I love when writers reference older comics, and MacKay does that a lot—which I really appreciate. In X-Men #17, the way Scott describes his strategic thinking immediately took me back to Uncanny X-Men #144, where he’s shown “cheating” at pool using his optic blast. In that same issue, Schwarzechild accuses him of pulling a “dirty trick,” and Scott explains that he sees the battlefield like a pool table. It’s such a fun and clever callback …
And honestly, it feels so right that pool, not chess, is Scott’s metaphor. Chess is more of a Xavier/Magneto thing—ideological, confrontational, rooted in opposing forces. But for Scott, conflict isn’t about opposing someone else’s worldview. It’s about control, angles, precision. Sooo pool is quiet, technical, and demands an incredible amount of patience, spatial awareness, and self-discipline—all things that define Scott as a leader and tactician. Okay maybe this last part is me seeing too much into it but I’m delusional like that…
I need to put together a proper PSA for professional Batman comic writers at some point to explain that “ward” is a very out-of-date and obsolete legal term in the US that hasn’t existed since realistically the early 1980s and at latest 1997.
If you’re a child actively interacting with the foster care+adoption system you’re either an adoptive child, foster child, or ward of the state/court. If you’re not a ward of the court (in which case the state is your legal guardian and you’re probably being represented by a guardian ad litem or designated social worker), the adult who has legal custody of you and legal/financial responsibility for you is either your adoptive parent, your foster parent, or your temporary legal guardian. You can’t really be a ‘ward’ of an individual anymore; that hasn’t been a thing since again, the 80s/90s-era foster care system reforms.
this is all to day: Batman writers stop calling Dick and Jason Bruce’s wards challenge. Even if you want to continue the mental gymnastics to ignore their adoptions, he is at minimum their permanent foster father and legal guardian. That’s how the system works. Do your research for once in your lives, I am begging
godddddd Zdarsky writes such a good Tim, it’s so unfair to me personally that he wrote a bad Batman run instead of writing one of the most phenomenal Robin runs ever put on paper
My own preference is for the solar-powered explanation, for a few reasons.
The first is that, while the punch dimension is objectively hilarious, I don't actually recall it coming up in the comics themselves. I think it's from a handbook somewhere.
I feel like there's more canon support for the solar-powered explanation, especially since we've seen at least one instance, possibly more, of Scott absorbing OTHER types of energy for the blasts.
(I don't have my scans right at the moment, but I distinctly remember some time in the 60s comics, where he absorbs a plasma blast from Alex for extra optic blast power. I feel like there was also an instance with Storm's lightning, though for the life of me, I can't remember where I saw that.)
I also tend to like the solar powered explanation because I think it offers more story potential. IIRC, the X-Men cartoon from the 90s used it in their Morlock episode (with Scott in place of Warren as Callisto's object of affection.) It's a nice mechanism for a storyline where Scott is imprisoned or depowered.
(Admittedly, it can't JUST be solar power, since Scott does not seem to have an issue maintaining his power in space. It might be STELLAR power though, with some ambient absorption.)
The shipper in me also likes it for the fact that Jean ate a star. The idea that Scott converts solar energy seems pretty compatible with that. And there was that one Phoenix storyarc (Endsong, I think) where the Phoenix was pretty obsessed with absorbing his eye beams for power. So I feel like it makes sense. (And if you want to make it a Throuple thing, Logan tends to be associated with wolves a lot. Wolves tend to be narratively associated with the moon. So you get a nice sun-moon thing there.)
That said, I'm not averse to the idea of the punch dimension if a creator wants to do something fun with it. I remember reading a fan theory once that linked the punch dimension and ruby quartz to Cytorrak and his ruby gem, and I thought that was a pretty neat idea.
A couple days ago, my cousin sent me a Facebook post from AeCha Cafe that said they were having their soft opening. A new bubble tea shop was opening in Tipp City and this was the first I was hearing of it?! Though I wasn’t able to go to their actual soft opening on Tuesday, I did make it out there yesterday with my cousin and her three kids.
AeCha Cafe is smackdab in the middle of Tipp City’s historic downtown, and has the prettiest blue tile storefront:
We walked in and took a look at the menu. They offer milk tea, fruit tea, some coffee options, lemonade, matcha, all that good stuff:
I had never heard of Cha Dum Yend before, so I asked about it and was told that it’s like Thai Tea without the milk. My cousin doesn’t drink milk so she actually ended up getting that, and I got an iced strawberry matcha. I know, I know, I should’ve gotten bubble tea since I was at a bubble tea place, but a strawberry matcha just sounded so nice and refreshing in the moment! I promise I’ll try the bubble tea next time.
Initially, I thought that the space was pretty small, but it turned out there was a whole other section of the shop with a decent amount of seating, and it even had this comfy looking couch section:
I noticed a couple of wall decorations that were perfect backgrounds for aesthetic photos, like this neon-sign and wall sticker set up:
After careful consideration of where to take my drink photo, I chose the latter:
I’m glad that this cute little shop moved in, and am excited to visit here more this summer with my cousin and her kids. It’s a great location and I’m looking forward to seeing more from them once they’re all settled in and in the groove of things.
If you’re in the area, be sure to check them out and support them in this first week of being open! Their hours are Tuesday-Friday from 8am-8pm and 10am-8pm on Saturday and Sunday.
What’s your favorite milk tea flavor? Do you like popping pearls or tapioca pearls? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
the thing about being actually pro-peace and not just being anti-American intervention is knowing that some fights genuinely have to be fought in order to achieve justice and lasting peace, largely because an opponent has given you literally no other choice
I’ve seen a lot of people tag my batgirl stuff as black bat and i’m not sure if that’s for tag organizing reasons or because people actually think she’s black bat in her batgirl suit but i’ve made this hopefully helpful guide for differentiating her mantles and suits!
I’ve noticed, also, in fanfiction, that people will sometimes have a Spoiler/Black Bat/Oracle trio with no Batgirl, which never happens! there’s always a Batgirl in rotation :)!
(specifically it’s been: Batgirl/Spoiler/Oracle, Black Bat/Batgirl/Oracle, Orphan/Spoiler/Batgirl, Batgirl/Batgirl/Batgirl)
*Tate Brombal, current author of Batgirl ‘24, stated in a Reddit AMA that he has plans for her black lenses, so they might make a return!
Another fun fact I didn’t include: Cass actually has a fourth mantle, Kasumi, she uses while undercover in Justice League Elite, and she actually uses that mantle longer than she does Black Bat! (12 issues vs 7!)
A few things that are up with me recently that I have not yet otherwise posted elsewhere:
1. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is one of Amazon’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2025 (So Far), and it’s nice to know that the book has made its mark at this point in the year. And while I recognize that the “so far” lists are just a way for Amazon and other places to double-dip on the marketing around “best of” lists, in point of fact lots of good stuff released early in a calendar year escapes the notice of end-of-the-year lists (there’s a reason Oscar contenders come out in December), so I can’t help but appreciate the effort. Other authors on the list include Stephen Graham Jones, Nnedi Okorafor and V.E. Schwab, so it’s worth checking out if you have not done so already.
2. I won an award! In Italy! The Italian translation of Starter Villain took the Premio Italia (not to be confused with the F1 series race of the same name) in the category of “International Novel,” with other finalist authors in the category being Charlie Stross, Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds and Mike Resnick. That’s a nice peer group. The full list of winners and finalists is here. Thank you, Italian science fiction fans!
3. Longtime visitors to Whatever know that in the last couple of years I’ve been posting cover versions of songs here. I’ve collected up ten of them into a YouTube playlist called “Cover Story,” and that playlist includes cleaned up and remastered versions of three of the songs previously posted here: “Love My Way,” by the Psychedelic Furs, “That Ain’t Bad” by Ratcat, and “She Goes On,” by Crowded House. The cleaning up is mostly fixing vocals (removing intakes of breath, moving the vocals up in the mix) and changing up instrumentation in a couple of places. Don’t worry, I’m not giving up my day job to embark on a life of cover artistry, but you know what? These don’t entirely suck. I especially think “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Under the Milky Way” are pretty darn decent. And it’s fun for me, which is really the point. Enjoy.
Aaaaaand that’s it for now – I’m busy at Phoenix Fan Fusion the entire weekend long, so if you’re going to be there, come say hello. Otherwise, have a fabulous weekend.
What goes better together than dragons, revolution, and being queer? Not much, and author Vanessa Ricci-Thode is here to show that with her newest novel, The Dragon Next Door. Dive in to her Big Idea to see how queer wizards can be both powerful and fierce and wholesome and cozy.
VANESSA RICCI-THODE:
How did I get from action movie Hobbes & Shaw to a sapphic romantasy? It’s not as big a stretch as you might think (and don’t tell me you watched that without wondering what if they just kissed already!) Like most of my ideas, big or otherwise, it always starts with asking What If?
“What if there weren’t so many fucking dudes in this?” is something I find myself asking all the time. Because look, I like action movies both mindless and thoughtful. But dudes aren’t the only ones who know how to throw a punch and blow shit up. And while yes we do very occasionally get Evelyn Salt and Captain Marvel and Furiosa and Wonder Woman, why not a whole lot more?
But I don’t make movies, I make books. So here we are. I’ve always liked the grumpy/sunshine, opposites attract, odd couple type of tropes going back to the original Odd Couple, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. I watched Hobbes & Shaw and really got noodling on doing something similar, but asking myself “What if this was queerified and genderbent?” I grew up rarely seeing myself in anything, so you can bet your ass I’m putting myself in everything (and everyone else who never got to see themselves in things).
Another What-If central to the story: What if they kissed? But make it ace. I rarely see any of the intersections of my identity in popular media, and I decided to make this an asexual romance at a time when that was something I was discovering about myself. As important as it is for me to see myself in things, I want others to have that as well. Both MC’s are women of colour and I very much am not, so there was a lot of research going into authentic portrayal and staying in my lane. I went through every free resource plus some paid workshops provided by Writing the Other, and then I hired a sensitivity reader.
My initial musings envisioned writing a book that was some kind of fantasy buddy-cop plot with more action and less pining than the end result. I also wrote this toward the end of TFG’s first term and really had revolution and overthrowing dictators on my mind. This book’s research started with The Anti-Fascist Handbook and the history of revolutions, but once I decided it needed a baby dragon (because of course it did), things went in an entirely different direction. For starters, my characters having to care for a dangerous but sort of helpless fire-breathing puppy took things in a much more nurturing direction.
And then I realized they weren’t just going to sit around and let the dictator take over—they’d march out and meet the threat head on. Not the revolution I was looking for, but definitely still cathartic. And, well, as a Canadian living under the threat of annexation, this book really hits differently now than when I wrote it. During outlining and then drafting, the book morphed into something more anti-colonial, stopping the takeover from happening in the first place (I was revising during the Biden years and possibly too optimistic).
Writing this book certainly offered a lot of challenges, not only in basically throwing out half my research and having to re-outline the entire second half while I was still drafting. This book had a monster of an outline, almost 20,000 words long! But I had three POV characters with arcs to track, trying to match emotional and plot beats for all three. This is the most upfront work I’ve done on a novel and probably the most intentional I’ve been about what I wrote.
And now we’ve (unfortunately) come full circle politically, and I massaged a few things in the final editing pass to reflect that, but the core themes have always been about community and bravery and a lot of mutual pining. In queerifying some of these action and fantasy tropes, the focus on community became central, with characters who are (usually) gentle with each other despite being at odds.
While the book has some applicable messages about unity, courage and the power of spite, it’s still a cute, cozy-adjacent adventure with a pair of odd couple wizards mothering a delightful baby dragon.
Warlock fled his people due to their unconventional inheritance practices and came to Earth. He barely noticed that he fucked Asteroid M up by crashing into it, though Magneto certainly did probably as he was somehow surviving reentry. Badman landed in Lee Forrester’s boat of all places and she was not happy to see him. She remembers being taken prisoner on R'lyeh for one of his Bond villain schemes in Uncanny X-Men #150.
I really do think life is a series of watching other people walk through doors you can’t follow them through. I’ve been thinking about it lately when it comes to marriage—my sister got married recently, and my brother before her, and while the occasions were joyful and I was happy for both of them, it was also like standing in mission control. Or maybe not even that, maybe the ‘friends & family’ section of the tarmac, several miles from the launch pad entirely. Waving as this intrepid astronaut (the one you would have sworn you knew as well as you know yourself, because you share so much and it lingers in your skin) climbed into a shuttle, jetted off into the darkness.
And then, the person who came back was….different. Not bad different! (Sometimes they come back better, this is also decidedly strange.) Just….different. They have gone somewhere you can’t follow, seen and experienced things you will never be privy to. They will go back to that dark, unknown and unknowable country again, once the holiday or other familial obligation is over. And so you spend some time talking to them, nodding and smiling on autopilot while you quietly wonder, did they do that before, and I just didn’t notice? Is that new? I don’t remember that. I can’t remember if—
It’s a very strange experience, to be confronted with the fact that people exist outside of you, even those who share 99.99% of your DNA.
I think this is very much the same emotion! This post is about my siblings, but I feel it with my friends who have had children recently too. Even my friends who chose to pursue graduate degrees—hell, even my parents, aunts and uncles, as they transition from work/raising their families to elder care and their own retirement. I think life is very much watching people walk through doors knowing you can’t follow; acknowledging and grieving that distance, even as you send them cute videos and “thinking of you!” texts. Understanding that you’re speaking to the black of space. Knowing that your dumb tiktok video might not distract from or make up for everything that’s happening in your respective lives, but the choices are (a) no contact at all, (b) send the stupid video anyway.
“Bittersweet” is a good word, we should use that more.
I really do think life is a series of watching other people walk through doors you can’t follow them through. I’ve been thinking about it lately when it comes to marriage—my sister got married recently, and my brother before her, and while the occasions were joyful and I was happy for both of them, it was also like standing in mission control. Or maybe not even that, maybe the ‘friends & family’ section of the tarmac, several miles from the launch pad entirely. Waving as this intrepid astronaut (the one you would have sworn you knew as well as you know yourself, because you share so much and it lingers in your skin) climbed into a shuttle, jetted off into the darkness.
And then, the person who came back was….different. Not bad different! (Sometimes they come back better, this is also decidedly strange.) Just….different. They have gone somewhere you can’t follow, seen and experienced things you will never be privy to. They will go back to that dark, unknown and unknowable country again, once the holiday or other familial obligation is over. And so you spend some time talking to them, nodding and smiling on autopilot while you quietly wonder, did they do that before, and I just didn’t notice? Is that new? I don’t remember that. I can’t remember if—
It’s a very strange experience, to be confronted with the fact that people exist outside of you, even those who share 99.99% of your DNA.
Where it is a brisk and nippy 100 degrees Fahrenheit! Sweater weather here, certainly. I am here for Phoenix Fan Fusion, and I will have panels and signings all weekend long; check the schedule for the details (I also need to check the schedule for the details. I am running slightly behind these days). If you are in the Phoenix area, I hope to see you there. If you’re not in the Phoenix area, well, I mean, have a nice weekend anyway, I guess.
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