I'm writing a simple one shot, not really in TMA universe, but with Dreadful Powers and their symbolism.
It takes place during a fantasy battle: swords clashing, spells flying around, various fantasy races, chimerical monsters, a bunch of undead - the whole mess. In the middle of it all Mc, who is basically heavily aligned with The Slaughter and rapidly giving in to its call.
At some point, amidst the dance of chaos and death, he starts a song. It's unclear how, but somehow the cacophony around slowly shifts into a melody, terrible melody. He has no instruments, he doesn't stop fighting, but clanging of swords on metal start to sound suspiciously like guitar strings, heavy thuds on shields are the drums and moaning of dying and wounded turn into a horn blowing.
The whole thing throws people into a raging frenzy - they fight not just to survive but to kill the enemy, to taste blood on their tongue as they use the last bits of strength to sink teeth in a foe's throat. The wind is rising, gathering red blood clouds that extinguish the sun and barely hold the rain of pain and misery.
It's all very graphic, you see.
The idea of it all I borrowed from one fantasy book I read some time ago. The problem is that it was in Russian, and used Russian song "Spirit of War" by Aria. The song is amazing, I absolutely love it - it perfectly fits by its music, lyrics, atmosphere and all - but I intend to write in English. So, I have to find a song in English, that would produce a similar effect.
And here's the problem.
There's a huge lot of songs about war, but the whole bunch I found is ill fitting either by the situation, the mood, or the voice - something. Aria was massively inspired by Iron Maiden, but I didn't find in their repertoire either. Maybe I didn't look hard enough.
The best I've found so far is "The End of The Line" by Metallica, but I wonder if I can find something better.
I guess, I'll also have to crosspost in some musical subreddit.

I was walking our dog Charlie when I saw the graveyard for the first time. A little white fence, not even knee high, ran in a circle around maybe a dozen small headstones. There was space for a small gate along the fence but it was empty now, like a missing tooth. Whether the gate was removed or never existed, I couldn’t tell, but the rest of the fence was in good shape. It even looked freshly painted.
“What do you think, Charlie?” I asked, pulling up my hood.
The sky had been threatening rain all week and it was finally making good. The Weimaraner tilted his head at me and then looked off toward nothing. The fact that nothing happened to be in the same direction of the graveyard, well, I figured it was a coincidence. But dogs always know, don’t they? When something is bad and dangerous and hungry and close. Charlie knew, even warned me in his own way. A shame I didn’t notice until after most everybody was…after it was too late to do anything about it.
Nicole was hanging up pictures when we got back from our walk. I started unpacking one of the billion boxes scattered around the living room. It appeared to contain roughly four thousand dish towels and a single chipped coffee mug. Charlie watched us, patiently, filled with the usual, unshakeable belief that if he sat long enough and looked adorable enough, sooner or later, one of his owners would produce a treat. He was correct and it was my wife who folded first, tossing him a dried sweet potato thing which Charlie gratefully caught mid-air.
“Like the neighborhood?” Nicole asked.
“It’s kinda perfect. Lots of folks out and about, saw a few other families moving in, oh, and there’s even a graveyard in the middle of the development. You know, like how we always dreamed.”
Nicole made an “ick” sound but overall seemed happy.
I heard Bryan and Anna thumping around upstairs, most likely still arguing about who got the room with the attached bath. If they hadn’t sorted it out by dinner, I resolved to think up a weird game they could play where the winner got first bedroom dibs. It was still early in the afternoon, so I caught Nicole up on what I’d seen in our new neighborhood while we unpacked. We were far from the only new occupants of Stone Brooke; at least four other houses had SOLD signs driven into their front yards like stakes through freshly vanquished vampires.
The development was less than a year old and I doubted it would make it more than another six months before being filled to the brim. That was fine with me. It meant our property value would keep going up, up, up and away.
“Do you think we’ll make any friends with our neighbors?” Nicole asked, opening a new box to unpack.
“We’ll be having joint ski vacations and holiday parties in no time,” I guessed. “I’ll try to chat some up next time Charlie and I make our rounds. I’ll even knock on some graves, if you’d like.”
Nicole scowled and shook her head. A thousand teasing jokes about the living dead limping up to our house ran through my mind but each evaporated before escaping my mouth. Eight years of marriage had left me with a finely-honed sense of when to be a clown and when not to push it. And, the truth was, I felt a small twinge of discomfort myself whenever I thought about the little cemetery. It was a family plot, old; would the bodies even be embalmed? Or would you find something rotted down to tar and marrow if you dug up one of the plots?
I shivered.
Nicole smiled. “Looks like maybe somebody just walked over your grave.”
“Not possible. I’m not leaving a body behind when I go, remember? Viking funeral? Have my brother launch fire arrows at a gasoline-soaked canoe with me in it. And then scatter the ashes somewhere meaningful,” I added. “Like the Grand Canyon or the ocean or the last Blockbuster on Earth.
Nicole called for Anna and Bryan and we sat down to a family dinner of move-in-day sandwiches and popcorn and whatever other road-trip snacks we still had from the drive. It was a good night. Bryan was distracted by his phone, a new friend or a girl maybe. Anna was joking with Nicole about something…something to do with school. I can’t remember what, exactly. I really wish I could.
That was the last time we all sat down together as a family for dinner.
I woke up in the middle of our first night in the new house. Some outside sound had entered my dreams. What was it? A whispering or a knocking or rasping. No, not rasping–rustling. Like the sound of many things moving at once but moving quietly, carefully, deliberately. I sat up in bed, blinking against the total darkness of the room.
There it was again; the rustling. Faint and far away, I guessed, but it was so eerie that I could hear it at all.
“Hey, Nicole,” I whispered. “Hey, are you awake?”
Nothing in response other than that rustle again in the dark. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere below me. I got up and stumbled through the room without turning on a light. I don’t know why I didn’t wake Nicole up to listen; I wish I had. I guess I didn’t want her to think I was crazy if I was the only one who heard the sound.
The rustling was actually fainter when I finally made it downstairs. There was only a little light in the house spilling in from outside through half-curtained windows. I paused on the second to last step down and listened. The noise was moving away, growing softer and less frequent. By the time I stepped on the living room rug, the night was silent.
I waited, listened for almost a full minute, then started padding back up the stairs. There was something unsettling about the rustling that made me glad it had stopped. I’d watched a Civil War documentary a few years back and they demonstrated how a battlefield surgeon would operate by sawing through a half a pig carcass then sewing up the wound. They’d pushed in real close during the last part of the demo so you got a great look and even a great listen..
The rustling I’d heard outside the house that night reminded me of the sound of the needle and thread slithering through the pig’s flesh as the surgeon closed the cut.
Wind, I thought. Dream. HVAC system. The first signs of a brain tumor. But probably just the wind traveling through the branches of the maple trees that line our street.
There’s a landing at the top of the stairs with a big window that looks out over the front yard. A silver-gray column of moonlight fell in through the glass, giving enough light to make out a shadow standing on my lawn but not enough to see it clearly. It was a man, tall but a little bent. I remember thinking maybe he was hurt so I moved closer to the window for a cleaner look.
The guy was right at the edge of my yard, nearly in the road. He was facing my house but I couldn’t pick out any details about him. Too many clouds and moonshadows for a good look at his face. We both stared at the other for a minute then the stranger turned and began to walk away. Or, ‘walking’ isn’t entirely the right word. He moved like a man who had just learned to walk and he almost, almost had it figured out.
His knees threatened to collide more than once and he was moving with a limp, favoring his right side. I watched him fall over twice, each time dragging his body along the road for a dozen yards or so before shakily standing up and continuing on like a shell-shocked soldier wandering out of a trench. Each time the man got near a streetlight he would veer away from the glow, stumbling back into darkness and always moving toward the treeline that marked the edge of the woods around our neighborhood.
I stood, frozen in the moonlight, as the night visitor slipped into the forest, movements jerking like a puppet with stiff strings. Then the figure was gone and I was left blinking, wondering if I was dreaming or maybe this was what sleepwalking felt like. It didn’t seem real, any of it; not the rustling, not the man in the yard.
Once I was back in our bedroom, I considered waking up Nicole. But what was I going to tell her? Hey dear, sorry to startle you, I think there was a zombie outside our house. Or maybe just a creepy neighbor. Or maybe your husband is just going slowly, gently, completely crazy. Before getting back into bed, I went and lifted the corner of the curtain on the window, peeking out at the last spot in the treeline where I’d seen the weird guy slip away.
I’m not sure what I was expecting; some trail of destruction, maybe, like Godzilla’s wake on his way to Tokyo. But there was nothing, no sign, no proof there was ever anything at all. Just the sleeping neighborhood, tucked away in the middle of silent woods. The trees were slick with the day’s rain but that would all freeze overnight if it hadn’t already. Streetlights stood out like nails driven into the night, these little bright scars in the dark. I followed the line of them from where it ended at the road back to where it started at the center of the house development.
The graveyard sat high on a hill there at the heart of the neighborhood where the lights started. Or ended, I guess.
I tried to put the bizarre experience out of my mind and laid back in bed next to Nicole.
Charlie and I were on another walk first thing the next morning when we saw another moving truck. This time, however, it looked like the family was on their way out. We stood under a tree watching the movers buzzing back and forth, big, quiet men with thick black belts around their stomachs. The departing family was helping, a man and woman with three three little boys. There was something about the way the parents were behaving that made me stop and observe everybody for a little longer than I usually would, especially with Charlie trying to pull on his leash to go after a Canadian goose.
The adults were zipping boxes from the house to the moving van at warpspeed, almost like they had a deadline. At the same time, both the man and the woman looked so exhausted I was surprised they were standing, much less zipping around like hummingbirds that learned how to drink coffee. They eventually noticed me and Charlie standing across the street, so I waved and walked over.
“Howdy neighbors,” I said, unleashing the most cheerful grin I could drag out.
The couple stopped moving boxes. They stood together, between me and their kids, and I got the unexpected but absolutely unshakable idea they were scared of me. Or, at least, awfully interested in me keeping my distance from their children.
I tried to smile even more disarmingly but it probably went in the other direction.
“We just moved in,” I said, pointing down the street. “How are you all liking Stone Brooke?”
The pair shared a look. They were both around my age, maybe mid-30s, and made an interesting pair. The woman was very tall, her face soaking in shadows cast by a gardening hat. The man was short and balding but muscled like a powerlifter. He took a step toward me and I instinctively tensed up.
“You should leave,” the man said, barely above a whisper.
“Okay,” I said, backing up, “I didn’t mean to-”
“No, I don’t mean here,” he said. “I mean this neighborhood. It’s not a good place.”
His–I assumed wife–was looking around the nearby houses while we talked. Something must have spooked her, because she took two steps forward and leaned in.
“Walter, we don’t know him,” she whispered. “He might be-”
“Okay, June,” Walter said, “okay, you’re right, you’re right. Buddy, I’m sorry, we don’t have anything to talk about. We’re out of here, hopefully before dinner.”
The couple turned away and walked back to their kids. Walter hesitated in his driveway, giving me one last glance.
“Listen, I’m sorry, you seem normal enough,” he said, ignoring the glare from his wife. “But you really should get out of Stone Brooke as soon as you can. We’ve only been here a week but there’s already so much…shit, if you are normal, you wouldn’t believe me. And if you’re not, well, we’ll be gone by tonight either way.”
Walter’s wife returned to his side, one delicate hand on his bowling ball of a shoulder trying to steer him away. She must have noticed my absolute confusion; the little bit of her face I could see from under the hat softened.
“If anyone knocks on your door after dark, you shouldn’t answer. Don’t go out after sundown, either. And if anyone you know starts acting…” She looked back at her kids. Two of the three were moving boxes from the house to the truck in a mini-conga line but the third, a little boy, was standing on the porch staring at us. “If anyone you know starts acting strange, just don’t be alone with them or let anyone else be alone with them. Do you understand?”
“Not at all,” I admitted but the pair were already gone, joining their kids next to the U-Haul.
The one boy was still separate from the others, still watching me and Charlie while we stood on the sidewalk at the edge of their yard. Feeling uncomfortable and confused, I gave the kid a friendly wave. He just stared until we left.
I tried to shake off the creepy encounter. Ten minutes of walking in the sunshine had me feeling fine in no time. Charlie and I took a loop around the rest of Stone Brooke then started heading home. I wasn’t planning on walking by the cemetery but that’s the way our route ended up winding. It was even smaller upclose; not the dozen or so gravestones I’d guessed the day before but maybe only seven or eight. The stones themselves were small and weathered. They were carved of something that was white once but had been sun-stained to a dirty gray. I couldn’t make out any names or dates from where I was standing just outside of the short fence. It didn’t feel right stepping into the cemetery to get a better look. I told myself it was respect holding me back from getting any closer.
Well, that and the fact that Charlie was not a fan of the area at all. He began whining as we approached the hill; by the time we were at the fence, Charlie was tugging at his leash, trying to drag me back toward our house down the street. And, weighing in at nearly ninety pounds of muscle and anxiety, he nearly succeeded.
“Easy, Charlie, easy,” I said. “We’re not going near the dead people.” He tilted his head at me. “Okay, we’re not going any nearer than we already are. I just want to look for a second, alright?”
It wasn’t alright. Not by Charlie’s measure. After about two minutes of trying to stand without getting wrapped up like an AT-AT walker by my dog’s leash, I surrendered. I took one last look at the graveyard before I allowed Charlie to lead us away. There were a few trees scattered among the stones. They were bare of leaves, which was normal for the time of year, but they were also stunted and sickly. The trunk of the tree closest to the cemetery gate appeared to be dry-rotted, its bark flakey and brown-orange in spots.
The last thought I spared the cemetery before leaving was that I didn’t like the faint smell I detected. Nothing crazy, it didn’t smell like death or anything dramatic; it was an earthy scent, like a field after a rainstorm but with the hint of something spoiled under all of it.
I let Charlie lead us home, walking quickly but not rushing. Nicole was up unpacking again when we walked in. The kids were still asleep. My wife had on gray sweat pants and my faded Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt. Her hair was tied up in a scarf. I remember thinking how pretty she looked, brown eyes jumping from box-to-box, looking for her next target, and smiling as she worked.
We spent the rest of the day just settling in, checking out the house, unpacking and playing games with the kids. Then we DoorDashed Chinese for an early dinner. I remember it being early enough that the sun was still out when it was delivered and just setting when Nicole took Charlie out for his evening walk.
Charlie returned alone half an hour later, dragging his leash and looking stressed beyond anything I’d ever seen from him.
“Hey, hey, buddy,” I said, opening the door he was scratching at. “Where’s your mom, Charlie?”
I stepped out onto the front porch, expecting to see Nicole running down the street after Charlie gave her the slip. But it was starting to rain and no one was moving anywhere I could see.
“Nicole,” I said loudly. “Hey, Nicoollle.”
She didn’t call back or come jogging down the road. My throat was feeling weird, so I swallowed then yelled her name, much louder this time. I tried to keep any tinge of panic out of my voice.
“Nicole!”
Charlie was sitting on the floor, still on his leash, looking up at me. He was whining so quietly I didn’t notice at first. I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Nicole. It rang for what felt like a few years before going to her voicemail. I tried again with the same result, then yelled out again, and then another call.
I felt it crawling up and over me, that panic, the anxious madness that you feel when a normal day teeters on the beam before falling into an awful damn day. That happened to me once before when I was in college and my uncle died suddenly in a car crash. I remember the phone call, the confusion, the resistance to the growing, unavoidable certainty that your life just changed in a terrible way.
My pulse was up and my stomach was cramped. I took a deep breath and called my wife for the fourth time in about two minutes. Maybe her phone was on silent. Maybe she was still out searching for Charlie?
In the rain? I asked myself.
Sure. She loves Charlie. She would look for him in the rain or a blizzard or a volcanic eruption.
“Okay,” I said out loud, “but after she couldn’t find Charlie, she would call me so we could all look. She would call.”
What if she was hurt?
The thought went off like a molotov in my mind, spreading until it was the only idea I could focus on. I pictured Nicole laying in some ditch or hollow with a broken leg, black sky pouring down on her. She’d call if she could, if that was the scenario, but if she couldn’t reach her phone for some reason, then she’d be counting on me going to find her.
I took Charlie off his leash and hustled upstairs. Bryan was in his room unpacking and Anna was sitting in a window nook reading. She looked up at me when I left the stairs and asked where mom was since she’d heard me calling outside for her. I told both of the kids that their mom was probably meeting some new neighbors and I was just going to pop out for a second to see if she needed anything. Anna was ten and accepted my excuse with a smile before going back to her book. Bryan, however, was thirteen and had a much better ear for lies. He gave me an odd glance but I smiled and promised I’d be back in two shakes.
Two shakes turned into nearly thirty minutes of me scouring Stone Brooke. It wasn’t a big development, maybe fifty or sixty houses spreading out in rings with the old cemetery in the middle. That was where the original farmhouse was when all of the land was owned by one family. I remember the real estate agent telling us that the day we toured the house.
It’s strange the places your mind will go for a distracting memory when your agitation is slouching slowly toward hysteria. I peppered my foot search for Nicole with frequent phone calls, which only resulted in stacking voicemails over voicemails. I scoured all three main streets, hood trickling with rainwater, my flashlight sweeping between houses and under trees. After an hour, I’d checked the neighborhood twice over, all except for the little graveyard. I wasn’t even trying to consciously avoid it but I realized I had.
The waist-high gate was unlocked and swung open when I lifted the latch, which was just starting to go to rust. I got the sense that the cemetery was once well-cared for and only recently had been more or less forgotten. There were a few weeds among the tombstones and a glass vase filled with nearly mummified flowers in front of one grave in particular but there wasn’t any sign of Nicole. The ground was soft from the rain but it was too dark to see much of anything. I did note that the entire hill was messy, more dirt than grass and quickly turning into pure mud.
“I hope none of the coffins float out,” I muttered, drawing my flashlight across the eroded markers.
There were lots of shadows and sunken places on the ground but nothing deep enough to hide a person. I walked home quickly, trying to stay a few steps ahead of the cold fear that kept flashing every imaginable horror that might have happened to my wife through my mind.
If I knew then what I know now about what actually happened to Nicole…the worst, darkest, most vile things I came up with, they weren’t even close.
I made my way home after the graveyard to tell my kids their mom was missing. Just the thought of starting the conversation was filling me with dread and a terrible guilt. They were children; how were they going to process this new, ugly thing? I’d do my best to summarize the situation for them and then I would call the police. That was the plan. Needing to wait twenty-four hours to file a missing persons report is a myth, I knew that. But the sheer surreal misery of the night was blanking my mind on what I would tell everyone.
Nicole went out to walk the dog right around sunset, so about 5pm or 5:30pm. Charlie came back holding his leash at 6:41pm. I remember the exact time because I checked my phone to see if there were any missed calls from Nicole as soon as Charlie appeared.
While I was walking up our driveway, I kept mentally rehearsing how I was going to break the news to the kids. Was there any good way to tell children their mom was missing? Should I inject optimism, sugar-coat, make promises? Or just be frank and completely honest and tell them I didn’t know if…
Not a thought I wanted to finish, even in my own mind, and I opened our front door still undecided how I was going to handle the next part. Then I saw Nicole sitting at the kitchen table playing cards with the kids and I froze. I stood there in the doorway staring until Anna noticed me and told me, look, mom’s home! I managed a limp smile and a nod.
My wife was facing away from me and when she turned in her chair, for an instant, I thought I was looking at a stranger. Then she smiled, really smiled, and it was just Nicole there, the same girl I’d met at a friend’s Halloween party fifteen years ago but now even more lovely. I grinned, still confused but nearly shaking with relief.
“Where were you?” I asked, attempting to sound calmer than I felt. “When Charlie came back, I went looking for you. I was worried that…well, I was worried.”
Nicole took a second to reply. Several seconds, actually. An odd look passed over her face, eyes closing, her jaw tight. Then she snapped out of it, whatever it was, and smiled wider.
“The dog had slipped away to chase a squirrel,” Nicole said. “I’m fine. We’re fine. We’re all fine. We just lost track of time. Sorry to worry you.”
“Okay but you could have called,” I pointed out. “And I called you.”
Another pause before she had an answer.
“I lost my phone chasing the dog,” Nicole finally replied. “And then we got all turned around and mixed up. New neighborhood, you know? Are you hungry?”
In our years together, we’d both gotten good at knowing when the other one was lying. That night, I genuinely could not tell. What she was telling me was plausible if not at all how I expected her to react to Charlie running. For that matter, it was already unusual that our dog would take off after a squirrel. And why would Nicole lie to me about all of it anyway?
But I pressed all of those concerns down into my chest and locked them there. It was a good night, I told myself, an eventful night, a terrifying night for a bit there, but now, everything was okay. We had all sat and played cards, then ate dinner, and then unpacked the last of our boxes before bed.
Nicole kept watching me all throughout the night. I acted like I didn’t notice. She was acting normal enough other than these brief pauses now and again, like she was stopping to think about what she was saying carefully. Her nose also began bleeding, which she stuffed with tissue, blaming the bleed on allergies. My biggest fear that night was she’d had a medical event or something and needed to go to the hospital. A fall turned into a concussion, maybe.
Or, God, a stroke?
Ultimately, Nicole wasn’t showing any signs of an emergency, so I tried to relax.
Still, I found myself watching Nicole for the rest of the night. She caught me looking while she was brushing her teeth. All she did was stop and smile at me. We laid down in bed and I immediately clicked off the light, telling Nicole that I was worn out. After a minute of silence in the dark, I felt my wife’s fingers on my shoulder. She pressed a fingertip to my neck and lightly brushed the space between my jawline and collarbone. It made me shiver; not in a pleasant way.
“Hey, that tickles,” I said, turning away.
Nothing for a moment and then her fingers were pushing against the back of my neck, not hard enough to be painful but not exactly comfortable either.
“What, uh, what are you doing?” I asked.
In response, Nicole kissed my shoulder. Or, it was half a kiss and half almost a bite. She didn’t break the skin but it was awfully close. I slipped away, putting space between us by rolling off of the bed.
“What the Hell?” I snapped.
Nicole didn’t say anything back. There was no light in the room, not even moonlight. In the blackness, I heard my wife shifting in bed.
“Nicole?”
Still nothing from my wife and now she wasn’t moving at all. Seconds stretched out and all I could think to do was stand dully waiting for things to feel normal.
“I just remembered I need to send some emails back to the office,” I told the darkness. “I shouldn’t be too long. I’ll just be downstairs. Are you heading to sleep?” No answer. “Okay, love you, Nicole. Good night.”
I heard her shifting again as I was leaving the bedroom. It was louder than before, a rustling that reminded me of something I couldn’t place. Whatever it was, I wasn’t a fan.
I ended up sleeping on the couch. I had a dream that people were standing outside of our house trying to look in the windows. There was the rustling sound from earlier, like running water or wind through a forest. I woke up to find Nicole standing halfway down the stairs, silhouetted by the light from my open laptop. She froze when I looked at her, stared at me, then softly walked back up the stairs.
There was no more sleep for me that night. I stayed on the couch watching TV with the lights on until dawn.

Basics of the fic was it starts in 2nd year with harry fighting the basilisk, he wins but barely, he actually dies but something shoved his soul back into his body and left him a note to stop getting himself killed before the fates decided to wollop him for being stupid. When the year ends he gets sent to america by the goblins and lands smack in the middle of camp half blood, turns out due to a curse from snape James potter couldn't have children which resulted in James and Lily contacting a god for help, turns out they contacted Hades. Hecate shows up at some point dragging along a couple muggleborns including hermione (apparently all Muggleborns are siblings in this). Fred and George also show up as sons of Hermes since apparently only Ron and Charlie were Arthur's kids with each sibling having a different father asides those two.
What follows is harry and hermione adjusting to the demigod way of life with harry joking this must be why he and hermione always seemed to run into monsters at hogwarts. Eventually Percy shows up with Grover and the events of Lightning Thief kick off with Zeus also suspecting Harry as "that demigod brat dares mock me with my symbol upon his forehead?!"
the quest prophecy is altered so that it's 5 shall head east to face the god who turned allowing Harry and Hermione to join in on the quest.

The fingerprint on the DVD holder [113]-[143]
“The claim that the defendant's fingerprint was found on a DVD holder in the deceased's apartment was controversial even before the trial began. Early on, the defense described it as fabricated evidence that compromised the fairness of the case against the accused." Since Inge took the DVD from The Video Place to her apartment after 3:07 pm, that would destroy his alibi. “She then took it out of its case at her apartment and placed it in the DVD player, where it was still when her body was discovered that evening.” On the morning of March 17, fingerprints were found on the DVD case using aluminum powder and secured with a foil. This was numbered as Folie #1 and noted on the back of the scene report where and from where this fingerprint came. The superintendent didn't see this on the cover, but he did see it on the foil. On April 12, almost a month later, the fingerprint on slide #1 could be assigned to the defendant. The investigating officer had already returned the DVD to the video rental store on March 24. This was done with the consent of the superintendent, as the guidelines stipulate that the foil becomes evidence instead of the object. “For practical reasons, the police could not keep everything they fingerprinted, as this would create a huge storage problem. This is pure nonsense.” The court repeatedly expressed great displeasure with this procedure and could not understand why the police would give up such an important piece of evidence. “The accused cannot be blamed for feeling compelled to argue in his plea that his constitutional right to a fair trial could have been thwarted by this. According to him, the police not only irregularly, and apparently contrary to standing orders, failed to take photos of the print on the DVD container, but their return of the container could amount to the destruction of essentially important evidence.” The defendant admitted that it was his fingerprint, but denied that it came from the DVD, but rather that it was from a glass.
=> I deliberately quoted the statement that Inge opened the DVD and inserted it. Between the video recording in the DVD rental store and the police finding the body, in my opinion, there is no reliable information. While I understand the court's anger over the return of the DVD, the further reasoning leaves me surprised, because nothing better could have happened to the defendant to question the origin of the fingerprint. Instead, the argument is that they want to deliberately falsify evidence.
The first analysis of slide #1 was carried out by a fingerprint expert and forensic investigator on November 25, 2005, who four days later stated in his report to the defense that the print could not have come from a DVD case, because there were no other prints on it. There should have been someone to find (Inges, rental staff, previous customers) who would have contaminated the print. The provincial head of the PKRS examined the print for the state and stated that it was very possible, later very likely a fingerprint from the DVD case. The defense then had an expert from Arizona, USA (“He is widely regarded as one of the most famous fingerprint experts in the world.”) make an assessment, who stated on August 20, 2006 “after numerous experiments on a variety of drinking glasses, it is my conclusion that lift #1 was taken from a drinking glass and was intentionally mislabeled as having come from a DVD case. Lift #1 has all the characteristics of fabricated fingerprint evidence and, in my opinion, is intentionally fabricated fingerprint evidence."
=> It is remarkable how often this expert speaks of intention and "fabricated" instead of limiting himself to the analysis. This suggests a certain objective of the assessment and the requirement for a statement of personal opinion.
In November, a ballistics institute superintendent said he could not comment because of the incompatibility of the materials. In November 2006, the Controlling Forensic Analyst carried out a series of examinations of glasses and DVDs from Inge's apartment. Two “curved parallel” lines became noticeable, which were also visible on Folie #1. These were identified as lip prints. The density of the aluminum powder in the background of the foil should have been greater because of the static charge on the cover. The position of the finger and right thumb as well as an oval water drop speak more in favor of a vertical drinking glass. In addition, the powder is smeared along the vertical lines, as is to be expected with a damp glass. The imprint on the foil does not come from the middle of a DVD, but rather represents a powdered corner. In summary, the fingerprint matches the reconstructions on one of the glasses tested. On December 13th the defense received the statement “I hereby confirm that the State no longer intends to proceed with the evidence surrounding your client's alleged fingerprint on the DVD cover.” “This should have been the end of the impugnated fingerprint,” but the defendant stated in his plea explanation “the fingerprint fraud tainted the State's case against me” and called it a blatant and dishonest attempt and a misleading attitude of the SAPS. The state contradicted this accusation and “This unfortunately resulted in the state presenting a considerable amount of evidence on this.”
=> I don't understand why it was unfortunate. It sounds like the prosecution should have left it at that. Although this becomes more understandable in view of the further course of events, one can understand that this serious accusation should not be left undiscussed.
In return, there was further cross-examination and presentations by two additional experts from the USA and the Netherlands. “Although these experts considered it to be a deliberate fabrication, it cannot be ruled out that it could perhaps be blamed on negligence or mere incompetence.” Since, despite all the circumstances, it is “admissible evidence”, the person’s statement must primarily be taken into account who made the Folie. This constable had only been with the PKRS for two years. The inspector first proved the DVD using aluminum powder and then gave it to him to make a foil. He used two films on the front of the case, one at the top and one at the bottom. There was only a print on the top one, so it was labeled #1 on the back. Folie #2 came from a glass on the coffee table, additionally nine prints from surfaces were lifted with scotch tape. Only when he was back in the office did he label the backs of the foils, put them in an envelope with the scene report and hand them to the Automated Fingerprint Identification Operator to have them scanned. “When questioned further in examination-in-chief about the procedure, he said that he had the scan done before affixing the relevant information to the back of the exhibits“. No photos of the objects with the identified fingerprints had been taken because the inspectors did not find this necessary. As to why he didn't immediately write the information on the back of the Folie, he stated that he wrote everything in the scene report. It is therefore surprising that this information contained times that were not specified in the report. He had memorized them. In addition, he did not have the foils signed by an impartial person, as is usual. He decided this on his own initiative, as this usually only happened when strangers were at the crime scene. “As a witness he made a poor impression. He tended to be evasive and to give almost incomprehensible answers to simple questions. In general, he would hardly be considered a reliable witness." A captain interviewed "did not advance the state's case at all." He stated that he and not the constable had brought the slides to be scanned and upon receipt left them in his desk for five days before having photos taken of them. This process could not be proven and he stated that the five days were a long weekend. The court finds that the captain “was also not an impressive witness. As evidenced by his testimony and affidavit, he was evasive and repeatedly contradicted himself. Overall, he offered extremely unsatisfactory explanations for what appeared to be irregular conduct in his handling of the evidence, including folio #1. His testimony cannot be considered reliable at all.” In contrast, the “highly expert submissions” from the experts from the USA and the Netherlands were highly rated. “Their intensive knowledge and expertise, and their wide-ranging experience that earned them international fame, came out strongly in their testimony.”
=> The police's actions in this case certainly seem sloppy and are hardly understandable given the importance of fingerprints at a crime scene. In this context, I asked myself the question of why there could have been an imprint of the defendant on this glass at all and how it could have still been damp after almost 24 hours/the next day. The adulation of defense experts continues, as does the less appreciative assessment of state personnel.
„It therefore follows that this court must necessarily find that the state has failed to prove that the accused's fingerprint on Folie #1 came from the DVD holder. The probabilities are overwhelming that it did indeed come from a glass, although it is not clear from which glass. There is, of course, no burden on the defense to show from which glass it may, or probably, came. This will unfortunately have to remain an unanswered question.“

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Welcome back to this write-up about a complicated artist's complicated book.
Don't be absurd, of course you have time!
Part 1 Part 2
Now that we've established what the book is about, let's take a look at The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls' rich publication and re-publication history. I promise, it's more scandalous than it sounds.

“HER SPEECH IS NOTHING, YET THE UNSHAPÈD USE OF IT DOTH MOVE THE HEARERS TO COLLECTION” (HORATIO, ACT IV SCENE 5)

As I've mentioned in the last installment, TAFWVG has been released multiple times, in multiple editions – four of them, to be precise. And I wish I was exaggerating when I say that three of those four releases have been veritable masterclasses in testing your audience's loyalty. In case you're wondering: the secret is to alter your source material in strange and unpredictable ways, while also constantly messing up on the customer service front.
Most of this installment condenses and combines these two excellent write-ups, which contain most of the receipts: TAFWVG: A History / The Bloody Crumpets: An Inconsistent History. 🔍 Anything that isn't sourced with links is in there.
It turns out there are good reasons why most fiction authors don't do real-life inserts so overtly – but in EA's case, it did make sense, and was warmly embraced by fans upon release. When the book first came out, some of these people had been familiar to the fanbase for years, frequently appearing in candid pictures on EA's blog and leaving comments on the forum; some were also involved in her music and show. Recognizing that one character's name was a pun on So-and-So's username was a nice Easter egg for veteran fans, and newcomers got to learn about fandom lore; it brought the story to life and the community closer.
One side character, for instance, was named after EA's best friend from Chicago, whom many fans had had direct interactions with: she co-ran EA's online stores during the Enchant years, and acted as admin, main moderator and EA-liaison of the forum throughout its near-decade of existence.
One crazy girl who thinks she's a pirate is 100% OC... but her description and illustrations 🪞 were explicitly modeled after pictures of Bloody Crumpet Vecona (one of EA's back-up performers), who became the first stand-in pirate character 📺 in the live show. Captain Vecona was also celebrated as the “Asylum Seamstress” 🪞🔍: most of the iconic early Opheliac costumes were her design. She had a following of her own, even prior to touring with EA, for her professional costuming work and her collaborations with German photographer Angst-im-Wald. (Shitty archive link, sorry - most of those badass photoshoots seem to have been lost to time. But if you were a European goth in the mid-2000s, search your old hard drives: I promise you, you've downloaded some of those pictures.)
Inmate “Veronica”, a cabaret girl diagnosed as a nymphomaniac, was a doppelgänger of her namesake, burlesque dancer Veronica Varlow 🪞 – the ride-or-die Crumpet, whom EA often lovingly called her “husband”, saying they had been lovers in a previous lifetime. Veronica was part of every single tour post-Opheliac release and developed a solid fanbase of her own, which she maintains to this day.
Even the brave and well-mannered talking rats (oh yeah, there's talking rats in the Asylum story) were named after EA's real-life pet rodents, who had featured in glamorous photoshoots. (Slight NSFW for sideboob.)
You get the general gimmick by now: EA turns her personal life into art, which she turns into a fictional world, which she then prompts the audience to inhabit with her. The whole Asylum concept was essentially an open invitation to self-insert parasocial fanfic: “Here's this very personal world that I've created, in which I, the artist, exist as a fictional persona, alongside all these quirky inmate characters that you've seen in my stage show, and who are avatars my real-life friends. Come on in, make it your home, and populate it with your own zany Victorian alter egos.”
And it worked, to an extent: like I've said, most fans were on board before they'd even read the book, and the Asylum became “real” in that sense.
But it can get a bit disorienting to find your place in a fantasy world, when said world keeps changing based on the author's shifting feelings about her story, her target audience, and her friends... plus, you'd love to read the book, but the darn thing still hasn't shipped.

ROUNDS 1 & 2: THE HARDCOVERS

~A MINOR ADJUSTMENT~
TAFWVG was first teased in spoken-word bonus tracks 🎤 on a 2007 EP. In spring 2008, EA started reading excerpts from her upcoming book at live shows. Early excerpts from the Asylum narrative featured a character named “Jo Hee” 📺; in the story, she is a cellist from “the Orient” (love that Victorian geography) and Emily's childhood confidante.
In real life, Lady Jo Hee, Center of Happiness, was the OG Bloody Crumpet. 📺 She had been there since from the very first Opheliac show in Chicago in 2006, accompanying EA on the electric cello – the only instrumentalist ever featured in the line-up besides EA herself.
In August 2008, Alternative Magazine ran a feature about the upcoming book.🔍, teasing some of its pages. Fans were quick to spot a very sisterly picture of EA and Jo Hee 🪞, borrowed from a fan-favorite photoshoot of the two. (An aside: this specific picture also became famous in the fandom for another reason. At some point, someone made an edit replacing Jo Hee with Amy Lee from Evanescence; for a while, it kept making the rounds in alt/goth internet circuits, casual onlookers kept getting excited about it, and Plague Rats kept having to step in and disappoint them.)
Anyway. For reasons undisclosed by either party, Jo Hee quietly left the Crumpets after that tour, never to be mentioned again.
By the time the book came out in late 2009, the character of “Jo Hee” had been renamed “Sachiko”. (I guess it didn't matter whether the one non-white character in the story was meant to be Korean or Japanese.) Jo Hee's face had been edited out of the (still clearly recognizable) photograph, and eerily replaced with Nondescript_Asian_Woman_023.jpg from Shutterstock.🪞
You'd think that the switcheroo would have raised more eyebrows, or at least some awkward chuckles, among fans of an artist whose better-known lyrics include “If I Photoshop you out of every picture, I could / Go quietly, quiet - but would that do any good?”. Yet to my knowledge, it did not. Possibly because, by the time people got around to reading the book, some fans had been waiting for their copy longer than Jo Hee had been a Crumpet.
A ROCKY RELEASE
Although the book seemed just about ready for publication at the time of those 2008 readings, the initial release was delayed by technical difficulties (some data had been lost during the editing process). And then delayed some more when, a year later, EA cancelled the US leg of a tour and slammed the door on Trisol, accusing the label owner of exploitation and embezzlement (he was allegedly selling fake tickets to her shows on a phony website). In August 2009, she signed over to The End Records, and we were back in business, baby!
Not only was The Book on its way to the presses, but the long-awaited release would coincide with a “Deluxe” re-issue of Opheliac, with new cover art and bonus tracks. For $100, you could pre-order the “Ultimate Book/Album Collection”, which included the revamped album, the book, a t-shirt, a tote bag, a recipe booklet and some bonus digital downloads, to be shipped in October. Or, for a more up-close-and-personal experience, you could purchase a VIP bundle for her upcoming shows in the fall: $50 plus ticket price would get you the book, a swag bag, and a meet-and-greet. (VIP tickets were capped at 20 slots per show; from what I gather, informal interactions with fans at the merch table were becoming overwhelming on previous tours. Again: fast-growing audience.)
Alas, due to printing issues this time, the making and shipping were soon pushed back to December. VIP ticket-holders were assured, at the start of the tour, that their copies would be shipped first as soon as the books were printed, with handwritten dedications from EA. Purchasers of the “Book/Album” bundle would receive theirs shortly thereafter. This seemed like a reasonable trade-off for a minor delay, and no one was too upset. (Well, some might have been, but at that juncture in Asylum history – for reasons that will become apparent in a later installment, when we get to EA's altercations with her fans – I guess they knew better than to get mouthy about it.)
The bundles came first... and in many cases, “bundle” was a generous term, because they arrived incomplete. When the t-shirt or tote bag weren't missing, they were printed the wrong colors. Many digital download codes had to be requested via email. The book itself was beautiful, but poorly bound, typo-ridden, and missing entire pages. (This was largely fixed in the second hardcover release.)
As far as I know, everyone who complained to the distributor got their money back – and I imagine it was a nice surprise when some items showed up, inexplicably, months after they had already been refunded. But it was still a bit of a “sad trombone” moment for many loyal fans, who had to request a refund on the Ultimate Super-Cool Preorder Exclusive Bundle to purchase the book and album separately.
As for the VIP package books, those didn't start shipping until late 2010 – a whole year after the official book release, months after less invested fans had already received their non-preordered copies. Worse: none of the books were signed, much less lovingly adorned with a personalized handwritten note as EA had promised. (And had tweeted about doing during the year-long shipping delay!) After enough fans meekly expressed their intense disappointment, EA's BFF-forum-admin mailed out signed bookplates that people could stick in their book in lieu of a personalized autograph. No real explanation was given. As far as I know, this particular let-down didn't cause a mass exodus of disappointed fans – but, in the midst of other goings-on, it certainly contributed to eroding many fans' trust in EA's word.
EA TAKES ON HOLLYWOOD
The 2011 release of the largely-identical second edition was better planned and overall uneventful, which gives me time to catch you up on contemporaneous events – like the reason EA ditched the Opheliac red and went platinum blonde. 🪞
Around that time, EA got herself a supporting role and a solo number 🎵📺 in The Devil's Carnival, Darren Lynn Bousman's psychocircus-themed movie musical. (If you're scrambling to place the name: depending on what kind of deviant you are, DLB is either the guy who directed half of the Saw movies or the guy who directed Repo! The Genetic Opera.)
If you've clicked the last link: see the bad boy greaser she's dancing with at the end of the song? That's the titular “Scorpion”, played by Marc Senter, and they were totally hitting on each other while shooting this. 📝🪞 They've been an item for twelve years now, in what appears to be a loving and mutually supportive relationship, and they seem besotted with each other. That's only marginally relevant to the story, but it's nice to know that at least one nice thing worked out in all this mess.
Back to 2011. Through her friendship with DLB and the Devil's Carnival cast (a motley crew of top-shelf B-listers 🔍 that included Bill Moseley, Paul Sorvino, the chick from Spy Kids, and the clown from Slipknot), EA also made a bunch of new industry connexions. That's how she came to decide that TAFWVG was meant to be more than a book, more than a live show: it had to become... a musical. Full company, full orchestra, big names, the works. Her 2012 album, Fight Like a Girl, was written and recorded with this project in mind, with most songs narrating events from the book and EA singing as various characters – which turns love duets into finger food for Dr. Freud. 🎵
Shortly before the album release, EA announced on Twitter that the Asylum Musical was scheduled to debut in the London West End, under the direction of Bousman, in 2014. "Casting calls to be announced soon!" (They were not.)

ROUND 3: THE AUDIOBOOK

2014 came, and brought... another TAFWG re-release announcement.
But wait – this time, it was going to be an audiobook! EA had been teasing one since before the original release, so people were quite excited. (It also sounded like a more achievable goal for the calendar year than a West End debut.) In early 2014, recording was well on its way, and the 6-CD boxset was due to ship in May.
PLEASE STAND BY, YOUR ASYLUM WILL BE PROCESSED SHORTLY
First, EA discovered “a new microphone ... that, upon testing, produced a recording of far greater beauty and expressive quality”, which naturally meant the whole thing had to be re-recorded. Two month's delay. No biggie. Our girl is a perfectionist.
But our girl also had to write, coordinate and rehearse her upcoming “Asylum Experience” – an afternoon-long interactive theater event, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, which would be performed at five dates of the Vans Warped Tour in August. (It's not exactly the West End, but it's a start! 🔍) And then she had to prepare for the filming of the Devil's Carnival sequel in the fall. So, obviously, the July deadline was not met. When she finally gave an update in late 2014, the ETA was basically “we are ever so close, but the audiobook gets there when it gets there; feel free to ask for a refund if you're not along for the ride”.
And then she signed with a literary agent. TAFWVG was going to be made into a “real” book, that readers could purchase in stores for a normal price and request from their local library – big event! (More for EA, I think, than for her fans. By that point, the second edition could be purchased as a PDF, and I believe most people who pre-ordered the audiobook had already read the story.) But this involved tailoring the narrative to a more general audience, which meant portions of the book had to be re-written... which meant further delays.

...Besides, and let’s have a teacup of “honesty time” here, if the new Asylum becomes an internationally best-selling novel, not only can we enact more change for good, but the Asylum Musical takes over Broadway faster, the Asylum Movie takes over theatres faster, and YOU are all dressed up as rats/inmates in said movie, you guessed it, faster (“Asylum Audiobook Announcement from EA”📝)

Well, you know what they say in show business: if you can't make it in London, there's always New York.
As EA assured her fans, their patience would be rewarded with a brand new, professionally polished version of the story – and in due time, I guess, a role in the movie. (“Let's hope she doesn't find another new microphone!” 🐀)
From that point on, there seems to have been an ever-widening gap between EA's enthusiasm and fan expectations. When audiobook snippets 🎤.mp3) were released, many fans were unimpressed by the oddly flat, overproduced recording (turns out a microphone can be so good it's a problem! 🐀), which highlighted EA's stilted, uncanny diction and not-quite-transatlantic accent. That caught everyone off guard, because she didn't use to read like... that. Even die-hard apologists had to concede through gritted teeth that, tragically, it was giving William Shatner. (If you're curious, you can find more previews here 🎤📝, along with EA's captions.)
Fans weren't just getting irritated with the various delays and excuses: they were baffled, angry, and embarrassed. When EA clapped back “U know U can just get a refund, right? That is totally within your power to do” on social media, and it came out that requests for refunds had been getting ignored for weeks or months 🐀, seasoned fans were like “Yeah, that tracks.” The whole never-ending ordeal was just starting to feel silly.
All told, the audiobook took two years to complete, with little to no new music in the interim. Two years is a long time for a young-leaning audience! Fans who had preordered at the end of their sophomore year were graduating high school by the time it came out. Others who had been in the middle of undergrad were now looking for full-time jobs. People had gotten pregnant, given birth and potty trained, or had houses built from the ground up. Genuine ultra-fans of the book had had time to... presumably, read other books. (“I wonder how many people passed away waiting for this shitty audiobook to be finished?”)
When the audiobook came out, many long-time Plague Rats had defected, either lamenting the misguided decisions of their favorite artist, or just calling EA a money-grabbing fraud and a lying liar. And a number of patient and unbothered fans had, quite simply, grown out of their EA phase.
Your humble servant, for one, ordered the audiobook the week it went on sale, and stuck with that preorder through five address changes and two graduation ceremonies. Now, bear in mind: through all the ups and downs, even as the charm dispelled, my taste in music evolved, and my perception of EA herself changed, I never formally stopped considering myself a fan. (Mama didn't raise no quitter.) To this day, and to my profound embarrassment, I give enough of a shit that I'm taking the time to write this story at all, and that I was able to draft most of itfrom memory.(Mama didn't teach me how to prioritize.) Well, get this: I have never once listened to the audiobook. I remember unwrapping the signed boxset (minimal artwork, flimsy cardboard, no liner notes), thinking “this could have been an email”, telling myself I'd get around to it for old time's sake... and then I never did, because it was ten hours long, and I just couldn't force myself to care about that story anymore. I was not an isolated case.
In light of this, I apologize in advance for any potential errors in the following paragraphs; others listened so posers like me wouldn't have to 🔍, and I'm going off of their word. The new and improved edition was, indeed, a different book – in that a bunch of things that felt meaningful to fans had been either reworked or excised.
THE AUDIOBOOK EDITS
The hospital narrative had been shortened in favor of the asylum story, and the controversial “Drug / Suicide / Cutting” diaries had been scrapped. Part of the fanbase applauded this decision, but others were disappointed 🐀, as they had found the diaries to be the most (some said only) personal, authentic, and insightful chapters in the book.
Curse words, some abuse, and all mentions of abortion had also been purged. It made the book tamer, but not by much... because Emilie's age had been changed from 27 to 17. Apparently, the literary agent had suggested this to make the book more marketable to a Young Adult audience. No other biographical detail had been altered, so the main narrator was now a 17 year old girl with no parents but an established music career, who checks in by herself into a high-security adult ward, no questions asked. (I'm still perplexed by this one. Did they not expect YA readers to know how hospitals work...?)
The pirate captain, formally known by her “mass of tangled black hair”, was now... a blonde. According to EA, this was a purely aesthetic change: it made the three main Asylum girls a redhead, a blonde and a brunette, which would look better in the stage adaptation. Between the lines, it also distanced the character from its original dark-haired muse: Vecona, who had left the Crumpets in 2008 after a rumored falling-out with EA over unpaid costume work.
The minor characters based on EA's old Chicago friends had been discarded entirely. Which likely made sense for EA – she hadn't lived there in years, the friend group had drifted apart as friend groups do, and by that point, there no longer was an EA forum to administrate or comment on – but not so much for her readers. Some fans had grown fond of these fictional inmates (wasn't that the point?), and weren't too happy to see EA symbolically treat them as disposable. Others were saddened that EA would just scrap these remnants of her old life, and of what felt like simpler, happier times in the fandom. Either way, children, this is why you shouldn't get a neck tattoo of your first boyfriend's name, OR openly base the “good guys” in your career-defining book on friends you made in your early twenties.
To compensate for the loss of... most named inmate characters, Veronica was given a much more prominent role in the plot. Namely, instead of being best friends, Veronica and Emily were now... in love! Lovers! Lesbian lovers! Which naturally meant that Veronica had to die. 🔍 Besides, fans famously love it when you pull a gay ship out of thin air between your two main characters, and then kill one of them off so that the other suffers more.
One last one, because I find it especially goofy: a scrappy teddy bear named Suffer, given to Emily by the talking rats, was replaced with...a Very Large Spoon, which gets its very own number in the musical. 🎵 The rationale was that Emily could use the spoon as a weapon in the climactic uprising against the Asylum doctors. Which, fair enough... except that, prior to being a cute and anachronistic 🔍 MacGuffin in the fictional Asylum story, Suffer the Bear had been a beloved mascot🪞 from the early Opheliac live shows. Some still remembered when EA had raised HELL, even starting a #FREESUFFER campaign on Twitter, because she thought someone had stolen Suffer from the stage (it later turned out that he had been misplaced in a flight case). All that noise back in the day... and now Suffer didn't matter anymore? The nerve. “She made shirts and everything!” 🐀
All this to say, reception was lukewarm. EA hadn't performed live since 2014 and the Devil's Carnival sequel had failed to make a splash (despite decent reviews, the franchise and main collaboration fell apart before the end of the promotional tour 🔍). People were checking out. There was only one way to correct this. A true paradigm shift. A fresh start – a new theme?
Hell no. It's another edition of The Asylum for Revisionist Tortureporn Friendfictions!

ROUND 4: THE E-BOOK & THE QUEST FOR THE SPOON OF ROYALS

In 2017, about a year after the audiobook release, EA self-published a digital version of TAFWVG through Amazon. The literary agent hadn't worked out in the end: publishers were put off by how dark the book was, even after the audiobook edits. EA explained that she hadn't been comfortable with some of the alterations in the first place; she respected the agent's input and had tried to give it an honest shot, but in the end, she wanted to do it the way she wanted to do it, solo... and this was it.
EA had reverted a number of the audiobook cuts (including swear words, mentions of abortion, and the narrator's age), but kept most of the changes to the Asylum narrative – namely, the omission of Former Friends Characters, and the romance between Emily and Veronica. In the newsletter announcement, she mentions being in the process of “re-recording the few little bits of the audiobook to reflect the current text version”. Not sure where we're at on that front; it's never been brought up again, and I don't think anyone's checked. (I assume most fans had war flashbacks when they read the word “re-record”, and instantly repressed that part of the communiqué.)
The “Drug / Suicide / Cutting” diaries were still omitted in the first release of the e-book, but re-included as a coda soon after, by popular demand, under the title “Evidence of Insanity” – with fantastical “doctor's annotations” like“W14A seems to have disassociated her own identity, episodic, each lasting for a longer period of time. We suspect she will continue further in this – stronger medication is needed, schedule electroconvulsive therapy.”
A physical paperback edition was released a few months later; in anticipation of this, the e-book was a stripped-down, text-centric version of the story. (Honestly not a bad call, because the digital version from 2012 was a scanned, non-searchable, 1.3GB PDF behemoth – not super Kindle-friendly!) No elaborate backgrounds and color photographs in this edition, but the pages were still illustrated with inserts of rats, keys, teacups, and... hold on... ciphers??🪞
As always in the Asylum, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. In a throwback to the prelapsarian days of the Enchant Puzzle (remember? the one that no one ever managed to solve?), the e-book illustrations contained puzzles, which formed the master-key to... a scavenger hunt! And in keeping with tradition, the grand prize was an extravagant adornment hand-crafted by EA: the “Spoon of Royals”.🪞📝 Oh my!
Some of the puzzles are simple anagrams that can be solved for keywords. A clickable word within the adjacent text takes you to a password-protected link, which takes you through to an audio file – a song or an atmospheric instrumental that goes with that moment of the story. There are also more complex ciphers that decode into riddles. Each key depicted in the book has a number or letter engraved on it. The total number of rats in the book is apparently significant. One link takes you through to a blank page whose source code contains a list of coordinates from various bridges around the world.
Oh, it was a whole thing. When the book came out, you could send a picture of you doing EA's signature “rat claw” hand sign🪞 to request admission to a private Facebook group (the “Striped Stocking Society”) where people could help each other solve the clues and EA would occasionally pop in for a chat. There was also a series of mysterious newsletters in early 2018, culminating in a Los Angeles event where EA showed up in person to pass on extra puzzle-solving material to a handful of lucky fans (although said material raised more questions that it answered 📝).
Overall, it was a great idea! Although the fanbase was generally smaller and less active after four years without a new tour or album (and a fair amount of other drama, which we have yet to get into), the e-book puzzle did pique people's interest in purchasing yet another version of the same story.
Unfortunately, once again, EA overestimated either how intuitive her fans were, or how invested they would remain. After months of collaborative efforts across multiple platforms, a number of puzzles had been cracked 🔍, but it was still unclear how the individual anagrams and numbers and riddle-solutions all fit together as scavenger hunt clues.
EA kept up the hype for a while, but the few hints that she gave on social media only revealed yet more encryption factors without really helping fans connect the dots. One cipher remained unsolved on Instagram for days and days before EA caved in and hinted at which key to use. She did helpfully specify that if you didn't know how to read music, you'd better start learning. (...Was this a fun puzzle, or a prep school admission test?) The in-person LA event had also sown some confusion as to the rules and constraints of the game: would winning involve traveling to a physical location? That didn't seem very fair. EA had mentioned physically burying some items – but could you solve the puzzle from a distance? Is the Spoon of Royals literally just buried under the Shakespeare Bridge in Los Angeles, California?? 🐀
I'm just saying: if this had come up in 2008? People in corsets and platform boots would have been out there digging.
But this was 2018. As we've mentioned, the core of EA's active fanbase (a lot of whom had been teens and young adults when she was touring Opheliac) was fast aging out of the years when most folks have the spare time, dedication, or desire to essentially do super-involved homework out of love for their favorite singer. Uncovering new songs was a fun perk the first year – but after the new album came out in 2018, none of the passwords led to exclusive material anymore. It felt a bit lacklustre for something so labor-intensive.
(The new music itself wasn't a rallying point either. Behind the Musical was, quite literally, an intended vocal guide for the Asylum musical – so, basically a collection of demos. The sound was VERY Broadway Revival, somewhat Phantomish 🎵, in a way that's either good or bad depending on who's saying it. The violins, to fans' chagrin, sounded all-MIDI; no sign of actual instrumental recordings. EA sang all the parts herself, as she had on her previous album. I'm not saying there's no merit in a one-woman Andrew Lloyd Weber tribute. Many old fans enjoyed the new material well enough, some even really liked it – but most agreed that it just didn't hit like her earlier stuff used to, and that it felt rather unfinished.)
Unlike with the Enchant Puzzle, the prize itself was not much of an intrinsic motivation. While the Faerie Queen's Wings were a straightforward concept that evoked EA's own signature stage costumes, the Spoon of Royals was... a large spoon attached to a necklace, community-college-art-teacher style. It looked impractical both as a spoon and as a necklace, and more importantly, I'm not sure how many readers felt a deep emotional connection to the spoon in the story. The spoon that had usurped Suffer the Bear, no less!
In short: people gave up on the game because it was too hard, it came too late, and they had other things to do.
Thus, the Spoon of Royals remains unclaimed to this day, and I doubt I'll see anyone crack the puzzle in this lifetime. The Striped Stocking Society FB group was terminated in 2020, around the same time a bunch of fansites folded and EA closed her Instagram comments for the first time. By that point, both EA and her fans had bigger rats to skewer – but we have a ways to go before we reach that part of the story.
I would encourage you to give the puzzle a shot for the hell of it (in case you're a cryptography nerd and currently under house arrest or in a full-body cast) but... I just tried a bunch of the links, and the passwords don't work anymore. So I guess that's that. To quote old Bill by way of conclusion: “Much ado about nothing”.

ROUND TOO-MANY: I'LL SEE YOU ON BROADWAY OR I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL

So, what now? Well, not much.
By the late 2010s, what kept many fans semi-invested – if nothing else, because it clearly meant so much to EA herself – was the prospect of an upcoming stage musical adaptation. The way EA talked about it 📺, it was very much a “when”, not an “if”. Sure, ten years on, we were still collectively stuck in the Asylum, but it would at least be a new format – and a return to EA's main field of expertise, ie songwriting and performing. Not only did the core fanbase long for new music and new shows, but Fight Like a Girl and Behind the Musical had brought in small influxes of new fans who were very eager for any chance to see her live. So whether it was out of genuine enthusiasm for the project, or out of “let EA have her musical so we can maybe finally move on”, the fanbase was overall supportive.
Even though people still joked about the 2012 announcement of a “2014 West End debut” (seriously, what was she thinking?), EA had really buckled down in the intervening years, and it looked like the project was plausibly well underway. As in, we had more than just EA's word to go on: the involvement of other people, who did not reside in the Asylum, seemed to confirm that the musical was a thing.

[CONTINUED IN COMMENTS because Reddit is being ridiculous about the character count. I swear I was under 40,000!]

22F, 5'5 180lbs, non smoker, on Vyvanse and augmentin.
I work at a shelter and had a bit of a situation with a feral cat attacking me yesterday afternoon. The bite to my left pointer finger was so excruciating that I didn't even notice the other bites and scratches l'd received, and it started swelling immediately. There's two very deep punctures, one on the in the middle of the lower half of the finger, and one on the inside of my palm right by the base of the finger. Within an hour my finger was about 50% larger and was hard to bend.
I went to Urgent Care about 3 hours after the bite, they washed out my wounds and put me on Augmentin and told me it would all be good and there's no risk of internal damage. The cat was vaccinated for rabies and is on a quarantine right now, I have my tetanus shot, and I have the antibiotics so l'm not worried about it being infected.
But since being at the Dr, my finger has continued to swell and became extremely hard to bend or straighten, as well as being very painful even when it's at ease. When I woke up this morning, the swelling had spread past the knuckle, about halfway down my hand. Here are the photos from a few minutes after the bite vs now: https:// ibb.co/album/q7Xydv.
My question is: is this amount of swelling normal for a cat bite that got immediate attention? I am extremely worried about tendon damage, and since it's a workers comp case, if I need surgery l'd rather have it figured out sooner than later. I'm not sure if I'm overreacting though - is it worth going to an ortho to have it checked out? Or is it too soon to tell?

My child is 5 and I legit hate bedtime it is a nightmare I stay in the room she plays with my hair and will ask for her foot rubbed her back rubbed it’s always a big production then she comes into my bed in the middle of the night to ask for hugs and she will put her arm around my neck (which I legit hate being touched on my neck) then ask AGAIn for her foot to be rubbed it’s literally like I can’t even sleep I have go constantly be doing something to keep her asleep and honestly now that she’s older it just gets worse if she wants hugs she cant even just stay still and hug me she needs to play with my fingers or do some weird shit n I’m over touched I feel like a freakin doll at this point

According to GS Statcounter, Google's market share is now 86.94%, the lowest percentage since they started recording search engine share in 2009. That equates to a more than 4% decline from the previous month, the largest single-month drop recorded, by far.
Even more impressive is the collapse in market share in their most important market, the United States. In April, Google had 77.46 of U.S. searches across all devices, a massive drop of almost 10% from the previous month. Over the same period, Bing has climbed to 13% market share in the U.S. and 5.8% globally (their highest market share since entering the search engine game in 2009).
Yahoo Search also seems to be doing surprisingly well out of all this with their share almost tripling to 3.09% worldwide (highest since July 2015).
While there is never going to be 100% consensus among the wider SEO community, I think many of us can agree that Google's search results have grown objectively worse over the past few years, a process of - potentially deliberate - enshitification that, in my opinion, has accelerated exponentially since the latest update. It has gotten so bad that for the first time in my over 10 years working in SEO, I am hearing average-joe internet users complain about the state of their search results on a daily basis.
It would seem that Sundar Pichai and his cronies believe Google's market dominance to be unassailable, regardless of how rotten their core product continues to grow, how many long-time employees they give the boot or jobs they ship overseas. As long as the stock continues to pump and Pichai can add himself to Billionaire row, that's what matters.
For all of you who have, up to now, believed that showing Google the middle finger is a gesture in futility, these latest statistics prove that we can make our voices heard. Imagine if the same happens this month (not an unreasonable idea) and Google loses a further 10% market share in its primary market. 90% market dominance might look invincible; shrink that to <70% and Google might find themselves quickly regretting their near-sighted approach.
We have an opportunity now to send a message to Google. To tell them that we will not sit by idly while they destroy businesses and livelihoods; while they play the blame game and accuse us of being the ones who are producing a poor product that doesn't align with user intent; while they scrape our content to feed their AI machine and simultaneously lock us out from the SERPS; while well-researched, labor-intensive, and passion-infused blogs and articles are not even ranking in the top 100 but a generic Forbes article that mentions the KW once, a Reddit thread with single-digit upvotes and Quora spam dominates the top spots.
So tell your friends, tell your family, tell everyone you know that there are alternatives to Google. Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, it doesn't matter. Even if we only switch temporarily, to show that we will not accept this new status quo that they are trying to force upon us. Despite what their recent stock performance might lead you to believe, Google has never been more vulnerable. I, for one, am very interested to see what happens if Google loses as much market share in May as they did in April...

Hello. My name is Lydia from Madrid, the capital of Spain. In fact, I recently visited Korea through a business trip request from the Spanish Meteorological Agency, where I was attending.
It was not that I had never visited a country in Asia, but I was shocked that Korea had a very different characteristic from China, which was my first overseas business trip destination.
In fact, China, which was my first business trip destination, was a country in an underdeveloped country that I never wanted to come back, contrary to the Chinese people who said on the Internet that it was an advanced country.
I visited China for the first time and Korea for the Asian Meteorological Agency's academic research group, and I was embarrassed by the appearance of urban infrastructure, which is more advanced than China, as soon as I arrived in Seoul.
In fact, it was very inconvenient to use the bus in China because there was no sign at the bus stop itself, perhaps because of national poverty, and it was not possible to know when the bus would arrive once
Surprisingly, bus stops in Korea were telling us when the bus would arrive on digital clocks, and we could even get help from foreigners' notices by using kiosk digital installed there while waiting for the bus. Bus stops in Korea have a system that allows foreigners like us to hear all bus arrival notices through voice AI, and even the stops are state-of-the-art, so we didn't have to feel the heat of the heat wave like in China. But at that very moment, I had no choice but to be very embarrassed. Spain's Meteorological Agency headquarters urgently demanded a revision using remote Excel, saying there was a serious number error in the report we submitted by e-mail, and even requested quick business processing because we will immediately send business trip documents to the Korea Meteorological Administration. In fact, according to the normal plan, it would have been possible to do this quickly because we had already arrived at the hotel, but no matter how many times we looked around, there was only a bus stop, and my team members and I grabbed our foreheads and sighed. But at that very moment, a Korean woman approached us and made a conversation using English, asking what was going on with us. I started making a fuss in the middle of the bus stop, saying that I had to use my laptop right away, but I didn't have the Internet, electricity, or even business facilities to print, and I didn't know which facilities to go to because I couldn't speak Korean properly. But as soon as I finished speaking, a Korean woman showed a small smile and pointed her finger at the back of me, and I immediately turned around and witnessed a tremendous scene there.

Please do excuse my rambling in this post! If this is something this subreddit has talked of before I'm unaware, but I thought I'd bring it on here regardless :)
‘I just think of these things, and, you know, I put in things that I think I'll pay off later, little hints and foreshadowing, as you do, and sometimes I do pay them off, and somtimes later in the book I go back and take out the foreshadowings, because I've sort of drifted away from them. But a lot of it takes place on a subconscious level [...] a lot of my process takes place and I don't know where it's coming from, but ideas come to me, and concepts come to me, and I work with them.’
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t0wWRnFR4vQ (the link to the interview)
This is a really interesting statement to me, mostly for the ‘subconscious’ line. It also got me thinking about a post I saw once about the links between pre-raphelite art and George’s subtle use of foreshadowing.
George himself has stated his love for pre-raphelite art, and when I look at it - it does very much give me an ASOIAF feel. https://www.creativebloq.com/fantasy/game-thrones-author-reveals-his-favourite-art-41514683
This quote further summed up the influence of such art on ASOIAF, particularly regarding the fashion and presentation of women:
‘ it’s pretty clear based on some of his descriptions that in his mind Westeros looks like Pre-Raphelite paintings of the Medieval era, specifically Edmund Blair Leighton’s stuff. Which of course is a Victorian era romanticized view of the Middle Ages, but I very much think it’s in line with Martin’s writing style to contrast this beautiful, romantic looking place and these beautiful, romantic looking people with the violent and gritty realities of life.’ (Ofeverykinnetre on Tumblr).
(I got slightly off track here, but I wanted to point out the obvious connections between pre-raphelite art and its relevance/influence on ASOIAF.)
Now, back to GRRM's use of foreshadowing in the text. I won't be bringing up any specific examples here (since I honestly can't be bothered looking for it right now) but I encourage anyone responding to this to do so, since I'm curious as to what 'jumps out' to you whilst remaining relatively subtle. Such as, something you pick up upon rereads.
The Pre-Raphaelite paintings in themselves were actually quite controversial at the time:
'the artists used bright colours so their pictures stood out against other works in an exhibition, demanding people’s attention. The Pre-Raphaelites were self-publicists, seeking controversy and attention. A lot of the themes they chose to depict were quite daring for the time – including problematic subjects such as poverty, emigration, prostitution and the double standard of sexual morality in society. Their pictures require a lot of concentrated reading and are so densely encoded with signs and symbols that you have to work hard at deciphering them.' https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/pre-raphaelite/why-were-pre-raphaelites-so-shocking
That last sentence reminded me of a lot of ASOIAF itself, as well as the themes that are referenced above, presented within this vivid and evocative imagery (which is akin with how George writes, he paints a vivid (and ofttimes beautiful) picture that is entrancing and keeps us engaged. But beneath the surface lie these difficult hard-to-swallow themes that are quite shocking in their impact. Now, I don't mean that all of George's writing is meant to evoke this 'pretty picture' of sorts because strictly speaking this isn't true. But just looking at such art, it evokes the image of the romanticised 'songs and stories' because as we know, romanticism is a key theme in ASOIAF - particularly in regards to the deconstruction of romantic, chivalric concepts/imagery.
(Though I would argue that we aren't meant to view this world as entirely bleak and gritty, but rather hope for love and goodness to prevail despite the harshness of the world.)
In terms of deciphering images, that also works with deciphering and decoding the text itself. I believe all of us can pick up on fairly obvious foreshadowing. I'm a literature student myself, so this sort of stuff jumps out to me when I read the books for the first time - I read each chapter slowly and critically because I really like to think about what I'm reading, how certain lines and characters and concepts connect to each other etc I really enjoy this. I think it's just a habit I've retained from high-school. On rereads is when the majority of us will pick up on new details that blended into the backgrounds, much like pre-raphelite art, you have to look deeper beneath the beauty and copious detail to decipher exactly what GRRM is saying and that is when it hits you like a ton of bricks and you start making connections (and predictions) and oh, it's so much fun.
'But a lot of it takes place on a subconscious level.' (GRRM)
'Their pictures require a lot of concentrated reading and are so densely encoded with signs and symbols that you have to work hard at deciphering them.' (Article)
So, in that sense, he does evoke the principles of the Pre-Raphaelites — both the text and the art share an 'aesthetic' quality, a reverence for paramount realism, an interest in and love for the medieval. But it isn't just the surface picture they are interested in, it is also all the hidden meanings and subtle hints beneath that.
The key difference however, is the contrast between actual art and literature. Just like details from the background can be brought to the foreground and thus focus your attention on it, the subconscious can be brought into the conscious of literature. What has been employed as implicit can be made explicit. And in terms of George himself, he can unveil such concepts whenever he desires. It's brilliant and fits right in with his self-proclaimed foreshadowing style.
I really hope we one day get to see this series finished, I know we're all hungering for new content, hence why we frequent this subreddit. ( I have faith in you George).
So, what has been your favourite instance of elusive/crafty detailing/foreshadowing that you've picked up on during rereads? Or perhaps even on your first time reading..One of my favourite ways this has unfolded in ASOIAF is foreshadowing the Red Wedding.

Hip Injection Technique:

• Patient lies on pain-free side, with lower leg flexed and upper leg straight, resting horizontally on a pillow.
• Palpate the triangular greater trochanter with thumb and middle finger of caudal hand, placed on either side of base, and identify dip at apex of bone with index finger.
• Place index finger of cephalic hand here while passively abducting leg.
• Insert needle perpendicularly about a thumb’s width proximal to the apex until it touches hard neck of femur.
• Inject solution as a bolus. Learn More: https://orthofixar.com/orthopedic-procedure/hip-injection-technique/

I've been working out of town the past bit. Sleeping hasn't been an issue for me for a long time. The first week, I was in a hotel room with someone who snores very loudly, and falls asleep instantly, immediately going into snoring mode. I could get to sleep before him, but I'd wake up around 2-3, and not be able to fall back asleep. That persisted for a week, and it was awful.
I arranged for 2 hotel rooms the next time, and it's been a lot more peaceful. However, I still find myself waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. Waking up in the middle of the night is normal for me, but I used to always be able to go right back to sleep. Now I can't. I've been sleeping alright at home, but anytime I'm working out of town the next day, I'm just fucked. I'm guessing it's anxiety induced, but I just need sleep. I work a physical job with power tools. Last week I cut myself with a mitre saw for the first time, it was a close call to loosing one of my fingers.
Anyone know of a way to go back to sleep? I've tried, with no success: * Melatonin * Zopiclone * Dyphenhydramine
One thing to note, smoking weed usually puts me out. However, I've developed an allergy to smoke (yes, really) and I get itchy everytime I smoke something. Benadryl (Diphenhydramine) get's rid of the itchiness and puts me right out in combination with the weed, but does nothing on it's own. Is it possible I've gained dependency on weed/bennedryl to sleep? I've stopped smoking weed, because my body has told me it's time to stop. Unfortunately, I can't get a good sleep when I'm out of town, and it's driving me mad. I'm at a breaking point.
Can anyone help?

Dear agent,
(insert comps- Honest June and Tristan Strong series, stand alone novel, and 40k word count)
12-year old Ivy Doe, desperately wishes she could have a family, a last name, and more importantly the answers to why she’s able to shoot fireballs from her fingers one day, and the ability to grow plants by using her mind the next. Ivy doesn’t know where her weird mixes of powers come from, but she knows she must keep it a secret. First from the rest of the Jane Doe kids at her Philadelphia Orphanage, and now from her new adopted mother, who moved her all the way down south, to Charleston, South Carolina.
In her new school, Ivy learns about the African American group, the Gullah Geechee, and how many African Americans, especially the ones in Philadelphia are secretly Gullah, but lose their memories of the Gullah culture as each year went past. Her classmate Jalen warns Ivy that a terrible wizard lives at the end of Ivy’s street and to stay away from the house, but one night, she spies on Jalen using magic himself, walking inside the same creepy house he warned her to stay away from.
After days of spying on him, Ivy realizes Jalen and his family also have a unique blend of powers, like herself. They tell her she’s not a witch or a fairy, like she always thought, but something much more rare. The problem is someone far more dangerous knows Ivy’s true worth and power and is using her as bait to lure her people out of hiding and steal the Magic of the Gullah people forever. Armed with only the knowledge she recently learned in Black History class; Philadelphia born; Ivy Doe must use the once forgotten culture of the Gullah from within her to save her friends.
I was inspired to write this novel after downloading TikTok and noticing the trending topic was everyone asking African Americans, “What part of Africa are your ancestors from?” and then laughing when they reply, “I don’t know.” It was disheartening seeing American kids and teens cry as people laugh and call them orphans without last names, and being mixed with multiple races and cultures. I wanted to turn the negative into a positive and show that it's an asset and not a liability to have a combined strength of multiple groups to create a brand-new culture and bond with a newfound family.
FIRST 300 WORDS
“Who are you? Where did you come from?”
The same squeaky voice and rattling chains were growing louder, which means he was getting closer. I didn’t turn around, I kept my normal pace, ignoring him, looking both ways before quickly crossing the street.
“Hey, slow down!” He shouted.
I shook my head, realizing he is not going to stop until I answer him. I spun around rapidly in mid step.
“Whoaaaa!” The lanky boy from my seventh-grade history class yelled. Twisting his handlebar roughly, swirling to my side in record speed, missing my body by inches.
“You almost hit me!” I exclaimed.
“Who… are…,” He stopped talking and inhaled and exhaled three times, before continuing, “Who you tho?”
This guy doesn’t give up. Besides, didn’t he already know my name? Everyone should, thanks to our history teacher, Mrs. Shaker, who thought it would be a great idea for me to stand at the front of the entire class and introduce myself as the first new student to arrive at Charleston Morningside Middle school in years. A great idea alright, more like a great way to be embarrassed. All the other kids in this town have known each other since preschool and were staring at me like I was an alien; a one-eyed green Martian to be exact. But I put on a brave face, like I always do, and pretended things didn’t bother me. Apparently, my classroom introduction wasn’t enough info for this boy. As soon as the bell rang, he hopped on his bike, hurling inquiries at me the entire walk home.
“I told you; my name is Ivy.”
Before I finished my sentence, the sounds of his loose rattling bike chains surrounded me, he was on the move again. My head swerved in a counterclockwise circle eyeing him closely.

I've been learning for a few months but just started lessons last week. My guitar teacher said that I was holding the pick wrong (with my thumb, index and middle) rather than thumb and index. I'm guessing this is because it makes your strumming less loose / fluid? I've been trying since then to hold it with index and thumb but feel like I have way less control and the pick keeps sliding into the wrong position (I hold it so it's coming out of the side of my thumb and front of my index finger).
Any tips on how to get more control just holding with two fingers? ...or is this just a case of practice / it feels weird because I've done it another way for 5 months?

Are you a Prodigal son?
The best known story in the world is the story or parable of the prodigal son. Luke often compares and contrasts in his gospel, for instance, Jarius had a 12 year old daughter who was a delight to his family is contrasted with a woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years.
The prodigal son story contrasts two sons. It’s interesting to note that Jesus had two groups in his audience that day — the publicans (and more than a few democrats) and the harlots on one side, the scribes and Pharisees on the other.
You know the story — younger son demands his share of the inheritance, in this case, he is entitled to 1/3 of the estate — the oldest son gets a double portion. He takes the loot and moves to a far country and squanders it on riotous living. Then famine comes, and a good life lesson is to realize that famine always comes, and he finds himself feeding pigs for a living, so broke and hungry, he envied the pigs their slop. Makes that job at Subway not so bad after all.
Then he comes to his senses. He realizes his father’s servants were better off than he is in the sty.
So, he writes an email to dad and asks for relief. And of course his dad loads up a u-haul and brings his son a new flat screen tv, a nice new bed, some clean clothes and a big bag of spending money so the son can continue his piggish lifestyle.
Er… wait…
The son makes a plan. “I will go back to my father’s house and offer to be his servant.”
How do you know you have the heart of a servant?
How do you react when someone treats you like a servant?
This son repents. That is, he gets off his ass and gets moving. He makes changes like leaving the pig sty. Note he doesn’t attempt to bring some mud and a couple of pigs. He returns to his father’s house.
And his father sees him while he is still afar off. That means that father was looking out for him expectantly. And runs to meet him. Remember Jesus’s audience. Jewish men don’t run. Like ever. It is undignified.
And the son starts in “father I have sinned against Heaven and you…
But the father cuts him off. Put the best robe on him. Who has the best robe? The father of course.
Put shoes on his feet. Who wears shoes? Not servants. Not slaves.
Put a ring on his finger! A symbol of authority, of position.
Kill the fatted calf! Let’s have a celebratory feast! Why? His son was dead and is now alive. Which means that son was dead while he was in the pig sty.
So, where are you in this story?
Are you sitting in the pig pen wishing and hoping and praying your Father is gonna send a care package to make your sty time more comfortable? Abraham never heard from God while he was in Egypt.
Get up. Get your inner servant on. Go home. Your Father is waiting and watching.

Just quick addendum: this will actually be three parts. Is it bad news though? Not really. If you're reading this that means that part 3 is already published and available to read, because I will be publishing them at the same time. Basically, as I recall all of this, I didn't realize how much there was. Not the biggest deal in the world, but luckily I realized it's really just better to break it into a third part before I released it. So anyway, here's not one but two new parts, concluding this initiation into my personal transformation.
On a perfect mid March morning, I woke up to the sun breaking. I heard birds chirping. I took a shower, did my morning workout routine, took another shower, and put on my outfit. Then I did my makeup. It was 73°F. I remember this day clearly as I remember all the events of the game clearly. Down to the last vivd detail. I do this because this marks a powerful point of symbolic and honestly even literal shifts inside myself and my life itself. The weather had been nice the previous few days, and I smiled when I thought about the game. "The game" being this thing I brought up in part 1: "dress thrills". I was about to play it for the first time. The idea was, I had to dress as slutty as I thought I could get away with without looking like I did it on purpose. To learn to really walk that line. I hadn't necessarily gone out of my way to "dress down" so to speak, except sometimes for my husband, which was always meant to be obvious signs for him anyway. This was supposed to be subtle. How was I going to pull this off? Up to this point I don't believe I've ever given a description of myself. So I'm a 5ft tall blonde woman in her late fourties. I weigh around 120lbs, and the running joke with my friends and later even my mom was that all my body weight was in my ass. Basically I've always been a short skinny girl with a fat ass. I have a pretty face, I've aged pretty well. My complection is more pale, but I tan easily. I have a pretty happenin rack for my age if I do say so myself, I'm a low C. Them ol gals still ain't what they used to be, but i think they're doin great. Anyway, as for my self description, just use your imagination for anything else you'd want to know. So, as I was saying, I was excited when I got dressed. All I was basically going to do was tell a buncha burley boys to haul boxes and totes downstairs from one corner of the basement to the other. Regardless, I had to dress practically. So I wore some high waisted blue jeans. They were elastic blue jeans (jeggings) that hugged my ass tight, to the last outline, and I knew it. Then I wore a low cut top that hung just above my midriff enough to be a tease but not show too much. My top was just revealing enough. My makeup wasn't done super detailed or anything glamorous, but I was still on point. My hair was tied back into a ponytail and I had my white cloudfoam Adidas on because them thangs are comfy. I also put on a cheap bracelet I had sitting around. I had maybe worn it twice before but I'd had it a few years. It was a little rhinestone bracelet in the shape of a halved plumb, pit in view, with little pink and purple and green stones sparkling. As I pulled it out of the box I found myself appreciating it again, even if it was a bit big on my wrist, so I threw it on real quick. I heard the ring of the doorbell. I walked toward it with a mild anxiety, and suddenly became more aware of my ass and it's bounce as I stepped. I took a deep breath and remembered I was getting a bunch of work done for free either way. I felt a bit better. I opened the door and looked up to see the six man crew ready to help me out. Joe was in the front and Brandon right behind him. "Joe!" I greeted him genuinely happily and opened the door. His familiar face warmed me up. "So good to see you!" I walked back and signaled them in. Joe of course was the first one in, so as the boys trailed in behind him I gave him a little hug. It already felt a little too natural for both of us. It was very brief but I fought not to wrap my leg around him. I swear I felt a quick twitch in his right hip. I think he fought something too, in the half second. "We're happily here to help" he said, with his usual wry smile and well meaning look. He's a "helper" if you understand. He spends most of his spare time volunteering to help people somehow anyway. He really wants the best for people. I smiled ear to ear just knowing he was here to offer help with no expectation of anything: just a good man. A gorgeous one. A moment later Brandon trailed behind him and we hugged too. That moment wasn't as discreetly intense, but I'm pretty sure I felt something there too. Now Brandon for a time would call me by my last name, and because Valantine's day has become my favorite Holiday, I'll go with the name "Valantine." So he says, after our hug, "We're ready any time you are Mrs. Valantine". I already felt a bit overwhelmed. Then I realized there were four unfamiliar faces standing there. The ones I'd also.....noticed.....while flickin my bean at Joe and Brandon out in the yard. I hadn't even been introduced to them. "Well I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I don't think I've met your friends." I said, barely succeeding in keeping my voice natural and stable at the time. So, standing almost side by side behind Joe was Jason, David, Josh and John. Joe and Brandon introduced me to each of them. Jason was a redhead who stood about 6' tall. He has a more youthful looking face than the rest of them, but some stubble jutted out of his chin quite masculinely that day. He has a leaner frame. David is a bit shorter than the rest, at about 5'10", with black hair. I noticed he was stacked THICK. His frame is like a refrigerator or something. Very broad shouldered, not at all fat, but uh, "dense" all the same. He had a short and well trimmed beard and sunglasses on. Then there was Josh, who was a baffling 6'5" tall. He had on a white wifebeater and blue jeans. He had brown hair, and his frame wasn't skinny, but he isn't super thick either. Almost like a swimmer. Then there's John. He's a six foot tall blonde who's also thick like Dave. Well, not quite so much, but a similar kind of frame. They were all athletes, and they all looked like it. I saw some very nice shapes in that moment. Some of them, well, they were the kind of shapes that bulge. After the introduction and some small talk I won't bore you with, I led them down stairs into my basement. I swear I could feel them looking at my ass bounce while I walked. I got a little more turned on than I already kind of was. I directed them to a pile of totes while we casually talked. They began to move what was honestly a lot of storage containers for all kinds of things over to the other side of the basement. It was something that needed to be done, but they had no idea they were also kind of doing this for my amusement. I felt a little bit guilty, but also realized this was an opportunity for me to make my creme de la creme play. Telling them that this was my home and I'd feel terrible if I didn't carry something, Joe insisted I just stand back. Not to be told not to help, I in an unusually chipper voice told him I was going to anyway. That's when I approached a large ceramic lamp sitting off to the side. I made sure to take a serious posture to pick it up, squatted, and just before I picked it up I popped my ass out just enough to look natural, and enough for those boys to notice that I do squats regularly. Then I gripped it, slowly picked it up and even rose to the tips of my toes. I quickly came down on my heels from my toes and felt my ass bounce. I knew they all saw THAT. All the same, I carried it over to the other side, feeling my ass give a little jiggle with each step, and put it down with a little grunt. They thought I had no idea that I had given them a nice little show. After that Joe asked me to take it easy and just enjoy some convo. I gratefully agreed and told them I was gonna run to the bathroom real quick. I went upstairs, almost closed the door, leaving a little crack, made some footsteps across the floor and walked in place for a moment in front of my bathroom. The truth is it must have looked funny. Then I crept back over to the basement door and listened. I faintly heard Brandon say, in a low voice: "I know she doesn't know what just happened, but if I could I'd SPANK that ass" There was stifled laughter. Then Joe goes, just as quiet: "Yeah she's a good woman but she's kind of aloof. All the same kid that goes without saying." Then the voices trailed off. Suddenly someone went "HOW old did you say she was?" I smiled. Then I couldn't make much more out. I went back down stairs after a few more moments trying to listen, nothing else really coming through. When I got down stairs we carried on as normal, but I could see some of their faces were a little red. Then Josh pointed out my mother's old sewing machine. He asked if it still worked. To be honest I don't know much about those things, but I saw another opportunity. So I go "while that thing is something like 100 years old, they say that if you keep it well lubricated and taken care of, it should last a long time." And I could tell how it hit their ears, then I pivoted. "Can you imagine life in the 1920s? Even how people viewed their outfits and clothes? What medicine was like?" And that led into a bit more conversation. All the same after they were done I served them all some tea, talked for about another half hour, and saw them on their way out. They had gotten most of the storage moved but there was a bit more that could be done. All the same... By the time they left, I was soaked. It was time for payoff. I won the game. I stripped down, got into my toybox, strapped in and had the MOST fun. I saw Brandon, Catherine and Tony the next morning at church. I was sure to tell Catherine just how helpful they were and thanked Bran again. Brandon had told her there was still a lot that could be done at my place, which was true enough. They let me know later if I needed Brandon and his friends or maybe even Joe on Saturdays for a while, well, they could look into doing workouts at my place. Joe knew I used to teach some fitness classes out of my home and that I still had a large workout space with a home gym. So we agreed and later Joe confirmed the following Saturday they'd come do some more work for me after a workout in my home. So there was another chance for dress thrills, after all, why wouldn't I joint them? I won't go nearly so into detail for this day, but when they had finished what was left with the storage, which is all I had them do that day, we got our workout started. I remember I told them I was going to change first. I had been wearing a tame blouse and some slacks, but when I came back down I was wearing a short black pair of spandex gym shorts that stopped juuuust under my cheeks. Then I put on a sports bra that shows just enough cleave, and my black ASICS. As i walked in the room i took off my plumb bracelet, i had been wearing it again, and i set it to the side. When we got started we formed a couple rows and I stood in the front. Behind me was Josh, John and Dave, Joe to my right, myself in the middle, and Jason to my left. Needless to say once we started moving the back row got the first whole part of the show. But we did things where they basically all got to see. I even got to lead the workout for a while. I jumped, I pushed, I lunged, I squatted and I thrusted. I could feel them all tense up a bit from time to time when I looked at them, and I could feel them all look at me when I wasn't looking. I served home made cookies and lemonade when we were done. While we were talking and snacking i invited them over the next weekend to swim instead. We could get more done and all but it was just my way of showing gratitude. They agreed, and just before they left I said in an ever so naturally aloof way: "I had such a good time boys, thanks for giving me such a good workout!" With a smile as honest as pie on my face. About 30 minutes after they left I ended up spending some really good quality time with my wallbanger. Then we have yet another opportunity, yet a third round of dress thrills. They came back the next Saturday to swim. I wanted to take things to just the next level of risk. To kick it up a notch. My last two outfits might have been risque, a bit on the line, but still though, they made sense. Or at least didn't raise too many questions, even if my outfits had answered alot of questions without speaking a word about them. Now we were about to swim. If there's ever an excuse to be basically naked, it's while you're swimming, right? Right. Okay, so I wore a multi-cam bottom that had a natural shrink up and around my ass, stopping mid cheek. My top was multi-cam too, but basically was just a strip of cloth that barely covered muh tatas. It was so small in fact they almost might as well have been out. My nips and airies mighta been covered, but not much else was. I was a little afraid they'd pop completely out that day, but I was careful and thankfully they didn't. I also had my bracelet on. When they rang the doorbell this time, I wasn't as nervous as I had been the previous two times. I know I didn't say much about it, but it was a whole process. I felt relaxed and even comfortable in my body at that moment though. I will give more detail later, but in those moments of small talk I already had created a bond with them. They were all good, smart, and hard working.....and hot. Especially Joe and Brandon. They made me feel safe too. So, instead of answering the door in a pair of trunks and a tank top with my bikini underneath like I planned, I just answered the door in my bikini. I opened the door. They were all in their trunks with either white Tees or tanks. "Hello boys!" I said with the mildest amount of seduction in my voice. I immediately hoped they didn't notice. Then again I kinda hoped they did. As they all came in, Dave being the last and closing the door behind him, I go "water's fine out back" and began walking straight to the back sliding glass door to the pool. I was like the pied piper. They didn't say anything, I could just feel the concentration as they followed me out the door. It didn't take long to break the silence though. I just picked up a pitcher of tea and offered glasses, and we got to talking naturally and it was quickly almost like they forgot I was basically naked. Almost, but not quite. Because they couldn't and I knew it. It was actually a little bit chilly out to swim that day, but for some reason, nobody seemed to mind. I pretended I didn't notice my nipples hardening slightly through my top. I had set up a volleyball net and I watched them play. They all were showing off for me. Watching them all strike the ball as their muscles rippled, young and strong. Hearing them talk about sports, hearing them laugh, I soaked it all in and enjoyed it. And I swam with them, and splashed and got splashed, and played as you'd expect in the pool with a group of friends. In the meantime I was able to speak just fluidly enough and play just dumb enough to convince them I had no idea there was anything, uh, "wrong" me with having so few clothes on. In truth nobody brought it up, even though clearly everybody but me obviously noticed. At a point in time Jason really quickly lunged toward me in the water and I jumped back a bit. I saw Brandon in my peripheral as I started to move back, and let my left hand barely "slip" onto his groin. I laughed with Jason really hard because that really was a jump scare for me, and Bran thought I hadn't noticed at all what happened. I noticed though. It was impossible not to. Now there was no question: Brandon had a magical creature in his pants. The Leviathan...a magic meat dragon. After a while I went inside to grab a drink, and as I backed up from my fridge I legitimately hadn't noticed Joe behind me, waiting so he could also get a drink. So I opened the door and stepped back fairly quickly, just out of habit, when I felt my ass just absolutely CRASH into Joe. And I'm not talking about like "oh its so hot you ran into Joe" no. I mean I felt his hip bones crash into my back bone right before my bumper ass simultaneously knocked his big ass all the way down and I myself lost balance and also fell backwards. And I hit the ground hard too, like WHAM. But to be honest I was mostly just shocked and had the wind knocked out of me. I wasn't in much pain. I looked over at Joe, who was a little out of breath too. We were both fine, but the look on his face was crazy. According to him mine too, and I'm positive he's right. After a second or two of eye contact on the floor, he goes "I ever tell you I love your plumb?", referring to my bracelet. We both began to laugh and laugh and laugh. It wasn't the words themselves, it was how he said it. He sounded only a little flirtatious, but more so reassuring. It was a good little moment. I made us each a Bloody Mary and we went back outside and had a good time. I could have sucked his dick while I was making his drink though, I remember thinking that distinctly. And so after yet another night of fun and play I sent them all off. Then I had another euphoric jack off session to them. I won again. Another good night in my toybox. I got to talking to Catherine and she asked me if there was anything else that could be done, and I said while there was plenty, unless she'd have him do some property work for me then honestly there wasn't much I could think of. She knew exactly what I was talking about. My husband and I owned a country house with some acreage a few hours south of town. She also knew of the work I was talking about too. I had mentioned it once before in the past. There was a lot of brush and some fallen trees that needed to be cleared, some maintenance on a shed and some other minor things. Bran said he didn't see why he and his friends couldn't. His mother said she had no idea if his father would let him out of town that weekend. But low and behold I got a text from Cathy, her husband encouraged it. "That kind of work will be good for him." Joe had experience doing that kind of work, he'd be able to oversee them besides. We were in early April at this point, and it looked like I had an entire weekend of my little game booked with the boys, who were all coming. They were Bran's best friends. I was SO excited. Too excited. Quietly excited. But all the same I felt something turn in my mind, some kind of feeling things were about to change. I also felt an intuition to just lean into what I was doing anyway. I felt myself, yet again, dismiss my own apprehension. I didn't think much more about it. Suddenly in one week I would be embarking on an adventure. At the time I thought of it as an adventure with new friends, and a personal adventure of private (if not outwardly inappropriate) gratification in liu of my derelict husband. What I didn't realize is that this would turn into the adventure of my lifetime. One week. Not even, not really. But basically. One week.

DC Next Proudly Presents:

THE FLASH

In On Two Fronts
Issue Thirty-Five: Running Wild
Written by AdamantAce
Edited by Deadislandman1
 
<< First Issue < Prev. Next Issue > Coming Next Month
 
 
Wally West's morning routine was nothing short of a whirlwind. He was up and dressed in a flash, literally, his movements a blur as he zipped into his clothes and was almost out the door when a familiar voice halted him mid-stride.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The question came not with accusation, but with a playful undertone.
Wally spun around, his momentum carrying a breeze that fluttered the nearby curtains, to find Rosie Dillon lounging on the couch, a steaming cup of coffee in hand. Her expression was a mix of amusement and affection.
He couldn't help but smile, his heart swelling a bit as he approached her. “Got a big day today, huh?” he teased, referring to her job interview.
Rosie nodded, her excitement palpable. “Yeah, and I'm going to nail it,” she declared with a confidence that made Wally's smile widen.
After a quick but tender kiss, during which he whispered an earnest “I love you”, Rosie gave him a nod, the unspoken signal that it was okay for him to resume his life at high speed. With another swift peck, Wally was out the door, the sound of it closing echoed faintly in the distance.
Once outside, Wally dialled back into the rest of the world. He returned a missed call from Ambassador Rhinebeck. One he should have known better than to miss.
“Ambassador!” he exclaimed as he connected and Grace Rhinebeck’s image appeared projected on his mask’s lenses. “Is everything alright?”
“Everything is fine, Flash,” she replied. “If there was a crisis in Doomtopia we would have sent someone for you.”
Wally winced at the name, but pressed on. “I know, but I don’t want you all to stop thinking you can rely on me.”
“We won’t, Flash.” There it was again. “You’re - pardon my expression - one of the good ones.”
As Wally raced through Gem City, the sprawling metropolis that had evolved from the merging of Central and Keystone, he took in the advanced architecture and bustling skyways once again. Flying cars never got old, especially when it left the roads clearer for the city’s friendly neighbourhood speedster. Still, their sleek innovations didn’t make up for the fumes they belched into the atmosphere. Wally frowned slightly; for all the technological advancements of the 25th century, some things seemed stubbornly stuck in the past.
Then, his musings were interrupted by another chime from his communicator. This time, it was a message from a scientist friend, beckoning him to the Flash Museum for a discussion on some Speed Force anomalies. It had been years since Wally was a walking Speed Force anomaly himself, which he figured gave him a unique insight. He quickly called his contact back.
“Should I be worried?” Wally asked brusquely. He didn’t mind skipping the pleasantries when he knew he’d be face-to-face with the man in less than a minute.
“Don't panic, just come by,”* the professor assured him. “I’ll explain everything.”
“Okay. On my way, Dr Thawne.”
 
🔻🔺 ⚡ 🔺🔻
 
Present Day
 
Morning light filtered through the blinds, casting a soft glow across the bedroom. Barry lay awake, the sheets pooled around his waist as he watched Patty sleep beside him. The rays of the sun played across her features, accentuating her peaceful expression. In that quiet moment, Barry couldn’t help but marvel at her, feeling a mix of exhilaration and apprehension. They had moved swiftly, rekindling their relationship with an intensity that was both thrilling and daunting. Yet, as he watched her, all he could think was how right it felt. They had navigated all of that teenage awkwardness years ago, Barry resolved, now they had begun to repair their cracked foundation they could speed things up all they pleased.
Patty stirred and blinked open her eyes, catching him halfway through changing into his shirt, his smile broad and unabashed.
“Morning,” she greeted, her voice groggy and husky.
“You know what my favourite thing about having super speed is?” she mused, sitting up. “Getting to sleep in and still get to work on time.”
With a playful flourish, she zipped around the room, a blur of motion that ended with her fully dressed in an instant. Barry watched, amused and slightly envious.
“That’s just an advanced Speed Force technique,” he chuckled, pulling on his last sock. “I’m never on time for anything. You’ll have to teach me that someday.”
“Maybe someday,” she quipped, a smirk playing on her lips.
Patty stepped closer, her expression softening. “Last night was wonderful, Barry. I can’t wait to do it again.”
“Next time, maybe we can eat out somewhere?” Barry suggested, hopeful.
“I’ll check my calendar after work,” she replied, leaning in to plant a quick kiss on his forehead. With another flash of speed, she was gone, her departure leaving a slight gust of wind that fluttered the curtains.
Barry stood alone in the quiet room, her absence already felt. Yet, the promise of what lay ahead left a warm feeling in his chest, a contrast to the cool morning air filtering through the window.
 
🔻🔺 ⚡ 🔺🔻
 
Red lightning crackled intensely around William West as he concentrated on harnessing the volatile energy. In the Speed Force Institute's training room, his quick, tight circles generated a powerful storm of energy, which he then attempted to direct with increasing precision. Each attempt to target the distant bullseye resulted in another charred mark on the walls or floor, the actual target remaining frustratingly intact.
Exhausted, he paused, hands on his knees, breathing heavily. Just then, the doorway slid open with a hiss and Iris West, his aunt, stepped through. “I thought I’d find you here.”
William straightened up, surprised. “I didn't know you had access to this place.”
Iris chuckled lightly. “It’s one of the perks of being the Flash’s sister.”
She walked over to him, her heels clicking softly on the concrete floor. “How's the scholarship application going?” she inquired, her tone genuinely curious.
William's shoulders slumped slightly. “I... haven’t really started. Got a lot on my plate,” he admitted, expecting a lecture.
Instead, Iris simply nodded. “I can see that. And I've been checking the logs; you've been training hard, maybe too hard. You're doing fantastic, you know.”
He glanced at her, curious. “Did Barry tell you that?”
“No, but he does speak very highly of you,” Iris assured him with a warm smile. “Maybe spend some more time with him outside of this... training arena? Barry Allen's worth your time too, not just the Flash. He could help with your applications.”
William shifted uncomfortably, his desire to focus solely on avenging his parents battling with the practicality of what Iris was suggesting. “We train together all the time.”
“Yes, you and the Flash maybe, but there’s more to life than just training, William. Barry can help with your applications, and I'll help with essays and personal statements,” Iris encouraged firmly.
The proposal was tempting, grounding. William nodded slowly, a part of him eager for the normalcy it promised.
“And have you spoken to Detective Zolomon again lately?” Iris asked casually.
William's heart skipped. He had indeed been meeting with Zolomon, working on something far from what Iris would approve. “Yeah, we talked about a police internship,” he lied, “but I don’t think I’ll go for it. I don’t want to be a cop.”
A blur of red and gold streaked into the training room, announcing Barry’s arrival in his full Flash costume. “Hey, Iris! William!” he called out cheerfully as he skidded to a halt beside them.
Iris raised an eyebrow. “You seem better rested than I'd expect,” she commented, her tone teasing.
William cringed slightly at the innuendo. “Seriously?” he muttered, his expression a mix of amusement and mild disgust. It was weird enough thinking about his uncle in such a context.
Intent to move swiftly on, William turned to Barry with a more practical question. “Why are you still wearing the whole getup, Barry? Everyone already knows you’re the Flash. Why not train in your sweats?”
“Ah, I'm glad you asked, William. That's actually the focus of today's lesson!”
William rolled his eyes at the formality. “Lesson?” he echoed, not entirely hiding his scepticism.
Iris, still standing by, decided to intervene. “Barry, I was just telling William he should take a break. He’s been pushing himself pretty hard lately.”
William's response was quick and firm, reflecting a determination that belied his young age. “I’m fine! Let’s just continue with the training,” he insisted.
Iris studied him for another moment, yet seeing the resolve in William's eyes, she nodded slowly. “Okay, but don’t overdo it,” she cautioned, her voice soft but stern.
“Promise,” William replied, a slight smile breaking through as he turned back to Barry, ready for whatever lesson his uncle had in store.
Convinced, if not entirely comfortable, Iris gave them both one last look before turning and exiting the training room. Her steps echoed faintly as she left, the door hissing shut behind her, leaving William and Barry alone in the vast, equipment-laden space.
“Alright,” Barry clapped his hands together, the sound sharp in the quiet room. “Let’s get started then. There’s a lot more to these suits than just identity protection. It covers my face, sure, but it also shields my body. The fabric is a lightweight fibre that doesn't impede speed yet absorbs the impact of hits, scrapes, and even some forms of energy blasts.”
William's brow furrowed in confusion. “But doesn’t the Speed Force protect speedsters from most of those things?”
Barry nodded. “The Speed Force does minimise the effects of friction, preventing us from igniting when we run through the wind. It offers some protection against other forces too, but it’s not all-encompassing, especially when you're up against supervillains like the Reverse Flash." The mention of the Reverse Flash sharpened William's focus instantly, likely Barry’s exact intention.
Barry continued, “Not to mention: the suit is skintight. We already don’t worry about drag, thanks to the Speed Force, but loose fabric can still be a nuisance. A streamlined design helps prevent any self-sabotage from tripping or fabric interference."
Half-joking, William asked, "So does this mean I’ve got to get myself my own full-body condom if I want to run like you?"
Barry laughed softly and extended his hand, holding something small and metallic. “No need.” He handed it to William who took it, examining the titanium ring engraved with the iconic Flash lightning bolt.
“This is...?” William began but trailed off, a profound awe colouring his tone.
“Max’s Flash Ring,” Barry replied with reverence for the fallen hero.
The significance wasn't lost on William. He slipped the ring onto his left middle finger, marvelling at how it seemed to be a perfect fit. Barry, smiling, did not mention the nanotechnology that adapted its size.
Removing his scarlet glove, Barry revealed a similar ring of gold. He demonstrated how to activate it by pressing a hidden button. William, filled with curiosity and a bit of nervous excitement, pressed the button on his ring.
In a blur, the costume shot out, rapidly expanding. In that moment, Barry placed his hand on William’s shoulder and pulled them both into Flashtime - the speedsters’ slowed down perception of reality - allowing them both to witness the unfolding of the suit in slow motion. There, William watched the dramatic unfurling of silver fabric accented with black and highlighted with red lightning bolts streaking across the chest.
However, as the Flashtime ended and reality snapped back to its regular pace, William, still caught up in the spectacle, failed to step into the suit. It fell to the floor with a comical slap, lying fully expanded yet unoccupied.
Barry chuckled at the sight, the sound echoing slightly in the spacious training room. “Looks like today's real lesson is how to suit up at super speed,” he said, amused. “Trust me, nobody wants to catch a speedster half-dressed and struggling into their costume.”
William, slightly embarrassed but more amused like his uncle, nodded, his earlier frustrations momentarily forgotten in the novelty of his new gear and the trust Barry was extending him with their prized possession of Max’s.
 
🔻🔺 ⚡ 🔺🔻
 
Wally West sat at the desk in his bedroom, the muted glow of his laptop illuminating scattered research notes for his engineering assignment. The tabs open on his screen offered little of interest, a stark reminder of the mundane aspects of a lot of education. Yet, beneath this veneer of academic normality, Wally harboured secrets that stretched the boundaries of time itself.
From the bottom drawer of his desk, he retrieved a sleek metal disk, a futuristic device incongruous with his surroundings. Placing it carefully on the desk, he pressed the centre. Immediately, it came alive with a soft blue glow, projecting a hologram of intricate car engine schematics into the air. The design was from the 25th century, tantalisingly advanced yet disappointingly close to modern capabilities. Wally pondered how he could integrate this knowledge into his paper without causing a ripple through the timeline.
His curiosity piqued, Wally's fingers hesitated over another button on the disk. Yielding to temptation, he pressed it. The engine's blueprint vanished, replaced by a holographic newspaper front page, the headline in bold.
FLASH DIES IN CRISIS.
It was the same page that had haunted Barry, stored in the time vault by the adult Bart Allen. The date and details shifted with each viewing, a morbid reminder of a mutable future tethered by a seemingly constant event: the Flash's death.
“Bart... where are you?” Wally murmured, lost in thought. He knew a teenage Bart Allen - Barry’s future grandson - had been hopping through time, training under every Flash. The young Bart who had made a brief visit to the 25th century had hinted at dire events, and clearly was fixated on this headline by the time he reached adulthood. In the present day, it had been years since Bart had covertly trained under Jay Garrick, and then Max Crandall. Everything he knew about Barry’s future fate, and the Reverse Flash’s machinations pointed to Bart and the complex tapestry of his history. He was overdue for a partnership with Barry, but when he did rear his head he would answer Wally with exactly what was going on. Bart was the key, he was certain.
The unsettling silence of the room was abruptly shattered. “Feeling nervous, West?” The voice, distorted and chillingly familiar, immediately made Wally’s blood run cold.
Spinning around, Wally faced the nightmare he had hoped to avoid. The Reverse Flash stood mere feet away, his red eyes gleaming malevolently, his features obscured by his rapidly vibrating form.
A surge of energy exploded between them, red and yellow lightning crackling wildly as they launched into a frenetic dash around the room. The chase spilled into the street, an eruption of speed and power that blurred the lines of the residential area around them.
“Everything is already in motion,” the Reverse Flash taunted as they circled each other, his voice a sinister echo in the whirlwind. “You and your light touch approach to timeline surgery can't stop it. I’ve already tried, with blunter instruments!”
Where have you been!?” Wally demanded, breathless from the shock of the encounter. The Reverse Flash had been absent since the chaos at Patty and Barry's wedding, his whereabouts a mystery. All the while, the Flash Family feared the day he would reappear.
The villain's reply was cryptic, tinged with dark amusement. *“The so-called ‘Legion of Doom’ has shifted its priorities. I check in, but I’ve been busy setting up the dominoes.”’ *
Wally gritted his teeth. If he wanted riddles he would have headed off to Gotham.
“Besides… you should know where I've been…” The dark speedster sneered, taunting the previously future-flung Wally.
Both came to a stop in the middle of the street, each just staring the other down.
“So what do you want?” Wally's cry was a mix of defiance and desperation. “You’ve messed with Barry enough.”
First, the Reverse Flash merely laughed.
“What?” Wally balled his hands into fists.
“Barry Allen is right where I want him,” the foe replied. “Right now, you’re the thorn in my side. I'm not going to let you mess everything up.”
The Reverse Flash charged forward with immense speed, and Wally reacted on impulse. At first, Wally was sprinting away, the evil speedster in hot pursuit as their surroundings were reduced to a blur. But as the Reverse Flash overtook him, Wally instead found himself the pursuer, chasing the family’s tormentor towards Keystone City, each step a desperate bid to unravel the threat before him and protect those he loved.
 
 
Next: Shatter in The Flash #36