#she strikes me as a trick items kind of woman. like she does the big ass mecha stuff too but she's basically batman if he was classy af

[angermango]

i finally got off my butt and finished up a somewhat satisfactory design for that AU Rachel Bronev I dreamt up aaages ago

I even finally came up with a name! say hello to

Anne Desperée

She's done with being fridged. In fact, she has just broken out of the fridge, dismantled it for parts and used those parts to make a mini-mecha heading to Targent's base right now.

also, the third lot of expression sketches was fun because it made me realise how much Layton and Descole's body language matches up in their sprites/animations. that had to be deliberate right

(+ just ref image sheet below of the loose inspirations)

[jadelotusflower]

It’s Cold in that Fridge: The Case of Nakari Kelen

Since The Case of Mara Jade has been doing the rounds again, I’ve finally gone back to this post that has been sitting in my drafts for literally years. So let’s honour this absolute badass who deserved better:

Once upon a time, the Star Wars universe was but six films (and a tv series) in the story of the Skywalker family. But beyond George Lucas’ story was an absolute boatload of books, comics, games, and other materials that made up the Expanded Universe. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars saga, everything in this universe was decanonised and deemed “Legends” - some aspects of this universe were retained or re-purposed, others sit in Disney’s figurative vault and will likely never see the light of day (and seeing how the ST turned out, maybe that’s for the best).

But this transition between Legends canon and Disney canon was not so simple, because the nature of publishing meant that there were novels approved during the time of Legends canon that would be released in the time of Disney canon. In particular, there had been the planned trilogy “Empire and Rebellion”, set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with each novel from the perspective of one of The Big Three.  

Razor’s Edge (Leia) and Honor Among Thieves (Han) were released prior to the Great Canon Split of 2014.  But while the Luke-centric novel had been planned, it was not due to be released until well after the Split. So Heir to the Jedi (so called as an homage to the Legends progenitor Heir to the Empire) became one of the first books of the Disney canon.

What does this background have to do with Nakari Kelen?  Perhaps nothing, but I do wonder how the writing process was affected by the shift from Legends to Disney - was the novel a relic of the old EU with any reference the LFL storygroup didn’t like excised during editing, or was it a trendsetter for the new EU, a Sign of Things to Come?  

The most salient point being, of course, that Nakari Kelen - like so many love interests before her - was not allowed to go along her merry way at the conclusion of the novel, but was shoved into the fridge.

If there was one constant of the Legends EU, it was that Luke Skywalker’s love interests couldn’t catch a break. Mara Jade naturally lasted the longest relationship-wise, with almost twenty years of marriage to Luke before some bright spark decided she had to go (as per the aforementioned case study). But before Mara there was Jem, Shira Brie, and Gaeriel Captison (who came close to escaping the curse), and in the Legacy of the Force series they brought back sole survivors Akanah and Callista, only to kill them off for good too (and rather brutally, if I may add).

So perhaps when Kevin Hearne began writing HttJ within the confines of the Legends continuity, he was merely sticking to the status quo, or perhaps once subsumed by Disney they needed to make sure Luke's slate was clean (so to speak).  And I can’t put all the blame on Hearne since I don’t know whether it was his idea, or LFL mandated - but regardless it was a poor decision.

The root cause of fridging, imo, is limited imagination.  How best to cause your male protagonist pain if not kill off someone they love, or at least have strong feelings for? The answer is of course, easily. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Luke Skywalker of HttJ is fresh from his victory in ANH, a lieutenant in the Rebellion: young, not dumb, and full of...

Nakari Kalen is an absolute Queen a civilian volunteer and crack-shot sniper who loans her ship Desert Jewel to the Alliance. Luke is immediately attracted to her, they bond over a mutual love of fast ships and leaving behind desert home planets, and engage in the inexpert flirting of two nineteen year olds while also risking their lives several times over.

I want to make it clear: I actually really like this book. It's a breezy read, almost serialised as The Early Adventures of Luke Skywalker, and is ofttimes genuinely funny. And credit where it’s due to Hearne, many of of the supporting roles in the novel are female. Other than Nakari, there's Soonta, the Rodian who gives Luke her uncle’s lightsaber, Sakhet the Kupohan spy, and the Givin cryptographer/math genius Drusil Bephorin. In a genre where male characters are often the default for these kind of roles, it was nice to see, but makes the regressive fridging of Nakari even more egregious.

Luke and Nakari make a good team fighting brain-sucking monsters and Imperials, but more importantly they have fun together - she encourages him to work on his Force skills, and he successfully moves objects with his mind for the first time (leading to Nakari adorably dub him "a little noddle scooter"). It's a very sweet, if brief, relationship, and a respite from the danger of the mission. They spend the night together (leaving the reader to decide exactly what happened behind closed doors), and share a kiss before splitting up to try and escape bounty hunters. No prizes for guessing what happens to Nakari immediately after she received the Skywalker Kiss of Death.

I assume there were two motivating factors for why Hearne and/or LFL couldn't let Nakari live:

1. If she survived, fans would wonder why she doesn't appear in ESB/subsequent material.

I recall this bandied about on forums back at the time of the book's release, and to that I say - so what? Fans are always going to wonder, and try to paper over the gaps in canon, to make up their own headcanons to explain any any perceived inconsistencies. It's certainly no reason to kill someone off.

It is in fact possible for two young people to have a romance that just fizzles, or doesn’t work out for whatever reason - it should not require great maneuvering or explanation. If Nakari doesn’t show up in the next book in the timeline, what about it? The reader is smart enough to assume she and Luke broke up, decided to just remain friends, whatever. But it seems that the only way for a female character to exit stage left is for her to die, which is bullshit.

And actually, there's no reason why she couldn't have shown up again. ESB and RoTJ cover a month and a few days, respectively, of Luke's life - just because there was no mention of Nakari doesn't mean she didn't exist at that time, whether or not she and Luke were an item. She could have made an appearance in a subsequent novel, or Rebels, or the comics - she could have become a recurring character, showing up when the Rebellion needed her, or - heaven forbid - even have her own comic/book/show! Her existence in Star Wars canon didn't need to begin and end with Luke Skywalker, merely to service his plotline and backstory and abandoning the richness of her own.

No, the only reason Nakari had to die was to facilitate this:

It was a blow to the gut, realizing what that sudden absence meant. I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but I had felt Nakari's life snuffed out through the Force, and into that void where she had shone anger rushed in - anger, and a cold sense of raw power and invincibility...I took a step to join in the hunt but stopped, breathing heavily, unaccountably sweating even though I felt so cold inside and the power of the Force roiled within me... I shook with emotion and power, and none of it felt the way the Force had before...I saw what kind of space it was , a black hole that would always be hungry no matter how much I fed it. I might never feel warm again if I didn't get myself under control.

Luke feels the dark side and is tempted by the boost of power it offers him, but immediately identifies it as dangerous and unnatural. I can understand why Hearne wanted to include this - it is a book of firsts after all: Luke's first solo mission, his first time using telekenisis, and ending with story with his first experience of the dark side makes sense. But it wasn't necessary, which leads to:

2. How to push Luke to touch the dark side without killing someone he has romantic feelings for?

Also, obviously, shite of the bull (or nerf, if you prefer). Even if this brush with the dark side was absolutely necessary for the novel's climax, there's any number of ways it could be achieved. At this point, Luke is fresh from losing important people in his life - Owen and Beru, Ben, and Biggs - lumping another death on top of that a narrative trick for Luke to react not only to losing Nakari, but the others as well. But it's cheap, the first card in the deck, and why not show a bit of imagination? Luke is young and inexperienced enough at this point that any number of things could be the catalyst - the whole book he's struggling with his growing powers, why not try and reach too far in the firefight with the bounty hunters, his anger and frustration with himself in not doing enough trigger the dark side temptation? It would work thematically and doesn't involve a fridging that ultimately has very little payoff.

Because Nakari is killed less than ten pages from the end of the book - afterwards Luke grieves, but ultimately chooses to honour her memory and be grateful for what he learned with her, recommitting to becoming a Jedi. It's all very surface level, and once again a female character's death facilitates a male character's development. Was it so imperative that Luke lost someone he cared about as part of this story? Sure, this was a time of galactic civil war, and it's far from unrealistic that these stories have a high body count, but who to make collateral damage remains an authorial choice, and in this case Nakari Kelen was (a) a female character of color, (b) a love interest of the protagonist - not just of this book, but the entire Original Trilogy.

I don't know to what extent (if any) race had to play in the decision. I'm sure there was a segment of the fandom absolutely livid that Luke Skywalker kissed (and maybe had sex with) a black woman. Was her death LFL hedging its bets, or demonstrative of the general lack of attention/respect they show their characters of colour?

In any case this was a chance to stand out from the old EU and it's fridge full of Luke's dead girlfriends, but instead they chose to introduce and kill off Nakari for the sole purpose of Luke's manpain and character development, and that's gross.

And then there's this:

A grisly yet reliable fact about custom bounty hunter ships is that you can always count on them to have body bags stashed somewhere for the easy transport of their kills. They often have built-in refrigerated storage, too.

NAKARI IS KILLED AND LITERALLY STORED IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT I WAS READING.

I really hope this was unintentional on Hearne's part, because yikes. He was halfway there, this book was full of interesting female characters who had agency - Drusil in particular was a delight with her super math and inability to understand human interaction. Nakari was full of life and fun - capable but relatable, showing a different side of the Rebellion and those that suffered under the Empire's rule. Fridging her in her first appearance is considerably more vile, because it reduces her to a footnote of Luke's story, a plot device to Help Him Grow, rather than a springboard to tell more of her own story.

Because Nakari was a compelling character ripe for spinoff potential. I would absolutely have read or watched her continued adventures, juggling missions for her father's Biolabs company and trying to aid the Rebellion, shooting her slug rifle and cracking wise, maybe even finding a way to amplify her mother's song Vader's Many Prosthetic Parts to really stick it to the Empire, or try and free the political prisoners on Kessel.

The old EU was made great by allies and enemies of Our Heroes showing up again to help or hinder them, and/or branching out into their own material. We fell in love with them, and followed their stories even as they diverged from the main saga, eager to read more about their lives.

Nakari Kelen never got that chance. In many ways, she exemplified what Disney Star Wars was to become: an exercise in wasted potential.

[thelittleredheadedmusician]

you were shunned and burned your cradle

Newsies Gen PG 4,365 words AO3 Living in New York isn't easy for a boy on his own. It's worse for Crutchie between his leg and the air itself trying to poison him. But things really can only go up.  For @i-got-personality as part of @newsies-secret-santa! You said you like Crutchie, canon era, and any kind of magic and well I hope that you like this!

Being a changeling in New York City hurts. It makes his skin itch and his lungs burn and his eyes water. From the iron that surrounds him, fills the very air along with the smoke. If he’s not careful when he reaches out or brushes against something his skin comes away with a sharp, searing scar.

Being a changeling hurts in a different way too. Knowing that, for whatever reason, his mother gave him up. That a human baby was far preferable to him and so he was left in some other child’s crib. To make matters worse, he was given up twice. That hurt even more.

On his crueler days, the ones filled with self-loathing, he blames himself. That it was some personal failing, his bum leg perhaps, that made his mother exchange him. That the same failing is why the woman who believed herself his mother threw him out onto the street. Logically, he knows this isn’t the case. For one, he remembers what happened to his leg and it involved an iron poker that proved to his mother he wasn’t really hers as fear burned in her eyes.

Being a changeling in New York hurts and it’s hard too. Trying to grow, to thrive, in a city that was made in opposition to your very nature. It’s even harder when you’re just a kid. When you’re living on the streets. His first few nights are the worst. He’s cold and hungry and tired and he hurts. Oh does he hurt.

Being a changeling is no walk in the park, though ironically walks in the park help some. Help a lot. Until he tires. But being a changeling in a city as big as New York means you’re not alone. Well, you’re never alone but there’s others too. If you know how to spot them.

He’s been sleeping in doorways and sneaking food from market stalls – but not begging, whether an innate part of being a one of the Folk or an innate part of himself he did not want or need anyone’s pity – for a few weeks when he sees her. She’s tall, very tall and with the tatters her skirts are in he’s able to see the pale pink of her calves from knee to muddy leather boots. It’s not a normal pink, not like the glimpses of his own cold cheeks in shop windows, but the dusty pink of a rose. Her fingers are the same color as she waves and calls, catching passersby’s eye and gesturing to the basket of flowers on her arm. The violets match her thick, plated hair and the bluebells her bright, solid-colored eyes.

He stops, shocked on the other side of the street, when he sees her. A cart and then trolley pass between them and still he can’t tear his gaze away. She’s smiling at him once the street is clear, wide and kind. The light almost sparks off her pointed teeth. She winks and crooks a long, thin finger to him. He crosses without another thought, barely managing to remember how to even walk before he’s in front of her.

“Hello little one,” she coos, tilting his chin up so he can meet her gaze. Her pink fingers then trail through his hair, straightening it, before running down to brush over his shoulders and tug lightly at his vest. This close he sees that she has small white flowers woven into the braid of her purple hair. They look like stars in a twilight sky and he’s fairly certain they sparkle too.

“Hello, miss,” he manages to reply.

Her grin sharpens. “You’re a polite young man. And that smile! Sweeter than stolen cream.”

At those words he can’t help but preen. “Thank you, miss. I quite like your hair myself. I’ve-” he stumbles, tightening his grip on the crutch under his arm, “I’ve never seen hair that color.”

Eyes widening, she straightens. “My, you’ve not met one of your own before, have you?”

“No, miss,” he shakes his head, hair flopping into his eyes. He reaches up to brush it back but she’s faster. Brushing it away with her rosy fingers again.

“But you know our ways?” She says it like a question but the flash of her eyes makes it a challenge.

He straightens, feeling so proud it borders on smug. “Never give your true name, always be polite, and nothing is a gift.”

Her head tilts and he honestly can’t tell if she’s thrilled or disappointed. Though they both know it’s not all the ways of the Folk, just the important ones. The ones the humans know in order not to err on their bad side. But for a changeling like him, it’s a good start and all true. That’s another thing he knows, the Folk cannot lie.

“Very good little one. You may know, but I doubt you have much practice. Let us strike a bargain, shall we?” Again, her head tilts and more than her long limbs or resemblance to a garden or sunset, this looks the oddest to him. Sets her apart from the humans still buffeting them on the busy street.

“Only be it fair and true,” he replies on instinct. Because, there’s nowhere else it could have possibly sprung from.

Pride and amusement has her spine straightening as she nods. “My proposition is thus; you give me the two buttons from your vest and I shall weave you a crown that will never wilt. That will remind you of who you are.”

He has to think about it, faerie bargains are notoriously tricks meant to cheat the person hapless enough to make one. There are normally catches and clauses. There are twists and double meanings and you always, always lose more than you gain. Yet, this seems simple. Straightforward. And it would be rude to say no.

“A trinket for a trinket,” he says, stalling.

She inclines her head. “A mortal trinket for a faerie trinket. A piece of a life that was and will be again.”

His heart and mind catch on that last bit but to puzzle it out could take all day and he’s getting hungry. He was trying to find food when he saw her in the first place. It’s a risk, but a benign one. “My two buttons for a flower crown woven by you that will never wilt.”

Again, her smile is sharp. But her knife his sharper as she leans forward and cuts the buttons from his vest, hand moving quickly to cup them before they can do more than fall from the fabric. She slips them into the folds of her skirt, her knife disappearing too. Just as quickly she begins to pluck flowers from her basket with her too long, stick thin fingers and begins to weave them into a crown and in a blink it’s on his head.

“May you wear it in good health,” she says and it’s a blessing he didn’t bargain for. His stomach twists and he nods; remembering not to thank her at the last moment. She flashes one last grin as she turns away, her skirts flaring out, and walks down the sidewalk.

He manages to not lose his flower crown as he falls in with a group of satyrs living in Battery Park, though he leaves after a few weeks when he learns the fish they always have for dinner comes straight from the aquarium in the castle. He goes back to sleeping in doorways and on fire escapes after that. He’s hungry all the time but he can never be sure if it’s his nature or his circumstances that cause it.

Eventually, his clothes become too thin and short, showing off his wrists and legs and strips of his stomach. Sleeping on fire escapes has a new bite as the fabric begins to cover less and less and more and more of his skin is exposed to the iron. The worst is how tight his boots have become, pinching and squeezing at his toes. He refuses to go barefoot though, not because of the cold but because it reminds him too much of the others. The women who walk on the breeze and become one with the trees. The men who blink at him before disappearing into shadows and around corners. The beings and creatures who pinch and poke and trick and steal and cackle and dance, dance, dance in between the oblivious crowds.

He finally manages to trade with an immigrant family from the Lower East Side, not feeling sad to hand over the last items his mother gave him in exchange for shoes that are just a hair too big and clothes that keep his skin from the sparking itch of his fire escape beds.

It’s this sleeping arrangement that gets him in trouble. Faeries are meant to be swifter, stronger than humans. But with his crutch he’s not able to outrun the police. A shopkeeper reports him for vagrancy and even his charms aren’t able to keep the police from dragging him to the Refuge.

Another boy, a newsboy, sees this from a little ways down the street. He freezes and his face darkens. His face with its too sharp angles and too bright eyes. The boy is moving before he has the time to process this, making a messy grab for a trinket from a nearby vendor’s cart, dropping his papers in the process. The police notice – everyone on the block notices – and grab him. The boy struggles but it’s a show, he can tell it’s just for show, and soon they’re both being lifted into the wagon.

The trial is short, the other boy cocky, and the warden at the Refuge cruel. At least here he has a bed, a real bed, for the first time in years. The other boy smooth talks his way into getting the one next to him.

“You can call me Jack, Jack Kelly. Though some of the boys call me Cowboy too,” he says with a quicksilver smile.

He raises a skeptical brow, his thoughts catching on the phrasing and the sharp points the boy’s ears come to. Sharp points that match his own.

“You’re like me,” he says instead of giving his name. He knows better than to give anyone his name. He knows Jack certainly isn’t this boy’s.

“Depends on what you mean by that,” Jack says slyly, stretching out on the thin bunk.

“How do you do it?” He asks with genuine curiosity, leaning forward so he can lower his voice and study Jack’s pleasantly bored expression.

Confusion pulls at Jack’s brow. “Do what?”

“Work as a newsboy.” It wasn’t obvious? “They lie all the time to make money.”

The quicksilver is back. “I never lie. I just embellish the truth. Tell a story. The facts are there, just maybe not all the facts. If it weren’t true, I couldn’t say it.” Jack shrugs and it’s an odd motion since he’s laying on his back with his hands propped behind his head. Made odder by the fact that it seems almost graceful. “It’s not so bad. Get to go all over the city and the lodging house means you’ve got a bed if you can afford it.”

He frowns at the non-sequitur. It deepens when he realizes it’s an abrupt topic change. “We’re stuck here and you’re offering me a job?” he can’t keep all the disbelief out of his voice. Even if he hadn’t checked, he could feel that the windows and doors were barred with thick iron rods.

“I’ll be out of here by dawn, question is if you’re coming with me?”

For a solid minute he weighs his options. The Refuge with its coldness and crying children. Jack with his silver tongue and faerie arrogance.

When they manage to sneak out into the courtyard a few hours later they’re met by the boys who helped break the lock and distract the guards. The first causes him to stop, he’s so obviously a sprite that the scowl is the only thing keeping him from laughing. The other is mortal and chomping on an unlit cigar, the scent of which still makes him wrinkle his nose. The four slink out and into an alley before twisting around the block and through another back alley until they’re farther and farther away.

“We’re even now, Kelly,” the sprite finally growls once the sky begins to lighten.

“A deal’s a deal, Spot.” Jack offers his hand, spitting into it first. If he hadn’t already figured the boy was one of the Folk that would have confirmed it. The spit shake marks him as a newsie. Spot turns to him and the mortal, nodding at them both before turning off a side street and disappearing.

“Bell’s gonna ring soon,” the boy says, almost nervous as he bounces on his toes and glances down the street. His eyes dart to where Spot disappeared to, then to him, and finally back to Jack.

“And we’ll be there, right new kid?” Jack raises a brow at him. It’s a taunt.

“Course,” he replies. No bargain was struck, no deal made, but he is in Jack’s debt and they both know it.

Jack nods, smiles, and turns back to the mortal. “Go get in line, Race. Make sure Weasel don’t give us no grief for being late.”

Race, apparently, grins around the cigar and takes off running. Maybe that’s where the nickname comes from.

“You can trust Racetrack,” Jack tells him vaguely as they follow, “he’s good people.”

Or maybe that’s not where the nickname comes from.

In the next few weeks, he learns the ins and outs of selling from Jack. And of “charming folks” though truthfully, it’s just magic. Jack starts calling him “Kid” and the other newsies “Crutchie” and he doesn’t really care because neither are his name and that’s what matters. The night in the Refuge isn’t the first or last Jack spends there, but it is the only one that’s intentional. He works harder to repay Jack who seems less and less inclined to care.

Finally, he feels they’re even when he manages to discover the nook in the corner of the roof of the lodging house. The air is still filled with smoke and iron but not the smell and sounds of mortal boys. He takes careful trips up with bedding and supplies until he feels it’s suitable. Sleeping under the stars just feels right and he can tell Jack agrees by the expression on his face when he sees it.

They grow close. The other newsies learn he can predict the weather with startling accuracy and say it must be thanks to his leg, he never corrects them. They talk as the city chokes them, about going to someplace that’s nothing but stars. The money comes in fits and starts as he grows into his own sharp features. The other Folk avoid him but mortals feel almost compelled to buy his papers. Stories come in across the river of a young newsie rising through the ranks of Brooklyn and ruling with an iron fist. They don’t tell any of the others that the rumors sound an awful lot like the stories of Court drama they hear.

He keeps his own crown in the bag at his hip, as unchanging as the day he received it. Though now, years later and clothes traded and swapped and bought he misses the buttons she took. Misses having something that reminds him of the place he used to believe was home. For even his crutch is different, having long outgrown the original.

They’re teenagers too soon, a blink in their long lifetimes. With it comes something they don’t expect, an odd almost awed respect from the others. Except Race but he never counted. He’s tied up in Brooklyn as a rule and so is exempt. They never sought the power they seemingly have, power different than that which they were born with, and they discover it in the most dramatic way.

It starts with a raise in prices. A raise which isn’t fair, and they of all people would know. Jack is outraged, he is angry too but in a colder way.

The new boy, the one who either didn’t heed the stories of the old world or else his family hadn’t passed them on – and that did happen as people sought to keep the good and leave the monsters behind when they came to America and never would they imagine to find so many pretty ones in the center of the city – and offers his name as though it was on a platter. Even his little brother gives a nickname. But Jack had been kind and called him Davey and the others had too, much to Davey’s unknowing chagrin.

The new boy, Davey, matches Jack in his heat, at least momentarily, offering the spark to Jack’s powder and unknowingly unleashing that power.

When Jack says they should strike, they strike.

He finally understands the appeal of the Courts for the first time.

“Do you think she’s really going to show up tomorrow?” he asks that night on the rooftop, head still spinning from the rush of their decision. The thrill had dampened slightly after Jack told him of Spot’s reluctance to join them. Understandable, why would he want to risk losing the grip he kept on the tight leash he had over Brooklyn? And he didn’t owe Jack anymore. But this was as much for them as for the mortals. Righting a wrong against oneself was practically faerie law. Though the girl reporter was an intriguing thought and a twist even he hadn’t seen coming.

“I think so,” he can hear Jack’s smirk in the dark. “She told me her name was Katherine Plumber.”

“Really?” He’s surprised, the way she’d eyed him he thought she’d know better.

“Least it’s the name she publishes under,” Jack is almost proud.

“Clever,” he says happily.

“Too bad your charm doesn’t work in print,” Jack teases.

“I don’t need glamour to be charming. The smile’s just icing.”

Jack laughs, the sound floating up over the rooftops. “Good thing she’s bringing a camera.”

He grins up at the stars.

Like any war there are casualties. Unfortunately, he is one of them. Being back in the Refuge again is hard. The time stretches and shrinks in ways he never imagined possible and somehow he knows decades, centuries later he will look back on this and still wonder. The scent of iron is so heavy it’s dizzying and the press of bodies so close it makes everything seem small. These mortals with iron in their blood and salt on their skin surrounding him on all sides. He has the crown, somehow he has the crown. His crown. It marks him as other and for a time, some measure of time, he feels even more alone. So different from these humans serving penance without crime with him.

He takes it out one night, straining to see the pale petals in the paler light of the moon when that changes. The crown proves he is not alone. The faerie woman, the flower seller, took what was never his to begin with and gave him his true home. His first taste of community. Of finding others like himself. Of finding Jack with his silver tongue and smile. Of the newsies of Lower Manhattan with their bright spirits and easy laughs in the face of the City. Of righteous Davey and mischievous Les and clever Kath. Even of Spot and his politics and power games. He found his birthright in the world he was forsaken to and that realization rekindles something within, twisting the crown in his hands.

He feels less alone, turning his charm back on as the sun rises. Knowing that he is just one of hundreds here in the Refuge feeling like this. Uses his charm to learn that there are some who can get messages in and out. Others who can get him supplies. And in the night, despite complaints from his fellows for the candlelight, he writes to Jack urging him to not let his own fire go out.

He knows they’ll win, has never been in doubt of it. Jack said they would and Jack can’t lie. But he knows Jack, and knows that not being able to tell a lie does not mean you can’t lie to yourself. So, he writes and hopes that it gets to Jack in time.

The time slips and spins and he sleeps and waits and imagines and remembers and nearly misses a name being called. A name that was never really his but he took before he could talk and he hasn’t heard in so long he’d honestly almost forgotten it. The others part for him as he carefully makes his way to the stairs that will lead him to the ground floor and the door out of this place. He is thankful for his faerie grace as he moves with so many eyes on him, his crutch catching on the uneven floorboards but he walks with his head high. Walks right out the door. He’s not the only one to do so, but he is the first.

Relishing in the ability to breath in the wind again, he rides in the governor’s open topped carriage taking in lungfuls of it. Even when it carries the stale scent of trash and the river. His smile is so wide it almost hurts and he nearly forgets to smooth the points his teeth have grown into with the giddiness humming like magic under his skin. The people on the street stare to see such a grubby looking boy riding alone in such finery and he lets them, waving a bit and laughing to think that all this was done just for him. There’s a strange metaphor all tied up in it somewhere. A riddle he’ll spend the time puzzling out later. Right now he just breathes.

Seeing the crowd turn at the sound of hooves and whistles and the governor’s gesturing sends his heart speeding. He accepts the excitement buzzing throughout it and between his ears as some of the boys rush the carriage, holding out hands in silent offers to help him down. For once, he accepts. Jack’s grinning up on the small stage above the door to The World – another twisted metaphor for another time – but he quirks a brow too. Knowing he only allows this because so much focus has passed on to question about the police wagon that has followed behind him the whole way.

He makes a face at Jack in silent response before letting his own pride takeover. He spins and gestures to the wagon where police officers are herding out a man. Herding out the man who runs the Refuge. Who ran the Refuge. He can almost feel his excitement pricking at his fingers in the same way iron does as the governor agrees to let him do the honors. The feeling overpowers the actual feel of the iron manacles as he clamps them on the man’s wrist, letting his glamor slip and his smile turn cruel for just a blink in the process.

The celebrating ends sooner than expected, though that isn’t entirely true. Despite the newsies lining up and taking their papers, they all still chatter and cheer. Bubbling up and over at their win. Jack is talking with Spot, Davey, and Kath when he comes over after getting his own stack for the morning. Spot gives him a significant nod before spit shaking hands all around and heading off with his lieutenants. Racetrack trailing behind. It’s an odd mirror of their first meeting and he brushes the thought away as another problem for another time.

“I’m so glad you’re ok,” Kath says as she hugs him. He’s come to realize that she’s special in more ways than one. Her possession of the Sight just part of a larger enigma. Her willingness to pull him into her and easy offers of friendship another. He doesn’t argue though, squeezing her right back.

Davey offers a hand to shake once she frees him and a cautious smile. The caution has nothing to do with him though and everything to do with Davey’s own contradiction filled nature. “You were missed,” he says earnestly. Swatting at his little brother who begins babbling exactly how missed he was.

“So, how was the ride?” Jack slings an arm over his shoulders, wide smile as he pulls him in tight to his side.

“You struck a bargain,” he almost hisses through his own smile clenched teeth.

“We came to an agreement.” He feels more than sees Jack’s shrug.

“It was two deals,” Davey corrects with a stern turn to his mouth and a flash in his eyes. “Jack made two deals with Pulitzer.”

He pulls away, brushing off Jack’s hold. He stares hard at the other boy. Dares him to say something and damn himself. Say nothing and damn himself even further.

“The first was a deal only we could make,” Jack says smoothly. He doesn’t blink and his sharp features become sharper with the seriousness that overtakes him. He understands immediately. It was hard. It was cruel. And it doesn’t matter what exactly it was and who gave what because in the end Jack walked away with what mattered most.

“And the second?” he prompts.

Jack shrugs again, shares a glance with the others, and smirks. “We won.”

Truthfully, he should have expected that. He rolls his eyes. Later, under the stars and the smoke, breathing in as little iron as they can he’ll ask again. He’ll find out what he did to convince Spot. What the terms of the bargain were. Of both bargains. And whether Jack was going to tell Davey their true nature, since there was no point in telling Kath. They have all the time in the world to leave the city and see the stars. These people they’ve turned into a home have only a lifetime and he’s already decided that he’s going to make the most of it.

End notes can be found on ao3. Please leave a comment and lmk what you think there as well! :)

[falloutdialogue]

Diamond City Security Dialogue

One Liners

Yeah. It's true. I got shot in the ass last year. Long story.

You been to Goodneighbor? Friggin' hole. Ghouls and chem heads all over.

A beer and my slippers after this shift. That's all I ask.

Hey, you that trader, up from Quincy? You sell any ointment? I got me this itch...

I hear you been asking questions around town. What, Diamond City's got two private dicks now?

Wanna do something fun? Run the bases. Trust me.

Ahem. Well hello beautiful.

Now what can I do for you, sweetheart?

Broke up with my girl. She kept the cap off the toothpaste. Know who does that? A synth.

Word of advice - never call your mother a synth unless she really is one. Yikes.

Crouching

Get off your knees. You look like a jackass.

What the HELL are you doing?

Whoa, whoa, no public squatting. Go find a bathroom. Jeez.

Intro Scene/Fighting Supermutants

Super Mutants!

Here's some Diamond City firepower you green uglies!

[Player helped fight] Damn. Not afraid of mutants, huh? You're our kind of guy/gal.

[Player helped fight, but didn’t get any kills] Mutants sure are hard to kill, huh? Thanks for the assist.

[Strong is a companion] Hey, uh, appreciate the help and all, but maybe keep your big, green friend out of the city, yeah?

[Strong is a companion] Hey, uh, welcome to our town and all, but maybe leave your big, green friend outside the gate, yeah?

[Player stood by] Not eager to get into a fight with mutants, huh? *sigh* I guess I can't blame ya.

[If there were many casualties] Dammit. Lost a lot of good guys today... When are the mutants gonna stop, huh?

Protecting Diamond City from Misc Enemies

This is our city, you fucking machine!

Suck it, you Protectron wannabe!

Die, you Institute asshole!

Time to beat down another crazy...

Batter up, asshole!

Code Red! CODE RED!

Welcome to Diamond City, motherfucker...

Game over, asshole.

That's what I call a strike out...

Posted Outside the Wall

Can't believe I'm posted outside the Wall. Who the heck did I piss off?

Feral Ghouls like to hide in the dark. Makes night patrol a real fright-fest.

Caught Picking Pockets/Stealing

Damn pickpockets!

I saw that!

Theft! Look alive, boys!

Hey. Klepto. Nice try.

Pretty sure that's not yours, pal/lady...

Great. A thief.

Whoa. Slow down there, sticky fingers.

Seriously, pal? Stealing?

Player is Taking Items of No Value

What? You picking up the trash?

You know that's junk right?

Got an amateur janitor over here...

Ain't everyday someone picks up the garbage for free...

Picking up garbage. You an old-time scavenger?

Hey, you wanna pick up trash, I ain't stoppin' ya...

Conversation with Sheng

Sheng, what have I told you about keeping the lake clean? Don't make me shut down this little stand of yours.

Sheng: Every drop of water comes out of that filter 100% pure. Why's a legitimate business man like myself always gotta be hassled by city regulation, huh? 

It's a health hazard, Sheng.

Sheng: It's a PROFIT hazard, is what I say. I manage the water. And I'll do it without your interference, thank you very much.

Eating Outside the Dugout Inn

Can't believe you eat that food. Only one thing worth buying in the Dugout Inn, and that's the booze.

Resident: Man's gotta eat, what can I say?

A real Diamond City boy eats at the noodle stand.

Factions/Main Quest

[If institute takes over commonwealth] These synths just showed up. They're not doing anything wrong... so... we're not sure what to do.

We're getting a lot of graffiti these days. Pictures of lanterns. Know anything about that?

Ask you somethin'. Crazy question. You didn't see a... flying ship recently. Did you?

You see that big blimp? What's the Brotherhood of Steel? Why are they here?

I was on duty when I seen that airship fall out of the sky. I wonder if anyone survived.

[Liberty Prime] Holy nuts! A giant fricken robot just walked by here like it was nuthin'. Now I seen everything.

You keep looking at me like that, I'm gonna start thinking you're a synth...

The Institute. Pfft. I ain't scared of them. No... really. I swear...

You read that article? In Public Occurrences? Damn synths could be anywhere.

Don't worry. You're safe from the synths here in Diamond City. I hope...

So it's true, then? You're leading the Minutemen? Good for you. Great cause.

I'm too friggin' slow to join the Minutemen.

How come whenever something interesting happens around here, you're right in the center of it?

[Excited, then slightly embarrassed] The legend him/herself! Way to give it to the Institute. You're like my hero or something...I dunno. Thanks.

There he/she is! The man/woman of the hour!

On behalf of all the guards here in Diamond City, I just wanted to say thanks. For saving us. All of us.

In the Newspaper

Hey, you were in the paper, right? 

You're 200 years old? Lookin' pretty good for your age, huh?

Vault Dweller? Huh... you seem pretty normal.

Vault Dweller with a thousand guinea pigs? What kind of twisted experiment was that?

Read that interview you gave. That thing you said at the end? 

About having hope? Good on ya.

About getting revenge? Right on.

About taking one day at a time? I can relate.

Player is a Known Criminal (but is now free to walk around)

Well, look. Diamond City's number one troublemaker. Oh, I got my eye on you. Oh, look here. It's the troublemaker.

Don't think we've forgotten about you. Play nice from now on, hear me?

[Player stole from someone] Hear you don't know what "private property" means. Just keep your hands to yourself.

[Player attacked someone] Ain't you the one who's been roughin' people up? Got my eye on you.

[Player killed someone] You're a freakin' psychopath, you know that?

Holidays

Today's Halloween, but do we get treats? Nooooo. It's all tricks, all day.

Can you believe today's Christmas? Ho ho friggin' ho.

Painting the Wall

Hey, you're the one made the Wall look like a lemonade stand.

Heard you're responsible for that new coat of green on the Wall. Looks nice.

The Wall's looking as green as the day she was built.

You. You're the one turned the Wall into some kind of... blue monster.

Ain't never gonna get used to the Wall looking like... that.

Reactions to Companions

What a mangy mutt.

Filthy animal.

Get out of here, you.

Well hey there, pup.

You keep an eye on that thing. I don't want to hear about anybody getting bit.

Hell of an animal you've got there.

That thing's not a stray, is it?

Nice dog.

Listen, um... Your pal there is kinda... scaring the crap outta me...

You and your mercenary friend keep your guns in your pants. Capiche?

Whoa, whoa. No Ghouls in Diamond City. Get that thing outta here.

Oh, man. You got a robot butler? I want a robot butler...

[Sarcastic] What kind of person pals around with a robot. Oh my God... you're not a synth. Are you?

Your friend looks like trouble. Make sure she's not.

I ain't telling you how to pick your friends, but Piper's kind of a troublemaker.

So what, you're in the Brotherhood of Steel now?

You know, your friend looks kind of familiar. Maybe...

Heard you rescued Valentine. Good work. Most synths scare the hell outta me, but Nicky, he ain't like those Institute psychos.

Hangin' out with Valentine, huh? Good for you. Nicky's good people. Ah, you know what I mean.

Dear God. Your friend. He's not a... you know. One of them super things. Is he?

Your buddy there's pretty intense. Brother needs to lighten up.

Chumming around with a merc, huh? I don't want no trouble on my beat.

Hey, you know the rules. No Ghouls in Diamond City. Get your friend outta here.

I know an ex-Raider when I see one. Make sure your "friend" plays nice inside the Wall, hear me?

[Sarcastic] Hey, ask your knight friend if they got shuffleboard up on that fancy ship.

What's with your shady pal, huh?

Got our eyes on you. Even if you are pallin' around with Nick Valentine.

Your Frankenstein friend there ain't gonna start eating people, is he?

[Sarcastic] Hey, tell your robot we're fresh outta crumpets.

You know, with McDonough out of the picture... We're gonna need a new mayor.

[Sarcastic] You make that robot yourself? You must be wicked smart.

You keep some weird company, pal/lady. Androids, reporters, dogs. Know any gorillas? Heh heh.

If I didn't know better, I could've sworn I saw you hanging out with a Ghoul. Here in Diamond City. But that's impossible. Right?

You're getting pretty chummy with that reporter, huh? Be careful, there. The mayor's got it in for her.

Reactions to Equipment/Armor/Weapons

Ho. Lee. Shit. Now that is some armor.

See you got one of those fancy Vault suits. Those one size fit all?

That a real Vault Suit? Damn.

Is that a Pip-Boy? Give my left arm for one of those.

Geez, pal/lady. I like guns, too. But you think you might be overcompensating there?

Nice piece you got there. Just keep it holstered.

Look, that armor's great, don't get me wrong. But how the hell do you, you know... Pee?

Hey, I ain't sayin' I want to shoot you, 'cause that would be rude. But would you even feel it?

A Swatter's man/gal, huh? Nice.

Nice hat.

Whoa! You look just like that Silver Shroud guy. From the radio.

Now you have the right idea. Power Armor. Only way to travel.

[fayewonglibrary]

THE ICE QUEEN OF CANTO (2002)

Faye Wong was known for her scalding temper as much as her singing but now she’s cool, collected and very much in control. Don’t believe the hype, she tells Vivienne Chow.

“The truth doesn’t matter any more,” intones a calm and collected Faye Wong, when she is asked whether her relationship with Cantopop star Nicholas Tse Ting-fung is on the rocks. She leans purposefully back in her comfy chair, snaps a bite out of a square of French toast and summons her assistant for another packet of Mild Seven cigarettes. It isn’t so easy to rile Faye Wong any more.

Three years ago, it would scarcely have been noteworthy had the pop diva launched herself at me across the table and jammed the toast into my eye. At a press conference at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in 1999, Wong lost her temper when an inquisitive journalist from Singapore submitted a question about her divorce from Beijing rock star Dou Wei. She screamed at the reporter, told her it was no one’s business but her own and stormed out in the kind of dramatic huff only stars seem able to carry off.

All I get is a cheerful, perhaps defiant smile and a puff of cigarette smoke. Wong appears only too happy to consider the question, despite the over-anxious butt-in from another assistant, who says: “Would you please cancel that question!” - intent on smothering the 32-year-old singer. Quite obviously, however, she can take care of herself.

“I’ve already answered it,” Wong cuts in. Well, actually, she hasn’t. What she has said is this: “The main function of the entertainment press is to get stories that are entertaining but sometimes the truth may not be as juicy as you imagine. Even if I answer the questions honestly, they still make up stories. They have their own ideas on how my private life should be. I have no desire to change that image so I choose not to answer. In this way they can continue to write whatever they want to.”

So she’s answered by questioning the question’s validity - that old celebrity trick - but at least that toast is staying on her side of the table. “Sometimes the entertainment news about me covers details I have never heard before,” she says. “I quite enjoy reading the stories myself. I’m just so fascinated by this. But I’m not keen to tell people who I am or explain to people what I have or haven’t done. Now I don’t really mind what has been written about me.”

That’s about as close an answer as anyone’s likely to get from Wong on the state of her relationship with Tse, who is 11 years her junior. Not that you can really blame her. Since the couple walked out of a private function, hand in hand, two years ago, they have been pursued relentlessly by the paparazzi.

And that’s hardly surprising, given Wong is the undisputed queen of Cantopop and Tse, a Cantopop star himself, is also the son of 1960s heart-throb actor Patrick Tse Yin and actress Deborah Lai. That was more than enough star quality to send even the most haggard entertainment hack into a frenzy when the couple’s romance was first revealed. Now there are rumours of a parting of ways, the gossip machine is again moving into overdrive.

But Wong has learned to be philosophical following the often fanatical media interest surrounding her marriage to Dou in 1996 and divorce three years later. “I’m more open-minded now,” she says. “At the beginning, I got upset quite often by the way I was portrayed in the newspapers and how people saw me. But since I can’t ask the entire world to change for me, I now look at these matters in a positive way.”

Until, that is, her five-year-old daughter by Dou, Ching-tung, is added to the mix. Ching-tung has been the subject of cut-throat press clamour since even before she was born. The battle to publish the first photograph of Wong pregnant resulted in a court case between rival newspapers Oriental Sunday and Apple Daily. The Oriental Sunday snapped the slightly swelling singer in the baggage lounge of Beijing Airport in October 1996 - the first confirmation that the star was expecting - and took Apple to court after it printed a spoiler story on the front page, including the picture, on the same day.

Since then, even the little girl has had to run the press gauntlet. On February 1, Chinese-language entertainment magazine Sudden Weekly published photographs of Ching-tung at the Hong Kong International School and ran an interview allegedly conducted with her on her way to the school in Repulse Bay. The interview claimed the youngster said Tse hadn’t visited her mother for some time. Wong was understandably furious. And for a moment, as she recounts the episode to me, the expression that darkens her face would, I know, have been terrifyingly familiar to the unfortunate reporter at the press conference three years ago. Wong leans forward. She’s more serious now. The interview never took place, she says. “I checked with my maid and spoke to my daughter. She has never done this kind of interview before. Sure, she might have said hello to someone but there couldn’t have been enough time for her to tell a reporter so many details.

"I understand people want to read about her and she cannot escape from being harassed because she is my daughter. It is not harmful if they make up stories about me but she is only a five-year-old child. Can’t the public sacrifice a little bit of their curiosity so the child can grow up in a healthy environment? Can’t they at least just wait till she’s older?”

Up close, it’s easy to see why Wong’s face graces so many magazine covers. She has beautiful, big round eyes. She says her tall and slender figure requires little maintenance, even after she gave birth to Ching-tung. And Wong is a trend-setter. What she wears will often become the hottest fahsion items of the season - even though she seems to be the only person able to carry off what are often quirky designs.

Born in 1969, Wong moved to Hong Kong with her family from Beijing at the end of 1987 when she was 18. Her enthusiasm for singing led her to the respected voice coach Tai Sze-chung and , at just 20, she was recommended by Tai to Cinepoly, with which she secured a record deal.

In 1989, Wong released her debut album, Shirley Wong Ching-man, a stage name she then used, which won her Commercial Radio’s Ultimate Female Newcomer(Bronze) award. In 1991, she left for the United States to study music. When she returned the next year, she released the album Coming Home, which became her first platinum record. She retrieved her real name, Wong Fei - Faye Wong - in 1994 and has so far made 22 studio albums.

In 1997, Wong announced she would make no more Cantonese albums when she left Cinepoly for global giant EMI. But she does sing the occcasional Cantonese song in addition to the records in Putonghua. “It is a marketing decision,” she says. “To sing well, one has to master the language in order to deliver the best sound. Putonghua is my native tongue so naturally I’m more confident with this language. But records are considered a commodity and we must take sales into account.”

Wong’s singing and songwriting talents, if widely recognised, are often tagged under the “alternative” label, although she has been voted best female singer on numerous occasions in Hong Kong, the mainland and Southeast Asia, and took the best alternative song composition trophy last year at the CASH Golden Sail Awards in the SAR with Han Wu Jie.

This kind of success usually brings a measure of satisfaction, so how does Wong still find herself singing songs she deosn’t particularly like? “I enjoy performing my own compositions but my taste in music is too off-mainstream and only a few people appreciate that,” says Wong, who has covered songs by Tori Amos and collaborated with Cocteau Twins. “I know what the masses like and I know they skip my compositions and listen to the commercial tracks. Hong Kong is not like Japan, where it accomodates various musical styles. I have too many business partners and I must consider their interests as well. I’m more mature now and I strike a balance between my personal interests and commercial value.”

Thus, she is promoting her new film. It is the Lunar New Year crowd-drawer Chinese Odyssey 2002, her fourth film, in which she plays opposite Tony Leung Chiu-wai. It is also a testament to her new, more-mellow attitude. When she last played opposite Leung in Chungking Express in 1994, Wong barely spoke to her co-star. This time, in a hectic two-month shoot over Christmas, she says the pair got on well. Leung told the South China Morning Post she “seemed like a different person this time. She is very cheerful and friendly.”

Wong plays the role of Princess Wu Shuang, who escapes from her palace for fun, often disguising herself as a man, only for both a man and a woman to fall for her. “Filming Chungking Express was painful for me because I had no idea what I was doing at all,” she says. “But Chinese Odyssey 2002 was an enjoyable experience - though I didn’t have time to sleep. The team spirit was fantastic.”

But it’s not just her character that changed between the two movies, she insists. Wong Kar-wai, the director of Chungking Express, and Jeff Lau Chun-wai, who wrote and directed Chinese Odyssey 2002, were two extremes. “As I am not confident and experienced with acting, I need demonstrations on how to act,” she says. “Jeff gave me very clear direction: he is willing to teach, whereas Wong Kar-wai did not want me to understand what was on his mind. I just had to perform what he told me to and some of the situations were quite embarrassing. Sometimes I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. It was good for me because there was no need for me to analyse the character. But now I want to know more about acting.”

In Wong’s 1994 song Exit, she describes herself as having a lack of patience. That’s one thing that has not changed. After 30 minutes, a clutch of cigarettes and a snack attack of toast, she gets up with an “Is that OK?” and has exited left before even her hovering assistants can pretend it was their idea.

------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCE: THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

[comic-watch]

The Trinity has found Steve Trevor, but not the way they were expecting. Now Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman must stop Deimos and revert Steve back to human form. Read all about it in Trinity.

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Trinity #21 Author: James Robinson Artists: Patch Zircher & Tyler Kirkham Colors: Gabe Eltaeb Letters: Josh Reed & Carlos M. Mangual Publisher: DC Comics

!!!Spoiler Warning!!!

What You Need to Know: The Trinity has become the closest group in the DC universe, and together they have been trapped in a dream world, thanks to Poison Ivy, and even fought against Circe and her demonic Pandora Pits. No matter what the big team of DC gets themselves into, they know that their friends and allies have their back. Recently the Trinity had gone searching for Wonder Woman’s home island of Themyscira. They found a ship that was in distress and, as the good heroes they are,  went to save the crew. However, instead of saving anyone, a portal opens up and sucks the team into a magical world known as Skartaris. On arrival, Superman notices he is powerless, and Wonder Woman seems to be blind! The depowered trio have to fight through hordes and hordes of different mythical creatures before finding Warlords home and daughter as they are being raided by the evil Deimos’ army. The Trinity helps defend the city of Shamballah and then realizes that the land has aged them significantly. Warlords daughter Jennifer changes there age back to normal, then shows the team around the castle including a room full of familiar and unfamiliar technology that Batman was significantly interested in. Without getting many answers, Warlord sends the team home where they started debriefing the mission to Steve Trevor; an ARGUS member that has been longtime friends with Wonder Woman and the rest of the League. Before the team lets go of all their information they realize that all is not as it seems. Steve asks about the task force they found dead in Skartaris by name, which no one had mentioned before, and without another word, the team confronts the phony Steve Trevor just in time for Deimos to reveal himself. Deimos had captured Steve and tricked the Trinity and now they must search around for clues as to where he has hidden their friend. Batman had been investigating the Blue Strike task force team since they arrived back home. Batman had found encrypted data that each member of the team had to go find, and afterward, they found a guarded temple in the middle of a jungle in New Guinea. Guarding the fortress is a couple of orc-like creatures, one being Steve Trevor!

What You’ll Find Out: As the orcs come raging after the team they realize that this is a harder fight than first thought. Obviously, the orcs are just regular people transformed so the team has to hold back while fighting. Luckily, Batman had knock-out gas that put the orcs right to sleep so the team could search and rescue Steve and defeat Deimos.

The story transitions throughout the issue from current time to the last arc when the team was still in Skartaris. We get a little more detail as to what was said between warlord, Jennifer and the rest of the group. Warlord explains that his lack of morality stems from the need for survival on Skartaris.

The story flips back to the team infiltrating the jungle fortress and beating up a team of Blue Strike security. Together they break open a huge vault door and find what seems to be a trophy room. Like most comic book trophy rooms we find mostly mystical items and relics. Batman determines the artifacts are new and that they are a mix of magic and modern tech. The only answer he can come up with is that Blue Strike is mining Skartaris for its weapons and tech; the only question is, where is the security?

A small security team seems a little light for such a large secret, as a portal begins to show a huge army led by Warlord and his daughter. Flipping back to the computer chamber seen in the previous adventure, Batman and Jennifer walk together as Jennifer tries again to justify her earlier actions. Jennifer explains she used the Trinity as bait for Deimos and Batman doesn’t buy it, believing that Deimos is hiding from Warlord. Jennifer promises this isn’t true and that no matter where Deimos is, his evil follows. In the now, The team hears a voice before opening the portal for Warlord as Deimos finally reveals his true self to the team.

He immediately captures Superman and Batman with magic forces and sends orc Steve back into the fight against Wonder Woman. With doubt as to who the true bad guy is still lingering, the issue closes with Deimos getting closer to destroying the Trinity.  

What Just Happened? James Robinson, Patch Zircher and the rest of this creative team starts to head in the right direction as “Trinity” starts to wrap the Skartaris story up. This issue uniquely went back and forth in only two periods of time, and not truly enough to annoy the reader. A bit of detail is added to the earlier story from Robinson as we get to see inside the conversations between the patrons of Skartaris and the team. Each has their own speech bubble on the first page that gets further context in later conversations; showing how the conversations and events lead to the current actions of the team. I have gone on to complain about Robinson’s treatment of Superman and Batman and in some ways, I still argue that he can’t write these two characters well. Their interactions and one-liners are cringe-worthy and at some point, you have to wonder how dumbed down you can make these two characters. In another mindset, it almost reminds me of the bronze/silver age of writing, which can be taken as a compliment or insult depending on how you take it. In my opinion, it’s not the worst writing I’ve found in the industry, but definitely not the best either. The fight scene at the beginning is a fun ride and as always, the fights are the highlight of “Trinity” this issue. So it really takes a lot to say this issue is worth reading when there is only one fight scene. Yes, the fight against the orc Steve and the other Blue Strike members is the only fight scene we get other than a quick panel of the team rushing at security guards. Other than that it’s mostly a bunch of standing and walking around. Thank the lord, Zircher and the art team comes in to fill the bleak blanks left by Robinson’s story with amazing linework and color that highlights the team at their strongest. The fight against the orcs does look amazing and makes you wish there were more punches and kicks thrown around during this issue. Instead, we get some incredibly drawn Wonder Woman and an extremely detailed version of both Warlord and Deimos that bring chills down the reader’s neck.

Rating: 7/10.  

Final Thoughts: While I have wanted so badly to enjoy this last arc of “Trinity” James Robinson has truly made it difficult. At this point, I only read the title so I can warn fans of what “unique” taste you’d have to have in order to enjoy this title. I grade the title so highly due to the incredible art by Zircher and the fact that, as a child, you may actually really enjoy this easy-to-read story that, in one way or another, maybe kind of fun. For someone that has a love for these characters and their complexities though, I’d recommend staying away from it.

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REVIEW:  Trinity #21 (The Lies of Warlord and the Rise of Deimos) Any thoughts on the latest issue of Trinity? Read my review before the last issue comes out! The Trinity has found Steve Trevor, but not the way they were expecting. Now Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman must stop Deimos and revert Steve back to human form.

[antiagingsol-blog]

Anti Aging Cosmetics Eliminate Years From Skin

It might take several years for age lines to base on the face, however they can be removed in a matter of mins with the help of anti-aging cosmetics. There are various other points that people can do to earn them vanish for a longer amount of time, like using shots that immobilize the nerves in the face. These treatments are quite pricey to use and also require that an individual get injections several times a year. A less expensive method for hiding creases is to cosmetics that are commonly utilized as base cosmetics applications. These wrinkle reducers can be located in lotions, or liquid base makeup applications as well as can be related to the face each day. Considering that percentages of these wrinkle-reducing formulas are used, it is normally the most cost reliable methods of concealing the effects of age in the facial region. A lot of creases are lowered in look due to the fact that the items have extra moisturizing homes in them. Other skin conditions can be concealed with using these products also. Skin discolorations can be concealed with an application of a colored cosmetics base. These cosmetics make the skin appear softer, smoother and also younger. Some cosmetics have nutrients added that minimize the quantity that skin ages even better. Vitamin E will certainly help fix any type of scarring that strikes the skin 's surface from acnes or rips to the skin. Cosmetics that have this vitamin in them are centered on making the skin appear more younger, and it is to a factor. To maintain healthy skin, a woman ought to consume a healthy diet plan, beverage lots of water and get a full night 's sleep. Then she could use cosmetics as a beauty item and also not as a beauty maintenance item. The anti-oxidant chemicals that are in all kinds of wellness and beauty products could counteract the variety of germs that develop on the skin. These radicals cause skin to age at a quicker price as well as this attribute has actually made anti-oxidant cosmetics incredibly popular. People add these cosmetics to their daily regimen of makeup applications and are thrilled to see the visible distinctions in their complexion in roughly 2 weeks. A lot of cosmetics applications act as a barrier versus ecological components. These cosmetics should be physical removed from the face region daily through some kind of rubbing process that is not as well difficult. This is since the cosmetics with anti-oxidant buildings cause cells to regenerate and also leave dead cells behind. If these cosmetics are not gotten rid of everyday, they can trigger maturing to increase and also any kind of anti-aging therapies would certainly be termed as useless.

Do you want more informations on antiagins solutions ? So visit lifecell anti aging treatment

[Music] hey everybody its Angie and welcome to hot and flashy today's video is my year-end roundup of the best anti-agers of 2016 so these are the best things that I use this year to turn back the clock on Aging so in 2016 I tried lots of masks creams lotions potions sunscreens and a new injectable a new laser and some new makeup tricks you know I always say that 50 is a gift that keeps on giving and now that I'm getting closer to 55 it's giving me even more presence which I would like to be able to return but can't in the form of gray hair and sparse eyelashes and eyebrows and enlarged pores new wrinkles and new sagging my channel here hot and flashy the goal is to help me and help you to look the best that we can as we age people who watch me fall all over the spectrum of anti-aging some people want to go into it all natural some people only want to use topical some people want to do procedures and more aggressive intervention and so I like to investigate it all and so you can find it all here so let's start first off with the thing that I think has made the biggest change in my skin that I've seen over the year and of course over the last 4 years and that is prescription retin-a I am using the 0.1% tretinoin cream I started in four years ago with the 0.05% last year I bumped up to the strongest lengthy 0.1% so I now have a full year under my belt of using the 0.1% and I have to say it has been great I cannot really believe the changes that I've seen in my skin it is a long-term play you do have to use it for a long long time to see results I didn't really see any results until I've been using it six to nine months and then it just kept growing and growing so by the three-year mark I was like blown away at how you know the clock was turning backwards on my face it's been studied since the mid 80s it is the gold standard of anti-aging and this is great stuff if you can get your hands on unfortunately the more of us that figure out that this works the more demand it creates in the marketplace and then the pharmaceutical companies start jacking the price up so I have heard from viewers that this is retailing for anywhere from two hundred and fifty dollars to six hundred and fifty dollars for a 40 gram tube like this I paid $10 for this because for some reason my insurance company covered it a lot of people say that their insurance will not cover it I also know in some parts of Europe you can't get it at all in England and all this other stuff in other parts is over-the-counter I went to Spain last summer I bought two tubes for 12 bucks apiece in Mexico you can get it cheap at the airport so you know it's crazy how its regulated in some places not regulated in other places but Americans who couldn't get this I have great news for you there is an acne treatment that is a tretinoin dual derivative that is now available over-the-counter this is a new development 2016 it happened over the summer I just found out about it and that is that adapt alene brand name different is available over-the-counter this is another vitamin a derivative this is a synthetic but it does work much like tretinoin does this has been studied in a few studies also as a wrinkle cream so it has been shown to work as a wrinkle cream but with much less irritation than tretinoin this one was $29 for one point six ounces and this one was $14 for the half an ounce so if you had been wanting to try this and just couldn't get your hands on it here is a great new option for you as I mentioned before I do like a good procedure but because my tretinoin use I got to say I used some of the procedures that I had done in the past much much less this year so for example I had gotten filler a couple of times in the past this year I was completely filler free I didn't use any filler the filler that I had gotten before has completely worn off so my face is still are free but I feel like because of the tretinoin I don't really need it I feel like my skin is firmer and plumper looking and all that great stuff I do still continue to use Botox but I got to say I'm using it much much less than I used to just because I do like the preventative aspect of it so I'm going to put Botox as one of like the best anti-aging procedures that you can get the one thing that I did try this year is a Botox alternative is called Dysport I did like the Dysport better it's not as widely used as Botox but I feel like the main difference is that the Dysport does like spread a little bit more so it just softens the lines between where the injectable stops and your non paralyzed muscles start so I had a Fraxel dual laser treatment done and can I tell you that I absolutely loved it but for bang for your buck I still will say that Botox is like number one on my list and there is no downtime where this one laser treatment was $1500 it makes like micro channels of injuries in your skin it helps with collagen production with the laser there was like three or four days of downtime where my skin was just like fluffing and it was so impressive to see that and then it was oh my gosh it was beautiful like baby skin afterwards it was like velvet I just couldn't believe it unfortunately that velvet stage didn't really last that long for me it was definitely worth it because it did get rid of this actinic keratosis I have over here when I did my three-month check-in that wasn't gone yet and I was still hoping it took it about six months for that to really disappear but once it did I had had a scar there and like a little bump there that wouldn't go away and after about six months it finally did go away and now that skin is nice and smooth so I got to say that laser treatment really did take care of that so if you were a Sun worshiper and you're worried about skin cancer this is a treatment that can actually remove some of your skin cancers to come in the future it definitely got rid of a lot of my discolorations faded a lot of my age spots and brown spots this is a dual laser and my only criticism was of my provider that she only used one of the wavelengths there are two one is for surface discolorations and surface wrinkles and it did do some good stuff for my service wrinkles but the other one is a deeper laser that's more for texture like pores I don't really like this group Lee skin I have down here so I would like to have seen what the other lasers results would have been and that's why I'm actually thinking of getting it done again but having or use the other part of the wavelength so for the best over-the-counter skin care of 2016 there was a big splash when matrixyl synth-6 came out and I did try a matrixyl synth-6 product this is from timeless skincare this is their matrixyl synth-6 i put it in a test using it on my neck and i combined it with an over-the-counter retinol because i couldn't use my prescription tretinoin on my neck anymore and so i wanted to see if using a combination of ingredients would help with my neck and boy did it ever I did a video showing the results after I use the combination of these two for six months this is the Sarah V skin renewing cream serum this is their over-the-counter retinol I had used another retinol previously but it irritated my neck just as much as the prescription tretinoin but this combo and this in particular did not irritate my skin at all and so by the end of the six months my neck was looking fantastic I took the after pictures and I couldn't even believe how good they were and again that videos link will be in the information box below this one so the combination of these two are the best over-the-counter that I found this year so let's move on to the best temporary wrinkle treatment I tried a couple of different masks this year I try to mask with magnets in it I try to mask with gold in it I tried one of those temporary things that you put under your eyes that like makes a film over your skin and makes it so you can't even move your skin that thing we're great until you put makeup on and then poof away it went so the best of temporary wrinkle treatments is the de marche labs relaxing lift gold instant wrinkle smoothing mask with 24 karat gold I was sent this product I tried it in a try at Tuesday video and I was surprised at how well it worked it smooth on my under eye wrinkles it diminished my pores amazingly in just 10 minutes you put this stuff on it gold it goes on gold then it dries to white then you wash it off then you can put on makeup and the effect seemed to stay even when I was like smiling it kept my smile lines from crinkling up as much as they usually do it only lasted for a few hours I'm not going to say that it was like Chanel would last all day or anything but it did show some promise and I would use it in the future like if I was going to a party all right you guys know that I cannot talk antiaging without talking sunscreen and in 2016 I did another massive review of all mineral sunscreen the best sunscreen in 2016 was again the Hydra peptides solar defense this is an SPF 30 this is the best one under liquid makeup the other sunscreen that really is fabulous but doesn't work as well under liquid foundation is the exuberance sheer daily protector this is an SPF 50 PA plus plus plus plus which means it gives you full spectrum coverage over all the rays that cause aging and skin cancer but the big news that I learn in 2016 is that exuberance is parent company is NeoStrata and NeoStrata makes a sunscreen that is identical to exhuming it's for about half the price this one retails for $45 for and ounce this one's about 27 dollars an ounce and then right at the end of the year I of course started looking at sunscreens for the 2017 video and I found a couple of sunscreens that I'm loving I haven't done the full test to see how they are under makeup and everything but very few of them they look good on their own and there aren't days when I really don't want to wear any makeup but I still want to wear sunscreen and I don't want to look white or I don't want look super shiny or gray or weird so the one that I found miss here that is really great to wear on its own that I absolutely love is by skinceuticals it's their physical matte UV defense sunscreen broad-spectrum SPF 50 this is a beautiful sunscreen and it's so lightweight and fluffy it's almost like a whipped up texture and I just love it and it goes perfectly with my skin tone so I can wear it without having to put any makeup on over it it doesn't reflect any light so that is a great one for me another one that I have been using and loving lately is not a hundred percent mineral you know I do like the mineral sunscreens because the chemical sunscreens tend to irritate my skin especially the ones that were loaded up with like five or six different chemical sunscreens so if I turn it over it's got Abel Ben's own homo Sally octonauts a you know on and on I kind of stay away from those because those are the ones that really burn my eyes but I found recently but the ones that just use zinc oxide and octa NOx a really don't irritate my skin as much so I picked this one up so this is Obagi medical sunshield matte broad-spectrum SPF 50 you get three ounces so the nice thing too if you're not going to run out anytime soon and it looks like your standard white sunscreen but when you rub it in it just disappears into your skin and it leaves a lovely matte not shiny finish so there you go it's been already it's not white it's not shiny I just love it it doesn't accentuate cores and wrinkles so it's a really great sunscreen and it doesn't really smell like anything it doesn't feel greasy to the touch it dries back it's very very nice alright the last two categories are hair related I know a lot of people my age where our hair is getting thinner our hair is getting grayer our eyebrows and eyelashes follow suit as well and in last couple of years I had tried Latisse and I had also tried rapid lash both of which work fabulously I didn't like Latisse because it hurt I couldn't stung my eyes and they were burning all the time I loved I loved rapid lash it was inexpensive it worked great for me my lashes grew my brows grew then all of a sudden they just stopped growing for no apparent reason it just stopped working so at that time I decided to switch it up and try a different one so I picked revitalash advanced and I've been using this one for about four or five months now and I got to say this has been working great for me this has the tiniest little brush delivery system so I really love that it's not cumbersome like the Latisse is you just take the brush and every night before you go to bed last step paint one swipe on each eye right where the eyelashes meet the eyelid then I also apply it to my eyebrows a couple of strokes in each eyebrow this tube is expensive but it lasts so if I only have to buy these a year it is so worth it my eyebrows have really been growing in like crazy much much better than the rapid lash and my eyelashes too are longer and they're also fuller so loving that product and then my you know last little discovery this year was that huh where my roots were coming in gray and I had to conceal those so I tried a lot of the powders and a lot of the different things but the ones that I prefer are the sprays and I had bought two of them over the course of the year this one is the Rita Hasan root concealer touch-up spray and the souther one is L'Oreal root cover-up temporary gray concealer spray these both contain almost the exact same ingredients they work just about almost exactly the same this one is more like 25 dollars this one is like ten dollars and I feel like they are interchangeable but yet I reach for this one more often I can't really explain why and this is new one that I did just buy but for covering up your roots and stuff is so convenient because you know you just spray it on there the only warning that I have for you is that it does tend to you know overspray and leave little dots on your forehead so after you spray your hair you might look in the mirror and be like oh my god do I have a new age spot today no just you know clean it off with a little spit and the nice thing about the mo is that once you get it on your roots it is waterproof it doesn't cost you go swimming it doesn't get come off you get caught in the rain it doesn't come off if you have a hot flash so you won't have it dribbling down your face so those are all the successes that I had in anti-aging this year I'd love to hear if you tried a new procedure or a new cream that you swear by something that you love feel free to leave me a comment below I'm sure everyone else would like to hear about it too because as you know I love to exchange ideas with you guys I can't do everything because I only have one face but I like to try to get through a lot of it so there's a lot more coming up in 2017 here on hot and flashy I hope you stay tuned and so that's the end of today's video so thanks everybody for your time you know I always appreciate your watching and have a great day and I'll see you next time bye

[antiagingsol-blog]

Anti Aging Cosmetics Get rid of Years From Skin

It might take several years for age lines to develop on the face, yet they can be eliminated in an issue of mins with the help of anti-aging cosmetics. There are other points that people could do making them go away for a longer time period, like utilizing shots that incapacitate the nerves in the face. These treatments are rather pricey to utilize and require that an individual get shots several times a year. A more affordable approach for concealing wrinkles is to cosmetics that are frequently used as base makeup applications. These crease reducers could be discovered in lotions, or fluid base makeup applications and could be put on the face every day. Because percentages of these wrinkle-reducing solutions are utilized, it is typically the most cost efficient methods of concealing the effects of age in the facial area. Many wrinkles are decreased in look because the items have extra moisturizing buildings in them. Various other skin maladies can be hidden through the usage of these items as well. Skin stainings could be masked with an application of a colored make-up base. These cosmetics make the skin show up softer, smoother and also younger. Some cosmetics have nutrients added that lower the amount that skin ages even better. Vitamin E will certainly aid fix any scarring that strikes the skin 's surface from acnes or holes to the skin. Cosmetics that have this vitamin in them are fixated making the skin seem even more vibrant, and it is to a point. To maintain healthy and balanced skin, a woman should eat a healthy diet, beverage lots of water as well as get a complete evening 's sleep. After that she could utilize cosmetics as an elegance product as well as not as a beauty maintenance product. The anti-oxidant chemicals that are in all types of wellness and beauty products can counteract the number of bacteria that create on the skin. These radicals create skin to age at a faster price as well as this attribute has made anti-oxidant cosmetics incredibly popular. People add these cosmetics to their everyday regimen of cosmetics applications as well as are enjoyed see the noticeable differences in their complexion in around 2 weeks. A lot of cosmetics applications serve as an obstacle against environmental components. These cosmetics should be physical gotten rid of from the facial region every day via some sort of scrubbing procedure that is not too difficult. This is since the cosmetics with anti-oxidant residential properties cause cells to regrow as well as leave dead cells behind. If these cosmetics are not removed daily, they might cause aging to increase and any type of anti-aging therapies would be termed as ineffective.

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 never age you ever wish you could find that her secret well today I found women who literally look half the rage we put their pictures up online for America to see and we also asked their studio audience to guess their age and everybody guessed they were decades younger their woman just like you and they're ready to spill their secrets they could do it so can you you can defy your age y'all curious about this before I first you're gonna hang out like a secret eradicate wrinkles now America thought Donna was 34 years old but Donna's chronological age is 52 come on out Donna when I get a look careful I cannot believe you are 52 I am so what is it what are they single look at you people normally think I'm a lot younger especially men who try to hit on me around the hole got a nice feeling which is which is quite nice which is very nice so there it's shocked amazing you tell me your age yeah people for the most part think I'm usually in my mid to late thirties which is which is which is quite flattering I must say well you should be flat because you are a beautiful woman are you willing to reveal your secrets yes I am doctor open Rafi get your little toolbox here show us your age-defying trick it is it is white vinegar vinegar cinnamon and honey so I have this concoction that I make where I combined make my own exfoliating face mask with honey and cinnamon and I find that it takes off a lot of the dead skin cells and it makes my face more moisturize and it also makes it you know quite supple probably how you do it it seems so simple yeah so actually what I do is I combine the cinnamon with honey I mix it up and actually use this every night I leave it on for about 30 minutes and then I use white vinegar as an astringent which it's delicious as well you can also eat it absolutely I would even leftovers me and then you could use the astringent which kind of tightens your skin and prevents it from sagging yes how long you been using this for I've been actually using this for a few years but as I get older I use it more frequently I gotta say I'm amazed something so simple can make such a huge difference in your life do you want to try it yeah please okay I'll be there I'll go first that's a move like you I'll definitely do it yeah don't you feel it working a little bit well I'd like to lick it off I could it feels it feels cooling acting but you know I actually looked into these tips in fact I did for all the guests onto the show today the vinegar I love because it keeps yourselves hydrated which is always a valuable thing to prevent wrinkling but I specially love the cinnamon in the honey yeah and the cinnamon in particular is a fantastic exfoliant which is probably the best way out there to fight off wrinkles oh it's great so I've made you a little you look wonderful guys like this I guess hmm all right now I'm gonna show you why I think this is so cool I I built you a little replica of your skin okay it's uh what's that maybe it's a big replica of your skin your skin sort of looks like this this big parachute reflects what's going on in our bodies now you'll notice we have some audience members here and with all women um oh maybe a little bit weakly pretend you're weekly I know you're ready not all right and what happens is the collagen in our body starts to get weak and especially as we get older the hormones aren't quite perfect you don't have enough collagen to lift up this parachute then look at this front area over here it's completely worn through right there's not no collagen a that's a that's a big wrinkle right there but there was your exfoliate with cinnamon paste it changes everything cuz that's nice bringing these big burly men burly men come on in burly men pink Alfa college everyone pulled back hard as you can it reinforces your skin it gives you less wrinkles I'm not that is pretty spectacular you don't think you that kind of war over there that's why you don't have Rico I think thanks girly men I thought my audience members I appreciate like a secret government agent discoloration on your chest neck in hands now America thought Diane was 45 years old we checked her driver's license which says that she is you ready all its sixteen she having no sunspots um well I'm the only girl so and the boys don't count so um my mother lived to be 94 and I will say that when she died she didn't look a day over eighty that's pretty good I got that yeah so you say fifteen years they allow it because you don't have any discolorations at all I mean looking at all of your skin so what's your secret gonna show it to us sure okay first of all in the morning when I am making my coffee I take some lemon and I squeeze it over the backs of my hands and the decolletage a decoupage of course yes Latasha you know what that is yes it's and um the acid and in the lemon helps to bleach out any you know when we were kids we used to put it in our hair and go out in the Sun it does yeah so it bleaches out any kind of discoloration you may have of course I don't have it yeah you don't have any company might actually blocks melanin production you