Flowery Disaster

Flambae: I'm not.

The rest of Z Team:...

The Z-Team comes back to base after the evening shift to find a sight for sore eyes waiting for them!

is their dispatcher actually kidnapped and replaced with a seductive demon or are they just seeing a well-fed, well-rested Robert in a good mood for the first time ever?

What do you think?

I thought it would be really cute if Flambae’s niece’s favorite hero was not Flambae or Mecha Man, but Coupé.

All we know about Flambae’s niece is that she had a dance recital, so if we assume she is a dancer, I like to think she saw Coupé and instantly became her biggest fan. Coupé is a ballerina with wings and she’s got cool shadow powers?? Flamniece instantly thinks she’s awesome.

Coupé doesn’t have much, if anything, in terms of merch, so Flamniece asks her mom for a black tutu. She dances around with one of her toy knives, imagining herself as a menacing, but graceful, assassin turned hero.

She begs Flambae to bring her to work or something so she can meet Coupé. It takes a very long time before both Flambae and his sister agree to let her meet Coupé.

Flamniece borderline screams when she sees Coupé in the SDN headquarters, immediately gushing about seeing her favorite hero in person. She’s practically vibrating out of her skin.

Coupé… has zero clue what’s going on. She obviously heard the child enter the room before she started freaking out, but it takes her a bit to realize that she’s fangirling over her.

The former assassin is stunned. She had never thought that anyone would take positive note of her as a hero, let alone be a fan. If you imagine this as being a timeline in which she was cut, she would be even more surprised.

She sees this little girl, dressed in a black tutu and wearing a homemade mask clearly meant to resemble hers, and her chest feels tight. Coupé crouches in front of her with wide eyes, just as starstruck as she is.

Flamniece, being a little girl, asks if she can hug her, and Coupé, still too in awe to speak, nods silently. Coupé, all jagged edges and sharp lines, goes soft in her tight embrace.

She had long trained herself to never cry. There had never been any room for tears in her line of work. Despite that, she feels her eyes blur slightly, and she wraps her arms around Flambae’s niece gently, afraid to break something so precious.

mecha man is slandered on LIVE TELEVISION for failing to avenge his father. even after years of being a hero the world only admonishes him when he finally can’t do so; invisigal tries to rebut robert’s criticism of her in ep. 2 by claiming that he’s “no real hero”; mandy confides in robert about how tired she is of the “Blonder Blazer” identity, saying that people see the hero before mandy; flambae refers to mecha man as a “real, actual hero” (really interesting considering how fast he called out mecha man in the superhero bar. . .); and there is a continuous choice in terminology when it comes to royd and robert’s conversations in “making the man mecha”.

there is a consistent theme of attempting to be a REAL hero— and the utterly crushing toll it takes when finally achieved. people don’t care that you’re a hero, they don’t care how well or long you’ve been doing your job, they will only watch and stare at you for doing what is considered the minimum. it only matters when you slip. one of the strangest writing choices in my opinion (and I think a lot of people share the same sentiment) was robert being forced to cut someone. I remember distinctly getting to that part of the game, hearing blonde blazer say it’s to “raise the bar” and being so utterly confused?? like, gee whiz what an easy way to make your team hate you. and the fact it happens so early in the game as well? you barely know this team. you don’t know a lot about the team members, none of their motives, stories, etc. you are essentially taking a complete stranger and deciding to cut them off from their support network, friends, and job.

and I do think the game understands this— when cut, sonar/coop both go to red ring, which while sounding extremely banal, does make sense when you think about it. they have no other place to go to besides the phoenix program. with criminal records like that, they won’t find any work other than that of crime. as I stated before, you basically strip everything they had from them when you cut them from the team. where else are they to go?

invisigal plays a HUGE role in this convo as well. we know that she is probably newest to the program, compared to the other z-team members who are all extremely comfortable with each other (blonde blazer saying she “sees a lot of potential in invisigal”, meaning she couldn’t have been in the program for that long); she’s the rowdiest, insubordinate, and generally a wildcard. she’s impulsive and reckless and extremely immature. these are likely the traits the player likely gets from her first impression, and that’s why her argument with robert was so confusing to me when i first watched it. why is this defiant, arguably least hero-like hero out of the whole z-team trying to define what it means to be a hero, and to mecha man of all people? and not even to mention that this convo comes right after invisigal’s failed attempt at capturing thunderstruck, ending with an injured civilian.

and I think it’s all really just a heady dose of projection. invisigal understands the standard on what it means to be a hero because she’s always trying to hold herself to it. it’s very explicitly stated that invisigal WANTS to be a hero, she wants to be good. she is always holding herself to the framework of being a hero, and yet it is so unattainable for her. to not just be one, but to look like one; she patently states that she isn’t like blazer in the manner of which she can effortlessly be a hero, but that invisigal innately has “villain powers”. she is destined to be evil, because she doesn’t have the look, or the powers, or the destiny that allows heroism within the life that was bestowed upon her. that she’ll never be viewed as anything more than vermin, an average villain.

except that’s EXACTLY what the z-team aims to disprove, and that’s why I absolutely love them. the z-team is a fucked up group comprised of infamous, boisterous, unruly former villains, with their dishonorable lives and lewd humor. and yet they also saved the city. and yet they were able to pull together as not just a team, but the team that rescued la from a crime gang. and yet they care so very deeply for one another with their own flawed yet so very loud ways. yes, they were never the ideal group of elite saviors— they’re an insanely strange bunch of people. but they’re heroes, and they protect lives and community and their city. because they were given the chance to finally grow instead of being perceived as outcasts.

The only people who knows that he used to be Mechaman are of course Chase and Blazer, so keeping that aspect of him is still a secret. But beyond that, the general reputation that Pulse has amongst villains and heroes alike is that he's an anonymous advanced hacker that's more akin to a ghost. If he can get someone else to do something for him, or have something done remotely then he will. No one knew what he looked like or if he was even a singular person until his capture, so thats when his identity as some guy 'Robert' becomes known to the Z-Team. Most of his time working as a dispatcher has the Z-Team heckling him in similar fashion because of this so their treatment of him doesn't change much until he gains their trust and he in turn learns to actually rely on others.

Pulse as a villain/vigilante does invoke some measure of unease amongst the Red Ring since he specifically goes out of his way to target them and Shroud.

DID THE JOURNAL FACTORY FUCKING EXPLODE???

you said it yourself: you're looking to vent it LITERALLY ANYWHERE

so vent it somewhere private. or at least not literally aimed AT another person, a total stranger at that

Like, this reblogger sounds so insanely self centered in their reblog. notice how both options focus on how being rude would affect THEM. "B has no consequences for me so it's perfectly fine to do"

Since Pulse follows canon up until he blows up only three years into being Mechaman, to Chase, Robert ducks him after his dad is murdered and then suddenly dies only three years into being Mechaman. So he's operated under the assumption that Robert has been dead for years.

Suddenly SDN and Blazer comes to him saying that there's a chance that this phantom villain could potentially be Robert. He helps Blazer and SDN track Pulse and when they finally haul him in, ooooguughh its ROUGH. This version of Robert is antagonistic, snarky, all teeth and fangs when he speaks, deflects questions and bids for familiarity with more subterfuge and false mirth.

Their relationship at SDN starts painfully strained because this is not the kid that Chase remembers and Robert fights tooth and nail to not be that kid.

"Robert....this shit is not food!"

So, I had actually never had a Twinkie before. Since most of my family are capable bakers, getting a sweet treat was always more of a "what is currently in the cake tin or fridge" sorta thing.

So, for the purposes of this artwork, I bought a Twinkie. Evidently, homemade baked goods elevated my standards cause that stuff was nasty as hell. Hence, the artwork, as it seems a widely accepted headcanon is that Flambae can cook.

And personally, I don't see him approving of Twinkies as a meal, unlike a certain Dispatcher.