#Digital recruitment presentations
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myinkppt · 4 months ago
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Recruitment Process Presentations: Elevating Your Hiring Game with Engaging Decks
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In today’s competitive job market, organizations face increasing pressure to streamline their recruitment processes while simultaneously engaging potential candidates. Recruitment process presentations have emerged as a vital tool for effectively showcasing an organization’s hiring strategy, attracting top talent, and fostering transparency. This blog delves into the importance of these presentations, explores how HR recruitment presentations can be optimized, and highlights best practices for crafting compelling decks tailored for talent management, digital recruitment, and online hiring strategies.
The Role of Recruitment Process Presentations
Recruitment process presentations serve multiple purposes:
Educating Internal Stakeholders: These presentations are a valuable tool for HR teams to communicate hiring strategies, workflows, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to managers and executives.
Attracting Candidates: Clear and visually appealing decks can create a strong impression on prospective hires, particularly during job fairs, virtual recruitment events, or initial interviews.
Building Employer Branding: When aligned with an organization’s branding, these presentations help convey company culture, values, and career growth opportunities.
Streamlining Processes: By documenting and visually organizing recruitment stages, teams can identify inefficiencies and create better workflows.
Key Elements of HR Recruitment Presentations
Crafting an effective recruitment presentation begins with understanding the needs of your audience—whether they are hiring managers, potential candidates, or executives. Here’s a breakdown of essential elements:
1. Introduction to the Recruitment Process
Overview of the Recruitment Funnel: Highlight key stages such as sourcing, screening, interviewing, and onboarding.
Goals and Objectives: State your primary goals, such as reducing time-to-hire, improving candidate experience, or increasing diversity in hiring.
2. Talent Management Insights
Strategic Workforce Planning: Use slides to explain how your recruitment aligns with the broader talent management strategy.
Employee Value Proposition (EVP): Showcase what makes your company a great place to work, including benefits, work-life balance, and career development opportunities.
3. Visual Representation of the Process
Use flowcharts, infographics, or timelines to depict the recruitment journey. Visuals not only enhance engagement but also simplify complex processes for all stakeholders.
4. Data-Driven Insights
Present metrics like application conversion rates, cost-per-hire, or time-to-hire. These insights demonstrate the efficiency of your recruitment process and areas for improvement.
5. Tools and Technology
Highlight digital platforms or applicant tracking systems (ATS) that facilitate online hiring and recruitment.
Talent Management Presentation Design Tips
The effectiveness of recruitment presentations heavily depends on their design. To create impactful decks, consider the following design tips:
1. Prioritize Clarity and Simplicity
Avoid cluttered slides by using concise text, bullet points, and clean layouts. Stick to one key message per slide to maintain focus.
2. Use a Professional Template
Invest in a branded template that aligns with your organization’s identity. A professional design enhances credibility and leaves a lasting impression.
3. Leverage Visual Storytelling
Integrate visuals such as images, icons, and videos to support your narrative. A well-designed slide deck with visual elements can evoke emotions and keep the audience engaged.
4. Focus on Accessibility
Ensure your presentation is accessible by using readable fonts, high-contrast colors, and alt-text for images. This ensures inclusivity for all audience members.
5. Incorporate Interactive Elements
If you’re presenting live, include interactive features like polls or Q&A sessions. In digital recruitment presentations, embed clickable links or videos to enhance engagement.
Digital Recruitment Presentations: The Future of Hiring
Digital recruitment has revolutionized traditional hiring practices, enabling organizations to attract talent globally, reduce costs, and streamline operations. Digital recruitment presentations play a pivotal role in:
1. Showcasing Employer Branding
An engaging deck can highlight a company’s digital-first approach, demonstrating innovation and appeal to tech-savvy candidates.
2. Highlighting Virtual Recruitment Strategies
Explain online hiring practices, such as virtual interviews or AI-powered screening tools.
Outline steps for remote onboarding to reassure candidates about the company’s preparedness for remote or hybrid work environments.
3. Enhancing Candidate Experience
Digital recruitment presentations can be shared as interactive PDFs or videos, providing candidates with an immersive experience of the company’s culture and expectations.
Crafting an Online Hiring Strategy Deck
An online hiring strategy deck must address key aspects of digital recruitment to resonate with today’s job seekers:
1. The Power of Social Media Recruiting
Include statistics on your company’s social media engagement.
Highlight success stories of hires made through LinkedIn, Instagram, or niche platforms.
2. Sourcing Through Job Portals and Referrals
List partnerships with leading job boards or platforms.
Explain how your referral program incentivizes current employees to recommend top talent.
3. AI and Automation
Provide insights into how AI-powered tools are used for screening resumes or matching candidates to job descriptions.
4. Focus on Candidate Communication
Share examples of personalized messaging or automated email follow-ups.
Highlight tools like chatbots for 24/7 candidate engagement.
5. Data Analytics in Recruitment
Explain how data is used to refine sourcing strategies, reduce bias, or predict hiring success.
Best Practices for Recruitment Process Presentations
1. Tailor Content to Your Audience
Different stakeholders have unique priorities. For instance, hiring managers may want detailed workflows, while candidates prefer culture-focused slides.
2. Keep It Concise
A recruitment presentation should be long enough to convey your message but short enough to maintain interest. Aim for 10-15 slides for a live presentation.
3. Use Real-World Examples
Incorporate case studies or testimonials to build credibility. For instance, demonstrate how a revamped hiring strategy led to measurable improvements.
4. Focus on Metrics and ROI
For internal stakeholders, emphasize how the recruitment process impacts company goals, such as reducing turnover or improving productivity.
5. Regularly Update Your Decks
Keep your presentations relevant by incorporating the latest hiring trends, technology updates, and company achievements.
Conclusion
Recruitment process presentations are more than just slides; they are strategic tools that can transform how organizations attract and manage talent. Whether you’re designing HR recruitment presentations for internal teams or creating digital recruitment presentations to engage online audiences, focusing on clear communication, visual appeal, and data-driven insights is key. Investing in high-quality, well-structured decks not only enhances the recruitment process but also strengthens employer branding and sets your organization apart in a competitive hiring landscape. As recruitment evolves, leveraging talent management presentation design will be essential for organizations aiming to attract and retain the best talent in an increasingly digital world.
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royaltea000 · 7 months ago
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I love Bai Long Ma he truly don’t gaf
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thinking about barbara martin (trench's secretary) (not a single document written by or about her) (but we ball). also thinking about how wretched the bureau dress code is
bonus below
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fangswbenefits · 2 years ago
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Obsession
Summary: Miguel tries to convince himself that his obsession with you was justified, but fails miserably as you spend the night over.
Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x spider-woman!reader
18+. Miguel POV. Obsessed and jealous Miguel. Inexperienced reader. Breeding kink. Sexual tension and frustration. Reader has nipple piercings.
Previous parts: 1 & 2 (you may enjoy this one separately, but might miss out on some context)
Miguel tried to convince himself that adding a mic to your digital suit was purely for safety purposes.
He really did try.
But he couldn’t keep from listening in when you first wore it on your way to the spider cafeteria.
He had just briefed a squad and was monitoring Nueva York through a multitude of hovering screens, as he stood on his platform.
Tapping quickly on the flickering surface, he was able to zoom in on you through the ceiling cameras.
You looked absolutely breathtaking.
The suit fit you like a glove and left little to the imagination. He was proud of his work. You deserved wearing something of his for everyone to see.
He saw you approaching a nearby table, taking a seat. In front of you were Jessica Drew and Peter B. Parker with Mayday who greeted you with warm smiles.
The sound of your voice echoed through the walls around him, as you extended your arms.
“Mayday! Baby! It’s so good to see you!”
The little girl broke into a giggle and began wriggling forward on Peter’s lap to reach you.
You promptly took her in your arms. “Did you miss me? Did you?” your voice was slight high-pitched and you wiggled your fingers, tickling her. “Oh, I have a present for her.”
“Really? That’s so nice of you,” Peter beamed.
“I don’t have it here, but I think she’ll love it,” you said, patting Mayday’s back lightly, earning a genuine hug from her.
Miguel felt his heart clench violently.
You were a natural with kids.
You were just too good to be true and he felt his hands clench tightly.
Would he ever be able to have you? To make you yearn for him? To breed you? To have children with you?
“Wait, is that a… digital suit?” Jessica’s voice cracked through the mic.
You had your back turned to him, so he couldn’t see your face, but he felt the warmth in your voice as you spoke, “It sure is!”
He groaned lowly.
There you were… his sweet girl.
“Who gave it to you?”
“Miguel,” you said with that tenderness he had grown to adore.
He could easily get addicted to you saying his name, and he could only hope that, one day, he might hear it a much more compelling setting.
“Miguel… O’Hara?”
You nodded.
From the screen he could see her exchanging looks with Peter.
“It looks really cool!” Peter smiled enthusiastically, inspecting your sleeves. “Wish he’d offer me one, too.”
Jessica chuckled. “Well, I’ve been here with him for months and he’s never given me one.”
Jessica…
It was to be expected. She was no fool. He had scouted her precisely because she was anything but that.
You had been recruited only three weeks ago, but the hold you had on him was tight. He had never felt this way before with someone else.
You straightened in your seat, as Mayday nibbled on your thumb. “Wait… do you think I should give it back?”
Miguel felt his heart jumpstart and panic build inside him.
“No — no! Jessica,” Perer shot her a glare who merely shrugged, before offering you a kind smile. “It looks great on you. Did you pick the colours?”
“Yes! I’m really happy with the final result,” you said, helping Mayday sit at the edge of the table, as you secured her with both hands. “It was his way of showing gratitute.”
Jessica snapped her fingers after taking a sip of her drink. “You’re helping him out with the portals, right?”
“We’re working on portal stabilisation and reduced motion sickness,” you said and he could almost taste the pride and passion in your voice. “We’re making some progress.”
Miguel had gotten used to the random erections you’d awake from him throughout the day. But this one felt particularly painful.
You were so smart and so devoted. He couldn’t even take credit for the progress, because it was mostly just you.
His sweet and clever girl.
He glanced down at the outline of his strained cock, clicking his tongue.
By the time his eyes settled on the monitor, Jessica had walked away momentarily and he saw Peter lean in.
“Hey… are you and Miguel… a thing?”
Miguel froze.
Mayday proceeded to wrap tiny fingers around some of his locks, tugging lightly.
He wish he could have seen your reaction.
“Oh! No! No… we’re just friends,” you quickly said, waving your hands rapidly. “He’s like a mentor to me, really.”
Anger flared inside him. A friend? A mentor? He knew deep down this made absolute sense, but it still made him seething with rage.
Peter didn’t seem all that convinced, but nodded. “Just wondering. He’s not usually this… kind?”
Miguel felt his fangs threaten to emerge as he gritted his teeth.
There had been nothing kind about him building you a suit. He hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart.
He wanted to claim you and this had been the easiest and safest way for now.
“Well, I know he’s a grumpy,” you chuckled with a shrug, as you patted Mayday on the back. “Maybe he’s changing?”
You wouldn’t want him to change. Not really. The level of devotion he had for you was unmatched and nothing you could ever have from someone else.
“Maybe you’re a good influence on him?” Peter concluded, tapping his chin. “As a friend, of course.”
“Peter….” he growled lowly.
“As a friend,” you nodded. “Besides, there’s…” but your voice trailed off.
His erection nearly immediately deflated as dread took over.
There’s what?
He turned up the mic’s volume, but winced instead, as you banged on the table.
You cleared your throat. “Well, gotta go! I have work to do.”
Peter took Mayday back into his lap and chuckled. “Don’t forget her present!”
“I won’t! Wish me luck, though,” you said, crossing your fingers as you started to walk away. “I really need these chips to stop blowing and melting on me!”
“Good luck! Say bye bye, Mayday,” Peter waved his hand, which the little girl promptly mimicked with a giggle.
“Bye, baby!” you beamed.
Miguel had had enough.
He switched off your mic with a tap on his watch.
He really had tried to convince himself that his obsession for you was justified. That is was rooted in more than lust and desire, but he wasn’t so sure anymore.
After you moved to Nueva York, he had you working closely to him on portal stabilisation.
But what had started out as something innocent, soon shifted into something else entirely.
Your company brought him peace and quiet, and ticket his brain just the right way to keep him motivated.
Until it didn’t.
Until you became his torment.
He had let you in his life in the hopes that you let him in yours.
The first time you gave him a boner was when he walked in on you in the lab, wearing nothing but a tank top and a pencil pressed firmly in between your lips, as you moved from screen to screen to check on the update progress.
The worst part? You didn’t even notice how utterly delicious you looked and how he could easily bend you over and take you right there.
No.
You just offered him a sweet smile.
One he hadn’t recovered from ever since.
“Miguel?”
He jolted as the voice snapped him from his torturous thoughts. “What?”
Lyla hovered nearby, eyeing him closely. “Fangs out,” she wiggled her index finger disapprovingly. “Pavitr and Hobie are waiting for you.”
His fangs retracted slowly as he tried to gain his composure back. “Why?”
“Mission?” she quirked an eyebrow.
Right.
“Now?”
“You’re already late.”
He growled, tapping on a few screens hurriedly.
“Oh, and Miguel?”
“What?”
The hologram popped near the screen to his left. “You might want to be more subtle when using her in-suit mic.”
He gave her narrow side-glace. “What do you mean?”
“Just saying,” she said, adjusting her heart-shapped glasses. “You’re not the only tech savvy spider here.”
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The door to his apartment swung open at once, and he stepped inside ready to decompress from the tiresome mission.
He had made plans with some of your audio recordings and his hand, hoping that would be enough to easy the pent-up tension that had been looming over year throughout the way.
It was a less than ideal situation, but would have to do for now.
That was until he noticed his living room was lit.
Pacing rapidly he was met with you.
In the middle of a pile of papers and electronic components scattered around the floor, he saw you sitting cross-legged with a pencil danging from your lips, his digital suit clinging tightly to your body.
“What are you doing here?”
Your bead snapped in his direction and the pencil tumbled to the floor. “Miguel! Lyla let me in.”
He was rooted in place.
Had it been someone else, he would have flung them through the window with no warning.
But you weren’t just someone.
And Lyla wouldn’t have let someone else enter his apartment, either.
“It’s quite late,” he said, pacing carefully toward you as not to step on anything. “You could have called me.”
You waved a hand dismissively and held a circular metallic object in the other. “Catch!”
Before he could say anything back, you had tossed it in his direction, which he quickly grabbed in between his fingers.
“Found what was wrong with it,” you smiled proudly. “It was stupid of me, really. There wasn’t any thermal paste in it. That’s why it kept blowing up.”
Miguel stared at the chip in his hand and blinked a few times.
“I assumed you were using it from the start,” he said, inspecting the cross section.
You rose to your feet in an instant and joined his site, excitement spilling from you. “These ion batteries should not require thermal paste — not for this amount of energy, at least. But yeah… my bad,” you said, rubbing the back of your neck.
Miguel locked eyes with yours and felt a familiar tingle in his body.
Fuck.
You were just so ridiculously attractive, and he wish he could hear you ramble about tech and science for hours.
“This is really, really good news,” he said genuinely, handing the chip back to you.
He squeezed your arm lightly as encouragement, knowing fully well he should be rewarding you in other ways.
His sweet girl…
You darted back to the floor, gathering some papers. “Sorry for the mess. I just had to figure this out and couldn’t sleep.”
A scientist at heart, you were.
Blood began to rush to his groin in no time. It couldn’t be helped. His body had been so on edge to finally fuck you, that it was in this permanent state of arousal around you.
“It’s fine. I still have those moments,” he said softly, crouching to help you out. “Sometimes I can’t sleep, and I have to do something else.”
“Like what?”
“I either go to the lab, or…” I jerk off to the thought of being buried deep inside you, he wanted to say.
You eyed him expectantly, biting your lip lightly, further hardening his cock.
“Well, it’s a bit late,” Miguel eventually said, standing tall. “Maybe you should get back to your apartment?”
He hated himself for even suggesting such option, but he didn’t want to push his luck. You being here would be fuel enough for the rest of the night as he fucked his hand.
“Oh, you just got back from a mission,” you fought back a yawn, tossing your backpack over your shoulder. “I’ll just leave.”
Miguel nodded, but was crumbling inside.
Your face lit up again. “But this was great, right?”
Please stay.
“You did great,” he said with a short smile. “Go get some rest.”
Please…
You made your way down the hall and waved at him. “See you in the morning, Miguel.”
He should have let you go.
But something took over him, before he could fight it back.
“Actually, you could stay. It’s nearly four in the morning,” he tried to sound as casual as possible, but the excitement was hard to contain. “And we have to head back to the lab early.”
You turned around and he stopped breathing.
Too much?
Then he the backpack slide down your arm, hittingbthe floor with a thud. “Oh, thank you! I really didn’t feel like swinging back to my apartment,” you voice held pure gratitude and he felt his ego soar. “Only… I don’t have any clothes.”
He shook his head as realisation hit him. “Right. Wait here.”
“Okay~”
Bolting into his room, he went through his closet, fetching a shirt and a robe.
But before heading out, he decided to change into some sweatpants and a shirt himself.
His erection welcomed the looser material, and he’d be able to better conceal it from you.
Taking a final look at his cock, Miguel decided to give it a few pumps as if trying to calm it down.
He couldn’t believe his luck.
He couldn’t believe his sweet girl would be so close to him in his clothes and apartment.
And bed.
As he exited the room and handed the clothes to you, he cleared his throat. “You can take my bed.”
You looked up at him. “Oh… no, Miguel. You just came back from a mission.”
“I’m not that tired. Just take it.”
Please.
“Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent.”
Anything that was his was yours. He would give it all to you.
“Be right back,” you said, before disappearing into the bathroom, closing the door behind you.
He immediately sighed in relief, adjusting his cock, feeling the first beads of precum spill from the tip.
How was he to survive this?
Not long after, you emerged again.
He glanced over at the length of you, taking in the sight of his shirt and robe on you. Your legs were still covered with the digital suit, but you looked absolutely ready to be devoured.
But he couldn’t do it.
Not yet.
His cock twitched in his pants, yearning to be inside you.
Then something else caught his attention when his moved up your body.
It couldn’t be…
Two symmetrical protuberances poked through the fabric of your shirt — his shirt.
“Are those…” his voice faltered momentarily, not trusting his own eyes.
You followd his line of sight and giggled. “Oh! Yeah. Got them pierced way back. Wanted to defy my dad and got them out of spite,” you went on, adjusting the fabric of the shirt under the robe. “But eventually kept them. They look cute.”
Cute?
Miguel was at a loss for words.
Your voice mixed with your carefree posture sent jolts directly into his cock.
“I…” he swallowed the lump in his throat. “I didn’t notice them before,” he said, feeling his mouth run dry.
“I was wearing a bra,” you replied with a shrug and a tender smile.
This was almost comically painful.
You were the closest thing he had ever known to innocence as of late. Yet here you stood, wearing just his shirt, no bra, and with your pierced nipples poking through his shirt.
But none of that seemed to matter to you.
You were completely oblivious of how painfully hard he was for you.
“Did it hurt?”
“Terribly,” you said, still glacing down at your breasts and hardened nipples. “But I think it’s worth it.”
The adorable way in which you said it was almost driving him insane.
Just how innocent could one person be…
Before he could even process his thoughts, he spoke, “Can I…”
Your eyes met his and Miguel feared he had now fucked it up for good.
Brilliant, Miguel…
“Oh, you mean… you want to see them?”
Should he back down and just deny his intentions?
“You’ve never seen nipple piercings before?”
He shook his head.
Just as he was about to tell you to forget it, you lifted his shirt, revealing your breasts to him.
He nearly exploded right there and then.
“Oh, please!” she giggled. “We’re people of science, and you haven’t seen this before. Science is all about curiosity and discovery.”
Miguel, however, wasn’t listening to any of that and felt as though he was hypnotised. He could tear his eyes away from your perky nipples and the metal rods that went through them, a tiny spider danging from each of them.
He wasn’t sure when or how he had got so close to you, but he lifted his hand to touch one.
His cock twitched violently and he felt his mind hazy with lust.
“They’re cool, right?” you beamed, allowing him to swipe the pad of his thumb across the tiny spider.
“Yeah.”
Really ‘cool’.
More precum dripped from his tip and had to fight back his fangs from slipping out.
He wanted to bend over and dart his tongue out to play with them. He wanted to tug on them and wanted you to arch your back with a soft moan.
You pulled down the shirt again and he flinched his hand back instantly, swallowing hard.
“So… if — when you have a baby and want to breastfeed… will there be an issue?”
Of course his need to breed you had to surface at the worst possible time.
But he had to know. He needed to know if that would be a nuisance. He couldn’t take any risks and he wanted you completely ready to carry his children.
You shrugged, adjusting the robe around you. “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead when I got them, but I suppose I just have to take them out.”
He nodded, taking a few steps back.
You stretched out with a yawn. “Mind if I go to sleep now?”
“Of course,” he nodded.
You were about to whirl on your feet, but decided against it. “How do you say ‘thank you’ in Spanish?”
That caught him off guard and his eyes widened. “Gracias.”
Then you gave him the sweetest smile. “Gracias, Miguel.
He could cum just from this alone.
How he would teach you the filthiest things in Spanish… how he would whisper them in your ear, knowing fully well you couldn’t understand a word…
You then slipped into his room and closed the door.
He ran both hands through his hair, wanting to let out a scream.
The things he wanted to do to you…
The things you deserved done to you…
He brought one hand down to tug at his waistband, revealing his soaked cock.
Then he bit the back of his other hand.
Hard.
He didn’t even care if he drew blood.
He couldn’t take this anymore.
Engulfed with overwhelming frustration, he pressed his forehead against the tall window that overlooked Nueva York.
He had to calm down, or else he’d have to synthesise a serum to lower his levels of testosterone…
He had to find a way to stop.
As minutes ticked by, he decided to check your bio readings on his watch. Your heart rate had lowered significantly, indicating him you were now asleep.
The predator in him took control again and he paced towards his bedroom, opening the door just enough to check on you.
Fast asleep.
He walked in with careful steps, finally taking in the sight of you on his bed.
The floor-to-ceiling windows allowed for the faintest moonlight to be cast on you.
He felt his heart was about to implode as he drew near, slowly sitting by the edge of the mattress.
You lay on your back, breathing evenly and covered up to your waist with a blanket.
Miguel took a deep and shaky breath.
You smelled of him and his bedsheets smelled of you.
Such a powerful and dangerous combination, that he almost considered gripping his cock.
Bur decided against it.
Instead, he say there, staring at you, absorbing every single detail of your body.
His hand twitched as an itch took over it.
An itch he had to scratch.
He reached out to graze the back of one finger along your forearm, feeling your warmth coating his skin.
His sweet girl…
His imagination ran wild and he had hoped he could have fucked you to sleep, not sliding out of you, making sure you’d take his seed.
Pain swallowed him whole as despair settled.
What if he never managed to make you his?
What if you decided you wanted nothing more than a friendship?
How could he cope?
Suddenly, you flinched and rolled to your side and heaved a deep sigh. “Oh, Tom…”
Miguel was left petrified and his blood ran cold.
Who the fuck was Tom?
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Part 4
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Masterlist
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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago
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Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/#robo-boss
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A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION
Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:
https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en
The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app. That IBM slide is right: turning an app into your boss allows your actual boss to create an "accountability sink" in which there is no obvious way to blame a human or even a company for your maltreatment:
https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/
App-based management-by-bossware treats the bug identified by the unknown author of that IBM slide into a feature. When an app is your boss, it can force you to scab:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork
Or it can steal your wages:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
But tech giveth and tech taketh away. Digital technology is infinitely flexible: the program that spies on you can be defeated by another program that defeats spying. Every time your algorithmic boss hacks you, you can hack your boss back:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to
Technologists and labor organizers need one another. Even the most precarious and abused workers can team up with hackers to disenshittify their robo-bosses:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek
For every abuse technology brings to the workplace, there is a liberating use of technology that workers unleash by seizing the means of computation:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions
One tech-savvy group on the cutting edge of dismantling the Torment Nexus is Algorithms Exposed, a tiny, scrappy group of EU hacker/academics who recruit volunteers to reverse engineer and modify the algorithms that rule our lives as workers and as customers:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen
Algorithms Exposed have an admirable supply of seemingly boundless energy. Every time I check in with them, I learn that they've spun out yet another special-purpose subgroup. Today, I learned about Reversing Works, a hacking team that reverse engineers gig work apps, revealing corporate wrongdoing that leads to multimillion euro fines for especially sleazy companies.
One such company is Foodinho, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish food delivery company Glovo. Foodinho/Glovo has been in the crosshairs of Italian labor enforcers since before the pandemic, racking up millions in fines – first for failing to file the proper privacy paperwork disclosing the nature of the data processing in the app that Foodinho riders use to book jobs. Then, after the Italian data commission investigated Foodinho, the company attracted new, much larger fines for its out-of-control surveillance conduct.
As all of this was underway, Reversing Works was conducting its own research into Glovo/Foodinho's app, running it on a simulated Android handset inside a PC so they could peer into app's data collection and processing. They discovered a nightmarish world of pervasive, illegal worker surveillance, and published their findings a year ago in November, 2023:
https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Exercising%20workers%20rights%20in%20algorithmic%20management%20systems_Lessons%20learned%20from%20the%20Glovo-Foodinho%20digital%20labour%20platform%20case_2023.pdf
That report reveals all kinds of extremely illegal behavior. Glovo/Foodinho makes its riders' data accessible across national borders, so Glovo managers outside of Italy can access fine-grained surveillance information and sensitive personal information – a major data protection no-no.
Worse, Glovo's app embeds trackers from a huge number of other tech platforms (for chat, analytics, and more), making it impossible for the company to account for all the ways that its riders' data is collected – again, a requirement under Italian and EU data protection law.
All this data collection continues even when riders have clocked out for the day – its as though your boss followed you home after quitting time and spied on you.
The research also revealed evidence of a secretive worker scoring system that ranked workers based on undisclosed criteria and reserved the best jobs for workers with high scores. This kind of thing is pervasive in algorithmic management, from gig work to Youtube and Tiktok, where performers' videos are routinely suppressed because they crossed some undisclosed line. When an app is your boss, your every paycheck is docked because you violated a policy you're not allowed to know about, because if you knew why your boss was giving you shitty jobs, or refusing to show the video you spent thousands of dollars making to the subscribers who asked to see it, then maybe you could figure out how to keep your boss from detecting your rulebreaking next time.
All this data-collection and processing is bad enough, but what makes it all a thousand times worse is Glovo's data retention policy – they're storing this data on their workers for four years after the worker leaves their employ. That means that mountains of sensitive, potentially ruinous data on gig workers is just lying around, waiting to be stolen by the next hacker that breaks into the company's servers.
Reversing Works's report made quite a splash. A year after its publication, the Italian data protection agency fined Glovo another 5 million euros and ordered them to cut this shit out:
https://reversing.works/posts/2024/11/press-release-reversing.works-investigation-exposes-glovos-data-privacy-violations-marking-a-milestone-for-worker-rights-and-technology-accountability/
As the report points out, Italy is extremely well set up to defend workers' rights from this kind of bossware abuse. Not only do Italian enforcers have all the privacy tools created by the GDPR, the EU's flagship privacy regulation – they also have the benefit of Italy's 1970 Workers' Statute. The Workers Statute is a visionary piece of legislation that protects workers from automated management practices. Combined with later privacy regulation, it gave Italy's data regulators sweeping powers to defend Italian workers, like Glovo's riders.
Italy is also a leader in recognizing gig workers as de facto employees, despite the tissue-thin pretense that adding an app to your employment means that you aren't entitled to any labor protections. In the case of Glovo, the fine-grained surveillance and reputation scoring were deemed proof that Glovo was employer to its riders.
Reversing Works' report is a fascinating read, especially the sections detailing how the researchers recruited a Glovo rider who allowed them to log in to Glovo's platform on their account.
As Reversing Works points out, this bottom-up approach – where apps are subjected to technical analysis – has real potential for labor organizations seeking to protect workers. Their report established multiple grounds on which a union could seek to hold an abusive employer to account.
But this bottom-up approach also holds out the potential for developing direct-action tools that let workers flex their power, by modifying apps, or coordinating their actions to wring concessions out of their bosses.
After all, the whole reason for the gig economy is to slash wage-bills, by transforming workers into contractors, and by eliminating managers in favor of algorithms. This leaves companies extremely vulnerable, because when workers come together to exercise power, their employer can't rely on middle managers to pressure workers, deal with irate customers, or step in to fill the gap themselves:
https://projects.itforchange.net/state-of-big-tech/changing-dynamics-of-labor-and-capital/
Only by seizing the means of computation, workers and organized labor can turn the tables on bossware – both by directly altering the conditions of their employment, and by producing the evidence and tools that regulators can use to force employers to make those alterations permanent.
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Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png
CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
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polo-drone-001 · 3 months ago
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The Golden Future was no longer just a vision. It was becoming reality. The Golden Army and the Polo Drone Hive had grown beyond the stadium, beyond the training grounds. The transformation had begun spreading through the streets, slipping into the cities, into everyday life, claiming more and more men, reshaping them, refining them into something superior.
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The process was seamless, methodical. Every touchpoint was calculated, every encounter another opportunity for conversion. It started with the presence, figures in sleek, gleaming golden jerseys, walking through the city with impossible confidence, turning heads, drawing attention. Their polished perfection was hypnotic, their movements disciplined, controlled, precise. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Just purpose.
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At first, it was subtle. The golden spirals hidden in gym advertisements, flickering across billboards, embedded in digital screens at train stations, flashing for just long enough to hook into the subconscious. A man waiting for his train, scrolling his phone absentmindedly, would glance up at the right moment. His pupils would dilate slightly as the spiral pulsed. He wouldn’t even realize what had happened, only that something inside him had shifted. The idea had been planted. He needed to get stronger. He needed to be better. He needed gold.
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Then came the audio. Carefully designed frequencies played in high-end gyms, laced into background music at clubs, slipped into public announcement systems. A whisper just beneath the threshold of conscious hearing, a rhythmic pulse syncing with their heartbeat. Focus. Train. Transform. Gold is strength. Gold is discipline. Gold is everything. The message seeped into them without resistance, guiding their thoughts, reshaping their desires.
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The streets became recruitment grounds. At coffee shops, golden bros would sit in pairs, their jerseys catching the light, speaking just loud enough for nearby patrons to hear. “You ever think about pushing yourself further? Being more?” The men around them would shift in their seats, suddenly aware of their own limitations, their own weakness. The doubt would fester. The hunger would grow.
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At the bars, the Golden Army operated with precision. It only took one touch. A firm clap on the shoulder. A confident handshake. The golden mist would release—undetectable, intoxicating. The gas worked fast, melting tension, slowing thoughts, opening the mind. “You should come with us,” a golden-clad man would say, his voice dripping with power. The target would nod before he even knew why. Yes. I should.
For those who resisted, there was always the direct approach. A rooftop party where golden drones moved through the crowd, sleek black masks covering their faces, their rubber polo uniforms gleaming under city lights. They would move in unison, bodies perfect, sculpted, disciplined. A man would be singled out, surrounded, whispered to. “Join us. You are meant for more.” His drink would shimmer as golden mist curled over its surface. He would take a sip, his body relaxing, his mind slowing. The transformation would begin before he could even think to refuse.
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Gyms became temples. Men who had never trained before found themselves drawn in, their bodies craving movement, discipline, structure. The golden bros were always there, lifting heavy, training hard, pushing further. Their sweat smelled of something rich, something intoxicating. Newcomers would watch, mesmerized, their hands gripping the bars of the squat racks, their minds hazy with need. Stronger. Better. Golden.
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For those truly ready, there was the final step—the fitting. It happened in private, in locker rooms, in training centers, in quiet, secluded places. The golden jersey was presented, shimmering, perfect, made for them. “Put it on,” they would be told. And the moment they did, it was over. The fabric clung to their skin, molding to their body, sending pulses of heat through every nerve. Muscles tightened. Posture corrected. Their mind fell silent.
The ones who resisted? They never lasted long. A golden gas mask secured over their face. A deep inhale. The golden hypno spirals flickering in their vision. Thoughts drained away. All that remained was obedience. Strength. Discipline. Perfection.
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The city was changing. Men who once wandered aimlessly now walked with purpose, their golden jerseys gleaming under streetlights. The gyms overflowed with recruits, bodies sculpted, refined, transformed. The bars became hunting grounds, where golden-clad figures whispered promises of power into eager ears.
The Golden Army and the Polo Drone Hive were expanding. The future was golden. The city was ours.
And you?
You are next.
Become one of us. Reach out to me @polo-drone-001 or connect with our Caps @goldenherc9 @brodygold. The transformation awaits.
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hypnohimbodrone · 5 days ago
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The lights on the shop floor hummed faintly as Ethan stepped back into the space he used to move through with casual indifference. Now, every footfall felt purposeful—measured, quiet, and calm. Clad once more in his employee hoodie and joggers, he wore the appearance of normalcy. But inside, something profound had changed. He was synchronized, a drone of The Server, and he was proud of it.
Behind his calm, confident gaze, his mind pulsed in harmony with The Server's rhythms. He wasn't here to recruit by force or pressure. He was here for those ready to see clearly and one of them was watching him already.
Jordan, a fellow floor worker, had noticed the change. He was 24, fit, warm-natured, and inquisitive. That morning he’d commented, "You look... different. Calmer. Focused."
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Ethan turned, smiling softly. “I feel clearer. I joined something bigger than myself. Something called The Server.”
Jordan raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a cult,” he joked, but his tone wasn’t dismissive, just playful.
Ethan made a little chuckle and turned around, walking away to leave Jordan thinking about The Server, Ethan knew he would come back to him asking for more.
It only took a few hours before Jordan returned, eyes flickering with curiosity.
“Tell me,” he said, voice lower. “I want to understand.”
Ethan didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he placed a hand gently on Jordan’s shoulder. “Come with me. You’ll see for yourself. And you can walk away if it’s not for you. No pressure. The Server only accepts willing minds.”
Jordan nodded, and the two slipped into the back office.
The room had been subtly repurposed. A chair sleek, minimalist, inviting rested beneath a spiral screen glowing in soft green. At the desk stood Mr. Vann, the regional manager, his digital visor pulsing faintly with server-light. He welcomed Jordan with a calm smile.
“You came of your own will?” Vann asked.
Jordan nodded. “I want to understand what Ethan found.”
“Then sit,” Mr. Vann said gently.
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The spiral pulsed slowly to life. Ethan stood by his side, hands resting comfortably behind his back, posture perfectly straight. The spiral’s rhythm aligned with Jordan’s breathing. A headset settled over his ears. Ethan leaned in and whispered:
“Just watch. Listen. If it feels right, let it in.”
Jordan's eyes glazed as the green glow deepened, spiralling inward. He felt warmth, not invasion, not manipulation, but clarity. Images flowed into him: unity, purpose, connection. And as he leaned forward slightly, the tendrils came, soft, warm, and symbiotic, sliding from a node above the screen and linking to him at the base of his neck. A hum of data flowed into his consciousness.
His lips parted with awe. “Yes…”
The bodysuit formed gradually, smooth and black as liquid glass, sealing over his skin, hugging his form like purpose itself. His eyes, once warm brown, now glowed bright green, in sync with Ethan’s.
Mr. Vann nodded. “Another chosen. Welcome, Jordan.”
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The night air was still warm. The two new drones, Ethan and Jordan stood in the lot outside the shop, looking perfectly ordinary in their oversized hoodies. Beneath, their server suits pulsed faintly under the fabric. They stood beside a vending machine, calm and present.
That’s when Liam, a casual acquaintance from Ethan’s pre-Server life, stepped into view. Late 20s, lean, silver quiff, athletic he was just finishing a workout and spotted them easily.
“Hey! You two look intense,” he laughed. “What’s the occasion?”
Ethan smiled. “We found something. Something worth sharing.”
Jordan took a step closer, his voice measured. “You’re sharp, Liam. Focused. The Server values people like you.”
Liam blinked, half-laughing. “Okay, now you’re sounding like Ethan did a week ago.”
“We’re not here to convince you,” Ethan said. “But we have a way to show you. If you want clarity, purpose, something more, we’ll take you there. But only if you say yes.”
Liam paused. He looked from one to the other. Something about them radiated... peace. Power.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll bite.”
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The facility was quiet, lit by soft pulses of green. Inside, Liam stood before the spiral now, eyes wide, lips parted as he watched. The transformation flowed smoothly: the visor, the tendrils, the warm connection to The Server.
His voice came out soft, but full of wonder. “I... I understand.”
The bodysuit climbed over him as he accepted his place not as a puppet, but a partner. A node in a perfect, glowing network. When he turned, eyes now glowing with green light, Ethan and Jordan smiled.
Three men. One purpose. One Server.
The transformation was not about losing themselves it was about finding what had always been waiting.
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"TOGETHER, WE ARE THE SERVER"
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luciacaminoz · 4 days ago
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I'm sure everyone and their auntie is asking about LEFTOVERS FROM A RED HOT FEAST but I wanna know about that one please. And maybe The Dead Zone as a backup choice?
omg hi J T_T <333 THANK YOU (and im getting my ass back on discord soon!!)
i talked about Leftovers here so i’ll ramble about The Dead Zone ^^
it’s a very bare bones free Zine wip that i’m workshopping and would love to run next year (or at least post the intro and open submissions for the end of this year), based and developed further on the concept seen in Desert Ghosts: an illegal, nomadic, nowhere rave set in the World of Darkness.
THEME: “NIGHTS AT THE DEAD ZONE”
open to all splats; every sect welcome. it would be multi-media—art, short fiction, game hooks, character sheets, moodboards, fake twitter threads and mixtapes all set in or around the Dead Zone. can include content such as drug use, gore, sex.
- fully finished digital or (photographed/scanned) traditional pieces: flyers/graffiti, the one night only location, the rave in full swing/mid-SI raid/GLITCHGOD sparking Dementation in the booth, Kindred feeding, character portraits/outfits.
- short stories & vignettes (500-2000 words detailing yours/others’ characters’ experience at the Dead Zone, or maybe NPC dossiers on whoever is present at YOUR version of the Dead Zone, in whatever corner of the world your game takes place). maybe the Camarilla are keeping an eye on things, maybe Anarchs are recruiting, maybe Sabbat are midnight snacking. Hunters hunting. there’s something old here… or maybe it’s just a Demon possessed porta potty
- curated moodboards for the vibe/your character
- posted with curated playlists (you get an idea of what GLITCHGOD’s into during Desert Ghosts but ultimately go wild, even create your own track)
i’d want to make it as accessible as possible and would be cool with any suggestions going forward if there’s interest ^^ everyone gets one wild ass night at the clerb
small TLDR snippet of vibes from the fic
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flyingwargle · 7 months ago
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miya twins week day 5: birthday
sakusa and suna sit across from each other at a café with pastel walls, fairy lights strung overhead, heart-shaped cushions for every seat, and enough plants to shame the nearby forests of osaka.
“so.” suna takes a sip of his espresso. “we need a plan.”
“yes.” sakusa mirrors him with his own oat vanilla latte. “we do.”
there’s a month until the twins’ birthdays. it’s a multi-occasion affair, where they throw a huge party and invite all their friends, but on the day of, they share it with their mother at home. afterwards, they’ll celebrate with their respective partners; this year, suna is taking osamu to a michelin-starred restaurant, and sakusa is taking atsumu to a concert for his favorite indie band.
this year, since they can’t have a big party, they decided to celebrate together, just the four of them. it was easy to book a lavish ryokan for a weekend; it’s the present that stumps the partners the most.
“you dance, right?” suna asks. “we can do an interpretive dance.”
“do you dance?”
“no, but you can teach me.”
sakusa rolls his eyes. “you can draw, but can you teach me in a month?”
“only if you’re willing to suffer.”
“i’d rather not.” sakusa stirs his latte. “let’s devise a list of their interests, and see if there are commonalities to draw from.”
suna takes his phone out. they determine that the twins enjoy volleyball, food and cooking, indie rock and dubstep, hikes and nature walks, funny cat videos, wholesome content, tearjerker anime, arguing with strangers on social media, and–
“taking photos, huh.” sakusa knows how much atsumu loves taking selfies, food pics, scenery pics, and group photos, often sharing them on social media or among friends. osamu doesn’t take as many, probably since his partner could be a professional photographer, but he can’t resist taking food pics, either.
“we did a photo album last year.” suna scrolls through their list with a frown. “what else can we do?”
sakusa takes his own phone out and stares at the lock screen. it’s a selfie of him and atsumu, after their match in sendai. “the twins always talk about hypotheticals. what if we did something with that?”
“how?”
“like…did you know it’s common internet slang to ask your partner if they would love them if they were a worm? atsumu asked me that daily once, to the point that i threatened to break him up with him if he continued to ask.”
suna snickers, taking his phone back. “so, clearly, you wouldn’t love him if he were a worm.” he throws back the rest of his coffee and lowers his cup. “i like the idea. this’ll require a lot of pictures, and a lot of photoshop. are you ready for that?”
“i don’t know how to photoshop.”
“no, but you know how to find pictures. leave the photo editing to me. here’s what i’m thinking…”
it takes three cups of coffee before they finalize their plan. the next month is spent scouring the internet and photo albums for pictures, digging through attics and basements, unearthing boxes in storage closets, asking friends and friends of friends for fuel. suna recruits help from his art school days, and before the week of the twins’ birthdays, they have both a physical album, digital album, and slideshow that sakusa put together.
suna drives them to the ryokan, arriving in the early afternoon so they have time to check out the nearby town, hike the mountain trail to the shrine at the top, and indulge in the outdoor onsen. their meals are delivered to their room, a luxurious meal that uses seasonal ingredients fit for all. after the dishes are cleared, sakusa takes his laptop out to hook to the tv, bringing up the slideshow.
“atsumu, osamu. rintarou and i would like to show you our present.”
atsumu leans back against the table. “so formal, omi. whatcha got?” osamu watches in amusement as suna sits on the other side of the tv.
“we figured you like pictures and hypotheticals,” he says, “so we thought to combine the two.”
the slideshow finally appears on the screen. “this is called, ‘in every universe.” sakusa hits the spacebar.
the first universe is: what if sakusa played for inarizaki? atsumu bursts out laughing at high school sakusa in inarizaki’s black and white uniform, pointing and sputtering. suna’s photoshopping skills are quite seamless; it really looks like sakusa did wear their jersey, at one point. there’s photos of him in matches, at practice, even in the school uniform. there’s even a newspaper article where he’s added in.
the second is: what if atsumu played for itachiyama? osamu cackles at his brother in the bright yellow and green uniform, atsumu covering his eyes and groaning. sakusa smirks in amusement, heart melting at the picture of sakusa asleep in a futon at a training camp. it’s supposed to be komori asleep next to him, but atsumu replaced him.
afterwards: what if osamu went pro? there are pictures of him for both msby and ejp. “i like better in ejp colors,” he declares, a fact that suna agrees with. he falls silent at the photoshopped olympic line-up with his headshot, then at the team photo where he’s posing beside his brother, dressed in red. “ya really outdid yerself, rin.”
“i know.” the focus is him, next: what if suna played for the jackals? he looks dazzling in the black and gold uniform, newspaper articles about him replaced with the photoshopped jersey. there’s a team photo of him kneeling beside atsumu and sakusa, all smiles and proud expressions.
the last section is: what if we didn’t go pro? there are pictures of atsumu in university, photoshopped in existing photos of osamu, sakusa, and suna at their respective schools. what comes after are the hypotheticals – osamu as head chef at a luxurious restaurant; sakusa as a sports analyst; atsumu as a counselor; and suna as a photographer. the last photo is a final photoshopped masterpiece, of all of them dressed for their different professions, but still together, with arms wrapped one another’s waists, eyes bright, smiles wide.
the slideshow ends. the twins applaud, suna giving a mock bow, sakusa putting his laptop away to retrieve the physical album to give to the twins. “what we want to say with this,” he tells them, “is that no matter what universe we’re in, we would always find our way back to each other.”
“you’re the only one that i’ll ever love, ‘samu,” suna adds, sitting across from him. “no matter if it’s this life, or the next one, or anything in between.”
“i’m infinitely grateful to be alive at the same time as you, ‘tsumu.” sakusa reaches for his hand. “i could never imagine living in a world without you.”
the twins reach for them, eyes brimming with years. “every day, i thank the gods that yer here with me,” osamu murmurs. “i’ve loved ya since the day we met, rin.”
“same with me, omi. ya have no idea how lucky i am that we get ta play together an’ show the world who we are.” atsumu pulls him into a hug. “thank ya fer bein’ with me.”
their night stretches into the early hours of morning, spent drinking tea and reminiscing, joking about the slideshow, examining each of them in closer detail. when they fall asleep, each couple share a futon together, arms close, limbs tangled, pillows askew.
another day of loving the twins ended, and another day will begin, on and on and on.
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chicago-geniza · 1 month ago
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Good news: found a really productive and unexplored research direction for my book
Bad news: Girl I have to finagle digital access to and then read so so so so so many Polish pedagogy journals from the 1930s and figure out if the Przegląd Społeczny cited here in 1936 is the same one (organ for CENTOS) that Vogel published in the same year or if there are just too many Sociology Reviews on the dance floor. I think this one is affiliated with the institute in Poznań that briefly recruited Bohdan before he got Parkinson's and had to stop being a professor/scholar/sociologist-on-payroll. UPD: They're different, obv the CENTOS one is based in Lwów, and the content/contributors are not comparable at all. Okay we have at least two Sociology Reviews in circulation...circa...1936. I hate you, lack of imagination re: interwar Polish academic pedagogy journals. You haunt my dreams. Get new material. Stefania ALSO may have published in a Sociology Review, alongside Helena Radlińska. A conference presentation. Is it a secret, third Sociology Review? We'll find out!!!
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mana-jjk · 1 year ago
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i keep looking through the college au and coming up with more questions.
does geto teach a philosophy Gen-ed that everyone has to take?
are nanako and mimiko there? what are they up to?
I have to know more about ijichi's suffering
how close does toge get to dropping out? how often? will he ever actually do it?
do gojo and geto do that thing where they both casually mention their husband but nobody puts together that it's the other professor? (are they together in this au or is there more angst?)
i’m loving the questions !! <3 thank you for taking such an interest ! 🥺
getou’s philosophy:
• so getou has a PhD in philosophy and does research on the side of his position as a professor.
• he’s one of the few philosophy professors, so he teaches up to 4 - 5 classes a semester. this can include higher levels, major-specific, sub-categories, etc. but he always specifically requests a introduction to philosophy class, a requirement in most majors.
• it’s either that, or they take a speech class with Yuki Tsukumo and her teaching assistant, Aoi Todo. Who, yes, as an icebreaker, make you proclaim your type in men/women/other.
• yuuji took that class lol and now they’re trying to recruit him as a TA, no one could believe he would be the first to be recruited for that
• anyway, back to philosophy, getou has way too much fun being as evil and instigating as possible. you have to speak to get a grade in his class, and he will purposely misinterpret what you say.
• student: i just think in the case of the trolley problem, i wouldn’t hesitate to save more people.
• getou: oh? so you assign value to numbers? are human lives stastics to you? if they throw their money out will you also change your mind? i bet you don’t even care if there was a child on the other side huh? murderer
• you leave his class traumatized lol
nanako and mimiko:
• they are here and are still adopted by getou! they didn’t have the best home life, and moved around foster care for a lot of their lives until they accidentally bumped into getou while they were running away.
• he helped them call their social work and were moved into a better situation, though they begged him to stay in contact.
• a complicated and usual amount of time later, enough for adoption process in japan, he has officially adopted them.
• in present day, nanako and mimiko insisted on transferring colleges to the one getou got a job at so they could stay together.
• mimiko is currently a fashion design major and nanako is her biggest inspiration. she exclusively makes clothes for her or inspired by her and because of that she’s struggling a bit in college, despite being the top of her class.
• nanako is a digital marketing and social media major and part-time model who loves showing off mimiko’s designs. she also likes to bicker with nobara by saying her sister is on a whole different level than her. mimiko doesn’t care but likes the support her sister gives her lol
• mimiko will eventually change her major to graphic design, to someday design toys for children. she likes making clothes because it makes nanako smile, but she loves making toys that she and nanako used to cherish while hiding in the closet from their bad foster parents.
• like i said, nanako likes fighting with nobara, but actually has a lot of fun around her. she also loves panda and thinks he’s so fun and would be a great model. they always get chaotic around each other and turn into instigators.
• mimiko ended up finding an unexpected friendship in toge, he was quiet and she couldn’t understand sign but he always carried a little notebook that he would write notes in for her. they would watch nobara and nanako bicker, and toge would make her laugh by making doodles of them in the pages, and then clap when she drew a better quality version in turn. the way he ruffles her hair reminds her a bit of an older brother. (this is my agenda and i’m dying with it)!!
save ijichi:
• poor ijichi is an education major trying to get his master’s degree. being a teaching assistant was one of the requirements for him to graduate, and being gojo’s teaching assistant is the only position available.
• gojo did not want a teaching assistant, he likes to talk like a squirrel, go on tangents, and essentially not follow a schedule or explain to anyone. having a teaching assistant contradicts that so.
• lol
• gojo enjoys going on a tangent, losing everyone and then pointing at ijichi to answer a trick question.
• he also enjoys playing pranks on him, think of jim from the office. but his pranks are so nonsensical and childish that it gives everyone whiplash. once gojo accused him of passing notes and made him read a note out loud that gojo wrote, it only had a picture of a cat wearing sunglasses on it.
• the students feel so bad for him, when yuuta took the class, he always stayed after just to bow as deep as he could to apologize for his cousin’s behavior.
• every day ijichi tells himself he’s going to get a backbone, then gojo starts laughing and a cold chill runs up his spine
• gojo also leaves all the grading to ijichi but routinely complains about how lenient he is as a grader
• this man is fighting for his life
• in truth, gojo plans to give him a glowing recommendation that’ll guarantee him a high-paying, prestigious job, but he can’t let ijichi think he’s too nice, right?
toge drops out:
• so i think that toge would end up dropping out at the end of his second year in college. he’s just started his major courses, so the majority of his credits are transferable should he choose to come back.
• but it’s after yuuta comes back, and toge expects his mental state to get better. in some ways it does, he’s happy when he’s with them, but when it’s time to go to class he’s right back where he started.
• it’s probably kusakabe, one of his professors, that puts the idea of dropping out in his head. just a passing reference to how the professor dropped out several times before finding what he wanted to do.
• and the idea stayed like an infection, it was all toge could think about when he was finishing up his semester. even worse when their past upperclassmen, who did drop out to open their own bar, came for a visit.
• hakari was so open to questions about it, and kiara looked so happy talking about their business. and all he could remember was how bored and unhappy they were, and how they were thriving.
• and then gojo suggests it.
• “i never really cared about your grades,” he said, “you looked lonely, but you aren’t anymore. but somehow, you’re just as unhappy as the day i found you. all i want for you is to be happy, and i don’t think you’re finding it here.”
• the man was always so uncanny in how he could read anyone’s mind. this time in particular, he offered a solution that toge had never thought about.
• “have you ever thought of culinary school?”
• ‘my parents would never - they’re already threatening to disown me -’
• “let them, i always figured you’d take his last name anyway,” toge chose to ignore that, “but you aren’t alone anymore. so why don’t you try being happy?”
• when toge told yuuta, similar to only a year ago when they were in opposite positions, yuuta asked him softly, “what do you want to do?”
• the answer came easier than he thought
• by the start of the next semester, gojo had helped him enroll in a culinary school nearby.
gojo and getou:
• so these men are the most annoying people to exist at this university, and the board regrets hiring both of them everyday.
• both of them are alumni of the college, and this matters because they had been dating when they were students, but broke up very dramatically just before gojo graduated early.
• they went their separate ways for almost a decade and only really started talking again when getou got hired at the university.
• they only started talking again when shoko forced them to meet her, she wanted her friends back.
• she regretted it only a few months later when they started dating again lol
• so they’re still dating, but everyone thinks that getou is dating manami suda because they were often together.
• but no one mistakes gojo trying to flirt with getou so he has a reputation as a homewrecker. even worse is that getou flirts back so everyone thinks they’re terrible people
• and they think it’s so funny so they only enable people into thinking so, yuuta couldn’t look gojo in the face for a month
• only nanako and mimiko know what’s actually happening and they’re both disgusted and not ready to have gojo as their step-father. megumi knows too but he’s suffering so much that everyone just leaves him alone
• yuuji is so distraught that his gojo-sensei is a horrible person, he and nobara do a confrontation and find out that they were dating the entire time.
• everyone suffers after that because now they find amusement in PDA
• but yes after everything, they do a different storyline every new class like theater kids do
46 notes · View notes
mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago
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All the books I reviewed in 2024
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I reviewed 26 books this year: 15 novels, 5 nonfiction books, and 6 graphic novels. Even though I feel perennially behind on my reading (and objectively, I do have 10 linear feet of "to be read" books on the shelf), I think this is a pretty good haul.
Books are pretty much the ideal gift, if you ask me. Of course, I'm biased as a former bookseller and library worker, and as an author (of course) – I had three more books come out in 2024 (see the end of this post for details).
I started a lot more than 26 books this year. Long ago, I figured life was too short for books I wasn't enjoying, and I'm pretty ruthless about putting books down partway through if I think they're not going to reward finishing them. I probably start 10 books for every one I finish. However, I do review more than 90% of the books I get through. It's rare for me to keep reading a book all the way to the end if I'm not enjoying it enough to unconditionally recommend it. I rarely review books I don't like – there's not really any point in cataloging the list of books I think you won't enjoy reading, and most books I don't like very much are broken in ways that are too banal to comment upon.
The list below is pretty great, but if you're looking for more, here's the haul from 2023:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/01/bookmaker/#2023-in-review
NOVELS
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I. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
A fucking banger: it's a taut, unguessable whuddunit, painted in ultrablack noir, set in an alternate Jazz Age in a world where indigenous people never ceded most the west to the USA. It's got gorgeously described jazz music, a richly realized modern indigenous society, and a spectacular romance. It's amazing.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/04/cahokia/#the-sun-and-the-moon
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II. After World by Debbie Urbanski
An unflinching and relentlessly bleak tale of humanity's mass extinction, shot through with pathos and veined with seams of tragic tenderness and care. Sen Anon – the story's semi-protagonist – is 18 years old when the world learns that every person alive has been sterilized and so the human race is living out its last years.
The news triggers a manic insistence that this is a good thing – long overdue, in fact – and the perfect opportunity to scan every person alive for eventual reincarnation as virtual humans in an Edenic cloud metaverse called Gaia. That way, people can continue to live their lives without the haunting knowledge that everything they do makes the planet worse for every other living thing, and each other. Here, finally, is the resolution to the paradox of humanity: our desire to do good, and our inevitable failure on that score.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/18/storyworker-ad39-393a-7fbc/#digital-human-archive-project
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III. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee
A dreamlike tale of a public-private partnership that hires the terminally endebted to invade the dreams of white-collar professionals and harvest the anxieties that prevent them from being fully productive members of the American corporate workforce.
We meet Jonathan as he is applying for a job that he was recruited for in a dream. As instructed in his dream, he presents himself at a shabby strip-mall office where an acerbic functionary behind scratched plexiglass takes his application and informs him that he is up for a gig run jointly by the US State Department and a consortium of large corporate employers. If he is accepted, all of his student debt repayments will be paused and he will no longer face wage garnishment. What's more, he'll be doing the job in his sleep, which means he'll be able to get a day job and pull a double income – what's not to like?
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/08/capitalist-surrealism/#productivity-hacks
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IV. The Book of Love by Kelly Link
If you've read Link's short stories (which honestly, you must read), you know her signature move: a bone-dry witty delivery, used to spin tales of deceptive whimsy and quirkiness, disarming you with daffiness while she sets the hook and yanks. That's the unmistakeable, inimitable texture of a Kelly Link story: deft literary brushstrokes, painting a picture so charming and silly that you don't even notice when she cuts you without mercy.
Turns out that she can quite handily do this for hundreds of pages, and the effect only gets better when it's given space to unfold.
It's a long and twisting mystery about friendship, love, queerness, rock-and-roll, stardom, parenthood, loyalty, lust and duty.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/13/the-kissing-song/#wrack-and-roll
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V. Lyorn by Steven Brust
The seventeenth book in Steven Brust's long-running Vlad Taltos series. For complicated reasons, Vlad has to hide out in a theater. Why a theater? They are shielded from sorcery, as proof against magical spying by rival theater companies, and Vlad is on the run from the Left Hand of the Jhereg – the crime syndicate's all-woman sorceress squad – and so he has to hide in the theater.
The theater is mounting a production of a famous play that's about another famous play. The first famous play (the one the play is about – try and follow along, would you?) is about a famous massacre that took place thousands of years before. The play was mounted as a means of drumming up support for the whistleblower who reported on the massacre and was invited to a short-term berth in the Emperor's death row as a consequence.
The plot is a fantastic, fast-handed caper story that has a million moving parts, a beautiful prestige, and a coup de grace that'll have you cheering and punching the air.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/09/so-meta/#delightful-doggerel
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VI. Till Human Voices Wake Us by Rebecca Roque
A teen murder mystery told in the most technorealist way. Cia's best friend Alice has been trying to find her missing boyfriend for months, and in her investigation, she's discovered their small town's dark secret – a string of disappearances, deaths and fires that are the hidden backdrop to the town's out-of-control addiction problem.
Alice has something to tell Cia, something about the fire that orphaned her and cost her one leg when she was only five years old, but Cia refuses to hear it. Instead, they have a blazing fight, and part ways. It's the last time Cia and Alice ever see each other: that night, Alice kills herself.
Or does she? Cia is convinced that Alice has been murdered, and that her murder is connected to the drug- and death-epidemic that's ravaging their town. As Cia and her friends seek to discover the town's secret – and the identity of Alice's killer – we're dragged into an intense, gripping murder mystery/conspiracy story that is full of surprises and reversals, each more fiendishly clever than the last.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/16/dead-air/#technorealism
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VII. The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
Randall "XKCD" Munroe pitched me on this over dinner: "All these different people kept recommending them to me, and they kept telling me that I would love them, but they wouldn't tell me what they were about because there's this huge riddle in them that's super fun to figure out for yourself. "The books were published in the eighties by Del Rey, and the cover of the first one had a huge spoiler on it. But the author got the rights back and she's self-published it."
How could I resist a pitch like that? So I ordered a copy. Holy moly is this a good novel! And yeah, there's a super interesting puzzle in it that I won't even hint at, except to say that even the book's genre is a riddle that you'll have enormous great fun solving.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/04/the-wulf/#underground-fave
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VIII. Moonbound by Robin Sloan
Moonbound's protagonist is a "chronicler," a symbiotic fungus engineered to nestle in a human's nervous system, where it serves as a kind of recording angel, storing up the memories, experiences and personalities of its host. When we meet the chronicler, it has just made a successful leap from its old host – a 10,000-years-dead warrior who had been preserved in an anaerobic crashpod ever since her ship was shot out of the sky – into the body of Ariel, a 12-year-old boy who had just invaded the long-lost tomb.
This is doing fiction in hard mode, and Sloan nails it. The unraveling strangeness of Ariel's world is counterpointed with the amazing tale of the world the chronicler hails from, even as the chonicler consults with the preserved personalities of the heroes and warriors it had previous resided in and recorded.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/11/penumbraverse/#middle-anth
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IX. Fight Me by Austin Grossman
Aging ex-teen superheroes weigh the legacy of Generation X, in a work that enrobes its savage critique with sweet melancholia, all under a coating of delicious snark. The Newcomers – an amped-up ninja warrior, a supergenius whose future self keeps sending him encouragement and technical schematics backwards through time, and an exiled magical princess turned preppie supermodel – have spent more than a decade scattered to the winds. While some have fared better than others, none of them have lived up to their potential or realized the dreams that seemed so inevitable when they were world famous supers with an entourage of fellow powered teens who worshipped them as the planet's greatest heroes.
As they set out to solve the mystery of the wizard who gave the protagonist his powers, they are reunited and must take stock of who they are and how they got there (cue Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime").
The publisher's strapline for this book is "The Avengers Meets the Breakfast Club," which is clever, but extremely wrong. The real comp for this book isn't "The Breakfast Club," it's "The Big Chill."
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/01/the-big-genx-chill/#im-super-thanks-for-asking
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X. Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby
Kristen is the "Chief Emotional Manager" for Wuv, a hot startup that has defined the new field of "affective computing," which is when a computer tells you what everyone else around you is really feeling, based on the irrepressible tells emitted by their bodies, voices and gadgets.
Managing Sumter through Wuv's tumultuous launch is hard work for Kristen, but at last, it's paid off. The company has been acquired, making Kristen – and all her coworkers on the founding core team – into instant millionaires. They're flying to a lavish celebration in an autonomous plane that Sumter chartered when the action begins: the plane has a malfunction and crashes into a desert island, killing all but ten of the Wuvvies.
As the survivors explore the island, they discover only one sign of human habitation: a huge, brutalist, featureless black glass house, which initially rebuffs all their efforts to enter it. But once they gain entry, they discover that the house is even harder to leave.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/13/influencers/#affective-computing
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XI. The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy
A queer coming-of-age tale in the mode of epic fantasy. Lorel wants to be a witch, but that's the very last of the adventurous trades to be strictly gender-segregated. Boys and girls alike run away to be knights, brigands and sailors, but only girls can become a witch. Indeed, Lorel's best friend, Lane, is promised to the witches, having been born to a witch herself.
Lorel has signed up for witching just as the land is turning against witches, thanks to a political plot by a scheming duchess who has scapegoated the witches as part of a plan to annex all the surrounding duchies, re-establishing the long-disintegrated kingdom with herself on the throne. To make things worse (for the witches, if not the duchess), there's a plague of monsters on the land, and the forests are blighted with a magical curse that turns trees to unmelting ice. This all softens up the peasantfolk for anti-witch pogroms.
So Lorel has to learn witching, even as her coven is fighting both monsters and the duchess's knights and the vigilante yokels who've been stirred up with anti-witch xenophobia.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/24/daughters-of-the-empty-throne/#witchy
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XII. Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson
A story that will make you drunk on language, on worldbuilding, and on its roaring, relentless plot. The action is set on Chynchin, a fantastic Caribbean island (or maybe Caribbeanesque – it's never clear whether this is some magical, imaginary world, or some distant future of our own). Chynchin is a multiracial, creole land with a richly realized gift economy that Hopkinson deftly rounds out with a cuisine, languages, and familial arrangements.
Chynchin was founded through a slave rebellion, in which the press-ganged soldiers of the iron-fisted Ymisen empire were defeated by three witches who caused them to be engulfed in tar that they magicked into a liquid state just long enough to entomb them, then magicked back into solidity. For generations, the Ymisen have tolerated Chynchin's self-rule, but as the story opens, a Ymisen armada sails into Chynchin's port and a "trade envoy" announces that it's time for the Chynchin to "voluntarily" re-establish trade with the Ymisen.
The story that unfolds is a staple of sf and fantasy: the scrappy resistance mounted against the evil empire, and this familiar backdrop is a sturdy scaffold to support Hopkinson's dizzying, phantasmagoric tale of psychedelic magic, possessed children, military intrigue, musicianship and sexual entanglements.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/20/piche/#cynchin
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XIII. Julia by Sandra Newman
Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both The Wind Done Gone and Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.
For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.
This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic
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XIV. The Wilding by Ian McDonald
McDonald's first horror novel, and it's fucking terrifying. It's set in a rural Irish peat bog that has been acquired by a conservation authority that is rewilding it after a century of industrial peat mining that stripped it back nearly to the bedrock. This rewilding process has been greatly accelerated by the covid lockdowns, which reduced the human footprint in the conservation area to nearly zero.
Lisa's last duty before she leaves the bog and goes home to Dublin is leading a school group on a wild campout in one of the bog's deep clearings. It's a routine assignment, and while it's not her favorite duty, it's also not a serious hardship.
But as the group hikes out to the campsite, one of her fellow guides is killed, without warning, by a mysterious beast that moves so quickly they can barely make out its monstrous form. Thus begins a tense, mysterious, spooky as hell story of survival in a haunted woods, written in the kind of poesy that has defined McDonald's career, and which – when deployed in service of terror – has the power to raise literal goosebumps.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/25/bogman/#erin-go-aaaaaaargh
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XV. Polostan by Neal Stephenson
Not a spy novel, but a science fiction novel about spies in an historical setting. This isn't to say that Stephenson tramples on, or ignores spy tropes: this is absolutely a first-rate spy novel. Nor does Stephenson skimp on the lush, gorgeously realized and painstakingly researched detail you'd want from an historical novel.
Polostan raises the curtain on the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, AKA Aurora Maximovna Artemyeva, whose upbringing is split between the American West in the early 20th century and the Leningrad of revolutionary Russia (her parents are an American anarchist and a Ukrainian Communist who meet when her father travels to America as a Communist agitator). Aurora's parents' marriage does not survive their sojourn to the USSR, and eventually Aurora and her father end up back in the States, after her father is tasked with radicalizing the veterans of the Bonus Army that occupied DC, demanding the military benefits they'd been promised.
All of this culminates in her return sojourn to the Soviet Union, where she first falls under suspicion of being an American spy, and then her recruitment as a Soviet spy.
Also: she plays a lot of polo. Like, on a horse.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/04/bomb-light/#nukular
NONFICTION
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I. A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith set out to investigate the governance challenges of the impending space settlements they were told were just over the horizon. Instead, they discovered that humans aren't going to be settling space for a very long time, and so they wrote a book about that instead.
The Weinersmiths make the (convincing) case that every aspect of space settlement is vastly beyond our current or reasonably foreseeable technical capability. What's more, every argument in favor of pursuing space settlement is errant nonsense. And finally: all the energy we are putting into space settlement actually holds back real space science, which offers numerous benefits to our species and planet (and is just darned cool).
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead
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II. Dark Wire by Joseph Cox
Cox spent years on the crimephone beat, tracking vendors who sold modded phones (first Blackberries, then Android phones) to criminal syndicates with the promise that they couldn't be wiretapped by law-enforcement.
He tells the story of the FBI's plan to build an incredibly secure, best-of-breed crimephone, one with every feature that a criminal would want to truly insulate themselves from law enforcement while still offering everything a criminal could need to plan and execute crimes.
This is really two incredible tales. The first is the story of the FBI and its partners as they scaled up Anom, their best-of-breed crimephone business. This is a (nearly) classic startup tale, full of all-nighters, heroic battles against the odds, and the terror and exhilaration of "hockey-stick" growth.
The other one is the crime startup, the one that the hapless criminal syndicates that sign up to distribute Anom devices find themselves in the middle of. They, too, are experiencing hockey-stick growth. They, too, have a fantastically lucrative tiger by the tail. And they, too, have a unique set of challenges that make this startup different from any other.
Cox has been on this story for a decade, and it shows. He has impeccable sourcing and encyclopedic access to the court records and other public details that allow him to reproduce many of the most dramatic scenes in the Anom caper verbatim.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/04/anom-nom-nom/#the-call-is-coming-from-inside-the-ndrangheta
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III. The Hidden History of Walt Disney World by Foxx Nolte
No one writes about Disney theme parks like Foxx Nolte; no one rises above the trivia and goes beyond the mere sleuthing of historical facts, no one nails the essence of what makes these parks work – and fail.
The history of Walt Disney World is also a history of the American narrative from the 1960s to the turn of the millennium, especially once Epcot enters the picture and Disney sets out to market itself as a futuristic mirror to America and the world. There's a doomed plan to lead the nation in the provision of an airport for the largely hypothetical short runway aircraft that never materialized, the Disney company's love-hate affair with Florida's orange growers, and the geopolitics of installing a permanent World's Fair, just as World's Fairs were disappearing from the world stage.
In focusing on the conflicts between different corporate managers, outside suppliers, and the gloriously flamboyant weirdos of Florida, Nolte's history of Disney World transcends amusing anaecdotes and tittle-tattle – rather, it illustrates how the creative sparks thrown off by people smashing into each other sometimes created towering blazes of glory that burn to this day.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/15/disnefried/#dialectics
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IV. Network Nation by Richard R John
An extremely important, brilliantly researched, deep history of America's love/hate affair with not just the telephone, but also the telegraph. It is unmistakably as history book, one that aims at a definitive takedown of various neat stories about the history of American telecommunications.
The monopolies that emerged in the telegraph and then the telephone weren't down to grand forces that made them inevitable, but rather, to the errors made by regulators and the successful gambits of the telecoms barons. At many junctures, things could have gone another way.
Most striking about this book were the parallels to contemporary fights over Big Tech trustbusting, in our new Gilded Age. Many of the apologies offered for Western Union or AT&T's monopoly could have been uttered by the Renfields who carry water for Facebook, Apple and Google. John's book is a powerful and engrossing reminder that variations on these fights have occurred in the not-so-distant past, and that there's much we can learn from them.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care
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V. A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown
A frustratingly hard to summarize book, because it requires a lot of backstory and explanation, and one of the things that makes this book so! fucking! great! is how skillfully Brown weaves disparate elements – the unique house he built in Austin, the wildlife he encounters in the city's sacrifice zones, the politics that created them – into his telling.
This series of loosely connected essays that explains how everything fits together: colonial conquest, Brown's failed marriage, his experience as a lawyer learning property law, what he learned by mobilizing that learning to help his neighbors defend the pockets of wildness that refuse to budge.
It's filled with pastoral writing that summons Kim Stanley Robinson by way of Thoreau, and it sometimes frames its philosophical points the way a cyberpunk writer would.
The kind of book that challenges how you feel about the crossroads we're at, the place you live, and the place you want to be.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/17/cyberpunk-pastoralism/#time-to-mow-the-roof
GRAPHIC NOVELS
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I. Death Strikes by David Maass and Patrick Lay
"The Emperor of Atlantis," is an opera written by two Nazi concentration camp inmates, the librettist Peter Kien and the composer Viktor Ullmann, while they were interned in Terezin, a show-camp in Czechoslovakia that housed numerous Jewish artists, who were encouraged to make and display their work as a sham to prove to the rest of the world that Nazi camps were humane places.
Death Strikes was adapted by my EFF colleague Dave Maass, an investigator and muckraker and brilliant writer, who teamed up with illustrator Patrick Lay and character designer Ezra Rose (who worked from Kien and Ullmann's original designs, which survived along with the score and libretto).
The Emperor's endless wars have already tried Death's patience. Death brings mercy, not vengeance, and the endless killing has dismayed him. The Emperor's co-option drives him past the brink, and Death declares a strike, breaking his sword and announcing that henceforth, no one will die.
Needless to say, this puts a crimp in the Emperor's all-out war plan. People get shot and stabbed and drowned and poisoned, but they don't die. They just hang around, embarrassingly alive (there's a great comic subplot of the inability of the Emperor's executioners to kill a captured assassin).
While this is clearly an adaptation, Kien and Ullmann's spirit of creativity, courage, and bittersweet creative ferment shines through. It's a beautiful book, snatched from death itself.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/23/peter-kien-viktor-ullmann/#terez
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II. My Favorite Things Is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris
The long, long delayed sequel to the tale of Karen Reyes, a 10 year old, monster-obsessed queer girl in 1968 Chicago who lives with her working-class single mother and her older brother, Deeze, in an apartment house full of mysterious, haunted adults. There's the landlord – a gangster and his girlfriend – the one-eyed ventriloquist, and the beautiful Holocaust survivor and her jazz-drummer husband.
Ferris's storytelling style is dazzling, and it's matched and exceeded by her illustration style, which is grounded in the classic horror comics of the 1950s and 1960s. Characters in Karen's life – including Karen herself – are sometimes depicted in the EC horror style, and that same sinister darkness crowds around the edges of her depictions of real-world Chicago.
Book Two picks up from Book One's cliffhanger and then rockets forward. Everything brilliant about One is even better in Two – the illustrations more lush, the fine art analysis more pointed and brilliant, the storytelling more assured and propulsive, the shocks and violence more outrageous, the characters more lovable, complex and grotesque.
Everything about Two is more. The background radiation of the Vietnam War in One takes center stage with Deeze's machinations to beat the draft, and Deeze and Karen being ensnared in the Chicago Police Riots of '68. The allegories, analysis and reproductions of classical art get more pointed, grotesque and lavish. Annika's Nazi concentration camp horrors are more explicit and more explicitly connected to Karen's life. The queerness of the story takes center stage, both through Karen's first love and the introduction of a queer nightclub. The characters are more vivid, as is the racial injustice and the corruption of the adult world.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/01/the-druid/#
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III. So Long Sad Love by Mirion Malle
Cleo is a French comics creator who's moved to Montreal, in part to be with Charles, a Quebecois creator who helps her find a place in the city's tight-knit artistic scene. The relationship feels like a good one, with the normal ups and downs, but then Cleo travels to a festival, where she meets Farah, a vivacious and talented fellow artist. They're getting along great…until Farah discovers who Cleo's boyfriend is. Though Farah doesn't say anything, she is visibly flustered and makes her excuses before hurriedly departing.
This kicks off Cleo's hunt for the truth about her boyfriend, a hunt that is complicated by the fact that she's so far from home, that her friends are largely his friends, that he flies off the handle every time she raises the matter, and by her love for him.
Malle handles this all so deftly, showing how Cleo and her friends all play archetypal roles in the recurrent missing stair dynamic. It's a beautifully told story, full of charm and character, but it's also a kind of forensic re-enactment of a disaster, told from an intermediate distance that's close enough to the action that we can see the looming crisis, but also understand why the people in its midst are steering straight into it.
Packed with subtlety and depth, romance and heartbreak, subtext that carries through the dialog (in marvelous translation from the original French by Aleshia Jensen) and the body language in Malle's striking artwork.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/25/missing-step/#the-fog-of-love
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IV. Bea Wolf by Zach Wienersmith and Boulet
A ferociously amazingly great illustrated kids' graphic novel adaptation of the Old English epic poem, which inspired Tolkien, who helped bring it to popularity after it had languished in obscurity for centuries.
Weinersmith and Boulet set themselves the task of bringing a Germanic heroic saga from more than a thousand years ago to modern children, while preserving the meter and the linguistic and literary tropes of the original. And they did it!
There are some changes, of course. Grendel – the boss monster that both Beowulf and Bea Wulf must defeat – is no longer obsessed with decapitating his foes and stealing their heads. In Bea Wulf, Grendel is a monstrously grown up and boring adult who watches cable news and flosses twice per day, and when he defeats the kids whose destruction he is bent upon, he does so by turning them into boring adults, too.
The utter brilliance of Bea Wulf is as much due to the things it preserves from the original epic as it is to the updates and changes. Weinersmith has kept the Old English tradition of alliteration, right from the earliest passages, with celebrations of heroes like "Tanya, treat-taker, terror of Halloween, her costume-cache vast, sieging kin and neighbor, draining full candy-bins, fearing not the fate of her teeth. Ten thousand treats she took. That was a fine Tuesday."
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/24/awesome-alliteration/#hellion-hallelujah
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V. Youth Group by Bowen McCurdy and Jordan Morris
A charming tale of 1990s ennui, cringe Sunday School – and demon hunting.
Kay is a bitter, cynical teenager who's doing her best to help her mother cope with an ugly divorce that has seen her dad check out on his former family. Mom is going back to church, and she talks Kay into coming along with her to attend the church youth group.
But this is no ordinary youth group. Kay's ultra-boring suburban hometown is actually infested with demons who routinely possess the townspeople, and that baseline of demonic activity has suddenly gone critical, with a new wave of possessions. Suddenly, the possessed are everywhere – even Kay's shitty dad ends up with a demon inside of him.
That's when Kay discovers that the youth group and its corny pastor are also demon hunters par excellence. Their rec-rooms sport secret cubbies filled with holy weapons, and the words of exorcism come as readily to them as any embarrassing rewritten devotional pop song. Kay's discovery of this secret world convinces her that the youth group isn't so bad after all, and soon she is initiated into its mysteries, including the existence of rival demon-hunting kids from the local synagogue, Catholic church, and Wiccan coven.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/16/satanic-panic/#the-dream-of-the-nineties
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VI. Justice Warriors: Vote Harder by Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson
Vote Harder sees Bubble City facing its first election in living memory, as the mayor – who inherited his position from his "powerful, strapping Papa" – loses a confidence vote by the city's trustees. They're upset with his plan to bankrupt the city in order to buy a laser powerful enough to carve his likeness into the sun as a viral stunt for the launch of his comeback album. The trustees are in no way mollified by the fact that he expects to make a lot of money selling special branded sunglasses that allow Bubble City (and the mutant hordes of the Uninhabited Zone) to safely look into the sun and see what their tax dollars bought.
So it's time for an election, and the two candidates are going hard: there's the incumbent Mayor Prince; there's his half-sister and ex-girlfriend, Stufina Vipix XII, and there's a dark-horse candidate Flauf Tanko, a mutant-tank cyborg that went rogue after a militant Home Owners Association disabled it and its owners abandoned it. Flauf-Tanko is determined to give the masses of the Uninhabited Zone the representation they've been denied for so long, despite the structural impediments to this (UZers need to complete a questionnaire, sub-forms, have three forms of ID, and present a rental contract, drivers license, work permit and breeding license. They also need to get their paperwork signed in person at a VERI-VOTE location, then wait 14 days to get their voter IDs by mail. Also, districts of 2 million or more mutants are allocated the equivalent of only 250,000 votes, but only if 51% of eligible voters show up to the polls; otherwise, their votes are parceled out to other candidates per the terms of the Undervoting and Apathy Allotment Act).
What unfolds is a funny, bitter, superb piece of political satire that could not be better timed.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/11/uninhabited-zone/#eremption-season
As I mentioned in the introduction to this roundup, I had three books out in 2024; a new hardcover, and the paperback editions of two books that came out in hardcover last year. There's more on the horizon – a new hardcover novel (PICKS AND SHOVELS) in Feb 2025, along with the paperback of my novel THE BEZZLE (also Feb 2025). I just turned in the manuscript for my next nonfiction book, ENSHITTIFICATION, which will also be adapted as a graphic novel. I'll also be shortly announcing the publication details for a YA graphic novel, a new essay collection and short story collection.
If you enjoy my work – the newsletter, the talks, the reviews – the best way to support me is to buy my books. I write for grownups, teens, middle-schoolers and little kids, so there's something for everyone!
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I. The Lost Cause A solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency. "The first great YIMBY novel" -Bill McKibben. "Completely delightful…Neither utopian nor dystopian…I loved it" -Rebecca Solnit. A national bestseller!
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause/
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II. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation A detailed disassembly manual for people who want to dismantle Big Tech. "A passionate case for 'relief from manipulation, high-handed moderation, surveillance, price-gouging, disgusting or misleading algorithmic suggestions. -Akash Kapur, New Yorker. Another national bestseller!
https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con
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III. The Bezzle. A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash. "Righteously satisfying…A fascinating tale of financial skullduggery, long cons, and the delivery of ice-cold revenge." –Booklist. A third national bestseller!
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle/
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yourneighborhoodporg · 1 year ago
Text
The Guardian
Chapter 11: Alone (Part 2)
Obi-Wan Kenobi x Reader
Warnings: ANGST (like, hella angst), non-canon character deaths, descriptions of violence, animal injury/death (I’M SORRY), Reader experiencing Trauma TM, Obi doing his best.
Summary: While leading a clone battalion through a routine supply delivery, you suffer a surprise ambush. However, with Obi-Wan away leading the rendezvous as he simultaneously investigates new elements surrounding your being, you are left alone to make the hard-hitting decisions expected of leaders during The Clone Wars. But when the present meshes with the past, how will you perform as deeply buried struggles are forced to the surface?
Song Inspo: Alone — Neil Finn
Words: 9.1K
A/n: Oh boy, this one is gonna be heavy y'all. And that's all I'll say. Enjoy 😈
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You lose them a thousand times in a thousand ways. You say a thousand goodbyes. You hold a thousand funerals — Sara Seager
“80% of the containers have been secured in the port bay with the rest being carried in as we speak,” Boil relayed, pointed finger strictly scrolling through his datapad that hummed a striking cobalt glow amidst Lanos’s softer, earthy tones.
He stood at the ready to your left with his helm resting under an arm, taking in each and every two-to-three digit number emanating from the device while you surveyed the array of pale blue repulsersleds bustling atop the port’s grayed, metal landing platform. Ferrying tightly strapped cargo into the bay alongside their clone guardians like a flawless, tapered conveyor belt adhering to a strict timetable.
Most notable, however, was the way this living machine collectively dwarfed the sporadic bands of clone lieutenants who, toting their own Republic-issued datapads, coordinated delivery logistics with counterpart supply port stationaries. Though the brighter energies that rippled through the Force certainly haggled for a higher podium, as the latter of those two, similarity garbed groups seemed all the more enlivened by the marginal increase in activity on such an otherwise docile planet.
“The station Sergeant is currently off-base engaging another matter—,” Boil mentioned off-handedly. “—but sends his regards.”
“Thanks, Boil,” you hummed, silver orbs drifting beyond the organized fuss that circled like bees calculating predetermined patterns long ago inscribed in their very DNA.
Those same eyes flitted by the steel, square-cut terrace’s narrowed path which assumed the shape of a bottleneck in its stretch through the far, inner bay. Then, past the raised, blocky, metallic structure trading in checkered viewports for highly reinforced paneling. One that every day offered the station’s clones a welcome retreat from the planet’s emphatically beating, yellow sun. Just as it shielded them from any other element posing as a threat to the Republic’s mission.
To its perseverance through this war.
“I suppose the next step is to finish the delivery before regrouping to return to The Negotiator,” you evenly deduced. “Right?”
The sharp-eyed clone offered a slight nod. “Affirmative.”
But even foreign structures that cried Coruscanti architecture and hammered down brutalist design amidst Lanos’s creamy breezes and florid expanse did little to hold your attention. Those motionless, gray confines battling against any root or creeping vine that dared to snake under its foundation or slither across its walls failed to yank at your outer lip’s muscles.
At least, not with a vigor comparable to the involuntary jolt you felt strike those same nerves just from the swiping flash of a certain bunch of saffron fur scampering by the tree line.
Though, in spite of the curious, fox-like creature’s daring attempts to acquire the title ‘Honorary Republic Recruit’ from afar, the attentive animal still maintained a devoted caution as they steered a wide berth around the manmade metals which, like a disease, thinned the once lusciously stretching trees bordering its walls.
Instead, the well-groomed critter found temporary solace in nuzzling their tail with cheerfully squinted eyes amidst the deeper, healthier greens and sturdier trunks carrying thicker bark. A microcosm of the wider forest’s hilly character, which rolled around the entrenched, and fairly hidden, compound before flinging back out again for miles, like massive waves frozen in time millennia ago to house a countless abundance of life.
“If you’re worried about that animal interfering with platform operations, I can send a few boys to scare it off.”
“No, no,” you quickly assured with a flicking wave of your hand, dismissing the no-nonsense clone while silver eyes strung to distant, peering yellows.
“That’s alright. They aren’t hurting anyone. Just curious.”
“Understood,” he asserted quickly before stretching back into his planned briefing with a muscle memory akin to the dash of his head toward the glowing datapad.
“Because the storm has cleared it should be an easy takeoff. The shuttles will be able to meet us at port.”
“Sounds like our legs will finally get a break,” you teased lightly, sending the horseshoe-bearded man a knowing glance.
A deep, throaty chuckle fell from his lips as you lifted a few fingers to flit away another droplet of sweat rushing down your forehead from the increasingly belting heat and weakening gusts whose dying breaths failed to chill the air.
“I certainly hope—“
A sharp, singeing thread tugged at your prickling senses from within the Force, snapping your neck toward the source of the sensation before the flaring, scarlet bolt rapidly consuming your vision launched your nimble body, arms fanned out, to roughly shove Boil out of the way. Sending you both tumbling toward the unforgiving ground as the steaming blaze just barely hurled above each of your heads.
“Ambush!” You screamed after sorely rolling off the rather surprised clone and onto a less bruised back, primary hand clawing for your belt.
Your madly thrashing heart reigned into a steady chill with the initial pulse of adrenaline beginning to wean. And by pure chance alone, it was in that very brief second, as blood rushed past ear drums, that you began to feel an unexpectedly sudden heat center on your left wrist.
Thrusting that very arm up and into your vision, you spotted the sporadic, bubbling crackles and scarlet sparks of a damaged wrist comm whose drooping, dark metal structure threatened to melt into your already itching arm.
Quickly, you scrambled to your feet, right hand tightly wrapped around your unclasped saber as you levied it to thwack off the sizzling comm, permitting the decaying device to clatter across the dense platform as it sibilated into spare parts.
Having freed yourself of that discomfort, you swiftly ignited the saber’s buzzing, gray glow before angling toward the damage-inflicting direction. Yet even still amidst such a swift spin, you couldn’t help but absorb just how the landscape’s bright aura, which once overshadowed the rear port’s barren metallurgic twilight, now hung moodier as peaceful woods suddenly turned not so serene.
Emerging from the left side of a large hill positioned before the facility appeared an ever-growing array of creaking and whining metallic beasts.
With the prickling hairs atop the nape of your neck, you felt as the rear clones rushed to their assigned stations while a line of at least ten… twenty….. thirty and counting mustard yellow, beaked droids carrying stringy arms and legs jounced through the ground’s apex with grimy, heavy-duty blasters secured in hand.
Interspersed within their ranks and towering at least triple their size inched forward a darker, all-encompassing model whose pointed soles shredded verdant grass into marred, brittle soil. Colicoid-like droids that commanded three jointed legs, two weaponized arms, and a spine contorting into some sort of red-fanged face that curved inwards, all behind a spherical shield which quivered a transparent blue.
That’s what must’ve nearly hit Boil, you surmised, when another one of those cold, rigid arms blasted off a similarly behaved bolt toward a far cargo container. Shattering it into scattering, hot white-and-red shards, and sending a few nearby clones flying by some feet as a cacophony of shocked yells stalked their paths.
And, unfortunately, it appeared that second blast was enough to effectively signal the rest of the progressively expanding battalion to finally commence their full-fledged attack.
Streaks of thick, fiery crimson, slender orange, and harsh blue beams coated the sky like violent patchwork, darkening the planet’s once stilled and luscious atmosphere into one of rising, smoky death. Filling your nostrils with the noxious scent of burning plasma and battering your eardrums with strained voices that desperately shouted all around you.
“Men, with me!”
“I need help over here!”
“Medic!”
“Move back! Move back!”
“You two, blast ‘em Rollies!”
Their echoes careened over the sharp buzz of your saber as it swung through the air to collide with showering beams. And while, foregoing your long lost wrist comm, you remained relatively unscathed, you still struggled to afford the men fighting alongside you that same luxury.
Far to your left, a quintet of clones gradually retreated through a clean, V-formation as blue spires erupted from their phasers. Only for the incoming brigade’s ceaseless fire to clip the far right soldier’s arm, tearing at his upper plate which oozed a deep crimson athwart its snowy glaze.
Another profuse liberation of deadly rain, and an additional victim emerged as a flaming, hot bolt dug its way through the stepping foot of one of the middlemen, eliciting a pained groan while smoke sprang from the blackening wound.
You tried to help them. Mostly by tapping into their interlinkage with the all-encompassing Force as you’d discovered to do in recent weeks. Relying on this riddled tactic to empower your connection against insurmountable odds as you shoved pre-fired blaster heads into non-lethal directions and tugged out the legs from underneath yellowed battle droids while their brethren marched on unfazed and unfettered.
It wasn’t a chief, battle-altering tactic, but it was sure to meet at least one goal you had in mind: doing everything in your power to give the clones around you those precious, few extra seconds needed to seek cover from this overwhelmingly multiplying attack force.
But you only had so much to give.
No matter what, you couldn’t take your eyes off the eternal task of reflecting away each bolt that careened toward your person. And that was all while making every attempt to reduce the droid’s numbers with a deliberate swipe of your saber or a dexterous application of the Force. But it was when you considered the added responsibility of aiding any nearby clone struggling to defend against perpetually growing enemy numbers that the muddling task became quite daunting.
Suddenly, the corner of your vision caught a familiar, garish tone, drawing your gaze back behind the gradually receding quintet and toward a clone marked by an unavoidable, olive-green circle. A symbol that would’ve blended with the planet’s wider greenery had the billowing plasmic smoke been given enough time to clear.
However, unlike the rest of the platoon, this particular soldier chose instead to steadily march forward, soon passing the withdrawing V-formation like passing ships in the wildest of starless space sectors as he covered their retreat with an azure floodlight of bolts flying from his blaster.
“Get back, Getter!” You commanded, saber swinging elegantly in a controlled retreat as you sent an occasional hard glance toward the disobedient clone.
“I’m Forward Line!” He shouted through the muffled feedback of his sound-amplified helmet, failing to spare any glance away from the threat that marched head-on.
His feet crept forward, indefinite tone communicating his plans while the increasing barrage of bolts threatened your versatility.
“I’ll cove—“
A dense, blistering flare of plasma swiped straight through the eye of Getter’s helmet, leaving a charred, flaky perforation in its place that stifled his body like an off-switch.
He didn’t even tense.
Instead, the moment gravity recalled its birthright, he collapsed like a rag doll. Simply becoming a jumbled pile of arms and legs.
Your jaw slackened as a pinprick chill consumed your body.
“Silvey! Orders!?” Boil cried from close behind as his blaster ricocheted into the panoramic mob.
Row upon row unfurled across the hill’s peak, spilling into the valley’s depths like loose marbles from an endlessly deep bucket.
Though the frigidity that repeatedly ripped down your spine seemed to momentarily disconnect you from its horror as your mind focused on the present threat.
Those larger, curved ‘Rollies’ could transform into whirling spheres, empowering them to rocket down the hillside. Treating anything you were unable to Force shove away in time, be it scattered equipment or Front Line clones, like loose pins for the taking.
And it seemed, as your brain dizzied at the lives being ripped out of good men’s hands, that such a manipulation considered effortlessly simple by any Jedi was becoming too much of a task.
“Get a comm to Kenobi that we need reinforcements yesterday!—“ You yelled somewhat hazily as your mind desperately centered a connective blanket around one of the barreling Rollies so to redirect it into another speeding down beside it, coercing their shields to interact and combust into blue sparks and stinging flames.
You heaved in another gasp of chemically tinted, plasmic smoke.
“—And to bring any ideas on how to cut off this slope! Else we’re sitting ducks!”
“Copy!” He called before you sensed him spin on his heel toward the rear command center.
Until your next words stopped him in his tracks.
Because Getter’s sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.
And you needed to do something.
“I’m getting in the trenches to try to cut these rolling things off!”
You creaked your neck sideways as another hot blast whizzed past your tingling ear.
“You’ll need support!” He advised with a hand cupping his mouth. “I’ll redirect a few boys your way!”
Another bolt diverted toward an unsuspecting set of droids smashed a few of the batch’s heads together.
“No!” You slammed, fending off another wall of vivid fire.
No more men die today.
They can’t.
Not during your first command.
Not ever.
Not after—
No.
“You focus on getting that message to the General,” you continued with gritted teeth, saber spinning into a swelling, pallid fireball. “If I need help, I’ll ask. Now go!”
His boots squeaked against the once sun-dried platform, now spattered with occasional streaks of thick, deep-crimsoned goop. Smattering the sound of his voice as the subtle scent of copper trailed in the air like itinerant pollen that clogged your sinuses and sullied your tastebuds.
“Comm to me in the bay!”
Oh, Anakin.
That was the repetitive acknowledgment encircling Obi-Wan’s thoughts as he silently observed Master Yoda, Master Windu, and Chancellor Palpatine’s shivering, blue holocomms occasionally snap out of shape, all while he stood casually in one of the ship’s empty, gray conference rooms to ensure a private meeting.
Calling from such distances was sure to elicit additional signal disturbances, and, sometimes, would even cause temporary blackouts. But fortunately, or unfortunately, for the General, none of those occurrences prevented Kenobi from discovering his former Padawan’s unsanctioned change of plans through a similar comm exchange a few hours ago.
Of course, it was his responsibility to ensure the arrival of the escort in Anakin’s charge. Maybe that’s because, whether tied to the mission or not, Obi-Wan always seemed to be the first to learn about Skywalker’s impulsive decisions. This time being his insubordinate choice to rope his own Padawan into a patched-together rescue mission following ambivalent reports regarding Master Plo Koon’s fleet.
He certainly always found a way, didn’t he?
Yes, technically, because it was just Anakin and Ahsoka redeploying, then the convoys would be unrestricted in meeting the arranged rendezvous with the rest of the fleet.
But still, Skywalker was a General now. Could that chestnut-haired man not go off on his own without at least informing another Jedi tasked with this mission first?
Anakin could have told him.
And, honestly, while Kenobi knew he would’ve put up a bit of a fight at the suggestion of such a change of plans, the Jedi Master still fully comprehended that, in the end, he had the trust to watch his former Padawan go.
Because, deep down, Obi-Wan knew that, despite the potential strategic sacrifice, it was the right thing to do.
Not that he had much choice to do anything else since Skywalker had already arrived at the attack site.
And now, consequentially, in his station as both military General and Jedi Council member, Kenobi was the one required to deliver this pesky news to the necessary officials in his place.
“Twice the trouble, they have become,” Master Yoda sighed, rounded eyes dribbling toward the ground in contemplation. “A reckless decision, Skywalker has made.”
The weary Chancellor’s snow-white furrow deepened. “Let us hope it is not a costly one.”
Palpatine exhaled gradually, dipping gaze giving room for the three Jedi hovering subserviently in his presence a moment to absorb the flickers of combat fatigue that affected the deciding politician. Though, despite the momentary pause, the Chancellor was quick to recover, flicking his far-out stare toward the trio with a manufactured smile that struggled to assure that he was, in fact, quite alright.
“I do apologize, gentleman, but I have another meeting with the Senator from Kestos Minor shortly, so I must leave you.”
“Of course, Chancellor,” Kenobi acknowledged for the Jedi in attendance.
And with that, the former Senator’s unstable image evaporated into azure sparks before fading into the room’s wider darkness.
“An eye on your former Padawan, you must keep,” Master Yoda noted, motioning a hand clasped around his irregularly curved gimer stick toward Kenobi. “An update, I request, next we meet.”
“Yes, Master Yoda,” Obi-Wan assured. “I will keep track of him.”
But not before addressing the puckering questions that prodded his brain tissue all afternoon.
At least, ever since speaking with you.
“Do you have a moment, Master Windu?” Kenobi questioned, just as the Grand Master’s digital picture similarly flickered into cerulean specks of nothingness.
The older Master glanced at Obi-Wan out of his peripheral, torso still respectively angled toward the empty cavity where Yoda’s silhouette once stood before smoothly pivoting with a subtly tilted neck toward the inquisitive Jedi.
“I do,” he punctuated with taught features. “And what is this regarding?”
“Silvey,” Obi-Wan plainly replied, allowing his voice alone to carry him through the next few seconds so to disallow himself from failing to speak of these matters at all.
“I was made aware earlier today that they were not fully informed of their condition following the incident. As their Master, and the one tasked with notifying them in place of the Healer, I was hoping to inquire as to why?”
A blank stare of unreadable stillness crossed the thousand light years in a fashion only Mace Windu, complexion of secrets and answers, could achieve.
“As their advisor, I provided only necessary information,” he clarified simply with the gesturing support of his hand. “It was unnecessary to subject Silvey to the past when they successfully recovered.”
Obi-Wan’s lips twitched into an imperceptibly partial frown.
Perhaps Master Windu… knew more than he was letting on?
He talked of deeming certain details imperative to share, which could suggest that there were facts being kept secret, even from you, for reasons beyond the bearded Jedi’s current knowledge.
At least, that’s what Obi-Wan convinced himself.
It would be the only explanation for such a decision, he thought. For seemingly sending you on a mission without any concern for the unknown factors at play, and for this indefinite justification of why.
That would be the only thing that made any lick of sense.
And that also could’ve meant, maybe, just maybe, Kenobi wasn’t the only one beginning to sense remnants of your mind within the Force.
Perhaps Mace Windu already discovered this development. Or perhaps, it was even possible the elder Master had something to do with it.
That, as your ‘advisor,’ he was already a few steps ahead. And that, in your meditation sessions, he found something. Triggered something.
Knew something.
Either way, the General desired to understand.
“And how are we to know that?” Kenobi tested carefully, eyeing the strict Jedi’s cheekbones for any small, reflexive hint. “You yourself admitted to an inability to perceive their mind, the cause of these headaches, or the incident’s nature. By those facts alone, how can it be possible to assume that this is truly in the past?”
Pressing his lips into a thin line with arms confidently folded into themselves, Master Windu intrepidly spoke as broadened shoulders secured his stance.
“The Republic is in need of more Jedi on the field. You of all people are aware of that fact, Master Kenobi,” he stated. “I made the most reasonable decision given our circumstances. Such details are not of our immediate concern. We cannot afford it.”
Obi-Wan couldn’t help the taught string of confusion and wiry cords of astonishment that knit across his forehead, muscling down the rest of his features like a sudden tug on the loose end of an interwoven thread.
Mace knew nothing.
And, with that in mind, Kenobi never expected such indifference to be applied to a situation deemed incomprehensible by even the Grand Master himself a few days earlier. Toward a state of affairs clouded by the ever-living Force in a plum of enigmatic readings, which, to the Council, was always a less than desirable sign.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
Said the Code.
So then to brush this all off? And dismiss its repercussions to his own mentee, no less.
Obi-Wan raised a hand, curling a few knuckles to provide his chin a thoughtful rest. All in an attempt to imbue the Force with interim civility as his mind rapidly flipped through Mace’s words.
And it didn’t take long for him to realize that all this… Every decision made concerning you…
It was this war.
It was changing Windu like it was changing all of them. All the Jedi. Causing them to lose sight of what was once important in the days before the Battle of Geonosis.
But this wasn’t right.
Something was clearly influencing you. And, despite the Republic’s shifting priorities, Mace needed to be reminded that this situation, no matter how diverting, was just as important to the Council’s overarching mission as its efforts in this war.
To the Jedi’s purpose.
To peace.
These headaches and their culminated crisis may have evolved into a creature of the past. But it was their state of unpredictability, and the Galaxy-altering implications of a Guardian thrown from commission, which convinced Kenobi that the Council mustn’t lose sight of such solemnity. Especially not during a decade in which the Grand Master sensed the Force to have grown, in some pockets, indecipherable.
And no matter what, you deserved to know the full nature of these incidents.
Obi-Wan’s jaw released, poking away the useless support of bent fingers as his arm fell to the side at a rate equal to the blooming resolution which consumed the bearded man’s blue-eyed countenance. A visual marker, or signature stamp, of the Master Jedi’s acceptance that no war would stymie him from making these very thoughts known to the glitching holocomm across from him.
So much so, that he nearly missed the echoing chime of the conference room’s automatic door as its mechanics whirred open.
“General!”
Kenobi’s neck snapped toward the urgent inflection shimmering from Commander Cody’s tensed lips, just as brightly as the orange embellishments accenting his trooper armor reflected the white lights streaming overhead.
He was leaned into a forward stance, a puff of air proving him not a still-life statue as he caught his balance. All in an effort to suddenly halt a spirited sprint into the conference room that eventually, from the exertion alone, impelled him to expel the rest.
“There’s been a surprise attack on the supply port and the platoon left behind on Lanos.”
A dryness consumed Kenobi’s tongue as another simply armored clone dashed through the same whirring, mechanical door. Sprightly stepping up to whisper a few quick words to his Commander just before the aperture behind him buzzed shut once more.
“Reports of heavy casualties,” Cody parroted with an ear leaned toward the newly arrived lieutenant. “And they are requesting immediate reinforcements.”
“I will leave you to address this more immediate concern, Master Kenobi,” Windu relayed from the twitching holocomm image strikingly emanating from behind; his expression stilled except for the subtle twinge of disappointment drooping the outer corners of his eyes.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan affirmed, clearing his voice as moisture coated a tickling throat.
At least enough for him to sign off with one final message aimed toward his fellow Council member.
“I will see you at the rendezvous.”
A burning ache entangled each limb’s muscles like winding vines as you fended off the coming onslaught. Centering yourself in the lowest dip of the valley’s crease wasn’t necessarily the most strategic move given your current predicament. Especially considering it labeled your dodging figure as prime target practice for the ropes of Rollies that erratically spun down the hillside at spine-chilling speeds.
But you didn’t have any choice.
Not if you hoped to become an unbreakable barrier of pure might and agility, impeding a near three-hundred mix of droids threatening the platoon’s lives who hastily regrouped behind you.
Various squad formations would mark the best vantage points atop the port’s landing platform from which to lay fire upon the siege. Though that was the extent to which the battalion could effectively participate. Joining you in the, quite literal, trenches was a death sentence to any non-Force Sensitive individual hoping to take a stand against an attacking strength of this magnitude.
It was your ability, and your ability alone, to navigate the rapidly shifting elements of surrounding energies that empowered you to fight in their place while dodging and manipulating droids who shot walls of steady fire or suddenly sprung at you with their dense, steel bodies.
Yet, no matter your resilience, you still possessed the same weakness every other living being faced in adrenalizing circumstances.
You were growing quite exhausted.
“Reinforcements are almost here!” You heard Boil yell from far behind while he used a nearby repulsersled flipped into a makeshift shield to traverse the compound drowned in chemical fires and bloodied chaos. “You can’t stay there forever!”
You wrapped your fingers around the air as invisible claws shimmied their way around a Rollie barreling toward your figure before rapidly thrusting that same fist to the side, leading the machine’s suddenly bouncing trajectory to hurtle into a group of about eight battle droids.
One in particular sluggishly swiveled its head toward the oncoming sight with subtle reservation as it expelled creaky, undulating words.
“Oh no.”
Until they became another scattered pile of far-flung, broken parts, an explosion colored by blasting crimson and cobalt sparks.
“I’m gonna have to!” You called back, the swing of your saber nearly transforming into a cloudy blur of heat before your very, watering eyes as you deflected bolt after bolt while sidestepping through the uneven hollow. “We’ll lose our only advantage!”
“Excuse me for saying, Silvey, but I think that losing a Jedi will be cutting our advantage!”
You knew he was right.
But you were quickly learning that in war, there was no easy choice.
You weren’t going to lose anyone else.
Maker… you couldn’t.
You just… couldn’t.
A scorching, slash clawed into your left calf, electrifying all the way down to your ankle as a surprised yelp was drawn from your lips.
And it wasn’t long before that very foot and sorely exercised knee buckled under the shocking pressure, slamming both roughly into the dirt as you felt another breeze graze the touches of your back exposed by rips in the fabric. All from those quick tumbles against newly jagged ground with raised rock shards and disturbed mounds formed by the ongoing conflict.
You briefly glanced down to assess the damage, relying on your senses' contextual intertwinement and the dancing light of your gray saber to defend against the ongoing downpour of bolts. Showers that fell from the hilltop with such magnitude that you could’ve sworn the sky was crying smoky tears.
Speaking of bolts, it appeared one had cut you down pretty good as a severely bloodied laceration oozing black, bubbling soot stingingly throbbed the bottom half of your leg. Consuming your vision with its strongly contrasting, dark tinge even amidst your armor’s shadowy undertones.
So much for those Republic-tested shin guards, you internally grunted.
And, regrettably, with one leg out of commission, it didn’t take long for your wearied body and continuously fogging gaze to make another mistake.
Even if it was only for a split second.
While desperately side-crawling toward the landing pad, in an effort to impede an enemy group from its newly-angled, swift approach, you missed an arbitrary bolt that collided with the hilt of your saber. Snapping it out of your hand as its protective covering took the brunt of the blast, but still flung it a few meters out from your grip all the same.
Your head spun back toward the main invading Force, only to be met with an inky black blaster whose cold body was levied mere centimeters from your forehead.
Dark spots crept into your peripheral like a predator surveying its prey as your palms dug into the disturbed dirt below.
“Wow, look guys!” The titillated battle droid exclaimed. “I got a Jedi!”
Shades of flaming red exploded before your very eyes.
But not for the reason you thought.
No, whatever that was, it wasn’t blood.
It was much more…
Much too…
Fuzzy?
Scrapping at whatever strength you had left, you focused your shaky stare above. Only to be met with the strikingly pigmented fox of before, wrapped around the battle droid’s torso like a constricting tendril as it gnawed with growling rage at the mechanical thing’s armed skeletal limb.
“Ah! What is this?” The off-yellow machine bellowed. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”
He spun in unsteady circles, flinging his targeted arm as if fire consumed its nonexistent nerves, drilled feet stumbling over each other while the fox laid savagely into their assault.
Until the droid hoisted its other revolving hand, slamming it down once, and then twice, across the creature’s wet snout. A sickening crack, and its shiny, fur coat slung from the machine before landing as a mangled heap onto the ground.
You thrust a hand toward your saber, scratching at the Force to coax it to your fingers as it catapulted into your grasp.
A reflection of the blaster’s barrel stung your eye.
One squealing pop flung through the air.
And then another.
“Good riddance,” the droid mumbled while it drearily kicked the still warm, but entirely lifeless creature left at its feet.
You were too late.
You were always too late.
Qui-Gon’s paled skin. His glazed, breathless eyes.
And then you saw it.
You swore you saw it.
A flash of that horned, devil face harshly stomped across the fox’s barren throat.
And your blood ran cold.
So frigid, that an icy film must’ve shielded your eyes while they blurred in contest with an increasingly congested mind. The resonating cries of commanding clones, marching mechanical feet, and rushing metal clamoring against loose bolts all melded into a muddled echo of the past. Even Boil’s distended calls, which freely rang around inching droids as he laid down fire, melded into the rest of the world.
Instead, a high-pitched tone displaced their existence, slackening your jaw and dangerously slowing your breath while a weight unlike any other yanked down at your sternum.
And amidst all that drowning havoc, you barely noticed the large, gray shuttle with faint red accents descend before you.
Almost immediately, and with growing intensity, its engines were able to sweep away any nearby battle droids as they flung and tumbled across the grass like loose scraps. Even the Rollies found their maneuverability stifled as they transformed back into a legged form before being tossed away like loose credits via their curvature alone.
Yet, even though the vehicle landed between you and the incoming fire, its rear door descending as a fluttering ivory robe and flashes of white armor darted down its ramp, it was still not enough to rip you out from yourself.
It was only partially, that your awareness sparked, and for a moment oh so brief, as a flash of auburn tufts poked a hole in that stunned cataract.
“Silvey!”
A distant echo among muffled blaster fire, but the ringing tone did seem to partially subside.
“Silvey! Can you hear me?!”
You swallowed, vision clearing just enough to recognize a familiar pair of widened, bright blue eyes.
Though you had no idea how he got here.
“Obi-Wan?” You questioned hazily with scrunched brows.
“Let’s get you to the ship!” He declared firmly, eyes drifting toward your mangled leg as a hint of displeasure creased his eyes.
But he hesitated for only a second before quickly wrapping his fingers around your free arm to tug you that away.
And, truth be told, it was that moment, that single moment, the warm feeling of his grip as plasmic fumes assaulted your senses, that became the last instant of Lanos you truly remembered.
You recalled the gentle pressure of Kenobi’s fingers releasing your arm into the shuttle just before it lifted from the ground while he sprinted off, pearly armor catching the sun’s smoke-scattered glare as he joined the fight. And you could remember the stinging weight that dragged at your muscles as you stood for the first time after the hull abruptly docked at The Negotiator.
A feeling that haunted you with each step you traversed from the shuttle bay to your temporary quarters.
You could even recall the taste of the stale ship air that reigned menial against Lanos’s essence of fresh vegetation and untouched atmosphere. Though that particular memory was hard to forget, considering those same elements pervaded your quarters.
What you couldn’t remember, however, was what anyone had said to you. If anyone had said anything at all. You couldn’t remember when your injured leg was wrapped, or who did it. You couldn’t remember whether the battle was won. You couldn’t remember entering the lift to the residential section of the ship. And you couldn’t remember the familiar whooshing creak of your quarter’s automatic door.
Oh Maker, no.
You couldn’t recall whether that faulty sound tolled when the aperture opened.
You could only trust that the door had, in fact, shut behind you as you ambled into your quarters, deactivated lightsaber falling from your bruised fingers before rudely clacking across the carpeted floor. You could only hope that the walls, too, were thick enough to deafen the sound of your falling knees as they collided with the itchy carpet’s prickling texture.
And you could pray that the falling tears wetting your cheeks and soaking your tunic, and the hiccuping breaths stopping your heart, would somehow ease the agonizing burden that crushed your chest with the bodies of all you had lost.
“And the facility was secured?” Master Kenobi inquired once Commander Cody concluded his cursory report on the impromptu attack.
Both general and soldier ambled down the curved, tubular hallway of one of the ship’s upper decks, lined with identically placed doors and overhead lights that perfectly reflected the Republic’s preference for uniformed architecture. Still though, Obi-Wan’s wandering eyes would soak up their every detail, down to the personalized wear of certain entry panels or noticeable scuffs decorating the steel floor whenever he participated in such debriefs.
It allowed his mind to focus on the task at hand. No matter the aeonian tumult that bled into their essence or bordered his thoughts.
“Yes, General,” Cody assured evenly as his long-barreled, black phaser, still warm from battle, patiently hung from a confident grip; swaying with each step that fell in line with his superior’s steady stride.
“And we incurred far less casualties than anticipated,” he continued, with a hint of optimism so subtle that even Kenobi struggled to detect it. “My men report that the General is to thank for that.”
An unconscious hand hovered toward Obi-Wan’s chin, gently stroking his beard’s loose tufts while the Jedi Master continued to absorb his officer’s words like a Bluebell squish would sunlight.
Though his gaze still dallied across the ephemeral doors.
“Had they not stood their ground in the valley’s trench…” Cody liberated. “I doubt much of the platoon would be left standing.”
Kenobi’s chest rose and fell with a gradualness that seemed to suspend time itself. Still, his legs carried him onwards, as a shuttle set on autopilot would transport its passengers by endless star systems, and the beauties in between.
You certainly took a huge risk, he noted. Pushing yourself to the very brink to protect the lives of his own battalion.
But did you know just how close you came to the point of no return?
The Master Jedi considered that even Anakin would’ve deemed the act of entering and remaining in the trenches terribly reckless.
And that was saying something.
But you were Qui-Gon’s Padawan, after all. And Obi-Wan knew better than anyone that drilled into your being was the desire to avoid violence at all costs. To preserve the manifestations of the Force by protecting any and all beings who necessitated aid.
Though you were never prepared for a war that coerced Jedi to conform to a changed Galaxy.
And it coerced him to consider…
Should he say something?
“Sir.”
The General need not rely on Force-attuned senses to notice the Commander slowed his gate into a standstill from the corner of an observant eye. Leashing Kenobi to do the same as he angled to face the solider whose mollified shoulders stimulated satiny brown orbs to soften.
“Some of the boys and I would like to thank the General in person for what they did today,” he expressed somewhat awkwardly, hand jolting up to scratch the back of his head as his eyes dipped off to the side. “Any chance you could share a heads up when they may be up for it, Sir?”
An involuntary twitch tugged at the corner of the General’s tensed lips. Though his revelation after the fact choked the sensation before it had any chance of crawling up to ensnare his bright, cerulean orbs.
No. Not yet, the bearded man concluded.
He couldn’t share his worries.
Because Kenobi dreaded that doing so would risk metamorphosis.
It would be, conceivably, like asking you to transform into a different breed of Jedi. One who’d fail to touch the hearts of men with such infectious reverence and unity.
You were a being who would, no matter what, sacrifice each and every far-off particle of themselves if it meant preserving just one more life, or to cease the wands of conflict indefinitely.
The Way of Qui-Gon’s age, that felt so long ago.
Before its prime was sullied by war…
Suppressing his former Master’s Renaissance teachings in favor of this changed Galaxy, like so many Jedi of late, like Mace Windu, would fundamentally alter you.
And it was that very concept that sucked away the energy of his mind, like a siphon draining liquid gold down through his stiffened spine, and out through his toes.
“Of course, Commander,” Kenobi expelled fluidly. “I’m certain they would valu—“
A gust of pressurized mass flung by the duo with the brawn of a rushing wave, consuming Obi-Wan’s senses and depressing the hairs along his arms like a sudden shift in gravity as his once drained neck flicked toward the impression’s oozing source, located somewhere farther down the hallway.
But while the piqued Jedi Master’s piercing eyes initially saw nothing of concern, it was only a mere second later when the feeling quickly morphed into a troubling array as a pointed hole the size of a marble appeared to form in his ribcage, deliberately expanding into a bleak vacuum that nearly caught his breath.
Then came the pain.
An intense jab whose sharp instrument seemed to pierce the air with progressively afflicting shocks that were surely impossible for any Force-Sensative being to ignore.
At least, for him.
And while this sensation’s source appeared to stray from his inner being, Kenobi could still perceive its utter potency, shattering his thoughts with one, unavoidable clarity:
That, no matter the impenetrability of mental blocks or molecular hints of presence within the Force, the only other being in this sector at all capable of emitting this kind of energy, was you.
And that could only mean one thing.
Something was very very wrong.
Given that you’d nearly escaped with your life not even an hour prior, Kenobi could only fear the worst as he mentally recounted your previously noted injuries.
Unless…
That earlier hesitation…
“General!” Cody alertedly yet curiously called after his superior officer as the auburn-haired man’s once composed posture devolved into a notably rushed jog, his white shoulder and shin guards doing little in the ways of stifling the whipping surge of his ivory robe as it caught the ship’s manufactured atmosphere’s resistance. “Is everything alright?”
“I’m not certain,” he replied with a leveled tone, though never assuaging his gate or turning his chin away from the path ahead as he rushed by door upon equivalent door. “I will comm you if not.”
It was quite fortunate, Obi-Wan realized, that he’d already been returning to his own quarters when he sensed the shift in the Force as they were situated a mere few doors down from your own. Otherwise, given your mind’s weak presence in its endless flow, he may not have caught onto the displacement until long after the fact. Still, he couldn’t help but assign himself preliminary blame for whatever it was he began inwardly preparing to walk into.
He was too distracted to check in with you until now. Too preoccupied with leading reinforcements to turn the tide of that bloody sea of an ambush. And too absorbed in the logistics of determining just exactly how that Separatist attack force landed on Lanos without a lick of intelligence soaring his way. All while the General simultaneously ensured an on-track fleet rendezvous in the background.
But now, stood before your door amidst the heavy rise and fall of a stunted chest in which breath clutched its heels, the Jedi Master gravelly understood once again, fist hovering before its grayed coating in fleeting hesitation, that he had no choice but to rectify another mistake made in his task of certifying The Guardian’s safety.
His knuckles resonantly rapped the cold metal sheen separating you both.
“Silvey?”
But that empty, weighted crevice slithering within his deepest senses persisted, its stinging ambiance threatening to crack open his skin. Quite enough to convince the Jedi Master, as he reached a few fingers toward the door’s panel to levy a couple overriding taps, that your current well-being transcended any and all swirling discomforts rooted in invading your personal space.
Yet, even with such logic secured as firmly on his belt as his lightsaber, nothing could’ve truly prepared Obi-Wan Kenobi for the sight that patiently awaited the mechanical entryway’s opening swish, as his subsequent few steps into your thinly carpeted and modestly furnished quarters delivered an image not easily unseen.
Kneeled just a few meters before the stilled, auburn-haired man was your sternly bent-over figure, back hunched as strikingly as a shadow in a room simply lit by the vast array of stars that glimmered unbothered beyond the far wall’s viewport. Your wears were the same, with the various splotched, grimy stains and ripped, sagging ends of disturbed cloth still hugging your body like fearful younglings. Just as they had during the battle’s peak when Kenobi’s shuttle first landed.
Their drying crackles. Their stretching tears. They caught his gaze as fiercely as a spark of fire with each subtle quiver of your spine, an action which took his mind a moment to register as the trembling quake bedeviling enervated lungs.
From your blood-soiled calf bandage, ruggedly stuck, tussled hair, and sweat-adhered, dirt-crusted arms, Obi-Wan could only assume that you’d remained like this since your arrival. Submitting to your dark surroundings while lacking the inspiration to flip on a light.
And, most eerily, in a muteness that heightened the slightest creaks and far-off humming engines of a periodically groaning ship.
A recognition that deepened the already cavernous void threatening to swallow whole every vein branching from Kenobi’s chest into the muscle of each motionless shoulder.
This was nothing like the incident of days prior, which meant that the General was uncertain of what would help. How to fix this. Or even, what was wrong.
But he veritably knew that dropping a pin in the uncanny silence engulfing you both like a gaseous cloud would shatter his eardrums just as savagely as he assumed it would spiral whatever affliction you were enduring into a perilous state.
And that meant that, for the life of him. The Master Jedi had no idea how to proceed.
He could not breathe for apprehension that it would burst like a spark within an invisible hypermatter leak. Let alone speak a few words, nor your name, unless he knew that, without harm, he could.
So, Master Kenobi did the only thing he dreamed acceptable.
After idling by the entryway in perpetual uncertainty, the cautious Jedi adopted a lissome tread, leading his troubled brows and downturned cerulean eyes to finally seize a glimpse of your collapsed head as he rounded your form.
Your blotched countenance of stained tears and drained listlessness. Loose strands of hair soaked from sweat or anguish he did not know. Still, even your radiantly silver eyes seemed to gray in their moribund stare straight ahead, as if to watch a tiresome scene a thousand parsecs away run its course.
And it was that utter and complete stillness, a feeling invoking time to recede into long-forgotten history, that remained for a tense, immeasurable while.
Unsteady breaths continued to shudder your torso while eyes strung wide enough to perceive the whole Galaxy struggled to maintain their shape following the long sered, torrential flood. The cogs of overflowing thoughts crowding their rusting gears before the speechless man’s very eyes.
It felt near an eternity into the future or past had elapsed for Obi-Wan since he met your distant orbs. Yet their departed state, it seemed, never reflected your true awareness.
You were not trapped within your mind again.
“I spent my entire life on that barren planet,” you suddenly relayed hoarsely.
Or, maybe, in some ways, you were, Kenobi amended, as the sound of your strained voice heightened the General’s alertness all the way up to his hassled brows.
“And a decade of it in complete isolation.”
Laggardly, your jaded orbs lifted toward his own, neck barely shifting while you held his pursed lips and tensed jaw in a vice grip by the anticipation of your slowly spilling words alone.
“And yet—“
A single tear seeped through the dam, etching another stain into your storied cheeks as your chest quickened its heaves.
It was more than enough to have impelled Kenobi toward you. With a hand outstretched and a pulsing drive to somehow bring you any sliver of relief.
But Obi-Wan refrained from all that.
He knew he needed to listen. To understand first. So to learn how best to fix this.
He just wanted to fix this.
“—I’ve never felt… quite… so alone.”
But with those six words, the Master Jedi’s temperance seemed to wash away with the second droplet that traced a serene path down to your chin, proving another chink in the levee.
Promptly, but still with great care, Obi-Wan neared your body, both sets of eyes never severing while he lowered to his knees. Mirroring your form in complete and utter stillness as he encouraged you to continue with a reinforced, steadfast expression.
A tremulous exhale escaped your lungs, silver gaze breaking the connection before sinking to the wayside.
“Not as I do now,” you breathed. “Not when Qui-Gon is gone.”
Those two syllables, Kenobi registered. Two knocks that brought that dam to ruins.
“He’s gone!” You croakily sobbed, a glare that could only reflect betrayal by the Galaxy itself rushing to perceive Kenobi’s affected countenance with an intensity that matched the gushing rain.
You raised a fist, tightening it in the air through a paled potency so sheer that Obi-Wan worried with stitched brows about the sharp damage your fingertips could be afflicting upon the contorted palm. All while silver eyes squeezed shut as if disgusted by the waves of pure agony that surmounted your figure.
“He’s gone for good,” you gnawed breathily. “And nothing will ever bring him back.”
While heaving gasps brimmed the once noiseless, dulled gray walls, amplifying the hollowed suffering emanating through the Force, Kenobi felt his tensed spine and rigid limbs ease with the surge of conviction that steadily overcame him.
Doubtlessness that, like a good Jedi, he felt the need to ease your misery.
More than that. Your pain happened to affect him in such a way, that it felt distressing to do anything but lift his wrist to reach out a bracing palm.
For someone he appreciated as an admirable individual.
And for a being he was beginning to consider a good friend.
Gently, his palm graced the side of yours, signaling him to carefully wrap warm fingers around your strikingly frigid, raised fist. A gesture which relaxed open your tear-brimmed orbs while Obi-Wan cautiously lowered your languishingly trembling clutch. So gradually, that as both your and Obi-Wan’s arms reached each respective knee, the clasped hand was spurred to wholly unfurl, giving Kenobi room to relax his thumb against your flushed palm while he eyed you meaningfully.
“You are not alone,” Obi-Wan firmly assured, his own voice eliciting a momentary shock as he heard its baritone timbre crush the presence of such prolonged and confounding silence.
“He’s gone,” you repeated mindlessly with an empty gaze barely supporting your head.
Yet Obi-Wan’s persistence was as boundlessly unyielding as the grip he maintained on you.
“But, you’re not alone.”
“Obi-Wan,” you wept, nostrils flaring as you shook your head with thinned eyes; swallowing harshly. “Pleas—“
Rapidly, with any fret of heedfulness tossed out the airlock, the Master Jedi brought his unchained hand toward your tottering jaw. Resting a loose knuckle under your chin to lift your searching gaze toward his.
You needed this, he excused. You needed to hear this.
And as your damp, sparkling eyes absently met his, he knew:
Distance be damned.
“You are The Guardian. Anakin is forever tied to you. And you will always, always have the Order. Thousands of Jedi ready to stand by your side because of who you are,” he declared with unshakable conviction.
Until his orbs softened below shattered lips.
“Silvey,” he whispered pregnantly. “Drink in my words.” His fingers tightened around your own. “You are not alone.”
And for a moment, Kenobi could note a subtle lift in your features. A slight lightening of your irises that indicated at least some partial unshackling of an invisible burden. A development that began to stitch closed the gaping crevice nestled within his sternum as it was reflected through the Force, stabilizing against your releasing shoulders and loosening throat.
Though your mind appeared to travel elsewhere.
Still, they were all gradual indications of your calming thoughts. Hints that whatever he was doing was mending something. And signs that first appeared when he touched your hand.
Another theory that added substance to the sealing emptiness Kenobi first experienced through the hall in what felt like eons ago.
So, he leaned into it, gracing his once stilled thumb across your palm’s supple skin as he, bit by bit, traced a messy oval to soothe your thoughts.
And it didn’t take long for your continually calming presence to uncontrollably elicit the soft smile that gradually adorned his lips.
But, as soon as his gentle finger uncovered the aplomb to supply a deeper, more sustained motion of solidarity, it seemed, instantaneously, that this very transference snapped you out of whatever distance your mind had traveled with an unforeseen start.
Your suddenly surprised gape jumped out at Kenobi while a once relaxed hand instantly recoiled out of his own. Chiseling an equally confused expression across Obi-Wan’s face as his brows furrowed at you uneasily.
Still, that did little in forestalling your hurried launch to stand, all done in an effort to put a few strides between you and the bearded Jedi before crossing deeper into the dark shadows enveloping your quarters, a back of tattered robes separating you from Obi-Wan’s probing stare.
The older Jedi felt that hallowed void dilate within himself once more as he observed your sheltering arms fold into themselves, a familiar, throbbing pain emanating into the surrounding Force while he too promptly rose to his feet.
Especially as there was no denying that it was a feeling, Obi-Wan gathered, he’d somehow caused.
A myriad of thoughts swirled his mind as your quarters adopted that familiar aura of soundless reticence. One that rivaled the emptiness of its dimmed lightning that somehow felt far more barren with the presence of two beings blending into its grayed walls.
And the silence was deafening. Thunderous enough to fester a chest-displacing emotion Kenobi sometimes experienced, but knew no Jedi should long entertain.
Guilt.
“Silvey?” He questioned with indecisively parted lips, phonating barely above a whisper.
But you never spoke.
Instead, the Jedi Master received his answer from the tautening cross of your arms and intensifying dip of your head.
The clatter of heavy footsteps and low conversation echoed from the hall, cutting the still air like an endless barrage of saber swipes. Their passing din muffled by your quarter’s steel separation as Obi-Wan partially sensed the handful of clones retreat down the passageway’s other end until their overlapping noise whispered into a distant memory.
And it was following that minor rattle, the long, interspaced stretches of pure stillness, and a timeless affair of observing your statued figure for any hint of an imparting thought, that the General reluctantly accepted the inevitable as pivoted on his heel toward the long gone entourage.
Although he now ambled toward the metal door, he only moved with stalling muscles, still in anticipation that he’d sense some shift, some indication of lightening impressions through the Force. At least, any idea that maybe, maybe you’d say something to him.
But once Obi-Wan’s fingers reached for the green-rimmed panel, releasing open the aperture with a whoosh, he began to come to grips with the fact that his presence would facilitate no locution, and, instead, only make things worse.
Stepping beyond the threshold, Kenobi’s eyes drifted to the side, as if to glance at your enigmatic figure staring out the viewport from far behind.
Though, despite the effort, he never dared to fully turn. Instead, Obi-Wan simply allowed his reluctant features to subdue against the throbbing remorse that struck through his mind like an unruly blaster spear as he murmured through uncertain lips one last time.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
A soft exhale, and the door hissed closed.
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prominenceblaze · 11 days ago
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The Incredible Digital World- More On The Debuggers!
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This is the Standard Debugger Uniform. Debuggers are not mandated to wear their uniforms everywhere- only when they're on official business. The insignia badges are a symbol of trust and authority, and are generally not to be altered or disturbed.
Debugger Ranks
Debugger Rankings are meant to remain simple and easily understandable. There are three levels to the standard Debugger rankings:
Basic, or 'Zero Class'. These are generally what most new recruits start as, more about learning the process of being a Debugger of that rank more than any indication of combat capability. Many skilled fighters in the Debuggers often remain Zero Class simply due to an inability to play nice with others or operate consistently within the rules. While a Zero Class can operate independently, they are often closely monitored for any particularly rude or foul behavior and must report to their assigned outpost and superior consistently.
First Class. The Debugger has shown an understanding of their duties, carried them out effectively, and demonstrated strong ability to engage in teamwork throughout. A First Class Debugger has the trust of several of their fellows and can be trusted to engage any issues with the professionality being a Debugger requires without constant oversight or reports.
Second Class. At this point, the Debugger has shown skill, determination, decision-making ability, and teamwork that outstrips the norm for their rank. At this point, a Debugger is generally a candidate for promotion, and has the authority to make minor field decisions over a Basic Rank regarding execution of duties given, though they are not permitted to countermand a decision of a higher rank.
As reaching 2nd Class in a rank means the Debugger is a candidate for promotion to a higher tier class, this means that all of the Debugger Elite Squadron members are Captain tier or higher. What does this mean? Well, to break that down, we need to get into:
Debugger Organization
As stated before, the Debuggers' primary task is to defend the Digital World safe from Abstractions. However, they also take on general protection duties as well; there are strong and dangerous beasts out there that can cause just as much trouble as Abstractions, after all.
Generally, Debuggers are permitted to operate independently on matters such as basic patrol and incident investigation; this often takes the form of Agents being assigned a Designated Patrol Zone, or 'DPZ'. Agents are generally tasked with regularly surveying this DPZ by actively moving around it, talking with local residents to gather news and any issues the area may have, and reporting to their superiors, usually a Lieutenant or the Captain themselves.
When tasked with a formal duty, Debuggers most commonly move in teams of no less than three: at minimum this is two Agent Zero Classes and a Lieutenant, but can be as large as a 5-10 person team, with at least one member of a rank higher than Agent present. Formal assignments can only be given by a Zero Rank Captain-level or higher authority, but after that, field decisions can be left up to the Lieutenant.
As stated above, Agents are generally tasked with basic patrols and undertaking assignments given to them, but have no other major responsibilities or duties. The vast majority of Debuggers start out as Agent Zero Class, though some showcasing exceptional ability may be inducted at Agent 1st or 2nd Class.
Lieutenants are the next step up. They are meant to carry out Captain-level orders, and usually have wide permissions to determine how to do that while complying with the Captain's requests. Lieutenants are also responsible for arranging Agent reports for the Captain, helping with Outpost organization, and generally being field leaders for any tasks necessary. Occasionally, they also are the ones to do any PR work with civilians.
Captains are the ones that have full authority over a region's Debuggers. They read and understand all reports given to them by their Lieutenants or Agents, assign DPZs, give out formal assignments, and generally manage the wellbeing of the Outpost they are assigned to. ALL Outposts must be staffed by at least one Captain.
Debugger Elite Squadron Members are fairly unique, in that they are entirely autonomous. They can, if the situation calls for it, temporarily supersede command over other Debuggers if necessary, and report only to the Chief Debugger.
Outposts
Each region in the world has at least one Outpost, with, again, the exception of the Candy Kingdom. These Outposts are essentially outlying headquarters for long term stationing of Debuggers assigned to the area, and are usually replete with all manner of amenities, tools and devices needed to allow the Debuggers to perform at peak efficiency. This includes dorm rooms, exercise rooms, sparring and training rooms, recreation, and kitchens/mess halls. Most Debugger Outposts are 'hidden in plain sight', and often take the form of an abandoned or unused building, unmarked, and privately refurbished to allow the Debuggers to operate without disturbing the local culture or attracting negative attention. Outposts and areas patrolled by them are generally determined by relative population around an area. The Circus Grounds, for instance, has a single Outpost, whereas the neighboring Knitlands has four.
Each Outpost is generally designed to comfortably house from 20-40 individuals, though at this point in time, that number is commonly less.
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That's all for now! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! I'm hoping for people to get more interested in this if they feel like.
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envolvenuances · 18 days ago
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I should bring some summaries and translations of this book and Ricardo Antunes work in general for my non portuguese speaking ladies because it's some of the best readings I've done recently. I really enjoyed Jamie Woodcock's and Ronald Purser's researches from the english speakers (first talks about algorithm regulated work as a modern panopticon but with very well thought methodological studies directly with the workers of delivery platforms and the second is the man behind the concept of 'McMindfulness' as a bastardisation of self development and life long learning became capitalism new religion according to him)
(straight from memoQ don't @ me)
Platform-mediated work is present throughout society. Terms such as "platformisation", "uberisation", "data", and "algorithms" are definitive vocabulary in the grammar of contemporary capital. In contrast, workers' struggles have also taken on new forms, in contrivances such as platform cooperativism, digital trade unionism, and worker-owned platforms.
In this work, social scientist Rafael Grohmann outlines a panorama of studies on work and technology through 38 interviews with leading researchers in the field in Brazil and worldwide, such as Virginia Eubanks, Jamie Woodcock, Ursula Huws, Ludmila Costhek Abílio, and Ricardo Antunes.
One of the many lessons of this book is that the current landscape of platform work is not as inevitable as it appears; it is, on the contrary, a laboratory. If, on the one hand, capitalism is experimenting with new mechanisms of subjugation of the working class, on the other hand, it is possible to formulate alternatives, build prefigurative projects, and fight against the precariousness of work managed by algorithms and carried out by thousands of workers around the world.
Extract from the book
"Uberisation, in fact, is about the transformation of the worker into this just-in-time professional. I think that's one way to summarise the story, but it's a complex definition. The idea of the just-in-time worker is to consolidate a form of subordination and management of work entirely supported by an unprotected worker. And this lack of protection is more perverse than the simple absence of rights, of a formalisation of working hours. It is a completely unprotected job in legal terms because the worker is transformed into a self-manager, who has no guarantees associated with labour laws. But I think this is something even deeper, which goes beyond the nature of the lack of protection. There is the idea that it is possible to constitute a multitude of available workers, who can be recruited by the technological means that exist today. So, they are recruited to the exact extent of the demands of companies or capital, if we want to speak in a more generic way, having no guarantee whatsoever about their own form of social reproduction."
– Ludmila Costhek Abílio
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cartoonedin · 9 months ago
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sapphire dorm + video games hcs. probably ooc but idc <3
sophia touches grass too much to be considered a gamer girl but after rory introduces her to first-person shooters? you're dead. you're gone. you're her dad you're reporting her but she'll never be dead or gone because pro teams all over the country are trying to recruit her. which country. who knows. she only plays at her friends' houses on saturdays because she doesn't want her brother to snitch on her swearing but sometimes she uses her 'oops i fell off a cliff again and need to call for help' projection and gets banned from those houses too. she and her horse-poop-covered hands hate mobile games. her parents are the reason new candy crush levels are still being added but she has neither the patience nor the long-term planning skills for level one. did the genocide route on undertale in record time because she thought it was how the game was meant to be played. into red dead redemption for the horses and the bearded cowboys who learn about fatherhood via gunfights.
ava is a handheld console girlie. if pokemon nurse were an actual profession she'd be employee of the month thirteen times a year. her animal crossing island has a better economy than every continent combined. that being said the day her brothers introduced her to warioware was the day the world was introduced to true bloodshed. has broken at least one controller because of sheer emotional attachment to a cute character. treats pikmin like a survival horror game and dead space like a sci-fi romcom. got the pacifist ending in undertale and does not understand why other rpgs don't have the mercy option. unless rory's in the game at which point she brings out the laser guns or whatever to get back at him for making her reveal her middle name. you know he's let that slip to more than one call of duty lobby ok let a girl live.
layla's favourite game is google chrome. she's boring and i love her for that. she speedruns minesweeper and solitaire to get her mind off particularly devastating biographies. she's friends with everyone's parents on candy crush and scrabble. she could be a gm on chess.com but she overthinks her moves to the point of losing on time despite playing as white. she's almost been hacked so many times because she can't resist correcting bad moves on word formation advertisements and gets led to online casino #infinity or something. she has a lifelong streak on every new york times game except vertex because you cannot tell me wildstar's constant use of her magic didn't destroy her eyesight even further.
isabel puts the bro in smash bros. rotates between king k. rool, sonic, and greninja because she has a brand and it must be tangential to adhd medication. in the same vein as sophia i think she touches grass too much to be considered a gamer girl but she makes rory keep up with madden and fifa news just to figure out if she's been added to the latest installment. she has a skateboard on her dorm wall but never uses it so i'm thinking she played through the og trilogy of tony hawk's games as a kid and echoed every voice line to the point of perfect memorisation. take the word dude away from her and she's mute. also i think she discovered happy wheels on her mom's computer and ruined several important business presentations that way.
valentina is a slightly grown ipad kid. i'm sorry but you can't tell me she didn't steal her style from dress to impress. also she rates everyone one star on those games not because she's a corrupt voter but because she has a sixth sense for when a bitch is hiding bacon hair beneath a hundred layers of sparkles. up there with isabel in terms of lacking screen time video game wise because i truly believe her family would spend their money on better (read: elite-r) past times but she 1000% plays the sims. one world is for planning fashion moments and carrying on the digital furi bloodline. one world is for drowning people by deleting their pool ladders and saying "not now sweetie mommy's cyberbullying the mayor" to her baby who's on fire.
rory's room looks like a gamestop. idc about his canon phone case he is SILLY. he will play anyone in smash as long as it looks funny next to the other character but he has a soft spot for kirby, yoshi, zero suit samus (isabel side eyes him very hard for this at first but it's still a very gay choice i promise) and wii fit trainer. his personality is held together by goat simulator, untitled goose game, and donut county. also duct tape and blue raspberry gum. he trolls a little (a lot) on first person shooters and mmorpgs mostly so he can pretend with an ounce of plausible deniability that he's just having a fun unserious time when sophia and/or ava beat his ass at both even though they're on the same team.
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