#not least for the fact it's technically the fourth one in the series if we count arcs 1-3 as books in their own right

[swearyshera]

So we are at the end of the road on something that has always been about the journey, not the destination.  I’ve taken my time to gather some thoughts.  This blog has meant a lot to many people, not the least of which is me.  I’ve had a hard time these last few years – I think it’s been hard times for everyone, in one way or another.  Personally, I seem to remember discovering this blog not too long before I had a breakdown and handled it very poorly, making bad decisions that cost me a lot of friends, or at least people whom I thought were my friends up until a breaking point.  (Your blog was unrelated to this).  When I came out of hospitalization I had a few things to rely upon – a video therapy group was one, certain family members and, well, as silly as it sounds, hitting up tumblr for my daily dose of Sweary She-Ra to make me laugh. And then in mid-January, 2023, one of the people who was closest to me in my entire life died suddenly of technically unknown cause but considering his health issues, probably a heart-issue. It was sudden and devastating.  We shared She-Ra and the Princesses of Power together because he was kind of curious about it and I was a nostalgia-fan of the ‘80s series.  We both became massive fans of Entrapta.  In fact, my nephew / best friend got me into the fandom in the first place because he had a silly idea for a fanfic about Entrapta wrecking havoc in the Fright Zone just post first-season and had little confidence in his fanfic writing, but decided to pass along said idea to me, an inveterate fic-writer for many fandoms.  I was put through the wringer this year – it’s the first time I’ve been in partial charge of a memorial service.  I am feeling better now than I did at the beginning of this year because I’ve found the strength to keep doing things that he and I liked to do together and time helps.  And again, in all of this, I had a silly little comic where a sparkly purple princess calls people “twattingler,” others make liberal use of the word that originally meant Fornication Under Consent of the King, one character swears all the time but apologizes for it, one character is contractually obligated to use Ned Flanders style cursing and there’s a fourth wall breaker and an incompetent boss with indecipherable accent and Marxist unicorns and all the rest.  No matter what was happening with my emotions I could just… take a little break and look at the funny fancomic.  Sweary She-Ra for me has been like a warm mug of tea on a cold day or a bowl of baked macaroni and cheese with a butter-cracker crust made out of the old 1960-70 something Betty Crocker cookbook.  It’s been Internet comfort food that has been sorely needed at times.  So thank you.  I just want to thank you for this funny little fan project.  I don’t think you have any idea how much it has meant to your audience.  @freedfromthegalactichivemind

And I don't know if the audience has any idea how much it has meant to me!

When I started this, things were pretty shit, weren't they? Here in the UK we'd just come out of the second Covid Lockdown, with the third expected to happen imminently; the weather was miserable, we'd barely seen our friends in months, the world in general just sucked. And I'd love to say that I felt a calling to break through that with some humour, but no... it was nothing like that. This is what happened...

And so it all went from there.

I almost just went for random scenes as I thought of them, rather than starting from the beginning. But I thought "Eh, fuck it, let's see how far I get", and the rest is history.

Even as the storylines got more complex (bear in mind, I started purely with the intention to do the original script with a few swear words peppered in), I always wanted to keep things upbeat. The painful moments are those 'this is the good stuff, hurt me more' moments rather than actually horrifying things - I know there's been a couple of exceptions, but in general it's held true.

But I've always been driven by one thing - the world isn't very funny right now; it's stressful, sometimes downright terrifying. And if I can alleviate that for ten, twenty seconds per day and make that tiny bit of difference to someone, then I consider that a job done. I'm not out here claiming to have the cure for depression, or some kind of plan to save the world, but I (hopefully) can make a few people smile in the midst of all the shit that's happening, even if it's just for a moment.

So much has changed in the last three years, but this blog has been such a central part of my world, it'll be weird when it's over (maybe that's why I don't want to stop there!). But if this coming Friday really is the last chapter in this part of my life, I'll still be happy that it happened. And if you've ever smiled or laughed at the blog, I'm happy that happened as well.

[smash-64]

2023 Game of the Year Countdown #1 The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie Nintendo Switch, 2023

For a fourth time since 2018, a Trails game takes my #1 for the year.

Breaking from tradition, this Trails game has no sidequests. It has a very linear story, although technically there are three linear stories and you can jump from one to another for most of the game. In many respects, this is the “Trails in the Sky the 3rd” for the Cold Steel series. Not only is the story more linear, but we get redemption arcs from past villains, and we also get an absolutely disgusting amount of playable characters. Chrono Cross has 45 playable characters, and people often say that’s too many. Well…Reverie has 50. And each of them gets at least a little time in the spotlight. It’s fantastic for Trails fans, and I adored it. I put 150 hours into this game and I’m not sure I could have put less time into it.

Playing the game on Switch, there were definitely a few times the game chugged, so I can’t give the game a perfect 10. Many of the cutscenes in Crossbell City were bogged down by the sheer number of NPCs, and was noticeable to me, a person famously unconcerned with performance. I can see why people advocate for playing this on PC or PS4, but the portability of the Switch trumps all else in my mind. This is really the only downside I experienced with the game, although it did not affect my enjoyment at all.

Having three linear storylines to follow in any order you want is phenomenal. You can keep going with characters you love, and are never forced to stick with the ones you don’t for very long. And with having a linear story, the pace of the game is potentially sped up a little bit from the traditional Trails experience where sidequests can often lead to very long delays in the main story.

The story itself offers a ton. Obviously I can’t spoil a game that is the 10th in an interconnected, on-going series, but I’ll just say that once the main story is over…the postgame story is equally as interesting and gives fans a peek at some of the series-long questions and issues brought up in previous entries. 

Combat is fairly standard as far as the Cold Steel games go. I love Trails combat and this game tweaks little, as nothing was broken. It’s perhaps a little bit more difficult than CS3 or CS4, since the Break mechanic was pretty OP in those two games and it has been toned down slightly, but you can still take full advantage of it if you’re smart and plan well. I also like how some of the accessories drastically increase specific stats, so min/maxing is actually fun in this game. I was able to get Tita Russell’s attack and HP to absolutely absurd heights in this game. She is no longer baby; she wants power!

As previously stated, almost every single character gets their time in the spotlight. Some more than others, of course, but the fact that we get 50 playable characters, yet every one of them gets a chance to shine is a wonderful piece of work by the developers and writers. I’d say that perhaps Musse gets very little, but she had more than enough focus in CS3 and 4. Even Machias gets his own episode, and he is so often forgotten that even I forget about him at times.

Music is good as always when it comes to Falcom. I appreciate some of the battle tunes, like Elegant Prowess, and the game has its own unique sound that sets it apart from CS3 and 4. Maybe not to the same extent that Sky the 3rd sets itself apart from FC and SC, but the tracks unique to this game sound different enough that they are easy to pick out. There are dozens of returning tracks as well, since we revisit quite a few places from previous entries. 

My favorite character is Estelle Bright, and I was glad to see a focused effort to put her in the spotlight more often. She wasn’t in CS1-3, and played a more supporting role in 4 than anything else. Meanwhile, Lloyd and Rean ran the show. Estelle is not one of the main storylines in this game, but it’s nice to see her back with some of her famous one-liners.

Overall, I can’t really say enough about the game. It’s an amazing JRPG experience, but one that requires playing the 9 previous games in the series. Maybe that’s a daunting task to some, but the good thing about trying out a Trails game is that there is always another one to play afterward.

[theoriginaltortuga]

Thoughts and opinions on Connor and Devon through the it lives series 

warning: long post, very rambly, and spoilers abound

So this might go in headcanon territory but ill try to keep it general for this post

ILITW:

I’ll admit connor was like the fourth LI i romanced after i started playing it lives and even then it was only because i had a specific playthrough i wanted. I don’t know how other people do it, but i changed my MCs personalities and appearances based on what i wanted their ending and final nerve score to be. So Devon Hernandez, my sole survivor, needed to be kind of a prick, or at least have severe foot in mouth syndrome, while maintaining the highest nerve he could and dating Connor was the best for that

But alas I fell hard for this character i previously skipped a lot of dialogue for. Connor is a wannabe bad boy in the best possible way, he’s got the leather jacket, the cool car, and the fighting skills, all while being “forbidden” by being Stacy’s brother. (won’t lie i was expecting a slight conflict from that even if it was just in flavor text, but im not mad that she was cool with it)  

the banter between him and Devon really worked for me, and i loved how even outside of the romance specific scenes there was still acknowledgment of the relationship (whether thats a failing on pb’s part or done because he’s technically on screen less than the others im not sure) 

More on personality, Connor is interested but not pushy, acts like he’s “not too good” while being too good at all times, a caring person and a fun one, an affectionate boyfriend and doesn’t put up with people’s shit. I realized i actually cared about him the second he offered to take Devon to a diner with burgers the size of their face

Main Route (connor and MC live, all their friends are dead) : 

Jumping through time to ilw and him and Devon are horndogs living together in a cabin and scarring their friends with their sex life, which was a direction i wasn’t expecting but one i loved anyway. Again all the small acknowledgements of their relationship killed me and pet names are always a win. Connor evolved from background character and “The Love Interest” to a semi-main badass. 

One thing i loved about it lives within is that all the characters from the previous books felt like themselves in a way that’s hard to explain but basically you just bought that these were the exact same characters and the fact that it was a completely different writer never crossed my mind

There is a kind of maturity in Connor and Devon’s relationship that is nice to see because they have been together 4 years, while still staying true to the versions of them we first met

This route ended with Connor proposing to Devon and getting them their beautiful house with the porch swing and several dog children and I loved the final moments of happiness in their otherwise kind of heartbreaking story

Good Route (connor and MC live, everyone lived):

Basically the same as above, though I will say I love the idea that the whole memorial Stacy knew exactly what was about to go down and I may or may not nudge aside the idea that Devon let their friendships fall to shit and their all like bridesmaids or groomsmen, its not that them falling apart again is unrealistic or bad, it just makes me kind of sad so I ignore it in my own hc

Bad Route (connor and noah live, everyone else died and then so does Connor):

The one i just finished playing and all the interactions between Connor and Redfield!MC were so sweet and i loved them but it always held that kind of bittersweet feeling.

I played with Noah also being into Devon which was also painful, but the line “i suspected for a while now” made me laugh because all i can imagine is an internal montage of Noah being annoyed at Connor and Devon’s affection and constantly looking at Devon with heart eyes and Connor just like “wow i should’ve clocked that like last year” 

i have a lot to say on the Devon being comforted scene that i will save for the hc post but the call back to “too good” was *chefs kiss*

And towards the end realization that Connor was a horror, the accidental hope i gave the crew, and then Connor’s horrific (in the best possible way) death was so wonderfully written. You know when you read something so good that you just have to do a couple laps around the room? That was me. 

Rowan flung Connor into the fucking ceiling and the description of his blood dripping onto them and Devon was just so gnarly. Devon has lost everything, watched most of the people they loved be brutally murdered before their very eyes, and is lashing out while also being sort of aware that its not really Rowans fault which speaks a lot to their character but it hurt so freakin much

and don’t even get me started on the graveyard scene and the parallels with the other Redfield!MC graveyard scene, metal rose and all. I mentioned it before but my Devon in this route is just burnt out on love and friendship and people in a way that i’ll get into more in a hc post but yeah he’s not finding love again and i don’t think he’d ever want to

In conclusion, i love connor and devon together and I thank the og ilitw writers for writing their relationship and the ilw writers for making it even better and tearing my heart apart along with Connor’s and Devon’s in very different ways

[bywayofmemory]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @iamstartraveller776, thanks!

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 313. 113 of them are 3SF fics so they only sort of count? I haven't even posted 2024's batch yet.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 452,247

3. What fandoms do you write for? My fandoms list on AO3 is...long. Like 80+ fandoms long. This is once again due to 3SF; fandoms I am or have been actually active in are Firefly, Chronicles of Narnia, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Grisha Trilogy/Shadow and Bone, and Greek Mythology.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Drunk on the Dying Light [Grisha Trilogy, Darklina] A blood-soaked amplifier gives Alina the ability to control him, but the Darkling still haunts her; all the more so once she becomes his wife.

Maybe It Will All Come Back to Me [A Song of Ice and Fire, Jon/Arya] The wars are over, Daenerys is on the Iron Throne, and Arya finds Jon at last, though neither of them are who they were before.

Hold My Heart in Two [A Song of Ice and Fire, Jon/Arya/Sansa] The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives, in whatever form.

The World That's on the Other Side [Firefly, Mal/River] When River Tam is fourteen, she meets a man who tells her her future. She doesn't want it, but he's a different matter altogether.

The Ladies Love Wash, and Wash Loves the Ladies [Firefly, Wash & all the women of Firefly] Wash is popular with the womenfolk; it's just a fact of life.

5. Do you respond to comments? I always try to! Usually I am successful.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I don't write unhappy endings too often, but two stand out - Always, we strive to get closer, one of my Narnia Fic Exchange fics from last year in which a post-canon Edmund battles through memories to find Susan, only to find she's not ready to give up living even for him, and A Rush of Blood Is Not Enough, a Folk of the Air sex-pollen fic where Jude unknowingly dubcons Cardan and he's very angry once it wears off.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Most of mine have happy or at least bittersweet endings, so this is hard - but it might well be The World That's on the Other Side, where Mal and River manage to fix everything bad that happened in canon before any of it technically happens at all.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Rarely, since I'm a NNF. I used to get a bit back in the day when I was actively writing Mal/River due to the age gap and mental stability issues inherent in that pairing, and now I get a comment or two on the Darklina fics from time to time. They just get deleted.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes! I write pretty vanilla M/F and F/F smut; haven't gotten further than the mildest of kinks so far.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? All the time. The craziest are probably the Where's Waldo/LotR or Narnia/Sports Mascot RPF [sort of??? how do you even classify fic in which Gritty appears?], both from 3SF. For non 3SF, it's almost all Narnia/ASoIaF. Probably the most unusual of those is The Truth Without Lying, since that's partly a 1940/50s England AU of ASoIaF as well as a crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of, but I don't look for it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Yep. There's three of them on AO3, and I've been asked other times, though if those were done they didn't get linked back to my originals.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Only in 3SF, where you can 'cowrite' in terms of leaving a series of prompts or fills with a specific partner or two. That I do almost every year. In the traditional sense, no.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? I don't really work in Firefly anymore for the obvious reasons (dead fandom, the Whedon of it all), but rereading any of my Mal/River work still feels like meeting up with old friends. I love them.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I had a third and fourth part of my Mal/River series Love Keeps Her in the Air planned out, and a good 1/3 of part three written. It's literally the only unfinished fic I have. It never got finished because I moved across the country during the middle of it and my ambition never quite recovered.

16. What are your writing strengths? Dialogue and characterization. I'm very good at getting character voices down (and typically just avoid writing characters I can't get a handle on, honestly).

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Plot. Beginnings. The absolute worst. This is why I have no WIPs; if I manage to actually get something started, the hard part is out of the way for me.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I used to do this all the time in Firefly, using Mandarin phrases they'd used in the show. Everyone did at the time. Now I wouldn't; I'd go the "swore at length in Mandarin" route, or just use dialogue tags and description to indicate the characters are speaking another language, like I do with Valyrian in my HotD fics.

19. First fandom you wrote for? LotR, a very long time ago. Firefly is the first one I published anything for that's still on the internet.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? I have so many favorites! I couldn't possibly choose one, except I could and it's The World That's on the Other Side. The ones written during ~the flow are always my faves, and that one stands out the most in that regard.

Tagging @thatgirlnevershutsup, @wingedflight, @siterlas, @starsuncounted and @oakashandwillow if you want!!

[ghor-dranas]

Don't be suspicious: Group Stealth Checks in Critical Role - Vox Machina edition!

Hello and welcome to the first of a four part series looking at group stealth checks in all three campaigns of Critical Role! This first post is looking at Vox Machina, the second will be the Mighty Nein, the third Bells Hells and the fourth will be a comparison between the three. I've split it in this fashion for easier consumption because there's a LOT of data here. All of them will be tagged under both #cr-stats and #don't-be-suspicious for your perusal.

Disclaimers first!

Most of the data on this post was compiled by @critrolestats, who I'm eternally grateful for, but some of it was done by myself, and all charts and graphs were made by myself. As such, everything is subject to human error.

Now, what is a group stealth check, and why am I looking at them specifically?

A group stealth check, for sake of this project, is any time 4 or more members of an adventuring party roll a stealth check at the same time. I chose 4 as the start point fairly arbitrarily, mainly to limit my data set. As for why I'm looking at it, I just think it'd be fun to see which party is statistically the sneakiest.

Let's begin under the cut!

Vox Machina made 88 group stealth checks over the main campaign and all of their specials. Their overall average is 24.48014

But before we get deeper into the nitty gritty, I first must acknowledge a certain spell that wildly skews averages. Pass Without Trace is a wonderful spell that adds a +10 to everyone's rolls, and so because it is so powerful, I'd charted every time the used it, and take it into consideration in each table.

So, first of all, let's look at each individual member of Vox Machina's averages.

Unsurprisingly, Vax is head and shoulders above everyone else, and Pike is dead last. A quick reminder that this is not their total for all stealth checks ever, but for every time they participated in a group stealth check.

As I mentioned Pass Without Trace, let's look at it specifically.

So, as we can see here, Vox Machina cast Pass Without Trace for well over half of their group stealth checks. About 64.77% in fact. In which case, why don't we compare how well they do with the spell up versus without.

Almost exactly 10 points better, nice!

Now, I mentioned that these checks start at 4 participants and go up, but how many people exactly are in these checks? How often is it just four people? I'm so glad you asked, have another chart!

Interestingly, despite being a group of 7, the highest frequency is groups of 6! This could be due to a combination of Vax scouting ahead instead of participating, and Pike's frequent absences.

If you're looking at this and wondering "how the fuck did they have 9 participants in some of these checks?" then this is the part where I inform you that they had guests partake in these checks!

Vox Machina had a total of 23 group stealth checks performed with at least one guest present, and 12 with 2 guests at once. Which guests? Let's see!

15 separate guests! Yes, we are including Scanlan 2 as a guest and not lumping him under Scanlan, simply for weird technical reasons. I am not going to do that math, but if you want to you can take Scanlan's average from above, and Scanlan 2's average from below and work it out from there.

Speaking of guest's averages!

Our sneakiest guest is Kerrek, with 26.5, and our least sneaky is Lyra with 11. But wait, this doesn't factor in Pass Without Trace! Lyra didn't have Pass Without Trace for her single check, and Kerrek did for both! Hell, Tova had it for both of hers, which means her ACTUAL average is 5. That'd be due to the disadvantage caused by her armour. As you can see, there are a lot of contributing factors here that I can't possibly account for, so this is what we've got.

One quick note to end on is that most of these numbers are rounded to two decimal places, simply because the full numbers looked really messy.

These stats are pretty interesting, but they don't really say a lot on their own, there's no point of comparison here for the other groups! Well, in that case please stay tuned for the next three posts in the series, where I'll be looking at everyone else. Once again, you can check those posts out under the #don't-be-suspicious tag on my blog.

[residents-of-the-darkforest]

DARK FOREST TIMELINE

THE FIRST RESIDENT JOINS

Their name is One Eye.

--

In canon timeline, takes place during A Blazing Star in DOTC.

--

At the time, mentors were not yet created, ‘kit’ and ‘paw’ suffixes were not yet put in place, and names were still two words.

THE SECOND RESIDENT JOINS

Their name is Slash.

--

In canon timeline, takes place during A Path of Stars in DOTC.

THE THIRD AND FOURTH RESIDENCES JOIN

Their names are Beetle and Splinter.

--

The time and means of their deaths are not known, but is likely to have taken place sometime after A Path of Stars in DOTC.

--

They were part of the same group as Slash, who lead them. One Eye was their previous leader.

MYRTLEWING AND ALDERSTAR JOIN THE DARK FOREST

In canon timeline, takes place at least two or one generations before the ninth code of the Warrior Code was put in place (After The Death Or Retirement Of The Deputy, The New Deputy Must Be Chosen Before Moonhigh) (begins pg 85 of Code of The Clans). This comes many generations before Mapleshade’s Vengeance.

--

Rainstar, the leader after Alderstar, is the previous leader to the canon Snowstar.

MINTNETTLE JOINS THE DARK FOREST

In canon timeline, takes place between Mapleshade’s Vengeance and Pinestar’s Choice.

FUNGICHOMP, MOLEKIT(CHIVE), FISHKIT, AND FROSTKIT(STORM) JOIN THE DARK FOREST

Occurs right after the Clans arrive at the lake territories at the end of Dawn in TNP

TALONPAW ARRIVES IN THE DARK FOREST

Occurs during Twilight in TNP

--

Fungichomp was furious enough when the three kits were condemned with him, but seeing Talonpaw be sent to the Dark Forest without technically doing anything pushed him to create the Daycare.

--

In this case, ‘day’ comes from the opposite of ‘dark,’ and is what the kits should be experiencing. ‘care’ comes from the fact that they are being taken care of. 

--

Talonpaw, possibly as well as the kits, helped build the Daycare, as Fungichomp wanted to distract him as well as make him feel like he was doing something good.

GORSEHEART AND EMBERDAWN ARRIVE IN THE DARK FOREST

Takes place seven generations after the end of the series (whenever that will be).

THE FIRST DARK KIT IS BORN

.

IT IS DISCOVERED THAT DARK KITS NEED FOOD TO SURVIVE

Because the Dark Forest has no food, after kits are weaned, parents must lure living cats to them and have their kits feed on their bodies for as long as they can before the cats wake up.

--

Typically, certain herbs are given to ensure the cats stay asleep for as long as possible.

OWLSHINE HELPS FEED THE DARK FOREST

When lured to the Dark Forest to be eaten, she promised to help them if they let her go.

--

She directed them towards cats that were unlikely to put up a serious fight.

--

She genuinely felt bad for the kits, and didn’t feel bad about feeding them.

--

When she was caught, she ran to the lake, where she drowned and later joined the Dark Forest.

MINNOWS FOUND IN THE DARK FOREST

They are discovered by Creaturefall

--

They are discovered by Starclan, drifting under the borders in small tunnels. They remain close to the border.

--

Due to their existence, killing the living for food is no longer necessary (though probably still occurs).

THE FIRST GRAND DARK KIT IS BORN

===================================

===================================

Here we have it!

It obviously doesn’t show every one, but just the ones that have a known canon timeline, and who are important to certain time points (such as Owlshine and Creaturefall, who are important because of the feeding thing, and Myrtle and Alder, who’s time is known because Alder is two leaders before a canon leader).

Myrtle and Alder, and Ember and Gorse didn’t die at the same-same time, but their deaths were close enough to be included in one spot.

Feel free to suggest more to this. If you know when your character joined compared with the canon timeline, let me know!

[f1]

Unwell Piastri did Azerbaijan GP weekend on four pieces of toast | RaceFans Round-up

In brief Baku “very difficult physically” for Piastri Unwell Piastri skipped McLaren’s media session after finishing 10th in Saturday’s sprint race in order to recuperate. He missed out on the points again in the grand prix, taking 11th, but said he felt in better shape. “Today’s probably been the best I’ve felt all weekend, which isn’t saying much,” Piastri told media including RaceFans after the grand prix. “It’s been very difficult physically, especially yesterday it was pretty rough. “I think I had about four pieces of toast for the whole weekend. So I need to get some food back in me before Miami. It’s been been tough, happy to see the end of it, but I still learnt a lot today on tyre management and stuff like that. So we’ll have a look and see what we can do better next time.” Verstappen “let himself down” – Russell George Russell said he doesn’t need an apology from Max Verstappen over his outburst on Saturday following the collision between the pair in the sprint race. “I think he’s a two-time champion, leading the championship again at the moment, it doesn’t bother me, but he probably lets himself down a little bit with those sort of comments,” said Russel. “Max is a super good guy, great, great driver it’s just words like that are just a bit unnecessary.” Following his profane rant at Russell in parc ferme, Verstappen referred to him as “princess George” in interviews with Dutch media. Russell was unmoved when he reviewed footage of their collision. “To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed at how little everything was,” he said. “I was expecting it to be a lot more. Obviously, there was a bit of contact, as there often is up and down the grid on lap one. So I was expecting a bit more.” Martins disqualified Martins’ luckless season continued in Baku Victor Martins has been disqualified from the Formula 2 feature race in Azerbaijan after a technical infringement on his ART car, losing his highest points-scoring finish of the season so far. The stewards ruled his car was in breach of Article 4.3.13 of the technical regulations, which states no part of car floor fins’ lower edge can be below the reference plane or more than 10mm above. The technical delegate said the floor fins were 3.4mm below the reference plane. Martins’ disqualification drops him from joint 11th to 15th in the championship. Frederik Vesti gained his fourth place, ahead of Kush Maini, Dennis Hauger, Isack Hadjar, Richard Verschoor, Jak Crawford and Arthur Leclerc, who took the final point. Crash raises concern over “unsafe” WEC tyre warmer ban Antonio Fuoco’s crash during Saturday’s World Endurance Championship race has prompted more drivers to speak out over the series’ decision to ban the use of tyre warmers. “It can’t be ignored that top class drivers have been struggling with cold tyres since testing of these cars began, and is the energy saved on those tyre warmers less than the cost of crash damage that has been accumulated?” asked Jack Aitken on social media. The former Williams F1 driver said the fact tyre warmers are not permitted in other series does not prove WEC can easily do the same. “IMSA run the same tyres, we’ve just been blessed with hotter ambient temps so far,” he said. “Daytona when it was cold was something. Other series with different tyres and usually much lighter cars cannot be compared, they are not the same.” “Yes, there are soft and hard [compounds],” he added. “However, if you choose the soft to get an ounce of grip (warm-up was still very, very difficult) you cripple yourself by running a tyre that cannot live with the high energy demands of a track like Spa. Like, unsafe levels of wrong choice.” New deal for Barber Barber Motorsports Park will remain on the IndyCar calendar for at least the next four years. The series announced a new contract to continue racing at the venue until 2027. via RaceFans - Independent Motorsport Coverage https://www.racefans.net/

[aotopmha]

The Shadow Generations addition to Sonic Generations frustrates me because it does the thing Sonic Superstars did and feels way too overpriced for what it is going for.

Part of the reason I've yet to play Superstars is because everywhere I look, it's still priced at full and as far as I know they've done nothing to iron out the frustrating and inconsistent aspects of the game.

Doesn't help the Sonic re-releases have been absolute messes, from Origins to Sonic Colors.

Currently I see plain Sonic Generations sold for half (or in fact less) of current full game price and I think that's the perfect price for that game, but Shadow Generations + the original game is once again (almost) full price.

The footage they've shown of the Shadow gameplay is great, but will it be worth that (almost) full game price?

Frontiers has some cool stuff going for it, but it also had so much mess in it.

And yes, that's the entire history of 3D Sonic. But it's the wierd sll-encompassing messiness of the recent releases that gets me.

Inconsistent music, odd graphics, as well as massive amounts of bugs. As frustrating as Sonic Heroes was with its controls and bugs, it wasn't inconsistent in terms of literally everything else as well, so I could enjoy a bunch of it despite the issues I had with the game.

They make new games that are messes and old, cool games worse.

And I think it's finally getting to me as a fan after all of these years.

The last 3D Sonic game I truly loved and absolutely played to pieces was Generations.

And the last 2D game I loved and played a bunch was Sonic Mania.

The two each released in 2011 and 2017, 13 and 7 years ago respectively.

And since then every Sonic game has either looked like a hyper-product-y/hyper-inconsistent mess (Forces, Lost World, Colors Ultimate, Origins) or something potentially super neat buried in massive amounts of frustrating gunk with also pretty product-y elements and massive inconsistency (Frontiers/Superstars).

So I'm left waiting for Frontiers 2 or Superstars 2 because they finally seem to be somewhat serious about having another formula and refining it, as they promised with Sonic Unleashed back in 2008 and now after Forces in 2017, with Frontiers being the first step.

There are other ways to get games, of course, and considering those ways, I would probably have a decent time with the latter two (Frontiers/Superstars), but I just want a game that's just good (not even great) all the way through.

Or at least looks that way for me to want to try it based on footage and reviews.

And Shadow Generations actually does look like that!

Just building upon boost formula while incorporating lessons from new games.

But it's also another one among the (almost) full price re-releases/remasters, which at this point have an absolutely horrendous history in terms of actual quality.

Maybe, just maybe the movies doing great and Frontiers doing well enough will finally show itself in the quality of the games themselves.

I've technically been a passive fan since I got into the series with the Advance, Classic and Rush series and from there loved the Adventure games + Heroes.

And then the boost games – Colors and Generations.

But I just want something solid like that again that might even have sometimes very frustrating issues, but was a complete, consistent package.

And right now, the recent history is just really bad, in fact, it's bad to the point where people are amazed when we get actual level design from levels and I feel like that's not a very good place to be for a platforming game series.

Shadow as a character has always been that "teenage uncool" kind of "cool", but still kind of fun edgy character that I can see 13-year-olds absolutely loving, but I at most just kind of liked like any other character, while my faves back then were always Sonic, Amy and Tails, with Knuckles as the fun fourth friend.

But I think Adventure 2 did what Shadow's character was going for really well and Shadow 05 did that same thing really badly; in this case, though, Shadow is really just used to make more boost levels in Generations, which I welcome.

Loved actually playing Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2 because it was just more speed levels. I must've played those levels hundreds if not thousands of times because I had so much fun with them.

And that's basically all of Generations except maybe the last level.

So if they just make some really solid additional Generations levels, that's all it takes for this to be good.

But as said above, this is a Sonic game remaster being made in 2024, so there's a pretty big chance it's a massive mess on all fronts.

But I'll wait for lower prices and sales and hope for the best.

[anneapocalypse]

Dragon Age: Last Flight

Last Flight is the fifth novel in the Dragon Age series, written by Liane Merciel and published in 2014, just two months before the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Through the framing device of a mage refugee at Weisshaupt finding a hidden journal, the story explores the Fourth Blight 450 years ago, and the true story behind the extinction of the Grey Wardens' legendary griffons.

At 300 pages, this is the shortest of the Dragon Age novels (not counting Hard in Hightown which in our world at least is technically not long enough to be a novel). I do not think this is the strongest of the novels—I think it has some lore issues in particular, and its characters are on the whole less memorable. At the same time, I think it does add a lot to the canon in terms of establishing history and contextualizing in-game events. So this entry will be an exploration of both the book's weaknesses and its strengths.

This entry will contain spoilers for the whole story as well as for some bits of Dragon Age: Inquisition.

The Blights

This is going to involve a lot of preface before we actually get to discussing the book, but bear with me!

I think Origins does a good job establishing the stakes and scope of the Blight and the need to unite the land and all its people to face it. The darkspawn feel like a real threat, the Archdemon is scary, the Deep Roads hold secret horrors which add additional scale and dimension to the darkspawn threat. As the game progresses, you watch the Blight creep across the map, and some locations become inaccessible as they are overrun. It's solid worldbuilding for a stock fantasy epic. That the Blight doesn't really extend outside of Ferelden is fine for this story, because the scope of the game is Ferelden, and it is well established that if the Blight is not halted here, it will spread to the rest of the world. It feels as big as it needs to for the story Origins is telling.

So it's interesting to learn later that the Fifth Blight is actually the shortest Blight in Thedas's history, canonically ended within a year and never spreading outside Ferelden beyond a few isolated darkspawn outbreaks.

If you read all the Codex entries when you played Origins for the first time (which I definitely did not), you learned that the First Blight lasted nearly 200 years and nearly collapsed two civilizations. Both the Tevinter Imperium and the dwarven empire were devastated by the Blight and would continue to decline even after its defeat. This of course can be accounted for by the fact that at the time, no one yet knew how to kill an Archdemon. Every time Dumat was slain, it would be reborn and the Blight would rage on, until at last came the creation of the Grey Wardens, and eventually Dumat was permanently killed.

With the Second Blight, they cut that down to 90 years, and by the Third Blight it was down to 15, and then 12 for the Fourth. A decade of war is still devastating, but it's not civilization-destroying on the scale of the First Blight.

There are reasons for the Fifth Blight being ended so quickly, beyond our heroes getting really, really lucky at the Battle of Denerim. (If Riordan hadn't managed to damage the Archdemon's wing, grounding it atop Fort Drakon, or if all of the 3-4 wardens present had been killed before its defeat, Urthemiel very well might not have been killed that day.)

For one, the Fourth Blight is said to have wiped out so many darkspawn that some believed they would never return, and it does seem to have taken them quite some time to replenish their numbers again. More than 400 years passed before the next Blight arose, and over time it must have felt more and more unlikely that another would come. It becomes easier in that context to see how the horrors of the Fourth Blight fell out of common memory, and how the Wardens fell out of favor, especially in Ferelden—which was not even a nation yet at the time of the Fourth Blight.

For another, it is revealed in Awakening that the Fifth Blight was actually begun by the Architect's failed attempt to perform his modified Joining ritual on Urthemiel in order to prevent further blights, resulting instead in Urthemiel being corrupted and rising as the next Archdemon. It's never explicitly stated in canon, but my guess is that had things taken their "natural" course (if such a thing can be called natural), the darkspawn might have amassed much greater numbers by the time they found and corrupted Urthemiel, thereby delaying the Fifth Blight but making it ultimately more devastating when it occurred. So I think it's possible that the Architect's interference, even though it failed in its goal, might still have saved lives.

The Fifth Blight was so short that we didn't witness the full extent of what darkspawn invasion does to the world over time, and this we get to see in more detail in Last Flight: barren ground, dead crops, sickly animals and children, even deadly storms. Sickness and starvation kill more people than darkspawn swords. A Blight is war, famine, and plague all rolled into one.

Weisshaupt and the Anderfels

One thing I was very excited about in reading this book was getting to see Weisshaupt Fortress firsthand, as previously we'd only heard about the famed Grey Warden headquarters secondhand. By extension we also learn a bit about the Anderfels.

Our point-of-view character for the present-day frame story is Valya, a mage from the Anderfels' Hossberg Circle, arriving at Weisshaupt with a small group of fellow mages seeking refuge from the mage-templar conflict quickly spreading across Thedas. With the Fifth Blight ended, the Weisshaupt Wardens are in no great hurry to put new recruits through the Joining, and instead put them to work helping with research in the fortress's library, sorting through old documents from the previous Blight.

In said library stands a memorial to Garahel, the Hero of the Fourth Blight, which I thought was pretty neat. It was also cool to learn that it was an elf who killed the last archdemon, and we'll learn more about Garahel and even more about his sister Isseya, our point-of-view character for the Fourth Blight storyline.

We also learn that the Weisshaupt Wardens are investigating intelligent darkspawn like the Architect, which is not very relevant to this story but was a piece of continuity I appreciated.

We are told, from Valya's point of view, that "no one, absolutely no one, save the truly heroic or the truly desperate, wanted to become a member." I think we already know just from what we've seen in the games that this isn't strictly true. But I also wonder if it's more true in the Anderfels—if the cost of becoming a Grey Warden is more common knowledge here.

Similarly we are told in the flashback part of the story, from Isseya's point of view, that "Everyone who had ever heard of the Grey Wardens knew that someday the darkspawn taint that the Wardens absorbed during the Joining would overwhelm them." So… perhaps that was common knowledge at the time of the Fourth Blight? It certainly isn't in the south in the present day, though again it might be in the Anderfels.

We're told early on that "By tradition, the Wardens took only one recruit from each Circle of Magi in Thedas." One at a time only, to be replaced when they die? Does this apply all the time or only in peacetime? I have no idea, and it isn't explained further.

At one point in the frame story some letters arrive at Weisshaupt, and it seems the Wardens of other nations write to Weisshaupt for supplies, which seems a little inefficient, frankly, given the sheer distance and difficulty of travel. On another note, the unnamed arl requesting a personal guard after his wife insisted she saw a genlock in the cellar amused me greatly, because I could just imagine the arl going to the poor beleaguered Warden-Commander of Ferelden and being told that if he really wanted his own personal contingent of House Wardens, he was more than welcome to write to Weisshaupt and ask for them.

In this story that Ferelden has a new Warden-Commander, which I believe lines up with the default world state BioWare uses for the novels and comics, in which the Hero of Ferelden is dead.

I think this story is especially compelling in how it establishes some of the terrible choices the Wardens have had to make in order to save the world. An early sequence in the flashback portion involves the Grey Wardens facing the cruel reality of choosing who to evacuate from Antiva City. Nobles have land, armies, and coin to aid in the war effort. Peasants have nothing to offer and will be left to die, and though the Wardens find this distasteful, they don't have enough time to save everyone, and this influences Isseya's decisions later on. The hard choices the Wardens must make are a major theme and I think one of the strongest aspects of the story.

Additional Worldbuilding

It was also really cool to see more of Antiva, which is where the Fourth Blight began. Antiva City on Rialto Bay sounds just beautiful, and that's sad when you realize you're seeing it just as it's about to be destroyed. Antiva was caught off guard by the Blight and quickly overwhelmed, and then the darkspawn spread south into the Free Marches which were not nearly unified enough to mount a proper defense.

They rebuilt after the Blight, of course, and I really hope we get to see Antiva City in-game one day and that we get to see more of it than we saw of Val Royeaux.

I do wish that we got some effort put into showing us that the fashion of the Exalted Age was different than what we see 450 years later, but nope, from what is described it appears to be exactly the same Origins-era fantasy-medieval aesthetic. On the other hand I am pleased to see the story acknowledge that language would have changed over the centuries.

Lore & Continuity Issues

Caronel is a Grey Warden side character in the present-day storyline. He is memorable mainly for the fact that I was immediately suspicious of him as soon as he said he became a Grey Warden during the Blight in Ferelden. This makes no sense unless he either left the country and underwent the Joining elsewhere, which is strange since Ferelden is where the Blight was, or he didn't actually join until the Blight was ended, which is also strange because the Ferelden Wardens desperately needed rebuilding after the Blight given that they only had 2-3 people left and their first group of reinforcements from Orlais were slaughtered to a one at Vigil's Keep within six months. I honestly thought Caronel was lying, like he was some kind of proto-Blackwall, and that either he hadn't yet joined or was concealing his true origins for some juicy reason. But nope, it just never comes up again and never pays off.

There is some very weird stuff in this book about aravels, the wheeled wooden "landships" Dalish clans use to move from place to place, drawn by halla and able to move swiftly through the forest through magic. Her limited knowledge of the Dalish and their aravels leads Isseya to devise a similar scheme for evacuating civilians from cities threatened by darkspawn, using modified boats and griffons. This is clever, and an interesting plot point.

The first weird thing is that Amadis doesn't think aravels are real. I can accept that perhaps she's never seen one, having perhaps never encountered a Dalish clan. But aravels are universal among the Dalish, and according to their Codex entry, so well-known to humans that their approaching flags are considered a warning to stay away. I guess it's possible that in Exalted Age, the Dalish maybe have been scarce enough in the Free Marches that their aravels might have become mere myth, but it's weird, and I'm not sure why it would be true.

The second weird thing is that these characters (and by extension the author) seem to believe that aravels fly. As in, fly high in the air, like a sleigh drawn by reindeer. This cannot be true. Halla are not winged creatures; they don't fly. (Unless we're counting that one glitchy halla in the Brecilian Forest.) Aravels have wheels on them. Humans call them landships, not airships. I don't even consider this to be debatable; it has to be a mistake, and I parse it as a misreading of the Codex entry, where "flying through the forest" is a figure of speech and "the sails of our aravels flying above the tops of trees" pretty clearly has to mean that the sails are visible above the trees as the aravels pass, not that the entire aravel is literally flying.

That Isseya decides to fly the refugees to safety using magic and griffons is all well and good, but to suggest that Dalish aravels fly… it's just a mess, and there's no way that was supposed to be canon from the start.

And then there's the blood magic lore, which is getting its own section.

Blood Magic

The blood magic lore was probably my biggest issue with this book. I can write off Caronel as a liar, I can write off the flying aravel nonsense as these non-Dalish characters having misconceptions about aravels. The blood magic stuff has much greater ramifications to me, because it touches the very fabric of the universe.

The first line that caught me off guard was "Blood magic required considerable sophistication." I thought, really? Because it sure seemed in Dragon Age II that a mage in a fit of desperation could just cut their hand with a knife, spill their blood, and immediately summon demons. This was never indicated to be a school of magic that required "sophistication," whatever that means, especially when it is so often a last resort of the desperate.

It also appears in this story that to control someone's mind with blood magic requires drawing their blood, not just any blood. While this would make sense in and of itself, I am not sure whether it lines up with what we've seen elsewhere, as the general attitude seems to be that if a blood mage is about, anyone they've had contact with could be in danger of having their mind influenced. Ordinary people could be mistaken about this, but not templars, whom we've heard speak of the dangers of blood mages being able to control the minds of those around them.

But I was really pulled up short by the part where Isseya picks up on Calien using blood magic, and confronts him:

"You're a blood mage. I can see when you're casting spells without touching the Fade."

This is where I stopped and said: Wait, WHAT?

This is… there is just so much to unpack about this, and more you think about it the less sense it makes. If blood magic doesn't touch the Fade, wouldn't that make it less dangerous, and not more, if there is no contact with the realm of demons? Why does blood magic attract demons if it has no connection to the Fade? If blood magic doesn't touch the Fade, why does it thin the Veil, which we know to be true because it's a very important piece of worldbuilding for the entire series?

Furthermore, the Fade is supposed to be what gives mages their abilities in the first place. It's why dwarves and Tranquil can't do magic. If blood magic has no connection the Fade, then dwarves and Tranquil and anyone else should be capable of performing blood magic.

The book even kind of contradicts itself on this stuff later, because we see Isseya reaching for the Fade as she prepares the blood magic ritual to Join the griffons. In the most explicit example, when she uses blood magic to enter a griffon's mind to find out what's killing them, we are told, "She grasped the Fade." So does blood magic touch the Fade, or doesn't it?

Thing is, this piece of lore is... sort of? maybe? affirmed by Solas in Inquisition, when he says that blood mages have more difficulty entering the Fade. (Never mind that Merrill never seems to have any trouble entering the Fade during "Night Terrors.") Which is not exactly the same thing as "Blood magic doesn't touch the Fade," but it could be related. So, I think there is something to this, regardless of how confusingly it's presented in this book.

I think what we ultimately have to take from this is that using blood magic makes it more difficult to enter the Fade in spirit, but… also potentially makes it possible to enter physically, if enough blood can be spilled to tear the Veil open. Why that is the case, I don't think we yet have enough information about the Veil and the magical qualities of blood to say. Maybe we'll find out. As for blood magic touching the Fade, I think the point is supposed to be that blood is a separate source of magic from the Fade, not merely a fuel for it like lyrium (which is also a kind of blood, but we're not getting into that here). It's just not handled very well. And as for what is required for mind control... your guess is as good as mine.

(Tangentially, there's also mentions of the Archdemon creating some kind of magical vortex in the sky during battle, and Isseya notes that its power does not come from the Fade. This I think ties into the face that darkspawn draw magic from the Taint, not from the Fade.)

Initially I just hoped all the blood magic stuff would be quietly forgotten along with flying aravels, but having realized some of it was confirmed in later canon, I think that much at least is here to stay. So I don't think the blood magic lore here is entirely erroneous, but the way it's presented is kind of a mess.

General Writing Weaknesses

Very embarrassingly, when I returned to this book about a month after finishing it to do this write-up, I could not remember the name of the present-day point-of-view character. (It's Valya.) This is not a problem I had with any of the other novels, and I think it's representative of the fact that a lot of the characters just weren't as memorable or compelling. The one I remember best is Isseya, and it's not because she had a particularly distinct or engaging personality but because her actions were central to the story. If pressed, I don't think I could really tell you anything deeply personal about most of the side characters, and despite them being from different time periods, I kept getting Calien and Caronel mixed up to the point that at one point I forgot Calien wasn't a Grey Warden.

And in such a character-driven fandom, I think the unmemorability of these characters is born out by the fact that I'd never heard of any of them or the book itself before I started actively seeking out every piece of Dragon Age media in existence. I've only ever been on the edges of the wider Dragon Age fandom and I'd heard of, for example, Rowan and Fiona and Rhys and Michel, at least in passing before reading their books; I've never heard anyone talk about Isseya or Valya.

While the frame story of the mage and templar refugees sets the story clearly in the time period right before Inquisition, I don't feel like it particularly serves this story, which is not about the mage-templar war, and the references to it, including the tension between the refugees at Weisshaupt, don't really go anywhere or have any payoff. Valya didn't need to be a Circle refugee and her companions didn't need to exist, basically; all they do is add more superfluous characters who don't matter to the story. Isseya's journal could have been discovered by any Grey Warden initiate who was both a mage and an elf, and I actually think it could have been more interesting to see the story of how the Wardens wiped out their own griffons through blood magic unfold through the eyes of someone who's already undergone the Joining and has that sunk cost in believing the Wardens heroic and good.

Valya suspects that the story the Chamberlain tells her about how the griffons died out is a lie, at a time in the story when she still has no reason to suspect that. It throws some intrigue to the reader, sure, but from a character point of view it's not believable, and Valya is too underdeveloped a character for it to make her seem smart. Instead it just feels like the writer wants you to know there's more to the story.

And then there are just some language issues I have with the writing, things that I think it behooves anyone writing in a fantasy genre to be aware of. There is always a certain level of suspension of disbelief required for fantasy, and all language derives in some way from the cultures it arose from and reflects the world in which it's used, but if the origins of a word are too obviously not of the fictional universe, they become immersion-breaking. I call this "the Brussels sprouts" problem. In a fantasy world where the country of Belgium and the city of Brussels do not exist, you cannot have a vegetable called Brussels sprouts. You can have that vegetable but you can't call it that without risking the audience's immersion. In this cases, the author uses the adjective "spartan," as in "a spartan respite." Most people know what Sparta was and who the Spartans were, and this word absolutely does not belong in Dragon Age.

There's also this one simile, "studded with arrows like a ham stuck with cloves," that stuck out to me, not because it was out of place in the universe necessarily—Thedas has pigs and it has spices, fine—but because it just seemed kind of uncreative to me. Like, oh, I guess people in this fantasy world with dragons prepare and eat ham exactly the way we do. Cool, I guess?

Merciel also has kind of a problem with unnecessary epithets.

In this book Dragon Age continues to be sort of iffy with its portrayal of transgender characters. They arguably did finally do better with Krem in Inquisition, but this is something that in general the franchise has a history of fumbling (see my post on the first three graphic novels for more on that). This book has a character named Lisme, who seems to be what we would describe as genderfluid. A huge deal is made of Lisme's presentation being dramatic and costumey, which seems both highly impractical in wartime and not necessary to establish the character's genderfluidity. I mean don't get me wrong here, if Lisme wants to dress up like a drag queen to fight darkspawn, I for one support her, but I also question the choice to write the character that way, as well as to have the narration tell us that no one knew "which was the truth" like his gender presentation is a lie. For a franchise that prides itself on the inclusion of LGB characters, Dragon Age has been sort of behind the 8-ball on trans representation, but the trend at least does seem to be an upward one--and I hope that continues.

There are couple of issues I'm going to mention which also apply to other Dragon Age books and so it's going to seem like I'm singling this one out unfairly. If I ignored them in previous books it's because they weren't enough of a distraction to take me out of the story, but they were still present and I will mention them briefly here.

We do set up the obligatory het romances real early; this is a thing in nearly every Dragon Age novel (hats off to The Masked Empire for breaking that mold) and while I wasn't invested in most of the characters, I did enjoy the thing between Amadis and Garahel, which of course ends in Garahel's heroic sacrifice. (Amadis despite not getting a ton of character development was still probably my favorite character in the book.)

There are moments in these books when it feels like the writer grabbed at the first name that popped into their head without thinking about why it popped in there. Like Asunder having a major character named Adrian mention an Enchanter Adria who never appears or comes up again. Or in this case, a character name Fenadahl, not to be confused with the elven Tree of the People, the vhenadahl. I understand that in real life sometimes people have similar names, and sometimes names sound like things, but in a book it's distracting and if you don't have a reason to do it and you aren't going to lampshade it in some way, you should probably avoid this sort of thing.

This is a small thing but it also represents a hole a lot of franchises seem to fall down as they age and expand, and one I fear Dragon Age is also succumbing to: the pressure to utilize characters that fans have heard of before. (I think this is way more of an issue in Inquisition and some of the comics, but that's another entry for another day.) In short: I know fans like to hear familiar names, but Brother Genitivi does not need to be the only human historian in all of Thedas. There can be other scholars who have written books. Mix it up a little.

Strengths!

I want to go out on a positive note, so let's finish with some more general things I liked!

While it initially feels a little dramatic the way Valya finds the super secret Grey Warden journal by following a hidden message on an old map to a secret hidey-hole in a stone wall, instead of just finding the journal in a trunk full of Fourth Blight stuff no one's had time to sort through, it does turn out to have been hidden that way for a reason, and specifically so that a mage and an elf would be most likely to find it, so that worked for me.

I mentioned that Amadis is my favorite character and it's mostly for this:

"Who are you?" Isseya asked. "You're not just an Antivan lady. Not by the way you handled those blades." Amadis laughed. "You must not know many Antivan ladies."

She goes on to explain that she's not actually Antivan, she's from Starkhaven, but it was a great line all the same.

The battle descriptions are great! I tend to find the battle scenes the most boring parts of these books, but this was an exception. The griffon-mounted battles were really fun and exciting. It becomes clear in this story how much differently a battle feels when you're not even trying to kill an Archdemon at the moment, only escape.

Blood magic stuff aside, I also like the way Merciel describes mages doing magic as reaching for the Fade, opening themselves to it, weaving threads of magic and so forth. It's more visceral than Gaider's descriptions ever were, and makes more vivid what it might feel like to do magic in this universe.

I liked the mention of the Wilds flower from Origins that can cure blight sickness (at least in Mabari), and it makes sense that it would sound like a fairy tale in the north because the flower doesn't grow there. That was a nice piece of continuity.

I think it works well that Valya knows the outcome of Isseya's story before we do, allowing for some foreshadowing in the frame story, with Valya saying "She did terrible things" before we know the extent of those things.

And I like the griffons! I like the descriptions of them, the bonds they have with the Wardens and their individual personalities, and I cared about them enough that I was genuinely sad about the sickness taking them even when I knew from the start that they were all going to die. The surprise came from the discovery of the hidden, magically-warded and unblighted eggs, and the revelation that griffons are going to return to Thedas! That's very exciting to me!

Final Thoughts

I think Last Flight is one of the weaker of the Dragon Age novels, but I still think it's valuable for some of its worldbuilding, and particularly for its portrayal of how much the Blights have cost Thedas and what has been sacrificed to stop them. It's almost unfair to compare it to, for example, The Stolen Throne, which had no continuity to break when it was written, and while it also didn't have the strongest characters in the series, their proximity to the first game automatically added interest to their story. Last Flight comes later in the series and thus has a lot more continuity to build on, and I can appreciate the added challenge of that, even as I wish the lore had been vetted a little more carefully. It doesn't have the strongest characters, but I can appreciate it as a world-driven story more than a character-driven one, even if I think that's a little out of step with the rest of the series.

It's not my favorite, but I enjoyed it and I think it's worth reading.

Addendum

More recently, I watched Ghil Dirthalen's video series about this book on YouTube. She noted some of the same issues I did, and she added one piece of context in particular: Merciel wrote Last Flight on a pretty tight deadline. She also shares a few quotes from Merciel from the old BSN forums, offering some lore-questionable justifications for certain writing decisions, and also mentioning that she hadn't read World of Thedas when she wrote the book. (Ghil also catches some lore issues that I didn't, so really, you should go watch her videos, part of her Book Emporium series; it's good.)

And given that this book doesn't actually set up anything that happens in Inquisition, I'm not sure why it was so important for BioWare to publish it when they did; it could just as easily have come out after the game. But that time limitation probably explains a lot. And knowing that just confirms for me that we probably shouldn't favor this book over other sources of lore where they conflict.

[lilygrants]

How YJ and GLTAS Fit (Or Don’t Fit) Together

Because why do something productive with my time?  In general, the Green Lantern franchise is probably the least-utilized of DC’s major properties in YJ, for two very simple reasons: 1) No “young” characters, and 2) They’re OP as hell. Seriously, one of my first exposures to the Justice League was an episode of the Superfriends cartoon where the Legion of Doom went back in time to wipe out the Justice League’s three strongest heroes: Superman, Wonder Woman, and... GREEN LANTERN. Greg Weisman, one of YJ’s two executive producers, has been very upfront about the GLs being OP as hell, and cited this as a reason that they’re often written as being away from Earth (ref: Coldhearted, all of season 2). They wanted their Justice League to exude power, yes, but they also want the kids to be useful! Even with Weisman and Vietti writing around them as much as possible, their overpoweredness STILL got them into trouble with the “missing 16 hours” plot point. Even today, you can check the “Ask Greg” archives or the YJ TV Tropes page and find a bunch of fans whining about why John Stewart didn’t just ask his ring where he’d been for 16 hours. Green Lantern is the definition of “story breaker power.” You think Superman is boring with his 96 billion super strengths and super senses? Green Lanterns can create basically anything they can imagine-- and Earth has FOUR of them in YJ, as of season 4. (Though we don’t know who the fourth one is, technically. It is prooooobably Kyle Rayner, but it could just as easily be any of the other Earth-based lanterns. I’m currently pretending it’s Aya.)    First, let’s take a list of characters we know exist in both series. 

Hal Jordan (main character of GLTAS, occasional, mostly-silent cameos in YJ) John Stewart (YJ’s favorite GL with bit parts in a couple of episodes and the video game, namedropped in GLTAS’ final episode) Carol Ferris (recurring character in GLTAS and Hal’s love interest, bit parts in one episode of YJ: Invasion and tie-in comic)  Guy Gardner (recurring character in the 2nd half of GLTAS, bit player in YJ-- speaks more than Hal but only because him being a jackass is funny)  Kilowog (main character of GLTAS, currently guest starring in YJ) Razer (main character of GLTAS, hijacked one episode of YJ and proooobably won’t be back, since he didn’t even touch the actual current plotline)  Tomar Re (bit character in both shows so far)  Mogo (bit character in GLTAS, namedropped in YJ)  Aya (main character of GLTAS, namedropped in YJ) 

So, let’s start with Hal.  Hal has spoken two words in YJ. (Technically, he spoke one word twice-- “No,” in response to Guy Gardner joining the Justice League.) 

https://youtu.be/MvAgVSamZe8?t=15

This is for the best, as there’s very little to contradict his actions in GLTAS. “Four years ago” places it during season 2, and all we know about Hal’s actions that year is that he spent January - June away from Earth. Presumably, most of that time was on Rimbor, but there’s still plenty of room in the second half of the year for GLTAS to happen. His personality is also a blank slate in YJ. His character design was also updated for season three, giving him a slightly different uniform, distinguished Mr. Fantastic gray temples, and some lines to his face. The law of conservation of detail suggests they did this for a reason, but I’ll be damned if I can imagine what that reason is, given that Hal is basically a nonentity in YJ.  

John and Guy present the first real contradiction between the two-- ie, GLTAS depicts Hal as the only GL on Earth at start, while by the analogous time period in YJ, they’ve both been GLs and Justice Leaguers for years.  So “The New Guy” did not happen in YJverse (or if the plotty events did, it wasn’t Hal and Guy’s first meeting-- they’ve known each other for an absolute minimum of 5-6 years by this point, and likely longer). There’s also the fact that Guy was also tied up in the Rimbor stuff. 

Guy is also very different-looking between the two. GLTAS is almost a note-for-note translation of his usual comic character design, while YJ goes for a modernized update of a similar idea. He also has a different voice actor, owing to the fact that he was most likely cast before the decision was made to include the GLTAS-inspired events. I also suspect that he will keep his YJ voice if ever used in future episodes-- one of the ways Weisman and Vietti initially differentiated their shows from other DC properties was by avoiding reusing actors. They’ve since relaxed on that front (and reused Bruce Greenwood to start with, anyway), but I imagine they like their version of Guy well enough to keep him the way he is.  

John very politely spent that time period actually on trial on Rimbor, so he presents no real conflict of events, except Hal didn’t get to make a Daily Show joke about him, since they’d known each other for years by this point. 

Carol’s the one it actually gets interesting for. In YJ, Ferris Aircraft seems to be focused on spacecraft-- her two appearances show her at NASA. She looks very different between the two shows, and again, has a different voice actor. The main question about her is whether or not she has a power ring in the YJverse. YJ Carol is very aware of aliens (her big appearance shows her attempting to broaden communications with Mars). Carol’s appearances in GLTAS were few, but memorable. I suspect she’ll also retain her YJ voice actor, not least because Kari Wahlgren also voices both Saturn Girl and Phantom Girl. 

Kilowog and Razer were lifted from GLTAS pretty much exactly as they were, voices included-- Jason Spisak, the workhorse of DC Nation, was already voicing Forager, and Kevin Michael Richardson was already voicing Vykin and Martian Manhunter. 

My gut instinct is that they were left in GLTAS form primarily as fanservice. Razer peaces out the first chance he gets, and I personally doubt we’ll see him again any time soon, much as I’d love to be wrong. Kilowog is sticking around for the moment, but he doesn’t seem to be hugely involved in the plot just yet. Weisman and Vietti didn’t feel the need to really personalize their version of him, because he’s not a major player-- or at least that’s my theory.

It is interesting to me that Tomar Re was cast as Dee Bradley Baker. His GLTAS voice actor, Jeff Bennett, is another one of those versatile men-of-a-thousand-voices that huge casts like YJ rely on-- off the top of my head, he voices all of the male Reds, T. O. Morrow, Alfred, and Abra Kadabra. He was also in Gargoyles, so very dear to Weisman’s heart! They could have cast him-- if they wanted to. It isn’t like Guy and Carol, where they made their choice before deciding to incorporate GLTAS. But they chose Tarrlok instead. Obviously, Dee Bradley Baker is a good choice. I suspect that (unlike Kilowog and Razer) Tomar Re is going to be Involved from this point forward, and so Weisman and Vietti made him their own. I mean, he IS on the poster for this arc. He’s gotten some pathos regarding Krypton. Kilowog parented his spacekid and otherwise has not done anything worth mentioning.

Mogo’s only been mentioned as less than Guy Gardner’s ass, and Aya as the subject of Razer’s quest, but questions remain. Could any of the characters YJ actually follows have known or known of Aya? I rather doubt it, much as I would looooove to be wrong here. I remember back on the old YJ Anon fic meme, there was a prompt about Hal bringing Aya to the cave and having her join the team as his sidekick-- but her lack of representation in the grotto leads me to believe she wasn’t known to them. 

[liz-allyn]

shudder; part 6/6 [agent mobius x reader]

Series Summary: Pre-Loki series. You are one of the most dangerous variants the TVA has ever recovered, but Mobius knows what makes you tick. Five times he made you shudder, and the one time you returned the favor.

Words: 4.4k

Chapter Warnings/Tags: smut, language, soft daddy kink, sex in otherwise unsanitary conditions, writer's horribly pathetic attempt at dirty talk

A/N: Here it is guys. I struggled with this chapter a lot, also mad respect for gn!writers. I don't think I succeeded in keeping it neutral (welcoming feedback on how I can improve) so I removed that tag.

You watched a small fire crackle in the darkness of an elevator shaft, being used as a chimney. Rain spilled down the walls, running over old steel and concrete, but at least you were no longer in it.

Once you had had the strength to move off the beach, you found a footpath scaling up the face of the cliff which led to an abandoned mining post.

The population of Olympus-V had steady decline for decades, either by migration, poverty, or famine. The planet had been practically barren for years, save for some mining operations to squeeze the last of the planet’s natural resources.

It was in one of those posts where you were now taking refuge with Mobius. You sat on the ground near the elevator shaft, your clothes still soaked, while Mobius fiddled around with building a fire. You wrapped your arms tightly around yourself and tried to keep your teeth from chattering.

“You know how many centuries it took early man on Earth to figure out fire?” Mobius mused as he tended to the flames. “I mean, it’s not a competition or anything, but other civilizations had it down in like a few decades, max.”

You rolled your eyes miserably. “I got him killed, you know,” you replied, not having the energy to follow Mobius into another one of his “fun-facts-about-history” rabbit holes. You’d been quiet for a while, with Mobius having to hold both ends of the conversation. The grim tone in your voice gave him pause.

“The new guy,” you clarified, your tone flat as you spoke of your deceased partner. The last time you and Mobius had spoken, he had sang his praises. “It was only our fourth mission together and he’s dead. Because of me.”

Mobius sighed and turned away from you, “That’s one interpretation.” He dropped another piece of coal into the flame and came to a stand. “Or,” he added, “you could say he was a great analyst who made rational, competent choices and was working with the best data he had. The fact that he trusted you doesn’t make him any less responsible for the outcome.”

He idly wiped his hands on his pants, carrying on and providing no harbor for your self-pity, “I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

“No. You wouldn’t.” Your tone was icy. “Because you weren’t there.” You glared at him from across the smallish room you were huddled in, bitterness souring your voice. “You sent me away, remember?”

He let out an exasperated sigh, rolling his head slightly. “I had no other choice,” he parroted the same old response.

That wasn’t an answer that satisfied you. At all.

“Why?” you bit back with a mocking tone, coming to a quick stand. You pulled no punches. “Because the TVA told you to? Because if the Time Lords—”

“—Time Keepers—”

“—Time Fascists,” you hissed, “think that I have a crush on you, they'll zap me out of my useless existence?”

He glanced over at you, smirking with his head tilted slightly. He replied with a voice as sweet as caramel, “Are you saying you have a crush on me?”

Your shoulders dropped. “You’re insufferable.” You turned away, wishing you could find a different mine.

“Hey, considering my recent valiant and heroic efforts to rescue you,” he replied, “you’d think you’d be a little nicer to me.” You let out an exhausted sigh, but he kept going - cool as a cucumber. “I thought we had a thing going there. I mean - first, you kiss me—”

You spun on your heel. “Kiss you!?” you scoffed.

“Yeah,” he drawled. “On the beach.”

“I was resuscitating you!” you argued. “You call that a kiss?”

He shrugged innocently, a sparkle in his eyes. “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything,” he responded matter-of-factly. “But, uh, yeah - it was a little underwhelming.”

He grinned slyly. You wanted to simultaneously melt into him and burn him alive. You scoffed, shaking your head incredulously.

“What was the point?” you exclaimed. “What’s the point of rescuing me if I’m nothing but a - a tool? A blunt hammer for the TVA to snuff out anyone that steps out of line?”

The pain in your voice was unmistakable, and Mobius dropped his playful banter.

“You think I’ve enjoyed spending the last - however long it's been - hopping around the timeline hunting people who are no different than me?” Your heart ached with every word, “You think I enjoy killing?”

“No,” he answered, weighed with guilt, “I don’t.”

Your rage flared. “Then why won’t you just let me go!?”

“I can’t,” he quietly explained, eyes cast down. He wouldn’t even look at you.

Fuck this infuriatingly charming, cowardly little TVA sheep-whore.

You felt the venom pooling on your tongue. “God! You’re such a company man, aren’t y—”

“I can’t!” he raised his voice in a way that you’d never heard before, stunning you into silence. He lifted his gaze and looked at you solemnly, his expression filled with regret. His words were weak, broken - barely above a whisper. “...Let you go.”

You stared blankly at him, reading the tragedy written on his features. With his defenses down, you could clearly see every word: I don’t want to let you go. I need you, forever. You are mine and I am yours and nothing else makes sense beyond that. I’d do anything to keep you safe.

Were those his thoughts, or yours? You didn’t know anymore.

Mobius reached up quickly and loosened his tie, before deftly undoing the buttons of his shirt.

You were staring like a deer in the headlights. “Wha-Wai-what are you doing?” you blurted uncomfortably with a furrowed brow.

He rolled his eyes. “Not catching hypothermia, if that’s alright with you,” he snarkily said as he pulled off his jacket and shirt, revealing a soaked white undershirt beneath. You remembered that you both were freezing and wet. “I’m drying my clothes by the fire. We still have 10 hours and 23 minutes until we hit the radiation peak.”

Ah yes, you had almost forgotten.

Ten hours until the end of the world, or at least of Olympus-V. And because Mobius’ TempPad was unbelievably conveniently out of juice, and unable to open another Time Door, you were pretty sure you had about the same amount of time left to exist.

Mobius confidently felt otherwise. He rattled on some jargon about needing a massive source of energy to power the TempPad - something about electromagnetic waves, solar bursts, radiation of a dying star, the “sweet spot” between a steady charge and a gruesome death. You honestly stopped listening back at the beach.

You were too busy questioning his motives and your own. Were you happy that Mobius was trapped with you, about to be swallowed by the sun? Or were you furious that he idiotically ran right into an apocalypse and now you both were going to die.

He quipped that at least that technically made him a hero; maybe he’d get a plaque in the TVA cafeteria. You would’ve made some kind of cheeky comeback, but you were already dying inside at that devastating thought.

“Not to be too forward, but you should probably do the same,” Mobius added, bringing you back to the present situation where he was undressing in front of you. “You’re shaking like a chihuahua right now.”

You were about to question the puzzling thought of him being in a place in time to observe a chihuahua, but then he pulled his wet t-shirt over his head. You turned your gaze away reflexively as soon as you spotted human flesh.

Here you were - former soldier, mercenary, and spy, and fearsome hunter of the Time Variance Authority - blushing like a shrinking violet. It’s not that he didn’t have a point, it was just--fuck, he’s undoing his belt— is this real life right now?

“Don’t worry,” he scoffed flippantly. “I’ll even turn my back to preserve your innocence and sanctity.”

He was being facetious but it made you wonder if he had any idea how un-sanctified you were. Your eyes widened at the thought: Did he watch that on the highlight reel too?

Now he was pulling his slacks off, and you were tracking in real time again. He kept his promise and had his back to you, allowing you the privacy to undress. And you did.

You peaked over your shoulder to see him lay his clothes out in front of the flames. He dragged over an old canvas tarp he’d found - pieces of which he’d stripped off for kindling - and moved it to a safe proximity from the fire. He sat down in the middle of the tarp, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around him.

And he kept his underwear on - boxer briefs, you’d called it - not that you were trying to look below his waist or anything.

Once he was at rest, he rubbed his hands over his bare arms to create friction. You mirrored his steps one-by-one, until you were also sitting in your underwear on the canvas with your bare backs inches apart.

You both were quiet for a long time, facing opposite directions, surrounded by the cold darkness, and the sound of trickling water. You could still hear the waves thrashing and the rain bartering on the rocks outside. The crackle of the fire - the way the flame danced and dimly lit your surroundings, brought you a sense of peace. It was almost... romantic. Even if it was the end of the world.

“I know this is my fault,” Mobius declared, breaking the silence. You could hear struggle in his voice. “I know I was supposed to stay within my lane. My purpose is to preserve and protect the timeline, and that’s it, it’s just....” He sighed, and you listened carefully, hanging on his words. Was this doubt?

It sounded like he was trying to understand himself. “Something’s different now,” he explained, with a little bit of wonder and fear. “When we’re together, I feel… like I’m someone else. And I’m not who I was before. Before you.”

You quietly listened, thinking about how much you identified with what he was saying.

“My head is telling me it’s all wrong,” he said, “that I’m making a mistake. That I’m playing with fire.” His next thoughts brought the tiniest grin to his otherwise grim voice. “When I’m with you… I feel like a dope… Reckless.” The smile faded as his thoughts sobered him. “Dangerous.”

In the silence that followed, you wondered again whose thoughts you were hearing - his or yours.

“How can something that feels so right be wrong?” he mused openly - for you, the Time Keepers, and all the Sacred Timeline - to hear.

The question that hung heavy in the air had such a clear answer, of which you were certain. Your mind raced trying to think of how to respond, how to explain. You simply couldn’t find the words.

So you turned your body towards him. You reached over Mobius’ shoulder gently to cup the side of his face, and pulled him into a kiss.

It was slow and chaste, projecting every intention and emotion that you lacked the words to describe. Each time you moved your lips, you took another breath; you wrote another line of your love letter to him. He sank deeper into your kiss, as your souls tangled and caught fire.

And then you felt it.

You were positioned behind him, with his back to your chest when a burst of lightning crawled up his spine. A desperate shudder racked his body. He pulled away from you breathlessly, his eyes closed, as you both panted and glowed with the heat of the moment.

“If I didn’t know any better,” your lips curled into a sultry smile, “I’d say I was making you nervous.”

He opened his dark bronze eyes at that, drinking you in. He couldn’t help but mirror your mischievous smirk. In an instant, he snatched you up and pulled you onto his lap. You kissed him hungrily, straddling him, as his hands glided over your body.

Your mind went foggy, as any composure you had in the situation was evaporating. His lustful kisses scorched your skin as they traveled down your neck. He lifted you higher so that he could drink more of you in. You gasped and sighed at how your body reacted to him, your fingers digging into his scalp. He groaned with pleasure as he found your open mouth again, your tongue a welcoming partner.

He pulled you in tighter, your hips grinding further into him. You felt his want, hard against your body, and you felt the last of your innocence pooling between your legs. The friction made you let out an un-sanctified moan, breaking away from his kiss. The sound of your voice intoxicated him.

You were in a controlled descent backwards as he lowered you to your back.

When did you start trembling? Has it really been that long since your last time?

Your hands danced across his chest, triggering goosebumps. Even his skin wanted you. You writhed beneath him as he positioned himself between your legs. You were bursting like a firecracker with anxious need. Your hands groped him, nails gently grazing - traveling down his torso and beneath the waistband of his boxers.

He gasped as your fingers wrapped around his organ, fluttering his eyes shut at your touch. You were on autopilot, your physical need in command of your body, as you attempted to pull his stiff erection from his boxers.

Mobius snatched your hands and you froze. He pulled your arms up, grasping your hands tightly, and pinned your wrists to the floor on either side of your head. You were hit with a wave of confusion, followed by shame.

Maybe you’d read this wrong. You looked up at him, half-expecting to read an expression of disgust.

What you found was the opposite.

His eyes— gentle, dark, and focused intently on you— telegraphed a message for you to read carefully:

You were not the one in control here.

You felt the wind of butterflies deep in your core as you realized he had clear goals for you in mind. He was asking you - imploring you - for command of your body. For the record, he already had it - whether or not either of you were conscious of it.

You lay still, save for your chest’s gentle movements, as his eyes unravelled the layers of your being. Trapped in his gaze, you were stripped bare in more than just flesh.

You were time travelling again - years into the past. The pages of your chapters fell away, until you felt like a pupil again, watching your master navigating the geography of your body.

His grip softened, giving your palms an affectionate squeeze before he released your hands. His leering gaze was already gliding down your valleys, and his hands followed, letting his fingertips brush the delicate flesh of your forearms as they travelled.

All your mind could do to focus was count your every breath as his touch and kisses grazed your skin. You wondered how long it had been for him. You quivered at the thought of him planning this moment.

He took time tasting you with each kiss - down your chest, your belly, the crest of your hips. You lifted your core with his encouragement, allowing him to pull away your last remaining piece of clothing. You were finally unveiled before him. He sighed softly, mind buzzing, as he delicately spread your legs apart.

He moved so slowly with intention, relishing each moment. You were on the verge of losing it and he had yet to touch your most sensitive areas. He could feel your hips squirm with anticipation.

“I want you,” he pacified you, “more than anything.” He tenderly kissed the inside of your thigh. “But I need to know that you want this too. Without a doubt in your mind.”

You were desperate by this point, way past “willing.” Regardless, he met your eyes, waiting patiently for your consent.

You were consumed with lust. “Please,” you stuttered in passionate exhilaration. You could barely recognize your own voice, “You can do anything you want to me.”

His face twitched into a sinful smirk. “I know.” There was that confidence again. “But that’s not what I asked.” He steadied his composure and fixed himself in your sights once again. You gazed at him with a more sobered expression, giving this moment the respect he wanted.

He watched your lips now that he had your attention. “Tell me you want me to make you feel good,” he seductively implored. “Tell me you want me to take you, here and now. I need to hear you say yes.”

The way he asked for your consent could’ve put you over the edge by itself.

“Yes,” you practically moaned under your breath. It was a sinful, thirsty plea. “God, yes, please. I want you to touch me.”

That ignited his fuse.

He lowered to his elbows, positioning his arms beneath your legs. His mouth was on you, leaving you aghast at the force. It was like he wanted more than just to please you - he relished in devouring you, like a frozen dessert on a hot summer day. You jolted and gasped, more from surprise than pain. He took note anyway, and steadied his animalistic pace.

It wasn’t long until your eyes were rolled in the back of your head. You were thunderstruck, arching your body and moaning with ecstasy.

The way his name sounded each time it sprang from your lips made him drunk. Every time you uttered it, you felt him tense and groan. It was a perpetual cycle. Your hips would reflexively buck from the intense pleasure and he would just hold on tighter. He forced your thighs apart as you encouraged him to unleash more rapture on your body.

This was not a particularly new position for you, but it was good. You weren’t sure where he got the experience, but he was really, really good.

And if “Sacred-you”— “NC-17-rated,” “parental-advisory-warning-labelled” badass-you—could just see yourself now: writhing on the floor while being laid out by an older man, one whom you’d rarely seen out of a brown suit and tie. You didn’t think this man knew how to fire a gun before, but you were practically mewling for him like a kitten.

And god, he really seemed to enjoy it.

You warned him that you couldn’t last much longer. You felt the tension building inside. You wanted desperately to satisfy him, to feel him inside of you, to have him enraptured with you. But unless he slowed down, you were going to lose it right here with his mouth on you. You knew he had needs, and you began to plead with him to let you fulfill them.

You pushed down on his shoulders, begging him to let you have a turn. He pulled away, pausing only briefly.

“Uh uh,” he chastised you with a wicked grin. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

He was back on you before you could reply, this time reaching two of his fingers into your core.

Your head dropped backwards at the sensation, and now you were obscenely begging him for more. You’d happily given up any attempt at controlling what happened next, focusing solely on the nuclear fission in your body.

You blossomed for him as his fingertips pulsed on the most sensitive flesh inside inside you. Muscles you didn’t even remember you had repeatedly contracted. He impurely hummed and he lapped greedily at the fruit of his labor.

You were gasping for air, beaded with sweat, as you came down from your high. He leaned over you to witness the sunset of your orgasm. Eyes full of lust, he pulled himself free of his boxers and discarded them as he watched you.

When you glanced down to see the stunning sight of his stimulation, it re-electrified you. You pulled yourself into a sitting position on his lap, wrapping your arms around his neck. Your legs straddled him eagerly as he lifted your hips over his member.

The erotic sound you both made as you slid down his shaft was sinful enough to cast you both into hell. You kissed him, open-mouthed, and tasted yourself on his tongue. Now that you were on top of him, wrapped around him, he seemed more frantic and less calculated with his movement.

He was gazing up at you like a lustful teenage boy, letting himself be taken by passion. “God...” he whispered, suddenly less skilled with words. “You feel so... ah!... s-so beautiful...”

“You’re so hard…stretching me so tight,” you groaned into his mouth, and he growled in agreement, nodding his head.

He broke away from the kiss, “God - yes, ah, you’re s-so tight, baby...” You grinned excitedly as you climbed and descended his length. You moaned like a porn star as you rode him.

“I can call you that, can’t I?” he said through his own breathless moans. You glanced at him in confusion. He looked concerned. His hands braced your hips as you continued your movement. “Is that okay?”

“Wha-what?”

“The pet name,“ he explained through sighs, “B-Baby? I-I don’t want it to sound de-demeaning, or... patronizing—”

Okay. Now he was overthinking it.

“It’s fine,” you urged him to move on, growing more frustrated, but now he was babbling nervously.

“I could call you something else—”

“—don’t care—”

“—’s’important to me that you know I respect you, and I’d never—”

“I don’t care, I—You can call me whatever you want. Please, daddy… Just— fuck me…”

You crashed your lips on his, but felt his breath hitch as he tensed you immediately. You either said something very right, or very wrong. The sex had all but come to a screeching halt, as you reluctantly met his eyes.

He gazed at you thoughtfully, gears turning.

Timidly, you searched his face for judgment, for any sign of disapproval, but instead, there was a look of almost— awe.

You watched the change in him as the devil overtook him. His eyes turned three shades darker, pooling with lust. His expression of wonder melted into a devious smile. Your dirty talk awakened something in him, like he was remembering a long-forgotten visceral part of himself.

He scooped you up and laid you on your back again, pulling himself out of your body. You only had a brief time to revolt, until he sat up on his knees and he lifted one of your thighs up, pulling your leg over his shoulder. You watched curiously trying to figure out what he was doing, until he gripped your hips and pulled you downward— over his shaft.

You let out a painfully delicious cry as he bottomed out inside of you. He hungrily watched your expressions and relished in the sound of your moans.

His hand braced the inside of your other thigh, holding your legs open so that you were spread at the right angle for him. As soon as he began to thrust, you were done for.

You groaned with ecstasy. “That’s... it..,” he praised you, eliciting more cries from you.

There were no more performances. There was no more pageantry. No more room for pretending to be anyone other than who you are.

You were coming undone for him, and he watched every moment. Every dirty thought and fantasy you ever had might as well have been written on your body. He studied each line.

“Oh god, Mobius—yes,” you babbled as you squirmed.

“Yeah?” he breathed, teasingly. “Does that feel good?” You nodded frantically.

Sweat beaded down his chest as his hands roamed to find your sweet spot, and another desperate wave of ‘yes’s flooded out from your lips.

“What did you call me?” he enticed, his mouth watering for your response. “What name did you call me before?” You were struggling with words, but he wouldn’t stop until he coaxed the right one from you.

“Say it.”

You tangled your fingers in your scalp, turning your head away. He thrust into your hips a little deeper, and you cried out obscenely.

“Say it,” he repeated, more firmly this time. “I wanna hear you say it again. I wanna watch you say it to me.”

More lewd noises dropped out of your mouth, as you propped yourself up on your elbows. “Yes, please, I love what’re… doing t’ me… I need it, daddy…”

He groaned with a lecherous smile, biting his lip. “You are so good for me.”

Lust was dripping from each word as he drew them out. His honeyed, Southern accent had returned. His eyes were blown black as he cooed with praise, “You make me wanna be so bad.”

You were gone after that. Your head tilted back, crying out through another climax. He could hear his own voice—that’s it that’s it—moaning in the distance somewhere, but he was enthralled with your little pleas. The tones of your voice washed over him; he used them to quell the blaze inside.

He knew everything he wanted to do to you, and everything you wanted him to do. And he couldn’t get past the feeling, as he buried himself deeper inside of you, that this was all... familiar.

This picture of you, spread out gloriously beneath him, was impossibly familiar. He imagined a bed that wasn’t his own, and light blue cotton sheets that couldn’t have been his, and the sunlight peeking from a sheer curtain, and falling across the ecstasy-filled face of his lover that he couldn’t have ever married...

That was....you.

Your voice was echoing in Mobius’ head. You whined and whimpered, glowing with passion, signaling that you were moments away from your climax. And then he was here - on Olympus-V with you, and he felt you tighten and flutter around him.

The sight of you, writhing beneath him as you reached orgasm, pulled a deep moan from his chest. White hot light flooded his vision. His body jerked and reacted in unison, filling you with his seed.

For someone for whom time had little meaning, he was now obsessed - trying to catch and hold back each fleeting moment. He leaned forward, his body spent, and you pulled his chin down into a longing kiss.

His mind was spinning. His lungs were still taking deep breaths. He pulled away slowly and rested his forehead on yours, his eyes closed as he struggled to make sense of what was real and what was a dream.

“I could never let you go,” he declared, deep in contemplation. You didn’t quite understand the connection in the present moment. You didn’t remember.

“Then stay with me,” was your gentle reply.

He gazed once again into your eyes with a knowing smile. “Always.”

A/N: And I'm leaving it there. For now. Please reblog with feedback, or send me a message on your thoughts. This is my first attempt at writing in a long, long time. Also it's my first attempt at smut so be nice with your feedback :-)

THANK YOU to all of you for your wonderful comments. Please reblog for support!

@generalhugzzz @isaxbella749 @yodaboo @aloyssia @simsiddy @coloursforyourportrait

[jesslockwood]

Photo Opportunities

Word Count: 2.7k

Pairing(s): Tom Holland x Actress!Reader

Warnings: FLUFF with a slightly (barely) suggestive sentence towards the end 

A/n: damn I can't write anything except actress reader? smh but this is for @londonspidey ‘s sit-com Writing challenge (ik I'm early lol) but I was so excited I wrote the whole thing in one go lmao the prompt is bolded!

Calling yourself a fan was an understatement. You were obsessed with anything and everything marvel. And oddly enough, you could after today say you were in the club. It wasn’t a public fact yet, until later that day actually, at the Marvel panel at comic con that you were being announced as the actress for the character, Felica Hardy and no one else knew except for the people who cast you and your best friend who signed an NDA. You were technically still a known actress for your roles on television mainly as Thalia on the PJO Disney + series and a couple of still decently sized films. 

You were currently wrapping up signing autographs for fans of yours for today. Your team had planned it out so it wasn’t suspicious that you were at the con with a few of your castmates scattered doing other junkets and press so people wouldn’t guess who they were acting as the cast for new marvel projects. 

You had been planning to go meet your best friend, who wasn’t in the industry before getting a text that she bought you both a photo-op with someone and she wouldn’t tell you who. You couldn’t only assume it was a marvel actor that you would indeed, freak out. 

Y/b/n: btw I brought you a mask. I get the wig lol.

You: please tell me it doesn’t cover my full face. Also, how are we posing?

Y/b/n: I bought as many photo ops as I could so a lot of different ones, And if I tell you the poses it’ll spoil it.

You: is this with the money I pay you to be my assistant with? Lol fine I’m omw with security

Y/b/n: maybe… 

Y/b/n: and they’ll need more backup security for who we’re getting a photo op with than you do for your hellfire.

You roll your eyes before taking your stuff and exiting the booth, before heading out the backways with staff security and your detailed security for the day. You only had security because you wanted to explore the con when you weren’t needed.

Your best friend had also been your assistant for the con weekend, but you didn’t want her to be confined to you the whole three days so when she could, you would let her explore it, at least she could experience it as a fan, right?

When you made it to that part of the building, you wanted to wait in line with her, which your security didn’t agree to so she texted you when there were about five people ahead of her. She was one of the last in line, with you asking her to be kind, so others would get their chance to be first with whomever it was. 

When she texted you and your detailed exit, getting a few stares and others taking their phones out to either take photos or tweet, you wave at them before joining your best friend in line.

“Here,” she says before handing you none other than a black cat mask before she puts on a red wig. 

You glare at her slightly trying to not make a scene, before putting it on. 

“I’m assuming you're Mary Jane?” you laugh figuring out that it had to be someone from Spider-Man.

“How’d you- never mind.” She laughs with you.

She then explains how she’s going to pose for your five photo ops, joking in between how she should “get a raise for this”.

You catch sight of him before sucking in your breath. This was either going to go down amazingly or terribly, there was no in-between with you. 

“Excuse Me, are you Y/n Y/l/n?”

You turn around and are met by some fans who were standing in line behind you.

“I am! How’s your con going?” you ask politely to the two of them.

“It's going amazing! We love you as Thalia! Could we maybe get a picture? Only if it’s okay?”

“Of course! Thank you for supporting me!” your best friend grabs their phone to take the photo, before you take off the mask, and stand between the two fans, and your best friend snaps a few photos. 

“Thank you so much! And Are you fans of Tom?”

You start slowly walking back to catch up to the line. 

“Yeah, I love him as Spiderman, but I also enjoy his other roles. He's very talented, I'd love to work with him one day!” 

“Have you seen him in Uncharted?  We love Him as Nathan drake!”

“I have, he was amazing per usual! How are you two posing with him?”

They show you their innovative pose. You laugh and tell them it's great before you have to wish them goodbye before heading up for your turn for the photo op. 

“How do we want to pose- hang on, I recognize you!”

You freeze slightly before your friend mouths for you to flirt. You look down at the mask in your hand before getting into character and saying “Of course you do Spidey, I'm always causing you trouble.” you put on the mask and wink. 

He seems slightly stunned, laughing, feeling like he’s seen you somewhere, not only because he found you extremely gorgeous, while in his peripheral vision he sees his brother/ assistant, Harry waving like a madman on the side. 

Your friend directs you both through the poses, first, one both him putting “webs” onto you as she looks over his shoulder, the second one, both of you kissing his cheeks, the third, all jumping in the air in your best superhero poses, the fourth one she gets a photo op alone and the last one she gives to you,

“Seriously, who are you?”

“Your Wildest dreams, baby,” you say, taking off the mask. 

Your best friend yells “freestyle” from the sidelines before Tom dips you, gently, with you shocked, holding the mask out with your free arm and the photo captures that moment. 

 He gently helps you stand back up fully, not before you drop the mask.

“Nice moves Spider-Man.”

“Not so bad yourself, Black Cat.”

You laugh before, taking off with your best friend, well more her dragging you to the printing station leaving the mask behind. Tom picks it up before shoving it in his back pocket to hopefully give back if he could find you. 

-

`You were sitting in the green room, trending on Twitter before you were actually supposed to be trending on Twitter, and god knows where else.  

Someone had snuck a video of you and Tom, up till him dipping you, and a video of you interacting with the fans in the line.

Your Y/b/n was currently reading off some tweets out loud

“‘A kind queen we stan.’  I agree, I also agree with ‘Date her if you can't date me tom!!!’.

‘THALIA AND PETER PARKER??? My two fandoms have collided.’ same, same. Oo this one says, ‘if she ain’t playing black cat I will sue marvel.’ I'm dying at the reply ‘She needs to post the photos or I'll sue her!’. This one’s funny, ‘she could squash him like a bug in heels but he liked his queen like that.’.”

She pauses watching you texting.

“Y/n? Y/n?”

“What? Sorry I was only half listening. I was texting my publicist. She said to stay on the DL until tonight. 

“Well we should get food, you haven't eaten since this morning.”

“By the way, your show has shot to number one on Disney +. Also, you have like three times the followers you had before, probably cause you're trending on every platform, even Tumblr!”

“Wow you should just become my social media manager now.” you joke trying to ease the joy yet weirded out feeling in your stomach.

“Does that come with a raise? Because after today I've spent way too much of what I'm paid.” she jokes back.

-

After finishing his photo ops Tom asked Harry who she was and to find out. By the time he finished autographs for the day, Tom and Harry walked to the panel room in the back for announcements, one that included him for the new Avengers movie, while Harry gave him the rundown.

“So she’s an actress, she plays Thalia on Disney plus’ Percy Jackson series, and that's her most known project. The other girl with her is her assistant best friend, and now she's trending everywhere. People dug up some old photos of her being a marvel/Spider-Man fan, so there's that. And she's here at the con for the rest of the weekend. She's doing photo ops tomorrow at one, and yes she's single from what I gather since you were looking at her like this.” he makes a weird face before tom smacks him.

“And plus you have time in your schedule to get a photo op with her, that is if you eat lunch quickly.”

That gave Tom an idea. 

“Harry I’m going to need you to book me one, oh and help me find a Spider-Man costume!” He says, before leaving harry to do ‘assistant’ work. entering the green room for the announcements, watching them announce a new movie.

“We are so excited to announce to the Marvel Universe, and spider-verse-” that perked tom’s ears, “-directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, and today we are announcing our amazing Miss Felicia Hardy, please give a warm welcome to the stage, Your Black Cat!”

You suddenly emerged in an aisle way, dressed in all black with a leather jacket, black ankle boots, and of course black sunglasses indoors.

The music is marvel music until it suddenly changes after a recorded laugh from you into “I can’t be tamed by Miley Cyrus”.

You start owning the music while saying hi and touching fans’ hands. You decide to take off your sunglasses and throwing them to a fan, for them to keep, before getting on stage.

“What a Performance from the one the only Y/n Y/l/n!”

You laugh, being met with the loudest applause you had heard all con before being handed a Mic. 

“Thank you but I'm a terrible dancer.” You Joke.

Tom was staring at the screen stunned. You had been the black cat all along. You were in the marvel universe and spidey one,  so he'd definitely be seeing more of you. The hard part is that you seemed so genuine when you talked, interacted with fans and was no doubt, stunning. 

“Better close your mouth or the flies will get in.” Tom turns around to find the voice of none other than his friend slash bully, Sebastian Stan, along with Anthony Mackie.

“Looks like the kid has a crush!” Anthony laughs, pointing to the screen you were on.

“I-I don’t! I don’t even know her!” Tom tries to come to his own defense, hopelessly.

“She’s got you whipped already don’t even deny it.” Harry comes in, joining the teasing of one, Tom Holland.

“Maybe we can invite her out for drinks tonight, then fanboy over here can meet her, and then probably scare her off!” Anthony mentions.

“You haven’t looked on the internet? They’ve already met.” Seb says, before showing Anthony twitter. 

Anthony stands there slightly shocked before bursting into laughter.

“Well, she’s damn well a keeper for Tom since she obviously likes him.”

A staff member peaks their head in the green room to tell Tom he’s up next.

“Well, that’s my cue to leave you two!”

On the other hand, you were on an adrenaline high from being on stage, and seeing all the fans. You knew tomorrow was going to be crazy, as you expected people to book your photo op left and right since the announcement. 

You had decided to decline an offer from your fellow marvel universe castmates, Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie, which they so graciously told you that whenever you’re free, the offer still stood. 

You had gotten to your hotel room seeing your phone blowing up on the social media apps for the second time that day. 

You responded to the important stuff, before heading to bed, knowing it was going to be hectic.

-

You had been right, it was absolutely insane, the number of people who showed up. You had fully booked all your time slots for photo ops. You had seen so many people dressed up in marvel cosplay, ranging from Loki to Ironman, even some people dressed up as your character, which was wildly insane to see.

You had been nearing the end of the line and had enjoyed every moment with the fans, and you couldn’t wait for your autographing session later that day, to truly get a chance to talk to the fans and connect with them and how they felt about you being their beloved Black Cat. 

After a few more photos, posing how they wanted, you see a fully dressed, head to toe, mask and all, Spider-Man. You had seen some spider-mans but most took off their masks to snap a picture. The person was the last in line. 

“Hey Black Cat.” The southern American accented voice tells you, seeming very familiar. 

“Hey, Spider, what poses do you have up your sleeve?” you ask kindly.

“I bought a few, Cat.” they laugh.

“Okay, You can do whatever a spider can right?” you pull out a line out of the comics jokingly.

“I can do flips if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Is that some kind of nerd pick-up line? Because it’s only kind of working.” you laugh. 

“I really can, but this is one.”

He gets down on one knee, holding a black cat mask instead of a ring. The photographer captures the shocked expression on your face.

“I- Don’t- What- Spider I-” 

“Ow My feelings…” Suddenly their voice changes into a British accent before they pull off the mask to reveal-

“Tom?”

“I guess you don’t have a spidey sense darling?” The photographer captures the moment without warning eating the moment up. 

You laugh at that. 

“I guess you found out my true identity Spider. And it’s nice to officially meet you, Tom.”

He laughs, just as nervous as you, he notices he has gotten closer to you and a strand of hair loosely is blowing in your face, so naturally, he pushes it behind your ear. Another snap of the camera can be heard. 

“NOW KISS!” a voice belonging to your best friend yells from the side, mid-eating a churro.

You both laugh really hard at that.

The both of you calm down, slowly leaning lost in the moment. The camera snaps again. You both look at the photographer weirded out, and they just shrug.

“Wait can you actually do a flip?” you ask, pulling away, not wanting prying eyes aka the photographer, to pry in your business. 

“I can, though I’d show you later, maybe in the greenroom?”

“That sounds naughty, but, sure.” you joke around. 

He laughs before, you both take off from the area going to grab the photos.

-

After spending most of the day together when you could, you get Tom’s number, before heading back to your hotel room. He texts you as soon as you get back. 

Spider: I had fun today, minus finding our assistants making out.

You: we should ‘snog’ too, it’ll gross them out ;)

You: I had fun too btw. Are you leaving tomorrow?

Spider: lol we should. And yeah an early flight, 6 am to be exact. Hbu?

You: Yeah me too... another day another dollar lol

Spider: ill miss you, Cat.

You: stop talking like we’ll never see each other again lol. As a matter of fact, come to my room, we’re watching a movie!

Spider: alright, I’ll order snacks. 

  You sigh smiling at your phone. You haven’t felt this giddy in a long time.

Your phone pings with a few Instagram notifications.

Tomholland2013 has started following you.

Tomholland2013 has tagged you in a photo.

You open Instagram to find the photo of him “proposing” to you posted.

“Ow, my leg, my- feelings...Welcome to the Universe, Cat.” the photo is captioned. You decide to post, the photo of him dipping you.

“So what do you say, Spider? Wanna help me pull off the Heist of the Heist of the Century?” you caption it, Before getting comfortable to watch a movie. 

What an opportunity ;)

Tags:

@lolooo22 @webmeupspiderdaddy @harryhollandsgirlfriend @spideyspeaches @greenorangevioletgrass @queenofthepouges @sheranatic111 @keithseabrook27

[herstorshe]

Why Catherine Howard Was Not Just a "Stupid Teenager"

TRIGGER WARNING: Discusses and mentions sexual abuse & harassment, r*pe, and childhood abuse

Catherine Howard, out of Henry VIII’s wives, is generally considered a stupid “bad girl”. In the last few years, this idea has come into question, partially due to the modern Me Too movement of women calling out men for sexual harassment and abuse.

Catherine usually gets this reputation from her series of sexual and/or romantic affairs, both premarital and not. This was the reason she was eventually beheaded on February 13, 1542.

There were three noted affairs that Catherine likely had. The first two were before she married Henry, while she was staying at her step-grandmother’s boarding house due to her being an orphan.

The first affair was when Catherine was about 13, with her music teacher Henry Mannox, who was at least in his twenties and probably in his thirties. We do not know if the two actually slept together, but there was definitely some sort of romance between them. It is unclear if this relationship was consensual or not, but we can guess that it probably was not, considering the fact that Catherine was so young and Henry was so old. This relationship occurred because the Dowager Duchess, Catherine’s step-grandmother, hardly supervised the many young girls who were in her care at all, resulting in men coming into their private chambers at night.

The second affair was when Catherine was about 16, with Francis Dereham, the Dowager’s secretary. Allegedly, they called each other “husband” and “wife”, and Francis entrusted Catherine with several wifely duties, such as keeping track of his money when he was away. Catherine and Francis both admitted later on that they did sleep together. Their relationship ended about a year later, when the Dowager Duchess found out. Francis was sent away to Ireland, and he and Catherine may have had intentions to marry once he returned. If they did exchange vows before sleeping together, they would technically be considered wed. Catherine later maintained that Francis had raped her, however.

Catherine’s uncle found her a place in Henry’s wife, Anne of Cleves’s, household, as he knew that Henry was losing interest in his fourth wife, and Catherine was known for her beauty. Henry’s eyes soon fell on her and he divorced Anne of Cleves.

Catherine married King Henry VIII in July 1540. She was probably about 17, and Henry was 49. During her marriage, Catherine may have been romantically or sexually involved with one of Henry’s courtiers, Thomas Culpeper. She may have considered marrying him before Henry proposed to her. The two were allegedly having secret meetings in Spring 1541, supposedly arranged by Jane Boleyn, one of Catherine’s ladies in waiting, as well as the widow of Catherine’s cousin, George Boleyn (brother of Anne Boleyn). Soon, all of this came to Henry’s attention and Catherine was sent to the tower of London and beheaded.

Here are the reasons that Catherine Howard wasn’t just a “stupid teenager.”

Women had very little power back then. Women were blatantly taught that they were inferior to men, and men were taught that they were superior to women. Women also had no legal rights.

Catherine especially had very little power. Catherine was a teenage orphan who had never had a good parental figure, and was not very well educated. She was noble, but poor. Until she was queen, men probably didn’t have hardly any regard for her, and so they would not feel guilty if they hurt her.

She was a child. What would we think of a 13-year old orphan having a romantic and possibly even sexual relationship with her much older music teacher today? Sounds pretty suspect, right? Catherine was quite young in all of her relationships, and was significantly younger than at least 2 of the men she had relationships with (Henry Mannox and Henry VIII).

Catherine said that she was raped by Francis Dereham. During Catherine’s trials, she quickly claimed that there had been no marital contract between her and Dereham, maintaining that he had raped her. Why don’t we believe her? The fact that many don’t believe this claim of hers would not be considered fair if this had happened in the modern era.

Sexual abuse and rape are still very common today, and women had even less power then. Even now, rape and other forms of sexual abuse are still very common, due to the continual systemic patriarchy. And then, women had even less rights. Of course sexual abuse was quite common then, even if the history books don’t call it that. People had different ideas of right and wrong back then, especially when it came to conduct with women. We need to take what men back then said with a grain of salt when it comes to sexual harassment and abuse. They did not have a fair understanding of what was fair in these cases.

Everyone says you can’t look back at the past with today’s eyes. But I argue that in some cases you do. If it is on the issue of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc, we need to consider it with today’s standards because primary sources from times in the past are often very prejudiced.

Catherine was a young girl who had gone through a lot before she was even 15 years old. Her mother died when she was very young and her father abandoned her soon after, sending her to an unsupervised boarding house where she was harassed and probably assaulted. She never had a good parental figure, and she was pushed around by men her whole life. She didn’t even make it to 20 years old, being executed for something that wasn’t even her fault.

Sexual Abuse & Harassment Resources

Sending love to everyone. You are not alone.

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673

Donate to Rainn, anti-sexual abuse nonprofit: https://donate.rainn.org/

The K Howard Project (anonymous forum + support group for survivors): https://thekhowardproject.weebly.com

Resources (Many of these include very triggering content!)

“Catherine Howard.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. URL.

“Katherine Howard: Vixen or victim?” The History Press. URL.

“Tudor women.” Geni. URL.

“The Six Wives of Henry VIII - Part 2.” History Tea Time with Lindsay Holiday. Youtube. URL.

[avatar-news]

The Fire Nation Awaits 🌺 An in-depth look at the ever-elusive islands in the era of Korra and when we will finally pay them a visit

[Artwork by Avatar News; not official.]

Note: This article was published before the official announcement of Avatar Studios at the Paramount+ investor day.

“Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.” We’ve all heard those words a million times. The four elements, and the power to control them bestowed by four subspecies of giant lion-turtles, are at the very heart of the world of Avatar. The balance between them was once upon a time broken by one of the four, the Fire Nation, forming the main conflict of Avatar: The Last Airbender. For much of Aang and the Gaang’s quest at the close of the Hundred Year War, the Fire Nation was a forbidden, far-away location, until the curtain was finally drawn back in the aptly-named Book Three: Fire when our heroes entered the inferno, undercover behind enemy lines. A dramatic tropical destination! New outfits! Culture shock! Needless to say, it was a big deal.

→ 🌺 The big reveal of the Fire Nation in Book Three: Fire had its own marketing push, matching public anticipation.

When the Hundred Year War ended, the newly-instated Fire Lord Zuko dedicated his life to righting the wrongs of his forefathers and working with Avatar Aang to bring the Fire Nation back into the fold under peace. By the time Aang’s successor debuted as the next Avatar in the titular The Legend of Korra, Zuko had abdicated the five-pointed crown and his daughter, Fire Lord Izumi, took the stage leading a reformed, rebalanced Fire Nation.

There was no more war, no more enemy lines, yet the Fire Nation became more distant and mysterious than ever before.

Korra’s close encounters with the land of fire

To this day, Korra has never visited the Fire Nation, nor has it been seen at all, nor do we know anything about it in her era. In fact, practically the only thing we do know is that its leader is a noninterventionist, which conveniently gets it out of the way of making an appearance in Korra’s journey as the Avatar so far.

The closest we have come to seeing the Fire Nation in The Legend of Korra was in Book Two: Spirits, Chapter Five: Peacekeepers. In the midst of the Water Tribe Civil War, Korra sets out across the sea to get help from the royal family, however, she is intercepted by a dark spirit and never makes it to her destination. In the next episode, she washes up on a secret island home to the Bhanti sages, which probably technically counts as Fire Nation territory, but as we know from The Shadow of Kyoshi (more on that later), this faction predates the Four Nations themselves so it doesn’t really count.

→ 🌺 Korra washes up on the beach of Bhanti Island in Book Two: Spirits, Chapter Six: The Sting.

No, as cool as that location and the events of the Beginnings two-parter that happened there were, it wasn’t the main draw of seeing the Fire Nation that we’re still waiting for: seeing how the Fire Nation, which was already industrializing in Aang’s time, changed over the decades, compared to places like Republic City and Ba Sing Se; meeting new characters; visiting new and familiar locations; worldbuilding both new and expanding on what we already learned.

After this aborted tease in Book Two, we never come close to the island country again (at least not with this Avatar and in her era; yes I’m leading up to something...). Instead, the focus turns strongly to the Earth Kingdom in the third and fourth Books, and beyond.

Keep in mind that The Legend of Korra aired for about two-and-a-half years total from 2012 to 2014. Since then, the story has continued in comics. The comics era has lasted from 2015 to present-- seven years to the animated series’ two. In that time, there have only been two comic trilogies due to various production troubles, and neither have touched the Fire Nation. Instead, they directly continue the Earth Kingdom-focused threads started in Books Three and Four of Korra, both originally airing in 2014. Or, in perspective: we had a focus on Republic City in 2012, the Water Tribes in 2013, and the Earth Kingdom from 2014-2021.

Will we finally see the Fire Nation in the next graphic novel trilogy?

This question comes to mind every time new Korra content is supposed to roll around, and the powers that be know it-- it’s a pretty obvious gap in the world of Avatar right now. This franchise is iconically built around four elements and the Four Nations based on them, so one of them being MIA is quite glaring, and for that reason everyone is understandably always asking about it.

The most concrete confirmation we’ve gotten was this AMA answer from franchise co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino in 2016, two years after the show ended and a year before the first graphic novels did come out:

“Yes, hopefully in the [Korra] comics, we’ll have a chance to go to the Fire Nation and see how it has changed since A:TLA.”

Since then, as previously discussed, two comic trilogies have come and gone, obviously not getting closer to the Fire Nation-- and I would actually argue entrenching themselves further away from it.

I want to make it clear that I’m against fan entitlement. Creatives telling the tales they want to in service of the story and the artform is how the industry should run. I’m just hoping to offer some perspective on how we got to where we are almost a decade into the era of Korra and the metatextual pacing of the franchise itself.

Either way, the next Korra comic trilogy has been official confirmed by the editor for Avatar at Dark Horse Comics in this informal statement on Twitter:

We’re not ready to announce any details yet, but we are working on the next trilogy. I really appreciate your patience and hope it’s worth the wait! ✨

There’s currently some kind of holdup for which we really have zero context or information, and we of course have no idea what this next trilogy will be about. (I do speculate a bit on what it could be a few paragraphs down.)

But, like what turned out to be Ruins of the Empire before it, I faithfully made a mockup graphic for my post announcing the confirmation of the next The Legend of Korra graphic novel trilogy. And like before, I chose to completely speculatively and blindly make it Fire Nation-y, as if the next comic could/would(/should?) feature it. This is mainly because I feel like that’s what most people’s eyes would be caught by and thus result in the most successful post (hey, at least I’m honest), but also because it’s just fun.

Here are both images, from 2018 and 2020 respectively:

→ 🌺 Speculative edits I made for my posts on the announcement of previous and upcoming Korra comics before we knew anything about them.

In both cases, the response was huge, and people were super excited about the prospect of Fire Nation content just from my quick speculative mockups. I am of course hoping that the new artwork I made of the Krew for this post will have a similar effect (it’s the first time I just straight-up drew it instead of editing existing images) but again it’s really mostly just for fun.

Anyway, until the next trilogy is properly revealed, we’ll just have to wait and see.

However, that’s not the only place this could happen.

Are they saving the Fire Nation for an animated movie?

With Avatar’s HUGE success on Netflix last year, interest in the franchise rocketed to an all-time high. The streaming wars have begun, and Avatar’s owner and its parent company, Nickelodeon and ViacomCBS, have finally started to notice.

ViacomCBS is launching Paramount+ on March 4th, a relaunch of its existing streaming service CBS All Access. Paramount+ is meant to be a big expansion and refocus to compete with the big hitters: Disney+, HBO Max, and, yes, Netflix. (There’s quite an entanglement there, with Netflix being the home of Avatar’s big year and the upcoming live-action series.)

One of the keys to a successful streamer today is high-profile originals to drive new subscribers. ViacomCBS knows this and they know Avatar has just become among the highest profiles a property can have, breaking records and going toe-to-toe with other big-hitting sci-fi/fantasy/genre franchises. This knowledge goes right to the top of the food chain: the CEO of ViacomCBS mentioned Avatar by name when discussing potential originals for Paramount+.

I have previously discussed how The Search relates to this. The Search was the second ATLA comic trilogy, focused on the search for Zuko’s mother in the thick of the Fire Nation, and if you didn’t know, it was originally pitched by Bryke as an animated movie after the original series ended.

I just want to be clear that what I’m discussing here is purely speculative, but this is the only other piece of the Avatar franchise that we know was optioned for animation besides the shows themselves. It’s possible they would be interested in going back to this idea as a Paramount+ original (and it would certainly be popular among audiences), but it is of course set during the era of Aang and thus covers both a time period we’ve already seen, and also by nature of already being released as comics, events we’ve already seen too.

However, the whole point of this article is that there is one major, huge thing we haven’t seen yet, with massive anticipation building for a decade behind it: the Fire Nation in the era of Korra. So, again, this is just speculation, but it’s also possible that they could return to the very smallest seed of the original idea for a The Search movie, and do a Fire Nation-focused Korra movie now.

→ 🌺 ATLA’s Fire Nation-focused The Search was originally pitched as an animated movie.

You can skip this next part if you don’t want to see me embarrassingly promote my fan idea 😆 but this is where the artwork I made for this article comes into play. The general idea for it, and the reason I tried to replicate the show’s style as much as possible, is that it’s what a Fire Nation-focused movie could maybe look like. Something as standalone and unrelated to Earth Kingdom drama as possible, with fresh new looks for the Krew to get people excited for something fresh and new! I really feel like the Avatar franchise has so much potential for expanded content like this, that’s why I have high hopes that Paramount+ will make the most out of it! You can see the individual characters’ artwork in larger size here. Ok I’m done back to business.

If the idea of a movie seems too impossible to you, we can also take a deeper look at Bryke’s involvement with upcoming comics instead.

After Korra ended, they officially each went their separate ways. They vaguely consulted on Avatar stuff, and Mike of course wrote the Korra comics, but Bryan was planning on writing and drawing his own original non-Avatar comic series and Mike was releasing his own non-Avatar novels. This all appears to have come to a stop when they signed on to showrun the live-action retelling of ATLA at Netflix, officially reuniting the partnership and committing to Avatar again in a big way. Of course, they ended up leaving that project over creative differences, but it did result in a big, lasting change: this time they remained official creative partners and have indicated they’re still working on Avatar now, together. This is a far cry from the official breakup after Korra, so it begs the question what exactly they’re working on. I of course have my fanciful predictions of a sprawling expansion of the Avatar franchise at Paramount+, but what if it’s actually a combination of the ingredients from before the live-action series...

More speculation, but what if the reason for all the mystery behind the next Korra comics is because they will be made by Bryke, with the two of them co-writing and Bryan doing the art for the first time? If that’s the case, they could want to make them a bigger deal than the other Avatar comics have been so far, and maybe that’s why it’s taking so long to iron everything out, have a more significant story, have more of a marketing push, etc. If they’ve been saving the Fire Nation for something big, this could be it.

I personally think this is less likely than a show or movies or something, but it is possible. Anything is possible right now since we know so little about the large-scale direction of the franchise moving forward, just that it’s gonna get big.

⛰️🌋 The Fire Nation in the era of Avatar Kyoshi

We’re not done! Despite everything I’ve written here, believe it or not, the Fire Nation was actually the star of the show in the last year.

With the debut of the Avatar franchise’s first original novels, Kyoshi made a huge splash (in a way only she can). If you haven’t read them yet, you NEED to-- they’re some of the best Avatar content EVER. The Rise of Kyoshi hit shelves in 2019 and The Shadow of Kyoshi followed in 2020. The latter is of particular interest here, because it was almost entirely set in the Fire Nation and featured practically everything and anything you could want from a visit to elusive islands. Though obviously set in a historical period some four hundred years before Aang’s time, Kyoshi’s sojourn in the Fire Nation gave us a huge amount of new information, a depth and breadth of worldbuilding, culture, and character we’ve never really seen in Avatar before. It truly makes the most of the literary medium, so hats off to author F. C. Yee for the passion and effort he put in.

In The Shadow of Kyoshi, we learn about the era of the previous fire Avatar before Roku, Avatar Szeto. Through Kyoshi and her own Team Avatar, we learn about the different clans and islands of the Fire Nation, as they experience the fraught early reign of Fire Lord Zoryu and the conflict between the Keohso and Saowon clans, culminating in the Camellia-Peony War. We get a multitude of fleshed-out perspectives from the upper crust to the flea-bitten underworld, matching the heights of the worldbuilding quality of Republic City. It’s such cool, intricate stuff, and really shows Avatar’s potential (and that’s all just the worldbuilding-- the character work is also top-notch).

That’s not the only place the Fire Nation has shone recently. One of Insight Editions’ awesome scrapbooks, Legacy of the Fire Nation, gave us a tour through the royal family’s history, including never-before-seen looks at young Iroh and Ozai and much, much more.

All this just goes to show that the Fire Nation has been a hot ticket throughout the ages and there’s one conspicuous gap in that history: the era of Avatar Korra. With so much recent expansion and development of the Fire Nation in our world, it would be perfect to see the culmination of it all in the current time period in the world of Avatar too.

If this made you excited for the potential of what the Avatar franchise could look like in the coming years, same boat!

The next concrete date where something could be announced is February 24th, when ViacomCBS will host their investor day and present their streaming strategy, including Paramount+ originals. There’s no guarantee Avatar is mentioned, but I’m keeping a hopeful eye out.

As for comics, Dark Horse’s schedule marches to its own beat, so there’s no way to know when the next drop of information is coming our way.

Could this finally be the comics that take us to the Fire Nation, or could the much-anticipated visit be in another medium like animation? Stay tuned-- as always I’ll post as soon as we learn anything new!

[mcd-ms-rants]

sorry this was delayed!! something happened irl

i actually had to rewatch certain scenes of s3 bcuz my brain blocked them due to trauma

anyways enjoy

STUFF I DIDNT LIKE ABOUT MYSTREET SEASON 3:

• ok first why does half the cast mentally regress into children?? This is extremely evident with Aphmau and Zane. Aphmau turns into a LITERAL CHILD and Zane becomes some angsty emo bratty teen. the only people who are not children are laurance lucinda katelyn and to some extent garroth

• oh wow zianna carrying the whole season on her back offering THE ENTIRE DAMN STREET. wow the Ro’meaves really care about their friends. If the Ro’meaves have so much money why do they even send their kids to pdh why can’t they go to O’Khasis prep they’re literally drowning in cash I was just ranting about this on another blog :)

• i get it this is a slice of life kinda season and it’s mainly centered around comedy but can we still see a bit of character building here like people like Dante and kc and Zane and like three fourth of the cast are severely lacking

• where do Dante and Travis even work?? I know that huge two story house isn’t cheap how do they make all that cash. Can we know what their jobs are since they don’t work at the maid cafe

• I REALLY don’t like that Zane is pretty much only shown with ponies here throughout this season. I’ve said this so many times now. HE HAS MORE CHARACTER THAN THAT. You CANNOT seriously tell me that the defining point of his character is ponies and mlh

• in the series before s3 (I think it was called the bigger move??) we get to see zianna talk about the Ro’meave family business and how Zane has always been more inclined towards it. It would’ve been nice to see it expanded on a bit more in this season considering it’s a huge company and garroth is (probably) set to inherit it and probably needs to like attend meetings or something as practice. and cue the brother angst

• is it really ok for Lucinda to constantly teleport inside people’s houses isn’t that kinda trespassing (I’ll make a post on the magic system here later!!)

• The sk’s are the ONLY people who have their shit together they have like the only decent character development arc. Gene shouldn’t have had a crush on Aphmau after all this time tho. That kinda ruins it

• WHY IS GARRANCE QUEERBAIT

• no seriously why

• WHERE IS VYLAD where did he go

• so many characters like Nicole, kenmur and Emmalyn are never seen again this is sad

• I don’t like how Aaron and Aphmau pretty much stop developing as individual characters and start developing as aarmau from this season. am I the only one who feels this way??

• not that important but

• some of the proportions for the items were WAY off. those cheeseburgers are literally the size of Aphmau‘s head and some objects are bigger (idk if this was intentional)

• why will Zane literally obey Aphmau like she’s god (which she technically is but he doesn’t know that yet) I get it their friends but let him have a bit of a backbone

• ok NO HATE TO THE VA but what is Ivan’s voice. once again no hate. but seriously

• why is every side character so generic looking?? the main cast have so many mods and add ons but they need it more DESPERATELY

• I mean just LOOK at the two dudes next to Ivan

• would it really have taken that long to at least make them not so generic

• also why do those two dudes next to Ivan like never speak why’s he got two mute dudes following him like he’s the boss

• show the sk’s more you cowards

• SHOW THEM

• yay Gene :) Gene hugging Dante is one of the best moments in this season HANDS DOWN

• once again kc’s character gets tossed aside. we don’t really learn anything new about her this season aside from the fact that she cannot be serious but we already knew that. it’s been three seasons and we pretty much know the same things we did in s1

• also can we know a bit more about some of these characters in general? Like Dante, Travis, kc and Zane. hobbies and interests?? Things unique to them?? some of these characters still don’t have many unique traits and they need them

• aarmau breakup was literally because ivan splashed a cat potion in the maid cafe and Aphmau (somehow) asks Aaron if he did it. and bcuz Aaron saw a pic of Zane hugging Aph beforehand (which even friends can do) he got mad at the whole thing and just left. I’m sorry what was going on here. Did this really warrant going back to your parents house?? Reason seems stupid to me. also I don’t like how LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE helps aph with her breakup since she’s in denial but what does she do?? Like nothing. girl pls. After the moms get involved it gets pretty straightforward. I mean they basically fetch him from his parents and bring him back. also wow Aaron’s parents SUCK. Cmon even ZANE got some development there you mean to tell me that the protag didn’t even DO ANYTHING. The person who was supposed to get the most development out of this breakup didn’t get any at all. then what was the point of a breakup if Aphmau didn’t learn anything from it??

ya so this is it that’s all that’s coming to me rn

once again sorry it’s kinda late stuffs been going on irl and I’m trying to deal with it

thanks for reading!! <3 <3

[idiopath-fic-smile]

hey hi I've been trying to write something, anything, and what came out is like 3k of an extremely stupid supervillain/superhero story that I’d been kicking around in some form like over ten years ago. it doesn’t map onto any kind of an AU so I guess it’s original fiction? enjoy?

Cityton Chronicles, part 1

The problem with carrying out an evil scheme, thought Edmund, was the scheme part.

Anyone could nurse a sinister thought or two; it wasn't that hard to shake one's fist at the sky and murmur, “You'll pay for this. With God as my witness, oh, you will pay” and then maybe cackle a little. That much was child's play. (Literal child's play; he had witnessed more than a few dire pronouncements from his classmates at Hawthorne Grimmsbury's Academy for Ominous Boys, especially when recess was threatened.)

Actually going through with a plan was a whole different story. There were logistics to manage. There were people to manipulate, details to babysit, hypotheticals to anticipate. The nitty-gritty, as it were.

Edmund was not destined for the nitty-gritty.

Although, wasn't that what useless people always said? “I'm more of a big-picture person.” Maybe he was useless. Maybe that was the issue. Maybe Edmund Malarkey, heir to Malarkey Industries, was simply not cut out for masterminding.

Case in point, he had a terrible feeling he was about to make a complete hash of the Ritual.

The parameters were clear enough: full moon—check. Chalk for pentagrams—check. One hundred lit candles—check. (Some were scented; the store hadn't had enough plain tapers in stock, but the text of the Ritual had been written well before the notion of pumpkin spice was a cozy twinkle in some godless marketer's eye, and so Edmund figured this would probably not disqualify him.) Thirteen hooded figures, all in black...

This was where things got dicey.

The first sign of the trouble to come was when Carl showed up in navy fucking blue.

Edmund pinched at the bridge of his nose and sighed loudly, breath crystalline in the late November air. The invitations had been so specific.

“It looked pretty dark online,” Carl offered as the wind whipped at them atop the roof of the Cityton Natural History Museum.

“Pretty dark? Pretty dark? Did it look like the blackest black?” said Edmund. “Did it look like Anish Kapur's most haunting nightmare? Did it look like a raven's wing in shadow at the stroke of midnight, Carl?” Carl stuck out his chin. “It's almost black.”

“Yes, and bananas and humans share about sixty percent of their DNA, we're almost cousins,” Edmund told him, dangerously quiet, “but fortunately for you, I'm not going to peel you and eat you in a fruit salad, you buffoonish optimist.”

Edmund should never have relied upon his father's former henchpeople. They were loyal to his father; they looked upon him with bemused tolerance. He should've just gone ahead and recruited all of the necessary twelve people from Craigslist. He'd held off due to a suspicion that anyone he found on the internet would assume the Ritual was fundamentally a weird sex thing, but at least a bunch of kinksters would have probably taken the rules seriously.

He sighed. “Carl, there's a bodega down on the corner. Go buy two black trash bags and make yourself a garbage-robe.” Carl frowned. “Is there time?”

Edmund checked his phone. Eleven fifty-three. “Hurry. And save the receipt.”

Another gust of wind kicked up. Edmund shivered. He'd been smart enough to request a fabric swatch ahead of time from the Etsy store where he'd custom-ordered his own set of hooded black robes. He hadn't stopped to consider how warm—or not—a single layer of said fabric would feel well into autumn, completely unshielded by the elements. Theoretically, he could've crammed a coat under the robes, like a child wearing a Halloween costume in an unseasonably cold October, but no, he hadn't wanted to look bulky.

He checked the candles again, for want of anything better to do.

“Boss,” said a hesitant voice behind him.

“What is it, Stephanie,” said Edmund.

Stephanie had clearly repurposed her teenager's old Hermione costume as her robes, but she had bothered to remove the Hogwarts branding, which was something, at least. Beyond the fact that Edmund didn't feel like giving a repellent transphobe any extra attention, there might have been copyright issues.

“Is that thing about bananas really true?”

“Yeah,” said Edmund. He had read it many years ago, in a book titled 2002 MORE WACKY FACTS TO BLOW YOUR MIND AND AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS, which didn't seem especially pertinent. He did a quick headcount. Even without Carl, they only numbered eleven. “Where's Donna?”

“You should call her,” said Stephanie. “Donna never answers her texts.”

Edmund had been halfway through tapping out a text. Ugh, Boomers. Calling was for emergencies only; everyone knew that. Unfortunately, this qualified. He gritted his teeth and dialed.

Donna answered on the fourth ring. “What?” She sounded groggy.

“Did you,” said Edmund, still through gritted teeth, “forget what night the Ritual was?”

“Oh shit,” mumbled Donna. “Are you sure? I thought it was at noon tomorrow. Carl told me twelve o'clock.”

“At night,” said Edmund. “Twelve o'clock at night, this is a dark incantation to a primordial god, it does not overlap with daytime television.”

Just then, Edmund's phone beeped with another call. “Can you hold, Donna,” he hissed.

“Hey boss,” said Carl, “the bodega only has white or green trash bags, what's my next step?”

“HOLD,” Edmund shouted, switching calls again. “Donna, can you grab an extremely dark-colored robe and be here immediately?”

“Like a bathrobe?” said Donna, sounding lost.

Of course Carl had not bothered to relay the dress code. Of course he hadn't even managed to hand her the painstakingly crafted invitation. Edmund had used the nicest card stock available to him, not that it mattered.

“Uh, boss?” Leroy called over the roar of the wind. Edmund flexed his stiffening fingers.

“One second, Donna,” said Edmund.

“How much longer is this gonna be?” said Leroy. “Because I was gonna catch the late show tonight—”

“Watch it on YouTube the next day like a normal person!” Edmund snapped. “Donna—”

“I can be there by 12:40,” said Donna through the tinny phone speaker. “There's some errands I wanna run first.”

“It's the middle of the night, what errands!” said Edmund. “Donna, hold—” He switched back to Carl. “Listen, are you sure there aren't any black trash bags?”

“White or green only,” Carl affirmed. “Some of them are scented, do you think that would make a difference?”

“Boss,” said Frank from the other side of the roof, “we lost the chalk?”

“Hold on, Carl,” said Edmund. “What?”

“It was here a second ago!” “Did you secure the chalk against the wind?”

“What?” said Frank.

“The chalk, it's cylindrical!” Edmund managed to shout. “Did you do anything so it wouldn't just roll straight off the roof?”

Somewhere above the din of wind came the sound of a half dozen pieces of sidewalk chalk landing on the street five stories below and shattering.

Edmund buried his (cold) face in his (frozen) hands.

“Uh boss,” said Stephanie. “It's 12:01.”

Edmund sighed. The primordial god K'h'gg'ragel might have allowed for some creative interpretations on Ritual-adjacent matters, but everyone knew K'h'gg'ragel was a stickler for punctuality.

“Alright,” said Edmund, pitching his voice to carry. “Pack it in, we'll try again next full moon.”

“Phew,” said Leroy, who was wearing a thick downy jacket over his robes, and a hat with earflaps, and mittens. “It's cold out.”

“I FOUND A BLUE ONE!” Carl shouted from the speaker. “IS THAT ANY BETTER?”

Edmund turned his phone off.

Lighting and strategically placing one hundred candles had been something of an undertaking. Blowing them all out alone and stuffing them back into a series of duffel bags was somehow worse. Edmund was about half-done when he heard a distinct whirring buzz. He looked up.

It was Dragonfly. Of course it was Dragonfly, heading right for him.

Great. Edmund's first-ever showdown was going to be a one-on-one against a superhero armed with a jetpack, one hell of a punch, and electrified darts. Edmund was going to get flattened, and all before he even got the chance to point out that the darts and for that matter the punching didn't fit with the overall insect theme. 

“Hey man,” said Dragonfly, dropping effortlessly down to the roof of the museum. “I saw the lights from the sky, thought I'd investigate.”

They weren't fighting yet. Why weren't they fighting? Edmund's whole body fizzed with adrenaline. Also, cold. Either way, he was shaking a little, and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“And what, strike another heroic blow against the terror that is a bunch of sweater-themed Yankee Candles?” said Edmund.

Dragonfly shrugged. His costume included a bottle-green moto jacket and gloves. It looked warm, in a way that made Edmund feel even colder. “Sweater candles? What, like burning wool?” he said.

Privately, Edmund had wondered about that too. This, he decided obscurely, was another strike against Dragonfly.

“Maybe burning wool smells phenomenal,” said Edmund instead, rocking forward. “There's no way you could possibly know, unless you're here to tell me you've lit a sheep on fire, which seems well outside your whole—” he waved his hands vaguely “—moral compass.”

“Word travels fast,” said Dragonfly gravely. “I am foursquare against sheep-burning. Always have been.”

Edmund squared his shoulders. “So, are we doing this, or what?”

From behind his signature oversized goggles, Dragonfly's brow seemed to furrow slightly. “Doing what?”

“Fighting,” said Edmund. He had to grind his teeth together to keep them from chattering.

“Ah,” said Dragonfly after a pause. “Oh. Um. Okay. Here's the thing?” He steepled his fingers. “You seem unarmed. You're not hurting anyone. You're also not committing any crimes.” Edmund opened his mouth to protest, and Dragonfly continued, “Or, okay, you're trespassing on the museum, I guess, technically, but it's not like you're even trying to sneak into an exhibit without paying.”

“I am here,” said Edmund firmly, “to perform a terrible and arcane Ritual which will summon—”

“Yeah?” said Dragonfly. “Where's your followers? Where's your summoning chalk? It's well past midnight and the only sign of any occult activity I can see is the candles, but for all I know, you were just up here trying to have a little me-time, which, like, on some level I get, you know?”

“So,” said Edmund blankly, “what now?” He had given up on trying to tense his jaw. His upper and lower teeth clacked rhythmically against each other.

“I give you a stern verbal warning about what's probably a minor fire hazard and recommend that you enjoy the museum from the inside, during business hours, with a ticket,” said Dragonfly. “I hear they have a great exhibit on prehistoric mammals. In the meantime, get somewhere warm, okay? Your lips are turning blue.” “Fuck off,” Edmund more or less managed to say through his shivers.

Dragonfly spread his hands, placating. “Fair enough.” He began to walk away. At the edge of the roof, he hesitated. “Uh, do you have a way down?”

“Obviously,” said Edmund.

“Yeah,” said Dragonfly. “Uh, okay.” They regarded each other. “What is it?” said Dragonfly after a few seconds.

Edmund froze. Or well, he was already half-frozen. Edmund stopped moving, was the point.

Apparently interpreting Edmund's silence as helplessness, Dragonfly offered dubiously, “I could carry you down?”

“How,” said Edmund, flat. It was the wrong thing to say, in that it wasn't 'No,' or 'Fuck off' again, something sensible like that, but damn it, he was freezing, and if he gave up the way he'd gotten everyone onto the roof, then this whole fucking evening was going to be a wash. He had tried so hard. It wasn't fair.

Dragonfly took a step closer. “Fireman or bridal?”

Edmund tried and failed to parse this three separate times in his cold-fuzzed brain. “Is that a meme?” he settled on finally.

“Do you,” said Dragonfly, “have a preference on how I carry you.”

“We haven't even established that you're going to,” Edmund said. Clackity clackity clack went his traitorous teeth.

Dragonfly sighed. “I can't leave you up here,” he said. “One, if I let you keep hanging out on the roof of the history museum, then technically I'm kinda aiding and abetting your whole trespassing situation. Two, it is really fucking chilly up here, and if you freeze to death, then that's on me. Which is also not, like, great for my conscience.”

“So I don't have a choice,” Edmund spat.

“You totally have a choice,” said Dragonfly. He tilted his head to the side. “Hell, you could do me a solid and just exit using whatever secret method you entered with, but I have a feeling mum's the word on that particular angle.”

This Dragonfly character was smarter than he looked. Of course, he was a grown man who fought crime dressed as a giant insect. The bar was not particularly high.

“Mum's the word?” Edmund echoed. “What are you, ninety?”

“I'm an old fucking soul, dude,” said Dragonfly. “Point being, you don't trust me not to watch you leave the roof. Which is hurtful, frankly. I'm not sure I trust you not to stay up here out of pure stubbornness. If I give you a quick boost down, then it's problem solved and we can both go about our nights. Crime-fighting for me, and for you hopefully a pile of blankets and whatever warm food rich people eat. Mashed potatoes? With...caviar?”

This clearly did not merit a response. Dragonfly knew who Edmund was, apparently. Most people did.

“What if you drop me?” said Edmund.

Dragonfly laughed. He had a nice laugh. It was yet another point against him, somehow. “Don't you think that might go against my whole—” he gestured with both hands “moral compass?”

Edmund recognized his own words being used against him. On the other hand, the thought of a hot meal and, moreover, central heating beckoned.

“I don't care,” Edmund said at last.

“What?” said Dragonfly.

“Bridal or fireman's carry,” said Edmund. “I don't care.”

Dragonfly nodded sagely. “Let's get this over with, then,” he said. “Hey, d’you want help with your candles?”

Did he? He didn't want to want help with his candles, but that was another question. On the other hand, if Edmund accepted Dragonfly's aid, it would shave off valuable minutes of this excruciating headache. The backs of Edmund's knees were cold. It was absurd.

“Fine,” said Edmund.

“Huh,” said Dragonfly several minutes later. “This one's rain-scented, and this one's Ocean Spray, and yet they smell nothing alike.”

Dragonfly had without fail commented on every single scented candle in the bunch. Edmund looked up from his umpteenth taper candle, momentarily distracted from the knifelike chill.

“Rain and ocean are two completely different things,” said Edmund. “The surrounding environment, the vibe, the salt content.”

“The vibe, I grant you,” said Dragonfly. “But salt, really? Have you ever smelled salt before?”

“The ocean has a smell,” Edmund insisted. His family had summered on the coast every year before—well. Before last year. He mostly remembered the sea as having a whiff of fish about it, which didn't sound promising for a candle, but it was the principle of the thing.

Dragonfly shrugged. “You've got me there,” he said. “Never been.” Cityton was only about an hour's drive from the beach. Edmund wasn't sure he knew anyone who had never visited at least once, for a long weekend at least. Of course, it wasn't like Edmund knew Dragonfly. He didn't even know what Dragonfly's eyes looked like.

Edmund blew out another few tapers.

“This one's just called Singing Carols,” Dragonfly announced. “Guess what it smells like, I dare you.”

And so on.

In the end, Dragonfly carried Edmund off the roof of the Natural History Museum scooped under the armpits, the way you might hold a cat if you were engaging in some light cat-related horseplay. The mechanical dragonfly wings were well-made, Edmund could admit that much; Dragonfly didn't seem to have any issue bearing Edmund's weight or the combined weight of the candles, and their feet gently touched the ground after only a few seconds. It was already slightly warmer—or at least slightly less freezing—on street-level.

Dragonfly let go and stepped back immediately. This close, Edmund could see that his lips were pretty badly chapped. It made sense that someone who donated all their time to—again—flitting around town trying to right every minuscule so-called wrong while dressed like a bug wouldn't be experienced enough with self-care to be acquainted with a good lip balm, but the thought made Edmund weirdly a little sad.

His sense of deeply ingrained politeness warred against the equally powerful urge to be a real bastard about the whole thing. In the end, politeness won out, by the very skin of its mannerly little teeth.

“Thank you for not dropping me to my almost certain death,” Edmund gritted out with extreme reluctance. He stared over Dragonfly's shoulder as he said it.

Nevertheless, for some awful reason, for just that moment, it felt a little like the end of a date.

“Right,” said Dragonfly. “Right. Well then. Happy trails.” He seemed to consider this. “Or you know, if doing crimes is what makes you happy, then for the sake of Cityton, let's say, mediocre trails. Do you wanna borrow my gloves?”

“Why,” said Edmund flatly.

Even though the goggles completely obscured much of the upper half of Dragonfly's face, Edmund had the distinct sense that a disbelieving stare was being leveled at him.

“For your hands? You know, the traditional office of gloves?”

As the scion of Malarkey Industries, Edmund was long accustomed to being hated for who he was. Hated, feared, not-too-secretly envied. And lately: mocked, dismissed, his family name transmuted into a juicy, low-hanging punchline for lazy late night writers.

He wasn't sure he'd ever been pitied before. It did not sit well.

“I'll warm my hands on the fires of hell while I plot your demise, you miserable fool,” growled Edmund.

“Yikes,” said Dragonfly easily. “Well, I'm off.” And with that, he took to the sky.

Edmund curled his fingers into the sleeves of his stupid, summer-weight summoner's robes and started back towards what remained of his home.