The neglected secondborn daughter of Lord-Captain Dominica Baltazar, Camina grew up used to the finer things in life. All the luxuries of wealth and power with none of the responsibilites. Then, within a year of each other, her mother was kidnapped by Drukhari and her older brother Gideon was lost on the far side of the Cicatrix Maledictum that had suddenly torn the galaxy, and the Baltazar protectorate of the Lion's Head Nebula, in half. The realm she inherited is plagued by rebellions and on the verge of collapse. And now there's also Hive Fleet Leviathan.
Camina is by no means stupid, but her mother hadn't bothered to teach her... anything really. She is a fervent reader and well-versed in the history and culture of the Imperium, but barely knows how to fire a lasgun, let alone fight a war on two fronts.
ADRIC VAN VALL, Seneschal to the Rogue Trader
Guilliaume Van Vall was the glue that kept the Baltazar realm together during the sudden disappearance of two Lord-Captains. His son Adric never wanted to take his place and Guilliaume never forced him to. Adric instead chose to become a field medic and his father used his connections with the realm's well-to-do to have his son trained with the sisters Hospitaller of the shrine world of Saint's Manger, one of only a handful of men in the history of the Adepta Sororitas to have the honour. When he dragged his father's mutitlated corpse out from under a dead screamer-killer, he know the worst had come. His father never found a successor. It went to him.
Adric's time with the sisters taught him pious devotion to the Emperor, but it also taught him mercy and compassion. To the rest of the Imperium, weakness.
F-11D SEGALA, Magos Biologis
Segala began her training under one magos Varnak. When Varnak died, Segala devoted her life to the study and eradication of the thing that killed him: Tyranids. Her hunger to learn about them grew very literal, and she secretly implanted herself with an illegally acquired omophagea, the organ that allowed Space Marines to gather information from the flesh of creatures they ate. When they learned what she had done, the upper ranks of the mechanicum banished her from Mars.
She has been hiding in the Baltazar realm ever since, slowly gathering dirt on Mars's upper eschelons so that she may extort her way back to the red planet.
Iron Ravens third captain LARISSA MORROW
The Imperial Truth states that women are incapable of becoming Space Marines. Morrow is a living violation of that Truth. She would have been shot through the head as soon as she was unthawed on the Zar Quaesitor, were it not for captain Farren of the nascent Iron Ravens chapter taking her in as his lieutenant. When he was entombed in a dreadnought, Morrow took his place as captain. She is a skilled and competent leader, known for being able to pull victory together from whatever table scraps her fractured and disorganized chapter could muster.
When one lives as a fact that contradicts The Truth, it breeds a certain baseline level of hatred. Morrow has adapted, but a century of humiliation by imperials of all ranks wears down the spirit.
Adric is always battle-shocked, Morrow always passes battle-shock tests because she has not felt anything in decades, while both Segala and Helena always pass battle-shock tests via bugs bunny cartoon logic
Pissing off the yankees by saying space travel is a russian invention then turning around and pissing off the russians by saying america won the space race by generally being the first to do it *well*
And if I said Megamind through its three subversions of Superman shows a deeper understanding that the point of Superman is that he was loved and taught to love by good, present parents, and because of that he is able to return that love to a world even if it doesn't always accept it, and he is not corrupted by his power, than many other films either subverting or playing the superman story straight.
Megamind has three Superman subversions. One is obviously Megamind himself. He was not raised loved by the world, but rather was loved by those hated by the world. Because he was still raised with love, he does care about other people, hence his character development. But because he didn't receive wider love growing up, his own is misplaced at first.
Metro Man was not loved growing up in a way that mattered. His adopted father was clearly very absent, and while we don't know much about his family, their relationship seems superficial. Because of this, his sense of duty to the world is also superficial, hence his boredom.
Hal wasn't raised with power. He gained it and was shown how to use it by a 'space dad' who only taught him power and not love. Hence, he sees it only as a grasping means to an end.
All three of these subversions, in their negative space, create the silhouette of the superhero that they are parodying. That silhouette is of a space child that came to earth and was cared for very deeply by the world, and taught love through his experience of love, and because of that holds fast to his duty to the world. Which is Superman.
Look y'all, this reveal means so much to me. So many times in movies these days there are big reveals for the audience’s benefit that mean absolutely nothing in the context of the story or to the characters in it. I’m talking the Thanos cameo in the Avengers’ stinger, I’m talking Benedict CumberKhan in Star Trek, I’m talking about every hackneyed “This character is actually this other character” when in universe nobody knows nor cares about their true identity.
But here? This reveal? This is a Big Reveal for us, Peter B Parker, and Miles, all on different levels. We and Peter both know Doc Ock is a portly dude, not a woman. We know the name Octavius… Otto Octavius. But when she says her name is Olivia Octavius we’re clued in to the fact that Doctor Octopus is a woman in this universe. And she has Peter captive.
Miles, if he was paying attention in science class earlier in the movie, would have known her name was Olivia Octavius, but that doesn’t mean anything to him, why would it? Liv has apparently been very good about keeping her supervillainy a secret. She’s in educational videos shown in high-schools. So to Miles, the reveal here is this scientist lady, who he knew enough about to know was the head scientist at Alchemax, is a supervillain. He gets the reveal a second or two after Peter.
And the movie? It was dropping hints the entire time, confident in our expectations blinding is to the truth. Olivia’s name was partially visible when Miles got to science class. Her glasses are octagonal. The lights in her lab are octagonal. We know she’s working with the Kingpin. Why wouldn’t she be a supervillain? Because she’s hot? Hell, Peter even says he needs to reexamine his internal biases. Maybe he was telling us that we should too.
It’s a reveal for us, and for our heroes. It means something, both in-universe and out. And that makes it infinitely better than other similar reveals.
