Sidekick Girl

11 responses to “Revelation X”

• Mikey on October 30, 2019 at 9:06 AM

  Between romantic betrayal, constant rejection by the hero agency… this is the sort of backstory that leads to telekinetic swords in everyone.

• Daniel M Ball on October 30, 2019 at 10:25 AM

  is it betrayal? I think we’re seeing one of those turning point moments. Val’s given the ‘correct’ answer by the rules, but maybe she’s facing the fact that life isn’t black-and-white, and sometimes the rules ARE arbitrary.

• Douglas Stanton Humphreys on October 30, 2019 at 11:48 AM

  A sad scene: filled with many conflicting emotions. Both are wrong in their own ways, but are true to who they are.

  Very well written.

• Annie on October 30, 2019 at 7:40 PM

  I don’t think Val’s wrong though. Even if he’s allergic, he’s basically admitted that he’s been lying about everything, including the scope of his own activities for the villains’ side. So it’s not just that he’s been the Vigilante this whole time, but she can’t really trust anything he’s told her at all.

• Daniel M Ball on October 31, 2019 at 12:01 PM

  Maybe it’s not having a female perspective here, but he was tossing flags left and right all the way through, (See: fan speculations). Further, these ‘lies’ were mostly omission. Things he didn’t tell her, not untruths he was telling her. It’s splitting hairs, but this is a reality with secret identity and superhero culture ingrained into it to the point of day-to-day life. (See: the prevalence of masks and codenames, while Valerie doesn’t go with a mask, most of her peers and even superiors do.) There are also blatant elements of deception in her entire environment. The “villain agency” existing, being able to obtain green-cards, etc. suggests that whatever government oversight is going on over the Heroes, it’s also going on over the villains. Essentially government sponsoring crime to keep supers occupied, at the non-benefit/detriment of civilians.

  basically, she’s already living a lie in a subculture built on lies, and her triple rejection is just further proof of this. She got into it to help people, but she’s living a Luchador plot-story. What has just happened with Coldfire kind of highlights this-he was bucking the system in so MANY ways, and actually helping people instead of just following the script handed down from D.C., and he provided her with plausible deniability by NOT telling her what his side action was.

  because if she KNEW, it really COULD blow back on her. Now she really does need to choose, because here we have this incident, right here, showing how fucked up her situation really is.

  She followed the script, now she has to think about whether the script is worth it.

• Daniel M Ball on October 31, 2019 at 12:05 PM

  here’s the thing: is what he SAYS the truth? or what he DOES?? she needs to figure out whether to measure the man on his actions (Sabotaging villains, providing intel, moonlighting as an actual, as opposed to luchador-script crime-fighter) or his words/lack of words. what’s the fruit of his particular tree? who’s walking the walk, versus punchclocking in and out and mouthing the words?

• Dr. Mercurious on November 3, 2019 at 12:24 PM

  For those of you who are accusing Coldfire of infidelity, remember: he’s being FORCED, therefor it’s RAPE.

  If he was a female and his ‘handler’ was male, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

  And Valerie’s been long overdue for a clue-by-four, except now I’m starting to hope it hurts when she gets hit by it.

• TheGlyphstone on October 31, 2019 at 12:10 PM

  Did he ever confess to her about his infidelity with Esperanza in the Arrest arc? There was some pretty compelling hints it wasn’t voluntary, but if nothing else her noted promiscuity could have put him – and by extension Val – at risk for who knows what weird STDs exist in this universe.

• MercuryGreen on November 1, 2019 at 5:23 PM

  I’m hoping they don’t have STIs that are meta-powered and ignore barriers. (Yes, I know they’re not 100% in our universe.)

  I’m pretty sure that Esperanza doesn’t know about him and Val, so I don’t *think* he told her.

  The thing is… this isn’t the FIRST person that the Hero Agency left in the dirt (Dion in “Visitation” also Declan Jade and Shiver). He’s in a rough place and they don’t care.

  It’s just… not good.

• Daniel M Ball on November 3, 2019 at 3:32 PM

  it’s government, MercuryGreen, it’s how they operate. ask anyone who’s had to fight with the VA over service-connected medical issues that the agency doesn’t want to acknowledge (Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, radiation exposure…) The Agency is there, but it only serves to promote a message that the elected officials ‘care’ and are ‘doing something’ about ‘the problem’. It’s about as useful as TSA.

• Madd the Sane on May 24, 2022 at 8:39 PM

  So that’s what happened to alternate Val’s Mr. Bat 2…