#rip my beloved past save data

[theclo4ked1]

(The post I wanted to put is most likely far too long for Tumblr, a mircoblogging website-- what? who said, what a dick! Anyways, here's a condensed version, as best as i can, of that post. there are spoilers below, so play the complete game before reading.)

the final horizion update was finally released last night at about 20.10pm (it was late, it left players confused on wtf was taking so long), and i almost fell asleep playing, again, but thats not the point. i use the nintendo switch to play Sonic Frontiers, and i have 110+ hrs of game time, and my save file had 75+ hrs on it. we've been hungry, "hangry" even, but i assure you, we shall all feast such a divine one. except for me, i wont be fully enjoying it yet. my plates in the fridge marked "plz dont eat :3" back in february when i finally got the game, for $50 lol, i remember spending the whole month on this game, hours spent every night i played, being one of the lucky ones, veterans now, who've waited through the year, hungering, yearning for the next updates to come for. lemme tell you, the Sonic Team "grill masters" (- someone on twitter, 2023) cooked, and that moment when the update finished installing, and i saw that glorious "Another Story has opened up on Ouranos" booting up the game was an exhilarating feeling. it was weird that Another Story was a proper noun. i didnt know what to expect, but I was excited anyway to see where I would go from there. unfortunately, the mystery and wonder was kinda removed due to the prior knowledge of Tails, Knux, and Amy (my girl returneth!) being playable again, the final boss changing, and now something huge is happening with Ouranos, which is the access point to the Another Story portion of the game via a giant ring (they bought the warp ring back!) however, before entering the ring, the game prompts you with a long warning message that game progress will be halted, and recommends completing the game first before returning here as it uses your current save slot. the way i see it, the AS acts like a parallel universe; the game's timeline splits after Rhea. the normal timeline is Sonic going about collecting the emeralds again, and eventually fighting Supreme and The End (ive never heard Vandalize in-game before cuz ive only played on hard mode, a small price to pay for being a chad gamer). this new timeline, the AS, is where after teleporting to Ouranos, Sage pulls a godtier move and is like "ayo lemme pull this godtier move real quick" and frees Sonic's friends, though still in their mid-dimensional forms, so they can collect the Chaos Emeralds (which are in different places than the vaults of the prime timeline). there are also more towers that just appeared on Ouranos, so my first thought was "oh my god they recombined Kronos, Rhea, and Ouranos, so thats why the towers are here", but no, it's apparently reserved for something relating to the four Titans; "memorials" as Sage put it in the release trailer. my reaction is still mixed on this, but i understand why they made a split like this; to keep the old and merge the new without changing much. i thought they would completely change the last fifth of the game to just be the AS portion, but no, it's just... Another Story. another book to read after this one that details specific and canon events that arent told in the first material. i played until i got to Knuckles' first time around the island. here the game mentions that you'll be able to swap characters later which im hoping this function is relegated to the dpad. its right there, four buttons, four characters, they couldn't have missed an opportunity as such. playing as Tails will be lit, but somethings that bothered me were

Amy jumps like shes in Cyberspace so turning is fucked, and

the controls for input feel slightly delayed; Amy's Card Attack combo is the weirdest thing because to execute the third attack, the spin, youre required to press your attack button consecutively AND in a consistent three beat tempo.

i was stuck trying to figure this out. a button pressed counts as the button comes upwards, after being pushed down, to make a click sound (for my gamecube pro-controller which was what i used during my time through the game). it requires a "full A press", not a half. Sonic, in the last update and the short time I played as him before Another Story, didnt have these problems. update 10/1/23: spoiler alert, i made the executive decision to can my save data ("dad-uh") just so i could start again. its an extreme compared to, yknow, just starting a new save SLOT, but i wanted just ONE save slot, and only one. im ocd like that, but im not diagnosed. its a joke. im sure, until a doctor says something that it. btw i started fresh. im about two hours in and Sonic still controls just fine imo the Cyberspace jumping makes some sort of sense because Amy is still between dimensions. still sucks to control though. the input delay i will not understand and im not sure they'll go back and fix this any time soon. so that just leaves me: only able have to eat the scraps and leftovers and cant eat with everyone else who finished this portion the day of. an exaggeration probably, but people have told me "oh yeah i finished that game in a day", the base game, casually. look.

kronos island time of completion (b4 moving on to ares), 7:58:54 ares island time of completion (b4 moving on to chaos), 20:00:28 chaos island time of completion (b4 moving on), 36:15:54 rhea island time of completion, 37:00:26 ouranos island/end time of completion, 48:50:33

my intrinsic explorative gameplay style caused what was about ~20hrs for most other people to be almost 50hrs for me my first time, again spread through a month. the game was said to be 20-60hrs so i guess they were right, but if this new game section takes ~3hrs, it would take me 10-20. more accurately im a completionist type of guy. when i wasnt in Cyberspace i was going around the islands solving puzzles, fighting Guardians, experiencing Starfalls (Starfall+ goes WAY too hard, btw whats with all the + signs, there are new guardians, i saw a Spider+ which is white coloured and shot lots of missiles at me) so i could go fishing with my man Big, which also bumped up my game time, and finding Koco around the map which were probably the biggest contributor why I capped my adventure at 48 hours.

(^ my intrinsic explorative gameplay style likely caused by who else?) they werent necessary for 100%, even Update 2 doesnt list them as needed but i went for as many as i could just because i wanted to. as for my time in post-game, it was spent fishing, rerunning Cyberspace stages, particularly 4-2, finding Koco in places i missed when I thought id been everywhere (and i mean EVERYwhere). all other time was just spent running and rolling by the time Update 2 came out. im a bit bummed that i lost my first ever save. i wont be able to look back and show people "this was the file i sank all my time and love into because i only played through the game once and never looked back", but going through again is both refreshing and will be unsurprising since i will know the events. it wont be like majoras mask not playing for eight years. its like kid icarus uprising, where I never knew what was happening next, and i would send my friend who loaned me the game accurate memes relating to the chapter i just finished (big surprise, chapter 6 is my most played chapter). i was all like "wooooah, that happened and oooooh" thankfully, i still have my scrapbook, i.e. the photos and videos i took via the switch's capture button, stringing together my first moments ("you. leave. immediately." - Sage) to the end ("so... that was fun!" - Sonic). i should compile them into video form. maybe this will be good. God knows im far too late and cant recover anything, so heres to a clean slate to new Frontiers.

(also you still cant manually delete saves. i tweeted to the game director Morio Kishimoto about it, hoping something that i said could change something i want to be better)

#sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic frontiers #rip my beloved past save data

[tiramisiyu]

【未定事件簿】 Tears of Themis: Main Story 7-35 Translation

Translation Masterlist | Video

Chapter 7 – Rains of Monte Cristo: 7-1 / 7-3 / 7-5 / 7-7 / 7-9 / 7-11 / 7-13 / 7-15 / 7-17 / 7-19  ♦️ ♦️  7-20 / 7-22 / 7-24 / 7-26 / 7-28 / 7-30 / 7-32 / 7-34 / 7-35

Content Warning: This section contains topics that may be uncomfortable to some readers (mentions of abuse). Please proceed with discretion.

✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼

Court Hallway

After the trial ended, I did not leave immediately. Rather, I waited in the hallway for Hang Jiahe. 

Soon, she walked over, guarded by two bailiffs.

MC: Miss Hang.

Hang Jiahe: What are you doing here? Are you going to laugh at me?

Hang Jiahe: Are you happy to have beat me?

MC: You’ve misunderstood. I came to tell you something.

Hang Jiahe: What?

MC: Actually… this examination report…

I took out that last examination report again.

MC: Due to time and technical limits, we currently do not have the identification results.

MC: When I showed it in court, I just wanted to add psychological pressure onto you.

Hang Jiahe: …

Hang Jiahe froze for a few seconds, but she then responded quickly.

Hang Jiahe: You tricked me… you tricked me… hahahahahahaha!

She suddenly burst into sharp laughter.

Hang Jiahe: I didn’t lose… I didn’t lose…

Hang Jiahe: I still got my revenge!

MC: …

MC: Miss Hang, can I ask you something?

Hang Jiahe: What do you want to say?

MC: You said in court that Qi Yu tried to hold Hang Fei back “that night”.

MC: But you still murdered her out of hate for her bystander position, correct?

Hang Jiahe: Yes, I hated her for being a coward, hated her for being too scared to resist Hang Fei, hated her for looking on for so many years without lifting a finger!

Hang Jiahe: She knew during those years what Hang Fei was doing to me, so why didn’t she save me?

MC: …

Hang Jiahe: Then… did you know that Hang Fei had also been abusing Qi Yu during those years?

Hang Jiahe: I did. How could she not have been beaten, with how cowardly she was?

MC: Then do you know why she was beaten?

Hang Jiahe: Why?

MC: …

I took out my phone and opened a video featuring Qi Yu’s abuse. That small woman was lying weakly on the floor, passively enduring the man’s punches and kicks. But she kept mumbling something –

“Don’t hurt Jiahe… and those children… stop it…”

Hang Jiahe: What…

MC: Miss Hang, did Qi Yu never do anything during all those times you were abused?

MC: Are you sure that every time, she chose to be a bystander, rather than being forced into her position?

MC: Did you know that Qi Yu said those words in each of the videos she was beaten in?

Hang Jiahe: I…

Hang Jiahe froze for a second, but then she immediately reacted.

Hang Jiahe: So what, then? What do you want to say?

Hang Jiahe: That I misunderstood her? That I shouldn’t have killed her? Then does all the pain I suffered for so many years even matter?

Hang Jiahe: You want me to absolve her? To forgive her?

MC: You’ve misunderstood. That’s not what I mean.

MC: I am not you. I have not endured your suffering, so I cannot request for you to forgive anyone.

MC: I haven’t seen what happened during those years, so I cannot judge whether Qi Yu was actively or passively making her decisions.

MC: And I definitely can’t carelessly determine whether she sinned or not.

I stopped for a moment and looked at Hang Jiahe’s gloves. 

In her mind, she probably was the Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantès – someone who had been wronged and could only get revenge for herself. She believed herself as intelligent and as lucky as Edmond, that she would ultimately be the winner. But…

MC: But even Edmond would figure out the situation before his revenge and repay his benefactors.

MC: I’m telling you this, only because I hope you’ll understand what sorts of people you sent away.

MC: I hope you understand that there have been people who intended to treat you kindly.

Hang Jiahe: …

MC: Also, Miss Hang, I can guess why you were not willing to ask for help from the police.

MC: In that sort of situation, you may have thought that you couldn’t rely on the outside world to go against them.

MC: But even so, me, Captain Morgan, and many, many people still have to do something.

I flipped further into the examination report.

MC: Even if Hang Fei is gone, the things he’s done will not disappear with him.

MC: This is the report we’ve created. Captain Morgan’s already sent it to upper management and applied for international cooperation.

MC: Miss Hang, we will bring you the justice you deserve for the pain you’ve experienced.

MC: As for the last few people, I promise that they will receive the punishment they deserve.

MC: So, for the rest of your life, please don’t live in hate.

MC: You’ve already stayed in the darkness for long enough. Please try to take a step forward.

MC: Doesn’t it say that in your beloved “The Count of Monte Cristo”?

MC: “He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.”

MC: Miss Hang, if possible, please try it.

MC: Perhaps the light you’ve always been searching for isn’t too far away.

Hang Jiahe: …

Hang Jiahe: Ha… ha… hahahahaha!

Hang Jiahe broke into sudden, sharp laughter. It sounded like a heartrending sob was woven in it, as it resounded in the empty hallway, melting into the rain.

Amid the grey deluge of rain, specks of light leaked through. Maybe the downpour would finally end this time.

Not long after, Simon’s homicide case opened trial, and Wang Chunchong was deemed the murderer. Xingrui Estates declared that they would be depriving Xu Yin of her position and removing her from the family. Only Tyson received the weakest blow, as the evidence for instigation of murder was insufficient. However, lots of people online were saying that they hoped he would “succumb to the demon of illness as soon as possible”.  

Thus, the homicide case of the couple in Yaofu Community came to an end.

✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼

NXX Base

After the Hang Jiahe case concluded, the NXX investigation team met up at the base again for discussion.

MC: That’s how the Hang Jiahe case went.

Marius: Thanks for your hard work!

Artem: Thanks for your hard work. You did excellently.

Luke and Vyn nodded at me.

MC: Thanks, everyone.

MC: Enough about me – how’s everyone else’s investigation?

Artem: I’ve already updated Tyson’s case file. I haven’t found any new clues for now.

Marius: I followed what Wang Chunchong said and investigated that guy named Xiao Ren, but…

Marius: I haven’t found anything for now.

Luke: You also found out about Xiao Ren?

Marius: Huh?

Vyn: What a coincidence. I, too, found out about him.

MC: !!!

Luke: Marius, what information do you have on Xiao Ren right now?

Marius: Mainly what Wang Chunchong told me before.

Marius sighed.

Marius: According to Wang Chunchong, Xiao Ren is linked to Heirson’s raw materials purchases.

Marius: Tyson held Xiao Ren to very high regard, and keeps his occupational information on severe confidential status.

Marius: All in all, this person seems pretty mysterious.

Marius: What about you, Luke? What did you find?

Luke: The aunties in the group told me that Zhao Fei kept looking for someone called “Xiao Ren”.

Luke: I suspect that Tyson brought up this person in the recording that he sent him.

Marius: That’s possible. Wang Chunchong also heard Tyson bring up Xiao Ren, so there should be some sort of link between them.

Artem: Luke, that’s not all the information that the assistive team provided you, is it?

Luke: Yep, that’s not all.

Luke: First, the workers in Heirson where the abnormalities appeared were mostly on the production front lines, so what they touch the most are the products.

Vyn: They probably mixed in their developed illegal drugs into the products, resulting in infection.

Luke: That’s right.

Luke: Secondly, about Zhao Fei…

Luke ripped out a page from his notebook and placed it on the table.

Artem: These names are…

Luke: When I was questioning these ten people about Zhao Fei, their reactions were a bit abnormal. I suspect that…

Luke: They’re the ones hiding Zhao Fei.

MC: What about you, then, Dr. Richter? You just said that you also found out about Xiao Ren.

Vyn: I spoke with half of the 20 special respondents and noticed that it was the same doctor in charge of their examinations.

Vyn: And that person is named “Xiao Ren”.

Vyn: So I suspect that this person knows many secrets regarding Heirson’s experimental data.

MC: If so, this Xiao Ren person knows about where raw materials come from and can deal with the experimental data…

MC: If we can find him, we might be able to patch up the missing part in our evidence chain against Heirson.

Marius: So this Xiao Ren is going to be our investigative focal point from now on?

Luke: Leave it to me, then. I’m the best when it comes to finding people.

Artem: Then leave Zhao Fei to me. I just happen to have something I want to confirm with him.

Vyn: I have only met with the special patients. I will continue to meet with the remaining bunch.

Vyn: Marius, what are your plans?

Marius: Me? I plan to go see Hang Jiahe.

Marius: She wanted to find reporters in the past to drop major news about Heirson, and she’s now in jail…

Marius: We should find out what this news is.

MC: Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that!

Marius: So, jiejie, want to come with me to see Hang Jiahe? After all, only the two of us know her the best.

MC: Uh…

I suddenly had a bad feeling.

Luke: Marius, do you really need someone to accompany you just to go see someone?

Marius: I’m not going to see a typical person, am I? I’m going to see someone who might give us an important clue.

Marius: It makes sense to be a little more cautious and bring someone else.

Luke: Then just bring your assistant. If anything else, then bring some recording equipment.

Luke: Convenient, and it can record in real time.

MC: …

Right after, Artem spoke.

Artem: Zhao Fei’s case was ours to begin with, and now that we have clues…

Artem: MC, let’s finish it off, alright?

MC: Lawyer Wing…

Vyn: I may be overstepping, but…

Vyn stepped in just before Artem could speak again.

Vyn: May I trouble you to go with me next?

Vyn: There’s a special patient that I need your assistance with.

Faced with their “eager” eyes, I was very sure that –

The investigation team seriously needs to recruit a new member!

✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼ CHAPTER 7 END  ✼ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ✼

#Tears of Themis #tears of themis translations #tot translations #lu jinghe #zuo ran #xia yan #mo yi #marius von hagen #artem wing #luke pearce #vyn richter #未定事件簿 #feels bad for hjh :'(

[nalgenewhore]

A rogue storm had her presumed dead and stranded on the red planet. Left on her own, astronaut Aelin Galathynius has four years to make it to the next drop-site, some two thousand miles. Armed with her smarts and dwindling supplies, Aelin attempts to survive on an inhospitable planet, when the nearest help is only millions of miles away.

masterlist - ao3 - last chapter - next chapter 

+*+*+*+*+*+*

Aelin carefully filled a container of water and walked it to her garden, pouring it over the crops and repeating the process until each little plant had been watered.

A camera had been set up in her garden so she spoke to it, still speaking as though TNSB couldn’t hear her or see her every move. “Now that everyone can talk to me, they never want to shut up.” She kissed the leaf of the smallest plant, smiling down at it and whispering a soft word of encouragement.

“They’ve even got a whole team micromanaging my crops. Which is just great,” she added sarcastically. Aelin and the botany team were not on the best of terms. “I don’t mean to sound arrogant,” she spread her arms, as if to say look at all of this, “but I am the best botanist on this planet.”

Aelin put the container down and dusted her hands, “In other news, they want me to pose for a picture. I’m debating between ‘High School Prom’,”’ she posed with her hands elbows bent and hands clasped over her stomach, “or ‘Happy College Student On A Pamphlet’,” she hooked her thumbs through imaginary backpack straps, pasting on a gloriously fake grin. “I’m not sure how it’ll all convey with my spacesuit on, but we’ll figure it out.”

Aelin laughed to herself and walked out to the kitchen area, now addressing the camera by the microwave, “Another cool thing about this communication business: email! I get a big data dump, like when I was on The Lani and stuff. Athletes, academics, musicians and even the prime minister too. But the coolest, the single coolest email I got was from my alma mater, the University of Orynth. They tell me that once you’ve grown crops somewhere, you’ve officially ‘colonized’ it.” A cocky grin overtook her features, “So I colonized Farnor. Suck it, TNSB botany team,” she stuck her tongue out before fetching her suit to take her photo.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Asterin was in stitches as she looked at the picture Aelin had sent. The golden-haired astronaut was mid-jump, her legs bent and her arms stretched up to the sky and she could make out the huge grin splitting the woman’s face. “Oh, this is so like her,” she murmured, tracing an iron nail over the photo. “This – I can use.”

“Good,” Weylan said, already on to the next topic. He addressed Sartaq and Gavriel on the screen, “Sartaq, is your team still on schedule.”

The man looked beat, a certain bleakness in his eyes, “It’ll be tight, but we’ll make it.”

“Make sure you do.” He tapped the table, “Nine-month flight puts us at day 868. Did we get the Botany Team’s assessment?”

Gavriel nodded, “They estimate her crops will last her until day 900. They resentfully admit Aelin’s doing a remarkable job.”

“Resentfully?” Manon questioned, arching a manicured brow.

“Yes, um, Aelin has a tendency to tell them to go have sex with themselves whenever they disagree with her or question her method. Either that or she tells them she’s the best botanist on Farnor and therefore she doesn’t have to listen to mediocre scientists,” Gavriel told them, a slight wince on his face.

The director of TNSB just shook his head, “Get her in line. We can’t have any miscommunications.” He turned to Manon and Asterin, who were both badly hiding their amused grins. “Food gets there at 868, hers lasts until 900…I hate this margin.”

“And that’s assuming nothing goes wrong,” commented Manon, ever-so helpfully.

+*+*+*+*+*+*

Aelin grabbed her toolkit and wedged it under her arm as she walked to the airlock, going out to do some late-night modifications on the rover.

Something was niggling in the back of her mind, but she paid it no heed, just wanting to do her work and sleep like the dead after whatever meager dinner she could scrounge up. She was running out of ketchup and she dreaded the day that she was forced to eat plain cooked potatoes.

A yawn grew in her and her eyes watered, gods above, she just wanted to sleep.

When one was stranded on a desolate, slumber was a fickle thing. Aelin’s eyes grew heavy as she pulled the airlock handle down.

All she heard was a ripping sound going along the canvas of the airlock before she was airborne, an explosion catapulting her and the tunnel far far away.

A strangled, panicked cry escaped her as she was battered and flung around the airlock as it flew through the air and crashed, her helmet crashing into something and she heard a cracking sound, closing her eyes on instinct.

The canvas tube rolled too many times for her to count until eventually it stopped and Aelin sat up, alarms blaring in her helmet.

It was cracked.

Fuck, it was cracked, a little hole where the polycarbonate-plexiglass had been chipped free. The beeping didn’t stop and Aelin fought to keep her breathing under control as she scrambled to her feet and wrenched the duct tape free, ripping off a length and taping it across the longest crack and then another across it.

Her toolkit had spilled everywhere and she grabbed a sharp screwdriver, stabbed it into the fabric of the airlock and yanked it down, creating a big enough rip for her to stumble out of.

Aelin could hardly see past the duct tape and she spun around, desperately looking for the hab and then sprinting, tripping countless times in her mad dash.

She stepped foot in and saw… her crops, destroyed beyond recognition.

Her lifeline was destroyed and Aelin gasped, her throat tight as she staggered out. She couldn’t stay here tonight and no good would come if she attempted to fix anything now.

Making her way to the rover, tears dripped down her cheeks until violent sobs were ripping from her throat and chest. She stumbled over a pile of rocks and fell to her knees, her gloves digging into the red dirt. There was no other answer; Aelin was going to die here alone.

A scream tore from her and soon enough, she was cursing the gods, “Where are you?! Why do you fail me time and time again?!” Her throat was raw and on fire. Her voice cracked, “Somebody save me.”

But no one answered her calls, not as she stayed there, kneeling in the sand, the reality of everything crashing down on her. There was no hope left, no bright and beautiful feeling.

The gods had never been there for her. Never.

Not when her parents died in that car wreck, not when she had to protect little Elide when she herself needed protecting, not when they made her fall for a heartless and cruel bastard, who carried a chip on his shoulder, going through life thinking no one had it as hard as he did.

It was stupid and childish to think they would save her now.

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

The mood in Mission Control was somber, nobody daring to speak as Nox read off the message Aelin had sent. “…crops are dead. Complete loss of pressure sterilized the soil and boiled off whatever was left in the water reclaimer…”

The only upside was that Aelin had managed to store away buckets of water and didn’t have to worry about that. “How long does she have,” Asterin asked.

“Well, she can still eat the potatoes she has. We estimate about two-hundred days.”

“Rations get her to what? Day four-ten?”

“Yes, so with potatoes, she can stretch to six-ten.”

“Prelim calculations call for a four-hundred-day round trip.”

 “By day 868 she’ll be long dead,” said Manon, her face emotionless. Her eyes narrowed and she sucked on her teeth, “It’s day one-thirty-five right now, we need thirteen to mount the boosters and do inspections… which give RPL forty-seven days to make the probe. Darkness above, gods damn it.”

“How long does it usually take?”

Gavriel answered Nox, his voice defeated, “Six months.”

Weylan spoke to Gavriel, already standing and doing his suit jacket up, “I’ll let you tell Sartaq and his team.”

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Fenrys was sitting in front of The Lani’s communications computer, typing an email to Aelin. TNSB had finally given them the ok to speak with her and only Fenrys had been up to the task.

Dearest G-Money, he wrote, laughing quietly to himself, Apparently, TNSB deemed it appropriate for us to talk to you and I drew the short straw. Sorry we left you on Farnor, we don’t like you very much and we were all tired of you hogging shower times. The downside is we have to rotate through your tasks, but it’s only dirt (not real science). How’s Farnor?

 +*+*+*+*+*+*

Aelin was crying as she read Fenrys’ email. Oh, how she missed them, so terribly. The day had been a long one, one where it seemed she couldn’t stop the tears even as she fixed the mess that had been made.

She didn’t think she’d ever been as heartbroken as when she was clearing out her ruined garden and dumping the dead plants outside. After she spent a few minutes mourning all her work, thinking to herself that the botany team would be thrilled she had finally failed, she got busy – covering the hole made in the hab by taping over a plastic tarp she would no longer need now that the greenhouse was useless.

The wind was making it flutter and flap, but it would hold as she replied to her friend.

My most beloved Fenny,

Farnor is fine. How’s The Lani? Cramped, with those two broody men? I accidentally blew up the hab, but fortunately, all your movies were spared which means tonight I’m going to eat plain potatoes and watch Mulan.

Everyday I go outside and look at the vast horizon, just because I can and guess what, I officially colonized Farnor.

I hope the girls are going easy on you poor boys, I know they can be rather ruthless when it comes to board and card games.

Say hello to the others and tell Lorcan that I’m gonna beat his ass if he’s still blaming himself.

After a few minutes, she read his typed reply, just two words, Will do.

Aelin did indeed watch Mulan as she ate her dinner and then, she got up, licking her plate clean and walking it to the sink before she sat down in front of her laptop once more, opening the video journal.

She wished so badly that she could be doing anything other than this, but enough was enough. She wasn’t a child and could no longer put this off. She owed it to herself and to her crew.

“Manon, it’s currently day one-thirty-six, around nine PM. I have a favour to ask of you, and I’m sending these to you, only you, because you’re the only one who will understand. Thank you for everything you did and thank you-“ her voice broke, “thank you for being my friend.”

Aelin took a second, her eyes shut as tears slipped past her lashes, “I want you to send these to the crew in case I don’t make it, ok?”

It took a lot to decide to send these, but Aelin pushed through, addressing the first one to Nesryn.

“Faliq… thank you for being you. Every day spent with you is one I cherish, because I love you so much. Thank you for getting me hooked on The Anatolia Story; it’s addictive. I’ve read fourteen out of twenty-eight volumes and I can’t wait to finish it, but I’m trying to ration them. I won’t forgive you for liking Twilight. Take good care of my goddaughter and your wife. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you guys. Every day I miss you.”

The rest of the letters went the same way, with her saying her last goodbye to her family. Every word had her throat growing tighter and tighter, until only Elide and Rowan were left. She didn’t know what to say to him, how to tell him she loved him so when she would be dead too soon.

Hot tears were streaming down her face and she looked crazy as she spoke to Elide.

“Ellie-Boo. I-“ she sobbed once and covered her mouth, “I love you so so much. To infinity and beyond,” referencing the movie that had their obsession with outer-space beginning, Toy Story. “There’s too much to say to you. You’re my person, baby girl. Without you, I would’ve probably wound up in a ditch somewhere. I want you to have the biggest wedding and a dress with enough sequins so that I can see it in the Afterworld. You are not allowed to be sad, no tears, Elide. I mean it. My funeral better be so much better than the one TNSB had – boooring!” Aelin smiled cheekily and then grew serious, the redness from her crying making the turquoise of her eyes pop. “Be happy, my darling sister. Because guess what, you and me? More than anything, we deserve to know happiness and you’re going to have to take my happy too. I love you, to infinity and beyond.” She pressed a kiss to her fingertips and touched the screen.

The letter she dreaded having to dictate was staring her in the face and Aelin stood up, walking around in circles as she attempted to order her thoughts. Eventually, she sat down, “…Rowan. I… there’s a lot to say, but I won’t ever be able to stop crying if I say everything. Basically, I love you. I don’t know how or when or even why, but I do. I’m completely in love with you, buzzard. And I wish I hadn’t been such a coward to keep it all to myself all this time. I wish that we could’ve been together and in the next life, I will find you and I will not be scared of it, ok? I will find you again and I will not be afraid.” 

She couldn’t say another thing and ended the video, sitting and staring at the wall until she finally fell asleep.

+*+*+*+*+*+*

an: that wasn’t a very nice chapter huh....anyhoo! comment/send me an ask to be added or removed from the tag list! thank you for reading darlings 

@mythicaitt @kandasboi @schmlip-scribble @the-regal-warrior @westofmoon @empire-of-wildfire @rhysands-highlady @city-of-fae @shyvioletcat @alifletcher2012 @tangledraysofsunshine @ttakeitbacknoww @tswaney17 @ourbooksuniverse @flora-and-fae @thesirenwashere​ @queenofxhearts​ @that-other-pineapple​ @sleeping-and-books​ @superspiritfestival​ @faerie-queen-fireheart​ @chemicha​ @rowaelin-cressworth​ @mynewdreamwasyou​ @candid-confetti​ @bat-wing-rhys​ @the-reading-obsessed-stitchbear​ @feyrethedarklady​ @booklover41802​ @rowaelinforeverworld​ @jamesxdaisy​ @julemmaes​ @hellas-himself​ 

#supernova #supernova chapter six #the martian au #rowaelin #rowan x aelin #rowan whitethorn #aelin galathynius #elorcan #elide x lorcan #elide lochan #lorcan salvaterre #fenhemia #fenrys x nehemia #fenrys moonbeam #fenrys marama #nehemia ytger #neslys #nesryn x lysandra #nesryn faliq #lysandra ennar #evangeline #weylan darrow #gavriel aryeh #manon blackbeak #asterin blackbeak #sartaq dalavtchai #nox owens #isa writes #nalgenewhore

[reddrobins]

the shadow [d.wayne]

Older! Damian Wayne x Reader

Summary: A new vigilante in town is starting to get on Damians nerves. After telling his friend about them, he soon finds out that maybe working with ‘the shadow’ isn’t as bad as he thought.

Request: Aldkwkddkwj i love your writing sfm,, could you please write a damian x reader where he rants to her alter ego about her? Like he's in love with her civilian self and he asks for advice without knowing its them? Idk if that makes sense rip

"They are insufferable, (Y/N). I cannot stand to be around 'the shadow' for longer any longer than 5 minutes. I mean seriously, what name is 'the shadow'?"

You currently sat on the floor of the Batcave as Damian put on his armor, ranting about Gotham's newest vigilante. "I dunno bird brain," You started, calling him the now overused nickname (which he hated by the way),"I kinda like the idea of a girl vigilante. It's empowering."

"Tt.:" Damian gave, slipping on his domino mask, "But, we already have a female vigilante, Batgirl."

Rolling your eyes, you stood up from your spot, "Yes, but, Batgirl doesn't work alone. The Shadow does. I respect her."

Now in full Robin get-up, Damian walked towards the weapons cabinet, grabbing his katana, "Well, I don't. She's an annoyance and a distraction, Gotham would be better without her." The teen vigilante got on his cycle, putting it in gear. "Whatever the verdict, I do have to go on patrol now. Feel free to stick around the manor. I shall be back in two or three hours."

You waved goodbye to Damian, then took out your phone - checking the time.

11:30. Perfect, you thought, just enough time to go home and change.

Taking the elevator back up to the first floor of the manor, you gave a rushed goodbye to Alfred (and of course Titus too!) then sped out the front door.

You made it home just in the nick of time. 12:00, you thought, enough time to patrol and be back before Damian.

Dawning your silver and black costume, you tiptoe through your house's hallway, as to not wake your mother.

You unlatched the front window and jumped out of it, landing on the nearby fire escape. You checked your phone, which also served handily as your data pad.

'Two reports of armed robbery, one home invasion and three homicides' your phone reported.

Deciding that Damian and Bruce had the homicides covered, you went towards Gotham National bank, ready to take down whomever had thought tonight was the perfect night for crime.

As Bruce finished putting cuffs onto the suspect of murder number 3, he turned to Damian, "I have this covered, there’s still an active robbery at the bank - I need you to head over and report back to me who it is. Do not instigate, Robin."

The teen nodded and with his gun, grappled onto the closet building. Luckily, the bank wasn't too far from the location of the homicides and Damian made it to the robbery in no time.

He jumped down from the scaffolding of an apartment complex and raced over to the back of the bank, where he could easily sneak in unnoticed.

That was until he bumped into someone.

Swiftly, Damian rolled back, tripping the mystery person as he did and unsheathed his sword, pointing it at their neck.

"Whoah, Rob - chill out dude." His victim whisper-yelled.

Damian almost groaned, he knew that masked voice all too well.

"Shadow? What the hell are you doing here." He hissed, putting the sharp weapon away.

You dusted off your costume and stood up, narrowing your eyes at Damian. "I could ask you the same thing, bird brain. But if you have to know, there's a robbery in the works. I'm here to end it."

Though on the outside you seemed calm and collected, you were freaking out internally. Crap. you thought, I cannot have him figure out who I am. He'd never let me go out again.

Breaking you from your thoughts, Damian continued, "Tt. Sure you are. That's why I am here. To do a job that's much larger than the means of you." He pushed past you, checking your shoulder, and reached the back entrance.

"It's locked," you hollered. "I already tried that genius."

Damian glared at you, then took out a batarang, swiping it up and down in between the door crack until a click sounded. The boy-wonder turned towards you, smirking, "But you don't have batarangs. Genius."

As he snuck into the bank, you quickly followed after him, closing the door behind you.

Robin looked at you in disbelief, "Why are you still here?"

Angrily, you said, "Excuse you, but this was my case. I was here first and I plan to finish it." You may have loved Damian, but Robin sure was an ass.

This time, you pushed past him and into the main centre of the bank.

"Two-Face." You whispered.

There him and his goons stood, bags filled with money in hand as they pointed their tommyguns at the tellers and unlucky patrons.

"Alright!" The rouge yelled, "On the count of three I'm going to flip this coin, Tails, you all live and heads," He said darkly, "My men shoot you all."

Somewhere in the commotion, a woman cried out, begging for mercy - this didn't sit well with Dent.

"To show you that I mean business, Roy!" He yelled at one thug, who nodded before lifting his gun.

Oh my god, you thought, He's going to kill that woman

You had already seen enough and before the shot rang out, you lunged at the armed man, wrestling him for the gun.

"Shadow!" Robin yelled out, watching you struggle to unarm the thug.

Two-Face had a different plan. This time, he raised his gun, aiming it at you.

However you were too enthralled with trying to save the sobbing woman from Roy, thus Harvey's actions went unnoticed by you.

But not by Robin.

The teen vigilante jumped out of the shadows, throwing a batarang at the chamber of the gun, blocking the shot.

"Gah!" Two-Face yelled out in frustration, "You little brat!" The man spun around, failing his gun about - trying to land a hit on Robin, who easily dodged all of the attempts.

You on the other hand, were fighting a losing battle. You had successfully gotten Roy away from the women and were now on his back, trying to get a grip on his neck.

The man was big, much bigger than you - maybe even stronger. But you were more agile, and were able to block most of his hits.

You however, couldn't stop the goon sneaking up behind you until it was too late.

Red stained the front of your costume and you were thrown to the ground.

All the while Robin had long knocked out Two-Face, now his focus on getting the people to safety, that was until he heard the shot.

"Shadow, No!" He screamed. In his fit of rage, he charged the two goons, easily neutralizing both of them.

"Batman!" Damian said into the coms, "The Shadow has been shot. Everyone else is neutralized and tied up. I need the batmobile."

His father gritted his teeth, "I thought I said not to instigate."

Damian was in disbelief, did he really wish to start this argument now? "I didn't. The shadow did, who by the way, Batman - was shot. I need help urgently."

"On my way." Bruce answered. "Until I'm there, do not let them sleep. How bad is the wound?"

Damian looked over to your bleeding form, "Bad enough." He then added, "But not fatal."

As you were bleeding out, you couldn't help internally scolding yourself. How did I not hear him? You thought, Now I am never going to make it back in time. Even through your haze of pain, all you could think about was making sure Damian, though he stood in front of you, never found out.

Damian came into your peripheral view and he reached out to you, cradling your head in his lap. "Shadow can you hear me?"

You nodded, giving out a pained laugh, "I'm not dead yet D-Robin. Of course I can hear you."

Yet. Damian's body clenched at the notion that you were going to die. "You are not dying. Not on my watch, (Y/N)." He said forcefully.

Your eyes widened, He found out. He's going to kill me before this bullet does.

"Damain I- How'd you know?"

He gave a light chuckle at your surprised face, "Beloved, You're the only one who calls me bird brain. How would I not know it to be you?"

You shrugged, accepting your stupidity of trying to fool the world's best detective's son then winced in pain, "I guess you're right..." Then, "So, then this means the end of vigilantism." You said solemnly.

The boy shook his head, dismissing your thought. "No. You're an excellent fighter (Y/N). Hell, you've bested me a few times prior. Though I'm not fond of 'the Shadow' per say, I am fond of you and I will not stop you from doing what you wish."

Smiling weakly you have Damians hand a comforting squeeze. "From now on though, I'll take your lead, don't feel like getting shot again."

The other teen nodded. "Yes. This experience was far from enjoyable."

#damian wayne #older!damian wayne #damian wayne x reader #older!damian wayne x reader #older! damian wayne x reader #robin #robin x reader #batfamily #batman x reader #batfamily imagine #batman imagine #batman

[stealinghero]

Okay so imagine this! The Lupin crew are relaxing at a cafe after a successful heist. The s/o says they have to use the bathroom and they leave. But after about five minutes, the s/o comes running out of the back door with a dehydrated body in their arms yelling that they need to go, there’s no time to explain and it’s not their fault, all while some shady looking people chase after them.

Finally.... after losing my first draft (about 4 pages) because of my stupid self overwriting it, it’s finally done!!

I did it a bit different than before to get the vibe of an episode, showing a few more aspects than just the view of the reader.

I hope you all enjoy it!!  It’s under the cut for length.

It had been a busy week. But now it was time to finally relax and come down. You were sitting in your favourite café, surrounded by your friends.

“I dare you to eat a whole Sundae in under 5 minutes.”

“Do you think I can’t do this?!”

“Hundred bucks against it.”

You snorted and had to laugh out loud when Jigen showed you the Sundae in question on the menu. It was huge!!

“Excuse me for a second. Don’t start without me!” You had to see Lupin try this dare, but nature called you with an urgency you seldom had.

“If I win, I’ll get a kiss!”

You turned around to your boyfriend and grinned.

“And if you lose, I get a kiss from Jigen!”

The gunman snickered and nodded. “Deal.”

“No deal! Don’t touch my precious love!”

You let the guys bicker while you made your way to the restrooms.

 A moaning was heard as soon as you entered. Some people had no shame! But something was off with it. Didn’t it sound painful? All stalls were open but the last one. Another moan, this time a man, more breathless but also kind of… breathless?

Curious about those sounds you got into the stall next to it and thought about taking a peek over the wall into the next cabin.

“That’s a good girl. Die for me.”

With a jump you pulled yourself up the wall of the stall and looked into the next cabin, only to see a black dressed guy with a syringe on the neck of a young girl.

“Unhand her, you freak!” you demanded.

He was quicker than you, already running out of the restrooms when you got down and hurried into the stall with the girl.

“Are you okay?!”

She was unconscious and very pale. The small holes at her neck almost looked like a vampire bite. Who was that freak?!

An uproar let you just get the girl out of the stall and run. Not a second too late as you could see the black dressed guy and a couple of his friends drawing their weapons, aiming for you.

 “Get up! We need to run!!” you shouted at your friends as you hurried past them with the still unconscious girl in your arms.

“What did you do?!” Lupin asked, already on his feet and fumbling for the car keys.

“No time to explain!!”

You heard a shot and felt the pain when the bullet hit you in the calf. Those guys were serious! Limping, you made your way to the car, followed by your friends, Jigen already shooting back and Goemon protecting you from a hail of bullets.

 Breathlessly you had told them everything on the way to the hospital where you had laid the girl in front of the emergency room. Just like the rest of the gang you were wanted so you couldn’t exactly just walk into any building without the fear of being arrested.

During the dressing of your wound, Jigen questioned you about the scene.

“This is crazy. Tell me again, did you recognize anything?”

With a huff you told him the story once more. You knew it was crazy! A side-glance towards your lover made you aware of the mess you had brought yourself into. He had decided to call Inspector Zenigata to get some information. It seemed quicker than to get into a disguise and just get to the nearest police station.

“A vampire? In broad daylight?” Goemon seemed incredulous.

“It wasn’t a vampire, Goemon! It was a man with a syringe. I saw it,” you replied.

“But where was all the blood? Even a kid her age should have at least 4 litres of blood. And she lost at least 2 of it.” Sometimes Jigen scared you with his medical knowledge.

With a grim face Lupin joined your round.

“You disturbed a serial killer. Pops says there were at least 5 different cases of this vampire. It’s always the same. A kid is lured away from its parents and sucked dry.”

You suddenly felt uneasy but you had to know.

“They survived, right?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“The girl is the first to survive. All of them had marks like a vampire bite. All of them sucked dry.”

Jigen spat and lighted a cigarette. A sure sign he was getting irritated.

“This is a disgusting thing to do to someone,” Goemon decided and grabbed his Zantetsuken. His own form of irritation.

“Pops is thankful for your information, but he also says there aren’t enough facts to get to a clear culprit. To think there were 4 of them...,” he left it unsaid, but you felt his uneasiness as he watched you.

“I will be okay. It’s not like they followed us.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Jigen slowly raised his hands, followed by Lupin. Both of them stared at a point behind you.

“I hate this,” you mumbled and turned around to find yourself surrounded by black dressed men, all of them aiming their guns at you.

 “I still don’t get why you don’t simply kill them.”

“It’s an order from above.”

“Fuck this. I know a bit about them. They can be dangerous.”

“Do you doubt your superiors?”

“No, Sir.”

“Then shut the fuck up and do your work.”

“Yes, Sir!”

You looked around in the dark cell to find something to get a clue where you were. After getting threatened you had to follow their orders. A blindfold, different cars, you were separated from the others. Were they in the same building as you? Were they already dead?

You swallowed your tears. Lupin wasn’t that easy to be killed. He would come and rescue you, right? He would hug you and kiss all those fears away. He would… maybe… surely… no! You had to get out of here! Think! What information do you have?

A dark cell, 3 metres long, 2 metres wide. A bucket in the corner. The door was solid metal, a small flap in the middle. No lock to be found. It had to be outside on the door. Maybe something simple as you hadn’t heard a key turn when you were thrown into this cell. You didn’t have a window. No blanket to cover yourself with. And it had to be soundproof, because the only things you could hear were the guards directly in front of the door even if you pressed your ear to the other walls.

 ~~~~

He gasped for air and coughed when he chocked on his own breath. Water ran down his face, soaking the bag over his head, making it harder to breathe.

“You will do as we say.”

He shook his head and tried to fight the strong grip on his neck as it pushed him down, into the water, once more. He was a good diver and counted the seconds with a clear head. But it was longer and longer, his lungs started screaming for air and he was still under the water. Two minutes had passed when he was pulled up again, again gasping for air in a desperate fashion.

“You will kill Lupin the Third.”

Again he shook his head. He was a stubborn idiot, getting drowned for his convictions.

 ~~~~

A sharp pain rushed through his whole facial nerve system as the wound opened and the nerves were exposed to the fresh air. Still, he wouldn’t admit it with a sound. It had be a short hit but still hard enough to rip open a huge gash on his cheek.

“It is easy, Lupin. You will steal the disc and we won’t hurt your little lover.”

He watched his partner through a monitor. They were collecting information on their cell, listening to sounds, checking the stability of the door.

“No.”

He had known it from the start. The whole day had been spent with an uneasy feeling. Why had he proposed a visit to the café?! By now he should know to trust his gut. But the face of his partner had been so gloomy and he had wanted to cheer them up… and he had endangered them with his recklessness.

“I will kill them,” the shadow promised.

Lupin shook his head. He had to trust them now. And he had seen a familiar face around those guys. What was more important to this person? Friends or the job?

“You’re right! I won’t kill them. He will,” the shadow laughed a bit while saying this, showing Lupin the familiar face getting tortured.

“Let them go!”

“Get me this disc and I will let your friends leave.”

The disc in question was unknown to him. Surely it was dangerous enough to destroy the world if people like the shadow wanted it. He had calculated the outcome and still hadn’t found a way out of it. Normally he would swap the disc with another, fooling those idiots. But with his friends in their hands? He would risk the death of his beloved ones. Manipulating the data on it was also out of the question, he had seen their work before. One or two skilled hackers were in this team, he knew. They would know any tampering before he could get away.

He had to trust his friends to save themselves. How could he gain time for them?

“Still no answer, hm? Fine. Then you’ll get to know the consequences,” the shadow threatened, pushing down a button.

Jigen appeared on the monitor. He was bound and gagged and seemed to be seriously hurt. Lupin snorted. It was likely the gunman had given his captors a rough time and got himself into trouble.

“Kill him.”

A gun was pressed to Jigen’s head. Lupin wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t.

The trigger was pulled and Jigen fell out of the reach of the camera.

 ~~~~

Was that a shot?! It had been too loud to be far away. Some clattering. You pressed your ear harder to the door but couldn’t hear anything. Silence fell. Maybe your friends came to your rescue??

After 5 minutes there was still silence and you fell down into sitting opposite of your prison door, staring at it, willing it to open with your thoughts alone.

 ~~~~

They had enough of drowning him. Wet and cold he was submitted into a cell, next to their other prisoners. He knew those cells. They were constructed specifically to be escape-proof. What a bullshit.

They had broken two of his fingers and this made it harder for him to work on the small gap between door and door frame. He was sure they watched him through the camera system. It was a game of time to get out of here.

A jolt of electricity rushed through his fingers and threw him on the floor, muscles cramping from the current. Damn, they had upgraded the security system.

 ~~~~

“One down, two to go. Get me the disc.”

He still couldn’t believe it.

“Your answer?”

They had shot him. Point blank, no room for tricks.

“Do you prefer to see the next death?”

“Don’t.”

“Get me the disc.”

He let his head hang and swallowed. They would kill the rest of his gang with him watching.

“Yes.”

“Good. Let me give you a gift before you go.”

Another button was pushed and he stared at the monitor. A hand, a leg…. A severed head staring back at him.

He threw up, emptying his stomach on the floor before him. He couldn’t stand the accusing stare of Goemon’s lifeless eyes.

“Please…,” he begged in a small voice.

The monitor went black.

“You have 24 hours.”

 ~~~~

You rubbed your temple as the flap in the door opened and a small tablet was shoved through, falling down, spilling all your food on the floor. A harsh laughter was heard and the flap closed. At least the water was bottled and didn’t spill.

You crawled towards the door, smelling iron. Blood on the other side of the door? You placed your face on the floor, trying to see through the small gap between the door and the floor. With a scream, you scrambled back to the opposing wall, shaking with fear. Did you… the… hi… you couldn’t understand what you just had seen. Lifeless brown eyes staring at you.

 ~~~~

It had been a matter of time until they had grew bored with him sitting in his cell, doing nothing. He was prepared when three of them came to get him. Two of them were entering his cell, getting him up on his feet, the third pointing a gun at him, ready to shoot without a warning. A really good work and he felt a small pride. He had been one of their instructors after all. And they were doing a good job, he had to admit.

“Are you ready to kill?”

He spat into the face of the man before him and earned a fist to the face for it. Blood dripped from his broken nose.

“Lupin is on the way already. There’s no need to be so hostile, old man.”

Damn. How had they made him go?!

The man before him laughed and hit him again, this time the fist hit his solar plexus, making him throw up in pain.

“You still have a chance to kill him if you’re fast enough.”

“I won’t.”

“I gave him 24 hours. And there is no rush.” A short gesture and the two men dragged him into another room, making him dread the things he and the other instructors had taught them, when he saw the instruments.

 ~~~~

Interpol headquarters. It would have been easier if they had allowed him to disguise himself as Zenigata!

Cursing he checked his uniform he had taken from a passed out officer. Well, passed out wasn’t that right, he admitted with a grin.

He would get the disc, bring it back and take his partner and get out of there. Far away from those maniacs.

“Officer, what are you doing there?”

He snapped back into reality, donning a smile and saluting in front of the captain.

“I was checking the premises as I was asked to do,” he answered.

A nod from the other man and he was free to go. He would need to be fast to get to the right floor. The shadow had told him the exact coordinates of the disc, making him suspicious. Why did the ICPO hide a disc with nuclear codes in their best guarded safe? Why did they have something like this in the first place? Something wasn’t right.

He thought about it the way through the building. Maybe the disc was something else? Briefly he remembered a different disc, containing the secret identities of all the MI6 agents. Maybe the ICPO had something similar?

No time to think. He had to get to the right floor and find a way to get into that safe, guarded by a difficult security system.

 ~~~~

You had enough! There had to be a way to get out of here?! Those bastards had killed Goemon! You threw yourself against the door for the fourth time when it swung open.

Shocked you couldn’t even react and fell to the floor, surprised by the sudden change.

“You wanted to get out?”

You blinked, silent – were you dreaming?

Zenigata grinned at you with a bruised face, missing two teeth.

“We need to get you out of here,” he told you, grabbing your arm.

You blinked again, and then the memories came back. Frantically you searched the floor for the head you had seen.

“It was a puppet. A scheme to break you. And Lupin.”

You shook your head. How!?

“Interpol’s special unit. They are specialized in anti-terror… well, I thought that.”

“Interpol?!” you had found your voice and were now eyeing the Inspector in front of you. He was a bloody mess, shirtless and bruised. Several deep cuts were on his body and you thought that a few fingers of his must be broken.

He growled before answering.

“I had a feeling about that case you were involved in. Seems I was right.”

“Inspector!”

You and him turned your heads towards the voice, seeing Yata dragging a half-conscious Jigen with the help of a hurt Goemon.

With a heavy weight falling from your shoulders, you rushed to your friends, hugging them and carefully looking over them for injuries.

“I found them where you told me. Inspector, what is going on?!” The young assistant seemed distressed.

“Doesn’t matter. Get Jigen and Goemon out of here and keep them safe,” Zenigata ordered, taking a short glance at you. “And you will need to help me here.”

You nodded. He had saved your friends and there was no sight of Lupin.

“They told me Lupin is on his way to steal something they want. We need to know where he is. And what they want.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Your brain was too slow to catch up.

“What bad feeling with the case I was involved in?!” you asked him.

He began to walk and you followed him, curious.

“After the second dead kid I had a hunch and followed a trace. A man of the Special Unit had been sighted near the crime scene.”

“They were 4 men,” you told him.

“Five. A sniper to keep trouble away.”

“But he didn’t shoot.”

“Then why are you limping?”

You stopped and stared at him. You were a sniper yourself and knew the priorities.

“Why didn’t he shoot me then?”

“He wanted to be found out.”

You shook your head in disbelief but Zenigata grabbed your hand and dragged you with him.

“His brother was the one to come to me after the fourth case. He was killed before he could confess his crimes. The sniper was the younger brother, I think he wanted to end the secrecy of this.”

“Why kids?! Why the blood?”

Zenigata dragged you into a room full of monitors and flicked through the different cameras, searching for something.

“To sell it to some rich guy. They all had the same blood type. Some special thing from India or something. I am not a scientist.”

“The Bombay Blood group.”

He turned around and looked at you surprised.

“Lupin is the same. He can give blood to anyone but he needs a donor from the same group to receive blood from.”

“And how do you know that?!”

You grinned a bit, remembering him telling you one evening and your search for a few pints of this blood group to have a stash safe if he would ever need it.

“He’s my love after all.”

Zenigata rolled his eyes and turned back to the monitors.

“Stupid love-bugs,” he grumbled.

 ~~~~

There hadn’t been a problem so far. The guards were wearing masks but he still had gotten around them and used the sleeping gas he preferred. Right now they were in the land of dreams, leaving him the peace to deal with the security system.

Modern electronics, an elaborate laser system and an old fashioned safe that was safe from the newer generation of thieves because it was too outdated to be used anymore. Luckily his grandfather had taught him his first steps in cracking a safe with a similar model. Even then this model had been old.

“Show me your secrets…,” he said to the computer as he was cracking the codes and disengaging one system after another. The instructions of the shadow had been precise and worked. He must be an insider. But still the main thought of the thief went to the disc. What was on it?!

 ~~~~

He had found a camera in front of a door that he wanted to investigate.

“If I’m right this is the main office. And we will find our…”

His voice was drowned in a siren.

“Don’t tell me we were discovered,” you said, growling. He said he knew the Unit! Then he should know their security, right?!

A gun was thrown into your hands.

“You have the permission to kill.” His voice was toneless and you knew how heavy this decision was on the Inspector.

“Because they won’t hesitate to o the same to you,” he explained and loaded another gun.

“Are you really okay?” you asked him, eyeing his still bleeding wounds.

“I won’t back down now.”

 ~~~~

“My, aren’t you a beauty…,” he purred and let his fingers caress the metal of the safe. A quick glance on his wristwatch told him he still had 12 hours. He would need 5 to get back to his captors. 2 hours were planned for escape and getting on a plane or hijack a helicopter. Something like this. This left him with a good few hours to crack this safe. And he would need them.

Kneeling in front of the safe, he got out his equipment. Those old models were often rusted but this was clean and cared for. The lock would be easy to pick, but any mistake would reset the code of the safe, making it harder to crack each time it was resetted. Those old safe makers sure were a crazy bunch.

A brief thought to his lover made him smile. He had to be extra gentle with this lock, just like with them.

 ~~~~

So far you had killed 3 men and still hadn’t left the floor. The office was still far away and those men pestered you with their skills.

“Trained by the best.”

“Didn’t you say you trained them?”

He had the nerve to grin at you.

“I taught them…” his grin vanished as he remembered who he was talking to.

“We should hurry.”

You nodded and took cover in another room, watching out for any guards. Gaining metre by metre you made your way to the stairs, followed by Zenigata.

 ~~~~

The door swung open without any sound. He whistled by this care. Whatever was in there must be really important if they took such good care about the safe and the security. Maybe his theory on the missile codes was right after all?

He stopped in his tracks when he saw the contents of the safe. There was nothing. Just the disc. No money, no important documents, not even a weapon. What the hell was on this disc?!

He took it and turned around.

“This is as far as you go, thief.”

He grinned at the guards in front of him.

“I am not a thief. I am THE thief,” he told them as he activated a button on his shirt, enveloping them with a smoke screen and slipping past them.

“The great Lupin!” he added as he activated the security system behind him and trapped the guards inside the safe room.

 ~~~~

Zenigata pointed to the door in front of you and you nodded. The plan was simple. Storm the room, get as many hostages as possible and try to find Lupin. Or at least a way to communicate with him.

After counting down, you two moved as one as Zenigata kicked in the door.

A single man lifted his gaze from the papers on his desk, watching you two.

“I underestimated you, Zenigata,” he simply said as a shot cracked through the room.

He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move much. He just broke down on his knees, falling forward, leaving you to catch him before he hit the floor.

“Zenigata!” His name escaped your lips as you held his heavy body. The blood flowed from the wound and in a few seconds there already was a pool of it under him.

“Do you care to follow him?” the man asked you. You stared at him. He hadn’t even flinched!!

“Who are you?! What do you want?!”

“Of you? Nothing. But I need your lover to get me something that is mine.”

The way he spoke the word ‘lover’ was disgusting. He seemed emotionless.

“My friends will come back and you will….”

He snapped his fingers and a huge curtain was lifted behind him, revealing a cage with Yata, Jigen and Goemon inside of it.

“Will do what exactly?” the man asked with a raised brow.

“Fuck you!” You raised your gun and shot at him without properly targeting. Even if the magazine was empty and the gun just clicked at your efforts, you couldn’t stop yourself to pull the trigger time after time at this unmoving man.

“I spared you from torture in order to get this stupid thief to move on my will. But now that he’s moving, I don’t need you anymore. Do you know what that means?”

You growled.

“Your men are dead!” you told him.

“Do you really think I need help to deal with you?!”

He got up and walked around his desk towards you, pointing the gun at you which he had use to shoot Zenigata with.

“You pissed me off. I won’t give you a quick death. And there won’t be tricks anymore.” He turned and shot in the direction of the cage, hitting Goemon in the shoulder.

“I will deal with you properly.”

You screamed your frustration out of your system and launched yourself against him.

 ~~~~

The whole building was in high alert and he had to change his disguise three times to leave it without raising any suspicions. What a work! He scratched the Interpol headquarters from his list of buildings for a planned heist. He would never get into there again if he could avoid it. Too much trouble.

By now there had to be a warrant for him to all the officers on patrol, right? He should avoid the crowded streets and stick to the alleys to get away unnoticed. This would cost him another hour at least! Slowly it was becoming a hassle to work in such a short time.

He cursed and quickened his pace. From a man he stole the hat, a woman lost her scarf while passing him. A new shirt was snagged from a clothes line and he changed while running though the streets. He would need to steal a car to get to the airport on time.

 ~~~~

Everything hurt. You had trained with the gang on most days and you weren’t weak either, but still you were struggling to keep up with a trained soldier. He was fast and stronger than you, but you used your quick reflexes to avoid the heavy punches. He had lost his gun during the fall and had resorted to a fist fight with you.

A punch hit you on the side on your head, making your ears ring and your head spin. This would leave a bruise… or worse. You felt the nausea and tried to ignore it.

A knee to his side had him grunting in pain and you threw your weight on your side to roll him over and get him under you.

His fist punched your side and left you breathless while you worked on his face, landing a few hits there.

Was he a monster?!  You were sure you had broken his nose and most of his ribs and he was still beating at you like a fresh man!

“Kill him.”

You heard the order from behind you and nodded. There was no other way anyway!

Slowly, with a bit hesitation, you placed your hands on the throat of your enemy and pressed them into the flesh.

 ~~~~~

He had seen the roadblock from far away and decided to test his luck. After all this would bee the fourth time he turned the stolen car around to find an unblocked road. He would never mess with Interpol again, Lupin swore. How could someone like Pops join such a stupid thing?! He would need to talk to him about that.

He accelerated and held the steering wheel in an iron grip with the eyes glued to the roadblock. Hopefully the officers there would get out of the way of his car… he closed his eyes in the last second and broke through the roadblock.

 ~~~~

He didn’t move anymore and still you pressed your hands on his throat until your knuckled turned white.

“He’s dead. Let him be.” A bloody hand reached for yours and when you looked up you could see Zenigata’s pale face mere centimetres away from yours. Slowly he eased every finger each away from your victim. You had shot people. You had seen them die at your hands. But you never had killed someone so closely. It changed you and you could suddenly understand why Jigen had sometimes scoffed at you for saying killing was quite easy. You would never say that again.

“The others. Help them.”

Blood ran over the Inspector’s chin and you wiped it away with your bare hands. He flinched a bit, leaving it to you to judge the reason.

The nausea had started to push into your consciousness and left you crawling towards the cage to free your friends. Where was the key…?

 ~~~~

From then on it was easy. Get to the airport, steal an unguarded helicopter, start it. He still had enough time to make it back to them, to give them the disc and just run. He felt like shit. What would happen if he came back? His partner would hate him for obeying those terrorists. For letting his friends die… Jigen’s execution and Goemon’s dismembered body came to his mind and made him sick to the bones. He was scum for letting this happen. The lowest point in his life had been reached today.

With numb fingers he tipped the coordinates of the hideout into the GPS and let out a sigh. He had seen Zenigata on the monitors. At least the Inspector was still alive to arrest him for his sins.

 ~~~~

You watched the sunset with a cigarette and the hip flask of Yata while the man himself cared for the injuries of the others. You had seen enough blood for today.

The alcohol burned its way from your mouth into your stomach, making you feel alive and to warm you from inside.

You got up when you heard the helicopter and strolled back to the makeshift sickbay.

Yata looked at you and you had to stifle a laugh. His hair was a mess and his clothes had stains of blood and grass.

“Seems like the missing thief is back,” he said, also hearing the helicopter.

You nodded and kneeled next to Goemon, placing a hand on the bandage around his shoulder. The Samurai huffed and said nothing. He was ashamed of being caught like that and had a puppet made of him to make Lupin believe he was dead.

“How’s Jigen and Zenigata?” you asked the officer opposite of you.

“Jigen’s stable and I stopped the bleeding of the shot wound of the Inspector… what about you?”

He had offered to take care of your wounds but you had dismissed him to care about the more severely injured.

An engine roared and several cars appeared on the horizon.

“And here’s the cavalry,” you said surprised at how slow Yata’s colleagues showed up after his cry for help before storming the secret base of his former associates.

“Better late than never,” he replied but you could see the disappointment clearly written on his face. He had to be saved by someone of Lupin’s gang instead of the police. That must have hurt.

 ~~~~

He was surprised to see the small group on the ground after landing. And two of them were supposed to be dead…

Not caring about the police cars coming at him, he went straight for his friends. He wanted nothing more than to hug his partner and never let them go. He would never let them go again. His walk broke into a run and he closed the distance to them.

 In the end the Police let them go. There would be no case regarding this slip-up. The disc was safe with them again and they had other problems than to deal with a third-class thief and his band of misfits.

All of you were checked into a hospital with completely false names and history, courtesy of Interpol. The cracked skull of yours would need some time to heal up, but when you saw Lupin standing in the doorframe to your room holding a huge get-well-basket, you had to smile. The time would fly faster than you would like.

#lupin iii #lupin the 3rd #jigen daisuke #goemon ishikawa xiii #zenigata

[digimonadventuretimelines]

[17 - Lullaby for Zebra • Elise’s Sweet Song •]

“You, you will go there and destroy the factory which manufactures devices for the Chosen Children. If you fail… You won’t want to know.”

Those words echoed in the black furred digimon. He had nothing to lose, nothing to gain either. He was a machine, or he believed to. However, he was organic digimon. A wolf. And his master’s orders were clear.

Destroy the digivice factory. Probably giving Izumi Koushiro the biggest headache if said mission is accomplished.

But it was raining in the human world. It was also dark, and he couldn’t see anything than a flash of light till it hit him. Luckly, his body was strong enough and he survived. The car and its passengers also were fine, just shocked and scared of that lupine digimon. The couple’s Labramon and Plotmon barked furiously at the irresponsible digimon.

Those ones… Why were they yelling at him? It doesn’t matter… He got hurt with the accident, his paw was sprained and he wished he didn’t break it.

He walked till a park and hide himself inside one of those giant turtle-shaped “shelters” with slides and remained there for the rest of the night.

At the morning…

“Where you watching the stream, Elise?” Mitsuki voice was heard by the mysterious digimon, “Some things happened during it…”

“Oh, don’t worry Mitsuki” a girl at the same age as Mirai -- blond hair with bangs and hair looking like the 14yo Yamato, and green eyes wearing a cute sky blue dress -- responded to Mitsuki. Her voice was so sweet and gentle… “I was watching it, but the same moment you got interrupted I got lost. Actually, something came from the screen of my laptop.” 

“Something?” he blinked, then took his digivice from his pocket “Like this?”

“Yes! But mine is… Blue.”

“Oh…”

“Oh… a furred paw!” a child in the park, closer to where the cousins Mitsuki and Elise where, had found something cute and tried to poke it with a stick. They were all playfully with no malicious intent, but the lupine digimon roared and scared the children.

All those cries interrupted Mitsuki and Elise’s talk, catching their attention. Mitsuki approached from the group of children younger than him and his cousin.

“What’s wrong?”

They didn’t say anything, and just pointed at the pelt. Elise stood on an average distance and looked at the black fur.

“Oh a digimon...” she knelt to see it better “It’s a… Gabumon with a black pelt.”

“It’s okay” Mitsuki talked to the kids “I think it just got scared, we can handle it from here. Go play in another place please?”

The kids nodded and left; Mitsuki approached from Elise “Do you think something happened to be hidden there?”

“Hmm… It was raining last night. Maybe got lost or hurt…?” she kept going, approaching from the digimon “Hey little one? Are you hurt?”

“Be careful…”

The digimon growled, but she didn’t give up. Elise then started to hum a song, and that made the digimon reveal himself. As said previously by the girl, it was a Gabumon, but not a regular one -- it was a subspecies, BlackGabumon.

“Seems hurt” Mitsuki observed the digimon, “Little bud, did you get hurt?”

“...” BlackGabumon didn’t reply.

“Maybe we should call Mr. Kido?” Elise mused, but the mysterious Gabumon lied his head on Elise’s lap “Huh?”

“I think he liked you” Mitsuki chuckled, “Try to ask where it hurts, I will call Mr. Kido to take a look--”

“No,” Elise interrupted him, “He wouldn’t let anyone else approach from him. I can take care of this.”

“I’m not sure if it is a good idea…”

“Let’s get something for him to eat. I heard a belly noise.”

“Fine fine…”

 “More children got digivices!?” Daichi exclaimed, Hoshi nodded in response “But but how??”

“They were watching Mitsuki’s stream.”

“This seems a problem” Natsu frowned “I mean, in the past it was a big deal because non-Chosen had fear about the digimon… But now…”

“That seems the opposite of a problem” Sting intervened “This means a Chosen in our actual days won’t need to hide their digimon like before.”

“I understand that! The problem now is that you all are mercenary Chosen Children.”

“What?” Hoshi eyes widened “What do you mean, Natsu?”

“Um, means you’re not on Koushiro’s list. Means you’re like, unregistered Chosen Children. Since with the growth of the number of Chosen Children in the past… The Twelve created a contact list and then, an organization which works undercover to prevent more cases of DigiChosen being taunted by evil forces, such as the Digimon Kaiser’s case.”

“You didn’t tell me about that” Daichi squinted his eyes at her.

“I was about to tell you later” and Natsu responded by a shrug “Anyway, That registered list is important to keep in touch and to make sure no one is being used by evil guys.”

“That didn’t work at all…” Ulforce shrugged. Daichi stared at him and he quailed.

“Ok, but how many people were watching Mitsuki’s stream?” the boy asked.

“Let me see,” Hoshi began to count “Mirai, Mike, Reika, Jin… I think Elise too?”

“Five people... Counting with Kiyoko, Eiji, you and me… 10 kids with a digivice. This means it’s a reasonable number. Excluding the unknown child, we have ten kids with ten digimon partners. But, with Brave Tamer we have 11 D-TimeRune holders...”

 “We’re back!” Elise smiled, then stood by BlackGabumon’s side “I brought you some snacks. There was a DigiNoir store around. Here, eat it.”

The digimon gently took the DigiNoir box and opened it. He quietly replied “... Thank you.”

“Huh, what’s going on Mitsukiii?” Pit asked.

“Elise found a digimon” he took the digivice to let his partner see the scene.

“Oh! A Gabumon! But… Is it OK?”

“Of course it is” Elise giggled “He looks like a Zebra. Black and white. Can I call you by Zebra, Gabumon?”

“... Ok.”

“H-hey we don’t know if he’s partnered with someone, Elise…”

“... No” Zebra answered.

“Oh he talked with you…” Pit blinked.

“That’s an improvement…”

“Where did you get hurt? Should I call a doctor for you?” Elise asked, looking at one of Zebra’s paws.

“... No” then he showed the injured paw to Elise “this one.”

“Oh…” he took the digimon’s paw with caution “It’s okay I will talk with a friend, his dad is a digimon doctor. He will tell me what to do so you can heal your paw.”

“... Ok.”

Elise then took her phone and took a photo of her new friend’s paw. Also scanned it with an app created for the purpose of collecting data and information about the digimon’s health. On the next day, she went to see doctor Kido and request for his help. Joe admired the girl’s kind act and examined the data.

“Your friend will be fine, it was just a sprained paw. No broken or dislocated issues.”

“Oh thank you, dr. Kido” she sighed and her muscles relaxed. That a relief.

“I will write the procedures to help you heal his paw.”

“Oh okay.”

She took the paper with the instructions and went back to Zebra’s whereabouts with the medicine. Mitsuki thought it would’ve been a hard task… But apparently that BlackGabumon was feeling safe with Elise around. Mitsuki wondered why, and what had happened to Zebra’s paw in the first place. With no answers from the digimon, he went on a investigative mission by requesting Mirai’s eyes on the cameras around the town.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for” Mirai swirled her office chair to look at Mitsuki in the eye “but On that rainy night something came from the portal on the Sector W. And as you can see...”

She zoomed in the lupine shadow popping out of the Digital Gate. It was a Garurumon? The image was not very good due to the ambient light and the rain also messed with the colors. But Mirai is a computer genius: She ripped the video off the database, and edited it to show the details they couldn’t not see by the light and rain. It wasn’t a flawless edit, but they could see it better: A Garurumon with black fur came out of the portal.

“Do you think… This is the same digimon from the park?” Mitsuki frowned, he didn’t know what to do or what to think of “Is it dangerous?”

“Hmm… That Garurumon appears on this other camera here, and he got hit by a car. Don’t worry, no one got critically hurt. If this is one of the refugees digimon… Lupinmon’s troops will come after him.”

“... Could you tell Daichi about it please? I will warn Elise, she needs to know.”

“Hold on, you keep Elise protected and I will keep you in touch in case of something coming after the Gabumon.”

Mitsuki nodded, and he left in a hurry. Mirai frowned, then looked at the screen and saw Brave Tamer’s chat icon blinking.

 “So, what should we do about it” Eiji asked Kiyoko, his eyes paying attention at her and her walking from here to there “You said that mr. Motomiya is a digimon now?”

“I can’t think straight now! Why is it happening to my family!? And to my friends!?”

“Please stay calm”

“I can’t Eiji! My dad is being called a THREAT! My dad, the most beloved person who always cares about the others and encourages them to break their limits… Is against us! I’m not sure if Mr. Yagami won’t… Won’t condemn him.”

Deep down, Eiji had concerns as well. His uncle was one of the closest friends of Daisuke, so he believed Taichi wouldn’t do something terrible like treating Daisuke as a traitor. But Kiyoko had all rights to be concerned and skeptical about it.

All he could do was gently accept her feelings towards the situation.

“Taichi won’t do that” Miyako was present in the room alongside the digimon, Daichi, Hoshi and Natsu “He knows your dad is not doing it on purpose.”

Kiyoko ran to Miyako’s arms, hugging her mother tightly. Miyako smiled and patted the girl’s hair. The grip around her waist has loosen at the first instance Kiyoko felt her mother’s hand on her head.

“Don’t worry.”

“May I ask what should we do?” Eiji calmly repeated his question, now expecting a different response.

Daichi rested his chin on his hand, “We need to… Keep preventing my brainwashed dad to commit a terrible mistake. Meanwhile I… Uh, I will go researching how to save him.”

  Days has passed. Zebra, the mysterious BlackGabumon decided to stay with that girl in that world. However…

“Why is he taking too much time to return!?”

The shadow punched the wall, fist clenched. The tension of that action made some of the scouts step back, glancing at him with fear in their faces.

“What? Why are you looking at me, you pack of imbeciles!?” he gritted his teeth “Go back to work!”

They panicked and returned to their usual activities. A greenish Kunemon subspecies -- Dokunemon -- approached from him.

“What now?”

“The eyes of the forest said Lupinmon was breaking your control again.”

“I am aware of it, I can read my victim’s mind. He’s stubborn and strong, and that one name going through his head… That kid is a problem.”

“Kid…?”

  That kid… The new Chosen Child.

“What are you thinking of?”

Magnamon caught him staring at his own reflex on the lake, next to the facilities of the army. Something went off in his opinion that he couldn’t tell the loyal knight… Because he had no idea how to.

“It’s nothin’, don’t worry.”

“Are you sure?”

“... The man and the kid… They seemed familiar to me.”

Magnamon did not respond, only kept his eyes lying on Lupinmon and quietly heard him.

“What is this feeling? Why I… I want to help them find this ‘important person’ he meant?”

“I don’t know… But we need to do something.”

“Let’s do it then, find that human-- Argh!”

“Master, what’s going on-- Ugh!”

Flying in the air and gesturing hands to show who was inducing pain to Daisuke and Vee, a humanoid digimon with human face, but his mask had resembles of Stingmon. It wore a suit, flashing moth wings moved to keep him hovering over the duo’s heads.

“Ah, I see you’ve been questioning stuff again. There’s no reason to ask yourself about said feelings. You’re a soldier. You and Magnamon serve this cause.”

That headache kept them unable to respond, all they were doing was growling and hearing that humanoid moth-like digimon speaking inside their minds.

“You poor beings are alive to serve me. So keep loyal to me and I will keep you two alive, or else...”

Daisuke and Magnamon’s eyes glowed in red, just like the time the Digimon Kaiser had control over the digimon once. Once the pain vanished, they looked up and in a very mechanical way.

“Yes, master Papillonmon.”

Papillonmon smirked, with the Dokunemon chuckling at the scene.

#datl text chapter #daichi arc phase 1

[demialwrites]

Kitty Kompanion Ch 5

Genji hadn't been at the watchpoint for longer than a full day for the past month. Not having a work schedule for yourself, you lost track of what day it was.

You did offer to do paperwork, but Winston waved your suggestion off. "Athena does all that."

So you doubted yourself that Genji seemed be going on longer and longer missions. Overall, you were okay. Your breasts were so nice and full, and your stomach didn't have as many stretch marks as you had feared. You should have been grateful that you were safe and healthy. The piece missing from your heart disagreed. Whispered to you that it was unfair. You wondered why you should get out of bed, to face the loneliness. The tempting sleepiness pulled you back down. You closed your eyes, chasing the split second before unconsciousness that was free of any worry. The extra sleep had the opposite effect that sleep normally has. You spent the day feeling like shit and looking like it, eyebags and all.

You gave up training after falling and bruising your hip. Your centre of gravity had shifted without you noticing. You sat there, annoyed. You punched the floor, resentful that the further along you got, the more your job was becoming 'being pregnant.' You took your frustration out on Genji's cock when he was home. Making him lay back while you rode him until you tired yourself out. Your fingers gave you a less satisfying orgasm, and it was getting harder to reach properly. Genji welcomed your use of him, contentedly drinking in your curves with his hungry gaze. As soon as your thighs refused to obey you, he guided you back slowly with his hands at your back to avoid ripping his knot out of your cunt. Genji curled around your pregnant stomach to give love to your swollen breasts. These was some of your best times with him lately, because his knot locked inside you guaranteed some quality time. You traded tender kisses and discussed possible baby names until he had to leave again.

Genji noticed the growing length of his missions, as well, and picked up the habit of bringing you a small stuffed animal from each new location. Whether he stole them or bought them, you didn't mind. The theme was baby versions of animals whenever he could find them. You had amassed a sizeable amount in a short time. You lay in the bed, surrounded by the stuffies, because half its occupants weren't there most of the time anyway. You were wondering if Genji's presents were doubling as baby toys. He indignantly huffed when you asked him this.

Later he confessed to Jesse and Hanzo in the Orca that his scheme had been found out, and his brother had no sympathy.

"Don't be cheap, then!"

"It is called being frugal, Hanzo. You would go broke just trying to get a first date," said Genji, taking a jab at Hanzo's expensive tastes in cologne, bath oils, eyeliner, skincare, and separate combs for his hair and his fur.

"At least he pays for the things," Jesse pointed out, when Genji would have no problem stealing them.

"As if there is honour involved in something so insignificant," Hanzo said.

"There is to me," Genji growled. "Who is the one who is single, and who is not?"

"Genji's got a point, Hanz," Jesse said. "You might try bein' nice every once in a while."

Hanzo squared up with the cowboy, ears flat and his tail waving. His white teeth peeked out of his sneering lips. Jesse barely twitched.

"You should work on that attitude. It's bringin' team morale down," he drawled, casually puffing on his cigarillo with a finger and thumb holding it steady.

Hanzo picked a far away sniper perch to sulk in after the Orca landed.

"Sorry if that was unprofessional, Jesse," Genji whispered to him.

"As long as we stick to the plan and come back in one piece, you two can cat fight all you want."

Hanzo wheezed poorly contained laughter. He got a hold of himself and asked McCree if he plucked his joke from the dumpster they passed on the way over. Jesse took his cigarillo from his lips.

"Well, I'll be."

"He laughed," Genji said. His chest expanded with a deep breath. He let it out slowly, placing a hand solemnly on Jesse's shoulder. "I will make an appointment with Angela for him when we get back. He is clearly terminal."

"Do not!"

Jesse and Genji fell against each other, snickering quietly so enemies wouldn't hear.

Genji returned from that particular mission with a stuffed baby beaver. He found you napping with all the stuffies. What an adorable sight you made, with your pregnant belly protruding above all the stuffed animals. He had no idea you missed him so badly, and instead was drawn to join you for your nap. He added the baby beaver to the pile and then pushed some to the side so he could slot himself into the cuddle pile next to your body.

You would have remained in the bed with this surprise appearance of Genji, but you an immense need to pee and right now. You inched towards the side of the bed, dragging your extra weight along. It disturbed your bedmate. He shifted around and you stopped with your legs hanging off the side of the bed, waiting for him to greet you. Genji opened his eyes, hazy with sleepiness, and spied the stuffed animals.

"My kittens," he cooed, sweeping his arms inwards, gathering some stuffies to his chest. He curled up around them, his tail touching his chin, and went back to sleep. You could tell he was sleeping by his peaceful, steady breathing.

You were about to pee yourself, so you quickly used the bathroom. Then you swiped your phone from the bedside table and snapped a pic of Genji cuddling his 'babies.' You had no idea what was going on, but you had to save this.

You woke him, and he whined at you sleepily not to show anyone because he didn't remember talking to the stuffed animals at all. But too bad. Too late. The picture was already taken. Genji left for another mission, and now you had this darling photo to look at to comfort you while he was away.

"Hey, Angela."

"How are you feeling? You look tired."

You were on a first name basis with the pretty, blonde doctor now, and you knew the drill for your check-ins. You stepped on the scale, so she could record your weight gain. To be fair, a medical program was automatically recording all the data for perusal at Angela's convenience.

"I am, but I'm fine otherwise I think."

"That's good. I'm tired as well," she groaned and launched into some gossip. "Everyone is keeping me very busy. Did you hear that Tracer recalled into friendly fire for the fifth time in three months? She's doing her best under the circumstances, but...Ugh! And I'm trying to convince Winston to switch to natural peanut butter as a compromise, but he conveniently keeps 'forgetting' to buy a minifridge for it. Then I just about put Jesse's cigar out on his leg. Ahhh, but I have the best sleeps after days like that!" She grinned. "Also makes me look forward to seeing your healthy little baby bump in comparison."

"The Winston part might be partly my fault. I ate all his bananas a week ago."

"That's alright. He's an adult; it's squarely on him," she said, pointing at her shoulders. "Come, come. Sit."

You sat on the exam table.

"My favourite part! Hearing the tiny heartbeat." She took the stethoscope from around her neck. "Athena, bring up the audio feed for the mother to hear."

"Yes, Dr. Ziegler."

Angela played your heartbeat for you. Then the baby's. You got a little light-headed each time with the realization that a tiny life was growing inside you. You cupped your belly tenderly.

"Almost makes me want to give up being a doctor to have children," Angela said wistfully.

You looked up in surprise.

"What?"

She chuckled. "Got you!"

"Whatever," you muttered with a smile.

"You know what's next," she said. You did, lying back on the exam table so the medical equipment could scan your uterus. "Let me just quickly go over your stuff here..." she said, walking over to the console.

You waited patiently. You wished Genji were here, but that was no surprise.

"Wait," the doctor said. You sat up, already on alert. "Am I that tired? Did I forget you were having twins?"

Dr. Ziegler was squinting at the screen and rubbing her cheek in deep confusion, while you fought the urge to flail about in panic. No, you did not mention twins!

"Wait," she said again. This time you deflated onto the exam table, already done with the surprises. "This one is reading as a few weeks younger. That cannot be..."

You nodded to everything she said, trying to ignore the lack of blood flowing to your brain. Dr. Ziegler released you for now, intending to study the results of the scans of the second baby. You dumbly walked down the hallway with your hands to your baby bump, until a thought smacked you like a pebble to the head. Genji was still not here, again! You fisted your hands angrily and jogged back to your room. You paced back and forth at the foot of your bed. The object of your anger was out on a mission, again.

Athena had to say your name twice before you realized she trying to get your attention.

"Athena! Right, sorry," you said, depositing your rear on the bed. "What can I do for you?"

"An audio transmission for you from Agent Genji."

You adjusted the position of your feet needlessly and smoothed invisible wrinkles on the stomach of your shirt.

"Alright. Connect us, please."

Your beloved's voice spoke your name, warmly drifting down from the ceiling.

"You!" you seethed.

"What? I-"

"Another baby! Angela says I'm pregnant with a second baby! Appeared out of nowhere! ...I think," you added quickly. "I don't know..." A tsumani of angst came crashing over your anger, snuffing it. "And you're not here!" you wailed.

You tried not to be selfish and blame Genji for not being here, but you just did. You failed. You were overwhelmed and alone. You stared at the floor, waiting to be chastised for not handling it better. Genji had never lost his patience with you before. Maybe this time you went too far.

"You may have to explain to me again what that means when I arrive home. For now, go see Angela. Please try not to stress too much. We will get through this. Together."

"The transmission has ended," said Athena.

"Thank you, Athena," you said sadly.

"You're welcome."

"Together," was Genji's last word to you. Of course he had your back with this. You were foolish to think otherwise. Still, the prospect of two babies to take care of was daunting. Hopefully, Angela had an explanation of where the second baby came from, and soon. And maybe...she was mistaken about the whole thing. You had mixed feelings about that. For now, all your previous emotions receded, leaving you drained and raw. You fell back onto the bed, needing another nap.

#genji x reader #female reader #kitty!genji #smut #angst #fluff #my shit #genji shimada x reader

[douglashonorscollege]

The Tesla Titan

research paper by David Wacker  ⌂

Part I: The Tesla Titan

“Tesla Titan, he’s a hero! Gonna bring emissions down to zero!” Now that may be a clear rip off of the classic Captain Planet theme song, but the Tesla Titan deserves the same recognition as the beloved pollution fighter. The Tesla Titan is not only stopping the crimes of fossil fuel overconsumption and outdated automobiles, but also making space travel less environmentally destructive. Reusable rockets have decreased cost and waste by a big margin. He has also promised that moving to Mars in the future is possible. Though he wouldn’t be able to do all of these amazing feats if it weren’t for his infinitely smart Artificial Intelligence by the name of OpenAI (needs a better nickname). It is said that Tony Stark himself went to the Tesla Titan for pointers on how to be a world-saving superhero. The Tesla Titan keeps giving more and more to our wonderful planet; he is a true hero and spectacle.  

His only flaw would be that he hasn't done a good job at keeping his identity hidden. Just about anyone with a WiFi connection knows the Tesla Titan’s real name which of course is Elon Musk. Musk is one of the richest people on the planet, and he has been doing his best to use it for good! The Tesla Titan’s Origin Story begins in the country of South Africa, where he began toying using computers at a young age. At the young age of twelve he sold a video game he had developed to a magazine company. It was a space-themed “shoot-em-up” called Blastar, and it made the future billionaire a cool 500 dollars. You can actually play it in your browser now with a little digging.

At the age of seventeen, while continuing to get more adept with computers, Musk decided to get a Canadian passport. His reasons were based around not wanting to support apartheid—a segregation order in South Africa—with military service as well as chasing better economic opportunities in North America. He first attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, but then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he earned two bachelor’s degrees. From there, Musk went to Stanford for graduate school, quitting after a mere two days. He thought that the future was with the internet, and he was correct; in a relatively short amount of time, Musk sold his first online company, Zip2, for 309 million dollars (Gregersen).  

Elon Musk, aka the Tesla Titan, has become a dominant figure in the tech industry over the past decade, and for good reason, too. He has brought about paradigm shifts in many different fields with relative ease. This is a result of his influence that he has gained over the years. He has the capability to alter public thinking quicker than it would otherwise change. A paradigm shift is comparable to a scientific revolution, something that generally requires a lot of marketing, money, and, usually, time. Throughout this essay I will compare his ability to sell products to the abilities of the Marvel character Tony Stark, aka, Ironman. Both have helped invent and create amazing pieces of technology. They also have much success selling these technologies, and the similarities go on and on.  

The Tesla Titan gets his name after the electric car company he co-founded and where he continues to hold the title of CEO. The car company was founded in 2003 with the idea of fun-to-drive electric vehicles in mind. They launched their first full electric vehicle in 2008, named the Tesla Roadster. The Model S was launched in 2012, becoming the best in its class in every category. The company has released many more vehicles over the years, and just last year, it announced the Cybertruck, which currently has over 650,000 orders. Tesla is also close to releasing a self-driving semi-truck, which promises a 500-mile range on a full charge. From Tesla’s beginning right up to today, “Elon leads all product design, engineering and global manufacturing of the company's  electric vehicles, battery products and solar energy products” (Tesla).  

Recently, Tesla became the highest valued car company in the world, reaching an estimated $208 billion value in July of 2020. It is now being valued at $387 billion by Yahoo Finance today, with the possibility of another jump in value after it was announced that Tesla is joining the S&P 500. In its seventeen-year lifetime, Tesla became the forefront of electric vehicles, and it has reached farther than any other car brand before it.  

Although Tony Stark never released his own brand of vehicles, he is known to be the owner of many expensive sports cars. He also created the Model 52 Iron Man Armor, which could fully transform into a flying car, equipped with two circular jets on the bottom to keep it off the ground. So there’s some comparisons to be made between these two men. In the movie, Spiderman: Homecoming, a Stark Cargo Plane is robbed. Where this might not be the best example of its abilities, it still has the capability to cloak itself and stay off radar. So they both have their experience in transporting goods.  

The Tesla Titan’s highest reaching feat is SpaceX, which he founded just a year before Tesla. SpaceX has also reached the forefront in its field of sending rockets to space and, now, landing them back on earth. Falcon 9 was the first ever successful landing of an orbital rocket booster back in 2015. Since then, there has been nowhere to go but up! Following the Falcon 9 was the Falcon Heavy in 2018 and then the revolutionary Super Heavy Starship System this year. The Starship System can carry a total of 220,000 pounds. It is designed to travel quickly to different cities around the globe. It doesn’t stop there, though; the System was also built with the idea of transporting supplies  and people to and from the Moon and Mars. It does all this at a fraction of the cost of SpaceX’s closest competitor, Boeing. SpaceX has even transported multiple astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) with its Dragon spacecraft (Gregersen). Just recently, four astronauts were successfully transported to the ISS in association with NASA (Wattles).  

A clear paradigm shift occurred when Falcon 9 became the first booster to land itself back on Earth. A mere thirteen years after its founding, the company managed to break a barrier no one had come near breaking before. The main thing that Tesla and SpaceX have in common is their fearless leader, The Tesla Titan. With the amount of success that Elon Musk has had over just the past two decades in these two fields, a connection has to be made with his influence. After so many successes, it would be hard for the world not to believe in his hero-like abilities being behind some of  today’s paradigm shifts.  

Connecting this to Tony Stark comes a little easier than comparing a single transforming car suit. Stark Industries has connections to the creation of the original Helicarrier that is used by the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization. Tony proposed the original idea to S.H.I.E.L.D., and with the help of Dr. Reed Richards and the former Xman Forge, they were able to design and eventually build the aircraft. Not that readers are able to see much of it, but there has also been a mention of the Stark Industries Aerospace Division, which supposedly created the first spaceship capable of space travel. It was first brought up in Iron Man, Vol. 1, #60, back in 1973, but not much has been said about it since.  

Finally, the last evidence I will provide for The Tesla Titan’s ability to perform paradigm shifts in a single bound comes in the form of Open AI. He founded the company alongside Sam Altman and others with a beginning pledge of one billion dollars. Since its inception, the company has worked on many different AI-related projects, from a fully AI Dota 2 team that regularly beats the best of the best human teams, to slightly less impressive—when it comes to competitive gaming—but still impressive bipedal AI simulations that learned to sumo wrestle one another. Moreover, Open AI developed an AI-trained robot hand that can solve a Rubik’s Cube. Then there’s the music generating AI, Jukebox, that has its own Soundcloud. But maybe the most impressive use so far is GPT-3, a unique text-suggestion software that can gather data in split seconds and fill out a full Excel sheet with data after a simple topic search and a few button presses.

In 2018, Musk left the company’s board but still remains a donor. He left the company because of possible future contests between it and the AI that runs his Tesla vehicles’ self-driving. While he might not be with the company anymore, the amount the company accomplished while he was associated with it is still nothing to scoff at. This is another great example of how someone of his status and income can significantly increase the rate of technological progress.

These accomplishments provide the easiest area to find similarities between The Tesla Titan and Iron Man. Both have their hands in the super intelligent AI basket. Tony Stark, of course, has his AI-assistant Jarvis with him wherever he goes, whether it’s in a pair of super fancy Heads-Up Display Glasses, in his massive super smart home, or of course while he’s in his trademark Iron Man suits. Jarvis is used for instant information, hacking, and even controlling certain aspects of the various Iron Man armors.  

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jarvis ends up inhabiting a Vibranium-based body that eventually leads to him becoming Vision. The body was constructed under the instruction of another super AI, Ultron, who intended on using the body as his most powerful form yet. As some will know, Ultron turns out to be an evil Artificial Intelligence with the classic, “exterminate the human race” mindset. Thinking quickly, Stark puts Jarvis into the body so it cannot be inhabited by Ultron. Vision is “powered” by the Mind  Stone (one of the six world creating Infinity Stones) which gives Jarvis full sentience.

My claim earlier about Tony Stark going to Elon Musk for inspiration was not that far fetched. Robert Downey Jr. did in fact go to Musk for tips on how to play the super-rich, tech playboy that is Tony Stark. And this completely makes sense, as The Tesla Titan is very comparable to Marvel’s Iron Man. It is a good thing that The Tesla Titan is on the good side, as it would be quite dangerous if he suddenly turned evil. He would have all the money and equipment he could need to possibly take over the world…  

Part II: Neuralink The Nefarious  

Neuralink The Nefarious, comes from a different timeline than The Tesla Titan, a timeline where the man behind the mask chooses to use his influence for evil rather than good. Neuralink The Nefarious sees the world as being infected by the parasite that is the human race, and he plans to use whatever resources he has—and he has plenty of resources—to expel the Earth of its sickness. But he won’t stop there—why conquer one planet, when you can conquer two, plus a moon? He develops spaceships with the cover story of cheaper space travel and commercial use for everyone. Behind the scenes, though, he schemes in the shadows. Along with his plans for stealing worlds, he is developing his mode of extinction for the human race in the form of mind-altering brain implants, which he markets as a possible cure for previously incurable diseases. The idea of self enhancement can drive practically anyone to madness, and he feeds on that desire. The implants are said to also provide information to the user just by thinking. While he’s at it, he has also sold “Not Flamethrowers” to the general public, another tool in his master plan. Neuralink the Nefarious will stop at nothing to become the Earth’s one true owner.  

This section of the essay will go over how not only does Elon Musk have similarities to those of Superheros, but he is also very capable of becoming a super villain. I will also go over the idea that when paradigm shifts do happen so quickly because of his influence, Technological Disjunction is rarely part of the equation.  Technological Disjunction is what happens when society doesn’t fully agree with a new technology that is being developed. For example, the use of drones by the public—many people worried about personal privacy. This has led to many regulations, including the requirement that the operator have a license to fly their drone over another’s property. Without a lot of technological disjunction, products that maybe should not be put on the market become available. Throughout this portion of the essay, I will compare Musk’s projects to multiple villains spread across pop culture, comparing their views and evil plans with those of Neuralink the Nefarious.  

Once again, Neuralink the Nefarious gets his name after one of his evil companies. Elon Musk founded Neuralink in July 2016, with a goal of solving paralysis and improving the human being by tampering with neurons in the brain. The “link” will be implanted into the person’s head with very thin “neural threads” reading interactions between the neurons that are used for movement in the brain. Their plan is to begin by creating a wireless link between users’ brains and their mobile devices: “The Neuralink app would allow you to control your iOS device, keyboard and mouse directly  with the activity of your brain, just by thinking about it” (Neuralink). As Neuralink learns more from its different iterations, the ability to help those with paralysis and other disabilities comes next. Or so they say.  

I believe that Neuralink the Nefarious got this idea straight from the 2014 Action  Film Kingsman: The Secret Service. The film’s antagonist is Richmond Valentine, a rich tech mogul looking to provide the world with “Free Calls, Free Internet, For Everyone, Forever.” He does so by implanting a chip directly connected to the brain. Sound familiar? It is later revealed that Valentine had an ulterior motive with his fancy Wi-Fi chips; not only do the chips provide said services, but they can also be used to make everyone who has one go into a murderous rage. So he markets and sells the chips around the world, and most of the first world ends up with one within a matter of a few weeks. He then activates their murder function and anyone with a chip begins doing whatever they can to hurt and kill everyone around them. Then of course the protagonist saves the day, but that’s besides the point. The point is this: if Neuralink the Nefarious really is inspired by Valentine—or vice versa—who knows what else these “links” will do to us.

A few months after founding Neuralink, Musk founded the Boring Company whose primary goal is to devise and create new methods of transportation. They plan to market underground tubes made for getting places quicker. However, for this essay, I will be focusing on one of the Boring Company’s previous products: in 2018, The Boring Company sold “Not a Flamethrower” to anyone who had a 500 dollars to burn. The 20,000 units sold out, generating ten million dollars for the company. Selling items similar to a flamethrower to the public doesn’t sound safe, obviously, as there is always the distinct possibility of someone wielding one with evil intentions.

I was not able to find a villain that specifically sold flamethrowers to the public. However, there is Norman Osborn, a prominent figure in New York, who is the head of Oscorp, which is a leader in various technologies. Behind the scenes though, Norman is the Green Goblin, one of Spiderman’s oldest foes. After taking an intelligence- and strength-enhancing serum, Osborn ends up going insane, which spurs his liking of destruction. I wouldn’t put selling flamethrowers off the radar for Mr. Osborn, whatever it takes to drive the city to the ground. Neuralink the Nefarious was pretty unique with this one, selling flamethrowers to almost anybody is something not many super villains have thought of, perhaps making him more villainous than the most evil of super villains.

These two companies of his are prime examples of technological disjunction being forgotten. Through vigilant marketing, economic class, and a wide influence, Elon Musk and his reputation have survived, even thrived, where others would have found themselves in the proverbial doghouse. Of course there will always be articles about how what he is doing is wrong, but they haven’t been impactful enough to keep Musk from continuing his work. He has accomplished so much that it has become hard to stop his Neuralink the Nefarious side—if it exists.    

Conclusion

Whether we are in the Tesla-Titan or the Neuralink-the-Nefarious timeline, Elon Musk has made major strides in whatever line of work he steps into. His companies have accomplished more in under twenty years than many have accomplished in over 100. There are so many more examples from his life to support both sides of this  argument, but I ultimately align myself with the Tesla Titan, not only because he’s the good guy but because there is more evidence for Elon being “good” rather than “bad.” I appreciate his thoughts on renewable energy and his efforts to save the planet from climate change. While I was writing this, my dad sent me an article about the announcement of ZETA, a group of electric vehicle manufacturers, including Tesla, arguing for no more sales of fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2030, moving our world  closer to the electric vehicle paradigm.  

To reiterate, Elon Musk is in a special place in the science world. He is highly intelligent and very well known, giving him the power to trigger paradigm shifts in pretty much every industry he touches, which so far has been for the positive. But if he continues to avoid Technological Disjunction, he could potentially turn toward evil, which could negatively impact all of humanity. It’s the job of the public to keep figures like Musk in check, to make sure they remain the Tesla Titans rather than become Nefarious Neuralinks.

Works Cited ~Brockman, Greg. “OpenAI API.” OpenAI , OpenAI, 28 Sept. 2020,  openai.com/blog/openai-api/. ~CB Insights. “8 Industries Being Disrupted By Elon Musk And His Companies.” CB Insights Research , CB Insights, 21 Sept. 2020, www.cbinsights.com/research/report/elon-musk-companies-disruption/ ~Chandler, Simon. “Elon Musk Is 'Distracting Us' From Real Tech Issues, AI Figures Warn.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 19 May 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2020/05/18/elon-musk-is-damaging-te ch-and-the-tech-industry/?sh=6206e5e19b8d. ~“Elon Musk.” Tesla, Inc , www.tesla.com/elon-musk. ~Evannex. “A Transportation Paradigm Shift Is Coming Thanks To Tesla's Elon Musk.” InsideEVs , InsideEVs, 22 Feb. 2020, insideevs.com/news/400142/tesla-elon-musk-transportation-paradigm-shift ~Fandome Contributors. “Iron Man Armor Model 52.” Marvel Database , marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Iron_Man_Armor_Model_52. ~Fandome Contributors. “Norman Osborn (Earth-616).” Marvel Database , marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Norman_Osborn_(Earth-616). ~Fandome Contributors. “S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.” Marvel Database , marvel.fandom.com/wiki/S.H.I.E.L.D._Helicarrier. ~Fandome Contributors. “Stark Industries Aerospace Division/Appearances.” Marvel Database , marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Stark_Industries_Aerospace_Division/Ap pearances.  ~Gibbs, Samuel. “Elon Musk Sells All 20,000 Boring Company 'Flamethrowers'.”  The Guardian , Guardian News and Media, 1 Feb. 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/01/elon-musk-sells-out-boring-c ompany-flamethrowers-fire.  ~Gregersen, Erik. “Elon Musk.” Encyclopædia Britannica , Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 27 Aug. 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk.  ~Hern, Alex. “Elon Musk: the Real-Life Iron Man.” The Guardian , Guardian News  and Media, 9 Feb. 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/09/elon-musk-the-real-life-iron- man. ~Klebnikov, Sergei. “Tesla Is Now The World's Most Valuable Car Company With A $208 Billion Valuation.” Forbes , Forbes Magazine, 1 July 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/07/01/tesla-is-now-the-worlds- most-valuable-car-company-with-a-valuation-of-208-billion/?sh=6d99944f5334 ~Neuralink , neuralink.com/. ~“Not A Flamethrower.” The Boring Company,  www.boringcompany.com/not-a-flamethrower.  xxx Peterson, Andrea. Even Elon Musk Knows He's a Good Supervillain Candidate . 25  Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/04/17/even-elon-musk- knows-hes-a-good-supervillain-candidate/. ~“Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) Valuation Measures & Financial Statistics.” Yahoo! Finance , Yahoo!, 18 Nov. 2020, finance.yahoo.com/quote/tsla/key-statistics/?guccounter=1. ~Vaughn, Matthew, et al. Kingsman: the Secret Service . 20th Century Fox, 2015. ~Wall, Mike. “Wow! SpaceX Lands Orbital Rocket Successfully in Historic First.” Space.com , Space, 22 Dec. 2015, www.space.com/31420-spacex-rocket-landing-success.html. ∎

More on David ~ Minerva’s Owl Homepage

#journal #journal2021 #2021

[groundramon]

Do you have a list of like top 5 tv shows? (Cartoons and anime included)

!!! Yes I do, actually!

I’ve actually thought about doing a YouTube video about this in the past, and while I do want to do list-like videos (and I already have at least one in mind) in the future, I put off doing this one because it actually…depends greatly on where certain shows I currently like are headed because some currently-airing shows would be on this list if they hit their full potential, but who knows if they’ll hit their full potential. Also I always split anime and cartoons into two categories because I always had a hard time picking otherwise xD But I do have some semblance of a list, and I adore talking about this kind of stuff, sooo:

5. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

This spot is kind of a three-way tie between Voltron, Bojack Horseman, and FMAB, all for extremely different reasons. So consider Voltron and Bojack my honorable mentions. But while I believe Bojack’s best is honestly some of the (if not the) best out there, and if Voltron promises through on what they’ve promised it will easily skyrocket up this list, Bojack’s worst is everything I hate about Hollywood and Voltron just has too many holes at the moment.  FMAB has the best of both worlds because it has great animation like Voltron, doesn’t have any of Bojack’s bad kind of moments, and doesn’t have many holes in it.  (Another honorable mention goes to BNHA, but like Voltron, I just don’t think it has had enough time to develop all the way. Unlike Voltron, it doesn’t really have any holes, but I do have a problem with how strictly it adheres to cheesy super heroes of the past.)

BUT onto FMAB itself. God cmon, its FMAB, do I really need to elaborate why its so great? The characters are compelling, their motivations are powerful and interesting. I could write an essay examining Ed’s character alone, because he has so many interesting motivations and morals that seemingly conflict with his angry disposition, and I don’t even like Ed that much. The story is exciting - there’s basically no filler, and it almost moves too fast at points. I do have problems with the show - as I said, it goes too fast. The only two deaths in the season happen in the first 12-15 episodes of the series, and although I think that’s because the original FMA animated those scenes already, it still fucks with the pacing of this show. Additionally, despite Lust, Gluttony, and Envy all being revealed before, the show introduces a completely new villain - Greed - to introduce the homunculi. And then they kill Lust - the presumed leader of the first three introduced homunculi?? Idk man, the show barrels in a completely different direction way too quickly. But other than that, its a great show. The only reason it isn’t higher is because I’m a biased shit towards other good shows.

4. Teen Titans

Speaking of being a biased shit, idk if it shows or not, but I have a HUGE soft spot for corny kids shows that try to give kids bad laughs and dark/relatable storylines, or rather, have a heart while doing so. Its not so much that I like a balance of comedy and darkness in my shows - although that’s a good thing, I eat pure angst up and I’m all-for pure comedy shows that have the aforementioned heart (ie we bare bears, another good show not on this list) - its just specifically corny pun-ridden teen/tweeny-feeling shows/games that actually have a decent story underneath that get me. (Also my sense of humor aligns much more with shitty teen lingo and puns than modern cartoon humor that’s considered “good”. Like I find Teen Titans 10x funnier than I’ve ever found Steven Universe. I’m a 90s kid at heart even tho I wasn’t alive in the 90s)

But the biggest impact of this show for me was the heart and the plot. The silly moments made me laugh, sometimes iromically and sometimes unironically and sometimes I wasn’t sure how, but it was the story that really gripped me. The first season’s overarching plot for Robin is honestly one of the most compelling things I’ve seen in kids cartoons…period. Its dark, its unique, its a subversion of such a simble and broad trope. Sure it had a nice cheesy ending but Robin actually saves the day through INTELLIGENCE, something he always had. No other Teen Titans ending did that, but I digress.

And god, do not even get me started on Terra’s arc. Just because Robin’s was the most well-structured arc doesn’t mean his was the most emotional. I was fucking distraught after Terra’s season. Those memes weren’t a joke, I legitimately cried right in front of my mom. IT WAS SO OBVIOUS, BUT IN MY BLIND LOVE, I MISSED ALL THE SIGNS… and god, even when she comes back, even when she’s given a happy ending, she manages to make me cry AGAIN. I never, ever thought I could cry over a character like Beast Boy, but she made me do it. I didn’t even cry when Sokka’s girlfriend died, but this really, really got to me. Once for personal attachment, and the second time because…the finale is so good. Literally its Bojack levels of deep, emotional, and realistic, and this was the ending of a fucking kids show. What the fuck. To this day I still get emotional whenever something reminds me of her arc. Which brings me to my next series…

3. Cybersix

Hi so did I mention Cybersix is really good? Because Cybersix is really good.  I’m not even done with it but yeah, I love this show.  It’s got an amazing art style, great animation, an intriguing story…I have a feeling I’m gonna be really disappointed when it ends because I’ll want to know what happens next so badly.  I like the characters, I like the aesthetic, I like the old-timey music that dates this cartoon so wonderfully, I even like the romance between Lucas and Cybersix/Adrian!  How’d you make me do that.  Oh yeah, because it’s not hard to get me to care about a mutually rewarding relationship that’s gradually built up through a friendship, then an aesthetic attraction, then presumably a relationship but idk yet, where both parties care about one another and their boundaries and have gotten along well since the start.  I forgot.  (I could nitpick that Lucas doesnt have the same buildup for the relationship as Cybersix [its complicated, basically he’s friends with Cybersix’s alternate persona Adrian but he’s in a relationship with Cybersix, and he doesnt know theyre the same person] but I’m not gonna.)  It’s just…a good show man.  @ hollywood, reboot THIS you cowards.  Stop rebooting shit nobody wanted a new version of and reboot shows that were ended to quickly.  Actually dont reboot Cybersix because the only animation studios that would be able to do it any justice are Studio Mir and anime studios, and whoever owns the current copyright to Cybersix would probably be okay using flash for it

2. Digimon Adventure (with a honorable mention to Digimon Tamers)

You can rip my love for the entire Digimon franchise from my cold, dead hands.  I’m sincerely surprised any show passed up my love for this show.  If/when the currently airing series in Japan gets brought over here, I’ll watch it, even though Digimon has kind of abandoned what made it so great in the first place.  But hell, even Fusion was enjoyable - the second arc, from what I remember, was pretty dark and interesting (im still mad they got rid of the two best characters tho) - and the only reason I disliked Data Squad so much is because of Marcus (that and it doesnt have anything else that’s absolutely stunning, in fact from a technical standpoint Marcus is the best thing about the show).

But there’s a reason I put Digimon Adventure here and not the entirety of the Digimon franchise.  Digimon Adventure is what started it all.  No Digimon season has as much heart in it as the original.  Sure the animation improves each season, sure Tamers is probably better story-wise on a technical level, but I dont think any season matches the raw charm of the original.  It was so charming, in fact, that what was supposed to be a 13-episode miniseries evolved into a massive franchise that’s still beloved to this day.  Hell, there’s still content being released for the 8 Digidestined of this season!  It’s right alongside Pokemon, Invader Zim, Hey Arnold, and all these other beloved 90s/early 2000s cartoons that are being revived in recent years, and I think that says a lot.

I wasn’t even alive when Digimon Adventure was airing, but I loved the Digimon games I had played so much that I went out of my way to watch it.  And I…loved it.  Sad as it may be, it was the greatest TV show I had seen at the time.  Growing up in the late 2000s watching only Nickelodeon and CN was not a good period to grow up in, and I never saw Avatar as a kid.  By the time the 2010s had rolled around, I had mostly given up on cartoons, and besides, they were all fugly.  I still tried to watch some, but just…the humor didn’t grip me, they seemed dumb, and they weren’t pleasant to look at.  (Okay the main shows I’m vaguing about are Adventure Time and Regular Show, as well as whatever Nickelodeon was doing but I begrudgingly put up with Nickelodeon for the most part because I preferred Nick and I never knew what else to watch)  Then Digimon came around, and hol-y-shit.  The characters were like nothing I had ever seen before, the storylines engaging and interesting.  Sure it was cheesy, but there was 95% less fart jokes than the average cartoon, a good story, and actually relatable characters that actually go through hardships and actually change for the better!

Digimon Adventure has been and always will be proof to me that no matter what you are, no matter what your show is, you can make a good show out of it.  If you get people who care, who can make relatable characters, who can come up with an interesting story, you can make a good show.  Digimon Adventure is basically a big long toy commercial, and yet its better than lots of shows that dont even have merchandise - and its also better than a lot of shows that have merchandise now, but weren’t created to sell toys in the first place.  I just.  Love it a lot.

Also, the reason I specifically chose Digimon Adventure, outside of having a personal attachment to it since it was always my favorite, is because Tamers hecking scared me as a kid and I’ve never gotten over how creepy the last arc is.  Like it’s good, but it still scared me.

Honorable mentions: Bojack Horseman, Voltron: Legendary Defender, We Bare Bears, Gravity Falls (thats a big one, it would definitely be on this list if I had 10 spots, and will gladly take the 6th spot if Voltron doesnt follow through or Bojack goes south), Over the Garden Wall,  the aforementioned Digimon Tamers ,and Infinity Train might be #2 or at least #3 if it wasnt just a single episode l m a o

1. A tie between Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

HI SO YEAH if you didnt expect this then you dont know me //BRICKED

Before I explain both, I want to be very clear that I’m not counting them as a single entity.  No, I just cant pick between them.  They’re two extremely different shows, and I actually agree with people who say ATLA is overall a more-rounded show.  Problem is, I watched both during a period of my life where politics and darkness make an extremely interesting show for me (aka the current period of my life) and thus its a very biased and “nostalgic” pick, just like Digimon Adventure.  Had I watched these shows when they were airing, I dont know if LOK would even be on this list.  Heck Digimon adventure probably wouldnt be on this list since ATLA would’ve held the crown for my favorite show for all those years.

They both have amazing animation and solid writing, but that’s about all they have in common in my eyes - even though they share the same world.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a kids show.  Through and through, its a kids show.  That’s not an insult in the slightest though; no, the fact that they can make something so sophisticated and enjoyable that still clearly appeals to children is really a testament to their skills.  Many kids shows that try to take on heavier/darker stories feel like completely different shows when they try to do that - shows that arent intended for kids.  Voltron and SU are the most notable examples of that, but even LOK has a little bit of that (but in LOK’s case, its the entire show, so I kinda give them a pass lol)  Other shows do it okay (Gravity Falls) but really the only show I’ve ever seen match Avatar’s perfect balance of comedy and seriousness is Bojack, which isn’t a kids show so it has an advantage over Avatar.

Avatar’s world is fanciful and larger than life.  I’m so sad that I watched Avatar and LOK after my fanfiction days; I would’ve loved to spend nights thinking about a potential Avatar story, complete with my own Avatar and original cast.  I could put it before Avatar, after LOK, who knows? but it would’ve been so much fun.  Hell I HAVE thought about Avatar stories, but I obviously dont have much thought up on any of my potential ideas.

The pacing of Avatar is golden.  How a show wish such good pacing got through Nickelodeon, I dont know, but whatever deal allowed Avatar to go on for three seasons and then end was a once-in-a-life-time deal (as evident by what happened to Korra).  Somehow this show came out almost completely perfect, with few or no flaws.

This is the pinnacle of children’s entertainment, in my opinion.  This is proof that there’s no excuse for the garbage that makes up 90% of children’s entertainment.  The standard doesn’t have to be this, since this is the best, but this show is proof that we need to raise the standard.  I wish executives actually gave a shit about quality; if they did, maybe we could get mostly good shows instead of mostly bad shows.

If most shows were half as good as Avatar, the average show would be gorgeously-animated, smartly-written, and really good, even if it had a flaw here and there.  If most shows were half as good as Avatar, Steven Universe would be the average instead of a godsend.

If I someday, somehow make a show that’s 2/3rds as good as Avatar, I’ll officially be a good writer.  I’d love to make tons of shows just as good as Avatar, but hey, I cant get TOO cocky now lol

Now for The Legend of Korra.  Korra has slightly better animation (god i love studio mir) and different but still intriguing worldbuilding.  I know a lot of people found the political bs to be annoying, but I actually found it quite intriguing.  Avatar did a little bit of exploring moral gray areas and playing with politics, but Korra just goes all-out.  I wish the first season’s morality could’ve been a little grayer, but even then, the politics were still interesting.  And god, that one scene in the first season finale, the murder-suicide…that’s still a really powerful scene.  The entire finale would’ve been super powerful were it not for everything resetting by the end of it, but hey, they basically did the same thing in season 3!

Holy shit though, season 3.  An on-screen strangling.  Someone exploding themselves to death.  And then the finale’s fight.  The finale’s fight. The finale of season 3 is one of the most intense things I’ve seen…ever.  The atmosphere in that fight is just…so good - combined with the animation and choreography, its just amazing.  You can almost feel every hit, you actually feel concern for Korra, you’re legitimately concerned for her life.  And you know what?  You should’ve been!  Because she almost dies, and she has to suffer the consequences of that.  The fourth season has a time gap in-between, but even then, she spends episodes trying to fully recover.

In my opinion, the only thing making Korra a kids show is Milo.  I’m certain they put him in there because otherwise, it wouldn’t have been allowed to be called a kids show.  It’s dark, its intelligent, its beautiful, and it’s going to go right over most kid’s heads.  As a kids show it does kind of fail; it just doesn’t really appeal enough to them.  Once you’re old enough to understand, say, Naruto or Dragon Ball you should be okay, but ATLA appeals to all ages while Korra really needs a certain maturity in its audience to be understood and to not scare its audience.

They’re just both. so good

(thanks for the ask!!!)

#stormy answers #long post #this took forever to answer but it was w o r t h #i actually have a script for this video now lmao so i could make this video now if i wanted to

[srseattlestreetnews]

Seattle Street News 47, Last Wishes

Corp News:

Ares Squires Exec Soltysiak Kane Dies Under Mysterious Circumstances

Late yesterday, Ares set up a press conference to announce the death of Soltysiak Kane:

Ares Macrotechnology, Knight Errant, and The Squires of Galahad are deeply saddened today to announce the passing of Former President of the Galahad Academy Soltysiak Kane. It was often said that guiding the Squires and helping them grow was his true purpose in life. Sadly, it seems that his heart never fully recovered from the pain of the Fitzgerald Revelations and his subsequent stepping down. Mr. Kane retired to his bed Saturday evening and after falling asleep, went to join his beloved Winnifred in the great beyond. In accordance with his wishes, he shall be cremated and his remains scattered around the campus of Galahad Academy, so that he may forever be a part of the hallowed institution. A small Remembrance service will be held at the Avalon Chapel in Bay City; in lieu of flowers, a small donation to your local Squire Order would be the best way to honor the late Soltysiak Kane.

SSN readers will remember that Mr. Kane was the President of the Galahad Academy and Order Master of the Squires of Galahad during the shameful and embarrassing scandal involving unethical kidnapping and experimentation on metahuman SINless children by Ares Execs Margret and Foster Fitzgerald. While there is no evidence that Kane was aware of the experimentation, Kane seemed to be the sacrificial lamb used by Ares to save face while there has been no public word from Ares about what has become of the actual perpetrators of the experiments, the Fitzgeralds. After sacrificing Kane figuratively, have they sacrificed him literally?

Official sources insist there is no mystery here and nothing to see. A completely healthy man just happens to die in his sleep for no particular reason right after an embarrassing scandal. Forgive me dear readers, but dying of heartbreak might be a convention in romantic literature, but doesn’t happen in real life—especially in not so convenient a way.

This reporter was able to contact a source close to Mr. Kane who I’ll call WhaddyaKnowJoe, who told a slightly different story. Joe says that right after the news broke, Kane made a number of phone calls, one to his lawyer, but three could not be traced. The call to the lawyer seemed to have been to change his Will. Joe was able to provide this reporter with a copy. Kane had just set up an endowment to make payments to Squires who “could prove they were part of the Fitzgerald’s program.” There was digital handwriting on the initial copy of the remade Will, and the handwriting evidenced “no trembles, or other signs of duress.” Strange that the confident and competent handwriting would belong to someone so close to dying of “natural causes.” The day after writing that new Will and those three mysterious phone calls, Kane made three withdrawals of 10K nuyen. Where did that nuyen go? Was Kane hiring a runner team for something? Perhaps a mission that someone else did not want to succeed? Who could that other person have been? One thing I’d like to leave this story with is a quote from WhaddyaKnowJoe, who know Kane well, “I can't say what happened that Saturday after he went to bed, but between you and me the weight of the guilt he felt about the situation wouldn't have been enough to stop his heart.”

Something happened to Soltysiak Kane the corps don’t want us to know. I think we should find out. If anyone has any info on Kane, including where that money went, or on the Fitzgeralds, contact the SSN.

Reflections on the Cyberware Market

The article is one of a series looking at the current state of individual corporate subsidiaries in the Seattle Metroplex. This particular issue focuses on the Metroplex Cyberware.

The Cyberware market is one of the larger markets in the Metroplex with a value of 145.6¥B, just edging out Robotics in revenue. However, unlike Robotics, Cyberware is a fairly densely populated market. Six out of the ten megacorps have cyberware subsidiaries and no one has overwhelming dominance: Evo leads with 26.3% of the market, followed closely by NeoNET (23.1%), Renraku (18.4%), Horizon (17.9%), Mitsuhama (9.6%), and Ares (4.7%). Cyberware is used by all sorts of members of the 6th World as a form of enhancement, but must of us in the shadows are used to seeing cyberware on the bodies of our Street Sams and other runners. Cyberware makes an impact from high to low. So what does the market data tell us?

SSN reached out to all the corps with a Cyberware presence and responses we got are interesting. A NeoNET contact offered some overall analysis in the absence of Vorack’s, noting that:

Cyberware is an interesting market: not big by any measure, but the biggest market with more than 5 players. None of the corps involved have it as their main market either. And still it boasts exciting products with very different uses. Like the tattoo industry that only became hot when it could brand itself as art rather than a mark of infamy.

Virtually all the players could at any time use their share as currency in a deal to grow one of their core markets instead, or become the clear market leader in one move. It is therefore only a matter of time before it consolidates.

Last but not least: Saeder-Krupp is nowhere to be seen here, but they can be relied on to foment a coup and pounce as soon as the numbers work. That is, if Vorack hasn't choked on confectionery baked with impromptu cooking implements by the time it happens. 

This analysis of the market as being one that might start moving towards consolidation seems to be borne out by comment by a tipster who works with Ares, the corp with the smallest subsidiary, who leaked the explosive news that Ares is in negotiations to sell their Cyberware holdings. A deal seems imminent and could result in interesting changes in that market. Let’s hope it will not result in layoffs for workers connected to Ares’s cyberware division.

A Mitsuhama spokesperson responded to questions about their Cyberware presence in s seemingly more corporate approved way noting, “In the vein of Cybernetics, or Cyberware, Mitsuhama has taken the approach of overcoming the growing dependencies to magic several of our competitors have taken. We're excited to see this area grow as further development of the Dawn Suits continue. Just yesterday a colleague of mine told me a story of a woman who worked in Health & Safety and was able to quickly, on her own, remove layers of rubble that had trapped a puppy and child who was in the wrong place as a magical experiment went awry. Quite terrible." Mitsuhama seemed to attribute their success in cyberware, despite their small market share, to their experience in magically diminished locations, “As you know, Mitsuhama has rebuilt much of the lost colony on Mars, where magics dwindle, making it ideal for technological enhancement and prime for research and development. We believe Cybernetics will only improve much of what we already do, including Matrix Services, Robotics, and Aerospace allowing us to better connect with whomever tries to integrate with our technologies in a holistic manner." This reporter pushed the Mitsuhama representative on its rhetoric that seemed to distance itself from magic and the Magical Goods market, and the source let slip some interesting news, saying, "Of course, we don't completely disregard magic and its importance on Earth; as such plan to dive into that area again to remain competitive and empathetic to those who want to dip into both realms. For instance, Cyberware that doesn't impact those of a spiritual nature; attempting to keep our spirits clean. We try to remain inclusive at Mitsuhama." The Mitsuhama rep indicates that perhaps Mitsuhama might enter into the Magical Goods market. Are they planning to create a new subsidiary or buy someone else’s?

This week’s market analysis has revealed some interesting information for investors and workers alike. The market seems to be on the verge of mergers and consolidation while Magical Goods might be on the verge of expansion and more job opportunities. What will this mean for our street sams and runners? Only time will tell! Additionally, let’s see what will develop with the rivalry between SK analyst Vorack and my currently anonymous NeoNET analyst.

 City News:

Meet the saddest guy in Seattle—(by 8)

Top Gun, that’s what he goes by at “Blast from the Past”, the trendy NeoNET-owned club where he spends his days and his nights. Not that he has a choice in the vintage Bomber jacket that projects the tough-guy image his thin frame and old bean counter uniform used to repress, and original Aviator sunglasses.

Top Gun is grieving, he misses the funky smell, the chaotic ethos, the graffitied 1980’s-inspired murals and random nihilistic slogans whose successive layers used to read like a people’s history of Seattle, written by hackers high on sleeplessness after a pizza-and-beer fueled coding session on their laptop succeeded by groggy deckers just out of stim-patch inspired fantasies lived out in VR.

He turns his sight to his left, briefly, like he fears being caught. “Donnie, manager. Keep out.”, reads the sign on the door behind the saloon bar, the pride of the former owner. Leaving the bar here is one of the few promises he, Donnie “Top Gun” Deckard, has been able to keep since he got his employer, NeoNET, to buy the place and let him run it. “I’ll make Blast great again”, that’s what he had told Barry White over a dinner at the Space Needle as they were shaking hands to seal the sale.

It had only taken Donnie two months to understand the sad smile on old Barry’s face that had taken him aback. Two months of ego stroking and veiled threats by higher ups to rip the soul of the place out, down to the minutest scrape of paint, to shed light on every shadow where the SINless used to be at home.

Smelly Petra climbs downs the stage amid polite clapping, gives him a smile and a thumbs up as she approaches. He rises from his chair, they hug for a second. A smile, a discreet tear he wipes from his cheek. I have known them both forever, but I resist the urge to join them. I only came here to watch Donnie, tonight, to reckon what’s left of my friend behind the familiar leather shell. She leaves and Donnie seats again.

A brief rustle, the crowd turns their brand new seats to the screen behind them. Kappa’s Orkinary is about to begin. Before the excitement and noise crank up one level or two, the brief respite allows the weird Galaga music, the tugging and yanking at the joystick to reach Donnie’s hears. I know why he just breaks down now, I was there with him twenty years ago when he answered Barry’s call for an expert in arcane arcade technology. We fixed whatever was wrong with the machine. I’m sure Donnie remembers the serial number of the original replacement part he brought with him that day.

What was just an odd job in a smelly, dirty deserted place, turned into a life-changing experience as we tried to make our way back through the crowd that had come for Annie Linux. She was in the middle of her signature “Sweet dreams are made of this.” We just stopped in our tracks, intrigued by that unfamiliar sound, the microphone Annie was holding, her silly clothes. We stayed another four hours, singing, shouting, clapping with them, these strangers that became our new family, just like that. We returned, night after night, until we parted ways and started on our nice corporate jobs. Sweet dreams indeed…

Familiar images from the stupid incident between the weird ork clone known as Krund and an unidentified troll are greeted by loud cheers. Orkinary has just started. Showing popular Kappa fare to the new faux Bohemian patrons is one of the awful compromises Donnie has had to make. This abysmally void show in particular promises to reach even lower with a mysterious trid they already advertise for next month and call Bang Fang!

He sure is sad, Donnie, right now, but when he rises again and returns to the office behind the bar, I see a new resolve in his eyes and know my buddy is finally going to fight back.

Reds in Town?

Tipsters on the street have reported a number of sightings of Renraku’s elite military special forces, the Red Samurai out and about in Seattle. Why? They are not brought out for no reason. If they are around, Renraku is up to something, and something big. What are they up to? Anyone have any more information, send it to the SSN!

 Features:

Once More 7--(by Breach)

2050 saw the rise of what we would really recognize as shadowrunners, when the truly portable cyberdeck was introduced to the market.  Before then, cyberterminals were bulky and hard to transport - ranging from desk-sized cocoons down to bulky desktop tower units - but in 2050 the keyboard-sized cyberdeck was released and deckers hit the streets.  Corporate warfare had always been a shadowy affair, but the ability to carry your hacking tools with you changed the rules of the game.  

The early 2050s also saw the spread of the Universal Brotherhood and other neo-communist movements, preaching a philosophy of unity, equality, and belonging.  They opened their doors to the SINless, and the SINless flocked to them like flies to honey - and in the end, it turns out that’s not a metaphor.  

By 2055, the hives were widespread and the problem came to a head. The first obvious outbreak was in Chicago, where insect spirits moved boldly and openly and swarmed the city, leading the UCAS government to quarantine the city (citing “a new strain of VITAS” as the official reason.)  In the shadows, we know that Seattle almost had a similar outbreak a few months earlier, but a team of shadowrunners investigating a seemingly unrelated murder managed to destroy the hive before its queen got started - the news reported the camps closed for “health reasons”.

Chicago was bad. I was there.

The city was cut off from the Matrix (nominally - some entrepreneurs set up illegal satellite hubs), and the world.  Relief goods had to be shipped in from outside as access to food and medical supplies quickly dwindled.  Gangs took over entire neighbourhoods and Knight Errant set checkpoints and roadblocks across the city.  They even tried to nuke the hive, to no avail - the bomb didn’t even explode properly, contained somehow by who-knows-what. When the nuke didn’t work, they walled us in, and left us largely to fend for ourselves - fights over relief drops were common, and sometimes complete shipments were hijacked and sold off to the highest bidder by whatever corp or gang managed to get ahold of it.

Fortunately, we managed to get the word out and expose the cover-up.  Once the world knew about the bugs, it was harder to write off the city as another disease outbreak and action was actually taken, though not often to the benefit of the people trapped there. The quarantine was lifted in 2058 after Strain III, an engineered bacterium that targeted the spirit-infected, was released.  While the bugs were stopped, HMHVV-infected individuals were killed by the bacteria as well, and it never saw widespread use.  

Chicago remains “Bug-Town”, a shell of its former self and still largely cut off from the world.

Next week we take a pit-stop to talk about the election of 2057.  There’s a lot to unpack there.

Questions about history? Ask Breach! [email protected]

 Gang News:

Gangland Engagement in Trouble?

Tipsters with an “in” with the Ancients tell me that the engagement between Street Sam JuL33T and Enzo Gianelli might be in trouble. JuL33T is apparently inconsolable over the death of her cousin Street Sam TIB and it not in the mood to get married to anyone. Belial is reportedly not at all pleased.

Letters to the Editor:

Dear SSN editor,

Mr. Vorack, his qualities as an analyst notwithstanding, made unsubstantiated, libelous claims against my employer, NeoNET, in your latest issue.

I know that NeoNET management won’t stoop to his level but I, a simple employee, hereby kindly demand that Mr. Vorack just put up or shut up.

Yours truly,

--b.

P.S.: I will wholeheartedly concede that NeoNET robots are not meant to be used for cooking in the way Mr. Vorack did. But maybe Mr. Vorack’s marshmallows simply did not taste great because they were a Saeder-Krupp product?

 Seattle Street News is an independent activist news source released weekly on Tuesdays or Wednesdays

[Watch CorporateSINs on every Wednesday, 6pm PST or on Youtube at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11c7BLFQtc&list=PLHKocVDXoWBtzze1SGGUnU6KB5UFrDLFo]

#CorpSINs #shadowrun #Hyper_RPG

[biofunmy]

Against Nihilism

Kate Ferro for BuzzFeed News

After a big breakup earlier this year — I was the one who ended things — I gave myself a lot of room to grieve in whatever ways felt good at the time. Ordering takeout for both lunch and dinner? Sure. Downing IPAs while watching women’s soccer at 10 in the morning? No problem. Draining my savings on weird funky clothing and yet another pair of clogs? You bet!!!

According to the tenets of modern pop feminism, I’m entitled to a certain amount of overindulgence because, as a hardworking woman, I’ve earned it. Everything from institutional sexism to harassment to heartbreak can supposedly be assuaged by a couple bottles of wine with a group of good girlfriends. The treacly “Treat yo self” mantra popularized on Parks and Recreation has enabled many a stressed-out woman to place that $800 Anthropologie order (you can always return most of it, right?). Life is hard and the world is on fire; maybe we deserve to indulge in some good old simple pleasures.

So what if wine is a carcinogen and the alcohol industry has actively worked to downplay the link between drinking and cancer? So what if fast fashion is built on exploitative labor and contributes to mass global pollution? So what if the concept of self-care — popularized by Audre Lorde, a black lesbian activist battling breast cancer — has been co-opted to sell us things we don’t need, things which indirectly harm others and might actually harm us in the end? We’ve earned it, ladies!

I’d like to think I don’t actively buy into the capitalist vision of self-care, even as I’ve thrown my money into its maw; at least, I don’t assume any sort of entitlement to feeling good via the accumulation of material things. More so, I just thought…fuck it.

A few months ago, drunk in the middle of the day, I impulse-bought a Juul at a bodega in downtown Manhattan. I’d been taking hits off my friends’ vapes for months, only after I’d had enough to drink that smoking became pleasurable instead of disgusting. That was the rule I’d used for myself previously with cigarettes: I could never buy my own, but if I was drunk, I could bum one or two or five. Actually owning a Juul, as much as I liked to think the vapor or whatever made them safer than my beloved Marlboro Lights, was definitely breaking the rules. But I’d reached a point where I no longer cared.

While other people were having their hot girl summers, I spent mine flirting with a sense of doom I haven’t experienced since I was a hope-starved teen. (Nihilism: It’s back in style, just like denim miniskirts!). And I’m not alone. Twitter offers a daily glut of jokes about the apocalypse; things have gotten so bad we’re begging for vaping or an asteroid or alien overlords to finally put us out of our misery. The novelist Jonathan Franzen published a (much-maligned) essay this past weekend about climate change, arguing that the oncoming disaster is impossible to mitigate and “we” can no longer pretend otherwise. (“Every day, instead of thinking about breakfast,” he wrote, we all “have to think about death.”) Reading recently about presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s dystopian vision of the future, I found myself dismayed, and thoroughly dragged, by Max Read’s description of a “doomer,” the archetypal internet memer who believes we’re all totally fucked: “a depressed, purposeless 20-something usually depicted smoking a cigarette and wearing a beanie.”

Okay, I’m not a doomer, but I have become somewhat fatalistic lately. With talk of another recession and the continued possibility of dying in a mass shooting or some sort of natural disaster, the scarcity mindset I’d developed as the child of a parent living paycheck to paycheck kicked back in again. Thanks to a few greedy corporations and crisis-denying national governments, climate catastrophe seems inevitable — no matter what personal choices I make about things like food or travel or children.

So why bother saving for the future if there isn’t even going to be a future? Why bother being kind to my body by taking it easy on the beer and potato skins when all the crap I consume might not catch up with me by the time that not-future comes to pass? No matter how I treated myself — and no matter what infinitesimal steps I took to be a better human citizen — we’d all end up in the same place in the end.

For a while during my “fuck it” summer, it felt great to be a mess, if only because of its implicit rejection of corporatized self-care’s evil twin: self-optimization. Since diets have become passé, we’ve entered a new era defined by “wellness,” but women are still expected to meet Eurocentric and patriarchal beauty standards — only, unlike with dieting, we’re now supposed to feel good about attempting to contort ourselves into socially acceptable bodies.

Fuck other people’s narrow ideas about the only right ways to live a good and happy life.

“Wellness” conjures images of Gwyneth Paltrow peddling hundreds of dollars’ worth of Goop vitamins and oils and crystals and juices to customers who, because they are not wealthy celebrities, will never look like Gwyneth Paltrow. Organic vegetables and private Pilates instructors are the provinces of rich people who have the time and money to optimize their bodies as if it’s their job (because it is). Fuck wellness! I thought, ordering chips and queso for the third time in a week. Fuck other people’s narrow ideas about the only right ways to live a good and happy life.

But was my life really better, or happier? I loved taking shots with my sister at my favorite dive bar, bonding in a way we sometimes struggle to when sober. But I hated that by the time we got home I was sobbing on the couch about our fraught relationship with our mother, some deep dark part of me ripped open and exposed to the unforgiving light. I loved the dopamine rush of confirming yet another online shopping order, but I hated having to return half the crap once it piled up in my bedroom. I hated hangovers, mountains of takeout containers, and the point at which my Juul would stop giving me a stream of little highs and instead just start making me sick.

Amazon Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection

Jillian Bell in Brittany Runs a Marathon.

Last weekend, I took myself on a date to the movies. I saw Brittany Runs a Marathon, which is the exact kind of movie I’ve been seeking out lately: funny, uplifting, and you know going in exactly what you’re getting. Keep your twist endings, Quentin Tarantino! I’ll watch the movie where the ending is literally spoiled by the film title.

Paul Downs Colaizzo’s indie movie, which won the Audience Award in the US Drama category at Sundance, stars Jillian Bell as the titular Brittany, a goofy twentysomething in a major life rut. A doctor tells her she has an unhealthy BMI (proven to be a bogus measure of a person’s health) and that she needs to lose 50 pounds. This leads Brittany — and Bell herself — to attempt to shed the weight of a “small Siberian husky” over the next year, at the end of which Brittany plans to run the New York City Marathon.

A movie about a woman trying to find fulfillment through weight loss sounds pretty out of step with our current cultural moment, when fat acceptance and body positivity have been gaining significant ground. Kate Browne in Runner’s World argues that the movie functions as “fitspo” by conveying to viewers that if you lose weight, you, too, can achieve your dreams. “The story we’re too often told about fatness and running,” she wrote, “is that body size is an obstacle to overcome in our quest for glory.” Madison Malone Kircher, in a piece for Vulture, made similar points: “In Brittany Runs a Marathon, being fat is portrayed as a starting point instead of just a state of being.”

I, too, would have preferred a movie in which Brittany ran a marathon after gaining back all the weight she initially lost while training — proving to herself, and to viewers, that she could do remarkable things at any size. Still, I think the film does complicate more straightforward and more explicitly anti-fat weight loss narratives in popular culture by making clear that personal fulfillment and a small waist aren’t inextricably intertwined.

Soon before she’s set to run her first marathon (spoilers ahead), Brittany pushes herself too hard in her attempt to lose her final 10 pounds; she deprives herself of food and ends up in the hospital with a stress fracture. She has to miss the race. While recovering, she’s much thinner but more miserable than ever. In the film’s cringiest scene, Brittany gets drunk and heckles a fat woman at her brother-in-law’s birthday party, refusing to believe that the woman’s “average” size partner could actually love and desire a fat person. At other moments, she makes jealous assumptions about a (thin) neighbor she doesn’t actually know; she begrudges a married friend his happy domesticity with his husband and children. The film suggests that Brittany’s main problem has never been her weight — it’s that she’s convinced all her woes have nothing to do with her own actions and that other people, in turn, don’t deserve their happiness.

Amazon Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection

Patch Darragh and Jillian Bell in Brittany Runs a Marathon.

At the end of the movie, when Brittany signs up for the marathon again the next year and actually makes it to the race — cheered on by friends she’d previously spurned — I cried. I cried because it was, yes, inspirational, but I was also moved by the way the story managed to explore personal autonomy and desire in a self-improvement narrative without discounting the significant role played by larger systemic forces.

No, Brittany shouldn’t have to lose weight to be treated with respect — but the material reality of her life is that, when she’s thinner, she’s actually “treated like a woman,” as she tells her soon-to-be boyfriend: People smile at her; they hold the door for her on the subway. No, it isn’t fair that the fancy gym she tries to join when she first decides to lose weight is cost prohibitive to so many people — but that doesn’t discount the fact that running, and other ways of moving one’s body, are completely free.

I cried because I’ve long resented all the pressure I feel to work out and eat “well” and drink less and sleep more. So much of that pressure comes from a world hellbent on optimizing our bodies and brains for workplace efficiency, for social acceptance, for conventional beauty standards, for “normalcy.” It’s pressure designed to make us believe the world will become less of a hellscape through mere personal effort, rather than structural change.

But what if we don’t make those choices (just) to make ourselves more palatable to the world around us? Yes, living “well” — if we’re financially and physically able — benefits The Man. That doesn’t change the fact that treating our bodies with respect and care might benefit us too.

When I first thought about quitting drinking, about a month ago, I read Sarah Hepola’s 2015 recovery memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. I sobbed through the last 50 pages. (Yes, I’ve been crying a lot lately.) She talks about how, even after she got sober, she still wasn’t taking care of herself: lots of takeout, not a lot of making the bed or hanging up her laundry.

I told myself this was OK, because our society was beyond warped in its expectations of women, who were tsunamied by messages of self-improvement, from teeth whiteners to self-tanners … I wanted to kick the whole world in the nuts and live the rest of my years in sweatpants that smelled vaguely like salami, because who really cares?

But then, after a while, Hepola realized: She cared. She realized she didn’t need to make her body and home feel and look better to please men, or because it was what she was “supposed” to do. “I should take care of myself because it made me happy,” she wrote.

After finishing the book, I wondered if, angry at the propagandist sham of American individualism and bootstraps meritocracy, I’d course-corrected a little too hard — giving up on trying to improve myself or the world around me.

Eddy Chen / HBO

Zendaya as Rue on Euphoria.

My nihilism was both political and personal. Politically, I’d become Chidi, the philosophy scholar on The Good Place, who ends up in Hell because of his ethical indecision. At one point, after grasping so desperately for moral purity and failing to find it, he gives up. “The world is empty,” he yells. “There is no point to anything. And you’re just gonna die. So do whatever!” Personally, I saw myself as Euphoria’s Rue (minus the hard drug-taking), who returns to her life of debauchery after getting clean in rehab because she doesn’t see the point in trying to get better. “The world’s coming to an end,” she says in the first episode, “and I haven’t even finished high school yet.”

It’s a lot easier to believe that you can’t do much to improve your moods, your relationships, and the way your body feels while simultaneously believing you can’t do much to improve those things for other people, either. Abdicating that sense of any responsibility let me avoid a deeper, darker worry: that prioritizing the self is, by nature, saying to hell with everyone else.

My obsession with that particular quandary led me to Trisha Low’s new book-length essay, Socialist Realism, in which she attempts to reconcile her desire for the comforts of love and home with her desire for a socialist utopia. Is it even possible to pursue personal happiness and fulfillment while prioritizing The Greater Good at the same time?

“Home,” she writes. “It’s just something to contain our misplaced desires for a better world. How can we willingly long for that?” Her work is built upon that of her teacher, the academic José Esteban Muñoz, who famously theorized that queerness is, by its very nature, not-yet-here — “that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough.”

In Megan Milks’s review of Socialist Realism for Bookforum, she notes that a decade ago “many queers were enamored with the alluring radicality of queer negativity” — think Lee Edelman’s 2004 polemic No Future, about the queer death drive — but “in the Trump era such grandiose nihilism seems puerile.”

I loved Low’s book for its messiness, its sense of struggle — a perfect depiction of the constant tugging I feel within myself every day, between my desire to deal with the realities of my own life and my desire to think on bigger, more ambitious scales. “Whatever,” Low eventually concludes. “You can make utopia out of almost anything.”

Since last month, I’ve stopped consuming alcohol (for now, though maybe also for longer). I threw away my Juul, then got jealous that I didn’t get rid of it more dramatically when I saw somebody smash theirs with a hammer on Instagram. Even King Princess, the Gen Z queen of Juuls, recently quit — a harbinger of change if I’ve ever seen one.

I’m trying to whittle away at my nihilism (both the personal and the political) in other small ways. I signed up for a trial at a rental clothing company, with the hopes that I’ll spend less money on shopping and contribute less waste. I’ve stopped eating beef, hopefully en route to full-fledged vegetarianism. And I joined a powerlifting gym after my friend Katie, who is basically a lifting influencer, extolled its many virtues. I’m hoping the sport’s focus on strength and power, rather than weight loss, will help me stop punishing my body for the way it looks and start celebrating it for what it can do.

I’ve had these little bursts of self-improvement projects before, but in the past I’ve always gotten bored and given up eventually. I’d start drinking again. I’d order a bunch of crap I didn’t need from companies that mistreat their workers and actively make the world worse. Whatever, who cares, nothing matters.

Just last week I caved and ordered six different white T-shirts and a $200 pair of boots. (“Basics!” I told myself. “Just the basics!”) I know I’m still going to have nights where I eat only popcorn for dinner and watch six straight episodes of Love Island and bum hits from my friends’ Juuls. I think what’s most important is that I’m at least trying to train myself to rely on more than just instant gratification. To have faith that, if I’m lucky, there’s a lot more life I’ve yet to live.

Critics of Franzen’s New Yorker piece on the climate apocalypse pointed out that the author’s climate projections are seriously flawed and his conclusions perhaps even more so. After taking swipes at everyone, from the evil science-deniers on the right to the overly optimistic peddlers of the Green New Deal on the left, Franzen sees hopeful futures for community gardens and CSA programs, but not much else.

“If your hope for the future depends on a wildly optimistic scenario,” he wrote, “what will you do ten years from now, when the scenario becomes unworkable even in theory? Give up on the planet entirely?”

What a patronizing way to address anyone who dares to dream. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg hasn’t documented her climate depression or dared adults to consider the impact of their personal choices just to piss off a bunch of man-baby conservatives. As a young person, she’s more than justified in fearing for her future, but despite her anger and her sadness — because of her anger and her sadness — she still believes in something better. Why bother even trying otherwise?

Yes, living “well” — if we’re financially and physically able — benefits The Man. That doesn’t change the fact that treating our bodies with respect and care might benefit us too.

Corrupt corporations and governments do hold the most blame, and the most significant obligations, when it comes to righting our course. But there is no easier way to shirk consumer responsibility — whether you’re eating beef, or flying a lot, or holding onto that unholy Amazon Prime subscription — than by self-soothing with the leftist adage that “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.”

As Charlotte Shane recently wrote in a piece about Jonathan Safran Foer’s We Are the Weather (yet another collection of Big Climate Thoughts by yet another underqualified white guy), holding institutions accountable “can’t be a ploy to deflect attention from our own culpability … No matter how otherwise constrained our circumstances, we can always choose each other, choose solidarity, choose effort. Every time we do, we’re making headway toward a new habit, a self-reinforcing orientation that alters the fabric of who we are and how we live.”

Is there anything in this world harder than trying to be both happy and good?

I’ve been listening to Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell on repeat since the album dropped, which has put me in the perfect mood for my sad girl fall. But as much as Lana sings her beautiful, dreamy way through the depressing fog that is modern living, she still ends the album on somewhat of a high note. “Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have,” she croons on the very last song. “But I have it.”

May we all, Lana. May we all. ●

Sahred From Source link Science

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