Post by redsycorax on Jul 23, 2023 3:46:19 GMT
In their interminable and repetitious career, the Freedom Brigade of the United States have confronted many strange and uncanny enemies. But now, one from their far distant past regurgitates herself! Who is Zsazsagaboria,and why is she... the Queen of Outer Space???
++
VENUS (1965):
Aphrodite Ishtar is the place for me
Megalomania is the life for me
Territorial ambitions spreading out so far and wide
Keep Mercury, just give me all Earthside
On Venus we'd all very much wish you'd stay
Your accent is atrocious anyway
We don't go for your invasion attempts too
So go away and can the rhetoric, you!
Stay there!
An empire!
We'll fight!
How trite!
You are in strife!
Goodbye queenly life!
Aphrodite Ishtar, she's imprisoned there!
[The above is a hit single by Snapchat Fnargle, FBUS groupie, about the "Terrible Queen of Venus!!!"]
PRESENT DAY METROVILLE:
"This is Melly Nadgers, and tonight we're at the launch of the epic film Barbenheimer, about a plastic blonde-haired doll physicist who split the atom in New Mexico back in 1945 during Global War B. Well, well- I see Mermaid and Mr. Might here on the carpet. What brings you two icons of the Freedom Brigade to this film?"
"Well, Melly, as you may remember, Princess Power, one of our charter members was a member of the GW B Freedom Force, our Globular Age predecessors and actually met Dr J. Roberta Barbenheimer. The atom bomb went off and we got to threaten Adenoid Hynkel with it until Bette Buchseite, the buxom model of Double Cross rectitude finally had enough of her incompetent boss, overthrew him and got her own designer doll line in Upper Slobovia because of a canny deal with the United States. And over here, Dr Barbenheimer got a hit song out of it, Aqua's "I'm a Nuclear Physicist."
"Some would say you're here deliberately horning in on this because you want to look trendy and topical and that your offspring the Inferior Five really should have taken over your spot by now. What do you have to say to that?"
"My, what a nice shadow of yellow that outfit is, Melly. Just like your 'journalism."" Mermaid said sweetly.
And unfortunately, any retort from Slotham City's most annoying tabloid 'journalist' would be lost forever to posterity. For, inevitably, a cosmic menace materialised high above their heads:
"Yes, it is I, darlinks!!! I have been regurgitated!!! I, Zsazsagaboria, Terror Queen of Venus tm , who have returned to menace you Dirtlings."
"Why is her title in lurid pink?"
"Silence! Yes, Freedom Brigade, I have finally returned from my unjust imprisonment on Venus and I intend to avenge myself on you!!!"
"But how did she get out of that impregnable prison?"
"Vell, polyandry is perfectly legal on Venus, so I simply enlisted the help of my multiple husbands and man-concubines, Burley Bud, Chronic Hiccupz, Mr Frigid, Hubert the Hutt, Joshua Whatsisname, Jack Samurai, Michael O'Hooligan, Felipe Di Verted and Prince Charles No Not That One to dig me out. Anyhow, you know Venusian menlings, darlink. They're a pack of himbos so it took them several decades to find the right route to the castle atop Mount Evertrite, but finally I was free!!! Free!!! Free to wreak my revenge on your pitiful planet Dirt."
"That's Earth. You mean you took several decades to undertake a jail break? Although I get the pathetic male sidekick aspect of your situation, really I do. You should see what we female and alternatively gendered Freedom Brigadiers have to put up with from these bozos." Princess Power replied.
"Hey!" Mr Might, Captain Swift, Bowman, Green Trashcan and Lightpower chorused in protest.
"Just a moment, one of her husbands/man-concubines is a former Capeman supervillain?"
"The poor darlink had nothing to do once Badman turned evil, so of course I married him."
"Thrusting, exciting Slotham City journalist Melly Nadgers here, Queen Zsazsagaboria, Terror Queen of Venus tm , oh- that's odd, it happened to me as well. Are you here to enslave our planet or are you husband-shopping? What's your comment on the fact you were confused when you married Prince Charles No Not That One, because you thought it was the villainous current King Charles III of the evil British royal family?"
"I refuse to dignify such tabloid ravings unless you pay me vun million credits, Melly darlink. I haff my price. I mean pride, I haff my pride."
Up in the Freedom Brigade satellite, Bat Woman mused worriedly about the re-emergence of Queen Zsazsagaboria, Terror Queen of Venus tm . Why were these pesky trademarks constantly appearing whenever the tyrant was mentioned? And how could ... she... possibly even exist anyway, without qualifiers about her actually being from ancient Venus billions of years ago when it still had a habitable atmosphere, liquid water and a stable ecology? I mean, frankly, although that sort of thing was okay in the Silver-Plated Age, such rampant scientific inaccuracy wouldn't be accepted by today's observers. Honestly, what were they thinking, anyway, given Maroon 4 had already scanned Venus in 1962 and discovered it was a fiery hellworld beneath a choking atmosphere of sulfur compounds? Although .. she... had gotten the name of one of the Venusian 'continents', Aphrodite Terra, correct, that was a coincidence. How could the Terror Queen possibly be humanoid or even the product of convergent evolution? And what 'terror' was this, anyway? It wasn't even as if anything approximating subsurface mining was even remotely possible-
"That will do, Bat Woman, darlink. My head hurts vith all this infodumping. And frankly, ze Author is just gratuitously showing off zeir professional background. This is no laughing matter. Vot am I to do?"
"Er, I thought you were invading Earth?"
"Ach, I can't. I had to pay alimony to Prince Charles No Not That One, that gold-digging bankrupt minor European royal ven I divorced him. I am totally intellectually bankrupt. Darn it. What's wrong vith zis dialogue? I am totally financially bankrupt. Particularly given, as you pointed out, Venus is actually completely uninhabitable and my continuity doesn't haff escape clause references to billions of years in ze past or a conveniently contrived alternate universe vere Venus is habitable. You see my problem?"
"So if you can't invade this Earth, why not sidestep and invade one in an alternate universe where Venus is life-sustaining and where analogues of us don't exist?"
"That sort of cheap plot fix would render me the laughing stock of outer space, darlink. I could never show my face in respectable universes again. Oh, vot am I to do?"
"How about speaking your name backward?"
"I am not a five dimensional imp either, darlink. Unhappily, that isn't going to save me from zis increasingly laboured plot. Oh, I giff up. I'm so sorry, Bat Woman and the Freedom Brigade. I'm so unfeasible, I'm even too unlikely for zis bargain basement probability sequence and zat's really saying somethink. Gootbye, darlinks..." And with that, whatsername began to become insubstantial and incoherent, much as the plot in which she was embedded had long since become. In seconds, she was gone.
METROVILLE:
"Yes, folks, what a scandal! The Freedom Brigade is NOW so hacky, their supervillain adversaries have to give up because their plots and continuity are so twee and addled...what?"
"Melly, some words. And those words are "Swiss bank accounts." We traced the trademark registration for... you know who... and guess who's been profiting relentlessly from the masthead and all of the trademarked mentions of that character throughout this entire adventure? None other than a certain Slotham City 'journalist.' You're under arrest, Melly."
"Hah! Crimes against factual status, accuracy, professional ethics and literacy are not prosecutable in a court of law!"
"Not for that. For high treason. You intended to unleash... that character... on Earth and then sue her for using your intellectual property rights."
"What about my freedom to screech?"
"You can screech as loud as you like, Melly. Bat Woman has locked on one of our Human Volume Controls and pressed one of our mute buttons. Take her away, girls and boys."
" ! ? ! !!!!! #$%%%&&!!! "
"Melly, Melly, Melly... inferences from the use of those symbols, please. Right, Freedom Brigade, we've apprehended another desperate felon. Well done, everyone. Bat Woman?"
"I do have a question, Clint. Given that ... that character... doesn't actually exist and her adventures are in the same narrative and existential position, what does that do for the Brigade's entire Silver-Plated Age backstory continuity?"
THE END [1.35 PM, JULY 24, 2023]
"And don't think prematurely ending this episode is going to capriciously end the questions involved here. How long can we continue to resort to this hackneyed pretentious postmodern ironic gobbledegook before the readers get tired of reading it and the curtain falls on us forever?"
"Tough cheese, Vicky. This episode is finished. And stop with the portentous and ominous warning routine, even if you are the licensed holder of Earth-55's Batman Archetrope and it goes with the territory. We all know what will happen next. The audience will ignore it and keep reading, because this is an obscure thread in a fanfiction bulletin board and they find it humorous."
"How long for, Clint? How long for??!!!"
++
VENUS (1965):
Aphrodite Ishtar is the place for me
Megalomania is the life for me
Territorial ambitions spreading out so far and wide
Keep Mercury, just give me all Earthside
On Venus we'd all very much wish you'd stay
Your accent is atrocious anyway
We don't go for your invasion attempts too
So go away and can the rhetoric, you!
Stay there!
An empire!
We'll fight!
How trite!
You are in strife!
Goodbye queenly life!
Aphrodite Ishtar, she's imprisoned there!
[The above is a hit single by Snapchat Fnargle, FBUS groupie, about the "Terrible Queen of Venus!!!"]
PRESENT DAY METROVILLE:
"This is Melly Nadgers, and tonight we're at the launch of the epic film Barbenheimer, about a plastic blonde-haired doll physicist who split the atom in New Mexico back in 1945 during Global War B. Well, well- I see Mermaid and Mr. Might here on the carpet. What brings you two icons of the Freedom Brigade to this film?"
"Well, Melly, as you may remember, Princess Power, one of our charter members was a member of the GW B Freedom Force, our Globular Age predecessors and actually met Dr J. Roberta Barbenheimer. The atom bomb went off and we got to threaten Adenoid Hynkel with it until Bette Buchseite, the buxom model of Double Cross rectitude finally had enough of her incompetent boss, overthrew him and got her own designer doll line in Upper Slobovia because of a canny deal with the United States. And over here, Dr Barbenheimer got a hit song out of it, Aqua's "I'm a Nuclear Physicist."
"Some would say you're here deliberately horning in on this because you want to look trendy and topical and that your offspring the Inferior Five really should have taken over your spot by now. What do you have to say to that?"
"My, what a nice shadow of yellow that outfit is, Melly. Just like your 'journalism."" Mermaid said sweetly.
And unfortunately, any retort from Slotham City's most annoying tabloid 'journalist' would be lost forever to posterity. For, inevitably, a cosmic menace materialised high above their heads:
"Yes, it is I, darlinks!!! I have been regurgitated!!! I, Zsazsagaboria, Terror Queen of Venus tm , who have returned to menace you Dirtlings."
"Why is her title in lurid pink?"
"Silence! Yes, Freedom Brigade, I have finally returned from my unjust imprisonment on Venus and I intend to avenge myself on you!!!"
"But how did she get out of that impregnable prison?"
"Vell, polyandry is perfectly legal on Venus, so I simply enlisted the help of my multiple husbands and man-concubines, Burley Bud, Chronic Hiccupz, Mr Frigid, Hubert the Hutt, Joshua Whatsisname, Jack Samurai, Michael O'Hooligan, Felipe Di Verted and Prince Charles No Not That One to dig me out. Anyhow, you know Venusian menlings, darlink. They're a pack of himbos so it took them several decades to find the right route to the castle atop Mount Evertrite, but finally I was free!!! Free!!! Free to wreak my revenge on your pitiful planet Dirt."
"That's Earth. You mean you took several decades to undertake a jail break? Although I get the pathetic male sidekick aspect of your situation, really I do. You should see what we female and alternatively gendered Freedom Brigadiers have to put up with from these bozos." Princess Power replied.
"Hey!" Mr Might, Captain Swift, Bowman, Green Trashcan and Lightpower chorused in protest.
"Just a moment, one of her husbands/man-concubines is a former Capeman supervillain?"
"The poor darlink had nothing to do once Badman turned evil, so of course I married him."
"Thrusting, exciting Slotham City journalist Melly Nadgers here, Queen Zsazsagaboria, Terror Queen of Venus tm , oh- that's odd, it happened to me as well. Are you here to enslave our planet or are you husband-shopping? What's your comment on the fact you were confused when you married Prince Charles No Not That One, because you thought it was the villainous current King Charles III of the evil British royal family?"
"I refuse to dignify such tabloid ravings unless you pay me vun million credits, Melly darlink. I haff my price. I mean pride, I haff my pride."
Up in the Freedom Brigade satellite, Bat Woman mused worriedly about the re-emergence of Queen Zsazsagaboria, Terror Queen of Venus tm . Why were these pesky trademarks constantly appearing whenever the tyrant was mentioned? And how could ... she... possibly even exist anyway, without qualifiers about her actually being from ancient Venus billions of years ago when it still had a habitable atmosphere, liquid water and a stable ecology? I mean, frankly, although that sort of thing was okay in the Silver-Plated Age, such rampant scientific inaccuracy wouldn't be accepted by today's observers. Honestly, what were they thinking, anyway, given Maroon 4 had already scanned Venus in 1962 and discovered it was a fiery hellworld beneath a choking atmosphere of sulfur compounds? Although .. she... had gotten the name of one of the Venusian 'continents', Aphrodite Terra, correct, that was a coincidence. How could the Terror Queen possibly be humanoid or even the product of convergent evolution? And what 'terror' was this, anyway? It wasn't even as if anything approximating subsurface mining was even remotely possible-
"That will do, Bat Woman, darlink. My head hurts vith all this infodumping. And frankly, ze Author is just gratuitously showing off zeir professional background. This is no laughing matter. Vot am I to do?"
"Er, I thought you were invading Earth?"
"Ach, I can't. I had to pay alimony to Prince Charles No Not That One, that gold-digging bankrupt minor European royal ven I divorced him. I am totally intellectually bankrupt. Darn it. What's wrong vith zis dialogue? I am totally financially bankrupt. Particularly given, as you pointed out, Venus is actually completely uninhabitable and my continuity doesn't haff escape clause references to billions of years in ze past or a conveniently contrived alternate universe vere Venus is habitable. You see my problem?"
"So if you can't invade this Earth, why not sidestep and invade one in an alternate universe where Venus is life-sustaining and where analogues of us don't exist?"
"That sort of cheap plot fix would render me the laughing stock of outer space, darlink. I could never show my face in respectable universes again. Oh, vot am I to do?"
"How about speaking your name backward?"
"I am not a five dimensional imp either, darlink. Unhappily, that isn't going to save me from zis increasingly laboured plot. Oh, I giff up. I'm so sorry, Bat Woman and the Freedom Brigade. I'm so unfeasible, I'm even too unlikely for zis bargain basement probability sequence and zat's really saying somethink. Gootbye, darlinks..." And with that, whatsername began to become insubstantial and incoherent, much as the plot in which she was embedded had long since become. In seconds, she was gone.
METROVILLE:
"Yes, folks, what a scandal! The Freedom Brigade is NOW so hacky, their supervillain adversaries have to give up because their plots and continuity are so twee and addled...what?"
"Melly, some words. And those words are "Swiss bank accounts." We traced the trademark registration for... you know who... and guess who's been profiting relentlessly from the masthead and all of the trademarked mentions of that character throughout this entire adventure? None other than a certain Slotham City 'journalist.' You're under arrest, Melly."
"Hah! Crimes against factual status, accuracy, professional ethics and literacy are not prosecutable in a court of law!"
"Not for that. For high treason. You intended to unleash... that character... on Earth and then sue her for using your intellectual property rights."
"What about my freedom to screech?"
"You can screech as loud as you like, Melly. Bat Woman has locked on one of our Human Volume Controls and pressed one of our mute buttons. Take her away, girls and boys."
" ! ? ! !!!!! #$%%%&&!!! "
"Melly, Melly, Melly... inferences from the use of those symbols, please. Right, Freedom Brigade, we've apprehended another desperate felon. Well done, everyone. Bat Woman?"
"I do have a question, Clint. Given that ... that character... doesn't actually exist and her adventures are in the same narrative and existential position, what does that do for the Brigade's entire Silver-Plated Age backstory continuity?"
THE END [1.35 PM, JULY 24, 2023]
"And don't think prematurely ending this episode is going to capriciously end the questions involved here. How long can we continue to resort to this hackneyed pretentious postmodern ironic gobbledegook before the readers get tired of reading it and the curtain falls on us forever?"
"Tough cheese, Vicky. This episode is finished. And stop with the portentous and ominous warning routine, even if you are the licensed holder of Earth-55's Batman Archetrope and it goes with the territory. We all know what will happen next. The audience will ignore it and keep reading, because this is an obscure thread in a fanfiction bulletin board and they find it humorous."
"How long for, Clint? How long for??!!!"
