HunterOpera

Regarding "Reins of the Tomb Raider," Leo said: Yay! Happy ending. Always shipped LaraxSam but canon served to sink that ship as it almost always does *shakes fist* Yeah. It'd be nice to see an LGBT couple actually survive a show in mainstream media. The Sam/Lara thing was especially frustrating, but it did play nicely into the ending of Reins, so I can't complain too much. Sam and Lara compliment each other nicely, too, which may lead into a proper romance in this weird whatever-it-is that I've stumbled into.

Yeah. James was a special little snowflake, but I wouldn't say he represented you or your countrymen so much as he represented entitled misogynistic toxic-masculinity bullshit. That sort of 'thinking' can pop up anywhere, and I needed a petty person that was a reflection of Lara herself. The Earl of Faringdon was noted in the lore as being engaged through a pre-arranged contract with Lara, so I took him on a journey that made him the opposite of her: a callow, selfish little brat, a petty self-obsessed narcissist with the weight of tradition behind him. If Lara had been American, the villain would have been American. Neville was a follower, a hanger-on who fell into a bad crowd. And 'harrowing' is a good word. Lara's experience was harrowing, but it's far from the only time she's had a harrowing experience. With help she'll internalize this and come out stronger for it. She has people to rescue, a world to save, and mysteries to investigate... and some of that means returning to Parmistan.

Insex was a sort of precursor to kink.com - they laid a lot of the groundwork for that whole network, and even ended up handing over some of their locations, props, and models. There's a documentary on them called Graphic Sexual Horror that's worth watching, and a lot of their old shoots are - well, they're fascinating. Insex went defunct in 2004, I think? Maybe 2005? Oddly, it was regulation that did them in. The documentary goes into it at length. The resulting sale of their assets allowed their riggers to go and work for kink, dungeoncorp, et al. They did a lot of story based stuff, and then did this thing where their models were often given numbers instead of names. One of their models was given the number 49. The shoot I'm thinking of is called "Apartment 49," and it's well worth checking out. Most of their stuff is. Good hunting~!

Yeah, I'm not done with Steph or Zamir. They'll be back. Zamir's got Innocent, remember, and Steph now has something of bloodfeud with her former friends. We'll get to that, though.

Regarding "Reins of the Tomb Raider," Burnsidhe said: Seriously? THAT is how you choose to deal with James? One shot and it's over? No revelation of how corrupted and foul he was to the world, no lingering public humiliation for him as a form of justice? Just one lightning bolt and that's it? Nope. That's what Zamir thought happened at that moment. James didn't deserve any mercy, and he got exactly none. As for corrupt and foul, it became apparent that James was a symptom of something worse as this story went on, at least to me. That's part of what I'm going to be exploring going forward, because it's the cause that Lara, Himiko, and Sam are going to go after. As an aside, I love the name you've chosen. 'Burnsidhe' has got to be one of the cooler titles I've come across recently. Regarding "Reins of the Tomb Raider," Anon said: Very well writen; but I have to agree with the last reviewer. The cops showing up would do more to hurt all involved. Lara Croft alive and well, and in bondage; with all gloating conspiritors. Here James died in victory. Thank you. I think the cops showing up would be bad for Lara; she's in no shape to deal with the press or really much of anyone after four and a half years of abuse. She's something of an introvert in the survivor timeline, and she's going to need some TLC before she's ready to go adventuring again. I see Sam spinning Lara's absence as a near death experience that's left her badly hurt; the quiet will mollify the nobles that were all too happy to leave her to her fate, though Himiko is going to have some things to say about them in coming stories. And, as per the last chapter, James ain't dead.

Hahahahahahahaha no. Zamir thought he was dead. Limited third-person omniscience means that I can set up one thing through one character's eyes and do something entirely different elsewhere. It's something I've used to better effect over in Bergman. Speaking of Bergman, we should have something up there in the next week or so. I've got another idea for Samus, too, something that might be fun to explore. Decisions, decisions...

Legends is a wreck that's made worse by how well Flash handles time travel. I've had a lot of conversations on this one, picking apart the narrative - it's got a bunch of characters we like, but they don't actually do anything. It's an ensemble cast where nothing is accomplished, where nothing happens, and the character moments aren't enough to drive it home. It's pretty mostly and sometimes stumbles across interesting concepts and good performances, but I've not been impressed. Really digging Banshee, and waiting for the final season of Person of Interest to start. The suitcase seemed like a good idea - I needed to get Lara from one place to another without drawing attention to it, so I borrowed from you and insex. Did you ever see any of the stuff 49 did? There's one where they remove her from her apartment in a case like the one described, and then take her to the set and let her out. ... so Boobswriter is doing his job, then? Alisair and Zip are villains in the world Boobswriter has conjured, horrible wretched traitors, shallow and selfish and spiteful. James' motivation was about as petty as I could make it. He's a jackass, and he got what he deserved.

I do. I think it's important to be able to write characters you don't agree with; James was a disgusting mess, a wretch, and if people despise him as strongly as they seem to it means I've done my job as a writer. I'm feeling quite pleased with myself, really.

Keep me posted on that one; again, the concept is cool enough that I want to watch it, but the writing is so damn wretched that things characters do don't make sense from one scene to the next... mind you, I did sit through Warehouse 13 and that didn't even make sense internally. The character moments saved it and it knew it was silly and it had fun with itself, so it had that going for it. What else you watching? I wanted James to just die; I couldn't see him having any kind of battle with Himiko/Sam - Himiko is almost a god, and working with Sam means someone like James doesn't stand a chance. Zamir and Steph got away, and they hauled that corpse with them. I might do something with that later; I haven't decided yet. I'm definitely not done with this universe, and Parmistan is too good a setting not to play with. I'm considering copy/pasta'ing my notes on the place here, and letting people do whatever they want with it. The orphan thing was a last minute addition that came about from re-reading some of the responses in your thread - the idea of Lara ruthlessly murdering people that stand in her way. Those people have families, presumably, and I thought it might be interesting to do something with that and ended up adding it in without much thought. I initially was going to being some Parmistani people to Croft Manor, but thought the widows and kids would be a little more interesting. You're right about them needing further development, I think...

No argument. It's what Marvel has down to a science - making good movies that have superheoes in them - and what DC, Warner, Sony, and Fox have yet to figure out. I want the new Tomb Raider movie to be good, but we won't know anything about the quality of it until there's a script. *shrugs* I really want to like Wynonna Earp. The idea is solid, the leads are decent at the whole acting thing and plenty hot, but the sexy pandering feels unearned. It's like there's two teams of writers, one of which is very good at drawing the best out of the concept, and the other of which is "our characters our idiots, but look at the softcore porn~!" I'm much more willing to watch bad movies than television, because a movie is an amusing diversion and a television show is a season. Hell, I collect bad movies.

I want someone that can act. One of the things I've always found attractive in anyone, for any relationship, is competence. Megan Fox is just kinda there, and I think Lara needs presence; even sympathetic Lara can control a room if she has to, can direct the ebb and flow of attention. She knows her shit, and I'm not sure Megan could convey that. That said, bondage and pervy bad guys would be fun to see in a major motion picture. We get hints of that over in the Shannara Chronicles, which is reason enough to watch that show. What I'd prefer to see, again, would be a healthy bdsm relationship somewhere in video media; too often you get bondage portrayed as something bad, when kink is one of the better ways relationships happen. Fun for the sake of fun instead of obligation. And of someone like Lara - strong, competent, Lara - likes to play at being a sub in a healthy way? That'd be kinda great. Don't think it would ever happen, though.

I hope his ending works for you. Dude had it coming.

This really is the best means of striking up a conversation with people and working through stuff. I've gotten some great ideas and feedback here over the years, and I'm grateful for all of it. Would recommend, 10/10, will be back again, all that sort of thing. I agree with you that it's more interesting to read about the breaking than the broken - the scenes that have interested me the most, on this site and others, have always been about the journey more than the destination. It's that psychological aspect again, chipping away at the core of a character to figure out what makes it work and then breaking it utterly. While it's interesting to see the final result of that process, it's never near as much fun as what builds up to it - but, by extension, an unbelievable process for that character can make a breaking feel false. It's a fine line to walk, and you do it beautifully. The new chapters are fun and more extension on the sexual frustration side of things, though I'm siding with JViper on the application of violence. An "Ultimate Surrender" style fight would suit this perfectly, and play into the holds you're already using while keeping the tension high. Again, I'm still looking forward to seeing where you're ultimately going to take this. Cool, man. Welcome to the forums.

Glad you dug it. That thing was a monster to write.

Could be good. People were worried about Heath Ledger as the Joker, and at this point I'm willing to give anything the benefit of the doubt until I see evidence of failure. She can't be worse than Angelina Jolie's take on the character, which I blame completely on the script. Those movies were fucking awful. Nah, you've got it. Regarding "Reins of the Tomb Raider," Anon said: Well written; hard to read something so depressing. Thanks. Next couple of chapters should make this a little more palatable.

Glad you're digging the races. Lara still understands language, but as we just saw in Village of the Damned her mind isn't what it used to be. The Lara we all know and love is still in there, and more than capable of coming out when she has the chance to assert herself, but she's taken a hit. Her pride has been damaged as much as the rest of her, and that's going to be a tricky thing to fix in the next couple chapters. Thankfully, I've got a way out... And we'll be getting into a little more Drasha-inspired abuse in the next chapter, and taking the idea of rubbing her face in her old life a couple of steps further. I've got plans. Terrible plans. And then a literal deus ex machina that should allow me to continue to explore a very strange world. I needed to take some non-powered people from different places that could pose a challenge to Lara without overshadowing her; this is still Lara's story, and the focus needs to be on her for this to work. Think of the other names as appetizers that will allow me to look at different facets, though some of those facets will be dark. What the Countess has done to Katie / Kate Bishop, for example, and what Paracelsus has done to Punky / Claudia Donovan. I was actually having trouble with Masque'd Hawk because it had gotten so dark, but the ending of this story gives the heroines of these stories a way to fight back. I am going to take it. Good can, should, and must triumph over evil, and James, Nefaria, and Paracelsus are the very definition of the word. We'll see how that develops. No kidding when it comes to Agent Carter, but the superhero medium lends itself shockingly well to smut fic, and even more shockingly well to bdsm-fantasy. I'm sure that's not a shock to anyone reading this. I absolutely will; this weekend is going to be a little hectic, but I should get to it by the time the next chapter goes up.

I'm in the process of editing the final part of the race now, and it start the same and goes in a radically different direction. Remember when Lara broke into the Village of the Damned and set this whole thing off? The entire chapter is called "The Village of the Damned," and my plan is to have that place live up to it's name. The handicap of being faster, stronger, or better in this chapter is getting there first and drawing attention to yourself. I dig your ideas, though, and might use them in the chapter afterwards.

Exactly! I'm thinking Paracelsus was the primary person responsible for this changeover, linking one Parmistan to another over a variety of planes. I also think that his personal world has drawn on elements of the others as he's needed them, as much for amusement as control.

I'm somewhere between annoyed and amused that I stumbled into continuity. Maybe I should build a website? Keep a list of these things in chronological order? I'll look into that later. For now... The hole seems relatively easy to deal with, the more I think about it: I've got Paracelsus right there. Dude was a time traveler with a penchant for re-working things to suit his own whims and always knew more than he was letting on. Supposing he could go the way of Rick from Rick and Morty and start dimension hopping, there's no telling what kind of damage he could do or where he could go. The damage he could do for his own reasons. There's a lot to be played with there, so I think I have a central villain to play with, an AU that almost approaches a kind of sense. I am completely workshopping with this, so bear with me; Parmistan, due to Paracelsus' influence, becomes a sort of dimensional sinkhole. It's a place that exists as a constant among several axis of time and space, like a hole in reality. The communication technology they've developed combined with the resources Paracelsus has gathered from others is allowing them to cook up a kind of trans-dimensional mafia, a group of people that are meeting and influencing different realities through a single fixed point. I could easily upload what I've got for Parmistan and allow people to play with the region and culture, setting up a kind of anthology space where people are free to use the setting as they like; that would allow for different voices, stories, and writing styles - all of which could keep it fresh. We could even work out parallel Parmistans. It's fiction: there really is no limit. Would anyone be interested in that? I could put a handy guide together and then people could go nuts with it. At this point, I do plan on looking at the various worlds I've already got intersecting, probably starting with Punky and working my way through towards some kind of climax, so, regardless, there will be more of this weird hunterverse I've stumbled into. The trick, as I see it, is to combine the stories while keeping them separate enough that people can read what smut they want without having to delve into the other stuff. I've been pulling from continuities that makes sense for the stories: I've despised most of nu52 Catwoman, for example, so I've been pulling off of the oDCU Catwoman as my model, but I'm not tied to the idea. There's a lot to consider here. Let's see where it goes.

Regarding "Reins of the Tomb Raider," Sazbi wrote: Now I'm interested in spinoffs of the other "animals" or more backstory to them in this universe. Yeah, so am I. I think they're coming; I want to finish off Masque and Bergman this year, but I might be able to give the others their own chapters wherever. I've talked about five of the others already, so let's reveal the others before we get the race going: Karma is Carmen Sandiego. She came to Parmistan for the same reason Lara did, and got caught in similar fashion. She's more elusive than dangerous, but Ivo leads out of the most efficient intelligence and security forces in his world, something Carmen would have taken advantage of in the past. She's about halfway through her sentence, and without her out there doing things her organization fell apart. There wasn't much loyalty to Carmen in that organization simply because she'd left everyone else behind time and again, so she's kinda stuck where she is. Punky is Claudia Donovan from Warehouse 13, and Paracelsus is, well, Paracelsus - a villain played by Anthony Stewart Head who can be described as "Giles as a 16th century sociopathic alchemist. Also, he is immortal." Warehouse 13 was kind of a weird show. Paracelsus was a character who was turned into a bronze statue near the show's end, but this was a process he had been show to be able to ignore before, and he'd been given more time to study the process he, himself, invented. Because the show is over I can play with that time line a little more; this Paracelsus escaped his bronzing and rekept the Warehouse, this time bronzing the rest of the crew and keeping Claudia as a pet because she was the one that really thwarted him. He's being a little more subtle than he was the last time around, not that Claudia can do anything about it. Innocent is Rebecca Sutter from Hot To Get Away With Murder, a legal show that has little to do with law and more to do with pretty but awful people making out with one another. Rebecca was a big part of the first season before her death in the first season's two part climax, where she was tied to a chair and suffocated. In this world, her assassin didn't realize that she failed to kill her, but Analise Keating did and needed to get rid of Rebecca in a hurry, so she used the girl as leverage in building a relationship with William Millstone, a powerful American oligarch and the father of one of her students, Asher. This is before his suicide in the second season, so Asher is going to be getting an inheritance he currently knows nothing about. Lastly, Tiger is Mary-Jane Watson, formerly the not-wife of Peter Parker and one of those characters Marvel has done nothing with for a very long time. She's been great in Iron Man since Marvel's reboot, acting in place of Pepper Potts, but I've got OsCorp and Stark Enterprises going head to head on a corporate level. Norman knows who Peter is, knows who Stark is, and doesn't mind hurting them both - especially if it gives him an in with his son, and that's how MJ ended up in this position. So, the hunterverse (thanks, MF!) combines elements of Arrow, Tomb Raider, Warehouse 13, How to Get Away with Murder, Metroid, Spider-Man, Batman, Street Fighter, the Carmen Sandeigo games, Gymkata, Resident Evil, and Hawkeye. This is made possible, in-universe, by Paracelsus mucking about with time and reality and his meeting with one Melissa Bergman, which I'll try to explain a bit when I write Punky and touch on a bit more in Bergman. It shouldn't be too hard to work Bastet into this, so I suppose there's a touch of Harry Potter as well. How big a hole have I dug myself? Can I keep track of this all? I'm going to pull a Star Trek reboot and much about with time to explain this all. I'm actually curious to see if I can pull this off...

Sometimes that happens; time is a weird thing in fiction, but I'd guess that those two hours are going to be pretty important in the life of one Miss Croft. The writing will take you where it take you, I think, and that's all to the good. I've found writing porn to be similar to writing any other action - it's a recount of the exertion and activity mingled with the emotional impact of said activity that works, at least for me, and it's one of the things that I admire about both your writing and MF's. Agreed on the Marvel and DC thing - one rules the big screen and the other the small screen, though Peggy Carter is pretty fantastic and the Netflix series are unreal on the Marvel side of things. I don't give Marvel credit for Deadpool or any of the X-Films, though, because they're done out-of-house and Marvel has little say in how those are made. It's one of the reasons that Marvel is pushing the Inhumans over mutants, and one of the reasons they've jettisoned the Fantastic Four in their reboot. I don't think anyone at DC Comics or Warner Bros understands why their characters work or what makes them interesting, and we'll have to see what happens with the reboot of their reboot of their reboot. Gah. I'm thinking I'm going to release a list of the others and a brief bit of their backstories today, then do a retro-active introduction chapter for each in whatever section those characters belong in. MF coined the phrase hunterverse, and I'm more than a little flattered by it, so expect me to run with that pretty hard. Selina is typically awesomely hot - there's something about the character that lends itself to the fetish of the writer or director, which didn't work as well in the Dark Knight Rises because Chris Nolan's fetish is Cillian Murphy. Here, though? Here I can get away with whatever, provided I can keep the logic internally consistent.

Yeah. Pretty much this: it's why Speedy will get an early lead that will fade quickly, because she doesn't have the endurance or the strength to maintain her pace - especially when pared against people like Ada Wong, Selina Kyle, Sakura Kasugano, or Lara Croft. We'll see that a few times in the races to come. In the meantime, any thoughts on who any of the other racers might be?

Thanks, man. I had a lot of characters to introduce in that last chapter, so I'm hoping they all stick enough to be memorable. Arrow is kind of great. I dig pretty much everything DC is doing on the small screen and sorta wish they'd take their cues from that for their cinematic universe. I'm still kinda annoyed that we didn't get Harley in Arrow because of Suicide Squad, but what will be will be. Felicity is great, yes, but she's not the fighter that Thea has been trained to be - I like the idea of a Felicity pony and might touch on that if I take MorbidFantasy's idea and develop these other characters and their backstories a little further. The idea of Felicity's hacking skills combined with Parmistan's communication infrastructure is actually mind-boggling and slightly terrifying, a thing I'm kist thinking about now. A lot of food for thought. You're dead right about this being the old Ra's. Thea is a weird one for me, because I usually try to leave these characters where I found them, and work within their continuities - it's important to respect these characters, I think, because they are iconic and that's what draws us to them. Or me, at least. If the character doesn't feel right it kinda undoes the story. That said, the world I've cobbled together takes its cue from the DC Cinematic universe, in that things got dark - Ra's won and has claimed Thea as a trophy, a reminder of how he defeated his three greatest enemies in one fell swoop: Ollie, Malcolm, and Thea herself. Oh, and Nyssa is a bloody force of nature in that world, but we might get to that. We'll see. As to the nuts and bolts, that comes with time and experimentation. It's one of the reasons I write these things, is to experiment with technique and ideas and to figure out what works and what doesn't. It's the feedback that I do this for, and the idea that this is actually working out the way I want it to. The trick is to figure out what needs telling; if you're bored writing a bit, an editor once told me, your readers will be bored reading it. Figure out what matters, then the language that works best with it. Every story comes from some character's perspective, so concentrate on the details that the character would notice. Also, and this was one of the first things I learned, be prepared to murder your darlings, by which I mean figure out what works for the story and work towards that and that alone. I have a cousin who believes that writing is a combined form of mental archaeology and controlled schizophrenia, where you're using your mind to clear away the dust off another world, peering into it and recording what happens there. It's an image I'm rather fond of. The idea, I think, is to dust with care and let what happens, happen: Reins is heading towards a much better ending than I had thought it was because that's where the story went. It will also make things better for Punky and Katie and all the rest, really, because given what's coming with Sam/Himiko... well, we'll get to that. Lookin' forward to your next two chapters, man. I'll be watchin' for 'em.

So, as I was reading this, I put together a thing that would justify these various characters interacting with one another without anything else interfering in this strange continuity I've accidentally built; the question is whether or not I'm going to have time to act on it. I'm definitely going to finish this story, and I want both Masque and Bergman done this year, too. That would allow me to do some fun things with these other characters, leading into possibly something larger down the line - but then I noticed the we, and I'm wondering if you'd like to collaborate on this? That could be fun. Failing that, a handful of one chapter write-ups might be interesting. Prologues that might just be named for the ponies as they are in Reins, describing how they got where they are. I'm going to have to think about this. And that brings us to the other problem: fanfic allows for a shorthand description, because we already know what the characters look like. Lara Croft looks like Lara Croft, so I don't have to waste words describing her - I can instead use an occasional descriptor to highlight something about her we already know, or draw attention to some facet of her personality or appearance. The people around her, likewise, end up being described in relation to her and generally do not matter. I like to think I've done a decent job implying that the Parmistani people are physically a robust and colorful folk, for example, but the fine details of Zamir, Ivo, and Drasha are beside the point. Even James is sort of a blank slate, his name taken from an actual Earl of Faringdon who was actually a decent sort - a much better person than the character that has taken his name. Trick of it is, the various ponies need descriptions for the story to work. Visualization is important. I'm trying to do the best I can to convey snippets of personality and appearance without taking away from the main character (Lara), and to give a sense of the people that own those ponies and how they act in contrast to the main antagonist (James) without taking away from his sense of menace and power. Most of those owners are true monsters when compared to James, with the possible exceptions of Williams and Karin. So, on that note, the racers that have been identified, their owners, and the backstories I've cobbled together for them so far: Countess Neferia is Madame Masque and Katie is Kate Bishop / Hawkeye. These are the characters from Masque'd Hawk, and it's a departure from how things went from the Matt Fraction Hawkeye comics. Kate Bishop hates being called Katie, so that seemed like a neat little detail to use against her, and Neferia despises Kate and is terrifying; she's an Iron Man villain, one of the big ones who Tony needed help from Dr. Strange to take down. The idea that someone that scary doesn't know how to game the system is absurd, and someone like Kate would be a hobby for her, not a threat. Wesker is, of course, Albert Wesker. Scarlet is Ada Wong. I've got Wesker faking his death in Resident Evil 5 by, well, dying. He keeps track of his son and discovers Ada interfering in Piers' life and he's still angry about her treachery regarding him, so he provides much of the technology that results in her clone being spawned in the sixth game. The events of that game are meant to keep Ada off balance and to put Leon at risk, two things that she manages to overcome - but as dangerous as Ada is, a surprise attack from a dead enemy catches her off guard and he manages to capture her. Roman Sionis is Black Mask from the Batman books, and Gutters is very much Selina Kyle / Catwoman. Roman isn't acting alone - he, Hush, and Scarecrow were able to nab Catwoman and have slowly broken her down, using her disappearance as a means of confounding Bruce while also taking revenge on someone they all have reasons to dislike. It's simple stuff, but ties into times all three of those villains have captured her. Their combined efforts succeeded where, individually, they failed. Ra's al Ghul is the one from the Arrowverse, and Speedy is Thea Queen. I usually try to work my stories in with continuity, leaving the heroines I'm playing with in a place that could fit into their worlds. Bastet Collar, for instance, fits in well in the fifth Harry Potter book, and leaves Hermione where she would be at the end of that book anyway. The Thea here is a radical departure - a world where things went wrong, where Ra's took Thea and kept her as a slap in the face to his three greatest enemies: Ollie, Malcolm, and Thea herself. The friendliest of these relationships is the one between Karin and Dearest, who is her rival, Sakura. According to the Street Fighter lore (and I'm convinced they told the poor bastard who wrote the SF Lore that he was writing an RPG, and that whoever it was started crying when he found out it was for a fighting game), Karin beat Sakura at the end of SFAIII, but realized it was a fluke and that Sakura was better than she was. This allowed her to grow as a person, and the two of them went from being rivals to friends, sharing a relationship roughly analogous to that of Ryu and Ken. Sakura is stubborn and a little crazy, and Karin is a little mischievous and doesn't really think through the consequences of her actions, and between the two of them they've ended up in Parmistan. This does tie into Street Masters. ... which means I might have to finish that one, too. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with Ada, though. She's a fascinating character with a lot of depth to play with, and I think you could have a lot of fun with her. What's the story?

Regarding "Reins of the Tomb Raiders," MF said: Lol do I see cameos from Marvel and Capcom in there? Do I see two cameos from your other "Masque'd" fic? That's quite a line up for the race you have there, which begs the question: when are the other race "entries" going to get their origin stories here in Hunterverse, eh? Huh. I totally missed that - I'll have to go back and correct that before posting the next chapter, and make sure it's consistent throughout. Thanks, man. Speedy is definitely Speedy from the Arrowverse; I'm a huge fan of what DC has been doing on the small screen, and loved what they did with her character in the third and now fourth seasons. I suppose it's not too much of a spoiler to say that, yes, Dearest is Sakura Kusugano from the Street Fighter series, the Countess is Madame Masque, and her pet Katie is Kate Bishop/Hawkeye from Marvel comics. ... and I've stumbled into continuity, haven't I? Dammit. The worst part is, I can see a way to tie Bergman to all of this, and it would work particularly well with the new ending. Dammit. How much time do I have? Okay, I have a question: I was curious to see how many people could guess the names of the women involved in the Great Game, but given the shorthand description I'm taking advantage of in fanfic, should I set the official list here? It's three comic book, three television, and three video game characters. Worse, I've got a basic back story for each, so... anyways, let me know. I'm finishing the end of the third day of the race now, and then I'll go back and edit the race chapters - Candover to Routard, Routard to Maraholme, and the Village of the Damned, all of which should be out this week. Then we've got two more chapters for Reins, and then I'm going to alternate between Street Masters, Masque, and Bergman. Dammit. There's continuity in this. I blame ComicCaptor as much as I blame MordbidFantasy for this. Thank you, both. This is going to be fun.