i hate to say it (like genuinely actually hate to say it), but i think it's time for a new blog. i set this one up way back in winter of 2023—and it's starting to feel that way, too. ghost followers and deactivated blogs up the wazoo. clutter the likes of which the A&E network would love to film a tv show about. i come on here to write and just feel so [vague sense of impending doom] that i can't focus on a damn thing. overwhelmed by my own chaos yk
the new blog will largely focus on existing dynamics that i have—and new ones will be established with thought and intent. my shortcoming as a writer on here has always been that i bite off more than i can chew. i get so excited by the thought of potential interactions that i stretch myself too thin to properly enjoy or build on existing interactions. you get it. i want to write with everyone and end up writing with no one
shoutout to anyone who's been here since day one. you guys witnessed the rise and the fall of linament dot tumblr dot com
[ unnamed contact ] : That depends.
[ unnamed contact ] : Would you say we still have something to fight about? [ DELETED MESSAGE ]
[ unnamed contact ] : Would you say we have something to fight about?
fanon interpretation is so bust. except specifically this one single piece of artwork (credit @strongazzgamer)
rage-baiter to the bitter end. guy who believes in superhero superiority vs. guy who is proving him wrong but who, even while winning his war, is still being ridiculed. who cannot escape the reminders of his own powerlessness. whose humanity (that he is trying sooo hard to shed) is forced upon him by the use of his civilian name. he's in control!!! and the super at his mercy, still convinced of his own supremacy (even at the verge of certain death), refuses to acknowledge it. jack signing off like ✌️ even in death i am better than you. you can kill me, but you'll never be me xx
i know syndrome was punching and kicking the air!!!!! and mirage had to hear all about it every night for a week. definition of beating a literal dead horse (if the horse laughed at you as it died and refused to acknowledge you as its owner. even while being choked by the reins)
n e way. the fact that jack would recognize syndrome as being buddy pine is a delectable concept to me bc like. he and mr. incredible were canonically friends during the glory days. they worked together, or at least spent time together outside of hero work. rest assured that mr. incredible ranted and raved about the annoying superfan who hung around his heels like a yappy dog. you think these ego-boosted hero figures didn't sit around complaining about the people in their vicinity? the people they were responsible for but ultimately, at times, annoyed by? please. i know in my soul that the antics of buddy pine were a frequent topic of discussion and ridicule at the after-work bar meets xx
THE PRAISE OF ANTIHEROES: A SIGN OF SOCIETY IN DESPAIR? ENTER: GAMMA JACK—a superhero at the head of an adoring fanclub, whose dubious morals and lethal abilities have landed him on a government watchlist. a walking, talking atom bomb with an ego big enough to match his status. professional womanizer and recreational rage-baiter.
DOSSIER [ BELOW ]. HISTORY. DEVELOPMENT. VERSES.
NOTE. ok i’ll say it: media literacy is dead when it comes to gamma jack. i’ve seen a lot of bad-faith interpretations of this character in fanon. i’ve also seen incredible woobification. this is not a fanon-compliant interpretation in either direction. i’m not portraying jack as a would-be h*melander, nor as superhero baby boy jesus christ himself. this is going to be a nuanced take based on my own interpretation of what little lore is available. gamma jack is a troubled hero who was put on a pedestal and conditioned into godhood; exploited by his government so that he, in turn, would not exploit them; and whose morality exists on the spectrum of good and bad—not innocent and evil. also hi you know me. i like taking the piss out of blond white dudes and holding their flaws under a microscope xx
NAME. JONATHAN ALBERHASKY.
NICKNAMES. JACK, HASKY. never john.
ALIAS. GAMMA JACK. formerly known as handsome jack.
AGE. early-to-late 20s (arc i); 30+ (arc ii); dead by 39.
STATUS. deceased. killed in combat by the omnidroid v.6.
note. what name or nickname your muse calls him by is situationally dependent. in a civilian context, strangers call him jonathan and friends call him jack or hasky. in arc ii, he almost exclusively goes by jack. in a professional context, he is typically referred to as gamma jack—though many people still remember him as handsome jack, and some use it as a derogatory nickname.
OCCUPATION. superhero (arc i); bounces around middle- to upper-management positions in various fields, never keeping any one job for long (arc ii).
SEXUALITY. closeted bisexual. famous womanizer; secret maneater.
RELATIONSHIP STATUS. officially? single. unofficially? chronic situationship haver. committed to commitment issues.
CHILDREN. none; sterile due to radiation.
[ NSA RECORDING OF GAMMA JACK, c.1946. ] yeah, i fought my fair share of villains, and they all have their own unique challenges. you know, they got their monkeys, and their giant laser robots, and their super aquatic ninjas. but i tell ya, once in a while, the real kicker is i get these dames, man. these dame villains. [ ... ]
ACCENT. none naturally. puts on a curious northeastern / boston elite accent while masquerading as gamma jack. ( think jfk. )
HAIR. gold-blond, loose waves. mid-length and well-maintained.
FACIAL HAIR. clean shaven (arc i); stubble (arc ii).
EYES. unnatural, highly-saturated green. emit a faint glow around the irises. in his civilian life, he wears specialized brown contacts to preserve his secret identity.
HEIGHT & BUILD. 6'1" / 185cm. obsessively maintains a lean, fit physique. visible muscle definition.
[ ... ] they got the curves, and the hair, and the big eyes, and boy! those ones, uh, they're really hard to kill. especially the ones where they come up and they're looking at you, and you're looking at them, and you feel that simpatico, you know? like, uh, she's diggin' you and you're diggin' her diggin' you—and, boy, you gotta take a jog around the block real quick and sorta get your concentration back. compose yourself, 'cuz you know, you can't get distracted by these sort of thoughts when you're going up against a super villain. [ ... ]
MENTAL. high intellect and narcissistic tendencies.
known for his stage-presence, crowd work, and PR skills.
uses flirtation as a manipulation tactic.
loves a bit of fun, especially at the height of his career—during which he is young and prone to immaturity.
tends toward provocation. he's going to say whatever he needs to say to get a rise out of someone. professional rage-baiter</3
MORALITY. grey. a quintessential antihero whose ego and cynicism erode his morality. he believes in saving people, yes—but because supers are intrinsically "better than" humans and thus have an obligation to defend their weaker counterparts. it's a textbook case of saviourism. he also does not hesitate to kill, as he believes it to be an unavoidable byproduct of the job. an inevitable outcome that he neither laments nor enjoys.
[ ... ] that's one of the hard parts of the job, you know? when you come across, uh, a dame's who's really something to look at, and you just gotta let her have it—she's got to go—cuz she’s a villain. yeah, those are the bad days. [ END RECORDING. ]
STORYLINE
ARC I. man, myth, and legend. in the glory days of heroism, supers are venerated as gods on earth. statues are erected in their image; films produced to immortalize their stories; and events held to praise their achievements. gamma jack is a favourite even amongst the favoured, worshipped by a legion of fans who are enamoured with his easy charisma and good looks. behind the public facade, however, jack is not the golden boy he presents to be. he is infamous for his womanizing, questionable ethics, and willingness to kill—or rather, his inability not to. in a post-war world that has come to fear the atom bomb, jack is considered as both a potential threat in need of monitoring and a governmental boon ripe for exploiting. young, vain, and deified to the point of self-delusion, jack is a super who fails at every turn to live up to the ideals of moral perfectionism that have been forced upon him by both private and public institutions.
ARC II. deprive him of his worship and even a god will die. following the super-ban enacted by the united states government, jack is forced into early retirement. in order to isolate him and dissuade any attempts of joint rebellion, he is relocated far away from his former friends and colleagues. jack does not adapt well to civilian life, and lives under the omniscient eye of the NSA. he acts out and gets himself fired from every job he is assigned to, forcing the NSA to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to relocate him and clean up his messes. still, he does not use his powers to harm others—and he does not don the mantle of america's newest super villain, as the government has always feared he one day might. ironically, it is only under the oppressive thumb of this post-super society that he is able to prove that he really is just that: super and not villain.
DEATH. as part of syndrome's systematic culling of superhumans, jack is lured onto nomanisan island—and let's be honest: it doesn't take much. a beautiful woman and an appeal to his starving ego and he's on a plane, ready and willing to enact even a sliver of his glory days. jack is able to destroy the omnidroid v.5 before being killed by its successor, v.6, which was engineered to counter jack's specific powers. rip gamma jack you got syndromed
ABILITIES.
jack is a walking nuke. a bomb in a cape. a weapon of mass-destruction dressed up in spandex. his powers are radiation based and fatal by nature. he is a deadly opponent and infamously known to kill those he goes up against—if not during immediate combat, then days, months, or years later, depending on the dose of radiation dealt and the sickness it reaps.
RADIATION BURST. the ability to create controlled bursts of radiation, the effects ranging from burns to complete disintegration within microseconds. detonation can also flatten trees, buildings, and other structures.
SUSTAINED RADIATION EMISSION. when jack is not actively suppressing his radiation output, his cells undergo nuclear decay and release gamma emissions that cause significant biological damage to anything within his immediate radius.
RADIOKINETIC FLIGHT. the ability to levitate and fly. while doing so, jack emits waves of gamma radiation that cause nausea and illness in those within close proximity.
TECHNOLOGY DEGRADATION. exposure to intense radiation causes detrimental failure in high-tech equipment, impairing its effectiveness and/or rendering it obsolete.
PRIVILEGE. no, i'm not kidding. i'm so serious. not an ability as such, but a power nonetheless. only a generically attractive white guy could pull the shit jack pulls and get away with it. his privilege is protection.
WEAKNESSES.
correction: jack is a walking glass canon. high offensive power, low defensive capability. powerful and fragile.
RANGE. beyond a radius of 100m, the strength of his power diminishes sharply.
DURABILITY, OR LACK THEREOF. even when in peak physical condition, jack is not any more robust or resilient than an average man. he is stronger than any human, but not as strong as an athletically-inclined super.
tldr; mirage has an unsuspicious Official bank account bc she’s into crypto and probably owns a monkey jpeg
mirage is wealthy. she makes a commission rate off of every arms deal she helps facilitate, and all of her business expenses are paid for. in addition to this, she receives a bonus for every superhero she lures to nomanisan island. despite her income, though, her bank account is modest and mundane. this is bc she receives her salary through crypto wallets that are unaffiliated with any of her or syndrome’s publicly-known aliases. sometimes she transfers small amounts into this account in order to make purchases that she doesn’t want to be traceable through the blockchain –– or, that she doesn’t want syndrome to see. she has a second bank account in her home country; it’s set up under her legal name, which has been systematically scrubbed from existence over her years of espionage. mirage never spends from this account. she only adds to it. consider it a nest egg –– the funds she’ll have to live off when her career and criminal dealings inevitably catch up to her and she has to disappear. / @ladyintree
audhd is so funny. got me playing cyberpunk on the tv and watching the strangers on my laptop. sometimes i take a break to open pinterest on my phone and scroll through my pokémon board
i want our muses and their stories to be so intertwined that i get to bring them up in threads 🤨. i want our dynamics to be integral to The Plot of my muses’ overarching narratives 🤨. ykwim
Eris had to hand it to him... He was the first to attempt to look into her past, and he actually vocally expressed the lack of proper findings. For that, she was pleased. It made her grin a little after blowing the cigarette smoke away. She figured it would be the last drag for another couple of hours. Fair enough, she's impeded on him a little too much at this point.
His burning questions didn't bother her, nor did the fact that he tried finding any and all information he could. Again, Eris was impressed, and it earned him a gorgeous gold star sticker compared to the many she already knew.
But for someone who claimed to know little, he sure knew how to ask just the right questions.
"I'm afraid I don't know you that well to start droning on about my past, Muamar." She said with some playfulness, but there was an underlying truth to it, too. Sure, everyone left a trail. Eris knew this well. But her trail wasn't burned by her own doing. It was burned for her. By whom? Not even she knew. Nor did she really understand why. "At any rate, such details are really unimportant. Even IF biz like this comes with a good and proper background check."
A breath through her nose, expression still neutral enough to not give away anything but amusement. It would have been really entertaining if he knew her government name. Now that would have either earned him a gun under the jaw, or a pat on the back and a clever way of convincing him they were contract-bound at that point. An alternate reality that Eris was playing with too much in her head.
"Mhm. Suits me, don't you think?" Indeed. Many in the Black Market trade would agree. She didn't boast with ego, but only sarcasm.
Eris truly didn't know what Muamar expected in terms of her answer to his inquisitiveness. He'd never get the answer he wanted, not from her. "Curious..." Then, to top off her already aching attitude, Eris revealed her own cigarette case. Showing she not only had a supply of her own, but took pleasure in smoking half of the one he lit before. "You are the first person to ever press me about this sort of thing." Careful hands prepared her cancer stick, lips firm as she lit it with a few flicks of her lighter.
"Never heard of you being so curious about your other associates. I assure you... I'm not different. I'll do what needs doing. If I wanted to exploit you, or anything you do, I would have done it already."
' no kidding. ' said, half to himself, in regards to who knows what. maybe about the accuracy of her name: one-part goddess and two-parts primordial chaos, all wrapped up in a realskinn suit. or maybe about the case in her hand: a revelation that he’s been duped! he scoffs, feigning exasperation.
' oh yeah? you guys talk—you and my 'other associates'? shit. flip me an invite to the grouptext. ' a joke planted over a seed of truth: he doesn’t have to be curious about people he already knows everything about. muamar isn’t one to reread books. repetition is a trap; a monotonous road to nowhere.
what makes eris so interesting is that she’s a dead-fucking-end. a destination with no origin. and there’s nothing more tantalizing than the desire to know the unknowable.
he flicks the butt of his cigarette onto the pavement and crushes it with the heel of his shoe. so much for not littering—not that cigarettes really count as trash. once enough people walk over them, they become part of the ground.
' relax. you already got the job. this ain't professional; it's personal. i like details. ' he likes the detailing on paint jobs. likes the kind of interior decorating details that make a house a home. likes learning details—and divulging them, too. when it suits him. ' no such thing as unimportant. every secret counts. '
in their line of work, knowledge is practically currency. the richest gonks around were the ones with a piggy bank full of minted secrets.
he snags the cigarette from her lips before she has the chance to inhale to her fullest. holds it, vertical and smouldering in the direction of the night sky, between them. he grins; the embers reflect oddly against the whites of his teeth. ( you know what they say about vengeance: it’s a dish best served freshly lit! )
' —show you some of mine if you show me some of yours. '
wayside, delta: doubt they'll notice if we never show up.
“ speak for yourself. ” stated somewhat smugly, she doesn't spare a glance, focused instead on the application of her eyeliner. the compact mirror she uses is cracked along the middle, and she has to press her face close against the glass. “ haven’t you heard? I’ve been making quite the breakthrough. ” a perfect line is applied, no smudges, no wobbles, and she smiles dangerously at her reflection. licks her teeth. look at our effy elizabeth. a functioning member of society! @linament
haven't you heard— ' huh? ' maybe he's joking, maybe he's not. his placid, say-cheese smile isn't a reliable litmus test. ' oh... ' he stands off to one side to avoid getting sucked into the compact mirror and becoming a kaleidoscopic burnout. a single reflection in two parts: connie and delta / elizabeth and effy. ' yeah, they say that. ' he flips through a pamphlet: parenting with narcolepsy. the cover features a poorly posed photo of a woman slumped over a kitchen table and a baby, red and wailing and brandishing a plastic spoon, on the floor beneath her chair. delta brings the paper to his face, sniffs it experimentally, and shrugs. ' you know what else they say? that your eyeliner's always crooked. told me so. yeah. when you weren't in the room. '
can i talk ab my natives? i’m gonna talk ab my natives. specifically about how their hair is representative of their respective narratives
delta’s hair is cut for him. it’s long, but it’s choppy and uneven. the band’s manager curates his image to better reflect the band—not delta himself. it’s representative of the literal and cultural white-washing he undergoes at the hands of mid-riff management. they’re painting his face white and forcing him to cut his hair. delta was, in part, a diversity hire. and now that they’ve got him, that diversity isn’t just not being respected—it’s actively being disrespected. they’re taking scissors to it!!! he’s being further disenfranchised from an identity that he already struggles with and there’s not a thing he can do about it. delta has no agency
klaus, on the other hand, does have agency. he also has a horribly shaggy haircut, but he’s doing it to himself. he cuts his own hair. he’s stripping himself of his identity. it’s representative of the fact that he feels so disconnected from his roots that he doesn’t even identify with them at all. it’s an act of self-mutilation; he’s disenfranchising himself from his community. ironically, however, the compulsive hair cutting started after the death of his sister. it is a mourning ritual and deeply reflective of his cultural roots—whether he acknowledges it as such or not
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
