#getting my labrys in a week and a half

[thuesdaynightdykelife]

Lesbians will see a melee weapon and immediately message their tattoo artist.

[aqueousablution]

(April 2023) Happy final day of Lesbian Visibility Week!

Original post body under the cut:

I've talked about it a fair bit already in the posts of the WIPs, but I decided to repurpose my old D&D character Éclair and her girlfriend Rosamund as characters in the same setting as sorXa, though they'd certainly be in a different resistance cell from her and her comrades, and possibly might never meet.

Longer alt text describing Rosamund: On the left, a Black human woman in red and white armor with some gold accents, worn over a loose grey jumpsuit. She has a backpack of sorts, which is red with a white-trimmed yellow light on top. In her robotic right hand, she holds a black and white labrys-like axe with a beam of yellow energy emitted like a spearhead. On her armor and axe are circular yellow gem-like adornments, some of which are emitting light (mostly on her right side and on the axe, as well as on top of the backpack). Her belt buckle and the buckle for the collar of her jumpsuit resemble upwards-facing horseshoes. She's about half a head taller than the gynoid.

Longer alt text describing Éclair: On the right, a gynoid with short, curly black hair, glowing white eyes, slate grey artificial skin on her muscular-looking body, and pale golden adornments on her arms. Dark lines run from her tear ducts to her cheeks, and then down her face, and she has pale golden headphone-like structures in place of ears. She wields a three-lobed bollock dagger (or sorts) in her left hand, and electricity courses from her hand across the weapon. Light is emitted from the three gem-like parts on her "gauntlets", as well as the one set into her left shoulder. She has a small pistol strapped to her right thigh, and she wears a khaki cargo jacket that has been converted into a vest, as well as a black neckerchief with a boxy lightning motif. She's about half a head shorter than the human.

Some design notes under the cut:

Originally Éclair was a Dex-based human Fighter descended from the vaati (think the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, not the Zelda villain, though his English name was probably based on them), so she had some control of storm magic. Taking inspiration from that, she's now a gynoid who can use the electricity generated by her body offensively, and she primarily focuses on covert operations (if her MO were a gameplay style, Metal Gear would be my first point of comparison). I simplified her weapon set down to just a dagger (based on this one, apparently of French origin) and what's basically a PSS silent pistol (I considered giving her a buster gun, but I figure that's too visible if she's in a scenario where she needs to go unnoticed, and I figure if she's ever in a scenario where kinetic projectiles are ineffective she can probably just go Sheev Palpatine on her enemy's ass); previously she had a Swiss saber, a bollock dagger, a bow, bolas, throwing knives, a backup shortsword... you get the picture. The nodes on her body only glow when she's channeling electricity through them, so they're not much of a concern as far as sneaking is concerned. The clap of her dummy thicc asscheeks, though...

Rosamund never got much development because the campaign fizzled out before she actually showed up, but she was originally conceived of as a human Cavalier Fighter and later switched to being a Marshal (basically my own homebrew conversion of the 4e Warlord to 5e; her subclass was Warlord, even, which in my take on the class was basically halfway between Fighter and what the class was normally). Her armaments were much closer to what she has here - a fairly typical trio of pollaxe, longsword, and rondel dagger. She also wore red plate armor (with a sallet, of course) and had a horse named Friedrich Wilhelm XXXII. Here she instead has a labrys that's kinda sorta like a pollaxe (just one that has two axe heads instead of a bec de faucon or a hammer), which can also be used as a really weird hand-cannon by firing beams from where the energy-dague is currently, and then she also a robotic arm that can punch like a motherfucker is she's disarmed (she uses less intrusive prosthetics - if any at all - when she's not expecting a fight). She also has a shield generator on her left arm, which takes the same batteries buster pistols use (you can see the bottoms of two of them, one on either side), and is projected from the large nodes on her forearm and hand. I'm still not 100% sure on where power for the labrys-cannon comes from - I'm thinking it's that generator/battery on her back, and the red on the inside of her robot hand is some material that allows the transfer of power into the labrys-cannon's haft. Her robotic arm is also part of how she can even wield it in the first place, given its heft. As far as her role in this setting, I'm envisioning that she's normally part of a squad of mech pilots, where she's their officer, though I imagine her mech would be on the small side relative to others in the setting - more like the walkers from Sonic Adventure 2, or one of the smaller types of ride armor from Mega Man X at most. And then when needed, she can pull her axe out of its holster on her mech and start busting heads on foot, as well.

[arcticdementor]

Sitting on the couch watching TV earlier this month, my wife read to me a headline from her iPhone. “Listen to this,” she said: “There are only 15 lesbian bars left in the entire country.”

“Great,” I said, “We’ll each get our own.”

Lesbian bars have always been vastly outnumbered by bars for straight people and gay men, but in the 1980s, there were more than 200 lesbian bars in the U.S. What happened? Well, a lot of them sucked. The first lesbian bars I went to in my early 20s were dank, smoky caves where women in khaki shorts and backward caps grinded on each other to Outkast. They could have been frat bars if not for the notable absence of men.

…

But there’s something else going on right now, because it’s not just lesbian bars that are disappearing; it’s lesbian as a category itself.

After Portland’s last lesbian bar closed in 2010, as Ellena Rosenthal explored in the Willamette Week, there were attempts to start lesbian-specific nights at various venues, but most avoided the L-word to appear inclusive of trans and nonbinary people. One event, called Temporary Lesbian Bar, apologized after being accused of condoning “trans women exterminationism” for using the labrys — a double-headed ax that symbolizes female strength and has long been a part of lesbian iconography — in their logo. That event still exists (or did before Covid), but the organizers make sure to advertise that, despite the name, it’s “open, inclusive, and welcoming to all people.” (Oddly, these fights only seem to occur around women’s space, not men’s. If gay bars, bathhouses, and clubs go extinct, it will be because of Covid, not because of infighting over inclusion.)

Portland may be a parody of PC, but it’s not an outlier. When I came out in North Carolina in the early 2000s, the term “lesbian” was fading and “queer” was rapidly rising. Most of my peers saw lesbians as stodgy, old-fashioned, and uncool, whereas queers were hip, edgy, and inclusive. Yet “queer” is vague enough to mean nearly anything, so the label says less about your love life and more about your politics. (I propose we all start using the Kinsey Scale instead.)

The flight from “lesbian” has accelerated since. An academic in the Southeast, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that when she mentioned to a colleague that she’s a lesbian, the colleague “reacted like I’d confessed to being a Confederate Lost-Causer. She told me that the term is outdated and problematic, and I shouldn’t use it.” So the lesbian keeps quiet about her identity: “It’s like living in a second closet.”

Not long ago, it would have been the Christian right stigmatizing homosexual women. Today, it’s also from people who call themselves queer.

…

Nonbinary people say that the identification liberates them from the prison of gender, but for others, it doesn’t dismantle gender roles and stereotypes; it reinforces them. It legitimizes the idea that there’s an intractable gender binary in the first place. Instead of saying, “I’m a woman and I reject gender roles,” NB ideology says, in effect, “I reject gender roles and therefore I’m not a woman.”

Joycelyn MacDonald, the editor-in-chief of the lesbian site AfterEllen, has seen the NB ideology pushed by well-intended people and she worries about the unintended consequences. “When we say that femininity is equivalent to womanhood, we leave no space for women, gay or straight, to be gender non-conforming,” she told me. “Butch lesbians especially have fought for the right to claim space as women, and now women are running from that instead of boldly stepping into it. It’s another way of saying ‘I’m not like other girls,’ and it’s demeaning to other women.”

This is not a popular position in some queer communities, and AfterEllen is routinely accused of being transphobic. In 2018, Rhea Butcher, a nonbinary comic, tweeted: “You don’t represent me or my friends and your website is a sham. You’re not a lesbian/bisexual website, you’re a TERF website.” (“TERF" stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” and is not, to put it mildly, a compliment.) Butcher’s tweet is typical, and it’s part of what makes having this conversation so fraught.

There’s been no clear polling on the shift from “lesbian” to “nonbinary,” and so my sense that the lesbian is endangered is purely anecdotal. But there are plenty of anecdotes. After I put out a call on Twitter asking lesbians for input, my inbox filled with emails from women who said vast portions of their friend groups have adopted new labels and pronouns. But none feel like they can openly discuss it, which is apparent by the number who asked to remain anonymous: all of them.

…

Some feminists argue that women are so oppressed in society that opting out of womanhood is a way of opting out of oppression. I’m skeptical. Why didn’t women do this decades ago, when oppression was objectively greater? Besides, enbies are more likely to be Smith undergrads than, say, immigrants getting assaulted at the border.

And there’s another not-so popular explanation: that it’s a fad, a form of social contagion.

I’m aware that this will be offensive to some people. The concept of a fixed, internal gender identity has become sacrosanct, and it’s viewed as something deeply personal and meaningful, like the soul. But humans are social creatures and we are easily influenced by our peers. This isn’t a moral judgment, just a fact, and I’ve seen how it plays out in my own peer circle. First one person comes out as nonbinary, then another, then another, and then one day half the dykes you know go by “they.” Add social media to the mix, and fawning profiles of nonbinary people in the press, and you’ve got yourself a mass cultural phenomenon.

I ran this theory by a therapist who specializes in LGTBQ issues. (She asked to remain anonymous, so I’ll call her Tara.) Tara told me that while the most common complaints of her young female patients involve gender identity, it’s not an issue with older patients. The older ones struggle with their sexuality or their relationships, but aside from a few transexuals with dysphoria, gender identity doesn’t come up. And young women, in particular, are prone to social contagion. We’ve seen this in many areas: eating disorders, cutting, exercising, yawning, strange fits of laughter, and even (forgive the term) hysteria.

When I asked Tara if social contagion could be the cause of the nonbinary movement, she paused for long enough that I thought she may have hung up the phone. “Yes,” she said. “But I can’t really say that to anyone.” The professional risks are too great.

[inheritorofmemories-archive]

This is my gift for @lilolilyr for the Andromaquynh Secret Santa. You asked for a hurt/comfort fic, and I delivered. Hope you enjoy it, and happy holidays! Ich hoffe, dieses Geschenk findet dich gesund und glücklich <3

I’m putting it under a cut for length purpose and here is the link to the fic on AO3.

~

Lost and found again out there among the paths

The stars are bright, cold and unreachable, hung high in the firmament.

They haven’t changed in all of her centuries gone. The names are different but the same figures look down on her, the gaze of the Ursa and the Swan’s tail, the Crane hidden under the horizon in these parts of the world.

She isn’t ready to see her homelands yet, but this is enough. This is good. The Steppe hasn’t changed either, the same grass covering the earth everywhere she looks, the sun burning her skin as the winds surround her. It all feels so familiar, the sights, the animals, the long days of travel. Andromache, sitting by her side, walking by her side, sleeping by her side. Andromache, Andy, Andreas, Hadriana, Anath and so many other names forgotten by time. And still, she’s here, with her.

They are not riding horses but it doesn’t matter, Quỳnh would crawl to the end of the world with Andromache. They left their jeep three days ago at the entrance of those lands and they’ve been traveling by feet since then. The pace is slow but that’s what they both need. Peace, to be able to feel the grain of time slip through their fingers, not lost in the confusion of the modern world and its obsession with going so fast nothing matters anymore.

They talk as they walk, share memories and new stories, but mostly they walk, side by side, hand brushing and glances shared in the intimacy of the wide and open Steppe. Even the wind taste familiar in these moments. Quỳnh watches a lot, at night when the sun has gone down, she watches Andromache’s profile lightened only by the fire in front of her. Shadows dances in her temples and cheekbones and her pale eyes are drawn to the flames, mirrors bright with life. Quỳnh wishes she could bridge the distance between them as easily as they used to.

~

When the salt finally ate through her bound of iron, when the ocean took mercy on her, when Quỳnh broke out of her prison the first thing she felt after the burn of air in her lungs was an indescribable fury. A mad feeling seething in her heart that she mistook as anger, resentment. But it wasn’t that at all, she now recognizes it. She felt shame, because she knew then, crawling on the rocky beach away from the cold ocean that it happened. She had been broken, after millenniums of riding the world without a care, a handful of lunatics had done it.

She feared she had become nothing but a shell of the woman she was once. An’ always said she was like a sword, sharp edges and unforgiving. She used to joke that no one but her love��s skilled hands could handle her, that it was meant to be the two of them. It felt good, to know she would always have a resting place with Andromache.

She feared she lost herself in the ocean, that despite how hard she kept her faith in Andromache, how hard she clung to life, suffering over and over through the pain of drowning, of burning water suffocating her lungs, she feared she lost it all. That Andromache wouldn’t have that sacred place for her anymore, that she had become monstrous at the eternity spend in a cage.  That despite how bright of a beacon it has been, her love somehow couldn’t be enough to save her. That their love wasn’t enough.

She was mad, furious at what happened to her, but more than anything she was scared. Scared of this new world, of what it had become and what she missed. Scared that she’d never find her family, that she would never have a home with them again.

And now, in a twisted play from fate, she is scared of losing Andromache.

She is so scared, like she has never been. Before seeing that damned iron coffin, nothing frightened her, for she had Andromache. Even the coffin didn’t fill her with as much dread as the sight of those bruises on Andromache’s cheek did when she finally found her again with the spy’s contacts the drunkard gave her. She wondered, has she lost her? Has she lost part of her soul? Did she cause this cruel fate?

~

They left the family a week ago. They needed time alone they said as they were packing their bags. Quỳnh needs time alone with Andromache, to be only with her, like they had been for so long before meeting Yusuf and Nicolò. She missed them, but looking at them doesn’t hurt like it does when she watches Andromache’s face. Andy said she had to leave, to be alone for a while, away from it all. It warmed Quỳnh’s cold chest that she was included in her idea of alone, that alone without Quỳnh means not whole, not complete, lacking.

They took a plane and flew all the way to the Great Steppe. At least it hasn't changed since she was gone, unlike her homelands. There’s still a bitter taste when she sees what happened to her mountains and her coastlines. Andromache says it gets easier after a few years, but she’s not sure she wants this to be more bearable, to get used to it.

They’ve been playing a game lately, “what hasn’t changed” she calls it. It started a few months ago when she finally grew tired of being reminded of everything new she missed the creation of. She looked at Yusuf who had been explaining to her some new gadget she had no interest in learning about that night and challenged him to find five things in the room that she knew of. It’s been easier talking with him since then, almost like before. The rules are simple, list everything that stayed the same through the centuries she wasn’t there for. Nicolò’s uncanny words, Yusuf’s bright eyes. The stars. An’s sweet tooth. The way Quỳnh still wields blades with the same grace; she can still spar with Yusuf in their shared Viet, Greek and Persian tongues.

Her love’s face hasn’t changed yet, despite her new mortality. She still has the same piercing eyes that look like home, that calls for her to come back home, please come back to me she heard Andromache cry out in her sleep.

She hides, hides it well in the day, in front of Yusuf and Nicolò and Nile. She smiles and laughs and moves the same. It’s only when they’re alone that she allows the walls to break down and for Quỳnh to see what’s going on in her head. The guilt in her eyes every time she looks at her, the way she touches her like she’s fragile, like she’s mist that would dissipate with the smallest gust of wind. She was so ready for Quỳnh to hate her when they found each other again, she doesn’t think Andromache’s really let go of this idea, that she doesn’t deserve Quỳnh, that she somehow failed by not letting her life rot by looking after an impossible task.

Quỳnh only needed one look at her pendant around Andromache’s neck, the pain etched in her eyes, the desperation in her voice for all doubt that she had been forgotten to leave her mind. The anger, the bitterness was still there, but how could she ever loathe Andromache, the other half of her soul, the one so unjustly ripped away from her?

At night, that’s when Andy confesses her fears. How scared she is too, of dying, of being gone after so long, of being without her family, without Quỳnh. Of losing that constant in her life, that she knew she would be there to see it happen, whatever was bound to happen.

She tells Quỳnh about her fear of aging, of her hands shaking, her hairs falling grey, her vision turning blurry, her feet uneasy and her mind crazy. Her fear of leaving them behind, the fear of the unknown. After all those years, the unanswered question still bears heavily on her. She wished she had answers like Nicolò and Yusuf do, like Nile does. That assurance that there’s something after for her.

She has nightmares too. When it’s not Quỳnh waking up cold and her chest squeezed by terror, it’s Andy who sweats through the sheet and mumbles names over and over. She dreams about Lykon, the hot blood on her hands. Quỳnh holds her through the night and they cry together, still bearing the grief for their lost brother. They share the burden, and that is all Quỳnh can ask for, wish for.

They share a lot of tears for the years lost to men’s madness, the one they won’t have, their mistakes and misdeeds. They share laughs too, when it’s late and the night is dark and the house quiet. Those real shards of joy that sounds like a thousand carillon, the sweet, soft laughter that heals and mends. They are rare, so, so precious. They talk about their first years together, learning to speak the same tongue, to move as one. They hold each other, close and dearly, with the desperation of a drowning man because Quỳnh refuses to let her go and Andy can’t seem to stop reaching out either, always seeking a touch.

It helps, feeling her hands in hers, her lips against hers, their body pressed together under the covers and standing hips to hips in the house, never apart, always locking eyes and sharing smiles.

~

They’ve set their camp in a nook of rocks just as the sun approached the horizon, near a small freshwater current and protected from the winds. They gathered wood together and Andromache used her metal lighter to start the fire. They unrolled their bedrolls and the thick plastic tarp and they filled their bottle with cool water, washed their hands in the stream like they so often did in time pasts.

They’re preparing their meal, Quỳnh’s cutting the few roots they have and boiling the barley and Andromache is gutting the two rabbits she killed earlier with her bow, her own labrys laid between them as the knives work. She’s wearing jeans and a woolen sweater and yet it still feels familiar, the sound of the blades and the crackling of the fire, the smell of wood and iron pot, the sight of the clear night sky, no clouds to cross the picture.

They chat idly in their own tongue as they work, no English, modern or what Quỳnh remembers, not even the so recent Italian language or the Sabir Yusuf spoke with them at first. No, it’s old, old enough that it’s forgotten by everyone, everything, papers and stones except for two being on this earth. They throw in the occasional olden Greek and Latin when they are in need of too new of a concept but it soothes Quỳnh’s heart to speak what she first learned, to build it again with Andromaque, keep its memory alive. It feels like saving a part of herself.

The comfortable silence is broken by a sudden shout from Andromache followed by a string of cuss and a number of blasphemies to at least three different cultures. Quỳnh turns her head in time to see her throw the half-skinned rabbit and the knife on the ground and clutch her hand to her chest. Her grip on her knife lessen and she wills her worries to quiet down.

“Fucking shit,” Andromache mutters under her breath and Quỳnh can see the blood flowing from the wound she inflicted on herself. She’s pressing on it but it doesn’t stop the blood from dripping down to her wrist. “Cut my hand.”   She says and turns to shrug at Quỳnh, feigning carelessness. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“You really should let me handle the knives, my love,” Quỳnh says as she sets her own knife down. Andromache has been hurt enough for her to know how to react in situations like this one, the sense of dread has quietened since the first wound she saw on her love’s body. “I would appreciate it if you could bring all your fingers to our couch tonight.” She tries to laugh; Andromache tries to smile. It still hurts too much but she knows it would somehow feel worse to not at least pretend that everything is okay. As wrong as it sounds, that hollow laugh of hers and the tight smile stretched over Andromache’s face feels like a breath of fresh air in the depth of their heavy hearts.

“We talked about this,” Andromache mutters. “I don’t want this to change anything.” This. This. This feels so unjust. How could the world punish them like that, taunt Andromache with eternity and take it all away just as Quỳnh finds her way back to her.

“Letting me use the knife won’t take away your skills my love. Or your honor.” She’s tiring of Andromache’s misplaced guilt, of her own heart betraying her and making her doubt. They have too few years to taint them with such futile thoughts and feelings. It’s at this instant, Andromache still holding on her hand and Quỳnh watching her hair falling in front of her eyes that she decides to push past what is outside of her control and move forward. She’ll keep the pain in her heart but she won’t let it define her, nor will she let Andromache be defined by it.

“Come,” She says and extends her arm toward her. “Give me your hand. Nile showed me how to care for wounds.” They’ll move on, gods help her they will find their path again, she swears it. Andromache holds her gaze for a moment, tilt her head, and it’s the first time since they reunited that Quỳnh gets that feeling. The one deep down that she knows, that they both know, that they are one. That they don’t need words, only a look, a touch to get it, to understand the other. Her throat lumps with relief as Andromache gives her her hand to hold. She’s holding her gaze with a peace she hadn’t see in so long, warm and confident despite the chaos surrounding them. Things will get better her guts murmur, and she believes it.

“It was time you pick up on this century’s medicine my heart, the way things are going I’ll have more scars than a crocodile has teeth before I get my first grey hair.” And this time the joke feels right. It feels like home, like the teasing and ribbing they shared so many times before a battle, on their couch, at a meal, in the busy streets, vast deserts and quiet forests. Quỳnh grins as she takes the small first aid kit in their bag and opens it in front of her, still holding Andromache’s wrist between her fingers.

“I might as well do it, seeing how determined you are at testing Nile’s and Nicolò’s knowledge of medicine. They need someone who isn’t afraid of telling you off before you run faster than modern science can follow.”

“It’s the hair,” Andromache says as if she hadn’t been intimidating kings and emperors with hair as long as a horse’s mane before Quỳnh even met her. Quỳnh smiles, the pain wavering in her heart as the warmth of feeling whole again gains her. Finally, she looks down at Andromache’s hand to judge the extent of the damage on the palm, only to have to double-take what she sees.

The blood isn’t flowing anymore and she knows that knife was sharp enough to dig deep in the flesh. The left hand, the one holding the meaty rabbit and the one victim to the blade’s enthusiasm, the one bearing the wound, doesn’t have any cut to show. Quỳnh’s breath locks as she stares at the hand, now cradled between her own.

“My love.” She says, and when she wipes the blood with her thumb, the skin appears undamaged, no cut, no scars, nothing but the smooth extend of her palm. She does it again, and a third time just to be sure. The flesh and muscles, tendons and bones underneath are unscathed, whole and perfect.

“What?” Andromache asks but keeps her eyes fixed on Quỳnh’s, a frown painting her face with worry. “Is it bad?”

“Your hand.” Quỳnh whispers. “Look at it.” There’s a moment of silence, maybe a minute, maybe an hour, Quỳnh herself isn’t sure. She just knows that she’s filling with euphoria and that Andromache’s right hand is touching the healed skin, slow strokes of wonder.

“It’s gone.” Her voice is hoarse, barely a whisper. She touches the skin, press on it, rub away the blood. It’s her hand that makes Quỳnh look up, and her eyes are filling with misty tears. “It’s gone. Quỳnh, I’ve healed.”

“Your immortality Andromache.” And the same shadow crosses Andromache’s eyes and her own mind.

“Wait.” Quỳnh lets go of her hand as she takes the knife again. They both watch as she brings the blade to the back of her forearm and slowly slices the skin, a hand long wound. It feels like one of those miracles Nicolò always talks about, the way the skin stitches itself close on its own, how the blood stop and the edges meet and the scar fades in a minute.

“It’s back, I’ve got it again.” The words are barely out of her mouth that Quỳnh wraps her arms around her neck and bring her close into an embrace, Andromache’s arms warm and heavy on her back. They’re shaking, laughing, whispering sweet nonsense into their shoulders, and Quỳnh knows tears are flowing from their eyes, she welcomes the liquid joy.

“Our love was enough then.” She can’t help but voice it out loud, needs to hear it to really understand the reality of what’s happening.

“Quỳnh?” Andromache pulls back, plunge her gaze into hers, it feels almost too much, too big.

“Our love was enough.” She feels herself laughing, nervous and bursting with relief, uncontrollable. “It is enough.” ‘I am enough’ she can’t help but think.

“What are you talking about Quỳnh? Of course it is. Always has been enough, more than enough. It has always been everything to me.” Both of her hands come to rest on the side of her face, cradling it with great gentleness.

“I was afraid my faith in you, in us had been wavering in my prison.” She confesses, lets herself feel it, feels the depth of the hurt now that she was proven wrong, that she knows it is untrue. “That you lost this gift of immortality because of me, because of my unreliable heart.”

“Oh Quỳnh.” Her voice breaks then, as does her face. “Have you been thinking this all this time?”

“Do you think me mad? To think that you losing your immortality coinciding with me finding you again broken, mad with fury, was nothing meaningless?” Quỳnh shakes her head then, covers Andromache’s hands with hers.

“Quỳnh, what are you talking about? I never doubted you.” Pain lines Andromache’s voice, desperation. “If you see yourself broken, then what am I? We are not as we were, will never be again. But that had nothing to do with you my heart.” She kisses her with urgency as if she couldn’t use her words to express everything in her heart. Quỳnh closes her eyes and feels the wind dry lips move against her, slides her hands behind her neck and bring her even closer. They part with a pant and Andromache smiles, a genuine, guilt-free smile, small but the seed of something bigger. “Our love was never tainted, in all of our millenniums together, it survived every hardship, every terror, every obstacle. We will survive this too.”

“I knew this, somehow, but you understand better than anyone how the mind is. It’s so easy to be tricked by sorrow when you’re grieving and hurting.”

“I’ll spend this eternity given to me reminding you Quỳnh. We never understood this gift, there’s no point reading meaning where there’s none. The only thing I am sure of is the love that courses through this world, through us.” Andromache fixes her gaze on her, strong, unwavering, and oh how Quỳnh missed seeing it. “I love you like the earth loves the sun, undeterred, constant, in the depth of my being because without I am not alive.”

“Can you believe that I do not hate you then?” Quỳnh prompts and she closes her mouth into a tight line. “That what happened was never your fault? That you couldn’t find me any more than you could save Lykon? My anger is not directed at you, never was, never will be.”

“I hate that I couldn’t save you,” Andromache says with shame in her voice. “I should have been there for you. You lost so much because of me.” This isn’t a new conversation, but it’s only today that Quỳnh realizes what she needs to hear, not a logical argument nor a dismissal of her feelings.

“I forgive you,” She says, and this time it’s Andromache who let go of a tight laugh, wet with tears. “I forgive you, Andromache, of any fault you gave yourself, I absolve any wrong you think you’ve done. You’ve saved me once in that desert where our path crossed for the first time, you saved me again in this century. I do not accuse you of anything, and neither will you. You are free of this burden.”

“Thank you.” Andromache whisper, tears in her eyes. “Thank you, my love.” Healing won’t be easy, but this is a start. They can forgive each other, forgive themselves, move on from there with a clear slate and shoulders relieved from their heavy loads of sorrow. They can do anything; they are not strained by time or Death anymore.

“We have time.” Quỳnh realizes, just as Andromache swipes her thumb along her jaw. “You will live, and we have time.” She pushes back Andromache’s hair, and she allows herself to feel the relief too. “You will live Andromache, spend time with the family, with Nile, Yusuf and Nicolò. You will see Sébastien again.”

“I don’t have to go yet.” She says, and the smile that carves itself on her face is radiant, shining with newfound light. “I don’t have to go.” Her hand slide at the back of her neck and slowly she kisses her, once, light and barely there, she rests her nose on her cheek “I am only grateful to have the gift back, to have the opportunity to spend it for as long as I’ll have it with you, together.”

“Just the two of us,” Quỳnh says through another laugh, press her forehead against Andromache’s, feel the warm skin and her hands over her shoulders. Let herself feels it all.

“Until the end.”

Quỳnh breathes the same air as Andromache, in, out, feel the same pulse as hers under her fingers, beating as one, like it always had. Like it was always meant to be.

~

The stars are bright, old and eternal, hung high in the firmament.

The fire is slowly dying, the last flames licking the wood and giving their valiant effort to burn for a bit longer. The moon lights their step, pale blue and cold on their warm skin. They are dancing together, waltzing under the milky way, hand pressed against hand, feet mirroring feet, circling each other as they did for the very first time ages ago, when the stars had different faces, when Andromache was still called a goddess’s name and Quỳnh’s was a whisper amongst her people’s legend.

Their gaze locked, lost in each other’s eyes, their nose touching and sharing the same breath, it feels like a dream.

“Do you remember my love,” Quỳnh pants as she shifts on her feet and pushes her hand against An’s, raising it high in the sky. “That night in Bābilim?” She grins and twists her hips just so as to press Andromache closer to her chest. She wishes she could crawl into her ribcage, be as close as possible, seize her heart from the inside and never let go again. She settles on sliding a leg between hers and let herself get lost in her scent, drunk from it like a young boy is from his first sip of ale.

“If I remember,” Andromache whispers in her ear. “You looked like wildfire. The most beautiful creature I had ever seen.” There had been music Quỳnh remembers, and wine flowing like rivers from the amphoras. She danced through the night, and Andromache’s gaze upon her was heavy and burning, she felt stripped from everything, baring her soul for the first time in her life. That’s the night their love became more than allyship, more than friend and necessity. That’s when it shifted to become more, to become everything.

“Do you remember what I said?” Andromache asks her, lays her left hand to her chest and she does the same, feel her heartbeat strong under her palm despite their clothing.

“More please!” Quỳnh moans like An’s does and pushes away with her hand only to crash together with the next steps. Andromache grins and indulges her change of rhythm. They had a room that night, a soft bed of feathers and fine silks like they had seldom seen with their own eyes.

“After that. On the balcony.” And Quỳnh remembers fondly that moment. Andromache had draped herself over her back, holding onto each other and murmuring in the quiet night. The moon had been full then too, albeit the desert looked warmer than the Steppe they are dancing in today. They circle each other again, Quỳnh savors the moment with her entire being.

“You will be my deathbed.” She meant it as a joke after the night filled with passion, but they both knew the deeper meaning. It hanged unsaid in the air between them. “Remember what I said?”

“And you mine.” Andromache presses her nose close to her cheek, her breath warm on her skin. They are silent after that, don’t need words anymore, not when they have each other.

They finish their dance when the last of the fire blow away in the night. They press their foreheads together and stand in the middle of the Steppe, alone, together. Whole and one. For the first time in over a year, in over five centuries, her heart finally feels at peace. She’s home, in the embrace of Andromache’s arms, of Andy’s, in the certainty that they won against fate, that they are truly immortal. That they’ll live together again.

The stars are bright and Andromache’s eyes are even brighter, Quỳnh is sure of that.

[themoonwheniamlost]

Knees of Green

My gift for @hesnotmy!!! I hope you enjoy this, I put the fic under the cut and on AO3 Here. I went a bit to the left with your prompt I hope you don’t mind! 

Thank you so much to @thirst-teenth for putting this whole thing together! We’ve gotten so much good content, and I’m so happy to have been a part of it. 

Thank you also to my Beta/Bestie/Lungs @jesuisnilunnilautre .

Happy New Year All, ilysm, Have some lesbians.

It’s been two weeks since Andromache had gotten separated from them in the battle, and while Quynh had all faith in her wife, it was starting to worry her. The boys were trying to be helpful, but if Nicolo says one more … encouraging thing about “Distance makes the heart grow fonder,” or “Two halves of one whole heart can never truly be parted,” Quynh is going to throw a rock at his head. 

Fall harvest was imminent. It was silly to feel alone in a house full of love, but she did. Roma had work to do in the next town over, and Quynh could work to keep their home safe here. She dons a simple skirt and Andromache’s cape, Quynh grabbed her handled basket and left the cabin. She set out, looking into the distance, following a path that she knew like the lines on Andromaches’ palms. 

With quick feet and a wanting heart, she soon found herself in the hibiscus grove. It was easy to think of her wife there.  The grove was a gift that had grown steadily through the years to hold decades’ worth of memories. Stories of love and dirt and patience, keep them fresh for the harvest of each day, ripe enough to taste at any recall. 

As she steps between the trees she feels her heart swell like the first time she set foot here, when Andromache, smiling and covered in soil, had pulled her into a clearing full of freshly turned earth and dragged her by the hand through the unworn paths, pointing to each sectioned area and explaining what would go where. Few things could stop Andromache when she had things to say, and this was no exception.  It went on for some time, Roma’s face bright and a bit flushed, outlining how the Hibiscus plants would ring the trees here, the pepper and tomato plants here, and perhaps a fig tree in the back — 

Quynh felt like she was chasing a bee around the grove, heavy with promise, a garden pollinated by faith and trust. She smiled and reached out with the hand not clasped in Roma’s. “Cưng, how did you get dirt in your hair?” Her beloved stopped to let her free the garden from her head, pulling her fingers softly through the strands until she was satisfied. 

She looked up to Andromache’s face again, tongue light with the intent to tease her wife, and was caught instead by a gaze she knew too well. They drifted close to each other, chests rising in synch, the air between them tightened. It was easy to tilt her head just so, to gather her wife’s hair in her hands, to close her eyes as Andromache placed their lips together. The soft and easy press of familiarity settled them on the newly turned earth, and when they rose they had both had gathered a garden in their hair. 

Now, Quynh sat in their garden alone, not even counting the stars, she already knew their names, but what did they matter now? Apart from Andromache the sky was a vast sea of empty eyes. The only person who had pulled the stars down for her was Roma, a warrior strong enough to shine in peace as she did in war. Apart from Adromach she often felt like half of a blade, a hilt with no extension. Deciding that there was no use sitting about, she could sigh just as well tending to the garden as she could yearning on the bench, she gathered her skirts and her trowel. 

She knelt down to tend to the peppers first. It would take longer working alone, but it needed to be done. It would fill the hours if nothing else. 

While two weeks was nothing to an immortal, time somehow had a way of warping, a way of making the seconds into hours, the days into minutes. Andromache had tracked down the bandits they had been following. Dispatching them was easily done, finding their leader, gathering their movements, and locations. It was easy but time-consuming, luring them into dark corners and allowing the village to breathe without fear of their holdings. Finally, she was done, it was time for her to get back to her family. 

Andromache felt the distance with each step she took through the market towards the edge of town. While she had missed them all, the need for her wife hung from her shoulders like a wool cloak. Roma sees flashes of Quynh in every person she passes. Flashes of her clever hands, her dark and sparkling eyes, the curve of her hip against a fruit stall, her laughter on the wind. 

After walking through fields and farms for hours she came upon the town square. She spends an eternity dodging through stalls and around the edge of the village. Andromache ran the final distance to their house. As she came upon the door to their cottage, Yusuf is leaning in the entryway, holding out a hand for her pack. “She took her basket out an hour ago.” His face is bright and laughing the way it always is when they reunite, whether they be apart for years or for hours. 

She hears Nicolo yelling from the kitchen, “Hurry back you two so we can have supper at a reasonable hour, yes?” 

“I make no promises!” 

She needs no direction; she knows the path to the grove the way she knows the line of Quynh’s thighs. Andromache enters the grove to see Quynh tending to the new growth. She sets her labrys just out of reach and leans against the bench, breathing the air of home, of the same place as her wife. 

Watching a woman could steal your breath. And it’s a different kind of magic to see her hands working the soil rather than a weapon. So often they were fighting or running, or fighting and running. This was a quiet joy, a small reprieve in the setting sun, the stillness of the grove. 

She tries to commit the moment to memory. She stands taking in the lines of Quynh’s back, the way her hips hold her weight, the working song she hums so often, her hands folding strawberries into the basket. When she moves silently to kneel by the, their eyes catch and hold. Quynh reaches up to fold a spade into her hand, gentle like butterfly wings and azalea buds and places the basket between them. 

Years of knowing how to make their movements easy, build a steady rhythm between them. What leaves to trim, what’s ready to harvest, what should be left on the vine. Steady as heartbeats, timing is everything. 

It was a practiced thing too, the way that they made their movements slower as they finished collecting the rosemary, the distance between them shrinking as each woman breathed in the other. Their hands brushing in the basket between them. 

They set their tools aside and reach for each other. Cheek to cheek, arms around waists,  hand pressing fingers spread wide and digging into cloth. Lips, pink and open, pressed tight to taste, small nips and laughter. Closer still, pulling off blouses and kissing the skin warm. On the ground pressed together, Andromache cups her favorite breast to her mouth and notices the dirt on her hands. She leans back, “We can’t work like this.”

“What?” Quynh's lips parted as she made herself arch into those hands.

Wordlessly, Andromache links their hands together and pulled them between their eyes. 

Quynh sits forward, pushing Roma to the side; she blinks slowly, laughs “Race you!”  and shoves off the ground to rush through the pomelo trees. Laughing, Andromache throws her head back, “Unfair!” then dashes after her.

Later, when they’re lounging on the shore with Quynh’s head on Andromache’s belly, tracing mindless shapes on her wife’s thigh, Quynh says, “I know that I shouldn’t worry when you aren’t nearby. It just that sometimes I can’t stop it.” She pauses, and Roma strokes her hair once, twice, as she tilts her head back. “I know it’s just a matter of time until we’re together again. Because it’s just you and me.”

Andromache lifts both of their heads so that they can see eye to eye. “Until the end, Solnyshka.”

They walk back to the grove, fingers entwined, hands swinging lightly between them. As they dress, Andromache chuckles and asks, “How much do you want to bet those two will have something to say about our green knees making them wait for dinner?”

“I’m married to you Andromache. I know better than to take a sucker’s bet.”

[alit0my]

You know those fanfics, 5 times (something) plus 1. So five times someone on the team taught Booker something. And since it was he who taught. (maybe with OT3) {for example: teaching a language, cooking, fighting with a sword}

hello anon! idek if you still want this fic bc its been so long... but i have finished it! no ot3 this time im afraid, just didnt fit well with where i took this... hope you enjoy!

~

1 - Russia, 1812

When they first found him in Russia, they barely understood one another and had to use Andromache’s passable French to communicate. The Asian woman beside her named Quynh stared at him, as if looking into his soul as he gasped out words of conversation as he recovered from another hypothermic shock. The two men were paired off, keeping a close eye on their surroundings and ignoring the conversation altogether as they did not understand.

”The first thing we will do,” Andy said, handing another wooly coat his way. ”Is teach you a language we can all speak.”

”Like hell you will. I’m to return to my family,” he replied, wrapping the coat around him tighter. Andy shook her head and huffed, glancing at Quynh beside her.

”When you return in fifty years, when your family is dead, we will teach you Russian.”

”Or you could learn better French,” Booker snapped, cursing the entire world under his breath as his limbs shook uncontrollably.

The corners of Andy’s lips curled upwards slightly.

(Back then, Booker paid no mind to this. But now, he knew it was the introduction to Andy’s competitive side.)

It was thirty-eight years later when Booker returned. Andy had gotten better at French, and Booker grumbled at the fact that he now had to learn Russian, as per their unofficial agreement.

He wasn’t half bad at Russian, but he wasn’t particularly good at it either.

~ 2 - Italy, 1850

As he returned to the group after the passing of his son, the last of his true family, Quynh pulled Booker aside and placed a bow in his hands. She watched as he pulled the bow string back slightly, testing the recoil of the weapon as if he was examining its limits. Booker was just trying to not break the thing.

Quynh was scary, and Booker did not want to mess with her.

”Now aim at the target,” she had told him, nodding her head to the tree as she placed an arrow in his other hand. ,em>”Aim, and fire.”

Booker did as he was told.

Booker missed the tree by a mile.

Quynh tutted and put her hands on her hips, before taking another arrow out of the quiver on her back.

”Try again,” she said, almost encouragingly. ”We have time. I’ll make sure you can handle a bow almost as good as me.”

Booker ended up being half as good as Quynh, which they both saw as an achievement.

(He could never be as good at archery as Quynh, but it was the thought that counted at the time. Really, Booker should have been grateful for the distraction.)

~ 3 - Japan, 1894

Nicky was sitting at the kitchen table cleaning his sniper rifle when Booker walked in, still half asleep. Pausing in his tracks, Booker rubbed at his eyes and looked at the weapon on the table, never having really seen it out of its case which Nicky kept stored under his bed in their various safehouses.

Nicky looked up at locked eyes with the youngest, beckoning him over to sit beside him.

”I will show you how to clean this, and then if you want, how to use it,” Nicky said, picking up the scope and rubbing the rag gently across the glass. Booker nodded and watched silently before Nicky handed him a part and a new rag. ”Gently, don’t rush or you may scratch the metal.”

Booker wasn’t sure how a piece of cloth would scratch metal, but he dared not say. Nicky was allowing him into his space, to help clean his most prized possession.

When the weapon was cleaned, Nicky showed Booker how to reassemble the rifle before picking it up and beckoning him outside.

”We will set up here, and I will teach you how to shoot,” Nicky explained as he set up the tripod that would hold the barrel steady. ”Come, look down the scope.”

Booker could not see a thing, and Nicky gently nudged his head until he gasped, suddenly seeing the tin can in the distance.

”Now line it up, and shoot.”

Booker missed, but Nicky’s eyes gleamed.

(It was something that Booker looked back on fondly as he sat in his French apartment surrounded by booze.)

~ 4 - Egypt, 1948

”Where is your sword, Booker?” Joe exclaimed whenever they were gearing up for a mission. Booker looked at him then the others, who all had a sword strapped to their bodies whereas he only had an assault rifle and a handgun.

”I.. Don’t have one?”

Joe scoffed. ”I will change that. When we are done I will teach you how to wield a sword.”

Booker objected, which fell upon dead ears as the team went back to gathering their gear. Furrowing his brow, Booker looked down at his assault rifle and started to feel anxious. Was knowing how to wield a sword some kind of necessity to be in this strange team of immortals?

(He found out later, the next day in fact, when Joe had woken him up at the break of dawn with his scimitar in one hand and a longsword in the other. Joe was always the early riser, and the most energetic. Booker missed him the most.)

”Here, I will train you the art of the sword,” Joe smiled, but Booker could see the excitement shining through his eyes. ”Try to strike me.”

Booker looked at him incredulously, but swung the blade at him.

He ended up on his ass with Joe standing above him, scimitar pressed lightly on his throat.

”You take too big of a swing, leaves too much gap for the enemy to strike,” Joe explained, removing the weapon from Booker’s neck and holding a hand out to help him up. ”This will be fun. Bonding, if you will.”

”Joe, no one even uses swords anymore?”

Booker ended up on his ass again, in record time.

~ +1 - France, 2020

Booker hadn’t heard from them in six months, as per their non-contact rule, but he hadn’t expected a package to arrive at his front door with his alias on it. Curious, he placed his glass of water (which still tasted of whiskey from the night before) on the counter and picked up the box, setting it down on his kitchen table.

He stared at it for a while, not sure what to make of it as he decided to rip open the box before he could change his mind. Inside were a bunch of letters each with his name written in different handwriting, a few pictures and five small magnets that represented each member of the team.

Booker picked up the first letter from Andy, skimming through the words quickly before the tears fell on the paper and ruined it for good.

’...miss you Book…...Nile’s idea to……..considered your biological family……….struggling to cope……..should have listened to you more, and for that I’m so sorry. You taught me that there is more to life than what we do, and I should have seen that back in the 1800’s and not belittled you for it. I love you Book, see you soon.’

Quynh’s letter was short as sweet, but mainly contained phrases in many languages calling him a dumbass and pictures of him practising with the bow.

’Next time, maybe try to be a perfect shot before you decide to cross us you moron…….I hope you have improved with your bow I gave you, oh wait you left it in England and some historian took it to the museum because it is so ancient…..You better get me my bow back you absolute- Nile has been reading over my shoulder this whole time and now I’m going to write some good things about you…

‘How to start? What is good about you, Booker? You reminded me that not everyone is good at something first go, and that they deserve the effort and time you put into them. You ended up being a good shot and it only took you ten years! The others took twice as long. We will have a competition when you return, so keep those archery skills sharp, my friend.’

The next letter was from both Joe and Nicky, and Booker smiled softly to himself. Never to be separated, those two, and he was a fool to think otherwise.

’Nicky does not want to write you a letter, so I will write for both of us. This was Nile’s idea, sending you this little ‘care-package’ as she called it, but do not think this is an olive branch. We are grateful for you, Book, and since you turned up our lives have been somewhat exciting. Our separate and joint experiences in teaching you things has brought us both enjoyable memories, and though somewhat tainted by your actions, upon your return we would like to teach you more new things as we teach Nile. Maybe you might actually improve on your skills for once.

We both love you dearly.’

Booker sniffled and separated the picture enclosed within the letter. It was a capture of when Nicky was teaching him how to cook proper spaghetti bolognese, after he found out that Booker was using jar sauce and packet pasta. Booker remembered getting scolded all night in Italian, and when he told Nicky he understood, the response he got was ”Good. I should hope so."

Nile didn’t write a letter, but she didn’t need to write one. They only knew each other for two weeks before shit hit the fan and Booker was sent away. Instead, in Nile’s envelope was a tiny slip of paper with a phone number on it, along with some fliers for activities to do around Paris.

’Call me anytime, I’m here to chat. Also, don’t mope about for a hundred years, do something! Learn a new skill! (Okay, that might be hard but just do it, maybe bake some sourdough? You love that stuff!)’

Booker took the magnets out of the box, walked over to his fridge and placed them in a circle with a small click!, his heart panging every time.

Bow and arrow, two swords, a labrys, and a handgun with a US flag.

~

AO3 Link

[gothwasps]

i finished 7 more sets of LGBT bug emojis !!! im setting them up to post at 7 PM PST over the course of the next Week, so, keep an eye out ! & after that, I’ll make a post of all the updated Lesbian pride ones, bc I changed from the lipstick lesbian flag to the new one ! Also going to ramble about the Process a little bit:

This time, I did Ants, Bees, Caterpillars, Crickets, Katydids, Mosquitos, and Stickbugs ! However, every time I want to make variations of a bug, I’ve got a whole ordeal ahead of me.

When I started making these emojis, I didn’t actually even really think of doing Variations, other than just a passing thought. Due to that, I saved them all as flat .png files. As you can imagine, it’s... not exactly Easy to get a perfect clean recolour of those. 

My first attempts were with the Wasp & Dragonfly LGBT pride variations, and those turned out... okay. However, if you examined them too closely, you’d note Easily that they’re Much different in Exact Shape from the initial ones. This is because the only way I could really recolour them was with fill tools, layer trickery, and careful HSV adjustments. It wasn’t ideal.

When I was doing the initial bug emojis, though, I saved them all at 300x300 pixels, which is... fine. & I basically didn’t put much care or thought into what went on which layer, because when designing them, I only had to make sure they looked good by the end of that one version. Now, though, every single time I want to make new variations of a design I already made? 

I have to re-make the design from scratch. There’s a couple of tricks I’ve learned to make it easier / more faithful to the original, & I’ve gotten the Differencemap Accuracy to like, upwards of 85-95%, but even so, it’s still a huge pain. However, now when I make the remakes of the bug emojis, I save their Layer Files ! & because I have an alpha-sensitive recolour tool now, that’s effectively all I need to make variations- for the most part.

This works really well for Palette-swaps, basically, and makes it so that when I want to edit one of the bug emojis, I have easy access to... well, all of it, just about. When I do Species & Form Variations, though, I still have to basically Make a whole .5 of a new design. Still, a far cry from the tedium of before.

This has also given me a chance to go through & make layer files of emojis that weren’t initially mine, like the Bee emoji (first one posting tomorrow!), and the Ant Emoji, but with the Ant Emoji, it’s... well, it’s a single flat colour. So I had to improvize some ! & I think I did good.

Of all of the original bugs (including mine), I’ll bold which ones I’ve got layer files, so y’all have an idea of my progress through redoing literally All of my work:

Ant, Antlion, Bee, Beetle, Butterfly, Caterpillar, Centipede, Cockroach, Cricket, Dragonfly, Firefly, Housefly, Katydid, Ladybug, Mantis, Millipede, Mosquito, Moth, Pillbug, Rolypoly, Sawfly, Scorpion, Silverfish, Slug, Snail, Spider, Stickbug, Termite, Wasp, Weevil, Woodlice, Worm.

So that’s 17/32. Having done 7 of them very recently, I just passed half-way. After that point, who knows! Maybe I’ll start making entirely new designs again, g-d knows I didn’t capture the full diversity of bugs, & even the variations can’t account for some things that I missed, like Ticks, Fleas, Mites, & the like.

(Also, personally I prefer the Labrys lesbian flag? but that’s w/e, and to be fair it’d be pretty fuckin hard to make emoji variations with only 1 proper Colour.)

[dornishsphinx]

@verecunda tagged me in this a while back, and it completely slipped my mind until I saw it half-done in my notes, oops—sorry it took so long! Also, this got wordier than intended, probably because that always happens when I’m avoiding doing actual work. Oh well.

If any of you feel like ranting about your fave female characters, here’s an excuse to do so--though no pressure, of course. Tagging @zonesthesia, @bioticplaneswalker, @joyseeker6, @moonhairedgirl, @yousef-the-uber-driver, @northernpansy, @tresjoly, @xxchimericalxx, @arthoure, @mrmissmrsrandom, @gascon-en-exil, @amorremanet and anyone else reading this who feels like it!

Rules:  Rules: Write your ten favourite female characters from ten different fandoms and tag ten different people.

1. Fire Emblem—Sonya

This ended up being a close tie between Sonya and Jill, but I gave this one to Sonya since I’ve actually finished her game. Sonya is amazing. A non-lord character with a connection to the villains always brings them up a notch in my estimation and it’s a damn shame she never got more than one boss conversation with her father—and none with her sisters! Her ending was initially aggravating, but I like to go with the common theory that since Duma is no longer around, talk of her becoming a witch was just hearsay. Her support with Genny is brilliant. She manages to be confident and alluring without turning into a caricature, unlike certain other unfortunate characters throughout the—mostly recent—games. And since she’s from a less popular game, she’s hardly as likely to get completely flanderised in spinoffs. Why on Earth would you ever pick Deen?

Honourable mentions: Celica (FE2/15), Lyn (FE7), Jill Fizzart (FE9/10). This isn’t counting games I’ve not actively played, though there are certain FE4 and FE10 characters who might have ended up in the mentions if I had, given what I know about them.

2. Persona—Yukino Mayuzumi

I actually wasn’t expecting to put Yukino here when I was first trying to figure out who my favourite female character from Persona was. I knew it would likely be a P2 character, since that is my favourite game in the series thus far, but then I realised how much I’ve been missing Yukino in particular while playing Eternal Punishment. The Empress arcana really does fit her: she’s a combination of tough-as-nails and motherly, and a cool older figure for the team to look up to. I especially love how she transfers the chance Saeko gave her to reform during her yankī days to Anna, years later. And that’s not even going into the revelations from her Shadow: she’s torn between two career paths, not feeling good enough to achieve either. And she gives up her Persona for Jun! That takes some serious selflessness.

Honourable mentions: Maki Sonomura (P1/2), Maya Amano (P2), Naoto Shirogane (P4), Labrys (Arena)

3. Ace Attorney—Ema Skye

This came closer than any other entry on the list, both Mia and Franziska initially taking this spot before I eventually settled on Ema. She was an interesting enough character as a kid, her peppiness and the science-obsession gimmick quickly giving way to a more complex characterisation, especially once her full involvement in SL-9 was revealed. However, the science-gimmick paid off wonderfully in AJ:AA when we see how she’s transformed into a jaded, bitter detective, her dreams of becoming a scientist crushed because she didn’t pass the exams she needed to get a career in forensics. When SOJ rolled around and she’d actually managed to get into the field, it felt earned, way more than if we’d met her SOJ self in AJ:AA.

Honourable mentions: Franziska von Karma, Mia Fey

4. Zero Escape—Lotus

Of all the characters who didn’t make it into the sequels which followed on from the original game, Lotus—along with Santa, who I’ll admit has more story-based reasons to return—is the one I miss most. She loves her daughters, fiercely enough to relentlessly investigate their kidnapping by herself for years when the police were of no use, and on top of all that, she’s a genius programmer. The moment I actively started loving Lotus was when she, clearly scared but putting on a brave face, volunteered to go in the electric chair in the torture chamber. It made you realise she genuinely is utilitarian, rather than just being out for her own survival; she’s clearly self-interested, but not completely selfish. I’m just gonna quote Uchikoshi himself: “She may seem selfish and cold, but she’s actually the most rational and sensible out of all of them. She has the intellectual ability to make very logical decisions.” She’s just the best.

Honourable mentions: Akane Kurashiki, Diana

5. Avatar—Azula

I know there are people who follow me still watching Avatar, so I’ll try and keep this as spoiler-free as I can in case they end up skimming some of this accidentally. (Though I’d definitely not recommend anyone who wants to remain completely unspoiled reads this entry on the list.)

But anyway—“Do the tides command this ship?”

The Fire Nation royal family just provides all the best characters in the series. Zuko is definitely my male fave, while his sister takes the female spot. Source of both the vast majority of best lines in the show, as well as the most Machiavellian of villainy, Azula is just awesome to watch in action, whether it be in the political, martial or personal sphere. The odd dynamic she has with Zuko is my favourite in the series, managing to be outright antagonistic, while at some moments offering the glimmer of a genuine, if warped almost beyond recognition, sibling bond. There are even more poignant moments where we’re reminded of her actual age and how her family circumstances have shaped her into what she is. She’s a complex villain, one of the best this, or any other series, has to offer.

Honourable mentions: Kuvira, Katara, Toph Beifong

6. A Song of Ice and Fire—Sarella Sand

Okay, if we’re doing a female character list, I kinda have to give the original Dornish Sphinx herself a spot on the list. Not much page space has been devoted to her as of the current date, considering our only consistent POV character in Oldtown just arrived. I’m looking forward to what she and Archmaester Marwyn get up to once GRRM finishes TWOW. The least war-hungry of the Sand Snakes, she’s not even been introduced on page as herself yet. Instead, we know her as “Alleras”, a pleasant young Dornishman of sharp intellect studying at the Citadel. 

Honourable mentions: Asha Greyjoy, Sansa Stark, Arianne Martell

7. DCU—Selina Kyle

Is there any Bat-work, canon or fanon, that isn’t instantly made a dozen times better by Selina swooping in? (Okay, there are a couple of duds, but usually she’s a delightful presence.) One of DC’s best anti-hero/anti-villains. 

Honourable mentions: Renée Montoya, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown

8. Danganronpa—Kyōko Kirigiri

The original Ultimate Detective herself. Cool, poised and collected, she certainly makes for a more convincing detective character than certain other later characters from the series, though Shuichi does try his best. 

Honourable mentions: Kaede Akamatsu, Junko Enoshima, Chiaki Nanami

9. Doctor Who—Martha Jones

I’m scraping the barrel a little for fandoms, considering I don’t even watch the show anymore, but Martha is my favourite of all companions. I never wanted her to get with the Doctor, of course, but I appreciated how her unrequited feelings for him didn’t swallow up her entire character. She’s courageous, smart and leaves the TARDIS on her own accord, which is refreshing.

10. Arthuriana—Morgan le Fay

This is a tricky one, since Arthuriana is more a literary tradition than a fandom per se. The characters which belong to it don’t technically ever stick to one characterisation, personality or role—everyone has their own interpretation, or even several different ones. That said—yes, my favourite is Morgan, how original of me, I know. Viviane runs her competition, but since she’s all over the place—quite literally, becoming or amalgamating several different characters at once—Morgan wins. There’s a reason she’s overused in modern adaptions, though, and it’s because she’s amazing. I mean, she even got a geographical phenomenon named after her and in some traditions, she lives in a goddamn volcano. She’s at her best as Queen of Rheged, though, casually trying to murder her husband, or Guinevere, or teaching a lesson to whichever knight of the week volunteers for her obvious trap. Just never mention that modern book she’s most known for around me unless you want me to angry-cry. Also, she’s not Morgause. Let Morgause be her own character, modern media, please.

Honourable mentions: Viviane, Lynette, Ragnell

[mitchbeck]

CANTLON: WOLF PACK TRAINING CAMP ABOUT TO OPEN

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - Sunday in Cromwell off-ice training, physicals, and hitting the ice will take place at the XL Center kicking off the Hartford Wolf Pack’s 23rd AHL campaign. The Wolf Pack will have the normal fluid roster for this time of year. Four more players from the team's NHL affiliate, the New York Rangers, will join six others who've already been sent to Hartford. On Friday, the Rangers sent three defensemen, Brandon Crawley, who enters the last season of an entry-level contract, a third-year pro, Darren Raddysh, who was acquired last season from the Rockford Ice Hogs (Chicago Black Hawks) for Peter Holland, who is entering the last season of his original entry-level deal. Also, Vincent LoVerde, who was signed as an off-season free agent who played with Toronto last season as the assistant captain for the Marlies. For two years in Ontario, LoVerde was their captain when they were in the ECHL. He played three years for Manchester, NH and was the captain on their last AHL Monarchs team that won the Calder Cup. The lone forward is Jake Elmer. He played five games at the end of the year last season for the Wolf Pack adding two goals and four points after completing his junior career with Lethbridge (WHL) where he had had 39 goals and 81 points in 68 games. Five other players were sent down at the beginning of the week. Two of the five players were goalies. AHL veteran Tom McCollum was signed in the off-season and was also a Rangers' training camp invitee. Francois Brassard, from Carleton University (OUAA), was the other. The other three reassigned are forwards. They are right-winger, Ville Meskanen, who showed flashes of promise in his rookie camp. Matt Beleskey was one of his linemates for a majority of last season. Second-year pro center, Ty Ronning, was dispatched and split last season between Maine and Hartford. The third is winger is none other than veteran Ryan Gropp, who played better in the second half of last season after being sent to Maine in November last season. Gropp is entering the last season of his entry-level contract and being sent back to Hartford so early is certainly not a good sign. Belesky was the first player reassigned and not invited to Rangers camp. He enters the last season of a four-year, NHL, one-way deal that was originally signed with the Boston Bruins. Beleskey gets $1.9 million with the Bruins picking up half of his salary. His cap-friendly deal gives the Rangers just an $825K cap hit for this season. Beleskey had to go through waivers first on Friday, the day before Wolf Pack camp opens, in order to be formally assigned. Defenseman Sean Day had off-season hip surgery. He will be in residence for a period of time that has yet to be determined. He has been skating, but still is in a no-contact red jersey. New Russian defenseman, Yegor Rykov, had an ankle injury in Traverse City but has healed and is back on skates. Another defenseman from Finland, a fourth-round draft pick, Tarmo Reunanen, who signed an entry-level deal, is going to be returned at the end of training camp to his Finnish club Lukko Rauma (Finland-FEL) for the season. That move will allow him to be with the Wolf Pack at the end of 2019-20 season and hopefully for the post-season as well. The Wolf Pack first preseason game is in Danbury against Springfield this coming Wednesday night. NOTES: Incredible how time flies. On Friday, defenseman, Dan Girardi, 35, announced his retirement from professional hockey. It seems like yesterday he was walking on with an ECHL deal only for the then, Charlotte Checkers in the Coast League. He played about a month before he came to Hartford. Then played a season and a half in Hartford before a recall to the Rangers and never came back. He played 927 NHL games between New York and Tampa Bay with 56 goals 208 assists 264 points and a plus-78 rating. He helped the Rangers to a division title, a President’s Trophy and a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2014. He has the most block shots since the NHL added the stat in 2005-06 and stopped 1,954. He played in the NHL playoffs in 12-of-his-13 pro seasons and had 788 games with Rangers. “On behalf of the entire Rangers organization, I want to congratulate Dan on an outstanding NHL career,” Rangers Senior Advisor to the Owner and Alternate Governor Glen Sather said. “Dan was the ultimate warrior. From the moment he joined the Rangers, he gave his heart and soul to his teammates, the organization, and the fans. Dan’s relentless effort and dedication to the Rangers was an inspiration to everyone..” Former Hartford Courant writer Bruce Berlet who covered the Wolf Pack for eight years and the NHL Whalers was effusive in his praise. “Amazing this "walk-on" played 13 years in the NHL, but it shows just what a hard-trier and great team player that he was. He is one of my all-time favorite Wolf Pack/Rangers players that I ever dealt with for just that reason and because he was so professional and classy with how he handled himself.” The Rangers finally got ex-Pack, Tony DeAngelo, under contract becoming the last player (RFA) to sign with the Rangers. This will allow promising, but not yet ready righty shooting rookie rearguard Joey Keane to be assigned to Hartford in the very near future. In fact, expect a slew of players to be assigned by Sunday/Monday to Hartford as the Rangers and all of the NHL teams work toward their CBA required 23 players permitted. Good news is neither the NHL or NHLPLA will reopen the CBA, so the current CBA will run its course until 2022. That means the NHL will be sending players to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The Bridgeport Sound Tigers open their camp as well-received, ex-Pack, Ryan Bourque, who signed his AHL deal, Colin McDonald (Wethersfield), Connor Doherty (Sacred Heart University-AHA), Parker Wotherspoon, and AHL vets Ben Thomson, and Steve Bernier, Kyle Thomas and among the first signees of the Danbury Hat Tricks (FHL) Dustin Jesseau. Former Wolf Pack defensemen, Hubert Labrie, and Mark Kastelic, and the son of a former Whaler, Ed Kastelic, were assigned to the Belleville Senators camp. Many ex-Pack players were sent to their respective AHL camps from their NHL parent teams; Rob O’Gara (San Antonio), Dustin Tokarski (Wilkes Barre/Scranton), Chris McCarthy and Tommy Hughes (Hershey) while Shawn O’Donnell and Matt Register were both cuts from Minnesota’s camp earlier in the week. Former Sound Tigers include Casey Bailey (Hershey), Dyson Stevenson (Utica), and Eamon MacAdam (Binghamton). Goalie Beau Starrett (Selects Academy at South Kent Prep) was assigned to Bakersfield. Sons of players also were sent to the AHL include Nolan Stevens, the son of ex-Hartford Whaler, John Stevens, is in San Antonio. Brad Malone, the nephew of ex-Whaler Greg Malone and the cousin of former Pack Ryan Malone, is in Bakersfield. Mitch Eliot, the son of former New Haven Nighthawk, Daren Eliot, is in Utica while Luke Esposito (Greenwich/Brunswick Prep), the nephew of Rangers great, Mark Messier, is in Bakersfield. Mason Primeau, the nephew of former Whaler, Keith Primeau, was sent back to North Bay (OHL). In the ECHL, former Wolf Pack, Alex Krushelnyski, the son of former Ranger Mike Krushelnyski, signs with Indy (ECHL). Mitch Jones, the son of former Nighthawk and Ottawa Senator, Brad Jones, signs with Jacksonville (ECHL). River Rymsha, the son of former Nighthawk, Andrew Rymsha, finished his NCAA career with Miami (OH) (NCHC) and earns a degree from Dartmouth, has signed with the Norfolk Admirals (ECHL). The team’s former head coach was Robbie Ftorek, a former player and head coach of the Nighthawks, and also a former Norfolk assistant coach in former Whalers goalie, Peter Sidorkiewicz, both of whom were let go this summer. Ex-Pack goalie, Charles Williams, is in Rockford’s camp and has a deal with Indy (ECHL). Peter Quenneville, a former QU Bobcat, is in Tucson’s camp and has an ECHL deal with Rapids City. Jake Marchment, the nephew of ex-Whaler Bryan Marchment, signs with the Orlando Solar Bears (ECHL). Billy Exall, of the two-time defending national champions, the University Minnesota-Duluth (NCHC) signs with Rockford (AHL). That makes 210 collegians to sign pro deals and 280 collegians overall. Nick Capone (East Haven/Salisbury Prep) will play with the Tri-City Storm (USHL) this season. He also de-committed from the University of Maine Black Bears (HE) and will skate for the UCONN Huskies (HE) in 2020-21. Read the full article

[badlydrawnstuff]

Labry AU, part 7. \o/

It had been days since Labry was last seen. Most of Hell’s inhabitants did not care- He was probably up on the surface, or dead. It didn’t matter.

The three that did care were perched on the roof of the old hospital.

“Should we really check?” Cherry asked her sisters, looking down at the entrance. “I don’t want to end up--”

She was cut off by Sherry, who was grinning. “Fight him? Yeah, me neither. I just wanna grab his ass again! He’s got such a great butt.” Wyne sighed, and Cherry put her head in her hands. Wyne turned, and leaned around Cherry to punch Sherry. “We’re gonna darn check on him, whether ya’ll like it or not! It ain’t like we’re booty calls for a gay man!”

They discussed the matter an hour more before finally voting 2-1 on going in. “If I can’t grab his butt, what’s the point?” was Sherry’s only defense- Which was ignored by both Cherry and Wyne. The two glided down to the entrance and promptly went in, leaving Sherry alone. With a shout of surprise, Sherry hurried after them.

-

Cherry was not amused. Having been the only one to find the stairs, she tried to lead her sisters by voice alone. Unfortunately, they were hopelessly lost, and Cherry went on without them. They’d be fine.

Finding Labry himself- if he was actually here- turned out to be a difficult task for Cherry. She had checked half the hallway so far, with no signs of life. She’d called his name out, as well, to no avail. He’d usually meet visitors with a threatening glare and choice words, not silence.

“I don’t think he’s here, ladies!” Cherry called out, her voice echoing down the hall. From the other end, which Cherry hadn’t checked, came Wyne’s voice.

“Then who’s this fella I’ve come across?” Ah. Wyne had found him.

Bumping the door open a bit wider, she found Wyne seated on Labry’s lap. Labry himself was sitting cross legged on the floor, his gaze locked onto the floor. “We’ve got a sad lookin’ cowboy tonight, Cherry.” Wyne pointed out, lightly prodding Labry’s face. He didn’t move, merely glancing at her. True to her statement, he did seem down.

“What’s wrong, Labry? Do you finally need to get laid?” Cherry joked, seating herself to his right.

“No.”

Just no? Cherry raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, gazing at him. Sure, he was cute, but that wasn’t why she was staring. Sherry, having finally caught up, quickly sat on Labry’s left and placed her hand on his rear. He only looked at her, not even bothering to stop her.

Sherry quickly caught onto Labry’s mood, and moved her hand to his shoulder. “Talk to us, soldier! You look sad.”

Labry was uncharacteristically quiet. He looked around the room, an unsure expression settling on his face. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, if not a tad hoarse.

“Who was I to you three before I lived down here?”

Only Wyne responded. “You were our pal, cowboy! We’d stop n’ chat with ya whenever we’d see ya!” Labry nodded, before asking a new question.

“Was I like how I am now?”

Wyne was unsure how to respond. Taking up the speaking mantle was Cherry, who shook her head. “If you mean sad, definitely not. If you mean being loud and violent, only the first one! Your bark was way louder than your bite.”

Again Labry nodded, thinking about this answer. Sherry decided to raid a nearby duffel bag. Both Cherry and Wyne ignored her.

-

“Are you trying to remember stuff?” Wyne finally inquired after a period of silence. Labry grunted and nodded, possibly looking sadder than before.

Again, they sat in silence, the only sounds being their breathing and Sherry rustling through the bag. They sat like this for a couple of moments, before the quiet was shattered by Sherry triumphantly yelling “I found it!”

“Found what?” was quickly asked by both Cherry and Wyne, to which Sherry held up a dust covered cell phone. “I thought it might have something on it!”

Cherry smiled while Wyne took the phone and brushed it off. “You’re good for something after all, sister!” Sherry pouted, whining that she was great for all sorts of things. Not bothering to respond, Wyne handed the phone to Labry.

Labry looked at it like he had been handed a foreign object. The slightly scratched screen, the colorful cover, the charms- They all seemed unfamiliar to him. He only stared at it, until Wyne gently took it from him, and turned the power on. “Might be a tad better if it’s on, cowboy.”

Labry found himself staring at the background- a photo. He swiped the apps out of the way, curious. The background contained five angels, most of which he barely recognized.

In the middle, a purple angel, a wide grin on his face. He was presumably holding the phone to take the picture. His other hand was pulling on a blue angels mouth, to make it seem like he was smiling. This blue angel, Labry recognized.

On the shoulders of the purple angel, a white angel rested. Labry recognized this one for sure- Merkabah. He’d met Labry the previous week. His gaze next went to a green angel, looking directly at the camera. Labry squinted- He’d attacked this angel multiple times. Tearing his eyes away from her, he looked at the last angel in the shot- a red angel that was looking down at the others. Labry faintly recognized this angel, too. He’d killed this one in combat.

Thinking about them, his heart tightened. Had they been important to him? The blue angel certainly had, with how Labry felt sadder just looking at him.

Labry would have been perfectly content staring at the home screen background, if not for Sherry urging him to check the photo gallery. Opening it warily, Labry was met with well over one thousand pictures to look through. “Good fricken’ luck, cowboy,” Wyne mumbled, looking almost offended at the gallery’s size.

They spent well over an hour looking through the photos and discussing them- At least, the succubi did. Labry was still strangely quiet, rathering to simply observe. The gallery was full of other angels, or pictures of the purple angel in front of things.

Finally reaching the end, they found a picture that told Labry what he wanted to know- If this phone was really his. It was a picture of Labry, when his feathers had still been falling out. He’d snuck the picture in a mirror when he’d been dragged clothes shopping by the succubi.

“That’s me...” Labry muttered, earning the surprise of the succubi. “You can speak?” Cherry teasingly asked, lightly prodding him again. “Yeah, that’s you. You know what else is you?” Eyebrows raised, Labry replied in the negative. Cherry leaned over and started the gallery over again, showing the first picture- One of the purple angel with a brown angel child, both smiling widely.

“The purple angel is you, cowboy!” Wyne announced, pointing at it.

Labry nearly dropped the phone in shock, something inside him shattering to pieces- His heart, perhaps? Sherry patted Labry’s shoulder, watching his face. “If we’re gonna talk about the old you, we’re gonna use your name! You’re still Raphael to us!”

Labry stared, mouthing the name. “That was my name? Raphael..?” It sounded strangely right to Labry, despite not recognizing it.They discussed this for a few more minutes, before Cherry noticed the time and panicked. They had jobs to get to! The succubi hurried out, saying rushed good-byes and good lucks, leaving Labry alone again. He looked down at the phone, his shoulders drooping. Just how much had he changed?

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1153

Monday, February 27, 2017

 That was a fun opening number for the Oscars telecast last night but I went to bed right after that. I haven't watched an awards show live in years. I can catch up with any interesting bits as folks share them later. Being an old coot is a lot simpler these days.

 February is on its way out and March is coming in like a lion with another cold snap for us here in Ottawa. Did that movie win anything? It hit me that I have three and a half more months to wait before I can go fishing again. Poopypants.

 Elektra #1 - Matt Owens (writer) Juann Cabal (art) Antonio Fabela & Marcio Menyz (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). This one is called "Always Bet On Red" even though her new costume is mostly black. I love the new costume and the art is very nice. I see some similarities to Jamie McKelvie's and Kevin Maguire's styles and they are done well. The story is a little weak and those in the know will spot the villain right away. I'll read more as long as Juann draws it.

 Kamandi Challenge #2 - Peter J. Tomasi (writer) Neal Adams (art) Hi-Fi (colours) Clem Robins (letters). This one made me feel like I was back in the seventies again. The distinctive art will do that to you. If you remember last issue's cliffhanger you'll be surprised at how Peter solves the problem. The mention of New Gods gave a hint to how Kamandi was going to get out of this issue's tight spot and it's another cliffhanger on the last page. I don't know if I'm going to read the rest of this 12-issue Challenge because the situations are kind of silly. I am curious to see what other creative talents are lined up to do the rest though. I just have to wait and see as each issue hits the racks.

 The Old Guard #1 - Greg Rucka (writer) Leandro Fernandez (art) Daniela Miwa (colours) Jodi Wynne (letters). I have been enjoying Greg's work on Wonder Woman and he's got another wonderful woman in this new book named Andy. She leads a team of mercenaries but these battle tested warriors have a very handy advantage. There are hints to this advantage in the first few pages but it's still cool when you finally see what it is during their mission. This one gets added to my "must read" list.

 Uncanny Avengers #20 - Gerry Duggan (writer) Pepe Larraz (art) Dono Sanchez Almara with Protobunker (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). Mostly a Deadpool comic as he tries to fight the Red Skull who has control over his teammates. I think the Skull's ego will be his undoing.

 Wonder Woman #17 - Greg Rucka (writer) Liam Sharp (art) Laura Martin (colours) Jodi Wynne (letters). You don't want to miss part 2 of "The Truth" as transitions are happening with some major players. That weapon featured on the cover of The Old Guard #1 is called a labrys, a Greek battle axe.

 Starstruck: Old Proldiers Never Die #1 - Elaine Lee (writer) Michael Kaluta (art) Lee Moyer (colours) Todd Klein (letters). Weird futuristic comic books never die either. This creation first hit the racks in 1982 and me being a huge Kaluta fan I bought and read them. I couldn't really keep up with Elaine's stories but I didn't care because Mike's art was so pretty. 35 years later and this story still baffles me. I won't be reading the rest of this because it's too spacey, like far out man spacey. I got to admit though that the art is still beautiful.

 Scarlet Witch #15 - James Robinson (writer) Vanesa Del Rey (art) Jordie Bellaire (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). This is a book that would benefit from a more consistent look. There have been different artists on this title since it hit the racks and some have been more appealing than others. James's writing is some of his best work and Vanesa tells his story very well visually but I don't think a lot of fans would pick this up just from flipping through this issue checking out the art. It's too bad because this character has gone through some cool changes since this title started.

 Spider-Woman #16 - Dennis Hopeless (writer) Veronica Fish (art) Andy Fish (inking assistant) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). This is one of those super hero versus super villains fight where it looks like the bad guys are going to win. You wonder how the good guys will survive and you keep waiting for it to happen and you can go phew. Spoiler alert: no one dies.

 Detective Comics #951 - James Tynion IV (writer) Christian Duce (art) Alex Sinclair (colours) Sal Cipriano (letters). Part 1 of "League of Shadows" finds Batman framed for murder. I like this story's villain who we haven't seen for a while. There was a "what the?" moment when Batman gets shot fleeing the crime scene. I thought his costume could prevent bullets from penetrating. I guess they all don't.

 Champions #1.MU - Jeremy Whitley (writer) Ro Stein & Ted Brandt (art) Frank D'Armata (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). I have been picking and choosing which Monsters Unleashed tie-in books to read and I picked this one because I really like this new young team. Most of this issue is the team fighting a team of bad guys hired by Roxxon Oil to stop an environmental protest. The monsters only crash land near the end and the two teams team up to save the day. My favourite thing about the Champions is that they're young but have that sense of responsibility that makes them heroes. I would recommend reading this Monsters Unleashed tie-in.

 Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #15 - Robert Venditti (writer) Ethan Van Sciver (art) Jason Wright (colours) Dave Sharpe (letters). Very few artists wow me almost every time I open up one of their comic books and Ethan Van Sciver is one of them. The detail he puts into every panel is astounding. I tend not to read team books but the solo adventures are keeping me interested. I am looking forward to seeing Guy Gardner duke it out with one of the bad Yellow Lanterns next issue.

 Hulk #3 - Mariko Tamaki (writer) Nico Leon (art) Matt Milla (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). The tease continues with just one brief glimpse of She-Hulk. I like seeing this slow process of Jen's recovery and the building suspense of the mystery killer. The anticipation of her Hulking out and finding out what the connection is between the killer and one of Jen's clients keeps me reading.

 Action Comics #974 - Dan Jurgens (writer) Patch Zircher & Stephen Segovia (pencils) Patch Zircher & Art Thibert (inks) Ulises Arreola (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). Whoa, way to make the mystery Clark Kent creepy there Dan. We're talking crazy stalker guy. This story crosses over with the Superman book so we only have to wait a week to find out what happens next. I like that.

 Spider-Gwen #17 - Jason Latour (writer) Robbi Rodriguez (art) Rico Renzi (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). I had to read this for part 4 of "Sitting in a Tree" but I've got to admit that I like the way Jason handles these kids. Add a guest appearance by one of the Champions and it's a winner for me.

 Inhumans vs. X-Men #5 - Charles Soule & Jeff Lemire (writers) Javier Garron (art) David Curiel (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). One more issue to go. I just want to see how Charles and Jeff resolve this conflict. My guess is that Forge and Moon Girl will figure out a way to trap all of the Terrigen cloud and somehow keep it from killing all the mutants. That way nobody dies.

 Amazing Spider-Man #24 - Dan Slott & Christos Gage (writers) Giuseppe Camuncoli (pencils) Cam Smith (inks) Jason Keith (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). This is a "Clone Conspiracy" tie-in. Please make it stop. The world has been saved so I hope they scale things back a little because I am getting jaded about these big events.

 Infamous Iron Man #5 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Alex Maleev (art) Matt Hollingsworth (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). If this doesn't convince you that Victor Von Doom has gone good then nothing will. This reunion of mother and son was very interesting especially when you get to the last panel. I don't know how Brian keeps coming up with these "what the?" moments but I'm glad he does. It's just no fun waiting for the next issue when that happens.

 Spider-Man/Deadpool #14 - Joe Kelly (writer) Ed McGuinness (pencils) Mark Morales (inks) Jason Keith (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). Nightcrawler guest stars as Spider-Man has a crisis of conscience. He can't figure out how to beat the mash-up killer Itsy Bitsy except for going all Punisher on her. I don't know if I'll read issues #15 and #16 because they are going to be crossovers with Deadpool. Something to do with Wade's demon wife Shiklah. I'll try to remember to pick up #17 off the racks when the Itsy Bitsy story resumes.

Q(���U

[dornishsphinx]

twenty-two meetings that never happened (2/22)

2. THE MAGICIAN

Yosuke swiped his finger across the screen to bring up the email again, just like he had done at least five times already. Meet your assigned partner at the clock outside the main building at 12pm sharp! Once more, he found himself checking the time. With a little notebook-style flipping animation, it ticked over from 12.29 to 12.30. God damn it.

He shifted from foot to foot; his right, his left, then right again. Had his assigned partner forgotten about the meet-ups? It would be just his luck if he had - though maybe at least it would be a good anecdote for his first call back home.

Home. Huh. Yosuke folded his arms across his chest and leant back against the wall, letting his gaze drift upwards to level with the roofs of tall buildings which loomed over the plaza. So, Inaba was home to him now? Weird. The city had been what his default image of home was for the longest time, even months into the provincial life.

Things here were different to how he remembered them, though. He’d assumed he’d get back into the swing of things soon enough when he first arrived, but now it was undeniable, even for him: the city of his earlier years seemed to have melted away in his absence. Before, he’d had stable roots: parents to go back to at night; old friends he could chill with; the quickest routes through the wide streets firmly memorised.

Now, though? That easy closeness with his friends had been shaken by years’ worth of texts gone unanswered, and he wasn’t quite sure how to fix it, or if he even should. Several of his old haunts had been shut down - while he hated to empathise with the those among the residents of Inaba who’d shunned him and his family, he had to admit to finally gaining a glimmer of understanding the moment he discovered his favourite takoyaki stand had gone under. As for his parents, they were still in Inaba and had no plans on returning, their city house having been sold when they left town. He’d rode past it, once, when going to see one of his oldest friends from the neighbourhood, like muscle memory had forced him to go past his house. A strange kid had been playing outside. He’d avoided going that route since.

“Yo! Sorry I’m late!”

He snapped to. A friendly looking guy was waving over at him. Presumably it was his assigned partner - thank god, he wasn’t going to have to decide whether or not to leave. Yosuke flipped close his phone and plastered on a grin.

“Hey, no worries, I was kinda late too!” he lied.

“Yosuke Hanamura, right? I’m Kenji Tomochika. They sent your name and photo so we could find all you lost newbies.”

“Oh, cool! Good to meet you, senpai!”

God, what the hell was his voice doing? Why was it so high and panicky? Had Tomochika noticed? He hadn’t seemed to, but was he was just being polite?

“So, hey, you wanna come see the canteen first?” he said. “Food’s not great, but it’s hella cheap. I’ll pay. I’m the reason your lunchtime’s been cut in half, after all.”

“Sounds good. Senpai.”

Tomochika grinned. “Awesome, I’m starving! We can do the tour after, ‘kay?”

The canteen was a blocky, grey building, with some weird murals painted across it that only made the rest of it look all the more industrial. Inside, it was swarming with students; all the ambient chatter made the air hum. Yosuke hesitated, but Tomochika pushed on ahead into the queue to the hot food section.

“Hey, you should get the curry rice,” Tomochika shouted, “It’s actually okay. The rest of the stuff here pretty much sucks.”

His voice carried; the server shot dirty looks at him. Yosuke winced and brushed it off with an embarrassed grin - he’d been on the other side of the counter so many times, after all. Still, it wasn’t as though the guy was wrong: casting an eye over the other options, it became super obvious that none of these options were gonna be appetising. At all. Pretty much immediately, he decided to go with the suggestion - though not before his attention was caught by what looked like they were supposed to be steak skewers. Weirdly, he found a small, nostalgic smile had started tugging at the side of his mouth at the sight of them.

Then, his attention got snatched away from them by a polite cough. He snapped his head around to see the girl ahead of him already walking away and the cashier looking at him pointedly. He could take a hint.

Tomochika was after him in line - as he waited for him to pay, Yosuke scanned the room for any potential seats. Yeah, no, this place really was packed - like, the impossible to move, let alone find a seat kind of busy. But then again, Tomochika was swanning off like he knew what he was doing, and Yosuke didn’t have half the experience he did, and so he followed him. Magically, he found two seats. Yosuke leapt for his, just in case someone else spotted it before he managed to park his ass.

His stomach grumbled. Tentatively, he lifted out some of the rice - twisted his wrist around one way, then the other - and took a bite. (You didn’t encounter Yukiko Amagi’s cooking and not check for suspicious patches of colour or lumpy bits that shouldn’t be lumpy in every other meal you ever had.) Flavour - sweet, spicy flavour - burst over his tongue.

“Huh, not bad,” he said in surprise.

“I know, right?” Tomochika exclaimed, brandishing his own chopsticks in a way that would make anyone with the slightest care for dining etiquette wince. “Trust me, if you’re coming here to eat, you wanna stick with that. Someone should profit from all those terrible lunches I went through my first year, when I was testing all the options.”

“Hey, it can’t be as bad as some of the stuff I’ve had back-” He paused. It was one thing to call Inaba home to himself, quietly in his head. Hell, he might tell his friends, if it came up. It was another thing to say it out loud to a stranger he was trying to impress. “-In the town I was living in the past couple years. Seriously, it was like they thought steak croquettes were high cuisine.”

“What town’s that?” Tomochika asked, seeming genuinely interested.

“Uh, Inaba? It’s pretty tiny, it’s kinda near-”

“Whoa, wait, I think I know that place! I mean, unless there’s a whole bunch of little towns with the exact same name. Which could be the case, I guess. Lemme see, uh… is the school called Yasogami?”

Yosuke’s jaw dropped. How? How the ever-loving hell did this guy know Inaba? It was Inaba. Nobody knew Inaba. Mom had pitched a fit when she’d figured out how remote the town the company had been moving Dad to was, and that had only been after a boss-difficulty-level google search to actually find the place.

“Yeah,” he said, dumbfounded. “Uh, wow. How do you know Inaba? It’s like, in the middle of nowhere. It probably doesn’t even show up on maps.”

It was only after he said it that it occurred to him: it wasn’t as though Inaba was as unknown as it had been when he moved there. It couldn’t be. Not after everything that had happened last year.

“Oh, our school did an trip there in second year, to exchange ideas on learning styles, or some bull like that. It sure was, uh. Quaint?”

Oh, so it wasn’t because of the murder spree - well, that was certainly unexpected. Ugh, wait, why was he even thinking about that? It had been more than a year ago; this was a completely different place; and he was over everything that had gone on then. Forcibly shoving the sudden pit in his stomach away, he twisted his face back into the jokey way he’d had it before.

“You’re telling me. I had to move there because of my dad’s job - from this city, actually. Wasn’t exactly an easy adjustment.”

Tomochika winced at that. “I am so sorry.”

The response rubbed Yosuke the wrong way a little. It wasn’t Tomochika’s fault, obviously: he was just going along with the atmosphere of camaraderie to keep things from getting awkward in that oh-yeah-we-are-actually-complete-strangers-aren’t-we sorta way. Still, he’d found himself missing the little place over the weeks he’d been back, quaint and tiny and murder-y as it had been. Even the steak croquettes, at points. (Hey, he’d never said his feelings were rational.)

“Nah, but it wasn’t really so bad. Like, there was a city not too far away - I mean sure, it wasn’t convenient like here or anything, but I wasn’t completely cut off from the world or anything.”

“I mean, I guess that’s not as bad as it could have been, but still. I can’t even think about going back to Tatsumi Port Island now that I’ve lived here and the city there’s actually pretty big. Oh hey, so if you’re from here, maybe you should be the one showing me around-”

Yosuke interrupted him: “Tatsumi Port Island? I’ve been there! Well, I went to the school, at least. Maybe it was the same programme you went on to Inaba?”

“You visited Gekkoukan? Man, that must have been after I left. I wonder if anything’s changed since then.”

Wait. If Tomochika had been at Gekkoukan High a few years before Yosuke went on the exchange there, did that mean he’d gone to school with those Shadow Operative weirdos who’d shown up to take Labrys away? Naoto’s investigations, at least the ones she’d shared with the Investigation Team, had pointed to Gekkoukan as their old base of operations, and it would be around the right time, considering the guy only had a few years on him. Hell, was he one of them? Those guys had been pretty suspicious, after all, so it wouldn’t be completely out of the left field if they sent one of their own to spy on him.

Oblivious to Yosuke’s minor freakout, Tomochika laughed, brushing aside the matter that he’d got tongue-tied over.

“But man, that is so weird, like, we visited each others’ high schools and didn’t even know it. You think maybe the organisers looked into our backgrounds while matching us up, to see if people have anything in common like that?”

“Seems a bit much for them to bother with, doesn’t it?”

He peered at Tomochika, waiting for a reaction, but he just shrugged. “Huh, I guess you’re right.”

Maybe he wasn’t some Shadow Operative secret spy after all. Weirdly, he found himself a little disappointed.

“So,” said Tomochika, dragging out the sound, “Inaba. I heard that’s where that crazy murder case happened last year? You’d have been living there at that point, right?”

Oh. Yeah. Of course he knew. It was stupid to think he hadn’t: it had made national news.

“Yeah. I was.”

“Oh, wow, no way! Musta been pretty scary, huh?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess.”

Something in Yosuke’s face - or voice, or maybe even just his aura - must have tipped Tomochika off, because he winced and in a hushed voice, he asked: “Ah, you didn’t. Uh. Know anybody who was, y'know…”

“I did, yeah.” Tomochika winced. “Oh. Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said, and to his credit, he actually sounded sincere about it. “I mean. I lost a friend in high school so, I know it’s not easy. I mean, he was closer to other people and it’s not like he was murdered but- I’m making this worse aren’t it? Sorry. I’ll shut up now.”

“It’s okay, man,” said Yosuke. “We weren’t really that close.” Well, it was true, even if only on her end.

“Still,” he said, “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Honestly, it’s no sweat. You didn’t know.”

Tomochika smiled back, a faint edge of nervousness creeping in at the edges. Oh, just awesome, he’d managed to freak out the guy he was supposed to be impressing. What the hell happened to him always being the most normal guy in the room? Though, looking back, maybe it had always just been in comparison to those goofballs he called friends back in Inaba.

Though. Maybe he could lean into it a little? New place, new people, new him? Oh, what the hell, why not?

“Hey, Tomochika-senpai, did you by any chance tune into the LMB Fest this summer?”