Terr asked, so you all shall receive

... is the new Task Force as of the latest issue (page?) and boy howdy is it a hoot!  No spoilers, but: Length felt just about right, difficulty curve was chef's kiss, and the set pieces were really, really well done.  I absolutely love that Knockback has a legit purpose now.  And I didn't even know the ancient creaky CoH engine could DO that (and I've looked into the code!). 

In addition, we have finally discovered Terrence Knight's true weakness.  Poor Terr.

Anyway, point is I really like the new TF and while I know things have died down on the CoH front around here, if you're at all interested in getting your tights on, I for one would run this one over and over again.  Is it the new default for when we hate the WST, aka the Roman Punching Party?  Not quite.  But it's close!

Thought folks would want to know, since I only hear about it in relation to their 2025 Black Friday sale. (Coupon code for that is on the front page of their website, as I post this.)

They also stock some titles from Discotek Media and Media Blasters.

https://www.mediaocd.com/

This story is available on AO3.

I've just realized that my eclipse.net address hasn't received any mail at all -- not even spam caught by my provider's spam filter -- since the 19th. If anyone has sent me anything in the last few days, it's somewhere in hyperspace somewhere.

I've submitted a ticket with Netcarrier. Let's see how fast it gets resolved.

According to the check-if-it-'s-up sites it's fine, but I haven
't gptten so much as an error code for hours, just empty tabs that neither load nor time out.

Drogn's idea was good.  

The Weaver's Web (Worm AU)
The Investigator's Boston side story continues
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/...-116839718

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Princess Principal has a backstory where they put multiple eras of English history in a blender but: does it really blend?

On a start of a rewatch, and via consulting the wiki, I noticed that the Queen is named Elfrida, but I had just assumed that she was Victoria because, like, she looks basically identical to Victoria.  Actually this is an easy one to resolve: maybe Alexandrina Victoria decided to take a different regnal name in this universe?  Perhaps one motivated by the romanticism of the era, as Elfrida is truly a retro name for a queen -- the last one ruled as regent around 980.

The bigger question is: Why are there dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine?  The only thing I can figure is that England didn't lose the Hundred Years War... and somehow still didn't lose these territories to the French later?  Like, what is happening on the continent?  Did they actually enforce the Angevin claims to the crown?  The thing is, up until, well, the Glorious Revolution, England was a total backwater.  They were able to punch above their weight in the 100YW because it was a much more centralized state than France in the 14th century, but later against the absolutist Sun King... how?

If I had to guess, maybe the Black Death really fucked over France, and England got off lightly.  And that this would be enough to negotiate a settlement that cedes the French claim on Gascony, Aquitaine and Normandy, in exchange for ceding the claim to the French crown.  It's hard to imagine they came by these specific lands later.  And if Elfrida === Victoria, the German princes need to be mostly unaffected by the change in history.  Which is to say that France still needed to rival Austria, rather than an OP Angevin Britain.  After 400 years, these people might actually be speaking English (quelle horreur) -- it took about that long to fully Romanize an area.

Alternatively: no Joan of Arc in their timeline.  Those areas are most similar to lands that England held in the 1440s.

But... what about Bonaparte?  If he fought for the French, we have to assume he took all of Britain's continental possessions (save Gibraltar... and maybe Calais for the memes?). (Alternatively, he could have fought for the Savoyards, and unified Italy a few decades early.)  Of course, the British were fighting a land war against Bonaparte in real life anyway, largely in Iberia, and funding the war elsewhere.  And, like in real life, the Brits got their land back and then some.

The weirdest thing in this show is moving the republican revolution into the what, 1890s?  What on Earth were the politics that allowed the Crown to control London and Kent and its overseas possessions, while losing most of the island to, uh, Roundheads?  Victoria (or Elfrida) was not an incompetent monarch, so it can't be that.  By the late 1800s, most of the revolutions in the world were nationalist, attempting to forge a state out of an ethnic group's homelands.  But, of course, the Midlands are just as English as London. So it seems unlikely.

But the Commonwealth is a group that can't control London (The City), Canterbury (the Church) and the colonies, but has its base in the industrial heartlands in Lancashire.  Oh my, the Commonwealth are damned commies!  For the common wealth, not the capitalist wealth!  It definitely makes the whole Berlin, er London Wall thing more appropriate.  And the late 1800s were full of communists (as well as anarchists, ultra-nationalists, etc.) – perhaps they're actually trying what Marx said, rather than applying communism onto an immature economy like Russia (still is, too).  It also explains why colonies would stay loyal to the Crown, since one would expect Indian client princes and Cecil Rhodes to want to continue keeping the proletariat down where they belong.

Anyway, that's my attempt to put Princess Principal into a plausible timeline.  Anyone else have theories?