{"id":2470,"date":"2014-05-12T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T17:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/?p=2470"},"modified":"2014-05-12T10:34:18","modified_gmt":"2014-05-12T16:34:18","slug":"better-angels-ripperclaw-of-the-villainous-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/2014\/05\/better-angels-ripperclaw-of-the-villainous-nine\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Angels: Ripperclaw of the Villainous Nine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ripperclaw\"<\/a>Written by Greg Stolze and illustrated by Kurt Komoda, \u00a9 2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Dorothy Virden was not the first Ripperclaw.\u00a0 That distinction fell to an Australian with terrible gender identity issues, an insatiable thirst for blood, and multiple-personality problems that left his demon\u2019s voice as one among several.\u00a0 The Villainous Four tried to restrain him but, when it became clear that Ripperclaw couldn\u2019t prevail, the host threw himself off a skyscraper.\u00a0 After recovering his amulet, they impressed it upon Dorothy, who\u2019d made quite a name for herself in Springfield Illinois, agitating for an end to the state\u2019s notoriously corrupt \u201cCombine\u201d politics.<\/p>\n

This was before Guts got recruited, so for a while she was the only woman on the team, and that bothered her quite a bit.\u00a0 The lack of racial diversity didn\u2019t impress her either, and that was one reason she voted to admit Nahari Sengupta.\u00a0 Her debate with Null about racial and gender politics got quite heated.<\/p>\n

How did Dot end up in this position?\u00a0 Once upon a time, she was a nice lefty-liberal housewife (who felt terribly guilty about her position as a housewife vis a vis<\/em> politicized gender roles but also didn\u2019t want to take a job away from someone who needed it more and besides, the developmental benefits of having a stay-at-home parent were pretty hard to deny her kids).\u00a0 She got involved with the school board as a concerned parent, which led her into local politics, and she just got deeper and deeper because she could always see how it was being done wrong<\/em>\u2014and not just blatant graft, but incompetence and laziness and plain foolishness<\/em> that didn\u2019t even benefit anyone!<\/p>\n

She did not have the charisma to get elected, but she was a force behind the scene, a tireless organizer, and it is a grievous irony that her husband and youngest child (her daughter Doreen) were killed by a trucker who\u2019d bribed his way to a license for which he wasn\u2019t qualified.\u00a0 Her agitations helped get a governor jailed, and attracted the attention of General Null.\u00a0 She agreed to join his cabal once her surviving son was in college.<\/p>\n

Her mortal form is a forgettable middle-aged woman with a weak jaw and frizzy, greying hair.\u00a0 It makes her deeply uncomfortable to use Ripperclaw\u2019s Impossible Beauty power, which transforms her into an absurdly proportioned blonde bombshell.\u00a0 But the demon insists.\u00a0 At least her current Ripperclaw costume doesn\u2019t have a stupid boob window or miniskirt.<\/p>\n

CUNNING<\/strong> 2, PATIENT<\/strong> 2
\nGreed<\/em> 2, Generosity<\/em> 2
\nEspionage<\/em> 3, Knowledge<\/em> 2<\/p>\n

SLY<\/strong> 3, OPEN<\/strong> 1
\nCruelty<\/em> 1, Courage<\/em> 3
\nCowardice<\/em> 3, Endurance<\/em> 0<\/p>\n

DEVIOUS<\/strong> 3, INSIGHTFUL<\/strong> 3
\nCorruption<\/em> 2, Nurture<\/em> 3
\nDeceit<\/em> 3, Honesty<\/em> 1<\/p>\n

POWERS<\/strong>: Impossible Beauty, Ineffable Defense<\/p>\n

ASPECTS<\/strong>: Horned (in this case, bigass claws), Invisible<\/p>\n

PRIMARY SINFUL STRATEGY<\/strong>: Devious<\/p>\n

\"Better<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Greg Stolze and illustrated by Kurt Komoda, \u00a9 2014 Dorothy Virden was not the first Ripperclaw.\u00a0 That distinction fell to<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[18,11,220,289],"class_list":["post-2470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-better-angels","tag-character","tag-greg-stolze","tag-kurt-komoda","tag-villainous-nine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Ripperclaw-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1wrNI-DQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2473,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions\/2473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}