A planned-out, in-progress Massive Multiplayer Crossover of a fanfic by Megan Phntm Grl, intended as an Adaptation Expansion of a roleplaying plot (crafted lovingly with the help of a whole lot of others who'll be credited in the final product) that's eaten up vast amounts of her time since it began. When it's finished (if it ever is), it's going to be a serious Doorstopper.
The setting is a kind of Ultimate Universe-style AU of Watchmen, in which those characters and most other fictional superheroes all share a universe. It's also an AU of Repo! The Genetic Opera, and of Monster. All of these have been relocated to fit on the same contemporaneous timeline. The author's hope is that all of the intertwining plotlines and close, coincidental relationships between just about everybody will lend it a Les Miserables-on-crack feeling, but only time will tell. The basic plots of those stories remain intact, but what actually plays out tends to go very much Off the Rails due to the crossover nature.
The title comes from an English translation of "Die Schatten Werden Laenger" from Elisabeth (though not a literal translation). If you don't want to read any further self-indulgent troping, the author herself invites you to please enjoy this video
of the song as performed by attractive Hungarians.
PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION, INCLUDING THE PLOT SECTION.
And thus, Adrian Weidt is born in 1939.
The story of Ingrid's hellish marriage, the young Adrian's eerily advanced intelligence showing up before he's even two years old, and the death of Ingrid's second child Klara is intercut with the goings-on at an Italian medical start-up called GeneCo, where Giuseppe Largo and his son Rottissimo, or Rotti, are doing some medical experimentation of their own, though at this point with a far more benign purpose. When the Weidts flee to America and become the Veidts, the scope expands again to encompass the American rash of superheroes, the equally unpleasant childhood of young Walter Joseph Kovacs, and the rise of Dr. Manhattan. Ingrid and Adrian end up each contributing to the murder of Friedrich Weidt, but Ingrid herself dies only a few months later, leaving Adrian to seek his fortunes elsewhere.
By the 1960s, GeneCo is in America as well and now run by Rotti Largo, there is a deadly outbreak of organ failures, and Veidt and Kovacs have both taken on costumed identities as crimefighters, alongside others such as the brutal Comedian, hopeful Nite Owl and the young Silk Spectre, who in many ways becomes the glue of the heroes' shaky partnership. Veidt is reunited with a childhood acquaintance named Anna, and they briefly fall in love before an acrimonious breakup. At around the same time, a young schoolgirl named Lucie Baillon is raped by a young pimp, is thrown on the streets by her parents, and ultimately gives birth to a child she names Adrien, who becomes the great joy of her life. Anna meets another man, Michael, while still pregnant, who promises to help raise her children, but he turns out to be working for a government conspiracy related to the same program that produced Adrian and Anna themselves, but he chooses to help her dodge the program anyway. He ends up shot for his trouble, and while Anna is trapped by the agents of the breeding program her twin children are taken from her and denied names.
A young blind woman named Magdalene Defoe becomes a cabaret singer for money and is quickly introduced to the harsh realities of life in the lower echelons of the entertainment industry until she meets, and secretly falls in love with, Largo's fiancee Marni. Veidt enters into business and becomes acquainted with a Dr. Nathan Wallace, whom he brings along onto a partnership with GeneCo to cure the organ failures, but their experimental cures fail to save the Silk Spectre, who dies at seventeen. Wallace falls in love with Marni, who ends up leaving Largo for Wallace, and Largo murders her and frames Wallace for it, using his leverage in politics to make Wallace instrumental in his plan to legalize organ repossession. Veidt abandons their partnership in disgust and begins a slow plan to do something about this pending nuclear war business.
Anna's daughter undergoes severe brainwashing but represses it, while the girl's twin brother internalizes her memories and is warped into an Enfant Terrible. A chance encounter with Veidt leads to the boy's obsession with being Veidt's child, and the sociopathic child ends up eventually arranging events to get himself and his sister closer to the man after Veidt has retired from super-heroism. Veidt swallows his pride and asks Largo for help, but Largo refuses when he secretly discovers the twins are Veidt's children. The boy twin is left with a damaged skull and brain when he and his sister flee together, and Veidt begins to slowly kill Largo with poison.
The Keene Act is passed. Superheroes are outlawed in America. Kovacs, now fully consumed by his Rorschach persona, refuses to quit. Nite Owl/Dan Dreiberg quits and remains friends with the increasingly isolated Veidt.
This work includes or will include:
- Author Avatar: Megan herself is in this fic (she was in the roleplay plot, after all!), though as a fairly minor side character.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted heavily by what happens to poor Ingrid Weidt/Veidt shortly after her arrival in America.
- Beautiful Dreamer: Roberto watches over Johan when he is not asleep but drugged unconscious. Apparently the sight is quite moving.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Ironically distinct from being clannish or mere bad parenting. The family's big, and it's screwed up all right, but most of its members live isolated from one another.
- The Largos play this straight, as in canon.
- Break the Cutie: Ingrid, Lucie, the twins, Susanna, Adrien Baillon, Shilo, Meg... Even Dan and Adrian count somewhat, in their younger years.
- Broken Ace: Adrian like whoa.
- Also, both of his children and his father.
- Broken Bird: A lot, if not nearly all, of the women. Ingrid, Anna, Mag, Lucie and Nina all count.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Luthor and Largo.
- Domestic Abuse: Friedrich. (Also, for that matter, in Adrien's backstory, you have a Marchetti.)
- Hair Of Gold Heartof Gold: Definitely the assumption about Adrien, but you can throw your idea of "good"
out the window.- Meg plays this fairly straight. Susanna is a mild subversion, being extremely driven and canny.
- The Ingenue: Ingrid, Meg, and Mag before the plot gets to them. Adrien and Lucie somehow manage to never lose this quality, even after they've both had to resort to prostitution.
- Mad Love: Roberto for Johan.
- One Degree of Separation: Things... kind of end up this way.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted like whoa. There's an Adrian, an Adriane, and an Adrien (all pronounced differently, though); two Michaels; a Mag, a Magda, a Megan and a Meg.
- Parental Substitute: What Johan keeps seeking. And then disposing of.
- Mind Rape: Still Johan's preferred M.O. though it's practically involuntary on his part. Basini is recovering from a rather inexpert attempt.
- Sissy Villain: Veidt subverts this; while he is pansexual and wears a lot of purple there's nothing effeminate about him. Johan plays this a bit straighter, though he's actually so much of a non-supernatural Empty Shell that he technically has no orientation and no gender identity.
- Son of a Whore: Rorschach and Adrien Baillon, though the differences between their mothers' personalities are vast enough that they ended up with very different childhoods.
- Stepford Smiler: Um, who isn't one of these at some point.
- ...well, Megan and Dan pointedly never are.
- There Are No Therapists: ...well, there is one in the background. She ends up totally broken herself.
- True Neutral: Adrien, Basini.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Except in Johan's case this desire got a little warped.
