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Yep, she’s from, or at least is introduced, in the run-up to the original Spider-Verse comic. Which managed the rare feat of taking a multiverse horde of spider-men/people fighting a foe that wants to eradicate them, and made it boring. The movie is much better. D’you mean for the comic she’s from or for this story? Since I don’t really think it is a spoiler if so, frankly I feel like we could’ve done a better job explaining it here. I don’t think Spinneret actually tells anyone what the deal is until the sequel. I dunno, @JayDee, do you understand what the deal is with this character? Yeah, nah, I’m pretty sure it’s left over from before we even decided to use the character who will be introduced in the next chapter. Pure coincidence. Y’know, I’m really starting to wonder now if there isn’t some sort of cognitive thing inherent to reading something that makes you think everything you see (or think you see) in the story was put there deliberately by the author.

Dear, surely, it’s a huuge relief...’cos for awhile this site wasn’t available TT So, it was helluva frustrating to see how your fav author’s works are gone. That’s why now decided to donate monthly and do my part by saving this site ^^

AAAAAAAAAAAUUUGH! Well, I had written quite a lot here, and then went to open another tab to check something, and in the process accidentally clicked the little x at the top of this one, closing it, and while AFF sometimes saves what I’m writing, this time it didn’t. *sigh* Alright, let me try and recreate all of it. First off, I’m obviously way behind on getting involved in this thread, and that has to do with work. I got back from Thanksgiving vacation, and then was promptly scheduled to work seven days in a row. I thought I’d have time on Tuesday, but my little brother decided to come into town for Christmas early, so my mom had me helping her get a bedroom ready for him, moving furniture with her, running down to Goodwill to drop stuff off and basically spending the day running errands, and then it was back to work Wednesday, but I’m here now! I don’t have any fascinating behind the scenes details to share about the creation of Chapter 2, as while I was heavily involved in re-writing a lot of the early parts of the story, this is the one chapter where I didn’t do that; not one word of that is mine. Of course, since I didn’t do that...mini-review! I really like the concept of what @Sparrow calls the eyrie (after the term for the nest of a large bird of prey). In the story that inspired this one, I don’t think the hell flyers had any sort of communal sleeping area, but this is an idea I’ve seen in movies and pulp adventure stories going way back: the place the monster puts someone it’s not ready to eat yet. This is also where we first meet Cindy, and this was yet another character I’d never heard of before (it’s funny, because character-wise this story contains a mix of “Oh yeah, I know them” and “who the hell…?”). I seem to recall she’s from something Sparrow wasn’t super fond of; I think he said she was the only really good thing to come out of that story arc or something. I really like her interactions with Chun-Li, especially Highlight of the chapter is still Chun-Li strangling the hell flyer through the bars of her “cell”. Something I didn’t quite realize was going on when I read Chapter 1 and saw Chun-Li hit the thing with a kikoken was that Sparrow was giving it a distinguishing feature. By injuring it in a specific way, he made sure we could tell that one apart so we can see Chun-Li get some very satisfying payback here. And yeah, also guilty of confusing Marvel’s Spinneret with the webcomic Spinnerette. I’d never even read the webcomic, merely knowing about it through TV Tropes, but it was enough to cause a mixup. Sparrow found me an online version of the comic that showed how we got the Spinneret that appears here (no spoilers, so I can’t discuss more), and I was actually rather pleased to find out there was a universe where One More Day had never happened. Always a good thing. I freaking loved JayDee’s summary of the moment I asked that question, by the way. It turned into a cool WitS moment, though, so it all worked out! To be fair, I’m blanking on other candidates for this myself, and as for keeping Harry from being too OP, we did have a readily available out. I won’t spoil anything for anyone who doesn’t know about the source material for this story, but you may have noticed that while magic works in the Necropolis, it’s getting nerfed somewhat. That nerfing is variable, but not random, and results in a lot of magic-based characters being significantly weaker than they ought to be (this will come up again in, I think, Chapter 8 or 9). I did get somewhat more involved here, writing some of the new stuff inthe action scene involving Harry. Originally, as mentioned, he would have had his natural magic, but no training, so he couldn’t really fight. When he gained five years worth of Hogwarts schooling, he obviously gained the ability to participate, so I put in some stuff about him hitting zombies with the disarming spell, which isn’t the best thing for actually hurting them, but expelliarmus is kind of his signature move, and I don’t know if he’d learned enough to throw an incendio at any of them (also that might have just resulted in flaming zombies, sending things from bad to worse). The other two characters, Black Widow and April, are doing pretty much the same stuff as Sparrow originally wrote for them. I can’t wait to discuss this, and my initial reaction to it, when it actually happens. I mean “Baby Got Back” isn’t that...*Googles*...1992. Holy shit, that’s 28 years ago. Man, now I feel old. Also, Damn it, JayDee! Now that’s stuck in my head. I...I can speak no more of this here. As for why the character in the next chapter doesn’t provide the Terminator line, I always assumed the line’s use here was intended as foreshadowing. Regarding the next chapter itself, I personally like it, though I do know things slow down for some scene-setting. I’ll talk about it more when we get there.

Late on this (to the point that JayDee already left a review!) but Chapter 3 is up.

Omg, well done…. I’m going to enjoy this. Got it on amazon.

Yeah, I wonder now if I would’ve done better with someone else for this part. Originally the idea was that I wanted a male character who wouldn’t be too overpowered, and to facilitate that I had Harry be from literally the very start of the series, when he’s 11 and doesn’t know any magic. Then I realised that (and what happens to him) was too much even for me, and aged him up some. Hence why it possibly feels a bit awkward. Actually had to think about that one for a second to figure out what reference you were making. Not sure if that’s more distressing than the fact you made a pop-culture reference that’s older than I am or not. You joke, but initially I had planned to introduce more Spider-people further down the line, who’d end up hooking up with Spinneret, but then realised this would be massively OOC for her, and more importantly, might make people think I’m catering to a cuckolding fetish, so I noped way out of that. Yes, and in light of one of the characters introduced in the next chapter it really makes me wonder why I didn’t have them provide this line instead, would’ve made much more sense. Nevermind. Mm, we’ll have to see if you feel the same way in the next chapter, as that’s when a bunch of characters all get introduced at once. Though it might not be as bad on here, as I’m unable to use the pictures I inserted originally to illustrate what they look like. Pity, though, I spent ages finding all of them. Probably a good idea, though I’m unsure how to name all the characters in a way that wouldn’t give away which characters survive the story (via the ones having the biggest roles) or make people think that some characters get more screentime than they actually do. Plus, this is an ensemble piece, so in theory everyone has equal billing. You see my problem?

It’s definitely an ego thing for me. I unhealthily used to measure myself by that number and would be disappointed when others would have double to reviews. It made me doubt my ability to write a summary or how good my writing was in general. Now it’s about the number of hits that makes me happy.