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In the canon TL, it was Ryan Steiner working in cahoots with Psycho!Kat. But here, Kate is sane and focused on fulfilling her responsibilities rather than conniving at regicide/matricide and usurpation, so my lead suspect is Ryan. Of course, drakensis isn't above throwing us a curveball, so...
A test-balloon for something that came to me a couple of weeks ago. What if the Council influenced events so Buffy went somewhere other than Sunnydale? Right now it’s just Buffy dealing with culture shock, but we all know that’s going to be the least of her problems soon enough....
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Threadmarks: After-Action Report, Action of 13/14 December 1993
...thing before these jokers even reached the compound fence, much less harmed anyone inside."
¹¹ APPRENTICE MCKELLAR: "Stormhawk's presumptive intent* was to stage a 'terrorist attack' that would cause a public panic and give them an excuse for a crack-down. They might also have been...
Threadmarks: “Fun in the Sun (Club)” pt.1 — two styles for comparison
Sure enough, my NSFW snippet “Fun in the Sun (Club)” wants to turn into a near-full-length fic — I’ve written over 7k words in the thing and still haven’t gotten to the bits that would get me an X rating from the MPAA, let alone to the end of the snippet or the rest(!) of the plot — and I find...
Not so much a snippet, as a mother/daughter exchange that occurred to me as I was mulling over certain backstory events:
“You realise that your relationship is technically illegal.”
“Mama, if the cops ever have a go at me, it’ll be for ‘having an SKS’, not ‘having the S-E-X’.”
They say that you should be able to sum up a character’s core drive in one word. Taz’s word is “Justice”: there is just too much about the world that is wrong and unfair, and she wants to fix it, even if it means beating it into the right shape with her own two hands. As shown by her first...
A little of the world-building behind the [alt-history] situation in New Zealand during the timeframe of Taz and Misha’s adventures.
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Operation MATCHBOX was a CIA-sponsored arms-smuggling program whereby Stormhawk agents and logistical apparatus, with the complicity of CIA...
...receiving his first VC on Crete, with someone yelling “Oh, no, the Boss has copped it!” when he shammed death to deal with two German paratroopers*, and of sweating artillery gunners in the Desert Campaign cursing his darting back-and-forth between positions because they were firing at German...
An out-take from the next installment of Valhalla Can Wait, showing us one of the worst enemies with which a Slayer or Watcher will ever have to contend. (Image links are crucial. I spent a lot of time on those props, dammit!)
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...they’d soaked up, and carried it all into the laundry to join the rest of the week’s washing in the basket. Just as well we’re having Mufti Day* on Monday. This stuff will have an extra day to dry.
While she was there, Taz glanced at the toilet against the interior wall and quickly made...
An out-take from Distance and Perspective, once the Scoobies reach Martinique and meet up with their ‘colleagues’. And yes, it’s probably a little Sue-ish to have Taz read people off like this, but if they decide they want to return the favour, she’ll stand there and hear them out. And then...
While inspiring a piece of canon gives me a warm fuzzy, I find the greater part of said warm fuzzy is just seeing Ashley coming to a better place, both materially and mentally. Her power and the situation(s) it’s constantly put her in have had her on the ropes since she was thirteen, constantly...
And once again, we see how if Ashley was just a very slightly different person, the sudden turnaround her life has undergone in the last week or so would make her go back to her (habitable, furnished!) apartment (with a working TV and free (if slow) internet and a useable kitchen where she can...
... Jesus Christ and all the Saints. Okay, I’m not super-familiar with Damsel of Distress, because I haven’t read many fics involving her, but after that chapter... does anyone else feel like Damsel Ashley needs all the hugs ever? I knew powers in Worm existed to not help people, but cripes...
In which Misha has to give a bitch her pedigree:
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“Wizards” video parlour, Hastings Street
That same time
Misha took a deep, steadying breath, then gave Danny’s mother a steady look across the change-kiosk, trying to keep his temper under control. “I’m sorry; I don’t...
...or how many she will do in future, but she appears in at least three titles that are already on our shelves at ‘Peaches’. The ‘tyranny of distance’* being what it is, I am certain there are more on the way.”
“Charming,” Taz huffed, massaging her own eyes with one hand. If they’re...
Everyone knows the canonical life-story of Buffy Summers, the Sunnydale Slayer; it’s an epic tale of heroism, tragic romance, mental trauma, and survival despite often-impossible odds.
But everyone is the hero of their own life-story. Whether it’s an epic, a tragedy, or a grim warning tale with...
Threadmarks: Family: can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em
A little bit of world-building, showcasing my spin on a canon character’s ‘origin story’ and what he was up to before we met him in canon to make him so different from the bloke we saw on-screen...
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Enlisted Mess, Price Barracks
Ladyville, Belize
07:31, Thursday, 17 March...
Threadmarks: There's what you want, there's what you need... and then there's what you get....
[Time for a quick outtake, kind of my riff on the Buffy/Joyce conversation from Becoming. For context: Elena, Taz’s mother, has known about Taz being the Slayer from Day One, and is... far from completely enthused. Taz has convinced her to take her and her best-friend Misha on a road-trip to...