For those who don't want to bother clicking the link and just want the lowdown: Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Thing, and Joseph Quinn as Human Torch.
Thanks to being the biggest and first commonly available part of Drunkard's Walk BGC has a special place for a lot of the people on these boards, so I figured I'd mention this here - the new Transformers Earthspark toy being sold under the name "Prowl" is actually a repainted Bumblebee Cyberverse Adventures Hot Rod, which means it's got almost the exact profile of the ADP car Leon an Daley drive in the early episodes (It gets wrecked by the Griffon IIRC, and the replacements are far more econobox.)
So, while it's more white with blue quarter-panels than the on-screen blue with white below a "belly line" and of course has Aurtobot logos instead of ADP, it is at least plausibly close, to the point it can do double duty as a BGC toy on your desk, and who'd have expected that after all this time?
Earthspark, like BBCA before it, is a "semi-budget" subline, but this was one of the better BBCA molds so it can still stand up with the average War For Cybertron (Siege|Earthrise|Kingdom) or TF Legacy (adjectiveless|Evo|United) Deluxe despite the lower price point, so at $20 MSRP he's already a good deal and if you find him for less I'd call it a priority buy if you're thinking about getting toys at all.
We've had to decide where in history to put Artoria Pendragon, our very own Saber. From the legends, there are two periods which fit the most: the High Middle Ages, a time of crusaders and chivalry, and sub-Roman Britain, a break in the historical record which can accommodate legendary figures among native Britons.
We're going with the earlier time period, 407-577 AD, largely because it offers some of the other elements of the story -- roughly Welsh/Cornish/Brythonic sounding names, an invasion of pagans taking on the Christian people of Britain (i.e. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who would later win... and then later convert to Christianity), and a more blank slate into which to write. Romans withdrew their last soldiers from Britain in 407, after the Groans of the Britons, circa 450, they disappear from the historical record completely. Historian and archaeologists are currently on the peaceful immigration meme, just as they supported the tribal conquest meme before 1950, so it's hard to know what really happened.
This thread is about that time, which I don't think people really have a sense of. So what is our Artoria older than?
Chivalry - it's not hard to see why later writers would want to add deeds of chivalry, because the lost kingdom idea is very good romantic literature. But the idea of a code of knightly ethics largely evolved in the aftermath of Charlemagne's empire, which leads us to...
Charlemagne, Karl the Great - his being crowned emperor happened in 800, which is centuries too late. She may have lived at the same time as Clovis, the first of the Merovingian dynasty, but certainly not alongside a Carolean.
Crusades - The First Crusade started in 1096! Crusading was roughly as close in time to her as we are to Columbus' first voyage of discovery.
Islam - And why would you need to crusade, because Mohammed had not yet begun to preach? (He does so in 613 AD.) The whole of the Mediterranean world was Christian, at least officially.
Turks living in Turkey - outside of perhaps a few merchants, Anatolia was thoroughly Greek, having been ruled by Greeks and Greek Romans for a millennium
The East-West Schism - The Christian church was not divided to Roman and Orthodox -- but there were other sects like Arianism which were very dominant in Western Europe, via the Vandal and Ostrogoth, and early Lombard kings
Hungarians living in Hungary - The Great Migration was in full swing at this period, with the above mentioned people and the Visigoths invading old Roman lands, but the Hungarians didn't come to Europe until the ninth century.
Formal/informal distinction in Latin languages - this seems to have emerged in the Middle Ages from the imperial "royal we" getting extended to more and more petty nobles, finally becoming the tu/vous distinction.
Venice - The most serene city did not yet exist, being founded later (c. 700) by Roman refugees from Lombard invaders, with many leaving from Aquileia on the land). Nearby Ravenna did exist, and has very lovely mosaics from the same period as our Arthur/Artoria.
Nationalism - This one is obvious, but just a reminder that there was no concept of a British nation back then, or a nation of all of the Gaelic-speaking peoples -- in fact invaders from the north were just as feared as Germanic people from across the seas. Religious identity played a much larger role (on the Christian side anyway; pagans were rarely concerned with orthodoxy).
Jadwiga of Poland - Okay, this one is pretty distant, but in 1382 Hedwig was crowned King of Poland, because there wasn't a rule in the student handbook that women can't be kings. She was canonized as a Catholic saint in 1997, but is an early example of women ruling as a king.
Just on the topic of of women as rulers, I think there's enough evidence that a female!Arthur as a "king" is at least plausible, historically. Besides Jadwiga, others included precursor Pharoahs like Nefertiti and Cleopatra VI. Matilda of Tuscany was an enormously powerful margravine of the Holy Roman Empire in the late eleventh century, and was crowned "Vice-Queen" of Italy in 1111. It's hard to tell what title Boudica had, given all of our sources are Roman, but she would have ruled in her own right had the Romans not contested the will. Boudica is closer in time to our Artoria than Jadwiga, though!
Yes, this is a relatively short list of women in power, but it's much more possible than a female Empress of Japan (though there were many powerful Dowager Queens in Korea and the Ottoman Empire). And much, much, much more plausible than a female Leonardo da Vinci, as suggested in the later Fate works. There's a tradition of feminist reinterpretations of King Arthur, but not so much of randomly genderswapping people with mountains of written documents about their lives for fanservice.
Back in thread XXVI, I asked about Extension:CirrusSearch/CompletionSuggester, which we couldn't get because we didn't have CirrusSearch. We have CirrusSearch now. Do we want to go through the process of asking the Tropers whether they want it, and asking Miraheze whether we can have it?
Alternately,
In an even earlier thread, Geth wondered about AdvancedSearch. That, we can now turn on whenever we want. Do we want to go through the process of asking the Tropers whether they want it?
As of tonight, the KanriKyara/ManaChara project now has a presence on Archive of Our Own. We're still going to post our work here, but eventually everything will also be posted on AO3 as well. We're only posting one chapter a week or so there, so as long as we keep writing at a reasonable pace, the Stories subforum should always stay ahead of it.
effect: Doug can continue functioning at his peak despite any physical damage ... for as long as the song lasts. Then he'd better have reached someone who can at least do some first aid, 'cause the song only lets him hold out until the end of its runtime. Still useful if its five minutes to midnight when his power resets if he's already used all his healing songs that day, has some kind of no-magical-healing debuff, or similar (admittedly quite situational) circumstance.
So earlier today, the VA nurse called up to say not to come in for Dad's regular weekly appointment, because they were having a "big COVID outbreak" in the Brockton MA office. If this means among the staff or the patients who come there as the closest VA hospital or in general I haven't found any further information,. but I know "Totally not COVID, guys!" "white lung" has had hospitals in China filled to capacity and unknown but sufficient to have the crematoriums running 24/7 and make coffins hard to buy numbers of deaths, again, for at least a couple of months.
So not to be alarmist, but it might be a good time to make a point of masking up and keeping social distance etc. assuming you stopped. Doesn't hurt anything if it's unnecessary, after all, and if it's in Brockton it's certainly in Boston, and that's a major travel hub that could have gotten it to or from anywhere.
So a while back I rolled up a zombies mastermind mostly just to see what zombies were all about. Hat tip to Bushranger in the Discord channel for the name, because I wanted /Time secondary.
Then I had to come up with a schtick, because ... well, I have to. I can't not. It's a curse.
So I present to you... Tomorrow Mourning's in-game bio, plus more:
Welcome to Tomorrow Mourning(tm), Paragon's finest post-living general services contractor! Our trained and licensed morticians use only all-natural components and guaranteed safe thaumaturgic rituals. Unlike some of our competitors, you'll never have to worry about your dearly departed joining some mindless horde of brain-eaters! Our franchise operators are all licensed and fully equipped to make sure that your former loved ones will return to their grave in like-newly-dead condition*, and not roam the neighborhood indefinitely, scaring children and eating people's pets.
Ask your Tomorrow Mourning Sales Representative about our no-scuff treatment! For that long-lasting like-living shine!
Tomorrow Mourning(tm)! We're never more than a day away!
* minus normal wear and tear. Money-back guarantee subject to limitations and conditions. Discounts available for bulk orders. Void where prohibited.
Daphne is the Senior Field Mortician. Phil is the newly-hired Provisional Mortician. Their manager, Mr. Hooper, tends to stay in the office and send them to do the dirty work -- though he'll step in sometimes if needed to tackle a particularly big job.
You may also notice a... recurring theme... among the minions.
And yes, I color-matched a certain cell phone company's color as best I could, because with those initials, how could I not?
(why, no, I don't tend to carry jokes too far, whatever do you mean?)
![[Image: S4JWNPg.png]](https://i.imgur.com/S4JWNPg.png)
![[Image: 81RxfPvikoL._AC_SL1500_.jpg]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/MEDIAX_849526-T2/images/I/81RxfPvikoL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
![[Image: DragonAurora_Zhang_960.jpg]](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2401/DragonAurora_Zhang_960.jpg)
