#and 90% of the time they’re operating in both simultaneously!

[robbyykeene]

I guess on one hand at least they decided to stop making Kim Da Eun a two dimensional racist stereotype straight out of the Yellow Peril playbook. On the other hand the only way they saw to accomplish this was by giving her a male love interest. Because that’s obviously what women’s entire lives revolve around

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Hi I read in the faq your answer to someone about top surgery for fat ppl and I just want to ask for a bit more info... do you think i should wait until I lose weight first? Like I’m worried that even if I get surgery... I’m still going to be fat and then I’ll just have breasts still? Thank u! Sorry if this is a dumb question!

Lee says:

As long as you don’t have any serious health complications because of your weight, you can get top surgery.

Fat folk are probably going to have to get double incision top surgery, since their chest would be too large for a keyhole or periareolar, but they can get just as flat as anyone else with double incision.

It’s more likely you’ll get “dog ears” at the end of your scars towards your armpits, but that can be dealt with by getting a revision which is often free. Make sure you ask your top surgeon what their policy on revisions are, and what fees you’d have to pay if you needed one.

There can be some fatphobia when you’re looking for a top surgeon- there can be some increased risks for overweight people going under anesthesia, and some top surgeons use that as an excuse to turn down a patient even when it is possible for them to get surgery safely.

You may have to “surgeon shop” a bit to find a surgeon who is competent, capable and willing, but it’s possible and achievable! I have two fat trans guy friends who got top surgery in the past year, and they’re totally happy with their results.

Cancer-related mastectomies remove all of the tissue, while top surgery only removes like 90-95% of the breast/fat tissue and the last bit is used to create a “masculine” contour. So a complete mastectomy for cancer would result in a very flat, almost concave chest. You can see some examples of what “going flat” after a breast cancer related mastectomy looks like here.

There are some fat folks who choose to leave in a little more fat in their chest because they feel like the extra fullness fits their body type because some fat men have “moobs” but that’s a personal aesthetic choice and not required or something, and it’s possible to get a flat chest with top surgery if you tell the surgeon to make you flat. I do think the majority of folks choose to go fully flat, but there’s nothing wrong with choosing otherwise.

Because a typical trans double mastectomy leaves about 10% of the tissue in for contour, and a few fat folks opt for even more (although this isn’t common), it’s still possible for post-top surgery folks to get cancer in that tissue. That means top surgery may decrease the risk of breast cancer, but it won’t prevent breast cancer.

So you should still get mammograms if you are the age to start getting mammograms, or you should at least do self-checks. This is something you’ll have to talk to your doctor about, and see what they recommend!

On the website of one top surgeon, they said they took off enough tissue it was unlikely you’d get breast cancer, but another top surgeon’s website said that it’s still possible.

“Is top surgery the equivalent to a mastectomy? In short, NO. At least 10-20% of normal breast tissue is preserved in most patients, especially behind the central pedicle (by necessity), and peripherally by design, to avoid unnatural contour irregularities. In addition, the female genotype is generally still at play, and there is no evidence in the literature that the use of testosterone is protective against breast cancer. Therefore, we uniformly advise that all patients engage in self-breast exams (generally easier with less overall tissue remaining) and start getting mammograms when they would otherwise be recommended (generally starting at age 40), especially (and occasionally earlier) in patients with a strong family history of breast cancer, or positive genetic testing. If a breast cancer were to develop, this would likely be managed (by a surgical oncologist) as it would in any smaller-breasted patient.” -Source

I think it depends on what procedure you’re getting as well, like how an inverted-t incision might be a bit fuller than a double incision with grafts. This article says you might also want to be tested for BRCA gene mutations to help decide what kind of surgery you’ll get if there has been breast cancer in your family.

If you’re worried about getting breast cancer because you’ve tested positive for BRCA gene mutations or family members have gotten cancer, you may want a cancer preventative mastectomy where they take out all the tissue instead of a cosmetic mastectomy like they do for top surgery. If you don’t like that look, you may be able to get silicone pectoral implants once you’re fully healed. But the procedure and your options should be discussed with your treatment team, and this whole thing really only applies to folks who are at a high-risk for cancer so it’s something you could talk to your surgeon about at your consultation. 

Anyway, that’s a lil tangent. Top surgery (via double mastectomy) is pretty customizable in the amount of fat you choose to keep, so you can choose if you want a very flat chest, a more contoured chest, a breast reduction or “moob-like” chest because they’re doing large incisions which means they have lots of room to work with when it comes to excising the fat and using liposuction.

If you gain a lot of weight after top surgery your chest may get a little larger, but it won’t regrow to whatever your pre-surgery size was because the breast tissue has been removed.

You can see an example of a larger fellow who got a flat chest here, and another example here. It’s definitely possible for fat folks to get flat chests after top surgery if that’s what they want from the procedure! 

Trans Bucket has a ton of pics of this, but right now folks say the website seems to be acting up so your mileage may vary with getting an account.

The Facebook groups Top Surgery Support (removal/reduction) and Non-Binary Top Surgery both have a ton of pictures uploaded as well, but you can’t see any “before” pictures there because of Facebook’s NSFW ban. They’re still worth checking out though for the personal experiences, community, support, and post-op pics.

There are a lot of folks who find it really hard to lose weight even if you’re eating healthy and exercising and all that because the body really doesn’t want to lose weight, so waiting until you’ve lost a significant amount of weight might not be an ideal timeframe for getting surgery because you might find it really difficult to lose weight which means you’ll keep pushing back the process of getting surgery until an undetermined date in the future, and not having surgery or an idea of when you’ll be getting surgery can be bad for your mental health if you have a lot of dysphoria. 

And it may also be easier to start getting active when you’re healed from top surgery because you don’t have to worry about wearing sports bras or hiding your chest while in the gym and stuff.

Personally, my advice would be to start the process of getting surgery now if you know that it’s what you need. So that means finding a surgeon, getting your WPATH-compliant letter or whatever else your surgeon/insurance needs to perform/cover the procedure, and schedule a consultation. 

If your surgeon tells you at the consult that they are requiring you to lose weight before you get a surgery date, at least you’ll have an idea of how much weight you have to lose which can help direct your goal and keep you motivated. 

And you may also want to consider getting a second opinion with another surgeon too, which would be my recommendation if the first surgeon has a weight-loss condition before they’ll operate and you don’t think that goal is possible within a reasonable timeframe, because the second surgeon may be more comfortable with the risk and say that you can get surgery with them without losing weight.

Anyway, what you choose to do is up to you, but I’d try to get a consult ASAP and go ahead with surgery because if you don’t get completely flat after top surgery and you end up with dog ears or something, you can always get a revision.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to lose weight at the same time (in a healthy way with the guidance of your doctor) if it’s something you want to do, and trying to get started on both goals simultaneously is possible, but even if you don’t lose weight you can still get great top surgery results.

So you definitely can get a flat chest after top surgery even if you weigh a lot pre-op and have a big chest- I’ve seen it myself a ton of times!

[dreamsofwhatlifemighthavebeen]

Fun times dealing with the equestrian center’s radio net. For the director of the equestrian center - who is here on a work visa, doesn’t have a car, and uses one from the equestrian center to take home - they just a few days ago retired a 1985 Chevrolet Chevette she had been using previously, and replaced it with a 2015 Chevrolet Sonic transferred over from one of my employer’s other companies. The Chevette did not have a radio installed in it, but they decided that the Sonic does need one. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the interior of a Sonic, but there really isn’t space for any sort of add ons in the interior. It could be installed on the center console on the passenger side and leave room to open the glove compartment, but I really don’t like the idea of having her look way down and to the right to see the radio if she has to switch channels and such, especially as she’s not a particularly fantastic driver to begin with. Even though we sell radios to the equestrian center at a much lower cost than we would for commercial customers, the owner of the equestrian center rejected that idea on cost, as she already knows she can buy TK-860 or TK-880 radios from us for substantially less. So, it looks like it’s going to be a Kenwood TK-880 (mobile radio to the left) mounted on the dash. Which, I don’t like doing dash mounts because I think it looks sloppy and I like my work to be professional, but it’s ultimately her call.

Honestly, I never saw any need to install a radio in her car... even the company which used it previously never saw a need to. So the owner says, “Well, she might drive it to events”. But never has she (the director) ever shown any interest in driving herself to those... if they’re taking the bus, she much prefers that, as she pretty much has a work center there which was made by taking some seats out of the bus and installing a small desk. Otherwise, she’d ride with someone else, even when given the opportunity to take a newer vehicle, and even when offered someone to act as her personal driver. She’s not into driving, and she’s not going to be now. But I lost that argument.

The equestrian center uses an organizational GMRS license which they had originally obtained in 1984 and have maintained since; thus, it was grandfathered in when the FCC stopped issuing organizational licenses in 1987. Originally, they had used the Motorola MR-355R (bottom left) and MR-356R blister pack radios. Problem is, they were buying these things at whatever big box retailers everyone else was buying them at, so we ended up with hordes of unlicensed users getting on the equestrian center repeater (there’s also a sorry saga of how GMRS users were screwed out of exclusivity on Channels 15 - 22 on account of squatters who bought the 22 channel “hybrid” radios en masse and completely ignored the blurb on the packaging which stated use of those channels required a GMRS license).

When I was given charge of the equestrian center’s radio net, I changed a lot of things. First, I limited who accessed the repeater. Crew and barn leads, admin staff, etc. Everyone working under the leads could use simplex, as they were never a far enough distance from each other to require a repeater. So, we were initially going to use BaoFeng BF-888S radios for the crew members who weren’t accessing the repeater, but we had difficulty finding a seller who could guarantee the radios they sold us had the FCC ID on them (a legal requirement in the US for operating transmitting on any service outside of Part 97 rules). We found one who could guarantee it if we bought the BaoFeng GT-1 (second from the left on the bottom row), which is internally the same as the BF-888S, but uses a different battery and case. For the crew leads, barn leads, admin staff, and those who were going to access the repeater, we went with the B-Tech (BaoFeng) UV-82C (not pictured), which is a commercial Part 90 type accepted variant of the UV-82 series radios. The dual watch feature also allows them to monitor both the repeater and their internal crew simplex net simultaneously without having to go into scan mode.

As the blister pack radios used a standardized list of CTCSS and DCS tones, I changed the repeater to split tones, with separate DCS tones for the transmit and receive side, and also used a mixture of non-standard and inverted DCS tones throughout the entire equestrian center net. So while someone running a police scanner or radio on carrier squelch can still hear our traffic, they won’t be able to talk to us or interrupt us with the blister pack radios, Midland radios, etc., as we had problems both with people intentionally getting on our repeater and also those running simplex who “coincidentally” used the same frequencies and DPL tones which we did. Once the FCC co-banded all of the FRS simplex and GMRS frequencies in 2017, we were left powerless to do anything about it (not that we really could before... the FCC was always pretty lax on their enforcement when it came to GMRS). If we run into a matter of getting disrupted by someone who successfully finds our DPL tones, then I have the means to require the radio’s PTT-ID to be on an approved list to trip the repeater.

For the riding instructors, we felt that perhaps something more durable was in order after one of the GT-1s broke. Initially, I took of the Motorola HT750s (second from the right on the bottom row) from the rental side of our business and loaned them to the equestrian center until we could figure out something more permanent. The permanent solution came when I happened across some Kenwood TK-350s (center of the bottom row) which were sitting in a bin and pretty much unwanted. So, after finding batteries for them, I was allowed to take those and donate them to the equestrian center. I actually had to lean how to use DOS in order to program them. Surprisingly, only one ended up preferring the HT750 over the Kenwoods. In the end - since she rents a room from and lives with me - I purchased one at cost from the business and donated it so that she could continue using one.

All the way to the right on the bottom row is one of my Kenwood TK-3180s, which I use both for the equestrian center’s GMRS net as well as the LMR radio net at my regular job. I was using one with the 16 key DTMF keypad (and the Tactical Features Set), but the owner of the equestrian center wants all radios labeled... while crew radios will tyically have only a number, the equestrian instructors wanted their names to be displayed on the radios they were issued, and I was instructed to do the same with mine. The running joke with it is, when we’re doing fundraising events (the equestrian program is a registered nonprofit), tours of the equestrian center, or other events, then husbands can try claiming they were only looking at the nametags on the radio to try remembering our names when their wives catch them staring at our asses. Since the DTMF keypad didn’t leave space for a label, I took one with the four button keypad and used that.

GMRS is regulated under Part 95E and requires a Part 95E radio. However, due to a lack of viable Part 95E radio options, many users have taken to using Part 90 LMR radios, as many of the UHF models cover GMRS frequencies. For example, the Motorola HT750 can be programmed with frequencies from 403  -470 MHz, and GMRS (as well as FRS) is a collection of 22 frequencies in the 462 and 467 MHz range. The use of Part 90 radios in GMRS plays fast and loose with the law, but acts in the spirit of the law, even if not the letter of it. The FCC has acknowledged the practice and has been leaving it alone, but they haven’t actually given approval to do that. To that end, we ensure that all radios are Part 90 (or Part 95E, as some employees have bought their own radios).

Which of course brings us to other problems in dealing with the radio net. A number of licensed GMRS users are quite upset about our use of a repeater on GMRS, especially given a lack of viable ones in the area. Some have identified the tower and have threatened to report us to the FCC (to which we tell them to go right ahead, as our use of that frequency is 100% on the up and up), some have tried to get us to make it a public use repeater (and typically suggest we use travel tone).

Then, of course, a number of the male employees - not content with the little GT-1 radios - always want something more “badass”. So I had one come up to me asking me if I could program his radio to the equestrian center net, and he hands me a BaoFeng UV-5R and told me the equestrian center owner gave her approval. Problem is, the FCC ID on that one - 2AJGM-UV5R - only shows Part 15 certification for 134 - 174 MHz and 400 - 470 MHz. So, outside of Part 97 (ham radio) use, it’s only legal as a receiver and scanner in those band splits. The ones which don’t have an FCC ID aren’t even legal for that. Had another one come to me with what looked like a Kenwood TK-3207... great 16 channel UHF radio, and the TK-2000/3000 series are becoming one of the mainstays of our rental service. When I removed the battery, it showed the model as TK-3000, but there was no FCC ID on it, so I asked him where he’d gotten it from. He said his brother used it for his business and had some extras. Just out of curiosity, I tried programming it with the KPG-137D programming software and was unable to. So I asked the brother where he’d gotten it from. He said he bought it off of Ebay. When I searched Ebay, I found a bunch of TK-2000/TK-3000 series radios from a seller out of China. So I installed KPG-137D on another computer and this time used the serial number for the UK/European version, and it successfully programmed the radio. All fine and dandy, but I gave it back to him and told him it’s not a legal radio for use in the US without an FCC ID being present.

I swear, I wear too many hats sometimes.

[nureyevv]

This job was supposed to be easy. That’s why Buddy had put him out in the field in the first place, right? He wasn’t as experienced as Jet in these things, but they’d said it’d be good practice for when the real work began. They just needed some cushion creds-- it was the perfect opportunity to acclimate him to the life of crime.

It was the exact sort of thing Juno would have normally refused to take part in. He wouldn't steal just to steal, certainly not from innocent people, but it just so happened their mark today was a double decker asshole. The Diamond Dame Casino, just off Saturn, was notorious for attracting the worst kind of people. Juno had never been fond of casinos anyway. He couldn't understand how someone could make a living off of other people’s addictions and still sleep soundly at night. The Diamond Dame was a whole different brand of nasty, though. It was a known location among criminals to make dirty deals without risk of being caught, and at the head of it all was a man by the name of Dallas Olson. He’d inherited the business from his father and had been inadvertently running the place into the ground ever since.

See, the issue with raising a kid around some of the worst spenders this side of Venus was that, more often than not, they don’t shape up to be the best with money. Olson’s bank account said he was in debt to just about every person he’d ever met, and a man like Olson met a lot of dangerous people. Normally, a guy like that would be a thief’s jackpot-- no pun intended. The only issue was that, 90% of the time Olson didn’t even know when he would be making out checks. Most days he tried to put it off until someone pulled a knife on him and he was forced to find some creds then and there. No robber worth his name (or lack thereof) would take a job with that kind of uncertainty.

At least, that was what Nureyev-- or Glass-- had told Juno when he asked why Olson had yet to be robbed blind.

They would have passed Olson by, too, if it wasn’t for the tip Buddy got. It was incredibly vague; all it told them was that Olson was making a repayment today. They didn’t know who he was repaying, how much he owed, or when it would happen. Juno had almost deemed it a lost cause when Vespa had spoke up: “They’re just giving us money at this point, Bud.”

Apparently, when you had a spaceship with four master criminals, a hacker that couldn’t be beat, and an ex-detective, nothing was impossible.

So, they set the stage. Vespa, Rita, and Jet would stay on the ship. Jet would be at the wheel, waiting for one of two orders: get us the fuck out of here or open fire. Rita would handle the tech-- get them into The Diamond Dame’s security system. Vespa would be in charge of monitoring the live footage, watching out for possible threats and keeping the operation in line. Buddy and Pe-- Rex were out in the casino, stationed by each of the exits. When they got word of who it was they’d be robbing, they’d be the ones doing the dirty work.

That was where Juno came in. His role was simple enough: figure out who it was that was walking out with their paycheck.

At least, it sounded simple enough. Then he actually got to the casino, with all its flashing lights and chiming slot machines. Juno could hardly think straight as it was, and there were so many people, more than he’d ever imagined. Being observant, picking one oddity out of a crowd, that was supposed to be his whole thing. He had to at least be decent at it if he was able to make a living off it for all those years, and yet… he had a bad feeling about this.

He couldn’t focus, and if he couldn’t focus there was no way he’d be able to pull this off. Still, he couldn’t tell the rest of them why he was so distracted because his big distraction was one of them. Whatever name he called him, Peter Nureyev, Rex Glass, or tonight’s specialty, Orion Krum, he couldn’t push that man from his mind. They hadn’t talked since their first encounter in the martian desert, not really. Every time Juno tried to catch him alone, to explain or apologize, or something, Nureyev always slipped away in the way only he could. It was obvious he didn’t want anything to do with Juno.

Juno didn’t blame him for it either. He left, and Nureyev moved on, even if Juno couldn’t say the same for himself. Just watch the crowd, Steel.

From his spot at one of the slot machines he examined a few groups. There was one gaggle of wealthy looking women who were far too drunk to be there on official business. Juno crossed them off a mental suspect list. He caught sight of one suspicious looking man dressed in a particularly showy black gown and for a moment he thought he might be onto something.

A moment later another man arrived in a similar sneaking fashion and Juno was right back to square one. The only thing those two were guilty of was an affair. His eyes continued to trace the crowds until he caught sight of that face again.

Stars, that face.

Peter didn’t look like himself tonight. His usual warm colors had been replaced with a deep blue, suit, speckled with silver like the night sky. He wore none of his signature makeup or jewelry, but his expression said he didn’t need it when he had a face like that. He looked like the kind of man that, if Juno had spotted him back on Mars, he would have avoided at all costs: arrogant, rich, and cold.

And, simultaneously, he looked like an undercover thief Juno really wanted to take back to his room after all of this was through.

He shook the thought from his mind almost as soon as it entered. He needed to move. Maybe a new vantage point would show him something he couldn’t see from here, or at least block out someone he very much could--

As he stood up from his machine he only narrowly avoided walking straight into someone. Juno stumbled backwards a few steps and was just about to apologize when he saw the man in front of him. He recognized that blonde hair and pointed nose from Vespa’s lectures. Dallas Olson.

He was young, Juno might have even said handsome if he didn’t dim in comparison to another nearby face. “Apologies, madame,” he said in a thick accent Juno couldn’t quite place, “I didn't mean to startle you.”

Juno inhaled deeply and tried to remember who he was. Tonight, his name was Renee Bruner, a lady with too much free time and enough creds on hand to find plenty of ways to entertain himself. The dress Buddy had provided him made him look the part, long and tight fit, made of a brilliant magenta silk, but he still had to sound like Renee, too.

“No harm done,” he said with a breezy, somewhat bored smile. “You know how it is after you’ve had a few.”

Olson nodded in agreement and extended a hand out to him. Internally, Juno’s stomach dropped. He’d hoped this encounter would be short and sweet. “It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance. My names Dallas Olson. I’m the owner of this establishment.”

Juno took his hand and shook it. “Renee. It’s quite the place you got here.”

“Aw, you’re too kind,” he replied with fake humility. “This may seem a bit odd, but I was wondering if you might do me a favor?”

Juno felt the hair on his arms prickle. “I suppose it depends on the request.”

Olson smiled gingerly. “But of course,” he answered with a slick kind of charm Juno only liked on one man. “My hope was that, if you agreed, you could introduce me to that gentleman behind you.”

Juno didn’t need to look to see who Olson was gesturing at. He looked anyway. Sure enough, Nureyev stood there, pretending to be properly entertained. The tenseness in his jaw said he knew he was being watched.

Juno didn’t know how Olson had managed to put together that they knew each other. They’d been so careful, coming in separate entrances and staying away from one another. Had they received bad intel? Was Olson on to them? Should they call a quits now--

“You… do know one another, yes?” asked Olson, and Juno was relieved to hear the doubt in his voice. So he didn’t know anything for sure. They could work with that. “I simply assumed with the way you have been looking at him that you were acquainted. I like to associate myself with all my new guests, and I had not seen your faces before…”

Dammit, he chided himself. He’d given himself away. If he’d been obvious enough that Olson had spotted him then he was sure Nureyev already knew too. Couldn’t he go two seconds without making a fool of himself?

Something about this situation definitely stunk. Olson wanted to talk to them for a reason, and Juno knew it wasn’t just good business practice. He was nervous, that much Juno could tell by the perspiration in their handshake, but he didn’t know why. At least, not yet.

It was time to change his approach. It’d be more suspicious to flat out deny knowing Peter now, and besides, trying to find their mark without a lead wasn’t going anywhere.

“No, no, you’re right. That’s my husband,” he said and braced himself.

“Steel,” he heard Vespa’s voice in his ear, “this is not the plan.”

Near by, Nureyev had heard the exact same conversation. He would just have to make it part of the plan.

Juno smiled and ignored her, keeping his attention on Olson. “I’ll bring you over now, just let me grab my bag.”

“Of course,” nodded Olson.

Juno moved to the side of the machine he’d been sitting at and grabbed a purple purse. Quiet enough Olson wouldn’t hear it, Juno muttered, “Just play along, alright?”

Gesturing at Olson to follow, Juno led him over to Nureyev as Vespa complained. If Peter was caught off guard he didn’t show it. Juno knew this was a role he could play. It was familiar for both of them, and a bit nostalgic. The only thing Juno had severely underestimated was how much it would hurt to pretend to be his again.

“Hello, love,” said Juno a bit awkwardly. He was learning he really hated undercover work. “I want to introduce you to the owner, Mr. Olson.”

Peter, unlike Juno, never let his disguise falter. It amazed Juno, but then again, maybe that was just what twenty years of practice looked like. His eyes were still ice cold, but he quickly adapted to the new information. He slid an arm around Juno’s waist and pulled him close, eyes still glued to Olson. It was protective but not loving. In other words, it was completely in character.

Juno hoped he didn’t notice how he shivered at his touch and seemed to flourish in the safety of Nureyev’s torso. It still felt so natural.

“Orion Krum. I hope my wife hasn’t caused too much trouble,” said Nureyev.

For a reason Juno couldn’t understand, Olson seemed to get more pale the longer he looked at them. “Not at all!” he said with unconvincing enthusiasm, “I had asked him to introduce us. I must say, though, he seems much happier now that he’s with you. His expression earlier was quite distressed.”

What was his game? If he didn’t know who they were, why was he so invested in them? Juno was trying to put the pieces together. They were missing something but he didn’t know what. Olson was scared, but of what? The answer tugged at the back of his mind and Juno tried to pull it free. He almost had it when Nureyev spoke and broke his concentration.

For the first time in the night, Peter, or rather Orion, was looking at him. There was something in his eyes, though, something that hadn’t been there earlier and made Juno’s heart do a somersault. There was something coy about that look that wasn’t like the character he was playing tonight. Peter Nureyev was peaking through. “Is that true? Were you feeling left out?” Then, noticing his error he added a cool: “then don’t wander off next time.”

That smugness… It felt like being teased by the Peter who loved him, all those months ago. Juno was caught off guard. “I, uh, Nur--”

Before he could say something that couldn’t be unsaid, Peter cut him off. Before Juno knew it Peter’s lips were on his and anything he was planning to say was forgotten. It was effective, that’s for sure. A one hit KO that was over almost as soon as it began.

Peter pulled away. It was barely a peck on the lips, just enough to fluster Juno while not being too uncalled for. Afterwards he turned his attention back to their new friend while Juno was left properly flustered. “Well then. We’ve met, my wife has been returned. Now we’ll be on our way, unless you had some further plan for my time.”

The prickly facade was back. Peter Nureyev had been shoved back inside, and while Juno had much preferred it to the emotionless creature he was imitating now, Olson looked… chipper. The color was back in his face and his smile was unsettling to say the least. It looked like they’d just fallen into whatever trap Olson had set, but Juno didn’t know how.

Something was about to go very wrong. He turned to Peter and tried to get a warning out before it was too late. “This isn’t right, we have to--”

Suddenly, Juno was ripped away and Peter’s comforting presence was gone. In its place was blaster and Olson’s iron grip.

Oh, thought Juno. This explains a lot.

One arm was up against his throat, keeping him from escaping. The barrel of the blaster was digging into his skull, and he wasn’t planning on risking his brains in a struggle. He was facing Nureyev, whose face Juno couldn’t read: shock, anger, fear? Or maybe nothing at all.

“Juno!” said Vespa’s stern voice in his head.

“Verona,” called Olson at someone Juno couldn’t quite see. “This kind man here will be providing you your payment.”

Nureyev raised an eyebrow in his direction. “And why would I do that?”

The answer was obvious enough, though, at least to Juno. Olson had finally dug himself into a hole he couldn’t climb back out of, but he wasn’t about to give in. He had plenty of unknowing customers with the kind of spending money he needed. Olson was smart enough to find an out and desperate enough to risk it all.

All he had to do was find an unsuspecting soul stupid enough to fall into his trap with something more than money to lose. Leverage. He’d almost done it, too, but their was one big problem. The most expensive thing he or Nureyev had on them was the clothes on their backs. No wonder Juno couldn’t figure out who had the check-- there wasn’t a check to begin with.

“Well, if you’d like to keep your wife’s brain in-tact, I would highly recommend giving Ms. Verona whatever she asks,” drawled Olson. Juno really hoped Peter was as concerned with his safety as Olson thought. Around them, heads turned. A few people looked nervous at the sight of the scene before them, but most just turned a blind eye. Olson let a lot of dirty business slip by unnoticed. It wasn’t difficult to return the favor.

“What makes you think I care about all that?” asked Nureyev with that signature nonchalance. He was playing some kind of angle. That didn’t make it sting any less.

Verona shot Olson a look that said he was supposed to have this under control. Panic flashed over his features but he was quick to compose himself. It seemed like the bullet in Juno’s head wouldn’t be the only shot fired if this deal fell through.

“Don’t play games. It's the money or his life,” growled Olson at Nureyev.

“Glass, Juno,” ordered Vespa, “get out of there!”

Juno thought that was easier said than done when there was a gun to your head. They were at a disadvantage-- even if they might have been able to take Olson and Verona in a fight, any sudden movements and he might end up with a hole in his head. They could try to stall until Buddy arrived, but Juno had no clue where she was or if she’d be able to do anything before Olson lost his patience. They had to act alone.

He looked to Nureyev, equal parts indignant and afraid. To Juno, it was still obvious he was in character. That’s right, he thought, we still have the element of surprise.

Juno didn’t know what his plan was, but he knew Nureyev had one. Nureyev always had a plan. So, without thinking it through, he played along.

“Orion,” he said, voice small, “I’m sorry I wandered off before I won’t do it again-- just, just get me out of here. Please. Just give them what they want.

Nureyev sighed. “Fine. What do you want.”

Verona spoke up now. “Ten thousands creds.”

“You’d have to be a fool to carry that kind of money on you!” Peter protested.

“Then give me the passcode to you fucking bank account, then,” Verona snapped back. She was getting irritated, though not entirely at Nureyev. It seemed she was under the impression Olson had a more reliable way of paying her back.

Peter caught his eyes. Did you see that, they seemed to ask, and of course Juno did. The private eye in him was already putting two and two together. She was the weak link. She was their escape route. “Hurry up, Krum,” said Olson through gritted teeth.

Peter chewed his lip. “I will, but there is a… slight complication.”

“What? What could possibly be the problem now?” demanded Verona.

“I’m a busy man-- I don’t have time to track all my expenses and banking, that’s what having a secretary is for.”

“And?”

Peter looked at her like it was obvious. “I don’t know my passcode.”

Juno nearly laughed. Their plan was to annoy Verona into snapping, and Peter was damn good at it. The mirth was, unfortunately, short lived.

Verona shook with rage. Juno thought it was entirely possible she might just combust then and there, and for a moment Juno was terrified they’d miscalculated. He couldn’t help but fear that, when she lashed out, she’d go straight for Nureyev’s throat.

The idea of it was enough to make him feel like he was going to be ill.

And then Verona spun on Olson. “Dammit, Olson, you said you had the money and you’re gonna get it for me. No more games.”

“I will, just wait, please, a few moments more,” sputtered Olson. “They have the creds we just have to--”

“We?” She cut in. “I don’t have to do anything, understand? You owe me. I said I was done playing. You either have what you owe me or you don’t. So what’s the answer?”

On cue, Juno heard the distinct click of a blaster’s safety being turned off, and he got the impression it wasn’t set to stun. A large man stood behind Olson in all black, eyes fixed on Verona. One word from her and his target would be dead.

This was their chance. In his fear, Olson’s grip loosened and his aim wavered. Juno took the moment to slip away, over to Nureyev. The two of them had been almost completely forgotten.

Nureyev’s hands were on his shoulders, sturdy and strong. Juno might have even thought protective if he didn’t know better. The taller man tried to lead him away from all of this so they could make their escape. They could disappear before anyone even noticed they were gone, but…

“Drop the gun, Olson,” instructed Verona. The blonde man whimpered, reserved to his fate, and tossed it at the floor where it clattered at their feet. At Juno’s feet.

No one was supposed to die here. Not even double decker assholes.

“Juno,” Nureyev said at his side, tugging at him now. “We need to go before people start shooting--”

Juno was moving before he could even think of the consequences. He dove for the blaster and shifted the dial to stun. Around him he heard voices, Verona yelling orders, Vespa shouting in his ear, Peter, the real Peter’s, fearful “Wait--.” He blocked it all out.

They were all close to him, he should have been able to hit them, but without the THEIA he was never one hundred percent sure. Three shots, just three shots.

Bang. The first beam went straight into the armed man’s chest. He crumpled to the floor.

Bang. The second shot was for Verona, and he only barely hit the mark. Just in time, too. By the way her hand had gone for her pocket she’d been looking to grab a blaster of her own. He made contact with her shoulder, and though she tried to stay conscious she followed her minion to ground.

Juno took a breath before firing for the third and last time. Olson gaped at him. “Wh--”

Bang. He didn't get to finish before Juno blasted him in the gut.

People were starting to panic now. Threats were one thing, but actually shooting to host was another. Before the chaos could close in, Nureyev grabbed his hand and they were running.

They busted through the casino doors, the cool night air hitting them like pool water on a summer day. “Your aim is getting quite good, detective.”

Juno glanced up at Peter and was met with a smile. A genuine one, at that. “Ah, well,” he answered, sheepishly. He hoped the darkness would hide his blush.

“Yea, he’s a fuckin’ natural,” growled Vespa over their earpiece. “It’d be awful nice if he was as skilled at following directions.

“Oh, don’t be honorary,” chided Nureyev. How was it that he could keep up this pace and not be at least a bit winded. “This job would have failed no matter what Juno did. No reason to place blame.”

“But Glass, I’d hardly call it a failure.” The voice speaking them now belonged to Buddy. Juno had almost forgotten she’d been in the casino all together.

“That so?” he asked between strained breaths. “Where did you go during all that? I nearly died!”

“Spare me the dramatics, Juno, you two had it completely under control. I figured if we weren’t going to get our creds from Olson I might as well tamper with the machines a bit. You wouldn’t believe what kind of money people put in those things.”

At his side, Nureyev’s grin widened at the thought of their loot. “Very clever, as always, Ms. Aurinko. I believe I see you now. You’ll have to show us what you picked up when we get there.”

Sure enough, they’d crested a hill and below, at the very bottom of the incline, was the ship. It was only then that Nureyev slowed his pace.

He met Juno’s eyes, lifted a hand to his ear, and shut off his communication device. Juno didn’t know why, exactly, but he repeated the motion anyway.

Nureyev seemed to blend into the night, his skin the only glowing contrast to the deep navy around them. He looked good, but then again, he always looked good.

There was a momentary silence between them, then: “You know, I’d like to believe you meant what you said back there.”

Juno searched his face for hints but found none. He had said a lot of things in the casino, most of them in the hopes of not getting killed. He didn’t have the slightest idea which one Peter was referencing now.

“I’m… not sure I follow.”

The dark haired man nodded, as if he’d expected that. “You said you wouldn’t wander off again, Juno. I hope that’s the truth this time. I hate to admit it, but each time I lose you I find it a bit more difficult to move on.”

The smile was still present on Peter’s face, but it was distant and sad. His gaze was somewhere else entirely. The ice from the evening’s alias had melted away and Juno was left with someone he recognized. Someone he loved.

“Yea… Yea I think I know how you feel,” answered Juno, “but, if it means anything, I think it is. True, I mean. At least, I want it to be.”

They were close now, and there were still a million unsaid things between them. Peter only said one of them, though.

“I suppose I’ll just have to trust you, then.”

And really, Juno couldn’t have imagined anything better than that.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN USERS

Smoking rapidly became a statistically normal thing. As societies get richer, they learn something about everything and everything about something.1 In fact it's the old model: mainframe applications are all server-based software assumes nothing about the paths from poor to rich, I knew I could see myself—making at least 4 of these 5 mistakes. And bingo, there it is: The Men's Wearhouse.2 But as knowledge has grown more specialized, there are few strong enough to keep working on something no one around them cares about.3 As well as being smarter, they tend to be calmer and more upstanding; they don't need you, it will work anywhere the Web works. It was only then that we realized that they were started there. Unless you're planning to write math applications, of course. Where is the man bites dog in that?

Life in Berkeley is very civilized. During the 90s a lot of money. The simplest answer is to put them in a row. They were also a kind of semantic deficit spending: they knew new things were coming. Professors in New York and the Bay area are second class citizens—till they start hedge funds or startups respectively. I recommend being good. But I remember thinking his company's name was odd. They were also a kind of selflessness. That VC round was a series B round; the premoney valuation was $75 million. Economic power would have been the part where we were working hard, the groups all turned out to be, there are no customs yet to guide you. He tried to make it open. It's not something people tend to volunteer; one likes it the way one likes popping zits.

I want to do better. They usually know other founders, and certainly not you as an investor. And once you've written the software, and issue a press release saying that the new version was available immediately.4 Startups are stressful, and this made their software visibly inferior because among other things, incubators usually make you work in their office—that's where the word incubator comes from. The thesis seems to be that the most important consequence of realizing there can be good art is thus a property of the subject or the object if subjects all react similarly. What most don't realize is how late.5 What you're doing is business creation. Google does. There are sometimes minor tactical advantages to using one or the other, like a detective trying to unravel some mystery.

But writing and art are both very hard problems that some people work honestly at, so they're worth doing, especially if you can see your email, why not your calendar? VCs are pretty good at reading people. PR firms. Whatever looked like the biggest win.6 Treat the first few as an educational expense. Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have imagined. So I added a message at that point. In art, the highest place has traditionally been given to paintings of people.

The self-reinforcing nature of this situation works the other way too: the less you need further investment, the easier it is to travel widely, in both time and space. The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the direction of over-engineering. The summer founders were as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. Much of what's in the sage's head is also in the head of every twelve year old. If a physicist met a colleague from 100 years ago. I doubt it could be any other way, as long as the potential returns look good enough. Odds are this project won't be a class assignment.7 Our only expenses in that phase were food and rent.8

Why does John Grisham King of Torts sales rank, 44 outsell Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good novel wouldn't complain that readers were unfair for preferring a potboiler with a racy cover. Viaweb let multiple users edit a site simultaneously, more because that was the truth. All you'll need will be something with a keyboard, a screen, and a funnel for peers. We always looked for new ways to give stuff away for free if advertisers would let them. His office was nicknamed the Hot Tub on account of the heat they generated. They're as expert in their world as you are in yours.9 Shockley Semiconductor, though itself not very successful, was big enough. The cheery, bland language of the people in a position of independence, they develop the qualities they need. It's something you're more likely to work in the end, and now he's a professor at MIT.10 This is particularly true of young people who have till now always been under the thumb of some kind of paternal responsibility toward employees without putting employees in the position of children. From this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what to look for in founders. Because ambitions are to some extent marketing as well.11

How do you be a good angel investor? And how do you avoid mistakes you make by default? Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few top university departments and research labs—partly because investors are so unlike hackers, and they even let kids in.12 Currently the way VCs seem to operate is to invest in a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it true, and the fact that they control Google, which affects practically everyone. Microsoft do? Among other things, they had no way around the statelessness of CGI scripts. Most high school students have searched for does not seem to exist.

Notes

Acquirers can be done, she expresses it by smiling more. And of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what they too were feeling in 1914.

Ii.

I've said into something that would appeal to investors, you need to import is broader, ranging from designers to programmers to electrical engineers.

Founders rightly dislike the sort of person who would in itself, and Smartleaf co-founder before making any commitments. The other reason it used to end investor meetings with So, can I count you in? There's a variant of Reid Hoffman's principle that you can play it safe by excluding VC firms have started to give them sufficient activation energy required to notice them.

5%.

Revenue will ultimately be hurting yourself, if the statistics they consider are useful, how little autonomy one would say that I'm clueless or even being deliberately misleading by focusing so much on the blades may work for us, the airplane, the median VC loses money. I don't think you need to play games with kids' credulity.

Yes, there are before the name Homer, to the home team, I've become a function of the big winners are all that matters, just their sizes. Look at what adults told children in the succession of spectacular treason trials that punctuated Henry's erratic matrimonial progress made him an obvious candidate for grants of monastic property. Though nominally acquisitions and sometimes on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit.

They'll be more likely to resort to expedients like selling autographed copies, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris wrote the first language to embody the principle that if a company they'd pay a premium for you by accidents of age and geography, rather than for any particular truths you'll learn. But no planes crash if your school, secretly write your thoughts down in, but this could be pleasure in a bar.

And I've never heard of investors want to change the number of startups have some kind of people we need to, so they will or at least for those founders.

In a project like a winner, they tend to say they prefer great markets to great people. But the most successful ones tend not to say they were still so small that no one on the parental dole for life in general we've done ok at fundraising is a scarce resource. The obvious choice for your side project.

The point of a cent per spam. One of the Daddy Model that it makes sense to exclude outliers from some types of applicants—for example, if you like a loser they're done, at least notice duplication though, because they can't afford to. But it's telling that it refers to features you could get a poem published in The New Yorker. This is what you love, or because they couldn't afford a monitor.

Actually he's no better or worse than Japanese car companies have been the first version was mostly Lisp, you should. I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to solve a lot of successful startups. There are some good proposals too.

[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 27 [90%]

The tension was clear and almost unbearable as Tony gently took you from the roof and back to ground level. He didn’t say a single word, seemingly intent on ignoring Fury who was now sitting in a booth inside the restaurant, as he went to the counter and ordered three coffees instead. As if this were just another normal day.

Somehow, sooner than you’d realized, maybe this was what normal constituted in your life now. And you’d take hold of it any way you could. So long as that life could go on. No other option. At least not in your mind.

Finally he handed your coffee to you and you noticed the, now only, person manning the shop run away to the back. Probably a very keen sense of survival. The air in the room wasn’t exactly positive. Then Tony escorted you to sit on the inside of the booth, plopping Fury’s coffee down in front of him rather carelessly, and sat himself down next to you.

“So. What do you want? I already told you we’re not interested in joining your little Avengers tree house club.” Tony was keen on playing this as calm as possible, it seemed.

But opposite him you were alight with energy. Still… maybe Tony had the right idea, and it wasn’t smart to overplay your hand.

Fury feigned a laugh, lifting his coffee. “No- see, I remember. You two do everything yourselves. How’s that working out?” Taking a long sip after asking.

“It’s-...”

“We’re getting by.” Being humble was probably the best way to get out of this situation you and Tony had found yourselves in- or rather him and you merely by extension. There was no hiding that you’d asked for SHIELD’s help, and whether or not Coulson had led you to believe they weren’t actually going to, Fury was here now. That had to mean something. And you had to own up to it and take whatever he offered. Tony being pissed about that could be dealt with later.

When he was still alive to be mad about it.

“I’m sorry. I don’t wanna get off on the wrong foot, do I look at the patch or the eye?” Yet there he was, playing it up as always. Sitting forward, “Honestly, I’m a bit hungover. I’m not sure if you’re real or I’m having a hallucination.”

Fury sat up to meet him. “I am very real. I’m the realest person you’re ever gonna meet. Best you start taking notes from your girlfriend. She seems to be the brains of this operation.”

“Oh, hear that honey? I think then that’s my cue to go. The two big brains can handle this all on their own, right?” He was turned to look at you and all you could do was beg with your eyes for him to shut up and stop being a child.

“Hm. That’s not looking so good, is it?” Fury reached forward to tug at the metal line of the suit around Tony’s neck where the skin was red and the dark veins creeping higher.

“Been worse.” Tony answered flatly.

You put your hands on the table. “Look- are you here to help or just mock the situation?” There wasn’t much more of this you could take.

“Why don’t you direct some of that at him? Maybe you wouldn’t be where you are.”

It was starting to look like all SHIELD agents were the same. Annoying. Petty. Didn’t want to listen to anyone about anything. Maybe on some level it was fair, clearly they were dealing with much more than you knew, or could even understand. But god damn it. It was becoming infuriating.

A set of footsteps sounded behind you and before you could even think to look a voice came with them, “We’ve secured the perimeter but I don’t think we should hold it for too much longer.”

And there at the table was one Ms. Natalie Rushman. Clad all in black. The stunned look on your face seemed to urge a small smile from her, and a very huge grin from Fury.

“Huh. You’re… fired.” Tony was just as shocked as you it seemed. At least you weren’t the only one out of the loop.

“That’s not up to you.” Said plainly.

You looked up at her. “Is it up to me?” Because if so…

She sat down and Fury put an arm around her. “I want you two to meet Agent Romanoff.”

“I’m a SHIELD shadow. Once we knew you were both ill, I was tasked to watch the both of you by director Fury.” Said so calmly and plainly.

You tried to think back. Natalie- or rather… Natasha… she’d been around since… “You knew that long?” What Coulson said on the phone the night before briefly came to light in your mind. We’re aware of the situation. “So- what- why?” Confused entirely. What were they doing this whole time? Just spying on you- and for what-

“Correction on your super secret spy intel. It’s wrong. Illness. Singular. Just me.” Tony waved a finger around. “And also, I suggest you apologize.”

“You’ve been very busy.” Fury cut Tony’s complaining off and you looked at him. “You split the company together, you’re giving away all your stuff-” Waving his hand at you, “Becoming an overnight hero sensation in Monaco-” And then waved it back at Tony, “And you let your friend fly away with your suit! Now, if I didn’t know better-”

“You don’t know better.” Tony cut him off quick and hard. “I didn’t give it to him. He took it.”

At this you tried not to look too guilty. Fury was quick on the uptake. “Whoa whoa whoa. No- he took it? You’re Iron Man and he just took it? The little brother just walked in there, kicked your ass, and just took your suit.” Turning his head quickly to Natasha, “Is that possible?”

“Well according to Mr. Stark’s database security guidelines, there are redundancies to prevent unauthorized usage.”

It wasn’t the fact that Natasha knew all this. It was the fact that she was right. You’d wanted to junk the suit. Tony wouldn’t let you. But they knew all this already. Your upset got the better of you. “What do you want already? You’ve been snooping around for months now to do what? Have this sit down just to say we know better than you? You’re not busier than that?”

“What do we want? Nuh uh uh.” Fury shook his head quickly. Natasha suddenly got up and left. “What do you want from me?” Pointing right in your face. “You’re not gonna sit there and pretend you weren’t begging me for stuff on the phone last night.”

Your face went red hot. Either from shame, with the way Tony whipped to look at you, or anger at Fury’s insistence that he had no role in this other than to watch until you started, as he called it, begging. “What do you want, then? Why are you wasting everyone’s time with the theatrics? If I said something that interested you then get to the chase already.”

He scoffed and started in hard. “You both- you’ve become a problem- my problem. That I now have to deal with- and contrary to what you think, you’re not the center of my universe. I have bigger problems than you in the southwest region. And no little late night sob story changed my mind on that.” You opened your mouth to keep arguing, because oh you had only so much to unload on this asshole, but he snapped very suddenly. “Hit ‘em.”

That was about as much as you had to think about before a blinding pain sliced up the back of your neck and into your skull, sending you careening back against the booth with a sharp inhale paired with a yelp. “What did you do-” It only briefly registered that Tony’s voice was pained as well.

Quick as it came, the pain receded, a breath of fresh air coming with it. Things seemed… clear.

“You alright?” Tony asking you this before he turned to look at Natasha crouching near him, “Could you please not do anything awful for five seconds?”

“What did you do to him?” Turning to look at him, you saw the darkness of his skin start to recede. A cure?? If they had had that this whole time- you were about to unleash hell.

“What did we just do for him.” Fury corrected. Looking at Tony, “You just got a shot of lithium dioxide. It’s gonna take the edge off. We’re trying to get you back to work.”

“Give me a couple boxes of that I’ll be right as rain.” Tony’s voice was quieter now, a little bit more resigned. He’d had to show a lot of himself in this one meeting that he had not even asked for. This was going to be a tough conversation later.

“It’s not a cure. It just abates the symptoms.” Natasha said softly, standing at the side of the table again. So. Not a cure...

“And her?” You and Tony shared a look before you directed that glance back to Fury. You would have been happy to just know they’d helped him-

Natasha put her hands together, smiling, and your attention went to her next. There was a waft of guilt. “A prototype for nano CGRP inhibitors.”

“That’s stolen tech. And- rich- considering you were the one causing the problem.” Tony’s voice was very sharp.

“It’s not the root of that problem. And don’t get nasty with me. We did it for your own good. Fixed it up for you.” Fury was eyeing him down.

“You know- I’m getting real tired of people saying they’re acting out of good will for me. I never asked.”

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” You felt so lost. Everyone was talking around you and at your expense and you really had no idea what was going on.

Fury leveled a similarly annoyed look your way. “You and I can discuss that later.”

“No. We’ll discuss it now.” Tired of being in the shadows of your own life. Whatever it was, you wanted answers now. And after everything else you’d been through together, Tony deserved to know whatever it was, too.

His lips pressed together before he shook his head. “You’ve got no control of your own means. You’ve been hiding. And it’s causing problems. Agent Romanoff was given suppression tech to force you under the weather to keep her cover intact. But it crossed some wires we didn’t mean to.”

Tony exhaled a somehow simultaneous amused and annoyed breath. “If that’s the best you’ve got, it’s embarrassing. I spotted that a mile away. If the top secret shadow government agency needs consultation on their top secret shadow spy gear, I’d say all the more reason we don’t need to get involved.”

None of this made sense. “You knew?” How much of this was Tony in on, too? What the hell was actually going on here?

He frowned. “I saw her with it, the first time we met. Base level chemoreceptor trigger and melatonin cocktail. The possibility she was working for someone else, either trying to get company secrets, or just get to me, was pretty high. It just looked like she wanted you out of the picture.”

“So that’s why you...”

Why he forced her away. Took her with no concern for how you felt- or made it look that way. So that while you were in office meetings she would feasibly somewhere else next to him. Foolish. You were so foolish…

“I don’t have time to play couple’s counseling.” Fury, with a new fresh wave of annoyance. He pointed at Tony. “You need to clean yourself up. And it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be an easy fix.”

“Trust me. I know. I’m good at this stuff. I’ve been looking for a suitable replacement for Palladium. I have tried every combination, every permutation of every known element.” Resignation coming in hot and heavy. You slipped your hand over his underneath the table.

Fury smiled. “Well I’m here to tell you, you haven’t tried them all.”

“Then why not say something sooner?” You couldn’t help but let this shoot out of you, upset with just about every part of this.

“We had to see how desperate you could get.” He was letting himself up from the table, Natasha walking away again without so much as a wave. “And don’t think I don’t have your call with Agent Coulson on file. We’ll hold you to that.”

“What- you’re gonna drag her to some secret government court on a verbally binding contract? She was under duress.” Tony’s focus shifting from this shining light of hope that Fury was offering in your stead.

Fury merely turned and laughed. “Hardly. Though if this is all it takes to put her there, we’re gonna have a lot of problems. Find your way home. I’ll meet you there.” Just like that he walked through the door and was gone.

Leaving the two of you sitting uncomfortably. “Guess we should get going.” Until Tony said that and suddenly stood, helmet under his arm. You followed suit, expecting him to be walking already, causing you to bump into him when he hadn’t moved. His hand went to your arm to steady you, but then with a very careful finger, lifted your chin and angled your head away, leaning in. Probably scrutinizing the injection site. “You really feel alright?”

“I guess.” You didn’t feel terrible, so at least there was that. And your head was certainly clear. No pain. “You made that- whatever she just stuck inside me?”

“It wasn’t finished, technically. I’ll have JARVIS run some tests-”

“Tony...” Reaching up, you put your hands over his, turning your attention back his way. “Whatever Fury’s got, please focus on that first.”

Focus on you. Because you can’t die.

His smile was brief, the nod of his head somewhat disappointed. “Yeah. Alright. I mean what more have I got to lose.” His arm went around your shoulders, leading you out of the restaurant. “I wanted to be in Genoa all warm and cozy on a bed- but what did we get instead. The house is destroyed and government agents are crawling out of the vents.”

“You destroyed the house. And as much as I don’t like them either, they’re trying to help.” It didn’t need to be said that the reason he’d wanted to go to Genoa was to die. So any alternative to that was far better.

“Hm. Yeah.” Thoughtful as he slid his helmet on. Putting an arm around you, he lifted you up effortlessly, and you found yourself clinging to him as he took off. “What exactly did you promise them?”

“Myself.”

Anything and everything they wanted from you. So long as Tony lived…

“Yeah. Under duress. I wouldn’t worry about it. I won’t let them take you. Who else is gonna run the company for me?”

You couldn’t help the roll of your eyes despite your smile. “Well if that’s all you need me for...” You both knew that wasn’t even close to the truth.

“You didn’t have to do that. Call them. Ask for their help.” It was hard to really register his tone of voice with the helmet on.

“Clearly. Since they’ve been spying on us for a long time now.” Still irked about this. They’d made a complete fool out of you- and Tony, too. If they’d known for this long they really should have done something before. Natalie- Natasha had all the opportunity in the world to help Tony earlier.

“Yeah.” This you could hear was quieter above the whip of the wind around you. “...thanks.”

Even though you weren’t sure he could feel it properly, you wrapped your arms tighter around him and gave him a squeeze. “Any time.”

There wasn’t anything you wouldn’t do for him. You’d come to that realization a long time ago. If the two of you could get through this… there was nothing left for life to throw at you that you couldn’t conquer.

...right?

[gooddadstan]

Fuzzy Walls and Tired Eyes chapter 3

At some point in time, Tim finds himself standing in a graveyard. Staring at the headstone in front of him, he recognizes it as the one with the bodies of Janet and Jack Drake, not from the unreadable words on the grave, or the scenery around him, but from the voice in the back of his mind that tells him it is, and he accepts it. All of his training along with every cynical bone in his body is saying he shouldn’t, that he should analyze and confirm the reality of the situation, but he doesn’t remember how he came to stand here anyway and every single point is telling him it’s a dream, so he’s just going to go along with it and see how it ends up. Nothing better than standing in front of your parent’s grave, right? Besides, he already tried waking himself up and it didn’t work, so he’s stuck here.

In front of the grave, his senses are accosted by the smell of wet grass and the feeling of humidity in the air, stuffy in the dressy suit he’d most certainly not been wearing seconds ago. The shadows are longer than he’d remembered, unwavering and intimidating in a way they hadn’t been in a long while. An all too familiar sense of failure and shame swells up in his chest, as off to the side a scene plays out of him standing over his father’s body, unable to do anything but stare at the corpse. He’d never really mourned the loss of his father, in the end, not other than what little he needed to do publicly. He’d only mourned the loss of the relationship they’d started to form. God, what kind of son is he? The hot, empty tears that sent rage to his core swelled in his eyes, and then he’s being lifted up with a batarang to his throat.

The fabric of the Robin uniform’s cape tangles between his feet as he struggles for a second before forcing himself into stillness, hands clutched around the arm holding him up. The arm of his brother. Not that this was his brother, but the likeness was enough to send shivers down his spine. Though the real version did attack him all the same, later on in their lives, this one was not him, and thus cannot be associated with the real being. Of course not. Then why do the memories flood over each other, fear undue for actions not Jason’s but Clayface’s. Why does he still have to fight down defensive movement when the Red Hood approaches him on patrol, in the way that he doesn’t have to do with any other Bat. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, it’s not happening anyway. With his newfound awareness of the situation and its faults, he could feel the ever so faint motion of clay as his captor pulled him close, shifting and yelling as the same as he had years ago. So as Batman formed in front of him, in that same stance with a vague panic hidden behind the cowl, he didn’t bother with the pleasantries of flailing around and trying to break free of the grip on his body. The words being spoken were inconsequential, and he only needed to wait it all out.

His stillness is interrupted by falling towards the grass in a practiced dodge, Batman sending a kick above his head. His uniform, Red Robin now, showed the diagnostics of Bruce’s disappearance even as Dick traded blows with him. The words spoken, full of venom, weren’t coming from him, instead floating into the air from nothing without changing the flow of the scene. To be called an equal then kicked aside and belittled, no trust in his words and pity in his eyes as he throws another punch. The sting of it hurt far more than the physical pain of his body. Unimportant, focus on the issue at hand, every nerve in him screeched, but his mind wandered elsewhere. And as his surroundings shift uneasily, from the red and white of a hightop as screams rang from ahead, to the empty halls of Drake manor sitting clean and proper under his small footsteps sounding rhythmically as he meanders, to the cold but home-like metals of Titans Tower with the sounds of laughter and chattering in distant rooms. He stands there a moment before sinking into his regular spot on the couch, warm and home in a way it hadn’t been since Bruce disappeared.

It only took a second after he’d let himself relish the calm for him to be punched to the ground. A fleeting glimpse of red, yellow, and green, conflicting with his own in the whirlwind his eyes are providing him. He huffs a sigh, falling back into the motions as he rises and gets hit again and again by the man he calls his brother. Jason, the real him now, angry and looming in an outfit meant to bring comfort and reassurance. Shouting about replacements, and asking questions the same voice from the graveyard answers as well as it can. A punch flies into his face before he can block it, and immediately he’s staring into the dark ceilings of the cave as he falls from the stuffed Tyrannosaurus. Damian’s smug expression stands unwavering above, watching as the green of his uniform and the dinosaur grows farther from Tim’s grasp.

Before he could hit the ground again, he found himself standing in a warehouse.

It wasn’t a particularly familiar warehouse, but it sparked enough recognition in his mind to not set off a panic. He doesn’t think he’d ever really been standing in this warehouse. Almost as if to adjust for that, his body snapped into pain, his Red Robin uniform scratched and battered like how he’d expect from coming out of an encounter with one of the A-list rogues, not a routine drug bust. But while he was about 90% certain he’d broken at least an arm before he was in this warehouse, there’s no marks on his skin, the new holes in his suit leading way to the normal pale skin contrary to the sting of pain in his limbs.

The floor sits as a dull metal, flecks of red across it from a few too many work accidents before the site was shut down. Normal. The walls, however, look like they’re made out of shag carpeting, appearing soft and inviting in a way that the walls of a warehouse really shouldn’t be. But no alarms go off in his mind, and he has to guess that this was commandeered by some weird villains in the past. Maybe they were dealt with on one of the gala nights he always hated attending. Would’ve thought he’d have come across it on his cataloguing of the Gotham villains, though. Reaching out to touch the carpeting, the softness of it goes through his gloves to his fingertips, and doesn’t fall away when he yanks at it. Instead, it draws him in with snaking tendrils of shag that envelops him easily.

What Tim saw next was best described as a Wonderland-esque clusterfuck.

People bustled around, occasionally popping from one part of the room to another and repeating tasks they’d already completed, talking and smiling and shifting their outfits and faces to be one person then another. They’d get into conversations with other versions of one person, cracking jokes about how ‘well one of us needs to change’ and then shifting simultaneously to a different person. The background kept changing, from warehouses to the Batcave to a bowling alley Tim had only been in once to do some undercover work. There were flowers sprouting in thin air, and writhing forms of matter twisting to try and be a solid object only to melt into an ocean of nonsense once more.

The rapid changing and confusion let growing around him, becoming louder and more crowded as glimpses of memories showed between people, right and wrong and both at the same time. It was starting to give him a headache. He could operate crowds, usually, his mother wouldn’t tolerate it if he couldn’t hold his own at a gala, but this was beyond any of the parties he’d been to. Too much chaos, too much indiscriminate noise, too much pushing and prodding and swirling existence. None of the rhythm he’d grown accustomed to with large groups of people. He wanted out, the pain in his body mixing with the pain in his mind until he woke up with a gasp.

Immediately, he recognized that he was in the cave. The dark ceilings high above his head were unmistakable. Irritation bit at his face and limbs, dull stings pulsing with his heartbeat. His left arm is immobile, along with his right leg, and he can feel the bandages tight where they’re adhered. He moves his unbound arm to his face, ignoring the objections of the IV sending some sort of fluid into his system, hand slapping directly onto an oxygen mask that shifts uncomfortably on his skin. Shifting his head first to the left, he sees the other beds in the medbay, empty and eternally prepped for quick transfer of patients. The medical cabinets sit off to the other side, lining the wall as orderly as ever. Turning his head to the right, where the chairs are when they haven’t been scattered from the movement of the assorted Bats, he sees four chairs, all empty.

He shouldn’t have been expecting someone to be there when he woke up. The Joker had been loose and the Bats needed to be prioritizing that. But it still stung, more than he’d ever care to admit, that nobody was even in the cave when he woke up. The increased beeps of the heart rate monitor was more than enough to act as an indicator for anyone outside the medbay, and the sounds of him hitting the oxygen mask and moving his head would do the trick even if a fluctuating heartbeat had been normal for his unconsciousness. It was normal for Bruce to sit and wait after patrol, or Dick to hover and mother-hen, or Alfred to sit with a cup of tea during what break time he gets. Now there was… nothing. It hurt, somehow, knowing that they wouldn’t deviate from their patrols to be there. It hurt more than any of the physical injuries he had. That was probably the worst thing, that for all the pain his body was in, he let some stupid guilt hurt him more. It was unprofessional.

Tim stayed awake for somewhere between a minute and a half hour, his mind too tired to keep count and no clock in sight. When he finally heard some shuffling out in the cave, his heart leaped at the thought of someone finally being there, and the damned machine betrayed him by saying it. Almost immediately, Alfred was in the medbay, and the guarded fearful expression melted into a kind half-smile covering a grimace. He felt guilty.

“Master Timothy, I’m terribly sorry I was not here when you regained consciousness.” Despite his mouth still open and taking in a breath to continue, Tim only raised a hand and waved it away. It’s not like it was Alfred’s fault, after all, he had a lot of responsibilities around the house. No use in making him feel bad for things he couldn’t change.

With a small pained expression, Alfred walks over and begins adjusting the IV stand just out of Tim’s sight. He could turn his head and look if he wanted to, but he was just so tired, and exhaustion was setting into his bones more every second. Maybe he should just… go back to sleep.

As his eyes droop downwards, more sluggish than normal, Alfred could only hope that this sleep would be a painless one. Tears never did make good background noise, in the end.

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

'SighSwoon' merges self-care tips with hilarious memes on Instagram

Scrolling through @SighSwoon on Instagram is the equivalent of picking up a mysterious book at a thrift shop and falling into words that both enlighten and entertain.  

Gabi Abrao, a 24-year-old Los Angeles native, is the mind behind one of Instagram's shiniest hidden gems. SighSwoon showcases self-reflective memes and guides on how to feel things, whether it's simple pleasures or a broken heart. It’s a treasure trove of content tailored for millennials navigating creative lives. 

Sighswoon began in the summer of 2016, Abrao tells Mashable over email. Heartbreak and the desire to make some changes drove her toward the internet as a medium for creating and connecting with others, mainly through memes. With an ever-growing follower count of 62.3K, she's connected with a lot of people.

“When I share a realization online and see that thousands of people are going through the same thing, it makes me feel less alone, less hard on myself. I want people to feel this way too — understood, empowered,” Abrao explains. 

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Reminder that we’re all multi-faceted human beings and inner movements and conditions are subject to change constantly. There is no fixed condition. The more you do and the more you experience, the more understanding you will gain about your many facets and when they show up for you. There is so much to you - your capabilities, your moods, your modes. Being in one mode doesn’t make you in fixed opposition to the the other. There is no forever, there is no never. Fixation is an illusion. Change and shape-shifting is nature. After you understand your modes, you may get close to managing them. The gift of this will be synchronicity and balance. ** (Reposting myself from last October because this theme keeps showing up for me time and time again. Love this truth too much. Happy shapeshifting.)

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Apr 7, 2019 at 6:20pm PDT

The artist uses her platform to offer a plethora of self-care tips, from how to sunbathe ("a secluded location where you can get as naked as possible") to the best ways to "shapeshift," a visualization practice for when you're uncentered. Reading her is kind of like speaking to a caring physician who knows exactly what ails you and then gives you the perfect prescription, free of charge. 

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Three years ago, following a mildly devastating heartbreak, I dragged my mattress and box spring to the very center of the room and said, “I am a lush, self-sustaining island“. I slept in the center of the room for three days. That weekend, I took myself to a local playhouse. A 20-seat theater, the space was tiny and intimate. I arrived alone in a long black dress and proceeded to watch a stubborn man fall in love with an alien. The play was incredible, surprising, I cried. Once home, I felt ready for the luxury of leaning on a wall and shoved my bed back up against it. . . Later, ready for guests and no longer isolating, I thought of myself as a castle in the desert. “Grand for itself, wise for itself,” I wrote in a poem. In this new form, I was rejecting the need for outside validation, especially that of romantic partners. I imagined myself made of stone that remained cool, even at the highest noon. I imagined myself as an abundant whimsical structure in an environment lacking of. Sturdy and welcoming and independent. “Grand when you arrive, grand when you leave,“ I added to the poem. . . In a meditation class in high school, our teacher told us to pick our place. My teacher, who did past life regression on dogs, said, “Pick a place to be in. Just sit there and listen. Make room for visits from animals, insects, spirits.“ I settled for a giant warm boulder in the sun, next to a free-flowing river, surrounded by woods. A buffalo visited me that day, my eyes closed in a classroom. When things are neutral, when things are good, when things are great, I am the boulder in the sun by the river. Or I am laying on it. . . The house cat reminds me to stretch my body and take time in the sun. The house cat makes me not feel guilty for napping too long or staring at the traffic outside. The house cat reminds me to give myself permission to relax and take it slow.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on May 2, 2019 at 7:19pm PDT

With so much to do and see online today, it can be difficult to slow your scroll and ask yourself how you're feeling. Abrao's hyper-aware content offers a mirror with which followers can take a nice, long look at themselves. The focus falls on subjects like self-worth, illusions, success, and creativity. She utilizes extensive captions to explain specific ideas in depth — or even just to describe a sunset.  

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me drinking the sunset on a hill overlooking the city. it’s incredible how some of the most impactful events occur in line with some of the most devastating. sometimes intensity is just intensity. i am living my dreams and aching simultaneously, and i’d be a fool to think this could ever be any other way. dual, shifting, unbelievably fair. i am so happy to still be here. when things feel gigantic, and the imagination builds tall tales to match the sensation, we can always return to water and sunshine.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Mar 26, 2019 at 3:50pm PDT

“As a teenager, I used to do street art wheat paste posters around the city that said ‘sigh swoon sigh’ on them," Abrao says of her page’s unusual name. "It was a mini poem I made up and attached meaning to, and sharing it like that was a reason to run around and be bad. Years later, the phrase would come back around and feel like the most fitting title for what my page has become.”

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My Higher Self just whispered this to me and I was floored. May we recognize crossfire. May we recognize deliberate, aimed fire. May we protect ourselves first before engaging in any perceived battle.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Mar 13, 2019 at 9:36pm PDT

The Sighswoon feed is aesthetically pleasing, everything kissed with a tint of beige. It's light and welcoming, which is exactly the way Abrao wanted it. She blames her fascination with the hue on her time spent at the beach: “I was renting a bed and a balcony in a living room for $500/month. The building’s stucco was beige, the cheap '90s carpet was beige, and the sand was beige. I think I just wanted to match everything.” 

SEE ALSO: I don't know who needs to hear this, but these memes are good

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tbt to the longest but purest #vintage #meme wrote this a year ago

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Feb 5, 2019 at 1:40am PST

“The cyborg in me recognizes the cyborg in you,” reads her bio, just above a link to her online store where she sells merch that features the saying on totes and sweatshirts. “It’s a claim to embracing the digital age,” Abrao explains, “the very human-meets-technology existence we all participate in, and are still wearily adapting to.” She admits that while it’s meant to be humorous, she also means it with her “whole heart." 

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my beloved cream crewnecks are now available! i got one sample made for photos are I absolutely adore it. sizes run a little big and on the “men’s” side of sizing. sweaters are made-to-order and will ship within two weeks. link in bio 🏹🏹 p.s. totes are still available in the shop and any orders made today before midnight will ship on thursday morning along with every order placed this past week. love a cozy cyborg

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Jan 29, 2019 at 1:41pm PST

With just about three years of memeing under her (beige) belt, Abrao has figured out the formula for making a solid one.

“A good meme is funny, relatable, insightful, and healing. In that order. You should laugh, then feel connected to the creator or others who understand it, then experience some introspect, then leave with a healed feeling from those three processes,” she muses. Her delivery method varies as she utilizes many different meme formats. 

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ok fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Feb 5, 2019 at 10:30am PST

Occasionally, Abrao will post pictures of herself wearing interesting outfits made of neutral textiles and glowy silks. These portraits provide a face to the name (as well as maintaining her color-coded image). They also fuel fan encounters at her part-time book store gig: "A few times I have rung up a book, handed it to the person across the counter, and they’re just staring at me, and they say 'You make memes right?'"

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Years ago, I read a passage by an unknown source that said - “When you have an amazing day, take note of what you were wearing, what you ate, who you were with, what you did. Do the same with bad days.” This shirt is my absolute favorite of mine, and I’ve only had good days in it.

A post shared by GABI + MEMES (@sighswoon) on Apr 17, 2019 at 5:11pm PDT

Abrao just wants to help everyone chill out. "I aim for my page to be accessible, empowering, and soothing," she says. And she wants to keep it up for as long as possible. 

"I wish to continue my studies of the invisible and unseen — documenting my findings through paintings, writings, videos, memes, and other art forms," she says. Her end goal is literally out of this world: "I will operate a carousel in the desert some day, and I hope to re-spawn on another planet in my next life." 

In the midst of all the noise that is Instagram in 2019, Sighswoon provides a light-filled digital oasis, a faraway page that's easy to get lost on. Be careful, though. You might just walk away feeling refreshed and renewed. And with an affinity for beige. 

WATCH: Nickelodeon releases official SpongeBob meme figures

[beatyoutothepunchline]

On Telephones

Carrie Fisher once said to, “Take your broken heart and make it into art.” I don’t know if she ever found a way to mend a mangled heart--one that can’t will itself to make any art right now--but if anybody has got something better than slamming a two buck chuck while laying on the floor of your dorm room, listening to Julia Jacklin’s cover of “Someday” by the Strokes for the ten millionth time, while going between six different tabs on Glassdoor of jobs you didn’t get while waiting for inspiration to ding like the semi-hourly email from Sur La Table, reminding your newly single ass that “love is in the air” and while it is you can take an extra forty percent off all clad cookware, I’d like to know. All of this is happening on my phone, which I’m trying not to look at right now and am failing miserably at because I’ve spent the last ten years slowly becoming more and more addicted to and reliant upon it. I’m not sure I could go twenty seconds without checking my Instagram feed, and I can assure you that unless the little blue dot on my map app moved with me, I wouldn’t ever get to where I was going. (Have you tried to ask somebody on the street recently where something is? Everybody’s got their headphones in). Remember when phones were just phones and all they did was call people? I do… vaguely. I remember using my stubby, bitten down middle school fingernails to pull up the antenna of my 90’s Nokia, plopping down on the floor in the living room of our house in Omaha and calling everyone in my mom’s address book and tell them I had a cellphone and if I needed to be reached personally, I now could. I remember my mom walking into the room and asking what I was doing, so I told her. I was on the phone with our next door neighbor, Doris Helfrich. My mom pulled the phone out of my hand and apologized laughing it off. I was too old to be doing stuff like that. Twelve or thirteen maybe, but I’m amazed there was a point in my life when talking on phone was a source of anxiety. This is due to the pressure of trying to make a good first impression, which I’m bad at to begin with. I’m one of those people you need to meet at least eleven times before they can form an honest opinion about me. There’s even more pressure over the phone, because there is nothing to go on other than my voice. This wasn’t something that I noticed until I got older and became slightly more perceptive and self conscious of it. I personally have no problem with it, however, in recent years it has come to my attention thanks to the groundbreaking observation of several of the men I’ve gone out with that I sound, “nervous” (In my defense, I’m usually burning the candle at both ends and my voice is shaking because I’m jacked up on an insane amount of coffee.) Or they say I sound scared or sad or angry. My absolute favorite though,came from this idiot I am crying over who told me,“You sound like a California girl.” Because apparently I talk slower (I’m assuming he meant I had a super cool laid back, So-Cal surfer drawl) and because I say “like” a lot (I do, but it’s usually because I’m trying to find the right way to say something. I’m not sure why taking my time to choose my words carefully needs to be pointed out to me as if it’s a bad thing.) But I’m cool and I quote from my favorite Valley girl, saying, “Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man,” or some other joke that fits the comment. The smart one’s laugh and move on. The dumb ones ask, such as said idiot ask, “Why do you use comedy to distract from insecurities?” Truth is I didn’t have any until idiot dudes started pointing them out to me. I hate to admit I let something that stupid get to me, but whenever my phone rings now there’s this sense of fear that the voice on the phone doesn’t match the person I am, and the takeaway will be what I sound like, not what I’m trying to say. The next phone I got was a burnt orange Sidekick, which meant I could finally text people instead of having to call them. Not that I knew anyone to text. Certainly, the sixty-year-old neighbors I called on my Nokia didn’t know how to text or didn’t. But I meet people at school, those people invited me to parties where I meet more people. Those people and I talked for a while and if general teenage awkwardness (because let’s be clear: teenagers were socially awkward long before phones started making them that way) or my inability to form a sentence without sounding like an idiot didn’t ruin the conversation we’d exchange numbers so we didn’t have to talk with our mouths anymore. I distinctly remember a two week period in high school where I met a dude at a party, told my friend to give him my number, lost my phone for two weeks (totally content with never seeing it again) only to find it with an eighty-nine percent battery life and three texts from the boy my friend gave my number to. And really there are two things that are amazing about this. The first is that there was a point in my life where I went two weeks (336 hours, 20,160 minutes) without looking at my phone and that there was a point in my life where I truly didn’t care if the dude from the party texted me. Right after the party, or at all. What happened to her? Fourteen years old in that cocktail dress my mom bought me last minute from Forever 21, standing along the back wall of a dark high school gym, the bass rattling my chest. There was a point in my life where the loudness of it all didn’t freak me out. There was something almost kind of meditative about it. Not the people or music. There is absolutely nothing meditative about being surrounded by teenagers in varying stages of puberty (and yet somehow simultaneously, at the peak of it), dancing to “Apple Bottom Jeans” by T-Pain and screaming “REMEMBER FIFTH GRADE?!” or singing out of key to “Fireflies” by Owl City and screaming “REMEMBER SEVENTH GRADE?!” or little circles of light from a disco ball spinning around your head like someone knocked out in a cartoon. I stood along the back wall of the gym, closed my eyes and focused on the bass until I forgot all the lyrics and all the people around me. If I were twenty-one then I’d have pulled my earbuds out of my clutch and put in my music, Jon Brion or Aimee Man or the Velvet Underground, and slow danced with myself. Unfortunately, I was fourteen. I didn’t know who Jon Brion or Aimee Man were and I didn’t go to the dance alone. For some reason, I decided to go with a bunch of girls who were appalled by the sight of grinding. I was appalled by them being appalled by people who made different choices than they did and decided to call my parents to pick me up an hour into the dance. “Already?” My mom asked though I’m not sure why she was surprised. I always left the party early. As I sat waiting on a concrete bench outside, a girl ran out of the building like Cinderella and the clock was inching toward midnight. She was wearing a powder blue ball gown that looked more prom in the ’50s than a homecoming in 2013 and she was bawling her eyes out, mascara and eyeliner streaking down her face. She sat down on the opposite end of the bench from me. There were about twelve identical benches around us, but she sat on mine for some reason. From what I gathered between sobs into her cell phone she and her boyfriend had just broken up because he had and cheated on her with another girl, who he had taken to homecoming instead of her. Back in my dorm room in 2019, in between Julia Jacklin songs, I started to binge-watching videos by Thoraya Maronesy where she challenges people to call their crushes and ask them out on a date, or asks what the kindest thing they’ve ever been told and there was one video titled, “Who's 1 stranger that you still remember?” And as I watched this video, I tried to think about a stranger I remembered meeting and only one that came to mind was this girl on the bench. And the only thing I remember feeling at that moment was disgust. Because I didn’t understand why she would cry over someone like that. I didn’t get it when I invited him to a lit series I was asked to read at. I’m scared of talking to one person, the thought of standing in front of fifty hipsters in Carhartt beanies who are all tastefully one drink into the evening, armed with big vocabularies and ready to critique me is terrifying. It’s not like Iowa where if you screw up people won’t remember it because they’re not paying attention, won’t remember it because they’re five beers in, or will remember it but love you enough to make it into a joke they’ll tell at your wedding, to your children when they are old enough to get it, and put in your obit. To my surprise, they were all incredibly nice and he was the asshole. I took his judgment of shaky voice and my word choice as honesty. I let him rip into the poets that read the whole walk back to the train, only meekly interjecting with, “At least they’re writing poetry.” I let him call me cute and mansplain the intricacies of his book on finance and politics. I didn’t get it until I made dinner for him (which took well over the estimated hour cook time, because I, in fact, do not know how to operate an oven) and he told me that he was seeing three other people while I was home over winter break. Over break. When he was calling me every other night to tell me he missed me, I was dipping out of dinner early, laying on the landing of the staircase of my parents place or pacing around the freezing garage floor talking to him for an over hour. Because who calls anymore unless they really like you? Only then did click and I finally got it. Heartbreak is a sixteen year old who--for the first time in her life--finally feels like Nora Ephron didn’t completely lie to her, only to have that feeling stripped away by some stupid thing some boy told her. Because a woman well versed in her past mistakes and a man well versed in his didn’t write the right words for that asshole. Heartbreak is a big blue dress that directly juxtaposes the era. That you write off as being delusional or dated, but secretly gives you hope that slow dance still happen, that late night telephone conversations between two people still exist, and still mean more than what is said during them. Heartbreak is mascara running all down your face and no one chasing after you when you leave the party. And let me tell you, that kind of heartbreak looks much better on a sixteen-year-old girl at homecoming than on a twenty-something sitting alone at her kitchen table, with a botched TJ’s lemon chicken sitting in front of her, still a little raw in the middle. I glance down at my phone, trying to convince myself it was to check the time instead of Snapchat, or Instagram. It’s the time of night I would have called him and I debate calling my mother, but I’ve already called her. She likes breaking news, not this repetitive, 24-hour loop of a relationship I prefaced with, “Don’t get used to hearing about him. It’s not gonna last.” I know she will be a hundred percent honest with me. She’ll tell me to wipe the snot out of my nose, splash some cold water in my face and get over it. So instead I call my grandma because I want to talk to somebody that will pretend to care and she is scarily upbeat and gets wildly off topic. She will save me. Or distract me. Maybe they’re the same thing. As soon as she picks up, she tells me about how my uncle Rob was in Chicago for a Navy conference. “But only for two days,” she says as if to avoid offending me. As if I would be furious to find out he didn’t want to spend the few free hours he had in his tight schedule to see me. She told me he left his Navy blues or whatever you call them back in DC where he sometimes works, or in Sicily where he is currently stationed. I forget where she said he left his Navy blues because I wasn’t listening to her tell me how he ran all over town on his lunch break, acquiring pieces of a uniform from thrift stores and getting them tailored to fit him before dinner that night. Where nobody was the wiser, save the two men he asked had a spare necktie. I didn’t stop to consider how beautiful that was--how it could be a short story. One I could’ve been writing if I wasn’t preoccupied with things not working out with the guy I was seeing. My grandma, now picking up on my not so subtle crying, tells me in an uncharacteristically flat, matter-of-fact tone, “It works or it doesn’t,” before telling me to link up with my mom’s second cousin who lives two streets down on Michigan Avenue. That I should consider writing him a letter. Maybe network a little. I write down his address, toy with the idea of writing a letter, but hang up when my grandma starts telling me to “network” with people. A few hours after my conversation with my her, no further into my homework or a story about my uncle, I go from break up songs to love songs when “Big Me” by the Foo Fighters pops up on my recommended list. I’d heard the song before, but I had never really listened to it. Some people say it’s about a fight this guy has with his girlfriend and the line, “If we can get around it/I know that it's true.” Meaning, if it’s the real deal, they’ll figure it out together. Some say that lead singer, Dave Grohl, simply meant it as a corny love song for his wife at the time, some insist it’s about dealing with the loss of Kurt Cobain. I don’t know. I wasn’t in the state of mind to analyze it, so I let the music video inform the brilliant and infuriatingly vague lyrics. The music video for “Big Me” parodies a Mentos commercial, aptly renaming the mint candy “Footos.” In it, Grohl, the band, and several actors (who, if not ripped off of the set from an actual Mentos commercial we’re perfectly cast as being the kind of people that could be in one), encounter a series of minor a setbacks. A woman gets parked in by a self-centered businessman, Dave Grohl gets cut off by an angry lady in a limo, and a kid is kept from getting into a Foo Fighters concert. After a moment of contemplation as each tries to figure out how to deal with the situation they are confronted with, they have this sort of “Ah-ha!” moment, before popping in a “Footo,” smiling at the camera and coming up the solution that has been there all along. The band picks the car out up of the parking spot so the lady can get out, Dave Grohl befriends the woman in the limo that cuts him off and give her a Footo, and the kid is able to sneak into the concert and play with the band. It’s equal parts funny, stupid and feel good and I can’t help but smile when I watch it. I text my brother a link to the video and tell him that I’m having one of those nights where I look at Dave Grohl and think, “Alec could do that.” I pause to explain that, “I don’t know exactly what I mean by that.” But I tell him have fun making that EP he and his band are making. I listen to the song fade out and check my phone, wishing I could pop in a Mento, choose happiness and figure out how to fix myself when I think of one last number I can call. I get up off the floor, walk over to my desk and slide the poem my mom gave me out from under the chip clip holding it to my picture frame. The poem was her dad’s. It’s titled “Don’t Quit,” and when I’m close to quitting I read the poem. When I want answers to questions I flip it over to the phone number written on the back under the name D. Imer. I have no idea who he might be is or what it might means. I open my phone, dial the number, and stop just short of calling. Not because I care about what the person on the other end will think of me or my voice, but because I don’t want to ruin the illusion I’ve created. Deep down I know it will not redirect me to a secret telephone line that will give me answers to all my questions.

[eng2100]

blog 08 - neuromancer

So as an introductory note, I’m actually quite a big fan of cyberpunk. I’m a hobbyist DnD player and the first campaign that I’ve Dungeon-Mastered for was actually a simplified version of Shadowrun that I wrote all the backstory and lore for. It’s in what I would call a “sequel” right now that I’m very much enjoying. So bla bla bla I was excited to get to Neuromancer this whole time because I’m a genre fan.

a brief primer to cyberpunk

So western Cyberpunk owes its roots largely to the detective fiction genre-- most notably the hardboiled detective archetype, a darker western interpretation of your Sherlock Holmes type who is usually a jaded antihero that works for money, but still has a sense of justice deep down. You see this more reflected in Blade Runner than you see it in Neuromancer’s Case, but there are still a number of correlations (Funnily enough, Neuromancer and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep both end on nearly the same line-- “He never saw Molly again.” and “...and I never saw her again.” respectively.) Interestingly enough, Case kind of spawns his own kind of cyberpunk hero trope-- the rebellious hacker, seen in Neo. 

If detective fiction owes itself to the inescapable aura of The Great Depression, then cyberpunk owes itself to the Reagan administration. Cyberpunk’s whole thing, at least in the west, springs forward from the fear of unregulated corporate growth in tandem with the rise of technology, and what the mixture of the two might bode for humanity at large. Both Neuromancer and Blade Runner owe their entire aesthetics to the vision of a world taken over by neon advertisements, bereft of nature, replaced by plasticity. 

Now, why the primer? Well, I think it’s important to preface the discussion of this novel with the idea that cyberpunk is a deeply political genre in a way that not many other genres inherently are. (All fiction is, of course, inherently political, whether intentional or not, but most genres don’t regularly feature as much political charge as cyberpunk, is what I mean.) Neuromancer is politics from an era before most of us in this class were born, and as such, atop being a seminal work of genre fiction, it’s a lurid look into what the landscape looked like in the 80s. We are living now in the times that 80s Cyberpunk once called “the future”-- and, well, what does it look like for us? Are we living in the Urban Sprawl?

not quite

Our dystopian future is significantly more...mundane than coffin hotels and the television sky over Chiba. You might say we got all the corporate deregulation and none of the glimmering aesthetic slickness of cyberpunk-- we really are living in the worst timeline. If i’m going to have to labor under capitalism for the rest of my short life, couldn’t I at least have a slick pair of mirrorshades?

the text

There’s a lot about Neuromancer to like. It earned its reputation wholeheartedly-- it is definitely the legendary cyberpunk novel that it is well-known for being. Its writing style can often be abstract at the same time that it’s luridly detailed, and it uses strange and interesting words to create vivid images in the reader’s mind of this foreign landscape of the Sprawl. It uses a lot of “old world” associations to lend deeper weight to its descriptions (the Tank War Europa game comes to mind in tandem with the Screaming Fist operation that looms over the plot). 

The book doesn’t shy away from the visceral nature of its own plot and setting-- drug binges and cramped love affairs in coffin hotels, fear and violence are all described in visceral detail that grounds the book hard in its reality while simultaneously indulging in a sort of dream-like surreality. I really admire the ways in which Gibson writes physical sensation whether it comes to the sex or the pain or the weirdness of cyberspace. The introduction of the novel sort of failed to catch me until Gibson went into detail about Case’s harrowing journey after losing his ability to jack into cyberspace and the intense, surreal affair with Linda Lee. Perhaps my biggest issue with the writing of Neuromancer is, however, Gibson’s tendency to throw a lot of world-building terminology at you really fast. Nothing bogs down a fictional story more than having to pause to wonder what certain words mean.

Describing cyberspace during a time in which VR wasn’t even a thing yet had to have been a challenge and a half, but Gibson found interesting ways to visualize the experience, and coined interesting terminology for it (ice and icebreakers, most notably). The Sense/Net bits are also pretty cool, but I’m also biased because anything that gives Molly Millions more screentime is just the best thing.

Did I mention Molly is my favorite character? I just can’t get over her. It sucks that her and Case break up in the epilogue, but it also feels fitting in a weird way. She really struck me as a standout character for a woman in a cyberpunk novel-- she’s an active player in her own sexuality, she’s violent and the stronger of the two between herself and Case. She has a sort of unapologetic way about her that feels very fresh even today. The first time Case uses Sense/Net to see through her eyes, I was hit in an unexpectedly hard way by the description of people in a crowd moving out of the way for her-- for most girls in real life, that’s a fairly unheard of experience, and to me, as a female reader, it did a lot to establish to me just how powerful she is.

That being said, this is a good place to segue into the conversation you know my Obnoxious Feminist Ass has been waiting to bring up.

cyberpunk vs women

You can tell a lot about a person’s base assumptions about the world by the way they talk about people in their works of fiction. Now when I say “base assumptions” I don’t mean their political leanings, I mean something that’s on a deeper, more subconscious level-- in this way, base assumptions are inherently neutral in a way, they’re incapable of being truly malicious, even if they’re harmful, because they’re just the base coding of how a person regards things inherently.

What I’m getting at is that at the time of writing this book, I don’t think Gibson had much of a regard for women at all. When the first mention of women in your novel is calling them whores, I’m going to be forced to assume both that you don’t like women very much and that women are primarily sex objects to you-- or at the very least that women factor into your view of the world in a very marginal way that is largely informed by porn culture. Now, let’s suppose that maybe it’s actually the POV character Case that’s just a raging sexist-- that theory might hold water if this were a character trait that is brought up as a flaw, or indeed, if it were really brought up at all in his personality, but it’s not.

To my great frustration, in the Neuromancer world, it seems like “whore” is about the only job available for women! Who knew the job market would shrink in such a way? Now, perhaps you could argue that Gibson was actually trying to make a point about the way in which porn culture commodifies women into sexy leg lamps for male consumption, and I won’t claim to know his intent, but to me, it doesn’t really seem that deep. It seems like to me that, to Gibson, women being mostly vapid sex workers in his dystopia is a foregone conclusion-- he didn’t think about it that hard, that’s just his stereotypical image of what women in an criminal underbelly do.

This problem of a lack of regard for female perspectives in cyberpunk narratives that largely concern themselves with themes of objectification and oppression under capitalist systems and the regurgitation of harmful sexist tropes certainly isn’t exclusive to Neuromancer. Cyberpunk is a economic-political type of genre, so oppression in the genre tends to fall upon class lines rather than race or gender lines-- and perhaps, this could occur in a far flung future in which capital manages to supersede bias, however, I can’t help but feel that this is a lazy way to write a political narrative. Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and The Matrix all have distinct problems with addressing the idea of intersectionality when it comes to the ways in which ones gender and race plays into their role in a capitalist system. 

Cyberpunk, for all its shining successes as interesting fiction and pointed political commentary, totally fails in the regard that it co-opts the struggle of lower-classes and applies the romanticized aesthetic to white male characters completely unironically. (You can read a pretty good take on Dystopias and post-racialism here.)

east versus west

So, when I went over the primer to the rise of Cyberpunk earlier, I left something out (on purpose!). During the 80s, there was another prime ingredient to the mix of the nascent genre’s formation: the rise of Japan as a technological leader in the global market. Before World War 2, and indeed, during it, American’s conceptualization of the future, was, well, American. They viewed themselves as the originator of innovation within the world and the blueprint from which the rest of the world should be based. However, this all changed in the post-war era as Japan began to participate in the market, leaving behind their isolationist ways-- suddenly, Japan was what the vision of the future looked like in American imagination-- the Tokyo urban sprawl.

The imagery of Japan is ubiquitous in western Cyberpunk, whether hardcore or or softcore or simply an incidental portrayal of futurism. Disney’s Big Hero 6 features San Fransokyo, San Franciso and Tokyo jammed together complete with neon signs in Japanese letters. During the 90s, Marvel launched Rampage 2099 and Spider-man 2099, both set in glittering neon cityscapes. The series Firefly featured a strange universe in which everyone seems to speak Chinese pidgins (but there’s no Chinese people in the show, funnily). MTV had Aeon Flux, a U.S. take on anime. Even movies like Total Recall borrowed the bright neon flavor. Video games such as Deus Ex and Cyberpunk 2077 feature these influences heavily, with less-bold-but-still-there influence being seen in games like Remember Me and Detroit: Become Human.

There’s an interesting cultural exchange going on between the east and west when it comes to Cyberpunk, as the 90s were rife with cyberpunk fiction in both places-- The U.S. saw The Matrix (which was inspired by Ghost in the Shell, as admitted by the Wachowskis in a phrasing that I find really annoying as an animator: “We want to make that but for real”.), while Japan had the seminal Ghost in the Shell and Akira. It’s interesting to note the stark contrast between western and eastern Cyberpunk-- eastern Cyberpunk misses entirely western Cyberpunk’s detective fiction roots, for one. For two, eastern Cyberpunk tends to concern itself more with philosophical questions about the nature of the soul in relation to technology and deep-seated cultural fears about weapons of mass destruction and government.

Neuromancer is deeply entrenched in eastern aesthetics-- many Japanese brands are brought up explicitly by name within the model (Mitsubishi, Sony, etc.). Gibson cites the “Kowloon Walled City” of Hong Kong as something that haunted him after he was told about it, and the idea of Coffin Hotels owes quite a lot to it. Gibson is quoted as saying:

“Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns - all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information - said, ‘You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town.' And it was. It so evidently was.“

One of Neuromancer’s primary settings is The Night City, a supposedly gaijin district of Tokyo on the bay-- this...sort of explains why there don’t seem to be a lot of Asian people in Asia, but the issue still stands. This isn’t a game-breakingly “I wouldn’t recommend this book” bad case, but it is something that I felt I should point out. Neuromancer is a foundational work to the genre, which means that not only are its successes carried over, but many of its flaws as well. Now, I don’t want this cricitism to sound like I think William Gibson is a raging bigot or anything-- I really don’t! I follow him on twitter and he’s a perfectly likable guy, actually. Problems aside, I really enjoy his work.

conclusions

Going into the future, I don’t think Cyberpunk is going away anytime soon, and certainly much of it owes its roots to Neuromancer. With shows like Altered Carbon and games like Cyberpunk 2077 on the horizon, I’m interested to see the ways in which our current economic political climate may effect what our vision of a technological dystopia may look like. Cyberpunk is easily one of the most interesting genres of fiction, and if you haven’t looked into it deeply, I highly recommend checking it out.

[sparklyjojos]

---[Disco part 18/?] Disco explains the Pine House case---

Before we get to the explanation proper, here’s a little thought experiment.

Let’s imagine two different ‘spaces’, A and B, and people living in them, respectively ‘person a’ and ‘person b’. Space A isn’t distorted in any way, so person a will be able to, say, watch TV normally, since the image will stay the same on its way to person a’s eyes. What about the disorted space B? Will person b be able to watch TV too? Yes, since the image from the TV will conform to the distortion of Space B. Person b won’t even notice that there is a distortion. If person a could peek into Space B from their own space, however, they could probably notice the image changing size.

What if person a went into Space B, stood next to person b, and tried to watch TV? Would they see the same image? Probably. If they walked through the disorted place, they would both get distorted accordingly without being aware of it... would they? Or would person a, who knows about the distortion, only bonk his head on the ceiling of what he knows is a passage “smaller” than him and be unable to proceed, while person b marched on without problems?

That’s the situation our characters are in right now: Disco and Mercury C who know what’s up are like person a, while everyone else is like person b. Consciousness shapes the world... and the Pine House / Natsukawa Cottage is no exception.

Rooms 1 and 12 of Natsukawa Cottage are also rooms 9 and 8 of the Pine House. That crack in the wall is a leftover from when the opposite walls of Natsukawa Cottage (X’X and Y’Y in the pic) joined together. The mysterious rectangular hole between room 8 and 9 of the Pine House was once the window at the end of the hallway of Natsukawa Cottage.

Natsukawa Cottage wasn’t rebuilt; its space was just severely distorted into a circular shape. Those aware of it, like Disco, can therefore do some interesting things like going ‘between rooms 8 and 9′... or rather, take a casual walk outside Natsukawa Cottage, going around the building from wall Y’Y to X’X or vice versa. Since the space between those walls is ‘compressed’ in the Pine House, people unaware of it, like the Angel Bunnies, wouldn’t be able to comprehend what exactly they’re witnessing, and be convinced the person suddenly got flattened and squeezed into the crack between room 8 and 9.

---

Time for a more practical presentation. Disco hangs three balloons in different places in the hallway on the 2nd floor -- in front of rooms 1, 4 and 10 -- then gets Fukushima and Kimura to help. (Note that Disco now has to go in very roundabout ways, since from his point of view, he shouldn’t be able to go through the hallway between rooms 8 and 9, as the building just... ends there. He can see the forest and all.)

Disco lodges a mattress in the hallway so that it completely blocks the view between rooms 6 and 7. He and Fukushima are standing with their back to the mattress, in front of room 7, where Mitamura’s body was found. Kimura is in room 9, setting up a mannequin. First Disco gives Fukushima a crossbow and asks him to shoot the mannequin, following the trajectory: in front of room 7 -> through the open door to room 8 -> through the hole in the wall between 8 and 9 -> into the mannequin by the window in 9. [This is the same trajectory Mercury C used during Kiyuu’s reasoning, but in the opposite direction.] Fukushima makes the shot without problems; the arrow stabs into the mannequin.

Disco takes the crossbow and makes a shot in the same direction, but inside his own worldview.

The arrow flies in a circular path along the hallway, piercing all three balloons and finally stabbing into the mattress behind their backs.

The space in the Pine House is distorted, and so is the path the arrow takes. Something “straight” can at the same time be “a circle”. (As soon as Disco says that, Fukushima and Kimura also realize what’s going on... and tumble down into the nearest room, as they just got ‘aware’ that this is where they should really be standing, lol)

---

Mitamura has been living alone for a long time in Natsukawa Cottage, isolated from the world. He created his own space that slowly transformed into a circle, as if to close him away from everyone outside. The new shape remained even after his death, now fueled by the consciousness of the great detectives and the Angel Bunnies.

The ‘doppelganger’ was likely just Mitamura seeing himself; if he stood in just the right position between rooms 8 and 9 of the Pine House, he could probably catch a glimpse of “another him” because of the space distortion.

Yesterday, Mitamura first went into his study (room 1 of NC = room 7 of PH). He got out the window and walked around ‘Natsukawa Cottage’ (got into the ‘crack’ in the Pine House). Using a ladder put against the wall of ‘Natsukawa Cottage’, he climbed into room 12 (= room 8 of PH) on the second floor and from there entered the hallway. He shot himself with a crossbow -- the arrow made a circle and stabbed into his back. He then used the last of his strength to hide the crossbow (in the ‘crack’).

Then Kozue appeared, possessed his body and made the blood circle. Why did she come here? Because otherwise Disco wouldn’t get close to the case that he was fated to solve. Everything that happened until now happened just so he would solve it.

---

After explaining his reasoning in front of everyone, Disco asks, “Well, how did I do? I’d say I got full marks on this test, or am I wrong... Mr. Mitamura?”

“I’d say it’s closer to 90% correct answers,” said the 17-year-old boy going by the name of Runbaba 12.

"Ladies and Gentlemen,” Disco points to him, “here is the future, current and former owner of the Pine House, the beginning and the end, the first and the last God, seen here as a 17-year-old, Mr. Mitamura Saburou! ...by the way, if your guts are still hurting, that’s appendicitis. Dr. Taniguchi Tooru upstairs will check it out and take you to the hospital for an operation."

At the age of 17, Mitamura Saburou jumped 20 years into the future and saw the circumstances of his own death. Upon returning to his own time, he arranged everything to go exactly as he'd seen in the future. So this arrangement wasn’t an idea that he or somebody else ever came up with; it was just there, circling between the future and the past, with no obvious point of origin. [Oh boy, does this remind me of the ending of Tsukumojuku.] Or maybe the past, the present and the future were somehow all happening simultaneously -- the causes and effects took place at the same time...

(”Well, maybe your score’s closer to 93% now,” young Mitamura said. “Can you get full marks and avoid having to stab yourself?”)

Right, what was the meaning of this whole stabbing thing? Odin lost his eye to gain wisdom. What kind of wisdom could a one-eyed person have that a two-eyed person didn’t?

That you can see the world without depth, in only two dimensions, but still be able to move in three.

Then maybe, just maybe, you can see the world in three dimensions, but be able to move in four. Maybe with enough willpower, you can jump through time...

(”95% now,” Mitamura said.)

But what can Disco do with it? He’s only good at finding missing children. Finding missing children... Right. When they met in the dream, Mitamura wanted him to find Ichirou and Jirou. Find them by jumping through time...

(”98%.” Mitamura smiled. “You can cross time. Remember this well. Don’t forget it, and don’t doubt.”)

Disco closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped.

[fatehbaz]

The current fear of China’s rising tech industry closely evokes the villainous depiction of Japan in ‘70s/’80s popular magazines and cyberpunk media; the tonally consistent tradition of American xenophobia against East Asia

As a sort of hobby interest, I do a lot of reading about Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Shanghai - three mega-cities and critical economic powerhouses that the Chinese establishment has used since the ‘90s as, essentially, experiments in rapid urban development with the basic intent to create hubs for computer technology industries to rival Silicon Valley. These three cities were essentially minor cities with rural agricultural hinterlands in the ‘80s, but today rank among the Top 20 most populous cities on Earth, with truly massive GDP’s, booming tech industries, thousands of start-up operations, and sophisticated architecture and transportation infrastructure. These cities - especially Shenzhen - have succeeded in rivaling the Bay Area.

There’s a lot at play - politically and socially - in how these projects were achieved (and especially fascinating is how Chongqing’s success is closely related with the city’s adoption in recent years of retro Marxist-Leninist communitarian ideals and programs). But today, I wanted to talk instead about American xenophobia and how these rapidly-growing tech hubs terrify Americans.

This week, I was watching a short-ish small-budget documentary on YouTube, which specifically explores how Shenzhen has become the “Silicon Valley of China.” Shenzhen alone hosts over 12 million people (greater than all of Chicago-land), but the city is physically contiguous with a greater urban area of 45 million people (three times metro Los Angeles-Anaheim) surpassing Tokyo and making it the most populous urban area on Earth; Shenzhen’s GDP is higher than Hong Kong, which happens to be just across a narrow strait from Shenzhen. Anyway, this YouTube documentary focused a bit on how the low-income residents of the otherwise highly-gentrified Shenzhen have become famous in Asia for their extremely passionate entrepreneurial spirit and penchant for re-purposing used and discarded tech parts to create homemade off-brand computer tech to sell at street markets. The narration also mentions how these tech wizards - and the more wealthy tech start-up workers - are able to establish themselves partially because they are not prosecuted for (re-)appropriating American inventions. Many jealous American tech workers allege that Shenzhen start-ups are “infringing on the intellectual property rights” and patents of American corporations.

And let me tell you, these (what I assume must be) young white American guys in the comment section are livid. Just, there is a stunning amount of comments that look like “Shenzhen only has a high GDP because they’re STEALING American intellectual property” or “yea, maybe they’re good engineers, but it was GENIUS AMERICAN MEN who came-up with the code” and “Americans did the hard part, the Chinese are just good at mass-production and cheap knock-offs.”

That last accusation is important: the concession that “China is good at mass production and efficiency” but “Americans are the real innovators who made it possible.”

“It’s not fair that China gets to profit off of technology that American heroes like Mr. Zuckerberg-Bezos McPeter-Thiel came-up with first!”

And these same tropes - “East Asians are frighteningly efficient, but Americans are smarter” - should sound very routine to anyone familiar with American xenophobia in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

So, this is all to say that I was reminded of a nice passage from one of my all-time favorite pieces of cultural commentary, which is Nicola Nixon’s classic “Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?” Nixon’s 1992 article discusses how all the hype that cyberpunk as a literary genre was receiving for being woke and “revolutionary” was not totally justified, at least for parts of the genre; a lot of cyberpunk at the time celebrated the Ayn Rand-style American, individualistic “cowboy-ism” of its male protagonists and included a lot of half-assed women characters. These shallow tropes were especially emphasized in the parts of the genre made for mainstream, popular consumption. Nixon, in the article, also clearly traces how radical feminist utopian science fiction of the 1970s paved the way for the kind of social wokefulness that cyberpunk would later claim.

Nixon’s article takes a momentary aside to address American (and Canadian) anti-Japanese xenophobia during the ‘70s and ‘80s, and how popular cyberpunk stories pitted American exceptionalism and rugged individualism against Japanese corporations. Nixon even suggests that Japanese congolmerates were subtextually conflated with “femininity” to make them even more threatening.

Here’s the fun passage:

Indeed the Yakuza is the paradigm for all the other Japanese megacorporations which appear regularly in Gibson’s texts: a collective construct which conflates the tight familial bonds of the Italian-American mafia with the equally tight employer-employee bonds of the frighteningly efficient Japanese industries. It is the latter which formed the subject of endless documentaries and business-magazine articles throughout the ’80s because their corporate practice presented the most substantial threat to American-style capitalism America had yet experienced.12

American xenophobia and isolationism, particularly with regard to the Japanese scientific and economic invasion, manifested itself in the media through such scare tactics as Andy Rooney’s piece on 60 Minutes (Feb. 5, 1989), which portentously identified various historic American monuments as Japanese owned! And 48 Hours presented a piece called "America for Sale" (Dec. 29, 1988), in which various reporters, including Dan Rather, emphasized American objections to Japanese ownership of American real estate and industry. Amorphous Japanese collectives clearly posed a threat to the land of the free entrepreneurial spirit. This is surely the fear underlying the (defensive?) mockery and ridicule attending representations of Japanese tourists, traveling in tightly-knit groups, sporting extremely expensive, high-tech photographic equipment. If Canada as a whole did not reflect precisely the same degree of anti-Japanese paranoia being played out in America, British Columbia, Gibson’s home, betrayed more conflict about Japanese investment than most parts of the country. In the early and mid-’80s, in the midst, that is, of British Columbian Premier William Bennett’s open-door policy to Pacific Rim investment, reactions to Japanese tourists and potential investors were mixed: their infusion of capital into the flagging B.C. economy was indeed welcomed, and yet their actual ownership of luxury hotels, real estate, and various natural-resource companies (the forestry industry in particular) was both attacked and feared as being, ironically, merely a reenactment of past American practice.

If we examine Gibson’s texts within the context of such conflicting interests, we see the degree to which he deliberately avoids any form of simplistic anti-Japanese paranoia or its attendant racism and ethnocentrism. And yet Gibson’s Japanese conglomerates, in their collective and familial practice, nevertheless form the implicit antagonistic counterpoint to the individualist heroes. The bad guys in Gibson are, after all, the megacorporations—Ono Sendai, Hosaka, Sanyo, Hitachi, Fuji Electric. The good guys are the anarchic, individualistic, and entrepreneurial American heroes: independent mercenaries and "corporation extraction experts" like Turner, console cowboys like Case, Bobby Newmark, Gentry, Tick, and the crew at the Gentleman Loser who jack in and out of the global computer matrix with unparalleled mastery. In Williams’ Angel Station (1989), Bossrider Ubu traverses the galaxy, roping in black holes. In Sterling’s Islands in the Net, American Jonathan Gresham, the self-styled "post-industrial tribal anarchist" (388), rides his "iron camel" through the "bad and wild" African Sahara—one of the few places free of the global Net—and eventually saves the hapless but earnest Laura Webster. The cowboys in Gibson, Williams, and Sterling are heroes who represent, as Williams suggests in Hardwired, the "last free Americans, on the last high road" (10). It seems telling that the American icon of the cowboy, realized so strongly in Reaganite cowboyism, the quintessence of the maverick reactionary, should form the central heroic iconography in cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk’s fascination with and energetic figuration of technology represents the American cowboy as simultaneously embattled and empowered. In ’80s America the Japanese megacorporations did dominate the technological market, but the cowboy’s freedom and ingenuity allow him to compete purely on the level of mastery. The terms of such a competition—Japanese pragmatism and mass production versus American innovation and ingenuity —seem precisely analogous to those of a familiar American consolatory fiction: that free enterprise and privately funded research and development in science and technology have produced in America the most important technological innovations of the 20th century, innovations which the Japanese have simply taken, pirated, and mass produced, thus undercutting the very American market which encouraged their discovery and making it financially difficult for the neophyte technological wizards to get corporate funding. In Interview’s special "Future" issue (1988), almost adjacent to Victoria Hamburg’s interview with Gibson, there appeared an article titled "Made in Japan," which confirmed for the American readership that the Japanese did not "initiat[e] new ideas" (Natsume, 32) and reassured it about the benign nature of the new products coming out of Japan: micro-thin televisions, special low-water-consumption washing machines, camcorders with RAM cards, auto-translation machines—non-essential but nice, unthreatening appliances.13 Computer and technological innovation would still come from American silicon valleys, would still be, by implication, "Made in America." In Gibson’s novels the console cowboys use expensive Hosaka and Ono Sendai cyberspace decks, but such mass-produced technology is always customized and enhanced, its performance and capabilities augmented by the cowboys’ more inventive, finer ingenuity.

In effect, the exceptionally talented, very masculine hero of cyberpunk, with specially modified (Americanized) Japanese equipment, can beat the Japanese at their own game, pitting his powerful individualism against the collective, domesticated, feminized, and therefore impenetrable and almost unassailable Japanese "family" corporations. After all, in the world of the microchip, small is potentially powerful.

From:

Nicola Nixon. “Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?” 1992 - Science Fiction Studies. https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/57/nixon57art.htm

This right here:

The terms of such a competition—Japanese pragmatism and mass production versus American innovation and ingenuity —seem precisely analogous to those of a familiar American consolatory fiction: that free enterprise and privately funded research and development in science and technology have produced in America the most important technological innovations of the 20th century, innovations which the Japanese have simply taken, pirated, and mass produced, thus undercutting the very American market which encouraged their discovery and making it financially difficult for the neophyte technological wizards to get corporate funding. 

In this passage, you could replace mentions of the Japan of 1992 with the China of 2018 instead, and you’d be describing exactly the comments of and contextualizing proposed by American xenophobes criticizing current Chinese tech development and mass production.

[alicescripts]

Part 3, Chapter 3: “Means of Escape”

Keisha: Beyond the sink is a bed. Sitting on the bed is a person in a gray hoodie, hood pulled up. Their face is lost in the shadow. But I think I know now I could go as close as I wanted to that hood, and still wouldn’t be able to see a face.

They sit on the edge of the bed, body toward us, a hand on each thigh. I expect to feel a wave of powerful energy coming off of them, but I don’t.

Alice: A cloud passes over the sun. It gets dim in the trailer.

Keisha: “We’ve come a long way to talk to you,” I say. They say nothing back. Anxiety is working my gut, but it does the same when I’m ordering pancakes at a truck stop, when I’m getting up to pee in the middle of the night. I can’t trust my anxiety.

Alice: But there were no clouds in the sky.

Keisha: “Hello?” I say. Silly. If they wanted to respond, they would.

I reach out, hesitant but knowing what I need to do. I touch them. They slump backwards. The Oracle is dead.

Alice: From outside, I hear a wet huffing and whooping. I don’t even have to look out the window to know…

Keisha: The trailer is surrounded by Thistle Men.

Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink. Performed by Jasika Nicole and Erica Livingston. Produced by Disparition. Part 3, Chapter 3: “Means of Escape”.

Alice: I don’t know where this trip started, what counts as the first moment, but for lack of a better answer, I’ll start with this. I’ll start with the amazing painted rocks.

I needed to pee, and it seemed a more interesting stop than a fast food place. As I was coming back from the bathroom, I went to look at the rocks, because why not, right? I was there.

They were better than they had looked when Keisha and I came back years later, but not by much. They were rocks, they were painted. They delivered on both fronts. As I stood there, I noticed movement on the rise above the rocks, a person thrashing around. Choking maybe, or a heart attack. No, not a person, two people. A man attacking a woman.

I have anxiety too, I don’t know if Keisha ever knew that. But my anxiety doesn’t turn inwards. I project it. I see the whole world as being as scared as I am, and I get this irresistible urge to come to its defense.

So I ran up that hill and attacked the man. His skin was baggy and his teeth were sharp. He was strong.

I had misunderstood my abilities in this situation. But the woman who he had attacked clambered to her feet and together we fought him. She pulled a knife from her belt, stabbed him through the throat. He gurgled, leaked yellow pus and fell to the ground.

I couldn’t move. We had killed someone. But the woman, she didn’t look at the man we had killed, she looked only at me. “My name is Lucy,” she said, “and most people wouldn’t have done what you just did. We could use a woman like you. How would you feel about a job?

Keisha: A patter of hands on the outside of the trailer. Gravity made wild moves. They were pushing the trailer back and forth, tipping it over just for the fun of knocking us around before the real violence began.

The body of the oracle we had come to see fell sideways onto the mattress, and then slumped to the floor as light and small as a child. I started toward them, but what would be the point? They were gone. Soon we would be too.

[howls] “Ahoooooooooooooo!” said a voice from the outside. [spitty] “Lumffffffffffffffffff,” shouted another. The Thistle Men were getting excited.

I took Alice’s hand, I kept my eyes on the body of the oracle, and then the oracle was alive again. They were still limp on the ground but also simultaneously standing over their own body. [whispers] “I’m already dead! Run! RUN!” the oracle said. And then there was only the body.

In my head, I saw a black boat floating forever at the mouth of a river. I pulled Alice with me out of the trailer. There were at least 20 Thistle men and they cheered upon seeing us, but I concentrated on a gap in their number and I made for the SUV. I wasn’t ten feet away when I saw the SUV had been disabled. Tires slashed, steering wheel sitting in the passenger seat.

The exhaustion of my despair was mixed with an adrenaline jolt of fear. Behind us, the Thistle Men flapped their lips as they tore toward us, making a strange jittering sound.

Alice: I took the job. If there were monsters in the world, then I couldn’t pretend everything was fine. I have the urge always to protect, and so I followed that urge.

It was torture hiding it from Keisha. But I had already been going regularly on business trips. I kept the same schedule, but instead of selling bathroom supplies to large office clients, Lucy and I hunted down the Thistle Men.

When we weren’t working, Lucy trained me. Hand to hand combat, first aid, target shooting, basic tactics. The tedious step by tiny step nature of detective work. Most of all, she trained me to trust her.

It was the murder of Bernard Hamilton when it happened. We were looking over the body and I thought, “Oh my god. This feels normal. This feels like a day on any job.”

And I didn’t recognize myself, this person who was so used to violence. My heart surged. I couldn’t breathe. I was in a panic over how calm I was. I didn’t let it show. I kept doing the job.

It went on this way for years, maybe could have gone that way forever, but circumstances changed and my double life became untenable.

Keisha: The Thistle Men were on us and we kicked and pushed them, pulling each other along, staying just ahead of their grasping hands. There was an old sedan, a boxy 90’s model. The tires were low, looked like it barely run. One of the vehicles that Thistle had arrived with, presumably. We made it to the car, and the keys were in the ignition. Alice fought off a particularly fast Thistle Man, and then fell backwards into the car next to me.

“This is in (all wheel drive)”, I said. “How did they even get this out here?” but there was no time to consider that, I could only do my best to steer it away from any ruts or patches of heavy sand that would snare it.

I pointed it toward the highway and started driving. Soon we were a good mile away, and I was able to start breathing again. “Foolish,” I said. “Just foolish.” “At least we’re safe,” said Alice, and I went to slap her shoulder for jinxing us, when the car ran right into a hole I hadn’t seen and stopped dead. I tried to start it, but whatever dark power had kept its old engine together was done. The car was done.

Alice: Thistle was going after family members. Lucy told it to me plain with a minimum of emotion. She never got emotionally invested in much. She wasn’t cold, just – practical.

The family members of Bay and Creek operatives were being found out and murdered. Word wasn’t coming down from the top, because they didn’t want panic, but Lucy thought I should know.

The choice was simple to me. I needed to leave Bay and Creek. I believed in what we were doing, believed in the importance of our fight, but Keisha was (all of it) for me, and I wasn’t gonna give her up.

“It won’t work,” Lucy told me. “Thistle won’t care if you’re still active, they’re in it for the carnage, not the strategy. And how much worse will it be without Bay and Creek’s protection?” I didn’t know what to do. I stopped sleeping, mostly stopped eating. I had joined because I wanted Keisha and everyone like her to be safe, and now my actions had put her in even more danger than before.

Lucy kept bringing me stories, more Bay and Creek operatives dead. Chaos in the head office. No one knew what to do.

That last time I left home, I thought I would come back. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Keisha, who was frightened about even the minutia of daily living. Having to face one of those boneless loose-skinned boogeymen? She would be helpless, and it would be my fault. I would indirectly be her murdered.

So I didn’t come back. It destroyed me. But I am a protector, I had to remove myself from Keisha’s life, letting her think that I had died. I just didn’t know any other way to do it.

Keisha: We had been walking for two hours and still no highway. I was staring to lose sense of direction. For all I knew, we were heading deeper into the wilderness. The afternoon heat was brutal. We had no water, and so we carried our thirst in our bodies. Thirst is heavy. It made us slow, made us stoop. The howls of the Thistle Men came from all sides. Hooting and laughing and whooping. We couldn’t tell distance at all. They could be right upon us or miles back.

I stopped, looked back at Alice. What were we doing? If this was it, did we want to spend the end wandering purposelessly? “Keep going,” she said. [sighs] “Keep going where?” I said. I searched out surroundings, not recognizing any landmark. And then, I saw a glint against the horizon and pointed at it before I knew what I was looking at. I thought of a time in Death Valley, a light in the sky above the Badlands. Alice laughed in relief. “A reflection off a car,” she said. “It’s the highway. [sighs] Oh, thank god you saw that.” “Yeah,” I said, “Thank god.” I don’t know what I saw.

We were so close to the highway, maybe 40 more feet, when I heard Alice gasp. I turned. A Thistle Man, his crooked baggy face grinning at me, as he squeezed his arm around my wife’s throat.

Alice: It felt as though the part of me that was human was gone. What is a person outside of the context of others? As George Eliot wrote: “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” Stripped of that, I still ate and breathed and shit, but I was not Alice. And I wanted nothing more than to be Alice.

I took no comfort in my hollowness, there is nothing romantic about it. It was a sickness, and I had left the only cure behind. Home was a person and I wanted to go home.

“How would you explain it to her?” Lucy said to me. “Where would you say you’ve been?” “I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ll figure it out.” “No,” Lucy said. “You try to explain it to me, right now, out loud. Where you’ve been as though you were talking to Keisha. I wanna hear the story you’d tell.” Of course I couldn’t. I couldn’t. The conversation ended there.

Month passed, then one day I considered a sight that had become ubiquitous in my life. The news crews covering the violent event we were investigating that day. In my despair, I stopped and I watched the crew film. Without allowing myself to think about what I was doing, I pushed my way through and stood at the front of the crowd of onlookers and I stared straight into the camera. Hoping that somehow, Keisha would end up on the other side of the stare.

Lucy was furious, as you can imagine. But I didn’t stop. A fire outside of Tacoma. Landslide in Thousand Oaks. A hostage situation in Saint Joseph. I kept doing it. Would I have done if it I had known it would lead Keisha to doing what she did? Probably not. I had sacrificed everything to keep her safe, and here my impulsiveness sent her careening out into the most dangerous places of all.

Keisha: [breathless] “Run,” said Alice. “Just run, please!” The Thistle Man snorted. It sounded like a boot pulling out of mud. [terrifying] “Yeah, run chipmunk,” he oozed. “Run away.” Branches cracking interview eh brush around us, yelps close by. Alice was sobbing and she was mouthing “go” over and over as the ropey arms circled her tighter and tighter.

Well fuck that and fuck the Thistle Men! I charged toward him, howling back sounding for all the world like one of them. I had become more than willing to meet their violence with my own, and I had learned a thing or two about how to do that. Alice thrashed as her oxygen was fully cut off, but I was already driving my thumbs into both of the Thistle Man’s eyes, pushing inward and upward as hard as I could, until I felt them squish beneath me. He screamed and let Alice loose, thrashing blindly at me. His hand connected with my head once then twice, and the world went away for a moment. I couldn’t hear out of one ear, I could hardly see.

Alice regained her breath, went in for a kick but caught the rebound from one of his swings and was on the ground again. He turned, sensing her vulnerability, and I used that moment to heft a rock and take it to him, over and over until he was down, Alive but incapacitated, in a puddle of that yellow glob that fills their bodies. “Hffffffffffffff,” he shouted at me. “Woooooooooooooooo.” I used the rock one last time, right onto his face, and he didn’t say anything after that. “We have to go,” I said to Alice, pulling her up. “I’ll help you,” she said, trying to put her arm around me and I could almost laugh. Almost. “Hun, you can hardly walk. I will be helping you.” I could hear out of my one good ear that the rest of the Thistle Men were upon us. I pulled us the last 30 feet to the highway, where I began wildly waving for help. a truck driver stopped and I hurriedly but successfully convinced him that we were one of his kind and just needed to get a ride to whatever the next town was.

From there, we were able to rent another car. We got the nicest one they had, because we knew that our line of credit would be burned anyway once the other rental company realized they weren’t getting their car back. So might as well run up that bill if we were gonna skip out on it.

The nicest one they had was only OK. It was a small town agency. And from there, back to Midland and our truck.

As we pulled up to our home on the road ,I stopped the car and turned to Alice. “I saved you,” I said. “I saved you, OK? So go ahead, kid yourself that everything you did was because I needed protection and so that justifies it somehow. But you remember this. you remember that I saved you and not the other way around.” I got out of the car and into our truck, and from there we went out of town and onto Texas, and onto whatever was gonna happen to us next.

Today’s quote: “Does anyone suppose a private prayer is necessarily candid, necessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative. Who can represent himself such as he is, even in his own reflections?” from Middlemarch by George Eliot. Thanks for listening. 

[faeflowerfeline]

And I need that fire just to know that I’m awake - chapter one

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15294807/chapters/35483394

Prologue

They reach their destination three days later. She hurts less, by that point, but she's still nowhere near as healed as Shikamaru is - although he had a medic to help him through it all.

Konoha is... odd. It's different, in some ways, but it really is the same old Konoha Sakura remembers living in for her whole life. It's a Konoha from before Orochimaru's attack, from before Pein's attack, from before Zetsu's attack. It's a Konoha that she almost doesn't remember anymore. From the way Shikamaru catches his breath beside her, settling back on his heels, she knows he feels the same. The sunlight filters through the leaves and falls on them in a way that Sakura's not used too as they watch their village go around its daily life.

"Kotetsu and Izumo are manning the gate," Shikamaru says in Sakura's ear and she snorts. Those two were notorious for letting in people that they probably shouldn't have, but it often turned out okay and most Jounin held a soft spot for the two. Honestly, the aforementioned soft spot is likely 90% of the reason they haven't been demoted yet - that, and their almost supernatural ability with most weapons. Sakura had learned from them, back when their band had been larger, and even she never got to the same level they had been.

(They're our greatest failure, Inner says, deep in her head, and Sakura has to agree.)

"We could probably just walk in," she replies, laughs at his soft laugh, and they share the most honest smile they've had in a while. Neither of them will risk it, though, and they both know it. No one had told them to change what happened if they landed in the past; Naruto hadn't told them what to do; but how could they not, knowing what they know?

It's a self-imposed mission, but regardless, they cannot risk failure. They cannot see their village fall for a third, fourth, fifth time, knowing they could do something about it.

(A mission self-imposed is still a mission, after all.)

"I mean," Shikamaru says, and Sakura tenses, because that's the voice he has when he has an idea that's objectively stupid, but is going to suggest it anyway. "We probably could just walk in - I'm the stereotype of a Nara."

"You're a fucking idiot," she tells him, socks his arm and slings the same arm over his shoulder. Jokingly, she flicks an appraising look up and down his body. "You're too hot to be a Nara."

"Hey!" Shikamaru says, sighs as she snickers at his offence. "Troublesome woman."

"Of course," she agrees amicably, "but we still can't just walk in. My hair's too memorable."

"Henge?" he suggests, and Sakura honestly considers checking for brain damage. Instead, she just looks at him, entirely too aware of the way her thoughts are projected on her face. "Yeah, okay," he says, leaning against her.

"What if," Sakura says slowly, "we tell them the truth?"

Shikamaru's look rivals hers in its deadpan disbelief. "We tell Kotetsu and Izumo that we're time travellers here to stop our village from being destroyed?"

"No," she says, inordinately patient for an amazingly stupid partner - he's a fucking Nara, why is he so idiotic? Boys. "We tell them that we're foreign ninja here to see the Hokage."

"Oh," Shikamaru says, like he's realising something that makes him feel idiotic - good, Inner thinks, all mild guilt and vindictive glee - "That could work."

Sakura sniffs, turns up her nose like Ino used to whenever something didn't go her way and says, "Of course it'll work!" Shikamaru looks at her suspiciously, before bursting into a helpless kind of laughter that makes Sakura feel warm inside. They're alive, and they don't have to worry about being ambushed by half-immortal and never-ending beings, even if they do occasionally have to worry about ambush from other humans.

(And isn't the whole idea of other humans a trip; Sakura's not used to there being anyone outside their small group and Zetsu.)

They're alive, and they can laugh freely like this. Sakura kind of loves it.

"We'll do that then," Shikamaru says, bringing her back into the moment. Sakura wrinkles her nose - she's going to have to smile; to act for this plan, and after this long, she's sure she's pretty rusty - but Shikamaru rests his arm over her shoulders. It's a comforting weight, the feeling of having someone she knows here for her.

When they jump down, she's only partially ready, but that's okay because she has Shikamaru here, has his arm over her shoulder and his Chakra brushing light and easy against her own. Kotetsu and Izumo straighten up as they approach, their hands hovering suspiciously over their weapons. Sakura approves.

"Hey!" She says, as bright as she can make herself be, offering a wave to the two chunin gate guards. "We're here to see the Hokage, is that okay?"

"The Hokage?" Kotetsu says, suspicion in his voice and in his eyes as he glares at them. "What business do you have with the Hokage?"

"Information trade," Shikamaru says easily, a feigned openness shifting how he holds himself. "We have information to offer, and ask only for refuge in return." The two chunin stare suspiciously for a few more seconds before Izumo gives a nod, racing off to - presumably - get someone to escort them in. Sakura settles down against the poles holding up the gate to wait, feeling Shikamaru follow seconds later, leaning up against her side. She almost falls asleep here, in the shade of Konoha's gate with Shikamaru resting against her. It's warm, and shaded, and safe somehow, even in this Konoha that's an old mirror of her own.

Shikamaru nudges her awake when Izumo returns, two ANBU at his side. It isn't at all a vicious awakening, but it is a startling one - she hadn't even realised she'd fallen asleep. That probably says volumes about her comfort levels here; they're alarmingly high and Sakura's going to need to fix that somehow.

Regardless, she climbs to her feet - slowly, no need to appear as a threat - and snaps a quick salute at Kotetsu, who watched over her and Shikamaru as they dozed. Sakura kind of loves him for that, if she didn't kind of love him already. Then she turns, heads towards Shikamaru and the ANBU just ahead, smiling just slightly because she's home, and this time, she's going to save it.

The Hokage's office is just as she remembers it, from before when Sarutobi was in office, when Tsunade was in office, when Kakashi was in office. (When Naruto was in office, although the majority of his leadership was months and months of ninja on the run, fleeing desperately from something none of their three living Hokage could defeat, even working together.) The Sandaime Hokage sits at the desk, long-dead in Sakura's memory and not someone she's overly affected by seeing. Shikamaru isn't so lucky - he sees his teacher in the lines of Sarutobi's face, in the cigar hanging from his lips, and Sakura slings an arm over his shoulders and draws him in. It's a hug, almost, but not quite.

(An undercover hug, Inner whispers. Sakura almost laughs, holds it back with willpower and willpower alone, while Inner, the lucky bitch, laughs at both her own joke and at Sakura herself.)

"So," a long-dead Hokage says, "Foreign ninja with information, asking only shelter? It is understandable that I am curious, even suspicious, is it not?" As he says this, Sakura realises with a dawning horror that they did not plan what they would tell him. From Shikamaru's hurried glance, it is obvious that he feels the same; and Sakura simultaneously breathes a sigh of relief that she is not alone in her idiocy and feels the overwhelming urge to cuff her idiot of a partner around the head - with that glance, the Hokage will trust nothing they tell him without evidence.

He's supposed to be a Nara! Inner wails in despair. Sakura can't help but agree.

"I am presuming you want the truth, Hokage-sama," Sakura starts, speaking as calmly as she can manage. "We offer it freely, and warn that the information shared in this room will be dangerous in the wrong hands." Sarutobi eyes her, but flares his chakra to activate the silencing seals anyway. Shikamaru is giving her a similar look from her side, and she glances at him, exasperated. Thankfully, he seems to get what she means, because he steps forwards and bows just slightly.

"Hokage-sama," he says, "I am Nara Shikamaru and this is my partner, Haruno Sakura."

Woah, Inner says, just coming out with it, are we? Sakura stifles a smile and joins Shikamaru in his bow. The Hokage watches them, calculating, before glancing past them at the two ANBU standing by the door.

Eventually, he says, "Nara Shikamaru and Haruno Sakura are two students attending their last year at the academy this year." The look he gives them is cool, like an iced-over bridge, liable to send them flying into the frozen water below. "You're going to have to try harder than that."

Sakura straightens, looks Sarutobi Hiruzen in the eye, and says, "Shimura Danzo is operating an ANBU cell known as Root, which you ordered disbanded. The Uchiha Massacre was ordered by Danzo, carried out by Uchiha Itachi and covered up by you." One of the two ANBU steps forward, but Shikamaru falls in behind her. His glare is a terrible thing - all Nara glares are, really, because it is not often they make an appearance - and the ANBU member freezes. Sakura continues. "Uzumaki Naruto is the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, son of the previous Jinchuriki, Uzumaki Kushina and her husband, Namikaze Minato. Uzumaki Mito was the Kyuubi Jinchuriki before her, as well as the Princess of Uzushisokagure, Konoha's greatest failure and the last known location of Uzumaki Naruto, the Nanadaime Hokage of Konoha, as he used the last of his chakra to activate a seal that sent both the head of Konoha's hospital and apprentice to the Godaime Hokage, Haruno Sakura and Jounin Commander Nara Shikamaru back in time." Sakura sucks in a breath, lets it out, and levels her gaze at Sarutobi. He's watching her with less wariness and more shock, which is exactly what she was going for.

Then Shikamaru stops glaring at the ANBU and sidles up by her side. When he opens his mouth to continue, she makes no move to stop him. "They watched all that was left of Konoha fall with its leader, and woke up on Uzushisokagure, ten years in the past."

Short, sweet and effective, Inner comments, audibly pleased.

And it is effective - Sakura watches as Sarutobi Hiruzen's face shifts from shock to pity, from something that could have left them out to something that will get them in.

This is why he's a genius, Inner comments, that undercurrent of smug pleasure still lighting up her voice. Sakura can't help but agree - he really is one; a lazy genius, but a genius nonetheless.

Sarutobi looks at them, silent but pitying; and says, "Tell me about the future." Shikamaru sighs in that way he does when he wants to call something troublesome but can't, and Sakura offers a tight smile.

"That might take a while," she says, "We're not even sure how far back we went."

"I'm reasonably sure it's at least ten years?" Shikamaru offers. Sakura only shrugs, before fixing her eyes on the Hokage.

"You said we're in our last year?" she asks, "When's the genin exams?" Sarutobi looks at her carefully, before apparently deciding she's trustworthy enough for this information.

"Today," he says, and Sakura mentally reclassifies 'trustworthy enough for the information' into 'unable to do anything about it anyway'. Shikamaru frowns, thoughtful, and Sarutobi smirks at them, almost all-powerful and seemingly all-knowing (although they know otherwise). It's no wonder he was called the God of Shinobi.

"Then it is ten years," she says, turning to Shikamaru. "We could fix a lot with a ten year grace period." Sarutobi stares at them, almost glaring as they completely ignore him in favour of considering what they can fix, with this amount of time on their hands.

"We can't help Obito," Shikamaru says, ignoring Sarutobi as he perks up at the name of Kakashi's old teammate, "He was gone for years by this point." Sakura whines, because Obito is the root of like 80% of the world's problems, and fixing that would have been the best way to change the course of history. "I know," Shikamaru says, pats her head like she's a particularly insistent puppy. She snarls, whacks his hand and humphs as he laughs quietly, turning back to the Hokage.

"We'll try to summarise the events the best we can," he tells Sarutobi, "but we may be here for a while."

The Hokage shrugs, leans back in his chair, and says, "I've got nothing to do."

By the time they've finished, Sakura's throat is dry and her voice hoarse. Shikamaru doesn't sound much better, his voice just as hoarse. She feels like she's going to cry, with the way her eyes burn and her throat aches, and she angrily swipes a hand across her eye.

Ninja don't cry, Inner says, but she sounds like she's going to cry too. Sakura doesn't blame her - they lost so much; lost so many, and to tell their story they had to tell of who died. Sarutobi pities them, plainly and openly, his eyes crinkled like he's going to cry too. It's not that much of a surprise - he likely knows the dead better than they do, and they had to tell him that he and those he holds dear would all be falling in the next ten years.

"I'm sorry," Sakura whispers, the words scratching in her throat, "I tried to save them."

Shikamaru's arm wraps around her, pulling her into a hug, and Sarutobi's voice rings through the office. "You did the best you could," he says, kinder than she'd expect from the leader of a village facing unknown ninja - because that's what they are at the moment, unknown ninja, regardless of how much that thought hurts. Then Sarutobi says something else unexpected - something they'd hoped for, desperately, but never thought they'd get; even by telling their story. "Cat and Crow will take you to your new housing in the Jounin apartments," he says, gesturing to the two ANBU who had led them to the Hokage tower in the first place, "You'll be enstated as Jounin of Konoha, under surveillance for the first few weeks, of course."

"Of course," Shikamaru says, inclining his head, "Thank you for your help, Hokage-sama."

Sarutobi watches them for a moment, then asks, "What would you like me to put down as your names?"

"Uhm," Sakura says, blankly, "We need names?"

"Oh," Shikamaru says, "Yeah. We need names."

"We'd have to get the Naras on board," Sakura muses, "Because the easiest way to get around us both being able to use the Nara clan techniques is to, well, be Naras."

"Oh no," Shikamaru says, staring at her in horror, "You are not making me tell this shit to my dad."

Sarutobi stares, sighs, and says, "I'll call Shikaku."

Nara Shikaku reacts almost exactly as Sakura expected - with disbelief, followed by a long, drawn-out sigh, and a comment so similar to Shikamaru's favourite saying there's really no question about his friend's Nara heritage. "So," the head of the Nara clan says, turning to them, "Names?"

Shikamaru looks at her, smirks, and says, "Sakura should be Shikamari." Sakura can't help but snort at that - he would give her a name so similar to his own that only a single character makes the difference.

Shikaku nods, the Hokage makes a note, and both look expectantly at Shikamaru. Sakura taps her fingers against her chin, thinking, before she says, "Shikaken."

"Like study?" Shikamaru asks, curious. Sakura smiles, shaking her head.

"Like sharpen. It suits you, I think."

Sarutobi nods in agreement, writing it down. "I'd have to agree."

"Nara Shikamari and Nara Shikaken," Shikaku says, offering a smile, "I'd like to extend a formal invitation to have you stay in our compound."

"It would look a bit weird if we weren't, I think," Sakura offers up, "I don't know all that much about clan things."

"Troublesome," Shikamaru sighs, in a way that definitely means it would seem weird if they didn't stay in the Nara compound, "But then we'll have to find a way to avoid Shikamaru."

Sakura groans, glaring at her partner. "Why'd you have to be such an intelligent kid! He'll figure it out too quickly."

"Why don't we do it this way," Shikaku offers, "You stay at the compound for a while - say, a week or so - and then move into the Jounin Apartments. It is something that happens, even if it's a rather rare occurrence."

"Thank you, Shikaku-san," Sakura says, bowing slightly, "Your help is most appreciated."

Shikaku laughs, ruffles her hair and says, "There's no need to be so polite." He offers a smile, adding, "Politeness is troublesome." The Nara clan head leads them from the Hokage tower, offering a quick goodbye to Sarutobi. "There are a few free houses on the outskirts of the compounds," he tells them, "You'll be staying in one of those. I have to tell you to come to dinner tomorrow night, though - I can only hold Yoshino off for a day, the troublesome woman."

"It's a miracle you can hold her off that long," Shikamaru mutters. Sakura laughs, lightly whacks his arm and leans into him.

"Don't insult your mother," she scolds, curling her arm around his as they arrive at the compound, "It's mean." Shikaku snorts at them, pushing open the gate and leading them to a house that sits quite close to the edge of the compound.

When Shikaku leaves them, he leaves them with the house keys. "Have a good sleep," he says, a wry smile twisting his lips.

Ha, Inner laughs, speaking for the first time in a long time - she'd quieted, after having to talk about what happened in their timeline - sleeping well? When was the last time we slept well?

I think that's why he's smiling like that, Sakura replies quietly, tilting her head onto Shikamaru's shoulder. Outloud, she says, "Thank-you, Shikaku-san."

"Just call me Shikaku," he replies, as he walks off. "Can't be too formal if we're family, after all."

"C'mon, Sakura," Shikamaru says, tugging her inside, "Let's get some sleep."

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15294807/chapters/35483394

Prologue

[allliii13]

Business Text Messaging Has 6 Benefits

The urge to communicate has always been upheld by many methods to stay connected, from local to global. Availability has been a major driving force behind the growth of every single global sector. These are the considerations while deciding which form of correspondence to use: quick, solid, advantageous, and simple.

Calls are perplexing, lengthy, and tedious to keep track of. Texting needs the use of programs, logins, online or information access, and a companion device that isn't as useful or small as texting. Messages are slow, out-of-date, and ineffective. As a result, text messaging is the most practical option for business owners.

The following are some of the advantages of business text messaging for businesses.

1. A high rate of open

Messaging will almost certainly have a greater open rate than instant messages. According to studies, email has a 15-22 percent chance of being read because of the high number of occasions where messages are mistakenly classified as spam and, as a result, fail to reach the inboxes of the target audience.

On the other hand, message texting has a fantastic open rate of 98 percent, which is great considering how much time most people spend on their phones these days.

2. Timeliness of delivery

A cell phone client typically takes 90 seconds to respond to an instant message and an hour and a half to respond to an email. Because not everyone has the luxury of time on their side, text messaging is the most practical option.

If a company wants to run a marketing campaign or reach out to customers when they're in a hurry, SMS gives them a better chance of doing so. This will increase the necessity to keep moving and the importance of the company's message.

3. Convenient Availability

Individuals require telephones to function, and SMS capability is a standard feature on all phones. Simultaneously, when communicating by SMS, no fancy programs or costly information plans are required. Send a message, and you'll get a message back.

Text messaging is frequently available while using the most basic of GSM organizations. However, due to distance and sign interferences, calls may not always be clear. Messages necessitate a consistent web connection to be distributed to their intended recipients.

4. Opt-in and Opt-out options

Not all customers appreciate getting updates on a company's products and services, and they aren't always able to participate in text-based promotions. Clients will find the opt-in and opt-out features of text messaging administration quite useful.

Clients who opt in to get SMS alerts from businesses can do so. On the other hand, Quit allows you to opt-out of receiving any more instant messages from the company.

5. Unquestionable Appeal to Customers

SMS has a favorable impact on firms who employ it because of the convenience it provides. When a brand is successfully open through means or assets that have been a dependable piece of many customers' life methods, it demonstrates that companies will capitalize on what parts and approaches operate best with end clients.

Advancements, item updates, and limited deals given through messages have a similar personal touch, and nothing is more appealing to customers than a verified, personalized form of communicating with them.

6. Improved Support

SMS improves the efficiency of a company's customer service operations. It makes communication easier for both the business and the clients. The latter can provide their feedback and concerns in stages, but the former can quickly and more realistic responses to client problems.

The best aspect is that even with a small team of specialists overseeing customer service, it is possible to handle higher amounts of client messages.

[olicityara80-blog]

Hello, how are you? I really enjoyed the season finale and found it to be a strong end to season 2 while its cliffhanger and also Luke’s Batwing début makes me hopeful for season 3.

The only complaints I had with the finale was in regards to Kate exiting after the fantastic performance Wallis Day gave her, her not visiting Alice to say goodbye to her and to tell her what she told Mary about her twin and even though Alice/Beth saved her, and Ryan still blaming Alice for her mom’s death even though Alice did not order it. Otherwise it was well written, felt dark, gritty, intense, high stakes, and very emotional while giving further character growth for Ryan and a final Batwoman vs Batwoman along with the emotional and compelling twin bond between Kate and Beth and also seeing the original trio of Kate, Luke, and Mary all together and later as a foursome friendship with Ryan. Great job.

And thanks for also giving Alice/Beth a proper goodbye with Ocean, who I’d personally like to think of as his ghost.

Thanks also for having season 2 further, but albeit slowly and gradually, integrate the series into the wider universe of the Batman mythos, including but not limited to seeing Lucius’s ghost albeit in silhouette form, and the real Bruce even if he was only in Luke’s mind.

On a side note and while I really like Luke’s suit, some feel that his helmet is a bit too big and also resembles Optimus Prime’s head. I’m personally alright with the helmet although I can see a bit of the resemblance and so maybe it could be redesigned a bit to look more bat like?

Having said all of this, I’d like to request some things I’d like for season 3 which I personally hope you’ll consider, as follows:

Could you please increase the series current budget to either 100 percent close to that of “Superman and Lois” or as close to it, like 95, 90, or 85 percent close, as possible? I’m significantly enjoying the cinematic borderline A List movie feel the latter series has and I believe it’s one of the main reasons it’s an enormous success and getting almost nothing but love. And so I personally think it would be a great idea to integrate that into “Batwoman”.

I don’t know how “Superman and Lois” is being funded. Many have claimed it’s being funded by HBO Max. Someone else claimed its writers are using the same company that Netflix, Disney+, and the MCU use to fund their own programs. I personally don’t have a clear answer but wherever they’re getting their budget from or what agreement they made with whoever to have it, could you please consider doing the same for season 3 and giving it that stunning cinematic, significantly visual impressive, close to an A List movie feel?

And not only the budget but I’d also like to respectfully request that season 3’s choreography, camera movements and angles, and directing also 100 percent mirror that of “Superman and Lois”.

Could you also please have the fight and action sequences to be as intense, brutal, fast paced, strong, and in the viewers faces as in the very beginning of episode 18 of “Arrow” Season 6, the Oliver vs ninjas scene in the first “Crisis On Earth X” crossover episode, episodes 10 and 12 of “Arrow” Season 7 and also that season’s prison arc, and plus Netflix’s “Daredevil”? I very much enjoy those types of action and fight sequences and it’d be fantastic to see them in season 3.

And speaking of which but could you also please consider adding James Bamford and whoever the action, fight, and stunt director was for “Daredevil” to the “Batwoman” crew for season 3 if the two of them are interested and available? I personally think Bamford did an excellent job with the action scenes on “Arrow” and that he, and whoever controlled the “Daredevil” action scenes, would both be great additions to your crew.

In addition to lesbian intimacy scenes, could you please also add an equal amount of hetero intimacy scenes while also giving Luke a girlfriend and having both those lesbian and hetero scenes be as passionate and heated as the ones that were in “The 100”, “Jane The Virgin”, and “Riverdale” but also balancing them out with lovemaking scenes if called for? And in regards to Luke but I’m ready for him to have a love interest and I’m personally leaning towards Luke/Mary.

On a side note but it’d be historical for the Arrowverse if polyamory was not only explored but also as endgame since those types of relationships are rarely explored in fictional media even though I think they’re a major part of the real world. And I think I like the idea of both Luke/Mary and Luke/Stephanie while polyamory would be a different way of exploring it rather than the love triangle idea which has been done in the past.

But if you do give Luke a love interest and potential relationship or relationships, could you please keep his journey as Batwing and growth as a hero more in focus than his love life while having said love life and its development presented in a highly mature, natural, and non-toxic fashion like with Clark/Lois, Jordan Kent/Sarah Cushing, and Steve/Diana [“Wonder Woman”] but with some playfulness, especially the mature aspect if you decide to bring back Stephanie and if Luke were to explore potential feelings towards both her and Mary and how the two women handle it? In regards to the couples I listed but I’m personally unaware of if whether or not there’s a fictionalized version of a highly mature and respectful three-way or poly relationship.

I’d also like to request please that Ryan, and while she doesn’t have to be friends with or even like her, to stop blaming Alice for her adopted mother’s murder. From what I saw and while Alice has done a lot of horrible things, and unless I missed something, it had not appeared to me as though Alice was involved or ordered that particular murder. Instead her gang seemed to have acted on their own and then she came into the apartment and stopped them though it was too late.

Another thing I also hope for, and if Julia returns for season 3, is that Sophie apologizes over her anger towards her in 2x01. I understand why Sophie felt the way she did but personally and with respect found it to be immature and that Julia did not deserve it. Though that’s my opinion.

On another subject but one thing I enjoyed about 2x15 is that the Bat Team conducted a significant amount of smart thinking and great coordination as they worked to help Luke. Such as when instead of the Bat Team twiddling their fingers, Mary quickly put together the serum needed to cure Luke and went on the mission to do so, they called a part time ally to deliver the cure to him instead of bemoaning and giving up over the Crows having him under guard, and when he was framed it occurred to Sophie and Ryan to do all they could to clear his name instead of the team acting like there was nothing they could do.

Plus I also liked the coordination and simultaneous operations they conducted in delivering the serum while working to find the real video to clear his name.

And so I’d like to ask but will you would please consider having the entire Bat Team continue all of that quick thinking, planning ahead, common sense, tenacity, professionalism, and coordination for every episode of next season? Though there’d still be times when things wouldn’t always work out since there’d be villains who’re smarter than them and by no fault of their own.

Regarding Mary’s clinic, I personally support it and her trying to help the city in her own way though there are some other viewers who have a problem with it since it’s illegal and doesn’t seem to require the option of calling the GCPD over bullet wounds. In light of that, could you please consider having her clinic become completely legal next season and with the calling the GCPD for bullet wounds requirement but still keeping it completely free of charge for her patients?

I’d also like to say that you’ve had some interesting rock and roll plus pop music selections for the episodes including for a great many of the fighting sequences. And I also think the respective music selections for the first and last Ryan vs brainwashed Kate moments were pretty good for those scenes while the song for Beth/Alice saving Kate from the water in the finale was a perfect fit for said scene.

Having said that, I’d like to make a request for next season but would it be possible, and if it’s alright with you, for the music selections of all of the upcoming fighting and action scenes in season 3 to be the same type of music style, whatever that particular type of song genre it’s known as, that was used for “Arrow”, “Gotham”, “The Dark Knight” trilogy, and “Daredevil”? It’s just that I’d like to hear some music that matches the dark, gritty feel for “Batwoman” like those other aforementioned programs had for theirs.

Speaking of which but the “Batwoman” theme sounds great and I really, really like Batwing’s new theme. They both scream “Power” and it’d be interesting to me if they combine during scenes when Ryan and Luke fight side by side.

On the subject of Kate’s exit and while I found it to be beautiful and well written, both myself and I believe a great many other fans are very disappointed, and the others upset, that she was written off. For me but with Wallis being such an outstanding actress from what I saw here such as the realism by having her characters show strong emotions, being a highly advanced martial artist in real life and can do her own stunts, I assume also having high levels of endurance since she’d trained for the swimming portion of the Olympics some years ago, and having the look you’d chosen for Kate but also had the familial resemblance to Beth/Alice and Jacob [the green eyes in regards to the latter], she is the perfect choice for the Arrowverse’s Kate.

Plus her being written off also feels to me like the same thing as if Ryan had been written off after all of the character growth and investment that was poured into her.

Having said all of that, and while I don’t know if the higher ups in DC would allow this, I’d like to please pitch a story idea to you and Mr. Berlanti for the back half of season 3 that could hopefully bring her back for said back half and it’d have to do with solving Bruce’s disappearance.

What if Bruce went missing some years ago because he learned of one of the most dangerous and nefarious organizations out there and that they are conducting a years long operation to destroy Gotham and are also responsible for his parents murders. And they either captured him followed by him pretending to submit to them or he decided to approach then pretend to join them?

Either way he’d have been on a deep cover operation this entire time to destroy them from within. Perhaps the Court Of Owls or another evil cabal from the Batman mythos if there’s one.

And so after the first half arc of Ryan and Luke dealing with old and new villains causing havoc with the weaponry used by Batman’s rogues while Luke also battles Tavaroff, the back half would be an arc for Kate and Bruce in that Kate returns by calling the Bat Team and asking their assistance to help her and Bruce stop this cabal and warning that the city is in imminent danger, explaining why Bruce went missing. It would also be revealed that the cabal secretly both funded Alice’s operations and helped build her organization while also organizing and funding Black Mask’s own operations though Roman was aware and was actively working with them and was their chosen and willing champion, his plans being their endgame for the city.

But since the Bat Team stopped it in the season 2 finale, the cabal’s planning something far more nefarious. And first the Wonderland Gang and then the False Face Society were their final tools in softening up Gotham and smoothing the way for the city’s end.

Alice would be infuriated by this since it would turn out that she was once more the puppet of others besides Cartwright and then Safiyah while realizing that everything she did in season 1 was never truly her own but had been preplanned for her by others. This would be the final straw to end all final straws.

And so Ryan, Luke, Mary, Sophie, Stephanie if she were to join the season 3 cast, Alice/Beth, Julia if she returns along with some contacts from British Intelligence connected to her father, Kate, and perhaps even Barbara Gordon/Oracle and her father if they’re allowed to be used all join forces to help Bruce complete his mission and Bruce, Kate, Julia, and Barbara’s primary objective would be to destroy the cabal while Ryan, Luke, Mary, Sophie, Alice/Beth, Stephanie, and Jim’s primary objective would be to protect the city from the cabal’s latest attack.

After which that arc would conclude with Bruce formally giving Ryan and Luke his blessing to continue as Gotham’s protectors and also to Kate and Julia as well if they want to stay and with Kate helping to guide the Bat Team as a mentor figure even though they seem to have grown as protectors on their own. After which he’d go on a new mission which is to find Selina Kyle.

If however the answer is no to that story pitch, could you please consider having the real Bruce appear in recurring flashback scenes as part of Luke’s journey and not just him but Lucius as well? It’d be nice to see more of them and Warren seems to be doing a good job as Bruce.

I also don’t know if one of the Batman rogues appearing next season will be Penguin but if he were to appear, what if Robin Lord Taylor portrayed him once more? I think he made a great Penguin and with the multiverse in existence…….

Also, and back to “Superman and Lois” once more, but someone wrote that they love it because according to them it has, and these are their words, small details, lasting effect, consequences to past episodes, smooth action. And so I’d like to ask if those elements also be incorporated into season 3, though I still hope for the intense action I’d mentioned above.

Also, but could you also please consider doing a shorter season once more like you did with season 2? A shorter season could perhaps keep the series lean and focused while maybe allowing a bigger borderline A List movie level budget to be fully utilized. Perhaps either 17 episodes or if not that but 19 episodes while 18-19 are the two part season finale?

Finally and while I don’t know your plans for Ryan’s love life, but could you please consider having her and Angelique be endgame in the presumably far future? They seem to have a nice dynamic and I like that Angelique has changed.

Those are my requests and wishes and I can’t wait to see season 3, am eager to see Ryan and Luke vs the new villains who’ll use the Batman rogues weapons, and look forward to hopefully the Luke vs Tavaroff rematch. I’m also curious to see what Sophie’s arc will be moving forward since it originally seemed to move around Kate and the Crows but now they’re both gone while even Safiyah’s also gone for now.

Have a wonderful day Miss Dries.

P.S. I didn’t think of this but in regards to season 3, could you please consider doing a tremendously epic bank scene, like in Snyder’s “Justice League” with Wonder Woman, and also Superman in “Superman and Lois” 1x09, in which either Ryan, Luke, or them both use explosives to burst through the doors and save the hostages from the bank robbers while the camera movements give the heroes a 50 % tremendously fast, and 50% slow, pace as they brutally & powerfully take down the thugs, and with the same or as close to the same budgets for those two scenes ?

Also, a friend told me that the “Daredevil” stunt coordinator that I mentioned above is named Phillipe J. Silvera.