entangled in the Dallon Pelham torment nexus of doom and despair. I think there are just so many interesting character dynamics that open up for her and I'm determined to think about them until the end of time.
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