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princessishPrincess Crystal Amaquelin hails from what is objectively one of the worst television programs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Inhumans. I the writer watched the entire damn show because I am a glutton for punishment and it was a trainwreck that I couldn't not see through once I began it; booze helped, as did the fact that I found Crystal (and her big stupid CGI dog) adorable and wanted to rescue her/them. That's what this roleplay journal essentially is, rescuing her (and by proxy her big stupid CGI dog). I'm the rescuer of wayward women in the MCU. I own it.
First off, though, I wanted to say: sorry, y'all, while I'm here to play Crystal I actually pretty much hated Inhumans as a series and most of the characters on it because most of them were assholes (Gorgon notwithstanding, though I disapprove of how he was ultimately handled in the plot, and like, Triton and Louise get a pass by virtue of being essentially plot devices). I don't actually have much interest in playing Crystal off of those not mentioned from her direct canon because I don't like them; snarky texting threads would be about the limit. Sorry. Maybe they're better in the comics, I don't really know, I haven't read any Inhumans comics because, well, the show was so painful it turned me off of the whole bunch of them.
Second, I would like to give some background for those of you who were smarter than I and did not actually subject yourselves to all eight episodes of this nonsense program. Conveniently it has absolutely no bearing on the entire rest of the MCU, plotwise, so you aren't missing much, but in case you're curious, basically the deal is this:
There are some Inhumans who still live on Earth (they are a big part of Agents of SHIELD, my devotion to which is another reason why I sat through Inhumans just in case) but there is another group of them that lives on the moon in a city called Attilan that is invisible to human detection because forcefields or something. They have been there for a very long time and presumably the Earth Inhumans do not know about them; turns out this is a good thing because Daisy Johnson, for one, would not stand for the way things are done in Attilan. The city is ruled by a royal family - currently King Black(agar) Bolt(agon), whose voice kills you if he uses it so he communicates in a fake version of sign language, and his wife Queen Medusa(lith) Amaquelin, who has prehensile hair and also is one of the only ones who's bothered to learn his fake sign language and therefore translates for him all the time - and society is divided into a literal caste system based on how useful the gifts you receive in terragenesis are. The people with useful gifts like healing or prescience or butterfly wings get to come help at the castle or whatever, while everyone else is stuck in the literal mines. It's bad, guys.
Crystal(ia), incidentally, is the princess by virtue of being Medusa's younger sister, and while it's never really explained how old anyone actually is or how that works in this bunch of people you can assume she's the moon Inhuman version of a teenager because she does things like skip royal ceremonies to play with her giant dog and lay around listening to music. She's basically Ariel from The Little Mermaid (more on this in a bit) and she's pretty much oblivious to the politics of Attilan because everyone basically just treats her like a kid and doesn't tell her stuff. Crystal has really useful superpowers, too: she's basically the Avatar, but she's white so she's not actually the Avatar, she just does the same stuff (control the elements). Also her name is Crystal, but Inhuman terragenesis is performed with terragen crystals, so she's basically named after, like, Inhuman puberty or estrogen or something. Good going, guys.
So at the beginning of the series all hell breaks loose because Black Bolt's younger brother Maximus decides to stage a coup. Maximus went through terragenesis and became... a regular human with absolutely no superpowers. So he should be in the low caste (according to their society's rules, anyway) but since he's royal by blood they keep him around anyway and it's really awkward for everyone because he's constantly looked down on and therefore has a huge grudge. He decides he's going to overthrow his brother and then allegedly do away with the caste system, which would be great if he was actually going to do something (he really shows no signs of having an actual plan, so it's basically just him talking so they like him). Black Bolt and Medusa and their advisors ("cousins"?) Karnak of the douchewad mind palaces and Gorgon of the good heart but uncomfortable racial implications go down to Earth for various reasons (banishment/trying to help being the main ones), after Maximus has his guards cuts off all of Medusa's superpowered hair (this is a relief as it was a very bad wig/special effect). Maximus also keeps Crystal in the palace, hoping that she'll endorse him. Spoiler: she really doesn't.
Instead, she goes to Earth too. All of the Inhumans are in Hawaii because Triton the plot device was allegedly killed there and something something homing beacon something something. Remember her giant dog? That's Lockjaw, and he's a giant bulldog who teleports. Very convenient because it means she has a way to get to Earth too. What's not convenient is that teleporting somehow injures Lockjaw or makes him ill and he spends two and a half episodes languishing in a random barn while some guy who found Crystal in the forest gets his veterinarian ex-girlfriend to come fix him. Through this time Crystal also learns about Earth and the less-shitty parts of humanity, which she mostly just seems really excited to hear because Inhumans on the moon teach that humans really, really suck. (I guess to make themselves look better?)
Anyway, eventually they all wind up reuniting, the Inhumans from the moon who are on Earth. Crystal awkwardly kisses the aforementioned boy all of once before they go back to the moon and she blows him off forever, which was the Heterosexual Agenda at play; Crystal also decides that when everything blows over she wants to go back to Earth and be like all of the "normal people living normal lives." (See? Ariel.) Unfortunately Maximus decides that Attilan must die, so he sets it to blow up. The "protagonists" make sure all of the Inhumans get out beforehand and teleport on down to Hawaii via their teleportation wall of more uncomfortable racial implications, and Crystal helps. And then they're all in Hawaii and it's the end of Thor: Ragnarok but with mostly shitheads instead and they're going to make a new home on Earth. I guess.
This roleplay journal is about what happens when Crystal, who now officially lives on Earth, strikes out on her own (or mostly her own, because obviously Lockjaw is coming with) and starts to see the world. She gets to use her elemental powers for good of her own design and probably meets up with other Marvel characters; she's been Avengers-adjacent in the comics, and why not here as well? (She's been adjacent to some Kree shitheads in the comics, too, and I don't want to go down that road, but still.) She just wants to be where the people are, wants to see, wants to see 'em dancing. Oh, but while she's super useful powerswise she's also still basically a teenager, so have fun with that drama.
First off, though, I wanted to say: sorry, y'all, while I'm here to play Crystal I actually pretty much hated Inhumans as a series and most of the characters on it because most of them were assholes (Gorgon notwithstanding, though I disapprove of how he was ultimately handled in the plot, and like, Triton and Louise get a pass by virtue of being essentially plot devices). I don't actually have much interest in playing Crystal off of those not mentioned from her direct canon because I don't like them; snarky texting threads would be about the limit. Sorry. Maybe they're better in the comics, I don't really know, I haven't read any Inhumans comics because, well, the show was so painful it turned me off of the whole bunch of them.
Second, I would like to give some background for those of you who were smarter than I and did not actually subject yourselves to all eight episodes of this nonsense program. Conveniently it has absolutely no bearing on the entire rest of the MCU, plotwise, so you aren't missing much, but in case you're curious, basically the deal is this:
There are some Inhumans who still live on Earth (they are a big part of Agents of SHIELD, my devotion to which is another reason why I sat through Inhumans just in case) but there is another group of them that lives on the moon in a city called Attilan that is invisible to human detection because forcefields or something. They have been there for a very long time and presumably the Earth Inhumans do not know about them; turns out this is a good thing because Daisy Johnson, for one, would not stand for the way things are done in Attilan. The city is ruled by a royal family - currently King Black(agar) Bolt(agon), whose voice kills you if he uses it so he communicates in a fake version of sign language, and his wife Queen Medusa(lith) Amaquelin, who has prehensile hair and also is one of the only ones who's bothered to learn his fake sign language and therefore translates for him all the time - and society is divided into a literal caste system based on how useful the gifts you receive in terragenesis are. The people with useful gifts like healing or prescience or butterfly wings get to come help at the castle or whatever, while everyone else is stuck in the literal mines. It's bad, guys.
Crystal(ia), incidentally, is the princess by virtue of being Medusa's younger sister, and while it's never really explained how old anyone actually is or how that works in this bunch of people you can assume she's the moon Inhuman version of a teenager because she does things like skip royal ceremonies to play with her giant dog and lay around listening to music. She's basically Ariel from The Little Mermaid (more on this in a bit) and she's pretty much oblivious to the politics of Attilan because everyone basically just treats her like a kid and doesn't tell her stuff. Crystal has really useful superpowers, too: she's basically the Avatar, but she's white so she's not actually the Avatar, she just does the same stuff (control the elements). Also her name is Crystal, but Inhuman terragenesis is performed with terragen crystals, so she's basically named after, like, Inhuman puberty or estrogen or something. Good going, guys.
So at the beginning of the series all hell breaks loose because Black Bolt's younger brother Maximus decides to stage a coup. Maximus went through terragenesis and became... a regular human with absolutely no superpowers. So he should be in the low caste (according to their society's rules, anyway) but since he's royal by blood they keep him around anyway and it's really awkward for everyone because he's constantly looked down on and therefore has a huge grudge. He decides he's going to overthrow his brother and then allegedly do away with the caste system, which would be great if he was actually going to do something (he really shows no signs of having an actual plan, so it's basically just him talking so they like him). Black Bolt and Medusa and their advisors ("cousins"?) Karnak of the douchewad mind palaces and Gorgon of the good heart but uncomfortable racial implications go down to Earth for various reasons (banishment/trying to help being the main ones), after Maximus has his guards cuts off all of Medusa's superpowered hair (this is a relief as it was a very bad wig/special effect). Maximus also keeps Crystal in the palace, hoping that she'll endorse him. Spoiler: she really doesn't.
Instead, she goes to Earth too. All of the Inhumans are in Hawaii because Triton the plot device was allegedly killed there and something something homing beacon something something. Remember her giant dog? That's Lockjaw, and he's a giant bulldog who teleports. Very convenient because it means she has a way to get to Earth too. What's not convenient is that teleporting somehow injures Lockjaw or makes him ill and he spends two and a half episodes languishing in a random barn while some guy who found Crystal in the forest gets his veterinarian ex-girlfriend to come fix him. Through this time Crystal also learns about Earth and the less-shitty parts of humanity, which she mostly just seems really excited to hear because Inhumans on the moon teach that humans really, really suck. (I guess to make themselves look better?)
Anyway, eventually they all wind up reuniting, the Inhumans from the moon who are on Earth. Crystal awkwardly kisses the aforementioned boy all of once before they go back to the moon and she blows him off forever, which was the Heterosexual Agenda at play; Crystal also decides that when everything blows over she wants to go back to Earth and be like all of the "normal people living normal lives." (See? Ariel.) Unfortunately Maximus decides that Attilan must die, so he sets it to blow up. The "protagonists" make sure all of the Inhumans get out beforehand and teleport on down to Hawaii via their teleportation wall of more uncomfortable racial implications, and Crystal helps. And then they're all in Hawaii and it's the end of Thor: Ragnarok but with mostly shitheads instead and they're going to make a new home on Earth. I guess.
This roleplay journal is about what happens when Crystal, who now officially lives on Earth, strikes out on her own (or mostly her own, because obviously Lockjaw is coming with) and starts to see the world. She gets to use her elemental powers for good of her own design and probably meets up with other Marvel characters; she's been Avengers-adjacent in the comics, and why not here as well? (She's been adjacent to some Kree shitheads in the comics, too, and I don't want to go down that road, but still.) She just wants to be where the people are, wants to see, wants to see 'em dancing. Oh, but while she's super useful powerswise she's also still basically a teenager, so have fun with that drama.
