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respectable-username · 3 years

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Because I'm obsessed with Hivemind Etho, here's another little story with them for the @hermitcraftheadcanons Hermitopia AU. As before, this is just a quick piece that's only been lightly edited because of the time constraints of this community AU.

This is also some setup for a potential future confrontation for somebody else to write.

---

The two Ethos stood at the door to the apartment, waiting for the hour to strike.

It was all they could do to not to brush the hastily cut and dyed hair away from one of their selves' forehead, or fight against the overly tight suit and tie, or scratch at the cheap surgical mask that sat in place of their regular cloth face covering, or the makeup that tried to conceal their prominent eye scar. The other self pulled their jacket closer, trying to extract enough comfort from it for the both of them.

The clock struck 7am. Etho knocked.

A few minutes later, the door was pulled open by a bleary-eyed Mumbo in a dressing gown.

"Hello– oh no what are you doing here please don't hurt me please don't hurt me."

The undisguised Etho pushed through the doorway as Mumbo backed away from the Unrestrained villain, now fully awake.

"Your ID card," said the Etho, entering the room.

"What?" said Mumbo.

"Your ConCorp ID pass," clarified the Etho, holding out their hand. "Give it to us. Now."

"Um, I don't think I'm supposed to do that," said Mumbo, desperately searching for something to grab.

The Etho's eyes bore into Mumbo, cold, unflinching, unwavering. One looked right at him while the other seemed to look right through him.

"Um, right, ok," said Mumbo. "Uh, can you pass me my bag? It's in there."

The disguised Etho entered the apartment and grabbed the briefcase sitting by the door, opening it and grabbing the pass inside, clipping it onto their own trousers. They closed the bag and held it beside them.

"Um, ok," said Mumbo. "I– is that all you wanted?"

"Your phone too," said the undisguised Etho.

"Please no!" Mumbo pleaded. "I can't lose that. What if there's an emergency and I need to call for help but I don't have my phone so the apartment burns down or if somebody gets hurt and I can't call an ambulance or–"

The Etho took a step forward. "Your phone," they repeated.

"Ok ok please don't hurt me," said Mumbo, retrieving his phone from his pocket and holding up both hands.

The Etho grabbed the phone and tossed it over their shoulder at their other self, who caught it flawlessly.

The Etho looked between the cowering Mumbo before them and their other, disguised self. About the same height. Hair roughly similar enough to pass. The ConCorp-issued suit didn't fit quite the same, and the face mask was an obvious difference, but it was close enough if nobody gave them a second glance.

And, having been observing Mumbo for the last few weeks, there didn't seem to be anybody who would give Mumbo a second glance.

The disguised Etho turned silently and left. The other Etho shut the front door and turned the lock, trapping them and Mumbo inside.

***

The disguised Etho walked up to the ConCorp entrance at 8:53am. This seemed to be the average time of Mumbo's arrivals. They walked towards the turnstiles and swiped Mumbo's pass.

"Everything alright?" asked a receptionist behind the main desk, presumably concerned by the face mask.

The Etho coughed. "I'll be fine," they croaked.

"Sweetie, if you're feeling unwell, you should be at home, resting," she said.

"Got stuff to do," croaked Etho, walking forward into the elevator before any further questions could be asked.

"Where's your office?" the Etho at Mumbo's apartment asked, sitting in a corner of Mumbo's couch from which they could see the whole room.

"Um, at ConCorp HQ," said Mumbo, fiddling with a teabag.

Etho sighed. "Precise directions from the elevator please," they said.

"Oh, uh, straight ahead down the corridor, last door on the left," Mumbo said.

The "Mumbo" Etho followed the described path and scanned their pass to enter the room.

The kettle clicked. Mumbo poured the boiling water out into the mug. The Etho in the apartment tensed, ready to spring away at any sign the hot contents would be flung towards them.

"And what's your password?" asked Etho.

"For what?" said Mumbo.

"Your ConCorp laptop," said Etho, the faintest wisps of exasperation creeping into their otherwise carefully controlled voice.

"I am so getting fired for this," sighed Mumbo.

"Better your job than your life," Etho replied flippantly.

"Of course," said Mumbo hurriedly. "It's – oh gosh I can't believe I'm saying this aloud – it's BMX4lyfe95!"

The Etho at the office typed it in. Finally, the internal network was open to them.

They started working to set up a reverse proxy to tunnel out from behind the firewall. Another of their selves at home was already positioned to connect to the network tunnel as soon as it was opened.

Mumbo poured milk into his mug, throwing away the teabag and walking over to the lounge. The Etho already on a couch got ready to jump, but Mumbo just sat down across from them and took a sip.

Mumbo stared down into his mug. "You're a hacker, right?" he asked, his eyes not looking up.

"One of my talents," said Etho cautiously.

"Since they're gonna fire me anyway, can I ask a small favour?" said Mumbo, still acting like his tea was the most fascinating thing in the room.

"Depends," said Etho.

Mumbo drummed his fingers against the mug. "I have this friend, Iskall," Mumbo said. "He's one of the office workers at ConCorp. I made his cybernetics after he got injured. But they keep breaking in weird ways and I don't know why. His explanations don't make sense! The metal I use doesn't melt like that from accidentally touching a stove. They shouldn't buckle like that from tripping into a wall. They shouldn't shatter from falling down a flight of stairs. I'm... I'm just worried for him. Is he in danger? What isn't he telling me?"

The Etho on the couch was quiet for a few seconds. "You only have partial access to the VEX files," they said. "There's a lot I can't find here."

"It's so creepy how you do that," said Mumbo.

Etho ignored him.

The Etho at home let out a quiet cheer as they managed to connect through the tunnel into the ConCorp network. They started browsing, collecting, and saving as much information as possible.

The Etho in the office switched their focus to finding some sort of privilege escalation vulnerability that would let them access the more secure files.

"Erm, I probably should have asked before," said Mumbo. "Would you like some tea? Some breakfast?"

"I'm fine," said the Etho in the apartment.

"So, uh, do you have any hobbies?" asked Mumbo.

"Please don't small talk," said Etho. "I'm busy."

"Oh, ok," said Mumbo. "Can I go grab a book or something then? Since, y'know, I don't have my phone or laptop or anything."

Etho nodded. "But if you call for help," they said, "I will know about it and I will make you regret it."

"Of course," said Mumbo.

The Etho in the office kept prodding at the ConCorp intranet. What they needed were the credentials of a superior, maybe even the Director himself. Hmm, it seemed from this directory structure that the Director was Mumbo's direct supervisor. It would only take a few hours to set up some sort of spear phishing attempt that would let them pivot directly onto the Director's computer. As long as they didn't get caught first, of course.

Etho opened Mumbo's calendar and declined all meetings that day that wouldn't look suspicious to avoid. There weren't many meetings to sort through.

"How often do you get visitors to your office?" Etho asked Mumbo.

"Iskall usually comes for lunch when he's not swamped by a project," said Mumbo. "Otherwise, nobody else just pops 'round usually."

"How about your boss?" asked Etho.

"He's busy," Mumbo said. "I have to go to him if we ever talk."

The Etho in the apartment nodded, settling back to focus on what their other selves were doing.

***

Hi Cub, Etho typed. Can you review this interface I made? It should let us remotely view what's happening with our heroes through their cybernetics. With some extra work, we could get actual video from their perspective to send to the media!

Etho sent the message, then sent the file with their exploit. The exploit was covered by a very quickly and poorly thrown together interface which returned the live location of a GPS receiver they had found in the lab.

They left it a few minutes, stretching back in Mumbo's desk chair as they waited for a reply.

Finally, one came through.

Hey Mumbo. Great prototype! We'll probably need to pass off development to the actual software engineering team, but this is a great initiative. I'm proud to have a thinker like you on our team!

Etho allowed themselves a smile as they checked to see if their exploit had worked. There it was, a tunnel open on the expected port right into the Director's machine. Jackpot.

The Etho at home pivoted through the new tunnel and started scraping as much information as they could.

"Your friend is a mercenary," the Etho in Mumbo's apartment said, making Mumbo jump at the sudden sound.

"Wait what?" said Mumbo.

"Iskall is a mercenary and assassin for ConCorp, working for them in exchange for ConCorp saving his life," clarified Etho.

"Iskall, a mercenary?" Mumbo said. "No no no no no. That can't be!"

"That's what his file says," Etho said with a shrug. "Either way, I've got what I need. I've called you in sick for the next week, and I'm keeping your pass to enforce that. Your phone will be returned, but I've programmed it to inform me if you let any part of today slip. I hope you understand."

"Uh, thank you, I guess," said Mumbo.

"I'll be here with your belongings in half an hour," Etho continued, standing up.

"What do– oh, right," said Mumbo.

"And don't do anything stupid," said Etho, opening the door to leave. "As thanks for your assistance, the nHo will try to keep you safe from any upcoming confrontation. But if you break this trust, that guarantee will not hold."

"I understand," said Mumbo, gulping at the idea of having to further betray his company, his friends.

The Etho left his apartment.

#hermitopia au #ethoslab #etho #mumbo #mumbo jumbo #res writes

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Pluralistic: 06 Mar 2020 (Stunning RPG dice, Shell funded climate denial, Church sends US predator priests to Mexico, South Korea is beating covid-19)

Today's links

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen: And you can also make your own.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay: Frits Böttcher was a packrat, and his papers detail exactly how he was paid to sow climate doubt. He was very good at it.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico: At least 51 "credibly accused" priests left the US and took up positions abroad.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything: Banjo claims it will predict and head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and child abductions without invading anyone's privacy.

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying: Investors, cronies and pals got to literally use it as a party trick.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing: Testing is part of the free national health system, and 140,000 tests have been administered.

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech: "No, I don't want great articles."

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't: Donotpay meets the CCPA, it's like peanut butter and chocolate.

This day in history: 2005, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The most beautiful RPG dice I've ever seen (permalink)

Sasha is a spectacularly talented RPG dice-maker, whose online store features the most beautiful dice I've ever seen – and as if that wasn't enough, she also sells dice-making kits to use at home.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/sunshadeauarts-academy/

Last month, ahead of the C2E2 con, she posted a series of new, not-for-sale (argh) dice that embed a variety of materials inside large D20s to form nebulas, clouds, alien landscapes, menacing eyeballs, and eldritch scenes. Check them out for yourself!

https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232722877008490497 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1229445585717035010 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1232795390916911104 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233370655216881664 https://twitter.com/sunshadeauarts/status/1233380666810806274

It's hard to say what these will cost; comparable dice on her site sell for $400. They're handmade, beautiful sculptures, after all.

https://www.sunshadeauarts.com/product/less-than-perfect-midnight-aurora-handmade-resin-inkless-titan-d20/

At that price, they're maybe too expensive for a gift for yourself, but as a graduation present, maybe? And that said, it's exactly the kind of thing I sometimes buy to celebrate selling a new novel, and that's on my roadmap for THE LOST CAUSE, my post-GND, truth-and-reconciliation novel, so I'm definitely putting a reminder in my calendar.

The king of Dutch climate denial was secretly in Shell's pay (permalink)

Club of Rome founder Frits Böttcher was the Netherlands' leading climate denier. He died in 2008. Investigative journalists combing through his papers, discovered that he was paid €500K by Shell and others to sow doubt about climate change.

https://www.ftm.nl/dutch-multinationals-funded-climate-sceptic

His network pushed out scientific frauds like the idea that excess atmospheric CO2 would be "good for plants" through books, lectures and reports.

He was good at it. His work was crucial to stalling action on climate change in the 1990s. Despite this, his 24 sponsors dumped him in 1998 after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, worried that outright climate denial had lost credibility.

No wonder! This was the guy who'd called climate science "a witch-hunt on CO2" and declared "Our planet is not a greenhouse."

In his papers, Böttcher notes that after he published these frauds, Shell contacted him and offered him giant sums to keep it up and amplify it. The work was personally commissioned by Shell managing director Huub Van Engelshoven. Böttcher was a packrat. His papers in the Noord-Hollands Archief in Haarlem stack 15.9m tall. Inside of them is an eye-wateringly detailed account of how wealthy, planet-wrecking firms deliberately and maliciously paid for climate denial.

That means that we now can name names. We think of climate denial as a kind of emergent property with no human agent, but as the world drowns, roasts, and writhes with pandemic, we have the names and addresses of the people who engineered that situation for their own gain. We know who his political allies were: the VVD party. When the Netherlands' dikes fail and the country begins to drown, these politicians might still be running for office.

It's tempting to think of the climate crisis as something we all bear responsibility for, because we didn't sort our recycling or because we didn't use the underfunded, anemic public transit options available to us. But efforts like this – from Platform Authentieke Journalistiek and Follow the Money – show we were corralled into our complicity by a network of super-rich plutes for their own gain, who knew they were wrecking the world and dooming our children but did not care.

American Catholic officials helped priests who preyed on children escape to Mexico (permalink)

A new instalment in Propublica's outstanding coverage of the Catholic Church's complicity in sexual abuse by priests shows that dozens of American priests who raped children were relocated to Mexico, where they continued to rape children

https://www.propublica.org/article/dozens-of-catholic-priests-credibly-accused-of-abuse-found-work-abroad-some-with-the-churchs-blessing#178005

These priests found new postings thanks to glowing letters of recommendation from church officials who knew that they had been accused – or, in some cases convicted – of raping children in their parishes. Some fled to Mexico to avoid prison, resisting extradition for years.

Not just Mexico: Propublica found 51 "credibly accused" US priests who are currently working in Mexico, Ireland, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Some of them continued to draw pay from their US parishes while they settled in abroad. Parishoners' donations paid for the predators who victimized their children to escape justice.

One priest, Jose Antonio Pinal, wrote letters to Church officials blaming the boy he raped, saying, "that he is not innocent of the situation he wants to blame me for completely." Pinal is still ministering in Cuernavaca. He claims his longrunning rapes of a 15-year-old were consensual, but "he was a minor; so, legally, I am screwed."

When he moved to Mexico, Sacramento church officials wrote to him promising to support him, so long as the new diocese promised to "protect the diocese of Sacramento against any financial liability for any acts committed by you while working in that diocese."

Some of these priests are listed as "inactive" in Church websites, but are still ministering in Mexico. Rev. Jeffrey David Newell, admitted to sexually abusing another 15 year old, and called it a "mistake." He currently serves in Tijuana. Newell says it was a single slip up. Other survivors of his abuse have filed lawsuits against his old US archdiocese. Newell calls their claims "totally absurd." His name has been removed from Church lists of "credibly accused" sexual predators in the clergy.

These predators' survivors are alive and deeply traumatized. And thanks to the inaction, complicity and even encouragement of US Catholic church officials, these priests are ruining the lives of new children all over the world.

A grifty AI company conned the state of Utah into giving access to everything (permalink)

The State of Utah has secretly contracted with "Banjo," a grifty "AI" company, to analyze all the surveillance and internal data generated by all the state's agencies.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200305/13422544042/ai-company-has-access-to-pretty-much-every-piece-surveillance-tech-state-utah-owns.shtml

Banjo gets all the 911 calls, CCTV camera feeds, license plate readers, and internal state databases, and its proprietary, secret algorithm will comb through all that to direct law enforcement.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/k7exem/banjo-ai-company-utah-surveillance-panopticon

The company claims there are no privacy concerns because it has a patented system for anonymizing data. The patents do not disclose their anonymization method, and every other attempt at this kind of anonymization has fallen prey to "re-identification" attacks.

Banjo gets to locate a facility inside the Utah DOT HQ, and will operate in all 29 counties, state university campuses and 23 cities (including Utah's 10 largest cities). The company's making $20.7m on this contract over five years.

Using FOIA requests, Motherboard retrieved records showing how Banjo got Utah officials to help it sell its services ot the state. When Motherboard questioned the officials about this, they flat-out lied and denied it. The Banjo pitch claims that they'll head off terrorist attacks, mass shootings and child abductions in realtime. The company provides zero evidence that they have ever done such a thing, or that they ever could.

But that lack of evidence didn't deter Utah AG Ric Cantrell:

"They do have case studies. I'm waiting for case studies from Banjo. I'm still waiting for information from them."

Uh, maybe you should have seen the studies before putting Banjo's servers behind your firewall?

Clearview AI says it only lets cops use its facial recognition tool but it's lying (permalink)

Clearview AI is another grifty "AI" company cutting secret deals with law enforcement to use its facial recognition tech, which relies on a database of nonconsensually scraped social media photos.

They claim only cops get to use this. It's a lie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/technology/clearview-investors.html

Clearview investors, clients and cronies all have logins to the system. Long before it was selling to cops, these people were literally using it as a party trick, getting people at parties to give them photos to subject to Clearview analysis, just for shits and giggles.

For example, billionaire John Catsimatidis used it to freak out his daughter, sneaking a pic of her data while she was at a restaurant and then IDing the guy and texting her with the guy's bio while she was still eating with him.

An investor named David Scalzo gave the app to his children: "They like to use it on themselves and their friends to see who they look like in the world. It's kind of fun for people."

It sure seems like Ashton Kutcher also got to run around and use it without limit or accountability. Last time I checked, he was also not a police officer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNhYqLbsAGk&feature=youtu.be

One tech expert, Nicholas Cassimatis, uses the app as "a hobby."

Your 21st Century panopticon, folks, brought to you by compulsive liars who ask us to trust them not to get it wrong.

South Korea's beating covid-19 with free testing (permalink)

South Korea has tested 140,000 people for Covid-19. The tests are free for all as part of the nation's public health program. Testing has led to world-leading containment of the disease.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-04/south-korea-tests-hundreds-of-thousands-to-fight-virus-outbreak

President Moon Jae-in calls it a "war" and has put the country on the kind of footing that you'd expect of any existential threat, sidelining the interests of industry in favor of national survival. They're testing 10,000 people/day. Results are available in hours. You can get tested at drive-through testing centers. The kits are 90% accurate and were developed by a domestic producer, Seegene Inc.

America is learning that offshoring high-tech manufacturing to save on labor costs and allowing its private sector to dominate its healthcare resulted in a brittle situation where it can't produce reliable tests, and the unreliable tests are only available to the wealthy.

The fate of uninsured, untested, untreated Americans is not theirs alone. They're the ones preparing wealthy Americans' food and cleaning their homes.

We have a shared microbial destiny that no amount of neoliberal doctrine can handwave away.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#covidclasswar

The web is unusably beshitted with terrible ad-tech (permalink)

The web is unusably beshitted and encrufted with popups, interstitials, rolldowns, nagware, paywalls, autoplaying video, ads that scroll with the page, and worse. I haven't looked at the web without an adblocker in years and it's still barely usable.

https://www.cjr.org/first_person/the-infinite-scroll.php

The modern web's equilibrium is "as terrible as possible, without being so terrible that you stop reading," or, worse, "as terrible as is necessary to get you pay to bypass the paywall."

In the CJR, David Roth publishes one of the most pitiless, accurate, evocative descriptions of using the modern internet of cruft.

"The page loads, and a little video ad box rises from the bottom left of the screen and begins buffering. Then a big box pops up over the small one with an offer to subscribe to the paper at a special promotional rate… As you contemplate it, the video begins to play in a muted spasm. This throws a scrim of gray over the rest of the page, making it impossible to read…While you've been triaging a second small video player has floated up into the middle left of the screen. You manage to close these various boxes, and now you can scroll. For a few seconds, anyway, until another ad creeps down from the banner ad above the headline."

But Roth isn't merely complaining here. He's also digging into the underlying reality: dwindling margins, short-term thinking, monopolization of the ad-market, and a buyer's market for ads that lets advertisers demand worse and worse of publishers. Publishers are staffed with people who are "perpetually maxed-out and stressed and scrabbling for a dwindling and finite amount of money." They're choosing chumboxes and other garbage because they want to keep the lights on.

This happened before, of course. It's an HTML5, CSS-enabled reprise of the pop-up wars, where exploding inventory and finite advertising allowed advertisers to play publishers off against each other with increasingly obnoxious, intrusive pop-ups.

These were unbelievably terrible, even by modern standards. Pop-ups would spawn at 1px X 1px, making them invisible, autoplaying audio. Others would sense your mouse heading for the close box and move themselves away from your pointer. They'd spawn 3 more pop-ups for every one you closed, or 300, until your computer ran out of RAM and crashed, taking all your work with it.

These pop-ups didn't go away because publishers won the battle. They went away because of pop-up blocking.

When Opera, and then Mozilla, turned pop-up blocking on by default, users finally had a meaningful reason to prefer one browser to the others. One browser was usable. The other one let pop-up ads crash your computer and eat your unsaved docs. As users switched en masse to blocking browsers, publishers could tell advertisers, "Look, we'll run any garbage ad you tell us to because we need your money. But if it's a pop-up it will be blocked by the majority of our users. They just won't see it."

The pop-up wars were won because technologists helped users exercise technological self-determination. But increasingly, browser vendors are ad-tech companies. Even when they're not, browsers are being designed to serve publishers (who are under advertisers' thumbs), not users.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

We should address monopolies in ad-tech and browsers, we should create meaningful privacy protections via a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But all of that needs to be accompanied with legal cover for users who assert the right to unshittify their web sessions.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

This won't just protect users, it will protect publishers. It's one thing to prohibit publishers from intrusive advertising. But it's another altogether to make that kind of advertising literally technically impossible.

For $3, a robolawyer will automatically force data brokers to delete you and sue the ones who don't (permalink)

The always-amazing Donotpay has a new robot-lawyer service: as part of your $3/month, they'll serve every data-broker with a demand to purge your records under the CCPA, and sue the ones who don't.

https://fortune.com/2020/03/05/delete-location-data-privacy-personal-information-donotpay/

Data-brokers don't just drive nuisance calls, they also expose you to risks like being doxed and swatted, or having your identity stolen, including by stalkers and bounty hunters who exploit mobile phone tracking to get your realtime location. Every single person should purge their data from every single data-broker, period. Donotpay targets the top 20 brokers and facial recognition companies, including Clearview AI.

Donotpay automates opt-outs for these companies. It also automates suing companies that don't comply or those that make illegal demands like requiring you to send a scan of your driver's license before they'll purge your records. Once you're signed up, you can opt out your whole family, and even your friends. If you don't want a $3/month sub (which gets you tons of other awesome robolawyering), you can just sign up once, pay $3, purge your records and cancel.

Fulfilling deletion requests costs companies about $10. You can use them punitively. Any time a company pisses you off, you can just file a data-deletion demand under CCPA.

When Donot pay started, it was Ios only and I couldn't use it. Somewhere along the way, they got a web interface, too. I just signed up. I'm gonna pay for the wifi on my flight this afternoon just so I can explore all its options.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Bram Cohen's Stanford talk on BitTorrent https://web.archive.org/web/20051124040524/http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/050216-ee380-100.asx

#5yrsago DMCA abuser ordered to pay $25K to WordPress https://torrentfreak.com/wordpress-wins-25000-from-dmca-takedown-abuser-150305/

#5yrsago Albuquerque PD encrypts videos before releasing them in records request https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150221/17074630102/albuquerque-police-dept-complies-with-records-request-releasing-password-protected-videos-not-password.shtml

#5yrsago Judge who invented Ferguson's debtor's prisons owes $170K in tax https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/06/ferguson-judge-owes-unpaid-taxes-ronald-brockmeyer

#5yrsago Hartford, CT says friends can't room together unless some of them are servants https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-hartford-scarborough-street-house-0218-20150217-story.html

#5yrsago Finnish millionaire gets EUR54K speeding ticket https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31709454

#1yrago Zuckerberg announces a comprehensive plan for a new, privacy-focused Facebook, but fails to mention data sharing and ad targeting https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-zuckerberg-privacy-pivot/

#1yrago Ruminations on decades spent writing stories that run more than 1,000,000 words https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html

#1yrago A thorough defense of Modern Monetary Theory https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2019/03/05/mmt-sense-or-nonsense/#62e9ed235852

#1yrago GOP lawmaker driven mad by bill that would decriminalize children who take naked photos of themselves, delivers a frenzied rant about anal sex on legislature's floor https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/05/39511377/a-bill-decriminalizing-teen-sexting-passes-the-house-causing-republican-to-scream-about-anal-sex-on-the-floor

#1yrago Bounty hunters and stalkers are able to track you in realtime by lying to your phone company and pretending to be cops https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/panvkz/stalkers-debt-collectors-bounty-hunters-impersonate-cops-phone-location-data

#1yrago From prisons to factories to offices: the spread of workplace surveillance and monitoring tech https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DandS_WorkplaceMonitoringandSurveillance-.pdf

#1yrago NH GOP lawmakers mocked gun violence survivors by wearing clutchable pearl necklaces to gun control hearing https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/06/gop-lawmakers-wore-pearls-while-gun-violence-victims-testified-activists-were-outraged/?utm_term=.addd1b7a24f8

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Emptywheel (https://www.emptywheel.net/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/), Super Punch (https://superpunch.net/, Bas van Beek (http://www.basvanbeek.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

LA Times Festival of Books: 18 April 2020, Los Angeles. https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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shinrasfirst · 4 years

Text

Goodbye.

For @rcdwrxck.

THEY GIVE YOU A KEY. It’s all that’s left of him now. A small inconspicuous key, not even particularly pretty. Random, standard issue; he left a note with it, asking for you to be the one to receive it in case of his death. A damn key to a damn locker at the Turk HQ. It fills you with equal frustration, anger and hope to imagine what could possibly be in there. You’re not sure you want to find out, because as desperate as you are to feel his presence again, you know it’ll be the last time you’ll ever feel it.

You head down to the lockers, a room you’ve been in plenty of times. Now that you stand there, in front of T-12 you wonder why you never asked yourself what Rude keeps in there. Probably because you expected it to be the same as yours: boring, everyday things. Or nothing. With a lump the size of a ShinRa reactor in your throat and cold clumsy fingers you raise the key to the lock, push it in and turn it. The door opens with a quiet click.

Something about that day was different. Something about the whole damn mission. Rude usually knew better than to let anxieties or superstitions affect his work, but that morning he woke up with a bad feeling and hours later it was still sitting in his chest like a monster lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike. Disliking the helplessness it made him feel, Rude tried to rationalize it. Maybe it was normal to feel like that every now and then, in their position. They couldn’t be lucky forever. This was a job with a bad outlook on a future that didn’t entail lasting injury or death; they all knew that when they signed up for it.

Rude did his best to keep it hidden and act professional, but his partner knew him too well to miss the subtle changes in his behavior. It was something Rude never pointed out, but appreciated quietly. Acting like he didn’t care was like a sport for Reno, but anyone who actually cared to get to know him could tell that it was only skin-deep. He cared more than he’d ever admit out loud - to anyone he knew at that point in time, anyway. Maybe he’d meet someone he could love enough to entrust them with his heart someday-- but that was not a trail of thought Rude entertained for long. It usually led nowhere good.

He simply nodded along to the things Reno said while they sat in the helicopter, the update on his weapon, some joke he told him before, how he couldn’t wait to go back and treat himself to a whole bowl of fried noodles after this mission. It was nice to listen to Reno’s voice, calming in a way no one else ever understood. I’ll treat you, he almost offered, but thought the better of it in the last moment. Maybe it was bad luck to make promises before missions. (So much for not being superstitious.)

When the helicopter landed and they stepped out the air was warm, unnaturally so, and they were welcomed by the terrible stench of burned cables and gasoline. The facility - or what was left of it - was still standing, thick clouds of black smoke rising from its carcass. It was impossible to say how great the damage really was, considering most of the lab was built underground; but that was precisely why they’d been sent here, wasn’t it? “Let’s be careful. Could be hell down there,” Rude said, deliberately phrasing it as advice for the both of them. Reno didn’t appreciate being told what to do (not even by his boss).

And with the heat and the stench rising around them, it did, quite literally, feel like a descent into hell.

A book. A calendar, to be precise. That’s all that’s in there. A simple black leather calendar, filled to the brim with notes and pieces of paper of various color and texture that have been shoved between the actual pages until the whole thing bulged. You don’t know how to feel (not that you’ve felt much of anything since then), underwhelmed? Curious? Confused? What could possibly be in this calendar - diary? - that looks so worn and unorganized and entirely un-Rude. It’s like a dirt stain on his perfect white shirt: something that just doesn’t exist. Messy and random and so unlike him. And yet, when you finally take it out of the locker, feel the weight of it in your hands, you can tell it is so clearly his.

It’s real leather, nothing cheap but something he bought with an intention. A calendar from years ago he scribbled into like a diary and then just kept filling it with extra notes. It smells like him; and you can tell he’s held it in his hands many many times. You open it up and are greeted by Rude’s enigma of a handwriting: neat and proper and yet somehow illegible - well, for anyone who hasn’t been his partner for years. You can read every single word (or maybe 99%) and it hits you like a slap in the face when you see the first two words on the first loose sheet of paper.

Dear Reno---

The air was hot and tasted of ashes and metal. They had to act fast in retrieving any data that could be salvaged - not only because they were sitting on a ticking time bomb, but because the very air they were breathing was poisoning them. They had a plan of the building, so finding the backup computers was easy. Getting the materia that was stored in the laboratory below, on the other hand? Rude had received two sets of orders for this. The official one: get them; they’re valuable resources and property of ShinRa. The inofficial one: no materia is worth the life of two agents and several infantrymen. They had to make a judgement call, and as usual agreed that it was worth the risk. Rude trusted Reno not to be stupidly brave about these things because they both knew making a choice like that always counted for both of them, and neither was ready to lose the other.

The laboratory had to be where disaster had struck first, judging by the shattered tanks and molten equipment. It looked like something big had exploded, leaving behind a scorched crater the size of a car. Steaming acidic liquid was covering part of the floor and dripping from the ceiling, filling the air with a sour stench. “Let’s get this stuff and get out of here,” Rude advised, already heading for the station that supposedly held the container of experimental materia they were looking for. ---They found it in a glass case on the back wall, surprisingly well-preserved. Whatever had wrecked this lab, hadn’t reached this part of the room.

Rude reached for it and pulled his hand back with a startled scream, almost instantly hearing Reno rushing towards him. He looked at his hand where his gloves had burned away like he’d touched acid or fire, revealing pink raw skin beneath them. It burned like he was holding a piece of searing hot coal. He hissed, pulling the glove off just in case whatever was causing the reaction was still on it, discarding it to the floor like something disgusting. “I’m okay,” he assured his partner, despite the skin on his hand looking like it was starting to blister. “Fuck this,” he heard Reno say, looking around for a creative way of picking up the container without sacrificing any other body parts.

One of the men who had come down here with them produced a chain they wrapped around the container’s handle to pick it up and carry it out of the lab. There was more to find here, more to save, stored away in shelves and cabinets or broken tanks - Rude could see that Reno thought about it too. Another judgement call, and this time he voiced his thoughts before his partner could. “Not worth it. Let’s get out of here.” Maybe it was the toxic fumes stinging in their lungs or the remainder of concern in Reno’s eyes but he agreed without protest, and they both followed the men back upstairs. Rude coughed, telling himself the smoke in the air wasn’t getting worse, and neither was the pain in his hand.

Dear Reno, After writing all these notes I’ve come to the conclusion that the sole reason I am keeping them and leaving them for you, is that I hope you’re still here when I am not. I am not giving them to you out of a desperate need to let you know, it doesn’t matter if you read them. Just as long as you get them. If you do that means you are still here, still alive. Which means I haven’t failed you completely.

I’m still sorry.

- Rude

It’s a sheet of paper with the ShinRa logo on it. You remember seeing the re-prints not too long ago, so it must be a recent note. You turn the paper over but there’s nothing on the back. It continues with the first actual page of the calendar.

“We all have lifetimes upon lifetimes in our minds, combining to far more years than our bodies could ever endure. They’re made up of ideas and dreams about things and people we want but never get to have. When I met you, I knew. There will never be anything I could want more than you. These are my lifetimes, or rather fragments of them, collected in no chronological order. I never know how to say these things on any other medium, but over the years it’s become hard not to voice them at all.

And I can’t help myself when I look at you.”

The tone changes after that. It continues with entries that seem to be written at later dates, with different pens, with more or less haste, in more or less detail. They’re random and incoherent, sometimes they’re not even complete. A heartfelt attempt at a poor man’s poetry. And there’s one thing they have in common that you notice right away: they’re all about you.

The way back seemed longer, painfully so. Something wasn’t right and it didn’t take a doctor’s examination for Rude to know that. His hand-- no, his arm hurt like his skin was melting off his bones by the time they reached the upper floor. He glanced down sneakily, not wanting to alert Reno, and saw that the skin was turning white where the glove had burned away, the blisters breaking open almost as quickly as they appeared, leaving behind thin bleeding cracks that gave his skin the look of breaking marble. Taking steps forward was getting harder, keeping his eyes focused became a real challenge. Something had happened to him that he did not anticipate and in his lack of understanding it he didn’t know what to do. He had to keep it together until they were out of here in any case; even if his arm decided to fall off he wouldn’t be the cause of Reno and the others staying inside this cursed building a minute longer than necessary.

By the time they finally stepped into the clear night air again Rude almost snapped out of it like a bad dream; if only for a moment. It was like breathing air for the first time, the toxic smoke getting washed out of his lungs with every breath he took and his burning eyes clearing with a few blinks. Somewhere in front of him Reno coughed and cursed, and Rude watched him like he was seeing him for the first time. Everything seemed slowed down suddenly, paused, like the world was wrapped in cotton and put on a high shelf. He just grunted shortly when Reno asked about his hand and followed him to the helicopter. His steps were slower too, coordinating them growing harder, but he had his goal right ahead of him and tried to focus on it, not the searing pain in his shoulder.

The next thing he remembered was standing a few feet away from the helicopter, feeling the wind of its blades cutting through the air, and right in front of him Reno. He was asking something, but he couldn’t hear him, a deafening rushing sound in his ears blocking out everything else. (What was he saying?) I’m tired, he meant to respond, or maybe, this mission sucks. None of it came over his lips but suddenly the sound was back on and he heard Reno’s voice clearly asking if he was alright. He sounded so worried it made Rude feel guilty for not telling the truth. His hand came up to gently curl Reno’s wrist in a sudden irrational need, but it only got him a look of surprise. Touching was not a common thing between them. As if he just remember that, Rude let go again, dropping his hand at his side.

“I’m right behind you, aibou,” he said.

You turn another page and find more post-it notes sticking together, shoved between the full pages of the calendar.

“I can tell that you showered just before you came to work. The tips of your hair are still wet and they’re curling just a bit. Did you go to sleep late saying you’d get up early to shower and then slept too long? You changed your shampoo. I liked the old one better.”

“Your eyes looked different the day we went to Goblin Island. I’ve never seen them like this, it was hard to look away. Maybe they reflected the fires that we saw, like the sea reflects the sky. Maybe I saw your soul that day. Either way it was beautiful.”

“Remember the day you ate a hot dog for breakfast and spilled ketchup on your shirt? You probably don’t because it happened more than once. I really wanted to kiss you that day. I know I didn’t or I would have take this note out of the pile. Continuity is important for us to make sense of things.”

“I dream of a day where I tell you, but that is all that it is. A dream.”

“Your laugh is addictive. Not that little sneer you like to do, the real thing. I wish I’d hear it more often. I could listen to it every day.”

“Your sunburn is finally going away and you suddenly have freckles all over your nose. It looks so cute, which I’m sure you’d hate to hear. I counted them this morning. They’re exactly 19.”

“I’m lucky I met you, more than I realize I think. I’m lucky to be on your side and to know you’re on mine. I wouldn’t exchange you for anything or anyone in this world.”

They were already in the air when the sight in his right eye began to go. The pain was everywhere by then, the entire right half of his body stinging and burning, and though he couldn’t see under his clothes he knew it had taken on the same sickly white color as his hand. Something was happening that he hadn’t prepared for. Something he should have been prepared for, something he thought he was, but now that it was here he didn’t want to accept it. There was no point in lying anymore, in pretending Reno was careless enough not to notice that he wasn’t okay. He was right there, hands on his jacket, looking at him, alternating between yelling at him and at the soldier flying the helicopter.

I’m sorry, Rude wanted to say, it’s going to be okay. His tongue was heavy and his throat dry, drier than it had ever been. It felt like he’d swallowed sand and razor blades, making every attempt at speaking futile and pure agony. It was spreading to his stomach, to his other leg, to his chest. He knew what that meant. It was still a long way back and if there was one thing he didn’t have anymore, it was time. He blinked a few times when a grey smudge spread before his eye, blurring out the image of Reno’s upset face. He didn’t want that to be the last thing he ever saw. He wanted to see him smile. It spread faster now, closer to his heart, and when it reached the pathetically pumping organ it felt like a blade cutting right through it. Rude’s chest contracted painfully and he sank back into the seat, his body hanging limply in the seatbelt. “I’m right behind you, aibou---” he said.

Or maybe he didn’t.

In front of him, Reno smiled the happiest brightest smile he’d ever seen. It made him feel warm all over, and for once, he smiled back.

He didn’t die in an epic explosion. He didn’t go violently and spectacularly. It was sneaking and sudden and silent. There was no aggression, no big cataclysm, no collapsing buildings or giant monsters and yet it burned itself into your mind forever. He was just there one moment and gone the next and you never in your life felt more helpless. You almost wish it had been an explosion; you certainly wish it had swallowed you both.

As you flip the page, a single white napkin falls out of the book and sails to the ground at your feet silently. You move to pick it up, and as your fingers brush the fabric you get a sense of familiarity. You’ve seen it before. Imprinted in the corner is the logo of a bar, the Emerald Grave, faded but still legible. You remember that place. Rude took you there last year, said he’d pay for one drink to celebrate your birthday and ended up buying two bottles for the two of you. You met someone that night, can’t recall clearly how the night ended. Rude must have kept the napkin. There’s an ink stain on it, and next to it three words in shaky handwriting.

“I love you.”

#rcdwrxck #d. rcdwrxck #( drabble. )#( m: rude. )#( rude: drabble. )#here goes nothing #t. goodbye #cw character death #long post

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hwarang-number · 4 years

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I mentioned recently that I was able to buy SHINee Season's Greetings 2017 from an eBay vendor in Japan (with 2-day DHL shipping to boot!), and I wanted to share some pics here.

First of all, it's MASSIVE.

(and very neatly packaged!)

Not to make this sad, but this is the first piece of merch I've seen with the signatures of all five of them. 😔 (That's the inside cover of the desk calendar - it looked a little odd at first and it took me a second to realize why.😣)

The desk diary has nice pics but just one cluster of them at the front, nothing throughout (which was a little disappointing).

But I got another tiny Father Francesco for the shrine! 😁

And I've only seen the mini calendar photocards once on eBay, and they were listed for just a little less than I paid for the entire Season's Greetings set.

I'll post calendar pics in a separate post, if anyone's interested. (I know there are HQ scans out there so no one really needs to see my crummy phone photos; I'm just excited - and surprised! - that I was able to obtain this gorgeous set. 💞)

#shinee season's greetings #it's really interesting how DIFFERENT each year is #i have 2017 2018 and 2020 now #shinee #shinee season's greetings 2017 #they're all so SOFT in this shoot

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thecomicsnexus · 4 years

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TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ADVENTURES: THE YEAR OF THE TURTLE JANUARY - MARCH 1996 BY DAN SLOTT, HUGH HAYNES, HARVEY MERCADOOCASIO, PHIL SHEEHY, PHILLIP LYNCH, ELMAN BROWN AND CHIA-CHI WANG

SYNOPSIS (FROM TMNT ENTITY)

It’s bedtime and a child asks his father to tell him a story. The father says that he’s going to hear the last Ninja Turtles story, for after this one is told, he’ll have heard them all.

At a temple in the heart of a lost jungle, the Shredder stands before a pile of his own dead Foot Soldiers, slain by an army of tribal warriors. Shredder orders the tribal chieftain to hand over the Green Talisman, but the chieftain sends his warriors to kill the Shredder, instead. The Shredder fights his way through the warriors, eventually killing them all and the chieftain as well. He then scales the temple and snags the Green Talisman (which looks like a third of a Zodiac calendar).

In New York City, Raph is busy pummeling punks, trying to dig up information the Green Talisman of the Thirteenth House, but none of the scumbags know what he’s talking about. Raph returns to the sewer lair empty handed, though Splinter tells him not to feel too dejected. Few know of the 13th sign of the Zodiac, the Turtle, whose year comes only once in a millennium (this happens to be that year). The other Turtles are busy digging up info on the Talismans in their own fashion (at Splinter's behest, as the stars are aligning and time is short). Don searches the net, but comes up with nothing. Leonardo strikes gold in an old parchment, learning that one of the Talisman’s is in Tibet. Mikey, while goofing off and watching a TV ad for the “Mighty Mecha Power Raiders” stage show at the Radio City Music Hall, notices that the White Raider is using one of the Talisman’s for a belt buckle! The Turtles race off to Radio City, though Don quickly updates his friends on the net with their latest find.

Unfortunately, one of those “friends” is Cyberius, a hacker working for the Shredder. Cyberius traces the modem (that Don stupidly left on in his haste) and finds the whereabouts of the Turtles’ secret lair. Shredder dispatches his henchmen (Cyberius, T.K.O. and Psonic) to Radio City to intercept the Talisman, while he heads to the Turtles’ lair alone.

At Radio City, April O’Neil and Oyuki are covering the Power Raiders’ stage show when the Turtles come barging through the crowd. Leo demands that Timmy the White Raider hand over the Talisman, but he refuses. The Turtles beat the stuffing out of the Power Raiders with ease, mocking their lack of martial arts skill. The White Raider, however, succeeds in summoning the mystical energies within the Talisman and begins pummeling the Turtles all on his own.

Meanwhile, the Shredder infiltrates the lair and attacks Splinter. Splinter puts up a good fight, but the Talisman has made the Shredder too powerful. Channeling the mystical energy into his gauntlet, he stabs Splinter through the chest. Before finishing his old foe off, Shredder is distracted by the sight of the parchment. Reading it, he learns the location of the third and final Talisman. When Shredder looks back, though, Splinter has vanished. Shredder mocks his enemy for hiding and vows that, once he has all three Talismans, he will use their immense power to conquer the world.

At Radio City, the White Raider proves too much for Leo, the only Turtle left standing. Using his wits, Leo slices off the White Raider’s belt, separating him from the Talisman (and hsi pants). While Leo is busy knocking the simpering Power Raider out, however, T.K.O. succeeds in covertly using her telekinetic powers to levitate the talisman into her hands. The three henchmen then disappear, leaving the Turtles to wonder where the Talisman went.

Having failed their mission (and pissed off a lot of Power Raiders fans), the Turtles return to their lair, only to find the place trashed. Their immediate concern is for Splinter, but he steps out of the shadows, none the worse for wear. As a matter of fact, he feels better than ever: The mystical energies of the Talisman have returned him back to his human form as Hamato Yoshi!

The father tells his son that it’s getting late and he’ll have to hear the rest of the story another night. The child wishes his dad good night and as the father steps over to the lamp to turn it off, the light reveals him to be Hamato Yoshi (whom the child addresses as “Splinter”).

Entering his son’s room at bedtime, Hamato Yoshi is horrified to find that all the furniture and blankets have been used to build a fort (or as Yoshi calls it, a “mess”). Yoshi tells his son that after he hears tonight’s story, he has to clean up his room.

Traveling to the Himalayas, the Turtles and Hamato Yoshi make it to the hidden temple that houses the last Green Talisman. Yoshi elects to stay behind, still getting used to his human form, and the Turtles infiltrate the temple (guarded by the Killer Monks) by themselves. Unbeknownst to them, brother and sister team T.K.O. and Psonic have already made it in using the maps Shredder stole from the Turtles’ lair. Hearing a group of Killer Monks coming down the hallway, T.K.O. uses her telekinetic powers to levitate them to the ceiling, while Psonic creates an energy keytar and plays some “null sound” to mask their noise from the guards. They then find the main entrance to the Talisman’s chamber, but T.K.O. reads the map and tells Psonic it’s booby-trapped. They then take a detour to a secret entrance.

In the warring Kyrranian Desert of the Middle East, Cyberius shows Shredder a vast battleground where two enemy nations are doing battle. Cyberius tells Shredder that according to his calculations, the alignment will occur in this exact spot… though it needs to be cleared of debris. Uniting his two fragments of the Green Talisman, Shredder channels the awesome energy through his body and handily wipes out both armies.

At the temple, Don finds the main entrance to the Talisman’s chamber, but is unaware of the booby-traps. The Turtles all fall into various deadly pits, but use their wits and skill to escape death. They arrive in the chamber, but before they can secure the Talisman, T.K.O. levitates it into her clutches. Psonic then forms several energy instruments and hits the Turtles with sonic attacks, blowing a hole through the side of the temple. T.K.O. levitates herself and her brother to safety as the Killer Monks descend upon the Turtles.

Mikey and Leo recede into their shells and Don and Raph use them as makeshift snowboards to sled down the side of the mountain. The Killer Monks give chase, at least until Psonic uses an energy guitar to cause an avalanche. The flood of snow eventually catches and buries the Turtles. T.K.O. lets her telekinetic forcefield down, thinking the Turtles dead, but Mike pops out of the snow and hits the bad guys with snowballs. T.K.O. drops the Talisman and both she and Mike race to snatch it up. They touch it at the same time and cause the confused mystical energies (only supposed to be accessed by one individual at a time) to explode.

The explosion frees the other three Turtles from the snow and they find T.K.O. and Psonic knocked out. As Don recovers the Talisman, Leo makes a horrible discovery. Just as the mystical energy had reverted Splinter’s mutation, returning him to his human form, the energies reverted Mikey’s mutation… turning him back into a baby turtle.

Yoshi declares that his son has heard enough story for one night; he’ll hear the conclusion tomorrow. Leaving, he tells his son he won’t hear it, however, until he has cleaned up his room.

Hamato Yoshi enters his son’s bedroom and commends him on cleaning the mess up. The son admits he actually just swept everything under the bed. Yoshi reminds him that in his haste to remove the clutter, he accidentally included something of great value: the Green Talisman. The son asks Yoshi if his toy talisman is actually THE talisman and Yoshi decides to finish the story.

In Tibet, Yoshi is busy training his new/old human body to get his chi aligned when suddenly he has a terrible premonition that his students are in danger. Yoshi immediately rushes to their aid.

At the crater, Leo plucks up Michaelangelo (now reverted back to a normal turtle by the powers of the Green Talisman) while Raph knocks Psonic out cold. T.K.O. attempts to hover the Talisman into her clutches using her telekinesis, but Yoshi arrives just in the nick of time to conk her out. Leo shows Mikey to Yoshi and the sensei fears that the only way to restore him is to use the power of the completed Green Talisman during the celestial alignment. Don rifles through Psonic’s pockets and finds his teleportation remote. He decides to hack it and use it to send them all to Shredder’s HQ.

At the Kyrran desert, Shredder has succeeded in slaughtering both armies and destroying all their weapons of war. Cyberius, while scarfing some pizza, says that the Turtles are trying to hack the teleporter. Knowing they have the third Talisman, Shredder tells Cyberius to allow them to arrive.

The Turtles and Yoshi teleport in, Shredder immediately attacks (Mikey and Cyberius’s pizza getting tossed around in the chaos) and with the two Talismans in his possession, the villain is unstoppable. Shredder is about to strike the killing blow to Yoshi’s chest when he realizes his old nemesis’s ploy: Yoshi had the Talisman in his vest pocket, hoping Shredder would strike and destroy it. Shredder collects the last Talisman, unites it with his two pieces and becomes invincible.

Right on time, the celestial alignment begins and the stars beam down a pillar of green energy… right on top of a discarded slice of pizza. As Shredder marches toward it, he fails to notice the tiny Michaelangelo already inside the pillar, waddling toward the pizza. As Shredder steps in, he slips on Mikey and drops the Talisman directly onto the turtle’s back. Mikey now has ultimate power in his grasp for the brief span the alignment is open. He uses it to turn the slice of pizza into a whole pizza. And with that, the alignment ends and the Talisman begins to depower.

Shredder, his mind blown over having lost his key to god-like power, finally has a mental breakdown and is reduced to a drooling vegetable. Cyberius, meanwhile, attempts to escape via teleportation. Donatello unplugs his equipments and then knocks the kid out. Yoshi quickly collects the Talisman and tells the other Turtles to each put a hand on it and hold it over Mikey: They will channel their willpower through the Talisman and use its last remaining energies to return Mikey to normal.

Yoshi’s son asks his dad if they were able to return Mikey to normal. Yoshi asks his son to answer that question himself… for he is Michaelangelo. Yoshi then wishes Mikey (who has the body of a teenage mutant turtle, but the mind of a child) goodnight and leaves his room.

Outside, April and the other Turtles ask if Mikey will ever be the same again. Yoshi assures them that Mikey’s mind is quickly catching up with his body and all will soon be well. He also reveals that, by using the power of the Talisman to reverse Mikey’s change, they also reversed his own: fur has begun growing on his arm and soon he will be Splinter again. Yoshi tells his sons not to feel sorry for him, as there is nothing to regret and the world is a better place for all that they’ve done.

REVIEW

Yes, that Dan Slott.

This story is so good, it could have been reworked somehow into the guest era of Mirage comics. But of course, Hamato Yoshi being Splinter is very non-canon. The mini-series is closer to the movies than whatever came before. It was supposed to be a new beginning, but it ended up being the final TMNT story published by Archie Comics.

I always wanted to read this comic, but I couldn’t really place it in any time or title. And I cannot even remember where I saw the art for issue 2 (probably a fanzine, but I cannot remember what the article was about).

And the art is amazing. It’s not Ron Lim inside, but it’s very good. It feels like a mix between Jim Lawson and the Henson Turtles.

The framing device was used very well (although, the color of the captions gave away the ending a little bit during the third issue). It does feel like a conclusion once that story is over.

I am also a big fan of seeing the Turtles go inside their shells, and the origin of that may have been that cover.

Also after years of inaccurate coloring, this mini-series has the right colors (you can see who is Asian and who isn’t).

The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers parody may have been a bit too much. They were more popular than the Turtles in 1996 (I feel like the last two season of the cartoon and the “Next Mutation” show were a direct response to the popularity of the Power Rangers and other darker cartoons of the time), but perhaps it isn’t a good idea to make fun of them, while your readers, most likely also watch the Power Rangers.

I give this story a score of 9.

#archie comics #comics #review #1996 #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #teenage mutant ninja turtles adventures #the year of the turtle #ron lim #scott koblish #heroic age #graphic colour works #harvey mercadoocasio #elman brown #modern age

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electricarmchair · 5 years

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Patreon Update: The Electric Exhibition Relaunch

At the start of 2019, I made a goal on my Patreon that if I reached $5, I would relaunch The Electric Exhibition- and thanks to the support I have received, I have reached my first tier!

I really have missed making prompts and reading your pieces. However, I found it unmanageable last year to reblog work that didnt have to do with the prompts, as the numbers were too high for me to keep up with. So for now, I’m going to start off basic, with one prompt posted by every Sunday.

Until the first prompt is posted, feel free to use any of the old prompts! Use the tag #armchairchallenge so I may find your work and reblog it at @electricexhibition. (Note: I will not be reblogging any pieces unrelated to the prompt.)

Past Prompts:

#17 - Saturnine

#16 - Brobdingnagian

#15 - Write a Haiku (based on a previous piece)

#14 - The Last Vampire

#13 - Another Hour

#12 - Orange

#11 - Eclipse

#10 - Rinse and Repeat

#9 - The Poisoned Apple

#8 - Zeros and Ones

#7 - The Porcelain Puppet

#6 - (Ghost) Riders In The Sky

#5 - The Whispering

#4 - The Tooth Fairy

#3 - 7

#2 - Once Upon A Time...

#1 - Keyhole (Bonus: Purple, Agile)

Thanks, guys

- April

If you’d like to support what I do, you can do so on my Patreon.

- Non-followers can find a free Feb-2019-Calendar-Printable of art and poetry from out of this world, here!

- Patrons will receive scans of rough drafts (poetry/ art), photos of the process leading up to the final copies, and HQ scans of the finished pieces - Daily- as well as goodies along the way.

- Be sure to check out the announcement for my boyfriend’s titular self-published work, SM-SARA, and other collected stories, here!

What you might be missing out on:

Inktober 2018 / Realistic Portrait series / the “A” is for Astronomy series

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electricexhibition · 5 years

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Electric Exhibition Re-launch

At the start of 2019, I made a goal on my Patreon that if I reached $5, I would relaunch The Electric Exhibition- and thanks to the support I have received on my main blog, @electricarmchair, I have reached my first tier!

Past Prompts:

#17 - Saturnine

#16 - Brobdingnagian

#15 - Write a Haiku (based on a previous piece)

#14 - The Last Vampire

#13 - Another Hour

#12 - Orange

#11 - Eclipse

#10 - Rinse and Repeat

#9 - The Poisoned Apple

#8 - Zeros and Ones

#7 - The Porcelain Puppet

#6 - (Ghost) Riders In The Sky

#5 - The Whispering

#4 - The Tooth Fairy

#3 - 7

#2 - Once Upon A Time...

#1 - Keyhole (Bonus: Purple, Agile)

Thanks guys

- April.

If you’d like to support what I do, you can do so on my Patreon.

- Non-followers can find a free Feb-2019-Calendar-Printable of art and poetry from out of this world, here!

- Patrons will receive scans of rough drafts (poetry/ art), photos of the process leading up to the final copies, and HQ scans of the finished pieces - Daily- as well as goodies along the way.

- Be sure to check out the announcement for my boyfriend’s titular self-published work, SM-SARA, and other collected stories, here!

What you might be missing out on:

Inktober 2018 / Realistic Portrait series / the “A” is for Astronomy series

#im back #electricexhibition #relaunch #february 2 #2019 #electricarmchair #poetry #prompts #poets on tumblr #poetry community #writing #writers on tumblr #writing community #patreon #announcement #update #february #thank you #armchairchallenge

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thotyssey · 6 years

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On Point With: Darlinda Just Darlinda

A veteran burlesquer, dancer and performance artist, Darlinda Just Darlinda continues to make her mark in nightlife and the arts world at large. On the eve of the premiere of her new project, DJD gives us the scoop on what this is, where’s she’s been and where she’s going!

Thotyssey: Hey Darlinda! I was wondering how last night's show at the House of Yes went... EXTRA!

Darlinda Just Darlinda: Hello! EXTRA Burlesque was awesome! LadyBox Theater did a takeover! My co-founders Peekaboo Pointe and Tansy did solos, and we were joined by one of our core dancers Vic Sin for a sneak peek of Untitled Rainbow Project that's debuting at Wild Project on Thursday 9/6 for a limited four show run!

We're gonna get into the deets of that intriguing project in a bit! So you are well known here for being a burlesquer, a dancer, a performance artist, a choreographer and show producer for a minute now. Were you always all of these things, or did some of these evolve over time after others?

Yes! I've been involved with dance, and theater since I was a child. My mom was a producer of a non-profit dance series in the 80's, and they were both on the board of the local theater company. They put me in all the dance, comedy improvisation and theater classes that were available in my tiny Northern California town.

So naturally I got my BA in Theater Direction. In college I directed The Vagina Monologues twice and for my senior thesis I directed Hedwig and The Angry Inch. I was obsessed with drag, but didn't know how to fit it in with my female body. When I graduated college, I discovered burlesque and realized that it was a combination of all the things I loved... and haven't looked back in 15 years!

I was wondering how your stage name came about.

I actually found the name “Darlinda” in college one day, when I met this fantastic woman in a red, white and blue Swarovski crystal encrusted leather jacket. Her name was Darlinda--, I'd never heard the name before. Then a week later, I was shopping at the Monterey County dump's thrift store called Last Chance Mercantile, and I found a burgundy satin jacket with the name “Darlinda” on the front and a RAINBOW on the back, I also found some rainbow booty shorts that same day(apart from being queer, I've always been obsessed with rainbows). I lost the jacket at a show, but the shorts are still alive and well.

Then when it was time to get a burlesque stage name, I thought about it... "Darlinda... just Darlinda, like Madonna!" then I changed my mind because I realized "Darlinda Just Darlinda is funny and catchy!" Sometimes it confuses people, so I have to reiterate, " first name Darlinda, last name also Darlinda, middle name Just!"

That’s a crazy coincidence, that odd name popping up twice in such a short time.

Right, I couldn't escape the name! Amazing!

Dita Von Teese just performed at Wigstock, and she’s arguably the most conventionally famous burlesquer... but the classic style she performs in is not what a lot of today’s burlesque dancers do.

I wanted to go to Wigstock, but since I had a show, I was only able to see an hour of it... so it didn't seem cost effective. Anyway, Dita is great: she employs a lot of my friends, her shows are a Grand Spectacle, and I really appreciate seeing that kind of artistry on a big gorgeous stage!

How would you describe your own burlesque... like, what are your goals when you perform?

My burlesque style is what I call Performance Art Burlesque. I tell stories, make political statements, do actual rituals, and sometimes just make people laugh and sing... along like my "Wind Beneath My Wings" act. My goals are to inspire people to feel something, to improve their lives, to be present and love themselves!

These days, burlesque is often about body positivity and female empowerment... these are important traits in the Trump / #MeToo reality. But I guess there will always be naysayers, feminists and misogynists alike, who dismiss it as objectification. How would you respond to them?

I have a #MeToo reverse striptease and an Anti-Trump striptease. Body objectification is only bad when the person who's body it is doesn't give consent, or isn't properly paid for what they do. I art model and strip! I've made my living consensually and consciously objectifying my body. It's my artistic "paint brush." One minute I'm doing a cute "patriotic" striptease... the next minute I'm physically nauseated, naked, pulling a photo of #45 out of my pussy so I can tear it up and tear up the patriarchy.

youtube

Werk! You and Minnie Tonka form the burlesque-producing duo The Schlep Sisters, best known for bringing us an amazing annual Hanukkah show, and more recently the “Boy Vey” revue at Coney Island.

We will celebrate our 15-year Anniversary in Feburary 2019, and our 12th Annual “Menorah Horah” during Hanukah (December 2-10th 2018)!

And you two did some drag in that Coney Island show!

"Boy Vey” in August, was our first time being drag kings together!

Is there anything else in the works from you two?

Minnie Tonka is in Untitled Rainbow Project this week, and is focusing a lot of her energy on her nutritional therapy practice called Wellness HQ.

Tell us about Ladybox. What’s the history of this theater group?

Yes, LadyBox Theater! Tansy, Peekaboo Pointe and I got together in January when I wanted to start working on my new Dance Theater show Untitled Rainbow Project. They had been working on their performance art piece Feast for a few years, so it seemed fitting that we band together to start our own dance theater / performance art group, and LadyBox was formed. Tansy has a background in theater, choreographing and starring in Eager to Lose at Ars Nova. Peekaboo Pointe has both a degree in dance, and is currently getting her Masters in Theater Technology.

With our cumulative decades of nightlife / burlesque entertainment, it seemed like the perfect time to start this company. I have dabbled in off-Broadway and noticed a huge male-centric influence on theater / performance art, that is super oriented towards gay men... but not so much queer women. So it's been really thrilling making this work with mostly queer women on the steering wheel! There are some men on stage, but it’s a mostly women-run company. It surprisingly feels revolutionary, because it shouldn't in 2018. But in the #45 regime, women's rights are threatened, so now is a huge time to stand up for our rights.

On a more logistical level..., once the company is up and running, we've got a few productions under our belt. We want to produce other female, queer, trans, POC, performance art/ dance/ theater makers. We hope the LadyBox can be a place for all folks to make their art! We are being produced by the amazing Mighty Lucky Productions for this launch, and from this we hope to start our non-profit and apply for grants!

Why is your piece called Untitled Rainbow Project, by the way?

I've been doing performance art with a rainbow theme for some time, 10 years ago I did A Year in Rainbow, a year-long "life as art" project where every other month I would wear a color of the rainbow. I did a daily blog about it, as well as a show each month honoring the color... and the in-between months I would wear rainbow every day. Anyway, for the past 10 years I wanted to do another rainbow project, and so I came up with the idea to do a loosely-autobiographical story using the rainbow color chakras as a storytelling device. For example, Red has inspired Birth and Sex! Orange is about Divinity! Yellow is Intuition. Green is the violence of love. Blue is speaking your truth and your voice. And Purple is a Royal Explosion! I couldn't think of a name for the piece, so I just used Untitled Rainbow Project for a filler, and it just stuck!

Amazing! Well it should make for a fascinating experience of viewing at Wild Project on September 6th, 7th and 8th!

I understand that on premiere night (Sept. 6th), there will be an epic opening party at Club Cumming, where the URP shall be performing with other greats.

YES, exactly! Club Cumming has been such a supportive breeding ground for nightlife in the past year, so it seemed like the PERFECT spot to hold our after party and fundraiser. I'm SUPER THRILLED to have Ana Matronic be our DJ! There will be performances, and a live auction of some amazing art!! I'm SO looking forward to it!

And this weekend, you’re gonna do Bushwig! What’s your slot, and what shall you be doing?

I'm at Bushwig Sunday Night (Sept. 8) 9:20pm. I'll be doing "Wind Beneath my Wings," my favorite lip synch striptease. Two words: "expect pussy!"

Pussy Power!

Anything else?

I'm a resident performer at Extra Burlesque at House of Yes, and Fuck You Revue at Bizarre Bushwick. So folks can find me at their monthly shows!

Okay last question: in your opinion or even experience, what is the absolute worst song to burlesque to?

Oh, that's a tough question. First one that comes to mind is Cher’s "Welcome to Burlesque." It’s TOO obvious. BUT I could see someone doing a parody to that song. That's really the joy of burlesque: it literally means to make a joke/ make fun/ laugh at something! And that's the joy of life... you get to laugh along the journey!

Thank you, Darlinda!

Check Thotyssey’s calendar for Darlinda Just Darlinda’s upcoming gigs, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

On Point Archives

#onpointwith #darlindajustdarlinda

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moonlitoutpost · 6 years

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A Year of Games - 2017

It’s a new year! So why not get in on the action and recount the year previous, the last 12 moon cycles, just like everyone else with a top of the top’s list. They’re a fun way to catch up on things and stuff that may have slipped through the cracks, a shorthand, basically just cheating off your friend’s answers before a test. But there is no test, and we didn’t study either.

Having recently read through some great lists ourselves, we thought we’d write our own! Below are a few of our favorite games that we have played in 2017. These choices are unique in that they are not limited to the calendar year, more of things that we played during it :)

1. Summon Nights 5

Summon Nights 5 is a beautiful mix of bewitching artwork, endearing story, and sharp gameplay. An addicting brew of a finely sculpted battle system and lackadaisical leisure. For us, it was our dark horse of the year, an unexpected upsetter in the roster of contenders. A last minute entry, bought/purchase on a whim, that went on to rise it’s way to the top, as our game of the year.

Right out of its lush packaging, its mysterious and decked out box held our stare long before we officially put the cartridge in. And somehow after this, we were instantly hooked! The game initially was released in 2013 yet thanks to this english translation, we were able to enjoy the adventure in its full glory. It’s always our pleasure to encounter a sleeper hit that seems to have almost criminally gone under the radar. Most likely by happenstance, the graphics reminded us of a really sharp DreamCast game, and that only makes us like it even more ;)

Though the game’s scope isn’t massive, what is in view, is satisfying and rather comes off as quite focused. The amount of systems that they have given you to play with are so rewarding and joyfully exhausting when you really get a handle on them. Slyly unfolding an intricate depth when it comes to the combat, and conducted by a brilliant understanding of pacing.

If it were a candy: Summon Nights would be a rich nuggety strategic RPG, wrapped in the light airyness of a visual novel. A charming game from top to bottom, we can’t wait to play more in this series!

2. Asura’s Wrath

A game that offers no moderation, no holds barred, takes no prisoners, and leaves nothin’ on the table. Asura’s Wrath deals in grander rather than subtlety. It’s not often that a game’s vibe can be considered timeless, but strangely enough Asuras Wrath by all account balances that idea of strange classical timelessness and pull no punches insanity. Every passing moment in it was just a new trip to revel in, as we blissfully savored every second.

It’s one of those oddities that you could say is by definition less than a ‘game’, but more than a movie. It’s an experience worth having. A power nouveau of uninhabited ideas, truly one in a million.

3. Fortnite

If PUBG is the hard-R inescapable action flick of the summer, then Fortnite is the Saturday-morning cartoon spinoff complete with its own tie-in sugar-soaked cereal and line of action figures: some assembly required!

It’s fast, it’s frantic, it’s flashy, it’s vibrant! Mad-dash blitzing our way to surviving 98 other players has been a theme for us this year. While many multi-player games left victories ringing hollow, in Fortnite, the highs have never felt higher! Every moment has its own risks and rewards, with juuuust the right amount of luck sprinkled on top. Bang! Your team suddenly clashes head to head with another. You’re well stocked, but you could be better off. Shots are fired. Your team walks away from the fight - but just barely. Your emerging status to win has now been cut severely. It’s these calculated risks that makes the game more exciting! If you take them, you could come out worse for wear. But with a similar roll of the dice…you could come out king. And that has the potential to be in every fight, with the lasting effects rippling through the rest of the match.

We don’t know if we’ve felt like anything like this in any other multiplayer game. That’s what we like about it, and that’s where the best moments come from. from the hijinks of playing together and with friends, and the moments where it comes down to the wire, clawing your way to win an extreme underdog victory: it’s just a great flow!

Every match of Fortnite gives you the prospect to come away with a story. For many games it is often promised but rarely accomplished. However this is one that actually feels like it.

4. Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak

The Gameboy is one of our most beloved systems, home to many of our all-time favorite games. Within its unassuming enclosure, there are many unique treasures and exciting surprises. This game is definitely one of them. If you are already familiar with the Hamtaro universe, you’ll recognize the perfect mix of adventure and adorability. If not though, get ready to embark on a game that is expressive, immersive and above all, heartwarming!

In this low-key adventure game you get to experience the world as the pint-size of a hamster. There’s a particular feeling it offers. Something about being shrunk down, tiny, a miniature evergladen, roaming through a world of macro amalgamations. You might say there’s an air of nearby secrets, or a peaceful openness, and this game lends to that atmosphere with a beautifully rendered playground of pixels. And like any fun adventure game, surprises are hidden behind every corner, making you want to poke and prod at everything in the world.

The pastel color palette is really pleasing and the art style is loose and free. Everything has so many different expressions and reactions to things, it really brings out the character, and goes a long way in tying the experience together. The animated Hamtaro show translates really well to the game, we found that like ‘wow, they captured it perfectly!’ Everything from the vibe to the design, is like you’re dropped into an episode of the anime itself!

In a world where so many recent visual novels and adventures games come with choices that hold the balance of life and death on the line, sometimes it’s nice to stop and smell the roses *hiff hiff*

No hamster will remember your choice..and that’s nice!

5. Persona 5

A long-awaited sequel to one our favorite JRPGS, Persona 5 improves on everything when it comes to the mechanics and the style of its predecessor. From the killer score to the fleshed-out battle system, a lot of it feels just grand! Each change that was introduced seemed to galvanize the strengths of previous work. It often feels like a combination of many smart changes and improvements, such as but not limited to: more meaningful fights, memorable dungeons/dungeon themes, more realized stealth mechanics, a more robust velvet room, increased save points, the addition of Momentos, more locations to visit, more interesting side quests, and more recreational activities than you have time in a day. The boss fights were super creative, leaps and bounds above what they had already laid out in 4. Dungeons feel like places, no longer just randomized tile sets of pre-fab pieces, making progressing through feel more significant.

For as many good things as we have to say about it, the experience is not without flaw. While it comes out hot at the gate, a long-winded pacing only serves to fatigue its excellence and only lessens the verocity of the latter half of the game. Going hand in hand with this, while it comes down to personal preference, both the story and characters, minus a few standouts, didn’t resonate with us as nearly as much as their Persona 4 counterparts. These two things combined made the final stretch in this feel more laborious and really made us wonder if dropping a dungeon or 20 hours would have made for a tighter experience. There is an art form to knowing when to end something. While it might be more evolutionary than revolutionary, Persona 5 is still one of the best RPG’s we’ve played in recent memory. It’s almost a compliment to say how hard it is to top yourself and how big an act Persona 4 is to follow. :)

Special Shoutouts:

1. Pocket Camp: We never played New Leaf, We Never Got to be mayor, we never got to design our own town, and we never got the 3DS. But we’re absolutely infatuated with Animal Crossing. This latest addition to the series is definitely an enjoyable one. It’s a little less full-featured, but you still get to interact with a motley crew of cute animals, and make that perfect decorating vision, and that’s just enough of a hit to stave off the encroaching cold grip of death before losing consciousness. It may not see like a big deal to people who cut their teeth in New Leaf, but for those who have missed their home away from home, Pocket Camp gave us just enough of a familiar taste of milk and honey, without the rule of a tyrannical higher power lording over you with monetary conflict..oh wait a minute…

2. HQ: Late last year we learned about a novel little app that changed our schedule completely. Twice a day we found ourselves dropping everything we did to pull out our phone in an attempt to win fabulous cash prizes. Whether it was calling live streams to halt, sneaking glances at it during work, or loosing track of time in public. Assembling the crew, nearby friends, anyone who would listen, in a huddle trying to remember what the progenitor of the Oreo was. (it’s the Hydrox cookie by the way).

HQ is the realization of a dream most people have, of being a contestant on a game show, all while being strangely futuristic. It’s more than an app, it’s a fun social drip of spontaneity.

3. Paragon: the game we spent the single most time with this year, We were interested in it more from an academic point than anything, and that eventually progressed into kind of liking it. We’ve played it a lot, and have had some pretty crazy moments, including a surprising amount of meeting new people while playing it. Even going as far as stumbling into seeing ourselves in someone else’s gameplay footage! :) It’s been the best year in our opinion for released heroes, and there have been many improvements both big and small. A lot of design choices still require smoothing out, but we feel it’s come a long way since then.

Due to very recent events, its days have now become numbered. Rumors had been swirling in the under realm for the past few weeks, and its future was pulled into question. Now with this latest announcement, the final nails have been put in the coffin. It’s sad to see a game with such promise pulled before the broadstokes really got all the details. A bit abrupt, though if you were literate it wouldn’t be hard to make out the writing on the walls. While it didn’t cast as towering a shadow as its contemporaries, its unique presence in the world of MOBAS will surely be missed.

This is actually the third time we’ve come back and written this last paragraph specifically. As news of Paragon’s decaying state were raised, we came back to re-amend it, each iteration getting a little more bleak, up until posting it today, having moments ago, with a tinge of morose irony, just finished filling out a refund form. So now that the final word has been given, now we’re here: as opposed to looking forward, we’re instead forced to look back.

New beginnings and new ends, the textbook definition of a new year

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xtruss · 4 years

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Four Million Parts, 30 Countries: How An Airbus A380 Comes Together

— Howard Slutsken, CNN • 28th December 2018

World's largest passenger airliner: The double-deck, four-engine Airbus A380 is the world's largest passenger airliner, measuring close to 73 meters in length and holding as many as 853 passengers.

(CNN) — It's the middle of the night in the sleepy French town of Lévignac, in the countryside just outside of Toulouse.

There are people lined up along the town's main road, waiting for a parade to begin. But there are no marching bands or decorated floats at this 1 a.m. event.

Instead, a convoy of six trucks appears, each pulling an enormous trailer carrying a massive component of the world's largest passenger airliner, the Airbus A380.

The crowds applaud as the plane's wings, fuselage sections and horizontal tailplane slowly inch their way through the provincial town -- a procession that's repeated every few weeks.

Giant Airplane Kit

The Final Assembly Line (FAL) for the double-deck, 500+ passenger A380 is in the Jean-Luc Lagardere plant, a purpose-built facility at Toulouse-Blagnac Airport in southern France.

It's also the site of the Airbus corporate HQ and flight test department, and where single-aisle A320s and wide-body A330 and A350s are built.

Since its first delivery to Singapore Airlines in 2007, more than 200 A380s have rolled off the line in Toulouse. Most of the planes, more than 100 aircraft, are flown by the Dubai-based Emirates airline.

As with other Airbus projects, the manufacturing of components for the A380 are spread among the company's facilities throughout Europe, and parts come from suppliers all over the world.

The megajet's wings are built in Broughton, Wales; fuselage sections come from Hamburg, Germany and Saint-Nazaire, France; the horizontal tailplane is manufactured in Cadiz, Spain; and the vertical tail fin is also made in Hamburg.

Getting these huge pieces of airplane to the FAL is a tightly orchestrated logistical process, overseen by Arnaud Cazeneuve, oversize surface transportation manager for Airbus.

From rivets and bolts, to seats and engines, an A380 is made up of about four million individual parts produced by 1,500 companies from 30 countries around the world.

"One A380, to me, is six components -- three fuselage sections, two wings, and the horizontal tailplane," says Cazeneuve.

Ro-ro Ships

Airbus has a fleet of three specially designed vessels to transport the A380's major components to a floating pontoon dock in Pauillac, just inland on France's Atlantic coast.

The roll-on, roll-off -- or ro-ro -- ships carry the six completed A380 sections from Airbus facilities in Wales, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

"There is no crane activity needed," Cazeneuve tells CNN Travel.

"Each production plant puts the sections on the transport jig, and a special multi-purpose vehicle goes under the jig to move it.

"I don't have to touch the section, just transfer the component from one transport means to another."

Six by Sea, One By Air

While the six major components of an A380 are enjoying a sea cruise, the plane's vertical tail fin flies from Hamburg to Toulouse.

The fin's first flight isn't on the outside of a plane, but inside one of Airbus' A300-600ST Super Transporters -- better known as the Beluga.

These highly modified cargo carriers started life as wide-body passenger jets. Each plane's cockpit has been dropped to accommodate a cavernous cargo bay that's been grafted atop the fuselage.

The fleet of five Belugas link Airbus facilities in Europe, carrying components to FALs for all of Airbus' planes.

Even though the Beluga is designed to carry oversized cargo, it can only accommodate the vertical fin of the A380 -- all of the other major sections of the megajet are just too big.

Meanwhile, in Pauillac, the A380's six major components are unloaded, and then moved to one of two barges for the next stage of the trip to Toulouse.

The barges make four return trips over eight days, traveling 95 kilometers up the Garonne River to Langon. But from there, it's still another 240 kilometers to the FAL in Toulouse.

As each major component arrives in Langon, it's transferred to a specially designed trailer. Once all six sections arrive, the road trip to Toulouse can begin.

Road Trip

Traveling only at night, the convoy takes two evenings to cover the 240 kilometers to Toulouse, on the Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit (IGG) -- a secondary-road route that was modified to handle the extreme size of the A380's sections.

"Between Langon and Toulouse, before the A380, there was a road managed by the French authorities," says Cazeneuve.

"When we developed the project, we came to the authorities saying, 'we would like to transfer these big components on this route.'"

Airbus paid 57% of the road upgrade cost of 171 million euros ($205 million), and the government paid the remaining 43%, recognizing the economic benefit brought to the region by the A380 project.

Roads were widened, and obstructions shifted from the roadside. Over 6,500 trees were planted, three to four times the number that were removed.

Dedicated bypass roads were built, to make it easier for the convoy to navigate around some of the 21 towns and villages on the route.

As well as a slew of other changes, roundabouts were rebuilt to allow the trucks to pass directly over the center of the traffic circles.

More than 35 kilometers of bicycle and horse paths were created, utilizing the new wider right-of-way.

Hero's Welcome

"When you're driving on the road, you feel that this is used by the A380," says Cazeneuve. "You know that this is something different than a normal road."

A calendar showing the planned convoy dates is available on the IGG website, and local residents are reminded three days before each convoy begins its trip, via roadside display boards.

As the trucks move through the night, the route is closed in sections to regular traffic, for both the safety and security of the convoy -- and then there's the town of Lévignac.

Instead of using a bypass, the convoy travels directly though the center of the town. This is the one section of the IGG where each truck is accompanied by spotters, walking alongside the trailers -- and for good reason.

"There is just 50 centimeters clearance on each side between the component and the buildings. People in the buildings are watching the components go by, right in front of their windows," says Cazeneuve.

Once through Lévignac, it's just an hour's drive to the convoy's final stop, at the FAL in Toulouse.

Although he might lose some sleep, Cazeneuve regularly heads out from Toulouse in the middle of the night.

"I go quite often to see the convoy, to see that everything is running well."

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look-alive-sunshinee19-blog · 4 years

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Web based life Strategy for Social Media

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest—with such a significant number of viral social channels out there, it regularly gets dubious for brands/organizations to monitor their internet based life schedule.

Internet based life is the up front of your promoting endeavors. That implies you ought to have the option to recognize what's going out on which social channel and when. For that to be the situation, you are required to keep your web based life work process on track consistently.

It shouldn't be an unexpected that making and distributing content, observing commitment, and following internet based life advertising accomplishment across different social channels can be somewhat testing. What's more, as organizations scales, this test just deteriorates.

Consider this — to have the option to oversee and run your web based life showcasing efforts, you're going to require a fruitful online networking work process, and you're going to require it quick.

An online networking the board work process is fundamentally a well-characterized framework or a progression of activities that you follow to proficiently plan posts across various web based life directs in an opportune way. Presently, various brands, organizations, and groups have diverse internet based life work processes relying upon industry, crowd and target.

Sounds muddled? All things considered, luckily, there are web based life work processes and layouts that you could use to streamline and accelerate the procedure. What's more, that is actually what we will talk about here…

Web based life Strategy Workflow

Regardless of whether you're conceptualizing on another battle or looking for approaches to improve the present one, having a ground-breaking internet based life system is an absolute necessity.

Utilizing a web based life system layout enables you to pick up lucidity over your web based life objectives, locate your optimal clients and quest for approaches to all the more likely connect with them, investigate your potential challenge, assess your present internet based life nearness, build up an attentive substance procedure, and change the technique varying.

Head to our Guide To Social Media Marketing for 2019 for a separate of the means! When you have the correct system that works for your business, you can detail it into a layout that can be effectively adjusted.

Web based life Calendar Workflow

A web based life schedule is the place you sort out every one of your online life posts by channel, date, and time, and is urgent to your web based life promoting toolbox.

In case you're always shuffling with such a large number of social channels, utilizing an online life schedule format will assist you with bettering arrangement and calendar the posts or substance you're sharing. Furthermore, you can make a different schedule or each channel/venture with no issue.

Use Hopper HQ as a social substance schedule and see precisely what is going out when!

Web-based social networking Management Workflow

When you've made your technique and sorted out social post schedule varying—it's an ideal opportunity to get everybody in real life.

You have to appoint assignments to people/gatherings, give them the data they need, and watch out for how things are advancing continuously. This is the place Kanban sheets and online networking the board work processes come into the image.

They assist you with keeping everything on track. There are work the executives programming and applications that enable you to make custom work processes or utilize a current layout to compose your different internet based life undertakings, dole out them to other people, team up on them, join records in them, and view them moving (or advancing) through different stages.

Online networking Analytics Report

The online networking examination report format is the way to estimating the estimation of your advertising endeavors. This is the thing that encourages you keep a tab on how your distinctive internet based life channels are performing.

The format enables you to record and spare online life measurements for each system, and incorporate subtleties like increased/lost devotees, all out commitment, absolute offers, all out perspectives, all out recruits, etc.

So these were the four significant formats and work processes that each online life advertiser should think about. Next, we've some extra layouts for web-based social networking that will spare you hours.

Web-based social networking Image Sizes

Having every social medium picture sizes spared some place convenient will spare advertising groups a ton of time. Content is a significant piece of computerized showcasing. Be that as it may, you can't simply distribute a 1000-words blog entry and anticipate that it should turn into a web sensation—except if you realize how to keep it intriguing.

Pictures, GIFS, images, recordings, and so forth are an incredible method to make the substance look additionally captivating and catching the crowd's eye (on any stage). "Online life picture size" is your fast reference asset to check what picture measurements and specs to use for each system.

Internet based life Audit

An internet based life review is the sort of layout that shows you a more clear image of what is and isn't working in your present web based life procedure (and what you can do straightaway). Such layouts are considered very valuable in holding new open doors under control and taking advantage of your web based life the executives assets while accomplishing higher crowd commitment.

Inside this review you can take a gander at all the examination from your crusades, evaluate devotee number and commitment rate over all systems, and utilize the learnings to illuminate your future online networking movement!

Give this a shot and you can make a custom layout dependent on your business' goals for online life.

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kentonramsey · 5 years

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One Editor Visited Zara's Headquarters in Spain and These Are the Secrets She Learned About the New Collection

When you're invited to get an inside look at Zara's headquarters to see the brand's latest Campaign Collection, you say yes. (Or, as Billie Eilish would say, "duh!") Walking through the brand's offices and factories in A Coruña, Spain, was pretty much awe-inspiring. It was so cool to see the entire process of how a single look gets designed, cut, created, and shipped to one of the thousands of Zara stores around the globe. It put most companies' HQs to shame (sorry, Instagram!). Zara has over 6,000 employees that rotate in shifts to make sure everything moves seamlessly. The distribution centers have multiple automated systems and machines that know exactly where to place an item when it's ready, making sure it goes to the correct store. It reminded me of Cher's closet in Clueless, but on steroids. I totally geeked out when I saw a box of a fresh new batch of Zara goods being shipped off to Willowbrook Mall in New Jersey, the location of the first Zara store I ever visited growing up.

Another thing I was excited to hear? That the company is planning to become more sustainable by 2025. Inditex, Zara's parent company, is planning for 100 percent of the cotton, linen, and polyester used by all eight of its brands to be organic, sustainable, or recycled. They expect to fully eliminate the use of plastic bags by 2020 and all single-use plastics by 2023.

When it comes to snagging the newest pieces, we all know the drill. Zara drops new products every Tuesday and Thursday, which is why the stores always seem to be filled with the latest trends. While chatting with the Zara design team, I learned how the Campaign Collection is different from the women's ready-to-wear line, and why it's worth the wait. The Campaign Collection was originally part of the women's line until it separated a few years ago. It follows the traditional fashion buying calendar and drops twice a year, once for Spring/Summer and again for Fall/Winter.

"Studio is a bit separate from the woman's collection - we don't have to reply to customer demand. Rather the opposite, customers either fall in love with the collection . . . or they don't," said a Zara design team member. "This season, the campaign was inspired by the Parisian sexy woman. Our muses were inspired by different French actresses in the '70s and early '80s." The collection usually consists of 20 to 30 pieces and comes at a higher price point since it's created with more high-end fabrics. Even with a higher price point, it is still relatively affordable compared to other contemporary collections.

When asked which pieces from the Campaign Collection will sell out the quickest, the design team called out a double-layer trench coat (my personal fave) and a contrasting lace slip dress that's perfect for the upcoming holiday season. Read on to see the gorgeous campaign, shot by Steven Meisel, and shop the pieces.

One Editor Visited Zara's Headquarters in Spain and These Are the Secrets She Learned About the New Collection published first on https://mariakistler.tumblr.com/

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trbl-will-find-me · 7 years

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Fic: Every Exit, An Entrance (1/?)

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option. (<3 to @companionwolf for lots of good fandom talk and getting me moving on this again.)

There are things she knows.

Her name.

Her age.

Her occupation.

There are other things she knows.

In March of 2015, hostile alien forces invaded the earth, making first contact in Germany.

As the Commander of the XCOM project, she led a global counteroffensive.

And that’s when things get fuzzy.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option. --

There are other constants, too: broad, general things like steadfast adherence to the laws of physics as commonly observed, and smaller, more specific ones.

The events before the invasion are familiar, a story she recognizes innately as her own, and a plausible chain of memories link what was with what is. There are no holes, no lapses in logic that make the dream fall away.

There is always a Doctor Shen, though the age and the gender varies. One invents a SHIV, the other a GREMLIN; they are both ferociously dedicated.

Bradford –always Bradford or Central, never John– is always there. Sometimes, there is a sweater; sometimes, there is a scar. They do not talk about June in Berlin.

The base is dark, the globe holographic, and his voice is still in her ear.

She looks for loose threads, one illogical strand to pull and pull and unravel the whole affair. She reasons that there has to be a slip, a glitch, some trick to tell the fun house reflection from the real thing,

She hasn’t found it yet, but she’ll keep looking, --

She stands in the midst of the carnage and chuckles quietly to herself. Bottles, glasses, clothing: when they partied, they partied. She should have known it would be a wild one when Molchetti had quite literally popped back into existence, landing in a heap on top of the hologlobe’s pedestal, cutting the air with an electric crackle.

“Hey, Strike One,” she called over the radio. “We found your missing package.”

She knows it’s not over, not yet. There will be clean up ops. There may still be the stray bogie, or a cell of aliens secreted somewhere far off. It may have just been the first wave, she thinks, and her stomach twists at the thought. There may be more coming.

Still, as she bends to pick up an empty bottle, she can’t deny that they earned this party. The Temple ship is gone, EXALT lies in ruins, and they are still alive.

There were days she doubted they would make it this far. Nova Scotia still weighs heavy on her, the sight of half the squad sliced to ribbons by chryssalids. Then there are the countless civilians they couldn’t save, abducted, tortured, and disposed of. And, of course, there are the shadows of the attack, of mutons pouring into the base, of their own people turned against them. Her ribs still ache from when she’d been thrown against a wall before a rare lucky shot stopped the creature in its tracks.

Yes, they’d earned a break.

Something stirs in the doorway, and she turns to see her second-in-command pick his way through. His sweater is missing, his tie is undone, and his shirt wrinkled but damn, if it isn’t a lovely sight.

The attack had taken a toll on him, too. Even setting aside the wrist only recently freed from a fiberglass cast, it’s hard to miss the hypervigilance, the longer shifts, the overreliance on caffeine and the rejection of a regular sleep schedule. He’d spent the night between the party and globe, ever vigilant.

“Commander.”

“Morning, Central.”

“Doctor Vahlen asked me to inform you that the sectoid heads are missing from the lab freezer.”

She should not be laughing at this. It is gross misconduct. With her luck, one is in her bed. Another is almost certainly in Central’s bed. They both know this.

And yet, laughter is all she can manage, sputtering out even as she tries to hold it back.

And then, she thinks she imagines it, but no, he’s laughing, too.

There they are, in the middle of chaos and mess, on what might be the first morning after the war, and they can still laugh.

She is ready to face whatever is next. --

She manages to sit until Bradford leaves, then half collapses against the pillows. Her head is buzzing and her stomach rolls. She knows she should get up, make the rounds, meet with the men and the staff. There are aliens to murder, an earth to reclaim.

But she is not ready to face whatever is next.

This is wrong, some little voice says. This isn’t how it played out. You woke up wrong. Go back to sleep and it will all be better.

She sits again, then slowly, gingerly, stands. The world around her spins and the bile in her empty stomach rises.

She remembers a party, a raucous party. Yan had clambered up onto the pool table and begun reenacting some internet video involving a very elaborate strip routine. Pukkila had egged him into it, and was appreciatively shoving cash into the other man’s boxers. Hafler had almost fallen off of the couch in an attempt to document the affair. The SHIV had buzzed around, a help and a hazard, butlering drinks and knocking down unsuspecting drunks. She remembers prying a haphazardly taped on butter knife from its chassis off, shaking her head at her soldiers’ antics.

But that’s not right, either, she thinks. Yan had died in the first terror attack, blood foaming from his mouth as thin men venom destroyed his lungs. Pukkila had been sliced to pieces holding off chryssalids in Nova Scotia one muggy June night. A berserker had dragged Hafler’s body off, barely human after having been mashed to a pulp.

She squeezes her eyes shut, and draws in a deep breath. It was a dream. They are dead and you are here and there is a job to be done.

Tygan is courteous and efficacious, and quite clearly brilliant. She is, truth be told, not sure how they managed to lure him from the city. There is a polish, a refinement that the rest of the crew lacks. He briefs her on what they know, what they might do with that knowledge. He assures her that all ADVENT tech has been removed, and that, yes, some residual effects do occur, but should dissipate in six to eight weeks.

Shen is bright and fierce, deeply apologetic for the loss she still so clearly feels. Her little robotic companion bobs and weaves, cute in its own way. She fights the urge to ask if Lily’s taught ROV-R to play fetch or if scritches behind the capacitors are a recognized form of affection. She laughs quietly to herself as she scales ladder from floor to floor; the elder Shen would have had a fit at the tattoo.

Her stomach lurches as she steps onto the bridge. The hologlobe is there, and the banners, yes, but they’re not quite right. The globe flickers in an out, unable to produce a steady visual. The banners are torn and tattered. Central is still buzzing at the center of the action, barely even surprised by the sirens that announce her presence, but she can read the ache of the wound in his carriage.

The eyes that stare back at her are young, so young, and do they really know what they’re getting into? What she’s leading them into? They are full of hope, full of expectation.

This is wrong this is wrong this is wrong, the voice in her head panics.

Her XO has the high points of his briefing ready. They’re hitting a stalled supply train nearby to make a grab for a power converter. There’s already a squad assembled and ready, waiting on her word.

She wants to take him aside and ask if it’s really wise. She’s been in a tank for twenty years and, hey, wasn’t it her decisions that had landed her there in the first place? Wasn’t it her failure that set them on this course? Does he really want to give her another chance?

Go back to bed. Go back to bed and you’ll wake up and this will just be some dream.

But, before she can open her mouth to give voice to any of it, Bradford reaches into his pocket and offers her an earpiece. She slips it on gingerly, still fighting the urge to protest. “Let’s see if I can still do this,” she offers, doing her best to offer up a grin.

“I don’t doubt it.” -- Someone is knocking.

“Commander?”

She groans in response, and gingerly lifts her aching head from her desk. Her desk in her office. Her desk in her office in the base. The base that is underground. Her calendar, with its vintage fruit crate label art, cheerfully reminds her that it is a week shy of Thanksgiving in the year 2015. She shakes her head, trying to shake the fragments of a strange dream from her mind. “Come in.”

Raymond Shen regards her with a sort of fond exasperation as he stands in her doorway. He is alive and whole, a cup of what she presumes to be green tea in his hand. For a moment, she is surprised, elated in her shock. Your daughter should see this, she thinks, She misses you.

“I thought you’d have taken advantage of the quiet to perhaps sleep in a bed,” he says, by way of greeting.

“That … had been my plan.”

Of course, he’s alive, she thinks. Why wouldn’t he be? The man came through the attack on HQ with barely a scratch.

He offers her a gentle nod, and a knowing look over his glasses. “Mr. Bradford is looking for you. There’s an incoming transmission from the Council. He started to worry when he couldn’t get you over the comms.”

She sighs. “Telling him to handle it will probably cause an incident, huh?”

“He seemed insistent on your presence.”

She sighs and rubs her face. “Thanks, Doctor. I’ll let Central know I’ll be right up.”

The man nods, heading out from her office towards the workshop down the hall.

She shakes her head, trying to clear the last vestiges of the dream from her mind. It’s not real. Shen is alive. Vahlen is alive. Shen’s little girl is a child. The aliens have not overrun the earth. Snap out of it.

“Central, what’s up?” She asks, pressing the comm link in her ear.

“Where are you? We’ve got an incoming transmission from the Council.”

“I was sleeping.”

“Moreno said quarters were empty.”

“On my desk.”

“You have a bunk for that.”

“Yeah, that was Dr. Shen’s thought, too. You know why they want us?”

“If I had to guess, something’s wrong.”

“Don’t even think it.”

“Comms have been quiet since Avenger, ma’am.”

“Let’s just hope it stays that way. I’ll meet you upstairs.”

Her relationship with the Council has never been great. For all her experience as the child of diplomats, she has never quite mastered the art of holding her tongue and concealing her anger. In the wake of the Nova Scotia incident, she had nearly torn the Spokesman’s head off as he relayed to her the collective’s displeasure with the two UFOs she’d been unable to intercept. Even when there was praise to be had, it still hung heavy with condescension.

Bradford is waiting for her outside of the situation room door. “Really, your desk?” He asks in lieu of a greeting.

She shrugs “At least it wasn’t on a tracking console.”

He grimaces. “You heard about that?”

“Central,” she grins. “Everyone heard about that.”

“Lucky me.”

“Don’t worry: the day can still get worse.”

The Spokesman stares down at them, face obscure as ever in the orange-blue light.

“Commander.”

“Mr. Spokesman.”

“The Council is requesting the remaining data from the XCOM project’s research efforts.”

She wrinkles her brow. “Results of autopsies and interrogations have been available as we got them, as have the specs on carapace and titan armors and the improvements we’ve made with satellite security and monitoring.”

“A casual review of your exploits in the field would suggest your advancements went far beyond what has been provided.”

“They’re interested in the weaponry,” Central volunteers.

“Absolutely not,” she says, her eyes darting from the screen, to Bradford, and back again. “Tell them no.”

“Commander, I would remind you that the XCOM project serves at the pleasure of the Council.”

“And I would remind the Council that the charter they themselves drafted gives me final authority over what is and isn’t released. Request denied.”

“Commander ---“

“Mr. Spokesman, I’ve addressed requests for interceptors, satellites, corpses, power supplies, medkits, nanovests --- virtually everything the Council’s asked for. I’ve even handed over arc throwers, against my better judgment. But I won’t hand over weapons. It’s an arms race waiting to happen, and you can tell the Council I said so.”

The Spokesman is silent. “Very well, Commander, but do not expect this to be taken lightly.”

The transmission cuts out and her shoulders sag, free of the tension she hadn’t realized she was carrying.

“Jesus,” Central offers.

“I won’t be responsible for plasma weapons being used against civilians. I won’t.”

“That may not be our biggest problem.” “You’re worried about an elerium bomb?” “I’m worried about Vahlen’s interrogation methodology.”

She shudders. She’d watched the process once, driven half by a sense of responsibility and half by a morbid curiosity. She didn’t make a habit of feeling sympathy for creatures that mowed down innocents, but the Sectoid Commander’s screams had been nothing short of agonizing; she can’t imagine inflicting the same on a human.

“Fuck,” she breathes. “You’re right.”

“POWs, political prisoners, dissidents: there are governments that wouldn’t hesitate to use that on their own people.”

“Including ours.”

Central nods.

“Damnit,” she rakes a hand through her hair. “Alright. Assuming they honor the existing terms of the charter, they have to fund us through the next six months. So, we’re safe til then.”

“And after?”

She swallows hard. “I don’t know.”

#xcom #fic #commander/central #x-posted to ao3 #every exit an entrance #canon typical violence

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fireandseaweed · 7 years

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Two Bro’s In Brome || Jason and Percy

Jason and Percy get pizza.

Late nights weren’t unusual for Jason these days. The duties of Pontifex coupled with the workload of his classes meant that he couldn’t go to bed quite as early as he used to, even though his alarm went off at the same time every morning. Sitting at his desk in the living room of his apartment, mostly tuning out the sounds of Netflix in the background, he tapped away at his laptop, editing a story he had to turn in for one of his classes. A cup of coffee (decaf because of the hour) steamed in front of him and even though he had a lot of work to do, he couldn’t help but feel peaceful. Until he heard the telltale sounds of a key scraping in the lock to his apartment. A couple people had keys; Nico, Annabeth and Percy, Piper, Will, so it was hard to pinpoint until the door opened who exactly it was. But he pushed his glasses up on his nose and waited for the door to open, “Help you with something?”

Percy had never fully understood how someone could be as much of a workaholic as Jason and Annabeth appeared to be. They both worked all the hours under the sun and to be honest Percy had sort of gotten used to the fact that they got so into their work that they forgot about him. Shifting the pizza boxes onto his left hand, he scrabbled with the lock and caught Jason red handed. “Ha. I knew you’d forgot.” He set the pizza on the table in the center of the living room, making his way over he spotted the laptop and word document. “If you’ve got work you need to do we can turn pizza night into a study sesh,” he always took his laptop to Jason’s. They often had to do homework as they chilled out together. “As long as you’ve got some beer I’m willing to forgive you.”

Jason turned beet red when he saw Percy come through his door with a stack of pizzas and a wide grin on his face, “Gods! I totally had! I’m so so sorry Perce.” He snapped his laptop shut and went to go help Percy with the boxes, setting them down on his kitchen counter before he pulled his best friend into a tight hug. “Between school and trying to work with the Vulcanites on rebuilding Temple Hill and shifts at the bookstore I’ve just been buried this week.” He released his friend and got them both beers from the fridge, “I do have beer! I always keep beer on hand just so you’ll forgive me when I inevitably fuck up.” He cracked the bottles open and passed one to Percy, “How are you? Thanks for grabbing the pizza.”

Laughing Percy hugged his friend and brushed away his apology. “I’ve already forgotten about it.” He shrugged and took the beer off of his friend. Taking a long drink, he smiled before grabbing a slice of pizza. Chewing on the cheesy delight he made his way across the room and slumped into Jason’s couch. “That’s much better,” he yawned gently and took another mouthful. Smiling peacefully he sat in silence for a moment before speaking. “Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve got too much on your plate? You don’t need to work and go to college and be the pontifex maximus. Leave something for the rest of us to do.” He laughed and swallowed another mouthful of beer. “Don’t sweat it,” he smiled. “I’m good, just, maybe for the first time in years I’m just living my life and it’s wonderful.”

“Is it because of the beer? There’s a reason I always keep your favorite in the back of my fridge.” Jason grabbed a slice of the super cheesy and bacony pizza that Percy had brought him, his favorite, and slid into the chair next to the couch, chewing idly and looking at his friend. “Nearly every day. But I made a promise to a goddess to be Pontifex, and a promise to myself to go to school and I need money so I’ve got to work too… so really it’s just a matter of keeping up this pace for another three years and then I’ll have my degree and it’ll all be peachy keen… or selling a manuscript before that and becoming a published author so I don’t need to work anymore. But you know me, P… I like being busy. If I’ve got too much downtime I go crazy.” A smile crept across his face and he leaned forward to squeeze Percy’s knee, “That makes me happy, dude. I”m glad. You definitely deserve this.”

“It may well be because of the beer, but it is also really nice to just get to hang out with a friend.” Percy smiled gently and swallowed another mouthful of ice cold beer. It was exactly what he needed after such a long and hard day. Shifting gently he shrugged. “You make too many promises Jason, when you commit to something you commit to it, I’ll give you that. But you’re stretching yourself too thin.” He wished that he could help his friend with this, but he had chosen this job and it was up to Jason to see it through. “I keep busy, but no so busy that I don’t ever have time off.” He taught swim classes and was the captain of the UNR swim team, he also studied full time and trained. “I’m lucky,” he knew it, despite the PTSD and everything that had ever happened to him, he knew that he was lucky. He knew that things could be much worse. “What about you?”

“We all know it’s the beer.” Jason threw a wink at Percy. Their long friendship made it easy for them to joke like this. When you’ve had someone’s blood all over your hands you get to joke with them a bit. “I make only the promises I intend to keep and the ones that need to be made. You know me, P. I gotta help however I can. Besides… as long as I have you and that genius girlfriend of yours to occasionally slap some sense into me.” He finished his piece of pizza and went to grab another from the box, “You get this from Pizza Place? Maxine’s getting better at this shit and it was already good as hell to begin with.” Sitting back down he shrugged and started in on his second pizza. “Life is life. I’m busy, therapy twice a week, I try to do some work on the Hill at least every weekend but you know what a fucking shitshow it is up there. Before you start to gripe at me I make sure to take at least two hours to do things just for me every night. I’m taking care of myself. Promise.” His eyes moved over to the large calendar hanging on the wall, filled with all sorts of dates and appointments, before he landed on a date heavily circled with a couple of stars on it, “New recruits come in a couple days. Ready for this year’s crop of scared kids?”

Shrugging gently, Percy laughed. “Well you are the one who is saying it is the beer, I won’t admit to anything.” He laughed and shook his head, he knew Jason was joking and it was always reassuring to have him make jokes at his own expense. That was when you knew you were with friends. Or in this case, his best friend. “Yeah, this is definitely one of Maxine’s finest works. I’ve been eating there since I arrived in New Rome and even I think that she is outdoing herself.” He chewed on his pizza and smiled, “You know how I worry about what could happen if someone didn’t make you look after yourself, besides Thalia wouldn’t let me get away with it if something were actually going to happen to you. I’m still pretty terrified of her shield.” He danced over the PTSD and the mention of therapy. This wasn’t the day for that. Jason’s suggestion made him laugh. “I doubt I’ll see much of them, I’m only covering a few training sessions for advanced swordsman, I won’t get to meet any of them for a while. I hope they’re ready though.”

With a twinkle in his eye Jason beamed at his friend, “Well that’s what brothers are for. Saying the inconvenient truths you won’t. I’m just here to keep you honest, Percito.” Jason debated on a third slice of pizza and decided to just sit and nurse his beer for a little while. “I can look after myself just fine, thank you. I have saved the world multiple times, a busy schedule is nothing compared to that. Though…. Thalia is more terrifying than Gaia and Krios combined.” He nodded as Percy talked, “I’m a little jealous. Reyna and Frank roped me into giving tours and being one of the on-call “if you need help settling in” people. One of the downsides of having an office at HQ. I doubt I’ll be very involved though. I’ll put on my best scary older legionnaire face and they’ll be too terrified to talk to me. Works like a charm every time and leaves me plenty of time to focus on the things that matter. Like homework, and movie nights.”

Laughing once more, Percy realised that he didn’t miss the nights that he had spent with legionnaires when he had first moved here. Hell he didn’t even miss being a counsellor at Camp Half Blood and that really told you that he had grown up. “Inconvenient or annoying truths?” He couldn’t hide his smirk and instead stuffed more pizza into his mouth. “Either way it is appreciated even if it isn’t convenient.” He shrugged gently and chewed on his pizza, “Well I wouldn’t go after her, I’m quite glad that she isn’t my sister. Although heaven help anyone who hurts you.” He shrugged gently and drank some more. “I do not miss those days, I am more than glad that there is a new generation of centurions who can cope with the nitty gritty details like settling in semi traumatised legionnaires and probatios.” Pretty much every demigod was partially traumatised. “Those are certainly important, but I hope you don’t have anyone who idolises you, that’s infuriating.”

Laughing along with his best friend, Jason stretched and twisted his broad frame until he was resting comfortably in the chair “she can be a hellion. An immortal, ageless, ferocious hellion.” A slight roll of his eyes and a shrug later he replied, finishing the last dregs of his beer “part of the job. Look intimidating in white robes and terrify them into doing well and fighting for the glory of Rome… and then praying to the gods that they don’t come knocking on my office doors.” He wandered over to the fridge and got them both two new beers, “That hasn’t happened in a year or so. Last one who was got a stern talking to by Reyna and Frank about what exactly constitutes stalking. I try to stay pretty aloof and unapproachable for that exact reason. I don’t have the time to deal with a wanted romantic partner let alone an unwanted one. Who has time for that?!” He chuckled wryly, mostly to himself. He hadn’t dated since Piper and though she kept trying to set him up with people, he was content to be single. “I know it’s early… but what’re you doing for Christmas this year?”

Gratefully accepting the new beer, Percy swallowed the last dregs of his current drink and held the ice cold bottle gingerly in his slender fingers. “Hashtag blessed ese,” he smirked gently and laughed before shrugging, “I never worry about you going rogue, I worry about Annabeth going rogue.” He thought back to his brief time in the legion and shrugged, the brand that had been tattooed onto his forearm seven years ago briefly popping into his mind. At least it looked cool. “I can’t blame them,” he said with a shrug, “I remember seeing Luke and Thalia in action and I was pretty awestruck, but you’re even more of a hero. The man who slayed the Trojan sea monster.” It was one of many of his best friends impressive accomplishments. “I get it, wanting to be single, from you it makes sense.” It was true. Jason deserved some time to himself, besides he was too busy to have a love life. “Mom and Gabby are going to Paul’s parents, so me and Annabeth will either stay here or go see her dad I guess. You? Either way, I expect to see you.”

“Who’s got the time to go rogue, dude? But gods help us if Annabeth ever does. We’d all be powerless in the face of her genius.” Jason’s cheeks flushed momentarily as he waved Percy’s compliments away “That was a long time ago. Now I’m just a dude doing dude things. and building temples. Nothing exciting. No monsters for this old man. Not if I can help it.” He couldn’t help but chuckle “but if I start getting a bunch of cats you gotta set me up on some dates, man. Don’t let me turn into that sad old man.” He knew Percy wouldn’t, even without asking. They looked out for each other, like they had since they first met, and he knew Percy had his back. “I haven’t decided. Either I’ll use my Pontifex sway to get a table at Bacchus’ for one or I’ll take a trip somewhere. I’m just trying to see who’s doing what.”

“Not to mention the amount of work it would be, by the Gods duelling a titan and giants was hard enough, when I fought Ares I was sure I was going to die.” Percy shrugged and smiled gently. It was nice that they could talk through things like this, even if they were mostly joking. “Just a demigod trying to have some kind of normal life, I get it.” He couldn’t think of anything better. Nodding gently Percy had to admit that he didn’t get to go home for Christmas nearly as often as he would have liked to be able to. Mostly because he was so busy, and the price of flying, it meant it was hard for him to work through it all. Pausing for a second, he nodded. “Well as I’m sure you already know, you’d be welcome to join me and Annabeth at any time. Christmas is a time for family.”

“I would honestly rather face Krios in single combat again than try to deal with a rogue Annabeth. That’s a depressing thought. Mostly for the titans. If a mortal woman is more terrifying than them.” Jason laughed, stretching, “well… as normal as we can get. We certainly don’t have the most normal lives, but we can get some sort of semblance of normality.” He gestured to the apartment around him “I’ve got a place. Houseplants. A bed that’s not a barracks bunk… this is pretty normal for us. It’s the kind of normal I can live with. Homework. Friends. Job. It’s a good normal and as long as I have you and Annabeth around I’m good.” His smile softened and mellowed, the smile of the content and loved, “I know. And the same goes for you guys. Wherever I am at Christmas there's always two places for you guys right next to me. I just sorta wanna get outta New Rome for it. No family to go to so I might just… go.”

“The titans are similar to the older and more conservative generation, they have stopped being relevant and that terrifies them.” Percy laughed. “As for Annabeth, well what can I say.” The pride in his voice wasn’t deliberate. But he couldn’t help but be fiercely proud of what she could do. She was way more impressive than any other demigod that she could think of. Smiling gently Percy thought about going away from it all for Christmas. Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. “I don’t know,” he sighed and shrugged, “I will have to see what Annabeth says, I’m not thinking just for me anymore.” He scratched the shadow of stubble that had crept across his face, tapping his fingers against his bottle of beer he smiled gently. It was true that this was as normal as things were to get for them. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. It was good to do something that didn’t have swords and blood as a main activity staple.

“Well… because we killed a bunch of them. That’s gotta really put a hitch in their panties.” Jason smiled at the clear pride Percy had in his girlfriend. They were a couple that loved and supported each other truly and deeply and Jason loved seeing it. “It’s not set in stone or anything. I’m just trying to figure out my options. But yeah… figure out what you guys are planning and let’s do something. Like normal mortal adults.” He sat comfortably in the chair for a long moment before heaving a giant sigh. “Alright. We gotta get some work done. Or at least I do. You can use my playstation if you want or do some work, but I’mma be writing shit. Be prepared for me asking you opinions on lines of shit. This is what you get for being my brother.” And he wouldn’t have asked for a better family.

#p: jason #two bro's in brome #para #chatzy para #f&gchatzy #f&gwriting

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