They're Baaaack...

(That Poltergeist joke would have worked better before Halloween--and before 1987 yuk yuk yuk.)

My last "new" computer went tits up on me a couple months ago.  I have no idea where it is right now, probably being examined by "top men" in Area 51.  (That Raiders of the Lost Ark joke would have worked better before 1982...)  I said the hell with it and bought a fancy new one, which finally arrived on Wednesday.  Or really Tuesday but FedEx is a pain in the ass.  I spent much of Devil's Night grappling with EA to get my Sims 3 and expansion packs installed. 

It really annoyed me when I was working on the second Girl Power story and I couldn't make any Sims of them.  So now I get to catch up on that. [Michael Offut slams head on keyboard]

The first change is relatively minor.  Apex Girl, the resident Supergirl, basically gets a haircut:

There's some debate in the Superman universe about how he gets his hair cut.  In the Girl Power universe she goes up to her Crystal Lair and uses some specialized alien machinery.  And as you can tell she's a little paler.  She has freckles too but her mask covers them up.  In theory she'd be a few inches shorter but you can't adjust height in the game so whatever.

 The biggest change involves Velocity Girl, the resident Flash.  The first Velocity Girl was Dr. Allison Sable (formerly Dr. Alan Bass) as pictured here:

The new Velocity Girl is Alan's wife Sally, as pictured here:

The main difference being that she's blond.  When she asks, "Won't people notice the difference?"  She's told:  "Just say you dyed your hair."  Not that people in superhero universes are all that observant; I mean you throw on a pair of glasses and hunch a little and you're suddenly a whole new person.

An even bigger change is that this Velocity Girl has a 13-year-old sidekick:  Velocity Kid, who has the same powers only she's smaller.  In this picture she should be shorter than Velocity Girl but the costume isn't available for teens so whatever.

I would have liked to make her mask pink too but it wasn't available in that color.  So it goes. In the interests of decency I didn't give Velocity Kid a boob panel; she doesn't have much to stuff into one anyway.

The other big change happened to Mermaid, the resident Aquaman (girl, whatever).  This is the old her:

And this is the new Queen Neptune, the first-ever queen of Pacifica:

She's largely modeled after Aquaman's wife Mera in the comics.  In attitude she's more like Wonder Woman.  Her first day on the job she basically challenges anyone in the kingdom (queendom?) to fight her if they question her right to rule.  This is in part because she suffers not one but two big traumas in the book.  You'd have to read the book to find out more.

Anyway, going into the third book there are going to be a bunch of new characters introduced.  This includes a Green Lantern-esque character.  And there are a bunch of villains, some of whom become heroines.  So expect more posts about this in the future...[ominous music plays]

Oh yeah and there's this thing:

Seriously I don't remember signing up for it.  I got an email reminder the other day and thought, "I signed up for this?  That doesn't seem like something I'd do!"  I guess I was high or drunk or something.  I think I was supposed to write something about Nano.  I don't remember.  Here's some stuff about it:
and the Amazon buy link - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GC5CF7S


So, um, yeah there's that.  I guess I won't win anything.

Anyway, today I'll be kicking your ass at Nano and also the Flash Fiction Fest is going on all this month.  And if you're in the US in a state that participates in Daylight Savings Time, set your clocks back tonight!