Episode 67 of The Letters Page: Disparation Freedom Five

Am I the only one who thought "Plaything" was a really strange name for a superhero?

Like, if you told me, "Here's a comic book superhero setting, and there's a character in it named Plaything", I would be thinking creepy little girls, possessed dolls and marauding toys. Granted, that line about her feeling like she's still a monster lends some credence to why she'd call herself that. It's just still weird.

I really do hope we get more Disparations in the future, though. I think I like listening to these as much as C&A like telling them. :D

It was a bit odd for a hero name.  But it doesn’t matter since Christopher and Adam are ending it all to get pie.  

Yeah, Plaything sounds like a name a character got from other people, something that a Villain would name one of their enslaved minions or that the public would call a creepy hero til the name stuck. Her self-steem issues must be pretty deep. 

Anyways, this episode made me really curious about Muse and her career as a hero in the main universe (specially if her powers are still as creepy as before). 

The only problem I'm having with these Disparation episodes is that we are presented these cool characters and universe, but soon we have to say goodbye to them. Specially since we see only a couple of adventures for each group we've seen, and these feel more like pilot episodes for shows you'll never see. "Here's the origin story of this Freedom Five, here's an entire adventure on how their 'leader' became an orangutan. Ok let's not show these guys again".

I mean, this is a minor frustration and I'm still enjoying these, and I couldn't ask C&A for more since they already made two episodes on characters that only appeared in a single card.

Anyways, still good fuel for the RPG (I so want to make a character with Evil Expatriette/Night Terror's powers). 

Oook!

~The Librarian

That's true for most alternate reality comic books/tv episodes, they just give you a taste. Sometimes you wish the alternate reality was the main one since the characters were so cool.

Jack Steel is the canon setting's Sergeant Steel. I would be curious to hear more about The Steel Sentinel, though, and how it differs from, say, the Ironclad Project and Bunker's history.

I thought it was perfect.  In one word, it encompasses the hero's youth and her imagination and her ability to control her creations, all without being too on the nose.  I like the name Apex a lot too for the same reasons.

I really liked "Apex," but yeah, "Plaything" was weird.  She creates playthings, she isn't one herself.  The word suggests that she's somehow the tool of someone else.  Too many stories where the bad guys refer to their servants or victims as their "playthings."

Morris Dugal is Bugbear, right?

I thought the name for Apex was familiar...

Yes that is who became Bugbear in the main timeline

Nice I did not pick up on that.

Oh shoot, good catch! :D

I'm still trying to digest the fact that apparently Argent Adept looks like Nightmist's twin when gender-swapped, even outside of the possession-based misty hair color change.

Not gonna lie, while I was listening to it (and not looking at the art), I thought the big orangutan was the one named "Ape-X"

Nope, that's an alternat-alternate Universe.

Ape-X

I love it.

Ape-X fights Ape in Ape-IV.

+1 on Apex being an excellent name.

Count me also in the column that is less excited by these Disparation stories. I like the stories better when they involve characters I'm already invested in. If the canon Freedom Five traveled to an alternate universe, or Chrono-Ranger and La Comodora were manipulating events in other timelines by having these adventures, I'd be much more interested. As it is, though, I'd rather hear Christopher and Adam narrate a blow by blow story with one of the teams we're familiar with.

Just my personal preference. I listened pretty deep into the food podcast, after all. ;)

True, but I think maybe it's the shape more than the color. I'm picturing the Quando art with red hair and it still makes me think of "Nightmist with a dye job". Argent has very straight hair; I imagine it'd look more like Christopher's if it was really long. (Argent also has a very angular face, which also makes the look different.)

I have to say, I really like the idea that most of the Dispiration universes are more likely to have very similar (or the same) heroes by title, rather than by name. Like, this universe didn't have a Devra Caspit, but it still had a Unity. It didn't have a Michael Conte, but there was still someone with Naturalist-like powers (unless that monster that created Apex was Conte). And so on. 

I love that we've now gotten two whole episodes off of a single card.

Am I the only one who thought the Tachyon/Omnitron hybrid Unity was some sort of heroic version of Idesa the Adroit from the Bloodsworn?  I can see Tachyon now that they've pointed it out, but that just wasn't coming across when I first looked at the image.

Discussions elsewhere made me realize this episode was interesting for having the trope "citizens innocently help the bad guys and hurt the heroes trying to save them not because they want to actively be bad guys but because they don't really know better" that happens lots in RL comics and Marvel especially but not very often in Sentinels.