#Create Strong Password

[shbub]

[sahiinfo]

#Free Password Generator

Keeping your online accounts secure is more critical than ever, and one of the simplest ways to do that is by using strong, unique passwords for each of your accounts. If you're looking for a quick and easy way to generate secure passwords, check out our #Free Password Generator.

[cantsayidont]

I hate Windows so much, and the only mitigating factor is that I hate OSX and Linux even more.

[themonsterunderthebed]

one thing i've been confused by immediately after moving from germany to the usa: i have to make an account on a bazillion websites to access my health insurance and information? like okay, germany is notoriously behind when it comes to digitalization and i'm a self-professed luddite, but honestly. i need one login for my insurance (perfectly fine, same in germany), another one for my pharmacy insurance? which is apparently separate? but to get the pharmacy insurance login i first have to register myself for a DIFFERENT kind of login which i still don't really understand what it's for? some kind of pharmacy-insurance-uniting login?

and today i went to a walk-in clinic and they just sent me an email saying i could download a summary of my visit today which - great! that's so convenient! so i click on the link and it takes me to the clinic's website, which offers me the possibility to login with yet ANOTHER third-party health login. like what is happening. how do people keep track of all these logins. personally i'm not a huge fan of trusting a password manager with access to my intimate health details. sure maybe my german doctors communicated almost exclusively by phone which was/is hell for people with phone anxiety but there's just something very weird to me about the concept of instant messaging my doctor

[dungeonzine]

Need help prepping your zine portfolio or could use some pointers? Here’s a brief guide for choosing and organizing your works to make a successful portfolio!

Let’s start with artists.

What format should you use? Simple is usually best! Google Drive folders are often preferred because they easily display your work with no extra steps. Carrds, websites, or curated social media work too, so long as there is not extra material or posts hiding your work. Try to have as few clicks before seeing your work as possible, so no need to separate work into folders and certainly don’t require a mod to search your entire page for it—they may not have the time.

Make sure that your work is publicly viewable! Double and triple check that your Drive folder is shared publicly or your websites are not behind a password.

When choosing which pieces to include, always choose your best and most polished work. All works should be complete, in full color, and be fully shaded or rendered. Try to have at least some of your works be approximately something that would be found in a zine, which usually means about A5 sizing. Backgrounds are an essential skill for zines; make sure you show you can draw them well. Of course, sometimes some of these elements are excluded in a piece as a stylistic choice, but all are important skills to show you have.

If possible, try to include the topic of the zine in your portfolio. It does not need to be every single piece. If you only have WIPs or messy work of the topic, then it may not be worth it to include it and that’s alright (though make sure the zine does not require art of the subject when making that decision. Ours does not).

Most zines ask for featured works separate from the portfolio. These are the first things mods look at when evaluating your application. Choose your strongest three (or however many are asked for) pieces as your featured works. Typically, try to include art within the fandom as a featured work if you can. Try to have those vital skills on display in these as well (backgrounds, rendering, etc) so it’s immediately clear you’ve got what it takes.

No need for every piece to hit every point. Try your best for the portfolio together to hit most of them and meanwhile you can work on creating some art specifically to show off anything you’re missing!

There are some things you want to avoid including at risk of weakening your portfolio. A portfolio is only as strong as its weakest piece, so having less pieces is better than having weaker pieces. Only include polished work you’re most proud of. WIPs, sketches, or isolated character work may give the impression that you won’t provide a complete zine piece. Including multiple styles or mediums (especially ones that you wouldn’t be comfortable using for the zine) may confuse a mod as they might not know which you’ll use. If you include multiple styles, make sure that you are skilled and polished enough in all of them to use them for the zine. It’s totally fine to have a smaller portfolio, especially if you’re just starting out—don’t clog it with art that’s not your finest.

Merch portfolios are very similar to page art portfolios, but focus on character-centric work often without backgrounds. Do research on what makes a good merch design, because not all compositions translate well to physical products.

Photographs of merch you’ve made are excellent, but if you don’t have them then you can make mock-ups to help mods understand what you’re envisioning for the final product. Merch portfolios can be a combination of photos, mock-ups, and designs. Print samples may look very similar to a typical page art piece.

If applying as both a page and merch artist, you will likely want to have separate portfolios, as the roles require emphasis on different skills.

Writer portfolios are similar to artist portfolios in that they should contain only your best work. You may also use a Google Drive folder or another hosting website so long as it is highly curated and does not contain many other works to sift through. Typically, zines ask for 3-6 works under 3k words, but double check these numbers with each project you apply to.

If you’re applying to a specific role, such as poetry or article writing, try to have those kinds of samples ready. It may help to make a separate portfolio for those more specific applications.

Here are some other tips! Of course, there’s an infinite amount of ways to make a great portfolio, so if this guide isn’t working for you that’s totally fine. Experiment with different ways if you’d like!

Our applications open soon. Good luck!

Got additional questions? Send an ask here on Tumblr or on our Retrospring! We’re always happy to help or clarify.

Learn more about our Dungeon Meshi zine here!

[lihhelsing]

steddie | 888 words | angst | mature

CW: drug use, implicit violence

Written for @steddieangstyaugust Day 3

Prompt: "The sunset looks lovely, don't you think?"

Part 2 | Part 3

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"The sunset looks lovely, don't you think?"

Eddie looks up from the joint he's rolling to find the only face he never thought he would see out here. 

"King Steve," he says, and maybe it's his imagination but Harrington seems to flinch at his words. "What can I do for you?"

Eddie goes back to rolling his joint. There's a part of him that thinks this could be a trap. Last week the entire swimming team had to do a test to make sure they were all clean and one of the guys didn't pass it. 

He didn't pass it because Eddie had sold him some stuff the week before so maybe now Steve was here to put Eddie in his place. 

Eddie lights up the joint and takes a long drag. If he's going to get a beating, then he might as well do it while high out of his mind. 

"I was hoping you'd sell me something," Steve says. Eddie looks at him with the joint between his lips, trying to assess him. 

"Sorry man, I'm all out," Eddie knows best than to create evidence against himself. 

Steve looks at the open metal lunchbox on the table and raises a brow. "Really?"

"Really," Eddie says. He doesn't bother closing it and he doesn't mind if Steve knows he's lying. 

"Jordan told me all I had to do was say that bullshit thing about the sunset and you'd get me something." 

Eddie turns his face to blow out smoke. Fucking Jordan. He had come up with that password phrase to avoid getting in trouble. If people really wanted to buy something, then they would have to come up to Eddie and say it. 

"He lied," Eddie says and he can see Steve's getting annoyed. 

He gets up and put his joint out, pocketing it for later. 

Eddie could definitely use a few extra bucks this week because their kitchen sink stopped working and Wayne doesn't get paid until the end of the month, but it's not worth the risk of getting in trouble. Eddie knows the money he brings home is what helps keeping them afloat, even if Wayne likes to pretend he doesn't know where Eddie gets it.

He closes his lunchbox and moves to walk past Steve, but feels a hand wrapping around his wrist, stopping him.

It's not a strong hold, he could easily break free and walk away, but Eddie stops. He doesn't think he ever got this up close with Steve, which is both thrilling and terrifying.

"Please, man," Steve says, his voice is really low and he's wearing sunglasses, so Eddie can't see his eyes. "I just need something to get the edge off."

Eddie looks down to where they are touching and feels a fucked up thrill going down his spine. Steve's hand is big enough to circle his wrist without much effort and Eddie wonders how it would feel to have that in a different scenario. 

He wonders how it would feel if Steve were to grab him and throw him down on the table. He could probably hold both his wrists with one hand, and Eddie would be helpless to do anything but take whatever Steve wanted to give him. 

Steve moves and Eddie doesn't even flinch, thinking he might get what he wished for after all, but Steve just takes out his sunglasses and Eddie's breath catches in his throat.

Steve has a big bruise around his left eye. It's ugly and it can't be older than a day. It must hurt like hell and Eddie has to fight the urge to touch it. 

"My head is killing me," Steve offers. He looks defeated and Eddie can't ignore the way his heart twist at the words. 

Eddie should ignore it. He should pull his arm away and walk out, leave him out here alone. But Eddie is not a fucking monster.

He picks up the barely smoked joint and offer it to Steve, who lets go of Eddie's arm and takes it immediately. 

Eddie decides not to think about the absence of his touch, and instead watches as Steve puts it between his lips and how that essentially means their lips touched, somehow.

Steve is giving him a hopeful look and Eddie should walk away but instead he picks his lighter and lights him up. 

The first drag floods Steve's expression with relief and he lets out a low moan that makes Eddie's whole body tingle. 

"How much do I owe you?" Steve asks, already moving to get his wallet. His arm brushes Eddie's but he doesn't seem to mind the proximity. 

"Consider it a free sample," Eddie says and Steve eyes him suspiciously. 

"You gotta let me pay you," Steve says and Eddie has to stop himself from saying 'you can pay me with something other than money.'

Even if he doesn't say it, Eddie is under the impression the words float around them like ghosts. Steve raises a brow and Eddie has to laugh it off before he starts taking off his clothes. 

"Don't worry, big boy. Enjoy your free sample."

And with that, Eddie retreats before he does something stupid like kiss King Steve. That would get him a beating for sure and Eddie likes a little pain, but he probably wouldn't like that. 

[superbat-love]

Smallville AU, where Bruce investigates an attack in Gotham by technologically advanced superpowered aliens, tracking them down to Smallville. During his drive into Smallville, he has an accident with Clark and becomes suspicious due to Clark's lack of injuries, suspecting him of being involved.

Bruce, being paranoid, transfers to Clark's high school and quickly becomes Clark’s Enemy No. 1. He intimidates Clark in the hallways, trying to provoke him into revealing his superpowers. Clark also resents that the girls he likes have a crush on Bruce. Tensions escalate when Bruce discovers Clark’s pod on the farm, linking him to the aliens.

Eventually, Bruce realizes things don't add up. There's no way the farm boy, clueless about browser settings and using 'password' for all his accounts, could hack government databases. Clark is just an innocent metahuman with a diary full of complaints about Bruce and pretty privilege, high school crushes, and attempts at short stories (which Bruce has to admit were pretty good).

Bruce switches tactics, seeking Clark’s help to track the supervillains in exchange for information about his origins. Clark, with a strong sense of justice, agrees. Besides, how could he say no to Bruce’s heartfelt apologies, earnest speech about stopping crime and those big blue eyes? (He’s not going to delve too deeply into why he’s been feeling lightheaded around his former high school bully lately.)

They work together to stop the Kryptonian supervillains, and Bruce helps create a training program for Clark to develop his superhuman abilities in a controlled setting.

[twomiddlefingersforthehaters]

We all know what Orochimaru and Kabuto found in 'the Forest of Death':

• Sasuke creating a long password that Naruto cannot remember to lure the enemy out.

• When he was with his other teammate (Sakura) he didn't give up the scroll even though he ran away in fear. But when Naruto shows up he willingly gives up the scroll.

• Sasuke began to fight Orochimaru without fear of death even though he knew he could not defeat him.

• Kabuto found that Sasuke was overusing the Sharingan even to the point of enduring the pain of the cursed seal to protect Naruto.

• They both confirmed Naruto was changing Sasuke's heart

I find it really interesting the way Kabuto talked to Naruto the two times they met in the second part .

“SASUKE-KUN CAME TO US OF HIS OWN FREE WILL. IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU GOT OVER IT. GOING ON LIKE THAT IS HARDLY BEHAVING AS A MAN...”

From the tone of Kabuto's speech I think he is mocking and criticizing Naruto. This phrase often uses to a person who can't get over a breakup lol. 「男のくせに未練たらしいね」 has a nuance that make fun of the man. And this expression also contains the Japanese view of men many years ago that is, "men should always be strong ".

The expression used by Kabuto is 引きずりすぎだ (hikizurisugida). 引きずる (hikizuru) can be interpreted in two ways.

① 引きずる refers to the state of being stuck in sad and painful memories and being unable to escape from the sadness. Those (some kind of) feeling continues for a long time after it has ended.

② 引きずる is the same as ``dragging the hem'' when the hem of a long dress touches the floor and moves, and is also used when things drag on without being resolved. 引きずる - to drag, to pull, to prolong, to extend

e. g: (終わった) 恋を引きずる いつまでも別れた恋人を忘れられない。

(owatta) koi wo hikizuru itsu made mo wakareta koibito wo wasurerarenai.

(It's over) He still can't forget his ex-lover.

The sentence implies that he can't get over it and has a mental illness after breaking up with his ex. He misses his ex a lot.

「〜すぎた」 means ``〜sugi (too much),'' and it depends on the ``heart.'' It means that a certain state is very strong or intense. In other words, the 引きずる state is very strong and intense.

引きずりすぎた -> which means that the unforgettable period was too long. 引きずりすぎだ。is a statement. だ means “It is”. It is another form of です。

So the phrase 「引きずりすぎだ」 kabuto uses means : "you can't get over (a breakup with) someone, you can't forget about that person, or you're still thinking about that person". It's probably because you can't forget about that person even after it ended, in the old way of thinking, such an attitude or behavior was considered 女々しい (Memeshī). The word "unmanly" is a corresponding word in English for 女々しい. It is because of the society's stereotypes that “men should be manly”. It is often said in Japan that men tend to hold on to their pasts more than women.

The term 「女々しい」 is usually used for a man. 女々しい is an independent word, and it can have several meanings depending on the context and situations.

女々しい meanings include:

• mentally too weak

• lacking courage

• 未練がましい (mirengamashī) - someone who cannot give up something and it never leaves their mind. "Too obsessive".

• 未練たらしい (mirentarashī) - bad at taking things too far; bad at giving up; too attached to something in the past and not moving on to the next thing.

• overly sensitive male - (Depending on the context and the speaker's intention)

For example:

1. A person unexpectedly meets his ex-girlfriend on the street. His heart skipped a beat when he made eye contact with the other person. He fantasized about what the other person was thinking, but when he thought about it calmly, he realized that he was an idiot. There's no way the other person is wondering if they can meet again. And he hate himself for remembering the happy times in the past. And he says: “I think that men and women have different views on love, but I guess, the word 女々しい is a word made for men...I feel miserable for being 引きずられる- drag down by past relationships. I can't let go as women do. It's disgusting... I'm sure women would be put off”

-> what he saying is that his ex- girlfriend get over him and he still can't let go of his feelings for her. And he hate that part of himself. This behavior of his will drive other women away from him.

2. 今でも昔の彼女の悪口の言うなん て、おまえは女々しい男だな

ima demo mukashi no kanojo no waruguchi no iu nante , omae wa memeshī otokodana

You are such a pussy to still speak ill of your ex girlfriend.

-> The speaker probably infers that the reason he speaks ill about his ex-girlfriend is because he is still thinking about her. Therefore, the speaker considers his attitude to be 未練がましい (mirengamashī) , and uses the word 「女々しい」 to describe it.

Generally speaking, never heard of the idea that ``women are mirengamashī'' , so it is unclear why the word 「女々しい」 has the meaning of 「未練がましい」. However, maybe this happens from the stereotype that “Men should live with integrity and a positive attitude without worrying about small things” , and that this led to 「男らしくない = otokorashikunai = unmanly」 to 「女々しい」

The example below is another type of stereotype:

👨 : 君は甘いものを食べすぎてい る 。 女みたいだ。 = kun wa amai mono wo tabesugiteiru . onna mitaida = You eat too many sweets. you behave like a woman.

👨: 好きにさせてくれ。 = suki ni sasetekure = Let me do what I want.

This representation reflects gender-based stereotypes. This sentence has the implication that liking sweets is seen as a feminine characteristic, and that men are being criticized for such behavior. This word has the following connotations:

1. The stereotype that liking sweets is a feminine trait. 2. The idea that men should not eat too many sweets. 3. The speaker judges the other person's behavior to be feminine and evaluates it negatively. However, this expression contains gender-based bias and is considered inappropriate in modern society. Food preferences are personal preferences and have nothing to do with gender. Additionally, this expression is sometimes used in conversations between friends or as a joke, but caution should be taken as it may offend the other person.

Let's break it down what Kabuto says:-

Kabuto: サスケ君は望んで我々の元へ来たんだ

Romaji: Sasuke kun wa nozonde wareware no moto e kita n da。

Literal: Sasuke-kun came to us of his own free will.

Raw: 引きずりすぎだよ男のくせ に未練たらしいね｡

Romaji: hikizurisugidayo otoko no kuse ni miren tarashīne

引きずりすぎだよ = hikizurisugidayo = "You are too attached to (your memories with him)." or "You are holding on too much to (him)." Here, 引きずる" (literally, "to drag on") means "not to be able to leave behind those memories or feelings from the past."

男のくせに = otoko no kuseni = even though you are a man; for a man; as a man; despite being a man.

男のくせに is pointing out or criticizing that "it is not manly'' (= `` lacks the qualities that are desirable in a man" or ``That is not the behavior expected of a man''). Furthermore, these points and criticisms are based only on the opinion of Kabuto who said, ``even though you are a man,'' (referred to as his ``view of men'').

e. g:

1. 男のくせに泣くな！

otoko no kuse ni nakuna ！

Don't cry , you're a man!

[I wonder why? Is it because they think it's better not to show their weaknesses? Maybe that's an old-fashioned way of thinking. I remember reading somewhere that up until the Sengoku period, men cried a lot.

In this day and age, where the Heisei era was ended and the Reiwa Era has officially begun, I think this idea that “men shouldn't cry” still exists, but it's become much weaker than it used to be. ]

2. 彼は男のくせに甘いものが好きだ。

Kare wa otoko no kuse ni amaimono ga sukida.

For a man, he likes sweets.

[This sentence implies “Men shouldn’t/don’t eat sweets because sweets are for women.]

3. 「男のくせに」とからかわれたものだ。

“otoko no kuse ni” to karakawareta mono da.

They would make fun of me by saying "Be a man."

4. 他人の悪口をかげで言うのは男らしくない。

tanin no waruguchi wo kage de iu no wa otokorashikunai.

It is not manly to speak ill of others behind their backs.

未練たらしいね = miren tarashīne = "It is unpleasant to see that you can't give him up." Or "It's disgusting that you can't let him go." Here, 「未練」 means "a regret," "lingering affection", "attachment," "persistence," etc., and 「たらしい」 in 「未練 たらしい」 implies that Kabuto finds it displeasing. たらしい (tarashī) is an expression of something that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Overall what Kabuto said have the following connotation:

1. 女々しい (memashī)

2. A man should always be strong.

Men are criticized for such behavior. And Kabuto is judging Naruto's behavior and evaluates it negatively. [And in Japan, there is a tendency to think that it's lame for men to dwell on the past.]

So, Kabuto is criticizing Naruto. And I also think he's mocking him too.

(Kabuto) Raw: フッ 相変わらず サスケ サスケかい...

Romaji: fu, aikawarazu Sasuke Sasukekai...

Literal: Heh, you are still all about Sasuke Sasuke, huh...

相変わらず aikawarazu- means still (not change), It's the same as it's ever been; As always; same as before; have not changed; as ever; as usual. This typically conveys a feeling of sarcasm and criticism. 相変わらず can only be used for comparisons of “past “ and “now” of one thing. フッ is an onomatopoeic expression for sneering.

[cupcakeslushie]

Hey Slushie. I have some questions about your AU:

1. I am seriously confused on Donnie’s situation in the bad timeline.

like I know it was mentioned in one of your short stories when he and Mikey were having a quarrel and that red thing-a-ma-bob but it is still very unclear to me.

2. When Donnie meets mayday, how does he process the fact that his older self made a child of his own genes and what would timothies reaction be (both in the good timeline and the bad timeline [I know the bad timeline one is mentioned but like J want his initial reaction])

3. (related to the 2nd Q) did Timothy know about his idea of making a child before she was made. If he did, ot would show a really powerful trust that Donnie has for Timothy

4. in the good/bad timeline, what is Mayday’s reaction to draxum before and after she found out about what he did to her father.

5. How does Timothy help with Donnie’s hallucinations and since Mayday is his child, does she also have them, like about never saving her father or not being strong enough.

6. In canon, The mud dogs are the complete opposite of the mad dogs. So since everyone is a bit different, what will the mud dogs in your AU look like.

Yeah… these are a lot of questions and I hope it isn’t too much. Hope you can answer them and please, continue the great work!!!

1. So, it’s okay you’re confused. I’ve only given out a small amount of teasers for the direction that the future timeline is going. There’s been a bit more expansion on my patreon, but not much. The little bits I’ve dropped are more world building and filler, and less plot. So I don’t want to say too much. There hasn’t been any more expansion on that stone in particular. Just know, it’s Krang related, and we’ll see it again! I’m setting things up that we’ll see further down the line. Some stuff I’m okay with mapping every little bit out for ppl but there is some stuff I’d like to keep you guessing 😜!

2. This is one of those things I’m keeping shh🤫!

3. Timothy knew that Donnie was trying to come up with contingencies, but he thought the plans were more along the lines of like some kind of binder with all his passwords, or maybe a cool ass avatar that could still control the resistance tech in a worst case scenario (*subtle wink at Kat*) Timothy had no idea about Mayday or Donnie trying to create clones.

4. She’s heard a few sanitized stories, but Mayday of the bad timeline has never met Draxum (he was already dead). And in her traveling to the past, I don’t think she’ll meet him. Like canon, Draxum won’t be taking part in the movie plot—also I’m still not sure of Mayday’s post-movie future, so bad timeline Mayday might never even get the chance to meet her Grandfather at all.

But Baby Mayday in the good timeline, on the other hand, will grow up with Draxum around. She won’t be given all the details until she’s probably old enough to understand the complexity of the situation. She’ll be conflicted, but with Donnie being in a healthier place, and her getting a very watered down side of things, Mayday will find she can’t hate her Grandfather for long. Her uncles have all done stuff they’re not proud of, she can still love them, and so despite the things he’s done in the past she can still love Grandpa Draxum.

5. Timothy will sometimes ramble on about his favorite anime, comics, or video games, or he’ll just read a book while being present in the same room. He can walk Donnie through breathing or grounding exercises when things get really intense. Mayday doesn’t have Donnie’s hallucinations.

7. Sorry, to say. I like the Mud Dogs enough in the show, but they’d pretty much be the same.

[cater-diamond]

OOC Here but this is something I need to talk about/need you all to be alert of.

I used to share this account and @thecountryboyofnrc with an ex-friend of mine. Actually share is a strong word, I created these accounts, and I was the one that managed them. All they did was pop in occasionally to look at the notifications and make one post and one comment during the entirety of us "sharing these account." Last week, they quit both accounts at the drop of a hat. Since then, I found out some things about her, and I stopped being her friend completely.

She attempted harassing one of my non rp accounts, to which I blocked her, and she immediately came back with a new account and began to harass me once more. I took care of that as well immediately, but she is aware of all of all my rp accounts. I changed the password and kicked all other devices off both this account and the epel one but she still might try to get in or harass me.

Long story short if you see any suspicious activity, out of character posts or harassment please let me know just in case

[exitrowiron]

Wage Transparency

Numerous states and some cities now require employers to disclose pay scales, salaries and wage information for existing and potential employees. The applicable jurisdictions continue to proliferate so many companies have simply decided to provide this information in every market. In my experience, the company established such broad salary ranges that the information wasn't particularly helpful, however it did require the company to address the compensation for those few individuals who, for whatever reason, fell below the minimum of the range.

Too much granularity of salary information can, of course, cause conflict with an organization but in general I think more transparency is better than less.

Very early in my career I was given responsibility for the annual budget process. This was before online budget software was available, so I created a very sophisticated (for that time) Excel model with VBA routines, etc. Each manager was given an excel file with the historical costs/revenues for their department and provided with instructions on how to complete the budget for each line item. In order to calculate the correct payroll taxes, etc. managers were instructed to enter the name, salary and bonus of each of their employees. This Excel sheet was then hidden and password protected.

You can probably guess the rest of story. This was before Excel had really strong password and encryption features, so I had a backdoor to the payroll sheet and when all the files were submitted, I could see every employee's salary and bonus.

Seeing which functions were paid the most was extremely motivating and ultimately guided the next decade of my career. I knew exactly what job I wanted and how much to negotiate for my compensation. Beth and I were willing to make the necessary sacrifices (including relocating 3 times) because it would be worth it.

Rather than bitching that I was paid too little, I was motivated to do what it took to get the better paying job. I wonder what would happen if companies were more transparent about their payroll.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Chiasmus

There's something that's been knocking around my head for a couple years now about Destiny's general narrative structure, and this entry brought it to mind and made me think. Bungie is keeping secrets, not deep in the files but in things unsaid. In the telling of the story, below the event horizon. In the shape of it.

"Do you know how to make a strong password?" he asked. "I don't know if I do," I said. "Tell yourself a story," he said. "Use that one good story you'll never forget, that you can carry forever. Let your story take odd turns and wear a few surprising marks, make sure it belongs to you, so you can keep it secret."

This echoes something I believe said by Savathun that the greatest form of encryption is secrets, because they can only be unlocked by true understanding. When I think about stories like Truth to Power, there is such deliberate structure and subtext to them despite being confusing and intentionally obscured, and that structure is seen elsewhere in Destiny. We've even seen Ikora and Arach Jallal discuss the narrative structure, called "chiasmus."

REY >> JALAAL

We are headed inward, as if moving from parent to child universe.

Then we proceed in reverse. Savathûn is revealed to be a fiction of Dûl Incaru. Dûl Incaru a simulation by Quria, and so on.

So in the end, Truth to Power moves outwards.

Just as Savathûn plans to move. In from our universe and out to the Distributary—

Or out from our universe to its parent.

JALAAL >> REY

Oh. I see. I see! A literary structure like that is called a chiasmus, and chiasmus means "crossing point"! Like a wormhole or a portal! It was hidden in plain sight.

Chiasmus is a sort of chiral structure defined as a "reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses – but no repetition of words", and this achieves a fascinating effect; it leads you down a path of understanding, and sometimes does so by leaving your understanding up to the inferrence of the structure itself rather than stating the point directly and then leading you there

This is a scalable and somewhat flexible technique that can be used in sentences, paragraphs, or whole texts to convey very particular meaning. It's even used in the national anthem of the Netherlands, the oldest living national anthem (this one is interesting because it bounces back and forth—verse 1 mirrors verse 15, 2-14, 3-13, and so on until they meet at 8). I believe something like this is the basis for the entirety of Destiny's story; start with two presupposed points set in stone, set one as the start and one as the end, hide the end, and then slowly build from there. Bungie gets a lot of guff for perceived retcons, but in the broad strokes, and thematically, when it comes down to it, they know their stuff and have always seemed to have a long view in mind.

Chiasmus derives its effectiveness from its symmetrical structure. The structural symmetry of the chiasmus imposes the impression upon the reader or listener that the entire argument has been accounted for. In other words, chiasmus creates only two sides of an argument or idea for the listener to consider, and then leads the listener to favor one side of the argument.

We begin with resurrection in D1, new life. There's hints of Darkness, but it's buried in the lore and is explicitly taboo. It's confusing, but we slowly learn to see the world from an all-Light perspective. Year 2 we learn about the basics of Darkness via the Sword Logic, the Hive, and the Taken. Then, we press on and lose everything in year 4. We begin to learn more and more until year 5, Forsaken. Year 6 we get the Luna Pyramid, Unveiling, and the arrival. Then, in year 7, we get to *use* the Darkness. In Year 8, we begin to learn about it and seeing the unseen from Savathun via Deepsight, before learning about the Witness. This is also when we see one of our enemies go the other way, crossing our path by going from Dark to Light. Year 9, we learn about the Veil and a new perspective on Darkness, and year 10 we return to the center to defeat the First Knife and are left with only echoes of its victims and the Darkness that bound it

What is the main plan in Forsaken, year 5? For Uldren to enter the Watchtower with the Shard and the Darkness within him, where he unleashes the Voice of Riven, who acts as proxy. Riven enacts the curse upon her defeat, which is maintained inside Elusinia by Dûl Incaru, Eternal Return. Light and Dark to enter a hidden realm where a being in a tower creates a curse which is unleashed upon their defeat, and beyond which another being in a further nested realm maintains said curse. This is strikingly similar to the Witness: it enters the Pale Heart via the Traveler and the essence of the Veil, where it builds a tower and tries to make a sort of curse which infests the Heart. And when we defeated it, the energy from that process was released.

Guess what the mission where Crow entered the portal with the 15th Wish was called? Chiasmus.

Bungie loves secrets, but datamining makes them hard to pull off. They even put a reference to this in an unnamed entryegg in the API for Truth to Power:

O you wonderful curious things. Do you believe you're the only ones with the power to see what should not be seen? Did you believe you can use such power blithely? For your trespass, I would ruin your luck, wreak havoc on your drops, poison your engrams, and fill your lines with static. Thus I would curse you and dissipate the bond that ties you to your tasks. How frail you Guardians can be! How many millions have fallen silent, never to return, because the bond did not hold them strongly enough? But you have already cursed yourselves. You have walked the Anathematic Arc and glimpsed creation from below. You will never forget the tenuous, provisional framework you found here. You will never forgive the mortality and fallibility that underlies a world you thought was everything. Those who use this power to seek unearned knowledge will see more than they ever desired. There is a price for glimpsing the Cord. You will pay it.

This episode, we're learning about Maya, who has a direct link to the Veil, Vex, and Darkness via Clarity ("Take me to the garden’s seed. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me—"), and now this strange Pyramid in act 3 of Echoes. Next, we have Fikrul, the Scorn (Dark Ether), and Mithtrax (Curse of Nezarec). And then we're ending on the Dreadnaught with Savathun, who hid the Veil, and Xivu Arath, who wants to emulate Oryx, the First Navigator with the implication that we will become Navigators. We reached the end of the line in defeating the Witness, but now we're beyond it. I think we're about to come full circle and see secrets beyond even the Veil.

Something else I like about this idea on a narrative and meta level; if the beginning and end of this leg of the story is already decided by its inherent structure, like life, then anything we do is futile. We will wind up there eventually, as everything does in the end. The only difference is the path we walk to get there

I. Guardians make their own fate. But what if the process by which they decide upon their own fate could be understood and manipulated?

But we are transcendent now; we walk a path as yet unimagined by both Light and Dark. What we do now— unshackled from HOPE—that is who we are; because only in the end are we free.

I.VII The cutting word is a doorway—the first syllable of hated salvation.

Better make sure you've got a strong password, wouldn't want to spoil the unveiling.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked. "When I was a little boy," Father said. "During the Before," I said. "Yes." He reached down to brush my hair. "I was recalling how very smart I used to be. When I was your age, I was a genius." "You're smart now," I said. He laughed hard. "Look around," he said. I always look around. "Miss nothing," he told me. Father was standing beside a big gray building. "This is what I want you to see," he said. The building had no doors or windows. "Do you know how to make a strong password?" he asked. "I don't know if I do," I said. "Tell yourself a story," he said. "Use that one good story you'll never forget, that you can carry forever. Let your story take odd turns and wear a few surprising marks, make sure it belongs to you, so you can keep it secret." Father kneeled, putting our faces close... "I want to show you something special," he said. "Something rare." I tried to imagine what that might be. "No," he warned. "You can't guess." Inside the gray building was a diamond wall...A projected sky floated above us. It wasn't our sky, alive with metal and light. Nothing about the grayness was wet and nothing looked alive. I had never seen a sadder piece of ground. "This was our world," Father said. "When I was your age." I touched the diamond wall. He watched my hand jump back. "Hot," I said. He laughed quietly. I shook my burnt hand, and it felt better. "Our world was this. The entire planet was a furnace. Acidic. Dead in so many ways. And I was your age." I was bored with the dead world. I looked at Father's face, asking, "Can we leave?" He started to reach for my hair again but decided not to. I was bored with everything. "When I was your age, people thought they knew almost everything. We had scientific laws and human truths, even a model of the universe. People carried pictures of the past and tried to have a clear vision of their difficult future. I didn't know everything, of course. But when I was a boy, I had every expectation of living a smart short life and learning quite a lot more. "Then the Before was finished. "You know why. "That's when everybody, particularly the smartest of us, learned that we knew nothing. We were children and our little ideas were toys, and the universe was cut apart with great ideas and magnificent, immeasurable potentials." Father stopped talking. I stepped away from the hot diamond wall. "Do you know what I wanted to show you?" Father asked. "Dead rock," I said. "Guess again." He wasn't happy with me. We stepped back into the real sun, the real world. I blinked and looked around, surprised by how green and bright everything was. How happy everything was. Even the saddest face was happy. "I know what you want me to see," I said. "Don't tell me," he said. I didn't tell him.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy

Amazon is a perfect parable of enshittification, the process by which platforms first offer subsidies to end users until they’re locked in, then make life good for business customers at users’ expense, until they’re locked in, then claw back all the value they can for themselves, leaving just enough behind to keep the lock-in going.

In a new report for SOMO, Margarida Silva describes how the end-stage enshittification of Amazon is playing out in the EU, with Amazon repeating its US playbook of gouging the small businesses who have no choice but to use the platform in order to reach its locked-in customers, making European customers and European sellers poorer:

https://www.somo.nl/amazons-european-chokehold/

The mechanism for this isn’t a mystery. Amazon boasts about it! They call it their flywheel: first, customers are lured into the platform with low prices, especially through Prime, which requires pre-payment for a year’s shipping, which virtually guarantees that customers will start their shopping on Amazon. Because customers now start their buying on Amazon, sellers have to be there. The increased range of goods for sale on Amazon lures in more buyers, who lure in more sellers, with both sides holding each other hostage:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

This flywheel creates a vicious cycle, starving local retail so that customers can’t get what they need from brick-and-mortar shops, which funnels sellers into offering their goods for sale on Amazon. The less choice customers and sellers have about where they shop, the more Amazon can abuse both to pad its own bottom line.

There are 800,000 EU-based sellers on Amazon, and they have seen the junk-fees that Amazon charges them skyrocket, to the point where they have to raise prices or lose money on each sale. Amazon uses both tacit and explicit “Most Favored Nation” deals to hide these price-hikes. Under an MFN deal, sellers must not allow their goods to be sold at a lower price than Amazon’s — so when they raise prices to cover Amazon’s increasing fees, they raise them everywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/

It’s not hard to understand why Amazon would raise its fees: the company has an effective e-commerce monopoly. Like Ozymandias, they have run out of worlds to conquer, and so their growth has to come from squeezing suppliers and/or raising prices, not from bringing in new customers. This is likewise true of mobile companies like Apple and Google, who have run out of people who are so excited about incremental mobile hardware gains that they’ll buy a new phone every year, which means that growth has to come from squeezing app vendors:

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/06/09/Pixel-4-to-7

This is likewise true of the streaming companies, which is why Netflix is cracking down on “password sharing”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

It’s true of the movie studios, which is why they want to zero out their wage bills by replacing writers with automatic plausible sentence generators that will write stupid movies that they think we’ll still pay to see because there won’t be anything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

It’s certainly true of Uber, which is why they’ve double the cost of a taxi ride and halved the wages they pay drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Monopolies “grow” by making their customers and suppliers worse off. But they have to be careful about this: if it’s obvious that you’re using your market power to screw buyers, you can get in trouble with competition regulators. That’s because the only part of antitrust law that the neoliberal project left intact is “consumer welfare” — the idea that monopolies should only face enforcement when they raise prices and/or lower quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya

This focus on price-hikes has given monopolists a free hand to squeeze suppliers and workers, because a monopolist — from Walmart to Amazon — can claim that squeezing your workers and suppliers is necessary to enhancing consumer welfare. The less you pay to produce a product, the cheaper you can price it.

When a company has a lot of seller power, we call it a monopolist. When it has a lot of buying power, we call it a monopsonist. No one ever made a bestselling, family-destroying board game called “Monopsony” so most people haven’t heard of the concept. But monopsony is every bit as dangerous as monopoly, and monopsonists find it far easier to acquire market power than monopolists. Few suppliers can afford to have even 10% of their sales disappear overnight, so a buyer who accounts for 10% of your sales can demand deep discounts and other favorable terms.

Amazon is a monopolist, but it’s also a very powerful and ruthless monopsonist. For example, its audiobook division, Audible, has a 90+% market-share, and it used that market-power to steal at least $100m from audiobook creators, in a scandal dubbed Audiblegate:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

For Europe’s 800k sellers who rely on Amazon to reach their customers, the monoposony conditions are blatant and shameless. Take listing fees: Amazon’s “flywheel” pitch claims that as the company grows, it achieves “economies of scale” that can lower its cost basis. But Amazon’s listing fees haven’t changed, even as the company experienced explosive growth in the EU (remember, sellers whose Amazon fees exceed their margins have to pass those fees onto buyers, and also raise their prices everywhere else to satisfy the Most Favored Nation requirement).

Amazon books the revenues from these fees — and other junk-fees it extracts from sellers — in Luxembourg, an EU member nation that provides a tax haven to multinational businesses that want to maintain the fiction that they operate their businesses out of the tiny kingdom. There is sharp competition in the EU to offer the most servile, corrupt environment for multinationals, and Luxembourg is a leader, along with Cyprus, Malta and, of course, Ireland:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But at least listing fees haven’t gone up, unlike other fees, which have climbed sharply. Amazon falsely claimed that its additional revenues from fees were the result of growth by independent sellers, which Amazon pegged at 65%. Later, the company admitted that the true growth figure was 22%. Meanwhile, fees are up 85%.

The true growth figure might be lower still. Amazon refuses to show the math behind its growth figures, or even say which sellers and sales are included in the figure.

The SOMO report cites research by Juozas Kaziukėnas of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, who finds that sellers are now giving 50% of their gross revenues to Amazon, an increase of 10% over the past five years across the whole EU. However, different EU (and ex-EU) countries have experienced much steeper increases in fees — in the UK, fees have nearly doubled (up 98%), and in France, fees more than doubled (up 115%).

Many of these increases come from the Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) program, which is promoted as an optional service, but which is really obligatory — careful research shows that sellers who warehouse, pack and ship their own goods get banished to the depths of search results, even if they have ratings, costs and times that are competitive with FBA. This is especially true of the “buy box” that lands at the top of most searches. The company refuses to disclose how buy box positioning is determined, but 90% of products in the buy box pay for FBA.

Amazon has used excuseflation to hike its FBA prices, blaming higher energy prices for price hikes that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and blaming covid for price hikes that predated the pandemic.

Italy’s competition authority did yeoman service in uncovering the sleaze of FBA, publishing an investigation that showed that Prime and buy box made the notionally “optional” FBA into a must-have for merchants, meaning that Amazon could jack up FBA prices without losing business.

Another notable source of gouging came in response to the UK and France adopting digital services taxes, which were meant to make up for the tax-base erosion enabled by Luxembourg’s flouting of EU tax law. Amazon passed these taxes straight through to its merchants, without seeing a comparable decrease in the number of sellers using its platforms — an unmistakable sign of market power. If you can raise prices without losing customers, then, by definition, your customers have nowhere else to go.

I’ve previously written about how Amazon’s $31b/year “advertising” market isn’t really advertising — rather, it’s a payola scheme that auctions off the top of a search-listing to the merchant with the most to spend:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is how you get a simple search like “cat beds” returning results whose first screen is 100% ads, and whose next five screens are 50% ads, many of them for dog products:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/

Auctioning off search results means that every time you search for something you want, you have to wade through screen after screen of listings for products whose vendors spent more on advertising, leaving less to spend on making quality goods.

This is as true in the EU as it is in the USA. The SOMO report shows that European merchants are required to spend ever-larger sums to show up in results for the exact products they sell, leaving them with a choice between making less money, raising prices, or skimping on quality.

But even the “winners” of Amazon’s gladiatorial combat among vendors can still lose. Amazon uses an automated product removal process that can delete some or all of a merchant’s products, without warning or explanation, and no one at Amazon will explain what a merchant did wrong. That remains true even if a vendor pays for Amazon’s “marketplace consultant” service — ask these paid Virgils why you’ve been cast into Amazon’s pit, and they’ll shrug their shoulders (and bill you for it).

And even if you can navigate the junk fees, the Kafka-as-a-service removals, the war of all sellers against all sellers for search primacy…you still lose. Merchants told SOMO that a product that survives Amazon’s gauntlet is likely to be cloned by Amazon and sold as an Amazon Basic or other house-brand product. Amazon doesn’t charge itself 50% junk fees, so it can always underprice the vendors it knocks off, and give its own products permanent top-of-search placement.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once testified under oath before Congress that this doesn’t happen — and then refused to return to Congress when multiple vendors showed evidence that he’d lied:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/18/amazon-congress-letter-third-party-data/

He definitely lied:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/

Amazon has faced investigations and enforcement in the EU over this, and settled a claim with a promise to “not use non-public seller data to compete with sellers,” but given the company’s record of broken promises on this score and the difficulty of catching them cheating, it’s pretty naive to think they’ll stick to this.

The report quotes Thomas Höppner, a lawyer who has represented small businesses that Amazon screwed over. Höppner says the problem is that the EU evaluates Amazon’s bad deeds on a “case-by-case” basis, missing the big picture: “By the time one identified problem was seemingly solved, Amazon had long made amendments elsewhere with the same effect. We require a more holistic approach that considers the entire Amazon ecosystem and the various interdependencies within.”

But the EU’s enforcement approach is about to change significantly. The EU just passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which imposes a bunch of obligations on Amazon:

allowing sellers to offer their products on other marketplaces at different prices (Article 5.3),

not obliging business users to pay for one of its services in order to use its platform (Article 5.8),

limiting the way Amazon uses non-public seller data to compete with them (Article 6.2)

preventing Amazon from giving top billing in search results to its own products or sellers that have acquired extra Amazon services (Article 6.5)

The report concludes with a suite of recommendations for improving EU enforcement. First, they argue for a return to traditional competition law, abandoning the “consumer welfare standard” that is so friendly to monopsonies and their abuses of suppliers and workers.

They call for a probe into Amazon’s Most Favored Nation deals (“fair pricing policy”), the practice of sponsoring search results, and spiraling fees. They want the EU to adequately fund DMA enforcement, with “measures to prevent regulatory capture.” And they want Amazon to publish clear explanations for how search results, buy box placement, and other practices hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

Amazon will doubtless claim that disclosing how those systems work will make it easier for spammers and scammers to game their way to the top of search results. We should be skeptical of this claim — content moderation is the last domain where anyone takes the bankrupt idea of security through obscurity seriously:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Finally, the report calls for breaking up Amazon, forcing it to choose between being a platform seller or a platform user, calling this the only way to “prevent the conflicts of interest between its role as a platform intermediary, seller, and service provider.”

The technical term for this measure is “structural separation” — a rule that bans platform companies from competing with their business customers. This is the principle at work in the US bipartisan AMERICA Act, which would force Google and Meta to spin off the parts of their ad-tech business that put them in a conflict of interest. Right now, Googbook represents both publishers and advertisers, while operating the marketplace where ad sales take place, and they take 51% out of every ad dollar:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Structural separation hasn’t really been applied in the US for a generation, but it’s gained currency in recent years, for the obvious reason that the referee can’t also own one of the teams. I was in Germany last week speaking to regulators and politicians, and they espoused skepticism that the EU would embrace structural separation anytime soon.

But they were wrong! Today, the European Commission announced plans to force Google and Meta to sell off their conflict-of-interest ad-tech lines of business, mirroring the provisions of the US AMERICA Act:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/

Structural separation really is the policy we should be demanding. It’s amazing that lawyers who would never argue a case in front of a judge who was married to the plaintiff will turn around and defend the idea that Amazon can fairly operate a marketplace where they compete with other sellers.

With Amazon dominating online sales, and with in-person retail cratering, Amazon’s decisions have the power to determine the outcome of whole swathes of Europe’s economy. This is the “planned economy” that the EU claims it detests and seeks to prevent — but it’s an economy planned by distant autocrats in a Seattle boardroom, for the purpose of extracting the surpluses needed to launch an endless procession of penis-rockets.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this postto read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

[Image ID: A desert ruin. In the foreground is a huge Amazon box, with an EU flag in place of its shipping label. Atop the box are the feet and partial legs of an Oxymandias figure.]

Image: Rama (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gladiator_with_sword-Louis_Ernest_Meissonnier-MG_1216-IMG_1223-white.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/fr/deed.en

[cantsayidont]

This seems like a good time to mention that if you have a Proton Mail account — even a free one — it now has a feature to let you create email aliases to use with other online services. Each alias is basically a forward-only email address you can use instead of your regular address when signing up for a service. To create one, click the "Security center" button (the little purple shield icon on the right side of the Proton Mail inbox), which should show you a "Hide-my-email aliases" section on the top right side of the screen, and click "New alias." You can create a different one for each service.

If you use a different email alias and strong, unique password (stored in a password manager) for each new service you sign up for, it can help you limit the amount of your personal information that is exposed if the services you use are hacked.

This unfortunately doesn't help much with services where you already have an established profile with transaction and stored billing information, and some services don't let you change your email address without starting a new account, but it's a worthwhile practice if you sign up for newsletters and mailing lists. I had been lax in doing this because I didn't have a convenient way to do it, but the Proton Mail feature is easy to use and doesn't cost anything extra.

[jumpywhumpywriter]

A Life in the Hands of the Enemy -- Villain reluctantly saves Hero's Life *BONUS Scene* part 7

Warnings: semi-reformed Villain, recovery whump, Villain saves Hero, runaway Hero and Villain

Amber groaned, rubbing her face. "Do you have any alcohol in this place? I think I need a drink."

Zack shook his head. "Sorry, but I don't drink, so I have nothing to offer."

Then a realization struck Amber. "Shoot, my team's probably freaking out about me right now after seeing the news. Mind if I use your phone to call them?"

"Oh, so now we're best friends doing each other favors?" Zack taunted. But he pulled his phone out anyway and tossed it to her. "Password is 'rainbow fluffypuff kittens'."

Amber choked on air. "You are one of the most dangerous villains to have ever existed, and your password is 'rainbow fluffypuff kittens'?!?" She sputtered.

Zack shrugged innocently. "It said it was a strong password, so I went with it. Don't judge."

Amber sighed and unlocked his phone, quickly dialing the number of Other Hero. She needed to let him know she was alive, and safe.

The line rang three times before it was answered.

"Who is this?" A gruff voice came through.

"It's me, Hero" Amber breathed. It felt amazing to hear her friend's voice again.

"AMBER?!" The voice on the other end of the line shouted in disbelief. "Are you okay? Our whole team saw the livestream -- you were being tortured -- whose phone are you even using to call me right now?!?"

"Uh-well-it's complicated," Amber awkwardly answered. "I just wanted to call to let you know I'm okay. I'm working things out, but I'll be coming back to hero team headquarters shortly. I'll explain the rest then."

"Have you seen the news?" Other Hero's voice was suddenly oddly accusatory and harsh.

"No...? Why?"

"I would highly suggest you do. You lied to all of us, Amber. Don't bother coming back, or you'll be arrested on the spot for assisting a murderer and criminal evade the law. You're off the team."

"Wait--What--?" Other Hero hung up before Amber could question him, leaving her in stunned silence.

"From the look on your face, I'm assuming it didn't go well?" Zack raised an eyebrow.

Amber didn't bother answering. She was busy typing madly on his phone, pulling up the latest news. Before cursing under her breath as she watched a video.

Curiosity piqued by her reaction, Zack hovered over her shoulder, watching intently.

It showed Amber tied to a chair, being tortured by her kidnappers... and then... chaos. A blur of motion, alarmed shouts, a few screams... the camera and tripod stand got knocked over in the scuffle, but never stopped rolling.

And at the end of the fight, a stranger stood in front of Amber, before taking off the ski mask -- revealing a very much alive Villain. Not dead like Amber had declared to the world. And with blood on his shoes.

"You killed my attackers?!" Amber gasped.

Zack shrugged guiltily. "They were torturing you, and I got... a little carried away."

"And you didn't tell me?!"

"You never asked," he pointed out. "It never occurred to you what I did with them during your rescue?"

Amber knew he was right -- she had been too distracted to even question what had happened to her kidnappers when she woke up in Zack's apartment. She also realized something else -- Zack had sacrificed everything to save her. His new life was good as gone, his face would be on every wanted sign in the city. He'd have to abandon this new life he'd created for himself to run away and hide now that the government would be after him. He'd thrown it all away. For her.

"I'm sorry I brought you down with me," Zack said with a wince. "You don't deserve this. I got sloppy and didn't realize the camera was live, I was too focused on getting you out of there."

Amber was taken aback by the genuine sincerity in his voice. "...Do you really care about me that much?" Zack was never known to be sloppy. Ever. He was always calculated, always prepared. Which meant she must mean a great deal more to him than he ever let on if he was willing to rush into a situation unprepared just to save her.

A hint of embarrassed red crept into Zack's face, and he wasn't meeting her gaze. "...Yeah. I do," he answered. "But I know you'll never see me the same way, so I've never told you about how I truly felt before. It's not worth entertaining the idea of a fantasy that will never happen."

Amber's stomach flipped at the confession, something dark and twisted in her chest rearing up. Danger. Play with fire. The sensation she always got when she knew something could hurt her, but wanted to go for it anyway. She ran a hand through her hair with a sharp breath. "So what now?" She croaked. "You're going to have to leave the city if you don't want to get caught. And I'll..." What? Crawl back to hero team and beg for mercy? Turn herself in? For the stunt she'd pulled faking the deadly Villain's death, she'd probably get a life sentence.

"...If I go to hero team, my life will be over." Amber's shoulders sagged with the heavy realization. Her whole life as Hero... gone, just like that. All because she'd spared the life of a Villain who had been given a death sentence.

Zack unexpectedly took a step toward her, his gaze sharp and intent as he leaned close. "Then run away with me," he whispered. "No more fighting criminals, no more risking your life. You could... be with me, and we'd figure out what to do with our lives, together." He hesitantly placed a reassuring hand on Amber's shoulder, who flinched, but didn't pull away. "It would be something new for both of us, but... I could give it a try, if you will too."

"The hero part of me says running off with a villain is a bad idea," Amber muttered. "But the other side wants to throw caution to the wind and play the dangerous gamble with you."

"Can I pick which side should win?" Zack teased.

Amber chewed her lip, thinking it over. Zack was a genius mastermind, a master of manipulation and deception. What if this was all a trap? What did he really want from her, beneath the charming, seductive facade? "What are your motives behind this offer?" She rasped.

"Already suspecting ulterior motives from me? I'm hurt," Zack laughed. "Although I suppose it is my style." He tilted his head to one side, carefully considering her. "I would like... a friend. Or something more, if you're willing to try. I've never had either before. Everyone I've ever met I've seen as pawns, or people I can use... but you... something about you makes me want to change, to live up to your expectations. I'm not sure why."

Amber could sense no lie in his words, and she contemplated his words for a long time before answering. "I think... I could run away with you," she whispered, half to herself. "See where it gets me."

Zack's lips cracked into a sly grin. "In that case... what do you say about a redo of the kiss? You were drugged out of your mind, so the first one doesn't count."

"Greedy bastard, aren't you?" Amber teased with a laugh.

"I can be both greedy and a bastard. Is that a yes?" Zack raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

Amber smirked, placing a hand on his broad chest, initiating the contact for the first time. "...Sure. Why not? Life is one big gamble, after all, isn't it?"

"That's right," Zack agreed with a smirk. This time when he kissed her it was hungry and possessive, desperate and longing, leaving them both breathless.

After that they ran away, leaving their old lives behind to flee the city that had rejected them. As allies. Friends. Or something more.

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