Speaking of the dustbin... I once or twice thought that I should maybe ask you to put "Secrets" in there, as a historical artifact of Plot That Was if nothing else. It wasn't that bad, right? I mean, the prison scenes were okay...

Then I read Phoenix again in preparation for this, for the first time in literally fifteen years I think, and discovered an unexpected direct quote from the Butcher in there:

"All those kids, and they thought I was Santa Claus, the
Easter Bunny, Rambo and Kerry Eurodyne rolled into one. And
then--WHACK! Oh, my God, the memories alone keep me warm at
night! Thank you, Largo, for an eidetic memory! God! It
was so glorious! All the blood! The brains! The young
lives snuffed out! I'm writing a book! I'm going to
Disneyland! I want the movie rights!!"

... yeah. You made the right call burying that one, Chief. Yeeesh.

>As for Fables, I have plans to revive some of that material as
>well, though they are less concrete than those for the Infamy
>revisions.

Someone, I think Phil but now I'm not sure, once told me that Hot Rod base jumping off of a Genom arcology directly into a high-speed chase was too awesome not to be used SOMEWHERE. :)

>In terms of in-story chronology, no, it hasn't; FI still ends in 2412,
>exactly as planned before. I think I know the remarks you mean - they
>were about Cybertron Reloaded being "the last FI story", but I
>thought I had explicated at the time that the "last" there was
>in-universe, not out-of.

Well, I mean... I know that none of the imprints ever actually END. You produced work in the Exile recently. It's not crazy that there could be another major Golden Age story at one point. But the "focus" has been on FI for a long time now, and I kind of got the impression that CR was meant to say "hey, the focus is moving to this awesome other new era" now, not "we're never gonna write in FI ever again."

Still, I stand cheerfully corrected.

>It's just part of the fun of pretending stuff is real, like writing
>brand names on the spaceship control panels we designed on posterboard
>as children.

True that.

As a Rochester native, I always found it way more fun than I oughta that, in Hopelessly Lost, you took the time to let us know that, yes, Priss' artifical eyes had "BAUSCH & LOMB" branded onto the irises.

-Merc
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