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Have one of my own shed feathers and a complimentary kit of Spikes!

Have some luminescent bookmarks! Great for late night reading.

That was a wonderful adventure, albeit one I think I'd need to read the other series to fully understand. The way the Lone Power showed up was really clever- and definitely not something I would have noticed!

Congrats to Jacob and Lise on Ordeals finished, Darkness cast out, and adventures begun!

(And I will try to write more in-depth commentary once I have an actual keyboard and coffee.)

San Tulkas makes so much sense. I assume the original gifts were food, as seen in the traditional elven tale of Good King Wénceslassë. If we assume Tulkas set up shop right after the fall of Utumno, he would initially have been giving to the Avari - the Quendi who refused to voyage to Valinor. Given that the only Valinorean contact they'd had was with Oromë the Hunter, Tulkas probably took up hunting himself so as not to overly spook them. Then, when Men eventually showed up, he just stuck with it.

Now, the other theory I have problems with, starting the the fact that it's introduced with a reference to the Fifth Age. Tolkien was pretty clear that we were in the Sixth or Seventh (he seemed to view one or both of the World Wars as the changeover). So, tut!

I also protest the characterisation of Maglor. First off, who says Elves are white? The Noldor have always been the darkest-coloured elves (Galadriel's branch aside, House Finarfin is barely Noldorin); it's only our assumptions that make us picture them as paler than pale. Tolkien, notably, spent far more time describing eyes and hair than skin (assuming you accept 'fair' as not indicating colour). So the whole illusion aspect is irrelevant. (It also shows a kind of 'illusion' that doesn't appear in Tolkien - elven disguises were always item based, not 'magic' like that.)

Secondly, Maglor wouldn't be hunting the Silmaril! He threw the blessed thing into the ocean, why would he go after it again? Yes, the Oath was still out there, but he knew to let well alone.

I also highly doubt that any group of Quendi would take their name from a king of Numenor. I'm pretty sure 'Atanamir' means 'Jewel of Men', too, which (though connecting to the jewel theme) is distinctly human, not elven.

hS

Please have a pot of black-hole coffee, and my welcome.

Hey! Take a bolter. You'll need it. The Sues are EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE.

It could be you. It could be me! It could even be- BANG!

What, he was obviously a Stu. Just watch, he'll glitter any second now. Look... see, glitter! wait, that's just blood...

Hmmm...

I think I may have just shot myself.

Have a laser pistol and a half-kilo of lembas.

Mrs. Riley's face was one of the most welcome sights Marisa could have imagined - one of her most sympathetic not-quite-teachers from elementary school, a wizard?

Still, stubborn pre-teen anxiety indicated she must have done something wrong - her parents had called her for advice on discipline, after all! So, while her parents got Mrs. Riley ("You can call me Candice, it's alright.") settled, and her brother wasn't quite encouraged to sit down and participate in the conversation himself, Marisa mentally rushed through everything she could have done wrong, or better, from her temporary meltdown on after.

That was why it took her parents two tries to get her attention. "Uh- yes?" she asked, looking first at her dad, then her mom - and then Mrs. Riley waved, so Marisa looked back towards her.

"So, I understand we had a 'situation' today?"

"Yeah," Marisa confirmed, sighing internally. Were they going to address her disappearing Manual, or was this just about the school stuff? "I couldn't handle having to watch a movie instead of doing more schoolwork today... so I screamed and ran off."

This explanation, even shortened, was miles above what she would have been able to articulate on her own before taking the Oath; one of the things that had been emphasized in the new AR program had been looking at things objectively.

"I didn't kick anyone, but I was really loud. I ran out of the classroom, the school, all the way across the road. I stopped there, though; the hill was too steep."

Going off her parents' expressions, this was no more than they had been told over the phone. Her father's expression was edging back towards 'angry disappointment', but Mrs. Riley being there meant he wasn't going to yell at her - another advantage behind wizards being in the house!

Mrs. Riley nodded. "And would this be a first time for this sort of behavior, at your new school?"

Marisa tilted her head, thinking, then nodded. "I've been upset, before, but this is the first time in middle school I've run away from anything." That clarification was essential - she'd had a history of troublesome behaviors in school including running outside the building once during gym class in fourth grade, even if grades-wise she was a model student.

"And you've already been told what the punishment is?" Again, Marisa nodded. "One week's in-school-suspension during science class - that's when I got upset - and at home, two weeks without TV." Then she grimaced.

"And one week without computer - but that has my Manual, and now it's broken! So I got upset over that, and I did a spell just now to prove to them-" she nodded in the direction of her mom and dad. "That wizardry's real, and that I need my Manual back. And I only used the limited version of the spell - no psychotropics," she added, as if that would help clarify.

"But that's not all there is to it, is there?" Mrs. Riley said - her voice was softer, now, and Marisa now had the impression that her neither her spell nor her temper-tantrum were the problem.

"I- no, Mrs. Riley, but, are you a Senior?" Candice looked a bit surprised at the subject change, but she shook her head in reply.

"Just advisory, Marisa. What about it?" She looked over at her parents, unsure of how much she should say at once.

"Well, you knew I was a wizard already through your Manual, right?"

She nodded, and made a gesture towards the temporo-spatial claudication where it was currently housed.

"And my entry didn't disappear after what happened today, right?"

"Marisa, I wouldn't have used the Speech if I had any reason to think you weren't a wizard, or if I didn't think you couldn't handle explaining it to your parents yourself." For protection, Marisa couldn't help but add. Earth was very much a sevarfrith place, after all.

"I did, however, get curious why you hadn't sought out other wizards in the first place," Candice went on, and Marisa winced.

"I'd... already made a friend." By this point, the rest of her family was staring. "I didn't feel like I should be reaching out more."

"Comfort zones," Mrs. Riley said, in a tone of voice that implied she'd heard of this reasoning before - if not quite in this situation. "They can be our undoing, Marisa. You know that." She meant in terms of wizards, and Marisa nodded.

"So, we were close..." she replied - then her eyes widened in realization.

"I was relying on him too much, wasn't I?"

Now it was Mrs. Riley's return to look confused, so Marisa quickly clarified, "My Manual. I'd bonded with it, him, and- I guess the fanfic really was too much." Her shoulders slumped, and her brother used this time to reply,

"Wait, what fanfic?" The expression on his face indicated that he hadn't much exposure with the word, either.

Mrs. Riley looked like she was considering facepalming right then. "Mike, Debbie - I don't suppose you've given Marisa the Talk yet, have you?"

Going solely off their resulting expressions, her parents hadn't - and hadn't thought they would have to for a while yet.

Marisa, meanwhile, was starting to feel lost again.

"Theee one about Internet Strangers? We've had that one."

"That's... not quite what I meant," Mrs Riley replied, "But it overlaps a little."

Marisa thought hard, thinking back on all the stories she'd ever read - both on ffnet, through the AR program, and DeviantArt. About intimacy, and boundaries, and reaching for something that was beyond what others seemed to not think was there... Feeling distinctly uncomfortable - not least because her parents also looked uncomfortable - she said:

"Is this about sex?"

((AN: A speech therapist and yoga instructor, and political activist, the real "Mrs. Riley" is one of my favorite adults to have ever played a role in my life. It only made sense to have her be a wizard here! ^^))

(If you ever apply for permission, your agents would be very busy based off those continua. ;) )

A pleasure to meet you, in any case! What's your favorite mission, if you have one yet?

Hello, and welcome aBoard! For your newbie gift, take this plate of freshly-made SPaGhetti!

Lessee, you're already familiar with the Wiki, so I'm guessing you already know to look there if you've got any questions first. So if you haven't yet read them, may I point you towards the Original Series and the Constitution? They're pretty much the only required reading around these parts.

Hope you like it here!

The show itself is slice of life. I'd recommend starting with S1E1 Left in the Dark. It provides a nice introduction to the characters, especially Lincoln Loud, the only boy among 10 sisters.

We know that agents do missions that never get reported - Jay and Acacia clearly aren't newly partnered at the start of Rambling Band. So a lost mission report just becomes an unreported mission.

I guess the other scenario is if a mission is actively deleted by the author, as in 'I am no longer happy with this'. I'd think that counts as removing it from continuity, which means the badfic was never killed at all.

hS

Lise was sitting half-curled on her bed when she heard the distinct pop of displaced air. She swung her legs off, wincing at the chill of the floor, and crossed to the window.

There was a figure out there, half-hidden between the derelict greenhouses. Lise grinned, and reached for her jacket.

Five minutes later she was crunching over the gravel towards her visitor. She rounded one of the scrap-metal sculptures that dotted the yard and stopped in front of him. "Hey."

"Hi." Jacob gave a little wave. "I pulled your coordinates from the bookshelf spell… hope you don't mind."

"No, no, that's fine." Lise went to lean on the glass, but it creaked alarmingly, so she just stood. "No problem."

Jacob nodded, and looked around. "It's all a bit… post-apocalyptic," he said, gesturing at the sculpture. Then he coloured slightly. "Sorry, that was rude."

"It's fine," Lise repeated. "We've got a cherry orchard round the other side… well, I say that, it's got a couple of cherry trees, anyway. And there's the racquetball court… it's kind of a weird house, not gonna lie."

"Right." Jacob chewed on his lip, then said in a sudden rush, "I'm sorry I didn't come earlier, but my parents were furious I'd gone missing, and then I got a visit from a Senior wizard, and then in the morning I had, like, the wizard in charge of all of Britain show up, and then we were off to the beach again, and it just… this is the first chance I got, I promise."

Lise nodded. She'd had her own share of visitors, though none quite so impressive as that. "So what did they say?"

"Well, we passed." Jacob grinned at her. "But I figure you already knew that. And the timeline wasn't changed - the Dark was defeated on schedule, and all that."

Lise nodded again. "And… the Lone Power?"

"That's the really good bit," Jacob said, with breathless enthusiasm. "It worked! You tied It up in Its own banishment. From the time the Afanc attacked Jane to… well, this morning, actually, It couldn't get a single incarnation into the whole of Britain." He sobered slightly and went on. "Diane - that's the regional Senior I mentioned - says the ban broke the moment we returned to our own time, and of course this means the 80s were kind of our own fault, but still… we kept the Lone Power out for two decades!" He stopped, looking guilty. "I mean, you did."

"Yaaay." Lise managed a weak smile. She kicked at the gravel underfoot, head down. "I'm glad it worked out. I was scared…" She shrugged. "That it was all for nothing."

"It wasn't." Jacob reached out, touched her shoulder lightly. "We won. You won."

"-- but I'm still banned." She looked up, met his eyes. "My Advisory says it looks pretty permanent. I can't magic myself into Britain, and, well… her exact words when I asked about flying over were 'I wouldn't want to witness the consequences'."

"Oh, no." Jacob's hand fell back to his side. "I'm sorry, I… I figured if the Lone One got back in, then you…"

"Yeah." Lise sighed, and sat down carefully on the greenhouse's retaining wall. "I guess the rules are different for Powers."

Jacob gazed down at her, then dropped to squat on the gravel. "Hey," he said, lying a hand on her knee. "We'll find a way, right? I mean, wizardry is all about getting one over on that guy."

Lise chuckled, then had to nudge her glasses back up. "Sure. But… I figured we'd be partners."

"We are," Jacob said firmly. "What, you think a little thing like a ban is going to prevent that?"

"Er, yes?" She reached down and picked up a handful of gravel, let it drain through her fingers. "I can't come help you when you have a problem, or anything."

"So I'll bring my problems here." Jacob's smile was distinctly lopsided. "You'll be sick of the sight of me before long, partner."

This time, Lise's laugh came straight from the heart. "I look forward to it." She clapped her hand over his, smiling.

Jacob's answering smile had a thoughtful character. "Do you remember… when we left?" he asked.

Lise looked puzzled. "The spell threw me out of Wales," she said, "and back home. Mom hadn't even noticed I was gone."

"Mm." Jacob glanced aside, back again. "... straight home?"

"I…" A flash of memory came to her: a mountain glowing under an azure sky, a lake pure as crystal, a serpentine neck rising to greet her; and on the lakeshore Will Stanton, and an old man with a hooked nose and the warmest of smiles. "... I'm not sure."

"Yeah?" Jacob looked at her, and his smile was the summer sun come to earth. "Me neither."

---

Author's Miscellaneous Notes:

-I am a sucker for epilogues named 'the beginning'.
-It's not a proper Ordeal without a visit to Timeheart.

hS

A Speech therapist, huh?

That sounds like a very dangerous spell to mess around with, though. How many secrets can it bring to light...?

hS

Hello there! I’m Snowblaze and I’ve been hanging around on the wiki for a while. I’ve now got an account and it’s about time I introduced myself.
My fandoms are Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Warrior Cats, Narnia and Lord of the Rings, and um... I guess that’s it really.

Especially with Tungsten. Because if there's anything I've learned from my recent archive binge that is actually worth explaining, topical, and that I'm capable of desribing, it's there is only one Tungsten. I doubt any of us could stand in for her.

And to answer classicfilmfan's question from my wiki talk page, the mission to take it down for good has been delayed because Real Life does not always arrange itself to suit our hobbies and I haven't yet figured out how the heck to tackle it without my cowriter. I'd only figured out the plan for MY characters. I'm working on some sort of arc for Su and Dio, but seeing as they're not mine and I don't have Tungsten's ingeniously off-the-wall brain, it's hard, and I'm afraid of not doing them justice. {= /

I also started writing the story of how it all went wrong the first time, but like so many of my projects, it's fallen by the wayside until something inspires me to pick it up again. Such as figuring out what happens next and how.

I do know the answer, though. All will be revealed... eventually.

~Neshomeh

It always helps to have more than the title when someone's trying to rec you a new thing and get you excited and curious enough to want to watch it.

What kind of plotlines do the episodes have? Is the show fantasy, or fiction? What do you think is the best episode, or the most interesting one to watch if you want to get a taste of the show to see if you'll like it?

A single episode can easily provide a gateway into a new show: I got into Supernatural after my friend told me excitedly about a new (at the time) episode called "The French Mistake", in which the main characters got sent into an alternate reality where their lives were a TV show, and the entire cast basically just poked fun at themselves and it was hilarious. (It's in season 6, if anyone's curious.) That hit my love of AUs and meta, and so I went home and watched first that and then another handful of episodes that looked especially interesting...and then I just went and started from the beginning. I stuck with that show for a good...nine seasons, I think? Maybe ten? I've fallen out of it over the past few years, but that's not the point.

The point is that if you can get someone excited about a book, or a show, or a soundtrack, or a movie, or a group...that's what will make them more likely to check it out. They need to catch some of your excitement. That won't always work, obviously--outside of time constraints and so on, people won't necessarily share your taste enough to get excited to begin with--but if you tell them a bit more than the title (say, the show's premise, particular actors, characters or plot premises you think they'll love, the things Neshomeh mentioned), there's more of a chance they'll get into it.

~Z, with apologies for any uncaught typos. Autocorrect is an interesting thing.

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

SPOILERSPOILERTHISISJUSTFILLERANDIAPOLOGIZE.

Also: in b4 the Lone Power banned Itself. Best kind of power play (on words).

And I am here for that sort of headcanon (re: Overshadowing), ngl.

This leads us nicely to the "Subjugation" fiasco, where six agents were called in, two chapters were completed, and then nothing. Four of the agents showed up later, but still nothing is known. So is the badfic dead?

I'd like to discuss what happens when missions are deleted. My theory posits that the Badfic comes back to life if this happens.

I love how the show is a throwback to all those 90's Nicktoons, and especially love the animation, which is inspired by comic strips of years past. Another thing I love is the characters.

Well, that's not strictly true. Rather, an entirely new site is about 90% done, featuring modern concepts like 'working on mobiles'. Unfortunately most of the remaining 10% is graphics, which has been slowing me up a lot. I'll get there.

hS

Some of you may be familiar with the webcomic Rain. To those of you who are not, it's about a trans girl called Rain, who spends her senior year at a cathoic high school while presenting as a girl. you can read it here. It also has a TvTropes page here.

Anyway, there's currently a dub project going on for it, and we need voice actors, as well as audio and videos and possibly artists for animation.
If you're interested, here is an invite link to the projects discord server. Auditions for roles end on May 10, so if there's a role you'd like, you can find a form on there.