#and those that are they government tries pretty hard to erase that initial

[moonpaw]

What if similar to the celestial dragons being the descendants of the original 20 kings, those who carry the initial D are the descendants of the lost kingdom? And that's why the celestials are scared of them?

[niragibitch]

The Killer Girl - [ Niragi X Reader]

This is the first Niragi fanfic that I write, and my first smut, I hope you like it Perhaps there is an error of agreement or spelling, as it was initially written in Portuguese and passed to English late at night

Niragi X Reader

Warnings: Violence, weapons, blood, sadism

Number of words: 2k

It was a completely degrading situation for her, handcuffed in the bed of that complete crazy man.                                                                                         She of all the people in the world, a murderer.She had an organization just like a beach where she was a leader, the purposes were completely different though. She and a group of around 50 people where she was the leader closed a complex of buildings, got fast, luxury cars and supplies to stay alive, gathered weapons heavier than the beach and were just there to cause chaos and having fun with the games, almost none of those who were with her wanted to leave this world, people with empty lives and no hope in the real world were very well there, criminals and murderers just like her too.

A hired killer, eventually hired by governments to eliminate people or even torture them for answers, her life was reduced to death in the real world and would continue to be reduced to it in this one, she killed whoever she wanted and moved on, she didn't see much felt in normal life like the others, it all seemed very pathetic.His organization eventually became a mini city of troubled people who followed some rules of good coexistence and obeyed it, nothing more. Anyway going to the point where she was captured by the sniper's guy.

Hours before she was in a game where her entire group was extinguished, she herself had to kill some of them in order to stay alive but something she didn't count on was that her munition would end. At the end of the game she was alive but slightly injured, and a guy with black hair and piercings found her, intrigued by where she got weapons, cornered her with other militants and took her to the beach. She reminded him of someone he knew many years ago.

After the hatter's talk about answers and death to the traitors and things she didn't care about, she handed them her cards and tried to leave, but being unarmed and injured she was dragged by Niragi to where she was currently.He looked at her for a few moments with an teasing smile, showed his tongue with that tongue piercing that gleamed with the light in the room.

He was about to climb on top of her to do who knows what when someone appeared at the door and he had to leave taking his inseparable rifle.What was a lot of innocence on his part, in seconds as handcuffs were loose and she was walking around the room looking for something, she didn't know when he would come back and needed a plan, which soon came up when she found ammunition and a revolver in a drawer.

Now she had some options but she didn't know which one would be more viable, the injuries no longer bothered her, pain became tolerable and easy to ignore , the current problem would be to go through the armed guys without getting into trouble. She leans against the wall, but soon she sees the doorknob moving and has to think about something, hiding in the bathroom she expects some commotion in the room.

Just as, through it, the door opens and after that it closes, that is to say he did not notice that it is loose yet, he turns around.

''That damn bitch! '' he exclaims and she hears some steps, deducing that he took steps forward by the direction of the noise she silently appears behind him, she had a chance.

She hits him in the neck hard enough for him to fall to the ground, taking advantage of the fact that he dropped the gun.

She steals the rifle, fastens the revolver to his waist and points the gun at him, unlocking it and holding the trigger.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" - he says in an automatic tone and just receives an empty stare from her

"I don't advise you to make any sudden movements or I'll have to put a hole in that pretty face of yours, dear."

he puts his hands up and slowly gets up.

"You know that if you kill me now there are going to be armed militants out there, don't you?" - He smiles implicitly and a challenging face.

"But if I shoot you now, they'll think it's just you being a complete insane, and shooting me and not the other way around, I can buy time and run away in the crowd."

‘'well thought ‘'

He approaches and in a quick movement taking the rifle and aiming it at her neck, she pull the revolver and put it on his neck in response, and inevitably end up smiling, it was the first time in a long time that things started to be interesting, probably because her life was at stake.t

The feeling of adrenaline was something incredible to the girl, she felt like she under somo drug effect .

''You're smiling, it's the first non-empty expression you've made since I met you, why? ''

Niragi can't help feeling attracted to her, someone with the courage to face him that way

"I imagined your blood running down that pretty face of yours" and inevitably she looks at his mouthIt

Seemed crazy, but she couldn't help but think about his tongue piercing, and to be honest he looked attractive since when she first saw him, shooting like an insane in the game hours ago .

He looks at her a little longer and ends up kissing her, using his free arm to grab her waist, who in response uses his free hand to pull his hair. Neither wanted to be the first to surrender and be the first to drop the weapon. Both fight a fierce battle to control the situation until he pulls her in a sudden movement, placing her against the wall, listening to her moan in response, her head had hit the wall but she didn't seem to bother with it. He holds her wrist against the wall, pulling out of the gun's direction and calmly drops the rifle on the floor.

"Drop that gun," he says in a husky voice next to her face.

"Kick that rifle away and I'll drop the gun" - She says imposing and he surprisingly complies, she fulfills her promise by releasing the revolver that makes a loud noise when falling on the floor, but that doesn't bother them.

Now, without being a big risk to each other's lives, they kiss again. He remains holding her wrist tightly against the wall, and she continues to pull his hair to the point that it hurts, she wanted him to be in pain.

He pulls away from the kiss and starts kissing her neck.

"What do you want me to do with you?" He mumbles, but he doesn't get an answer making him irritate by biting. "You're a sick bitch, you're enjoying this, aren't you?”But again he doesn't have an answer, the grip against her wrist weakens and she takes the opportunity to loosen her arms and inverts her positions placing him against the wall this time, with one hand she scratches his neck and with the other she pulls his chin making him look at her and kiss him biting his lip hard enough to bleed. He is initially frightened by that, but she kisses him again, normally feeling the taste of his blood in her mouth.Glad to have made him bleed, she separates her lips from his .

"About your first question," she whispers in his ear. "I want to see you like this, hurt and in pain, with blood running down your beautiful face, and about the other I'm really loving it.”

He holds her thighs by pulling her towards him, she hugs his neck and curls her legs around his body, which carries her to the bed, where they both start to undress each other.

When they realized he was already making aggressive penetrating against her who tries to make his back and neck bleed as much as possible. He tried and failed miserably to hold his moans, the physical pain mixed with the pleasure of it, it was maddening, he was getting lost in her. eventually she put her hands against his neck hanging him until she felt he could not take it anymore, and he slapped her ass with no measure of strength and pulled her more closer making her hips as close as possible to his.

Both were lost in each other's reactions, their breathing changed, the blood and marks they had caused on each other, and in the midst of it they both reached ecstasy.

He fell on top of her, practically dead from fatigue after such an act and with no idea what would happen next.

"You still haven't told me your name, dear''

''Neither you said yours, we are even ‘' - she replies arrogantly making him roll his eyes but ends up answering- ''(Y / N) ..’’

"Huh?" He grumbles in a questioning way, he couldn't formulate coherent sentences at the moment

''That's my name, asshole''

"You are lucky that I am not close to my rifle right now," he replies slightly irritated.

''I say the same, or you would be dead now’'

"Niragi ... that's my name ..." he says in a sleepy voice and ends up erasing against her shoulder that despite knowing that he is a crazy and insane guy, she couldn't help but find him cute.

She could get up and shoot him right then and run. There was also the possibility of getting up wearing her clothes and just walking away, he didn't seem to sleep for some time and he probably wouldn't wake up. However she chose to leave to think about this problem the next day and soon fell asleep too.

[…]  

The next day the girl was the first to wake up, getting up carefully so as not to wake her bedmate, while thinking about what to do. The easy answer was the handcuffs, the handcuffs were still on the headboard.The next day the girl was the first to wake up, getting up carefully so as not to wake her bedmate, while thinking about what to do.

The easy answer was the handcuffs, the handcuffs were still on the headboard.    

She approaches him by carefully pulling his arms up, placing them against the cold metal of the handcuffs and adjusting them so that they are as tight as possible.

She couldn't help analyzing the bruises left on his body, his neck was a little red, some of the places she scratched looked more like they had been cut and could take a while to disappear due to the depth, not to mention the wound on his lower lip . In general nothing there was very drastic, with ointment and ice he would quickly be fine.Not that she was going to take care of his wounds or let him go for now.

Anyway, the calm expression he had while sleeping was cute, he looked so vulnerable.

She stops looking at him and starts to martyrize herself with her own thoughts and gets up wearing her clothes and walking to the bathroom.

It doesn't take long before he wakes up, a little sluggish from sleep he doesn't notice the situation until he notices his trapped wrists.He looks for her with his eyes, and not seeing her there irritated him completely.

He struggles to get of the cuffs, making her hear the sound of metal against the bed. And then she takes a deep breath, leaving the bathroom and facing him.  

"If you don't let go of me now, you'll regret one day being born, when I'm released," he says in a menacing tone.

''What makes you think that someday you'll be released? I can kill you here and now, so be sensate and measure your words, ” retorts in a monotone voice

She leans against a wall with her mind racing, she needed a decision on what to do. A plan.

At no time did his eyes deviate from her, he analyzed her as if his life was at stake and in a way it was .

"What do you plan to do with me?" He says in a fake monotone voice, he wanted to stay calm as she was but it was difficult.He didn't like to feel vulnerable, and the situation at the moment left him on the fine line between frightened and angry.

''Sincerely? I have no idea, ”she says and smiles, approaching the bed and smiling sarcastically.“ What did you plan to do to me when I was handcuffed?''

"Do I really need to say it?” The smirk said it all, and as usual he sticks out his tongue with that piercing. "Are you blatantly staring at my mouth, if you're a good girl and let go we can repeat what we did yesterday’’ he tease

"Temptant" - she climbs on the bed, putting one leg over him, sitting on his belly ''but whoever is trapped is you and I can do whatever I want anyway ‘' She shrugs and can feel him shudder despite trying to control his emotions. reactions not wanting to appear helpless .''This situation is being really fun and stuff, but I think it's time to reach an agreement ... '' she passes her hand carefully over the marks on his neck '' I will give the cards and we will play from there, if you scream they will find you pathetic because of the current situation, you will lose your reputation ''he starts to get angry and that just amuses you even more ''So promise me that if I let you go, I can stay alive, with that gun and walk around freely .’'

"Do you think I'm stupid? You will definitely try to escape and I already saw that you are no amateur with guns ..''

"If you are afraid of dying, know that I have been able to kill you several times, including when you were sleeping, you need not be afraid of me, kitten. I do not bite most of the time .." she blinks. "Now give me a definite answer before I get piss ‘'

"Okay, I'll agree to your terms, though…”

"What?" She asks, starting to lose patience. "I'm starting to think that shooting you would have been a lot more practical.”

"You're going to live in that room with me" and after saying that he sees her expression change to something indecipherable "I'm going to need to keep my eyes on you so you don't do anything suspicious

"Was that it? Okay then, we have a deal" and so she gets off him by letting go of his wrists  ''But know that dealing with me is something almost unbearable and that if you irritate me you might end up not surviving’’

He is relieved to have his mobility again, his wrists were marked and would be purple for a long time.

"I advise you to put an ice on your bruises." She kisses him on the cheek, picks up the gun and walks away towards the door."

Where do you think you're going?"

''Analyze the perimeter since I'm stuck here, go get dressed before worrying about my life, I'll see you around ‘' and she leaves slamming the door

Niragi stays there without knowing exactly what to do, she was an intriguing woman. She drew his attention by making him want to keep her close and shoot her head at the same time. It was only a matter of time before they trie to kill each other.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook vs Robert Bork

Unless you're a certain kind of conservative, you probably haven't heard of Robert Bork, but he's one of the most important people you've never heard of. The best way to understand Bork is that he was Ronald Reagan's court sorcerer.

Reagan was an empty vessel with the hands of ruthless plutocrats shoved up his asshole*, operating him like a hand puppet for their collective will to power.

He served as a kind of dowsing rod for policies that would transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

*Hence the polyps

That dowsing rod pointed straight at Bork. Bork was an alternate history writer, a fabulist with a unique and wildly improbable theory of antitrust statutes: that if you studied the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act with Qanon-style fervor, you'd find hidden messages in them.

Specifically, you would discover that the lawmakers who drafted, debated, amended and passed these laws thought monopolies were good, actually. They were only concerned with a small and possibly mythical minority of monopolies that were "harmful."

Not just any harms: Bork said that these ancient sages were worried about *consumer* harms, which, practically speaking, means monopolies that use their power to raise prices. This, he said, was the only thing that the government should step in to prevent.

Since it is nearly impossible to prove that a given merger or tactic would result in higher prices before the fact, and *also* it's nearly impossible to prove that a price rise after the fact was attributable to monopolism we should probably just forget about antitrust.

Reagan loved this. By shifting antitrust's focus from *democratic* harms (like reducing choice, distorting regulation, hurting workers, etc) to *consumer* harms, he could demote "citizens" (who have a role in shaping policies) to "consumers" - mere ambulatory wallets.

Reagan tried to get Bork a seat on the Supreme Court, but there was a little problem. Bork had committed a string of disgusting crimes while serving as Nixon's Solicitor General, and the Senate refused to confirm him for a seat.

(Conservatives were outraged that committing crimes at the highest level of government disqualified you from the Supreme Court and coined the term "Borked" to describe rich, powerful people who had to face the unfair prospect of being held accountable for their actions)

But Bork - along with the Chicago School economists - went on to completely revolutionize the world's conception of anti-monopoly enforcement, as neoliberal leaders all over the world (Thatcher, Mulroney, Pinochet, Kohl, etc) took up his theories and tuned them into policy.

Bork was a fringe figure, but he was preaching a gospel that stood to make the richest people on Earth *so much richer*, and they bankrolled the hell out of his theories.

For example, 40% of US federal judges have attended "continuing education" seminars at an annual lush Florida junket where they are initiated into the bizarre world of "consumer harm" theory.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/10/18/law-and-economics/

40 years later, monopolism has surged in every industry, from bottlecaps to pharma, from poultry to pro wrestling, from eyeglasses to emergency rooms, from oil to car parts, from music to publishing to movies to online services to telecoms.

All driven by mergers, all resulting in higher prices (so much for "consumer harm") all wildly distorting of public policy (the decision to let Boeing self-certify the 737 Max is repeated in thousands of ways across hundreds of industries), all brutal news for workers.

It's a disaster, but it's one that we have been powerless to avert or address for so long as "consumer harm" ruled antitrust enforcement.

Finally, that's changing.

In 2019, Dina Srinivasan published a landmark paper: "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook," which made *incredibly* clever arguments showing that FB's democratic harms were also consumer harms, meaning FB could be sued without first undoing Borkism.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

But the magic of this work was in revealing the poverty of the consumer harm standard: she laid out the innumerable ways in which FB is bad for society and showed how a sliver of these harms were technically illegal, raising the question: why isn't *all* this stuff illegal?

Today, Facebook was hit with *two* antitrust suits, one from the FTC and the other from almost every US state (including California!).

The complaints say that FB's acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were anticompetitive.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/9/22158483/facebook-antitrust-lawsuit-anti-competition-behavior-attorneys-general

Of course, they *were* anticompetitive. We know, because Zuck - who specializes in tripping over his own dick - sent out memos extolling the acquisitions' anticompetitive advantages, proving he hasn't learned a thing since he traded incriminating IMs about founding FB.

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

The complaints build on Srinivasan's work and they carry the same flavor: claiming "consumer harms" in the acquisitions, but winking and nodding toward a broader, more democracy-focused (and less consumer-focused) critique of monopoly.

It's a weird tightrope act: they want to win, so their argument is designed to balance on the single, fragile hair that borkism stretches across the chasm of monopoly enforcement, but they wanna make sure we see that big sturdy bridge of nonbork antitrust right there.

If there was any doubt, it was erased by the remedies demanded in the complaints. The prosecutors aren't asking for money damages - a fine is a price, after all - instead, they want FB to sell off the companies it bought for illegal purposes.

And they want FB to get regulatory approval for future acquisitions (though the states will let it buy companies for less than $10m without approval). These are not "consumer harm" remedies - they're "democracy" remedies, aimed at removing the company's source of power.

Facebook has stood up a website explaining why it's a cuddly mom-and-pop business that's being bullied by mean government meanies:

https://about.fb.com/building-to-compete/

The argument's pretty similar to the one laid out in a leaked memo in October:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#dnr

Basically: it would be really hard for us to unwind these illegal, anticompetitive mergers. Seriously, it would cost a bundle and take so much work!

This is an unserious argument, and it shows how badly FB has misgauged the mood.

All of FB's arguments are garbage, really. Take the line that ex-British-Deputy-PM-turned-FB-salesdroid Nick Clegg has been peddling: "STOP TRYING TO BREAK UP FACEBOOK OR THE CHINESE WILL WIN!"

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-nick-clegiden-must-unite-global-powers-to-shape-internet-amid-china-threat

The company's best arguments are about "market definition" - to claim that they don't have a monopoly because of all the competitors they face, provided you define FB's market broadly enough.

Like, "Here at Facebook, we are in the 'using computers' business. Now, just think of how much time you spend using a computer without interacting with FB! Your car has a computer and it's not on FB! How can you say we have a monopoly?!"

If you want to see someone making this argument as well as it can possibly be made and literally getting laughed at by a University of Chicago (!) audience, check out this debate from 2019:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Jp-GJ9LM0

Forcing FB to divest itself of Whatsapp and Instagram is a no-brainer. The company lied to secure those mergers, broke the promises it made to get permission to make them, and the penalty for that should be unwinding those mergers.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

And if FB fights this for a decade the way IBM fought its antitrust action, fine - IBM outspent the entire DoJ antitrust division every year for 12 years (Bork called it "antitrust's Vietnam"), but even though Big Blue wasn't broken up, they had their spirit broken.

It was fear of another tangle with antitrust regulators that caused IBM to sit idly by while Phoenix cloned the PC ROMs and created the PC clone industry, which became the US computing industry.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

And it was the same fear that caused IBM to hire an outside company to make the OS for its PCs, getting a couple of nerds named Paul Allen and Bill Gates to supply one for them.

IBM's 12 years of antitrust hell focused the attention of every tech giant of the age, letting them know what was on their horizon if they acted like IBM had. It created the US tech industry.

Today, VCs call the businesses that Big Tech dominates "the kill zones" because they know that monopolists have the market power to destroy any startup that tries to compete with them.

There is an entire - better, more pluralistic - tech industry that's been suppressed by Big Tech. If FB and Goog and Apple and the other tech giants spend the next decades throwing billions at the FTC and the states attorneys general, it will be money well-spent.

Because it will be money that these companies don't get to spend destroying the next wave of tech companies, co-ops, and platforms.

[convenientalias]

I'm greedy, I want all the fic meme questions for Time Travelling Juice (seonho/sungrok) and for Long Car Rides (jo yeong/shinjae)!!

Oho. Yes. I could definitely ramble about those. (Also this post is long, so I'm adding a cut.)

Time Travelling Juice, for those not in the know, is the Sung-rok/Seon-ho time travel fix it fic I wrote. It's like 40k so I can admit I put some effort into it.

☼: how i came up with the idea-- The first seed wasn't actually a time travel fic. You see, when Seon-ho said to Sung-rok in the burning house that he was going to be a ruler of darkness I kind of thought he meant they were going to become bandits together or something. So I was like "AU where they really do run off to become bandits together." But then I was like "an IC Seon-ho will never abandon politics until he's used up his very last chance bc he's too damn ambitious". Then I was like "the only Seon-ho who wants to just go chill with the ppl he loves is Seon-ho the week he dies. and Sung-rok doesn't even really get to see that Seon-ho. Tragic." So then I was like "AU where dead Seon-ho does a Peggy Sue but also Sung-rok comes along and they Run Away and Become Bandits."

The fix-it aspect of this fic and the political intrigue etc that make up the majority of the fic were kind of incidental lols. Bc even in a second life, Seon-ho isn't going to just drop things that easily.

I also thought Sung-rok deserved a chance to yell at Seon-ho for only surviving him by a couple days. ☄: what the writing process was like-- Pretty typical. I made an outline for like. A long oneshot or a twoshot or a threeshot or something. Then I realized there was too much plot for that when I'd written a whole chapter and nothing had happened except Sung-rok time traveling. So I went on, reoutlining and reoutlining as inevitably chapters didn't cover as much ground as planned, until eventually I reached the ending. ✄: something i deleted before the final draft-- I don't think I deleted anything I actually wrote, or at least nothing too major, but in my initial outline Seon-ho was going to kind of kidnap Yeon when he ran away (for her protection, of course) and also possibly kidnap Bang-seok (to prevent his future murder). The latter would have been hilarious bc of how much Sung-rok would have objected to it on grounds of practicality. Unfortunately Sung-rok was right so that plot point had to be abandoned. ♡: my favorite part-- uhhhh this bar scene of pining and time travel reflections:

“Do you know,” he said, “none of the workers here recognize me?”

“Hurt your pride?”

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean.”

Sung-rok did know what he meant. After Yeon’s death, after Seon-ho had come here a number of times, a couple of the servers had known his name, as had the proprietor. They’d known Sung-rok, too, as the man who came to drag him out. They hadn’t particularly liked either one of them less. Seon-ho was a paying customer but he worked for the government and could easily be trouble. Sung-rok clearly hated the place but he got Seon-ho out before Seon-ho could get too drunk and troublesome. In short, their attitude had been solidly neutral. But if it had been an ambivalent relationship, there had been a relationship nonetheless, now erased.

“You’ve never been here,” Sung-rok said, “and in the future, we won’t come here again.”

Seon-ho turned and smiled at him. “So resolute. Sung-rok, you know, it doesn’t matter. My body has never been here. It’s never tried opium either. But I still know the high, and I still know this place. Turning back time doesn’t make me clean.”

“If it doesn’t,” Sung-rok said, “then I will.” He met Seon-ho’s gaze evenly. “In this life, you’ll never run to drink or to smoke. You’ll never so much as want to. I will never allow you to be hurt again.” ☠: something i found challenging-- It was kind of hard to balance the different kinds of fix-it-ing I wanted to be doing. Like on the one hand, I wanted Seon-ho to cut all his political and familial ties. On the other hand, he had to settle some things with Yeon and Hwi. And on a third hand, I really just wanted to be writing a Sung-rok/Seon-ho slow burn but I'm honestly much more of a fast-burn writer. And I was kind of trying to at least touch on of each of these things (1. politics and plotting 2. Yeon and Hwi 3. Sung-rok romance) in each chapter, which was kind of a lot to handle. ☾: how i thought people would respond to the fic-- Wasn't expecting it to be super popular bc Sung-rok is a minor character. But ppl like time travel, so I still expected some readers :) ☽: how people *actually* responded-- It got a bit more attention than I expected, and I had a few regular commenters, so that was nice. ∞: something i wish i’d done differently-- Well now I kind of wish that Yeon HAD run off with Seon-ho and Sung-rok but I also think she and Hwi should be together and forcing Hwi and Sung-rok to hang out for a prolonged period of time would be a disaster so. I guess I don't really wish I'd done that.

★: something i’m proud to have accomplished-- I think this is still the only multi-chapter Sung-rok/Seon-ho fic on AO3, so that's cool. And possibly the fandom's only time travel fic? We have some reincarnation fic which is kind of similar but a Peggy Sue fix-it is a specific genre and I don't think there are any other MCTNA Peggy Sues.

Long Car Rides is a Jo Yeong/Kang Sin-jae fic where the two go on a trip to Haenam to investigate a lead on Lee Lim's organization. Shippy happenings ensue.

☼: how i came up with the idea-- This was an exchange fic for chiiyo86. They mentioned liking casefic. I can't remember how I got from there to "also there should be a road trip" but I'm sure there was some logic behind it. ☄: what the writing process was like-- Brainstorming based off chiiyo86's letter, writing an outline, writing the fic. Pretty simple. ✄: something i deleted before the final draft-- Again I don't think I deleted anything I actually wrote but due to circumstances I had to scrap forcing a "there was only one bed" situation. Great tragedy for me. ♡: my favorite part-- Yeong getting petty bc he wants Sin-jae to pay for their not-date. (If Sin-jae pays... maybe it's a date???)

“You’ll pay for Jo Eun-sup’s chicken but not for mine?” Yeong leaned back in his seat, smile turning to scowl. “Why not pay for it? It’s on sale.”

Sin-jae stared at him. “…are you actually that cheap?”

“Cheap?” Yeong’s scowl intensified. “I’ve been making and buying you coffee for months now.”

“Wait, that was supposed to be some sort of quid pro quo? I thought it was…” He’d really just thought it was Yeong being rich and, well, sort of friendly. But fuck if he was going to admit they were friends. “I thought you were trying to bribe me into coming back to the Kingdom of Corea. Like, look how good we can treat you in the Royal Guard, come join up kind of shit.” ☠: something i found challenging-- The casefic aspect. I kind of suck at casefic. How do ppl write mysteries? I don't know at all. ☾: how i thought people would respond to the fic-- I hoped a lot of ppl would like it! Yeong/Sin-jae is a bit niche but my last Yeong/Sin-jae fic had gotten a lot of comments. ☽: how people *actually* responded-- A bit less attention than I'd hoped for, but more comments/kudos accumulated over time. More comments/kudos than I get on average, certainly. ∞: something i wish i’d done differently-- Eh, no real regrets. Could be longer? That comes down to the casefic aspect again, though. To prolong it I would have needed better ideas for that element. ★: something i’m proud to have accomplished-- Hmm I don't think I did anything super interesting with this fic but I do think it's cute and kind of funny. So I'm satisfied.

Thanks for the ask! I didn't have the energy to answer all the questions last night lols. But I did enjoy rambling about my writing, as always.

[megwhiteviscom]

YCN; Art Fund

For this brief, I have been through many, many different ideas. I found this brief particularly hard to come up with an idea that fully encompasses every problem and challenge outlined in the brief. It was a good challenge for me however, as it forced me to appeal to an audience that I was not familiar with and did not know how to relate to, and therefore had to research extensively.

I begun by doing research into why people did not go to museums. I asked and used lots of surveys, and the two most common problems and issues I discovered by people who do not visit them were:

1. Museums are not interactive enough.

2. A museum is not thought of as somewhere to go in free time.

In order to tackle this brief, I needed to address these two problems. The first idea I came up with was an interactive app, called 'In three words'.

I was inspired by listening to friends recount their experiences in museums using one sentence. The idea behind this was that, in hearing just a sentence of their experience, I was really intrigued and inspired to go. Using the idea of word of mouth, this app would be similar to a social media app and users would post reviews and recounts of their experiences at museums and galleries. The problem with this first idea was that it was accidentally already aimed toward people who already attend museums and galleries; it would heavily rely on users that already go to inspire others to go, and the only people it would really inspire would be those who are already interested in galleries.

I revisited the brief on the YCN website and tried to really take it apart for my next idea. The main tagline of the brief given by YCN were the words “All museums together in a rich tapestry”. My vision for my next response to this brief was to bring this idea to life and come up with an idea that would bring all our museums together, whilst drawing the attention of people who wouldn't normally consider a museum for a day out. Each museum is a puzzle piece, and the pieces fit together to make a picture of history, culture and the arts in Britain.

My research for this project included projects such as the ‘Animals with Attitude’ project which took place across the Gold Coast of Australia. Artists competed for the chance to decorate giant koala sculptures which lined city streets, parks, buildings, and public open spaces, while reacquainting the community with the City's native wildlife. The purpose of the project was to “excite, inspire and encourage public exploration of the city via visiting each of the wonderfully decorated sculptures”.

A similar project I also included in my research was ‘Wallace and Gromit’s The Grand Appeal’, which took place in Bristol. The trail of artwork, named “Gromit Unleashed”, was a collaboration with the Bristol Children’s Hospital Charity and, obviously, Aardman Animations. The project “set out to capture the imagination of the public by adorning Bristol’s streets with 80 giant Gromit sculptures for 10 weeks”, and the pieces were later auctioned to raise money for the charity.

The last piece of research integral to the puzzle piece project is the the ‘Nike Air Max Graffiti Stores’ by AKQA São Paulo. The pieces were inspired when the local government ordered graffiti art to be painted over and erased, and one of the most interactive ad campaigns ever was born as a fight back. Previously erased graffiti characters in the city were repainted, wearing Nike trainers. How it worked was that you could only buy through unlocking the purchase with geolocation activation. “It was what Nike called a ‘phygital’ experience,” said Luiza Baffa, Managing Director at AKQA São Paulo.

The main idea for the puzzle piece project is this; to entice people who would have never previously thought of venturing into a museum using local and striking art, and a fun competition.

Firstly, local artists will be chosen by each museum participating to install a ‘puzzle piece’ into a museum in any way they like; be it a sculpture, painting, larger than life, small enough to have to search for. The ‘piece’ could be personal to them, personal to the location or personal to the museum/exhibit itself. This is a really integral and special part of the project; through Covid times not only have museums been suffering, but local and smaller creators and artists have too. Through this project both can help and uplift each other in the initial stage.

Secondly, using the puzzle piece project website on a smartphone, people who go into the museum and see the piece can scan it with their cameras, unlocking a competition entry with their phones (using geolocation activation, like the Nike Graffiti project, so that entries can’t be forged!). This competition will be very special as the project would be partnered with big brands such as Nandos, Pretty Little Thing, Resturant Choice, National Trust, etc, so there is a chance to win prizes chosen by the enterer that are unique and exciting to them. This is really important as this captures a very wide audience, and those who would not appreciate normally anything a museum could offer them. The brand endorsement is also important as it draws attention to the project and makes it widespread to the target audience who follow those brands.

The more puzzle pieces you scan and collect, the more entries you have into winning vouchers and prizes. This means it is beneficial to visit as many museums as possible, and every museum entry is the same; meaning you can enter by walking to your small local museum on your doorstep, which many might not realise is even there.

After having feedback on this idea I actually realised that, although I included the competition in partnership with the bigger brands, it still doesn't really account for those who would not ever consider visiting a museum as you would have to step into a museum first before being able to participate. I realised also that having something interactive, like an app, competition or game, doesn't directly appeal to the audience I am trying to communicate with.

After scrapping yet another idea, I took it straight back to the beginning again and tried to really strip it back to the very, very basics of trying to solve the problem. I came to the conclusion that an interactive app or competition does not capture the attention of those who would ignore an app or game already about a museum or gallery. I decided on designing an advert campaign - this would immediately capture the attention of people just passing by. Immediately I thought of the idea of collaborating and using the names and images of big brands, as this would also provide a selling point and make the idea of visiting a museum more 'mainstream' and well known. The final idea I came up with was to create billboard adverts comparing every day activities to visiting a museum, for example, 'entertain the kids for less than a happy meal'. I wanted the adverts to really instantly capture the attention of those who would never normally consider a museum as somewhere to go, and put it on their radar.

[sweetness47]

Ghosts of Memories

 Pairing Clint Barton x reader

A/N: this is for #MAMTWritingchallenge hosted by @marvelatmytrash (I haven’t decided whether or not to make it a series yet. I will see where this one goes.) feedback is always welcome, as is reblogging.

“You have no idea who I am do you?” paired with calming someone down after a nightmare.

Warnings: Fluff, maybe, language, violence, memory loss, lost love, nightmares, trauma…basically if you’re under 18, don’t read this!

Summary: You are a SHIELD agent, one of the top elite. Not only do you kick ass with weapons and without, you can also control elements ie. Earth, fire, wind, water, electrical current and light. You can’t remember anything past 6 years ago, due to a terrible accident, or so you’ve been told. Doctors say your memories may never come back. So what happens when they do start to return?

Six years ago:

“I’m just going to the store to get eggs and milk, then pick up a deluxe pizza on my way home.” Y/N shouted down the basement stairs to her hubby. Clint peeked around the corner and looked up at her with his best puppy dog eyes. She caved and sighed. “Alright, ham and pineapple, and a 6-pack of Bud Light, but only because I love you and because it’s your birthday.”

Clint ran up the stairs and wrapped Y/N in his arms, and giving her a short, intimate kiss, promising some fun later. She threw her arms around his neck, moaning into his kiss. “Thanks honey. You are really the best, you know that? You kick ass, save the world, and you’re mine.” he whispered in her ear.

She smiled, “Of course I know Clint, and I’m lucky to have you too.” She said, winking at him and kissing him on the nose. “Who else could I get to fix the toilet, help me save the world, and kill all the spiders for me. You’re indispensable.” Y/N giggled as Clint reached for her sides, especially that ticklish spot by her ribcage. She squealed and tried to tickle him back, but he backed her against the wall. “Ok, ok. I give.” He was laughing as hard as she was as they kissed then, both breathless and both exceedingly happy.

As she got in the car, she remembered his reaction that morning as she presented his birthday present, neatly wrapped with an iridescent bow and matching ribbon. As he opened it, and realization set in, a huge grin appeared on his face, and in an instant he was swinging her around, showering her with hugs and kisses, the framed ultrasound picture still in his hand. She was about ten weeks according to the tests, and everything looked exactly the way it should, no abnormalities. It was too soon to know the gender, but she didn’t care. They were pregnant.

She listened to radio as she drove, weather reports and warnings were filling every station she tuned in to. Then she hit a winter onslaught. The sky darkened, and in the blink of an eye a torrential downpour of ice and snow suddenly clouded her vision. As she tried to use her power to lessen the storm’s intensity, another car lost traction on the icy street, and rammed into Y/N’s SUV. The force of the impact caused her car to break through the barrier of the bridge, and plummet head first into the frigid waters below. Blackness and water were everywhere, Y/N tried to move the water and get the car out, but there was too much ice. Instead of moving the car out, the ice pushed it down to the bottom. Her cracked windshield began leaking, the cold beginning to seep in, and without any access to wind, she couldn’t get out.

Desperate to free herself from her seemingly inescapable prison, she used light to melt what remained of the window, bracing herself for the onslaught of arctic liquid that would come at her. It wasn’t enough, the pressure slammed into her, knocking breath from her lungs, not letting her get air before enveloping her. Y/N tried to focus as she swam out the window toward the surface. Finding a small opening still in the layer of ice that covered the river, she came up for air, trying to grab the top of the ice. She could hear people yelling, but was too cold to say anything. Then before she could make the water warmer and get herself to shore, she was pulled under by the current, her head striking the jagged edge of the ice, and her world went black.

Present day:

Y/N stared at the transfer notice in her hand. Why on earth, especially since she really liked her current posting in Ireland, would she all of a sudden need to go to New York. Fuck this shit. Her head began to pound, and she absently grabbed a bottle from her pocket, popped two white T-3’s and went back to cleaning out her room. There was some small part of her that wishes she was normal, with a normal job, maybe a normal family. But noooo, she was a government assassin, and an inhuman, which made her a valuable commodity, and apparently needed in New York. She looked out her window, thinking how much she was going to miss all the lush green countryside and the peaceful walks amongst that greenery.

New York, where the aliens had attacked some time before, and the Avengers initiative was enacted. She knew who Nick Fury was, especially since he was the first person she had seen when she’d awoken from her coma. They had met on numerous occasions since, and each time he had attempted to recruit her to help with the Avengers. But she had declined each time, not wanting to leave Europe. She wasn’t European by birth, but she’d grown to love it here since being re-assigned after her accident, the one where she lost a lot of her life, her memories gone, locked away in the deep recesses of her mind. Doctors said the memories could come back at some point, or they may never return. What was worse, SHIELD files had been erased of her life before. It was almost as if they were hiding something from her, either for mental health reasons, or simply because they liked her better now. And no one ‘knew’ anything, or so they said, even Fury, stating that maybe she shouldn’t keep digging. She had tried social media, phone records, DMV records, anything, and they all came up blank. It was as if she’d never existed before, and it nagged at her conscience.

She was soon packed and on board the small plane that would take her across the ocean. Agent Phil Coulson met her at the airstrip when she landed, to escort her to their base. “Welcome here Y/N.” He extended his hand and she took it happily. Phil was something of a legend amongst the elite agents, having been the force behind putting together the A-team as she liked to call them. And truth be told, she was anxious to meet them, having been a fan for a while now. Natasha Romanova was kind of a role model, even though the age difference was only 2 years, she was everything Y/N aspired to be. There were times she imagined sparing with Widow, just to see who could best who first, though she suspected for as good as she was, Natasha was better, having trained from a young age.

When they finally arrived at the ‘secret’ base, she was shown to her quarters, where she set to work unpacking and changing out of her travel clothes. Making sure her identification was properly displayed, she took herself on a self-guided tour of the facility. It was actually pretty nice digs, and pretty big, much bigger than the Irish base. Not watching in front of her, because she was busy looking around, she walked into a brick wall, which actually wasn’t a wall at all. Thor had been walking back from the cafeteria with some java for the road, when Y/N bumped into him, causing hot liquid to erupt from the cup, and spill all over both parties.

Y/N immediately apologized. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Are you hurt? Let me help.” And bent down to retrieve pieces of broken pottery that was the cup.

Thor smiled warmly. “No harm done. There is always more coffee to be had. Are you new here?” he asked, seeing your name badge.

Her cheeks turned a deep shade of crimson. “That obvious huh. Yeah, just transferred in from Ireland. I’m Y/N. You must be Thor.” She stated casually, gesturing at his armor and cape, and of course that infamous hammer. Mjolnir was the most fascinating weapon she’d ever seen. Y/N pointed to the beautiful but deadly item in his hand. “I know I can’t pick it up, but can I…well…touch it? Sorry, that sounded weird. It’s just a really awesome hammer.” She blushed more, realizing how stupid that sounded.

Thor chuckled. “Not at all my lady. By all means, feel free to gaze upon the power of the mighty Mjolnir. However I must warn you, it does tend to shock those who touch it, except me of course.”

Y/N raised a brow, now completely thrilled. She reached out her hand and ran it across the Asgardian symbols and craftmanship, and did indeed get a shock. But rather than sting, it seemed to blend into her skin and ignite her own power. Soon her body and Mjolnir were sharing electrical current, the hammer increasing the strength of Y/N’s energy output. Thor watched the interaction, completely taken aback with what was transpiring in front of him. Never in his lifetime had anyone been able to create that kind of power with his hammer except for himself. Now his curiosity was peaked, and he offered Y/N the weapon to hold. Frowning but not unwilling to try, she accepted the gift, and both were genuinely shocked when the hammer allowed her to hold it.

Some of the nearby agents had stopped to witness this event, including Fury and Coulson, and a wide range of expressions filled their faces, from shock, to amazement, to genuine wow. Y/N handed the hammer back to Thor when she saw the attention she had attracted. Excusing herself, she made her way over to Nick Fury and extended her hand. “Sir, good to see you again.” You said with respect, and perhaps a touch of affection. Fury was like the older brother, always protecting her and covering her ass when she dug into files she shouldn’t.

Fury accepted the gesture and returned the handshake. “Y/N. Haven’t changed a bit I see. Still manage to find new and interesting ways to make yourself known.”

Y/N smiled. “Yes sir! Now, on with the tour!” She gave a mock salute, earning a smirk from Coulson and a glare from Fury. He didn’t scold her, but she did make herself scarce, as the tour wasn’t quite done yet anyways.

She had been briefed on the plane with regards to the nature of her re-assignment. Power, they needed whatever they could get, and Y/N’s power was amongst the best in the entire SHIELD world. Talks of aliens and impending doom were everywhere. But the agency seemed especially worried. Whatever. Steady paychecks helped with the negotiations, landing herself a nice raise and bonus incentive. She could only hope that her ‘headaches’ and ‘nightmares’ didn’t interfere with her work. It wasn’t bad now, not like it was when she’d first awaken, but it still happened on occasion. It was like a never-ending cycle of torment, flashes of near death, a storm, drowning. But she could never move past those images. She would wake in cold sweats, shaking, screaming, only to realize she was alone and in no present danger. Only once did the flashbacks happen during a mission, luckily it was Fury and Hill that accompanied her for it, and neither were hurt in the process.

Fury did advise her to see a counsellor after, and she did. But the talks, while they did help some, were only that, talk. Nothing could be done to bring back the rest of the memories. It was just plain annoying sometimes. And times like this, when she was this pissed, were the times where she found exercise to be a good stress reliever. So she made her way around the base until she came across the training room, where she found Nat taking on Steve Rogers. Amused, she stood by the door and watched. Where Steve was fast and strong, Widow was small and agile, both were quick and equally deadly in their own right. Just as Y/N sat down, Steve caught movement out of the corner of his eye and Nat flipped him, taking him out for the count.

Steve got up as you walked over to apologize. “I’m sorry. I distracted you. Good match though.” You remarked.

Nat came over to join. “It wasn’t bad. Don’t apologize though. Distraction can’t be used as an excuse.” Then she looked over at Y/N. “Do you want to go a round?” she asked quizzically.

You raised a brow. “Sure. I’m Y/N. I just transferred in from Ireland.” You shook hands with Steve and with Nat.

“Nice to meet you Y/N.” Nat smiled. “Do you need to change?”

“Nope. I’m good.”

Nat motioned Y/N over to the mat. A few people stopped to watch, including Steve. Y/N put her hands up. “I won’t use my abilities. This will just be hand to hand.” She promised.

It was Nat’s turn to be surprised. “Abilities? You’re inhuman?” Y/N nodded. “That’s where I heard your name from.” She shrugged. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

Nat took her fight stance, as did Y/N. For what seemed like an eternity neither moved, studying the other, watching like a lion stalking prey. Then Nat lunged, her body diving to sweep Y/N’s feet from under her. But she dodged, anticipating Widow’s tactics, and made a beeline for her arm to disable her. She countered, throwing a kick at Y/N’s arm, which was deflected, and coming around with a backhand to attack. Ducking, Y/N landed a small punch in her midsection. Nat quickly brought her knee up, catching Y/N’s chin, causing her to bite her lip. Y/N recovered quick, bringing her leg sweeping low in a circle, and connected with Nat’s ankle. She fell back, but was back on her feet quickly.

Back and forth they went, minutes ticking by, people beginning to cheer and wager on who would actually win. Without using her power, she was pretty evenly matched with her idol. For a while it seemed as though no one would ever win. Then someone else stopped to watch the fight. Someone who went white upon seeing who his friend was fighting. He pushed through the crowds to get a front row seat, unable to believe what he was seeing. “Y/N?” he whispered.

Y/N looked up at the mention of her name, and Nat got the upper hand, setting Y/N up and taking her down with that head-scissor lock flip. Gasping for air, Y/N looked for the owner of the voice that had cost her the match. Then leaning over her, offering a hand up, was a handsome, blue-eyed man that looked like he’d seen a ghost. Only he was staring at her, not a ghost. He kept her hand in his, almost afraid to let go.

Y/N tried to remove her hand, but he held firm, as if she would disappear if he let go. “Y/N. What the hell? I…it’s been 6 years. Where have you been? Why didn’t you come back if you weren’t dead? I don’t understand…” his voice trailed off as he studied Y/N’s confused look. Realization dawned on him then, and he let her hand go. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

Y/N bit her lip, taking a step back as she shook her head. “No, sorry. Ummm…” Her head began jackhammering in her skull, and she ran, needing to get away from him, from everyone, just needing to be alone.

It was Nick who came knocking on her door. She let him in, only because she knew he wouldn’t go away. He motioned to sit, and Y/N nodded. The flashbacks began adding images, of a man with light brown hair, blue eyes. Holding her, making love to her, kissing her. Not even the T3’s were helping now. With tears streaming down her face, she looked into the eyes of the man she had learned to trust, the man who she was pretty sure had been partially lying to her all these years.

“I want the truth Nick, and I want it now.” Y/N wiped away a tear and glared at the man in front of her. “Who in the hell is that man and why did he act like he knew me?”

Nick sighed. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a USB and threw it on the bed beside her. She looked at it, then back at Nick. Anger slowly seeped through her usually calm façade, and he held his hands up as a peace offering. “These are the files you’ve been searching for all these years. Your life before the accident, your original posting, and everything else you tried to find. That man in the gym, Agent Barton, was your husband of 5 years, and your childhood friend, your high school sweetheart, and your first love. The day of your accident, it was his birthday. Your gift to him was an ultrasound picture of the 10-week-old fetus you carried. A violent storm swept into the area when you were driving to the store, your car was run off the road and into the icy river. You nearly drown. You went into a hyperthermia-induced coma. Your abilities are quite powerful, but ice doesn’t like you. You couldn’t save yourself fast enough. You lost the baby. The memory loss was from a concussion suffered when your head found the edge of a sharp jagged ice chunk. You know the rest of this past 6 years. Everything else is on there.” He gestured to the piece of tech, and got up to leave.

Y/N just stared at the wall, barely acknowledging Nick’s exit. For two hours she just sat there, trying to process everything she’d just heard. Her skull felt like a basketball pounding on pavement. She couldn’t keep her eyes open as the world started spinning. Her body hit the mattress, feeling like lead. Her mind flashed images, dark water, sleet, ice, cold water rushing at her, the current pulling her under the ice, her chest hurting from lack of oxygen, panic. She tried to scream but the water muffled the sound. She flailed, clawing at the ice, needing the air, needing to live. Suddenly arms were holding her, shaking her, a warm male voice was calling her name.

Clint had been walking slowly toward her room, trying to figure out how to talk to her. Then her screams broke through his thoughts and he tore down the hallway, opening her door in less than 3 seconds. She was choking, her breath ragged, like she couldn’t get any air. She was panicking. She was having a nightmare. He sat on the bed and gathered her into his arms, and held her, stroking her hair, whispering soothing words.

She opened her eyes to the man who was a stranger to her, but not a stranger. She nestled into his embrace and cried.

@legion1993 @marvelatmytrash

[theoverworld]

There Is No Such Thing As Area 51

There is no such thing as Area 51. Sorry! And the fact that it’s the golden egg of conspiracy theories worldwide is exactly what the US government wants. I’m writing this in a bit of a rush and I don’t have any of my thoughts organized, so I’m just going to break it down as follows:

Groom Lake / Paradise Ranch / Edwards AF Extension / Restricted Training Facility UX104

These are a few names for the place you know as Area 51. I don’t know much about its history, but essentially it was intended by the US Air Force to be a secret weapons-testing facility during the Cold War. It had a few on-site extensions; one of them was for developing experimental rocket and jet engines, one was for training contingents of troops for nuclear warfare and post-apocalyptic survival, etc. But much like the third Star Wars movie, the site and its purpose got out around the time of the Roswell incident, and a media frenzy popularized the base. The government tried at first to quell speculation about it, but then adopted another strategy: feed into the hype, and simply move the base a few dozen miles away.

Today, Groom Lake (Area 51) is a small but functional military airport and base. It’s got a bunch of bunkers mostly housing low-security servers, and some munitions tests are performed there. Staff are regularly moved in and out, mostly folks who are low on the totem pole and trying to climb up the ladder to the real facility. There are some very outdated nuclear fallout shelters that are still maintained and used for storage. The facility consumes an enormous amount of power, and everything possible is done to make it look like a well-guarded military base that is engaged in some huge, secret operations.

The employees really do fly there every day from Las Vegas on conspicuously inconspicuous jets marked as “JANET,” sometimes referred to as “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.” And they want you to notice. And wonder. They want you to wonder where those jets are going.

And they never want you to spend one second thinking about where they came from.

The real “Area 51”

This is the most exciting part, because as far as I can tell in my limited and clandestine researching, nobody has ever divulged the real secret before. It’s pretty highly guarded, and they straight up murder people who are stupid enough to share it. Murder isn’t even the right word. They erase people from existence. Sometimes entire families. That’s why the government freaks out when they find that one of their employees is terminal and has nothing left to lose. It’s why if you’re an employee there, you only see their doctors, so that they know about your health before you even know about it. They want you to die real quick of a sudden heart attack, so that you never have a moment to think about how you might do a public service and air their dirty laundry. And sometimes they induce those heart attacks when they determine you to be an HMT, or “health-motivated threat.”

But I didn’t need to see a doctor to know that I am suffering from the same malignant tumor that killed my father: glioblastoma multiforme. Every three months we get a health evaluation, and every six months we get a CAT scan. I simply didn’t report the very damning symptoms this past eval, and I’ll probably be gone before they scan me next. I really wanted to do this instead. Maybe just to be the first, I guess. The only other thing I’ve ever done with my life is fix computers.

The real secret military base is McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.

The history of the airport was always bound up in military involvement. Before and during WWII, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Air Force were building, storing, training, and doing all sorts of things there. Basically the government (and its corporate benefactors in the military-industrial complex, of course) acquired full ownership of the airport around the time Area 51/Groom Lake exploded in the public eye. It was a rush job, and a simple solution.

For all intents and purposes, McCarran is an airport. It moves civilians in and out and all over the world just like any other airport on earth, but its subterranean operations are really something else entirely.

First of all, you have to understand the structure of this military base.

Because it serves ostensibly as a business of public transportation, every single aspect of the base has dual functions. This is called “masking,” and it is deployed with remarkable effectiveness at McCarran. To name a few examples, the constant take-offs and landings of airplanes provides sound-camouflage for cutting-edge engine tests. The public completely ignores these sounds and dismiss them as the standard cacophony of airports. Some of the jets themselves are even equipped with technology under test, while others are used to transport hundreds of government employees dressed as vacationing civilians. At any given time in McCarran, up to six of the gates* (corrected by a reader; I initially said terminals) are filled with employees of the highest echelons of the US military and government. They sit around on their iPhones, dressed as college kids in their pajamas or weary businessmen. And they’re paid to look the part.

The entire base is heavily guarded by plainclothes soldiers. Military police, tactical specialists, counter-terrorism forces, and all kinds of soldiers scurry about the airport dressed like cops, airport security, and desk attendants. Their weapons are usually concealed sidearms; the real firepower is packed by the boys waiting around underground. Assault rifles and armor-piercing weaponry is stored around the airport’s public spaces in various places. It’s not hard to do, because nobody’s looking for it. And of course they hire a good number of civilians to work the TSA and other positions; this is called “mixing” and it’s necessary. What kind of airport would never post any job listings?

Have you ever watched the mechanics ducking in and out of the planes outside, or seen your luggage loaded onto the plane as you board? Well, all of that cargo transport activity acts as a cover for the mass movement of special forces, lab equipment, military hardware, exotic building materials, etc. It’s not hard to do. They drive one of those rigs by with all the luggage spilling out of it, and then you instinctively don’t question what’s on the other four rigs behind it. We even have mix-ups and spills occasionally, and nobody bats an eye.

You’re always exposed to some level of radiation while flying (and McCarran, by the way, is why the standard of safe exposure is set where it’s at), but excess radiation from weapons-testing is vented into the earth and out of the nearby desert. Having an airport to explain the radiation is an effective means of ridding the base of nosy folks with Geiger counters. But the true genius of this top-secret military installation is at the largest scale: the base was built under an airport because of the enormity of its power consumption. But it consumes a lot more power than a regular airport, so it was built in a city that consumes a tremendous amount of power – Las Vegas. So the base is hidden from view, even on the electric power grid. Area 51? Not so much. And that’s on purpose.

Inside the base

So if Area 51 is the distraction, what do we call the real one? It has many names, but it’s usually referred to as the “NEXUS.” That’s an acronym, but not many people know what it means. Not even me. Everything about the Nexus, from its operations to its structure, is compartmentalized. That means everything is need-to-know, and virtually nobody knows anything more than their own specific task. You could work in an office in the Nexus doing something like accounting, and never have one single clue what the woman next to you does. Or the guy down the hall. They say not even the President knows exactly what’s going on there, just a few generals and some dudes in the CIA.

The business culture here is insane. It’s like North Korea. Everyone is smiling, everyone is fine, and everyone is happy to say just a few phrases about what it is they do (when we’re allowed to socialize, which is not much). Every line is bugged, every room has a camera in it, and nobody knows who’s watching/listening or when. So that makes you think, nobody here is telling me the truth about anything. Not even the guy I share an office with. I wonder if any of us know why we are here. People you’ve worked with for a long time will suddenly get “reassigned” or have a “medical emergency” and you’ll never see them again. And nobody will remember that person, no matter how many people you ask.

I actually got hired to do some programming for the Navy when I was in my early 20’s out of college, and then got sent to Groom Lake to do server tests. They liked my IT/networking skills, so after a series of strange psychological tests and mountains of non-disclosure agreements and background searches, I got offered a job “at a facility near Las Vegas proper.” Here are a few stipulations of that job, by the way: It’s a $1,500,000 after-tax lump sum plus a $220,000/year stipend, housing/car/medical paid for – but psychological breakdowns, anxiety attacks, grave health conditions, and family issues void the contract. I also sign approximately 2 new non-disclosure agreements per week, most of which read “under penalty of death” somewhere. Employees aren’t allowed to leave the grounds for 5 years, and we all live underground. Term of service is 5 years, then 4 in debriefing, wherein we get to live in Vegas but report to another facility four days a week. We are discharged and observed for the rest of their lives. Our passports are permanently void; we cannot ever leave the continental US. I heard a statistic that 20% of former employees commit suicide. I don’t know if it’s true, but if it is, I bet it’s actually “suicide.”

The base is underground. It’s a network of large structures called hives, which form what is called the “Colony” or the “Nexus.” We make lots of Resident Evil jokes, by the way. Except unlike in that movie, the government doesn’t try to make its employees feel comfortable with fake forests and windows overlooking digital cityscapes. It is a dark, dreary, Soviet-style labyrinth of halls and bunkers, replete with all sorts of submarine-like features: water- and air-tight hatches, trap doors, reinforced blast doors, etc. The only exception are the office ‘buildings’ inside where chair-moisteners like me work. They look just like the office you work in. Except the men with guns standing guard 24-7 everywhere, looking over your shoulder. Oh, and the beautiful, almost surreal glow of the cutting-edge laboratories that pock the lower levels of each building. I’ve never been in them, but I’ve passed by a few times.

There are 4 hives to my knowledge (although I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more). I work in Hive 1. I run some of the servers with a few other guys on one particular floor (there are 16 floors in our hive), but we monitor and maintain all of the servers in Hive 1 so we move around a bit. I’ve gotten to skim some of the data that passes through, and from what I can tell, we’re the most boring hive. I’ve compiled the following list based on the things I’ve intercepted on our network and also from hearsay from other coworkers. The Nexus has multiple networks and they’re all decentralized, but there are some ways in which they communicate, and it is via those lines of communication that I am privy to some sensitive information. Here’s what I know:

Hive 1: finance, accounting, operations/organization divisions, troop training/housing, and some small-scale weapons testing.

Hive 2: Chemical engineering, some nano-tech research, and “advanced psychological fitness,” whatever that means, for elite military forces. Probably black-ops stuff and how to survive thirty years in solitary confinement at a Siberian prison. I also have reason to believe this is the hive where the bigwigs meet and live.

Hive 3: Upper levels = bioweapon and disease research/testing. If the government has zombies, they’ve got to be here. I’ve wanted to make so fucking many zombie jokes over the years, but I never know which of my coworkers is a rat. Lower levels = Advanced space-travel and space-warfare technologies. Particle engines and gravitational beams and the like (guessing, no real evidence). Science-fiction stuff. I once saw an email with all sorts of coded language, marked “A-B,” which is widely believed to refer to “astrobiology.” That’s alien life. Maybe it’s just some single-celled organisms or fossilized plants from some meteor, or maybe it’s something much more advanced. Whatever it is, there must be some reason it’s not on the upper levels with all the biologists.

Hive 4: Total informational blackout. There are encryptions and firewalls and network security features protecting this hive that I’ve never seen before, not even on top-secret Navy projects I worked in the past. I’m being very nonspecific in the language I use to describe our server clusters and networks because I don’t want to tell them exactly who I am. They’ll eventually find out anyway. But there’s a widely-whispered rumor about Hive 4: allegedly, the most terrifying thing in the world is in that structure on floor 15.

There are a few unusual things about Hive 4. First of all, none of the top brass has clearance to get in there. They access it remotely via video feed in their conference rooms, and materials are often transported from 4 to 2 for physical review. I don’t know why our bigwigs won’t go into 4, but maybe it’s because it’s too dangerous? There was one guy who worked in 4 a few years ago when I first started, and he caused the first Nexus-wide lockdown I’ve ever seen. He was being escorted through 1 thumpers (what we call the squads of black-booted soldiers that grant access to different hives), and he started shrieking about IDA’s. I didn’t hear his screams, but I heard the gunshot while I was eating lunch. They put a bullet in the back of his head before he could finish his sentence. IDA’s, by the way, are inter-dimensional anomalies. I have no further information on what those are.

Another thing I’ve read minimally about are “the twins.” I don’t know who or what these are, but they’re the “above-top-secret” gem of Hive 4. It is treasonous to even correspond about them on our secure networks unless you are cleared to do so, and only four employees are. I’ve only seen a few things about them. One was a medical record. No vitals, unusual vocalizations that manifest hallucinations and psychosis in nearby employees, and skin that produces violent nausea when touched. The document was basically speculation that the skin functions much like the Australian stinging tree or a jellyfish.

I read documents about people who worked with them as well. In 4, a woman was remanded to the psychological ward after being in the same room with them, and a soldier who stood outside of the laboratory where they are kept basically killed himself. Specifically, he peeked inside during a routine access, then began bashing his own brains out with the butt of a pistol while singing an Irish folksong. The woman who was remanded to psych was even weirder: during breakfast with her colleagues, she grabbed a fork, stood up, walked out of the mess hall, stripped all of her clothes off, blinded herself in both eyes, then somehow managed to make her way all the way up to Floor 1 where the access corridor to Hive 3 is located. How she managed to operate the dozens of keycard readers, passcode boxes, and retinal scanners is still under review. Last email regarding her was sent in 2012, about how she sits in the dark of solitary on Floor 11’s psych ward with a permanent and blissful grin on her face.

One of my colleagues whom I trust told me that he saw the twins once through hacked access to a video feed. He said they are woman-like, about twice as tall as a full-grown man, with unidentifiable black growths dangling from their heads (like hair but thicker), and they basically float a few inches off the ground and drag their toes lightly as they move. They’re utterly pale. He never saw the faces, but he claims that they appear to distort reality (or at least the video feed) in such a way that space looks bent around them. Perhaps these are the IDA’s that earlier dude was screaming about.

This is all I have for now. But hopefully the world knows the truth someday about what goes on down here. We are all basically prisoners. We have very limited and supervised access to the internet, so if you don’t hear from me again, assume they figured me out.

[angeltriestoblog]

The state of the world has once again taken a turn for the worse, and like all other similar instances, I turn to the comfort of the written word. With that being said, I wanted to put it out there that I have no intention of speaking over the narratives of those who need to be heard the most during this time. (I guess it pays that I don’t really have much of an audience here.) It’s just that I’ve always said that writing helps me compartmentalize my feelings and figure out my next course of action, and I guess this time is no different. I need to get my thoughts down somewhere I can see them instead of having them flit around aimlessly in the deep recesses of my brain.

—

These past few days, I have been made more and more aware of my smallness. Following the (first degree) murder of George Floyd, I’ve had access to all the information surrounding his death: who did it, how they did it and why, the implications of the act, and the several ways black people of color and their allies are standing in solidarity to counteract this brutal display of injustice. I’ve come across several petitions that hope to hold certain individuals accountable or raise issues to the national level, funding sites that aim to provide financial assistance to those most in need, and resources with the intent to educate that demand to be circulated on a wide scale. While these have technically showed me how I’m not entirely powerless, that I do in fact have the ability to enact some sort of change, it’s still difficult to stomach that the change I am capable of making is not as substantial as I want it to be.

I understand that what I’m feeling is a hassle, at worst—nothing compared to those on the streets, to the black people of color who have to fight for rights that are supposedly inherent to all human beings, who demand justice for all those who have fallen because of police brutality only to have these cries fall on deaf ears. I do not have to face various forms of oppression and microaggressions not just when this topic is trending, but throughout the course of my entire life. I do not carry this lingering fear that every step I take outside of my front door could be my last. What happens to their community is absolutely sickening but the thing is, we haven’t even seen all of it. Keeping tabs on social media, checking up with actual victims of structural racism often deludes us into thinking we know exactly what’s going on and how hard it must be, but access to all of this information doesn’t erase the fact that I am watching everything from afar.

So instead of sulking so much that my reaction could be misconstrued as an attempt to make the conversation about me, I tried to channel all this frustration in a more productive manner. I’ve reduced my Twitter time because my timeline has magically morphed into a raging cesspool spewing hatred and anger and is thus getting in the way of my journey towards being an effective ally and concerned citizen. I’m definitely not saying this because the people I follow only ever tweet about the resurfacing of the #BlackLivesMatter movement—hopefully, at this point of the post, I’ve already made it clear that I am far from apolitical. It’s just that my following can easily be classified into two groups: those who wear their ignorance on their sleeve and actively resist any form of education, and those who are so ruthlessly divisive that they scare away anyone who wishes to be educated. The world is already unforgiving enough as it is and I refuse to take part in that kind of culture. I have been trying to ease my way back in though by looking at tweets almost exclusively in the likes of some of my most politically aware friends (hi Pat, Ryen, and Alyanna—I hope you never have to see this) and checking the trends sporadically for any live updates.

Not only have I realized just how many hours in a day going on that stupid bird app actually eats up, but I’ve also had a lot of time to educate myself and reflect on my previous actions. I figured that if I’m so upset about how my impact on a global scale is terribly lacking, I can always start on a more personal level, which is probably just as revolutionary. I’ve watched movies, gone through articles, and even started on this book called White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, which debunks why exactly it’s so hard to talk about racism with white people. In this process, I’ve learned that everything I knew about the concept was surprisingly shallow and surface-level. Having first claimed my badge of wokeness when I was 15 (and engaged in some pretty performative activism at the time, if I do say so myself), I was shocked to find out that everything I collected from viral hot takes and recommended YouTube videos that claim to be an extensive guide to fundamental social movements possessed an unforgivable degree of inaccuracy.

For instance, all this time, I was under the impression that I could only be a racist if I called someone ugly because of their dark skin or curly hair, or said the n-word whenever I sang along to Caroline by Amine. As long as I didn’t do those things, or any other form of discrimination towards a marginalized group, I was in the clear and had nothing to worry about—I could get a star on the Good Noodle board. In reality, to quote Scott Woods, racism is “a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not”. It is not something we actively choose to participate in, but something that we are born into—literally who would have thought!

Because racism has been demonized by everyone with working mental faculties (as it should be), it’s hard to own up to the fact that at some point, we have subconsciously picked up racist behaviors or exhibited racist tendencies at some point in our lives. Every time someone tries to point out where we went wrong in the hopes of giving constructive criticism, we have our defenses up, a list of receipts of all the times we tweeted the #BLM hashtag prepared to show that we are, in fact, not the villain that we were made out to be. This is a counterproductive exercise that helps nobody. If we truly want to step up and show our support for the movement and those working to make it happen, we must first be open to the possibility that we have done wrong and we have so much more to learn.

As a kid, my beauty standards were very Eurocentric, like most Filipinos: according to a study conducted by me based on years of personal observations and experience, we are the country most obsessed with whitening soap and hair rebonding treatments. I called my friends the n-word as a term of endearment and previously used AAVE (African American Vernacular English) in my tweets to give them a little bit of personality. I chose not to watch chick flicks that revolved around interracial couples because I felt that the difference in their skin color got in the way of their chemistry. One time, when my mom and I were walking to WalMart during a vacation to the States, we came across a stocky black man and my initial reaction was to hold my purse closer to my body. I remain deeply ashamed of these beliefs I held, which were admittedly born out of ignorance, and I acknowledge my responsibility to continue to eradicate any traces of these I may still have.

I am also doing my best to extend the same compassion I have for black people of color during these trying times towards my own countrymen. We’ve struggled enough during this pandemic thanks to the sorry state of our healthcare system, and now the government seems hell-bent on speeding up the passage of the anti-terrorism bill. This threatens to impede our freedom of speech and help government officials get away with incompetence and even abuse of authority. If anyone gets a hold of this blog post and chooses to interpret this paragraph as an open threat to the President, this could be the last time you could ever hear from me, and this frightens me beyond words.

I know this isn’t a new contribution to the discussion but here are some links to helpful masterposts containing a variety of resources should you wish to donate, learn, or sign. This goes for both issues in our motherland and what is supposedly the land of the free. Let’s stay vigilant, let’s stay compassionate. Wishing you all the love and light the world still has left to offer.

[itsfinancethings]

If your aim is to tell a nuanced story about heroism, historical trauma and revenge, it’s probably best to keep Nazis—by which I mean the literal perpetrators of the Holocaust—out of it. From a thematic perspective, it’s very hard to win with these guys. Depict them as brilliant, bloodless killing machines, and you’ll burnish their terrifying mythology; choose instead to paint them as dimwitted, incompetent henchmen, and you’re liable to trivialize the suffering and deaths of millions. A few beloved films that take aim at Nazis have managed to avoid these traps by sacrificing emotional realism in favor of off-the-wall satire (The Producers) or sheer catharsis (Inglourious Basterds). Unfortunately, Amazon’s Hunters tries to juggle all three modes, for the duration of a 10-episode TV series, without anything approaching Mel Brooks’ wit or Quentin Tarantino’s technical flair.

Created by relative newcomer David Weil, Hunters will arrive on Prime Video on Friday, Feb. 21 with the imprimatur of executive producer Jordan Peele. It’s set in 1977—that culturally dense year remembered for Star Wars, punk, disco and the Son of Sam murders—and our hero is a young Jewish Brooklynite, Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman of Percy Jackson fame). Though he’d ideally be in college putting his prodigious smarts to use, Jonah is living at home, working in a comic store and moonlighting as the city’s most inept weed dealer in order to support the Holocaust-survivor grandma (Jeannie Berlin) who raised him. But there’s more to this doting matriarch than Jonah knows, until tragedy strikes and he meets her friend Meyer Offerman (the great Al Pacino, overdoing the stock old-Jewish-guy mannerisms a bit) and gets drawn into a squad of vigilantes assassinating members of a vast network of Nazis living under assumed names in the U.S.

Elsewhere in a 90-minute premiere that feels longer, a suburban-Maryland barbecue ends in a cartoonish burst of gunfire. Homegrown Nazi psycho Travis Leich (Greg Austin) calmly delivers wicked white-supremacist monologues in between calmly committing horrific acts of violence. And Millie Malone (Grey’s Anatomy alum Jerrika Hinton), a black woman struggling to earn respect in the overwhelmingly white, male FBI, is sent to Florida to investigate the murder of an elderly, female NASA scientist. The network of undercover Nazis starts to take shape, as does their evil plot to bring about a Fourth Reich on American soil.

Christopher Saunders/Amazon

Inspired in part by real mid-20th-century Nazi hunters and the shameful U.S. government initiative Operation Paperclip, Hunters shares with Peele’s movies an effort to use fun, propulsive genre storytelling as a vehicle for serious social commentary. Horror, for Peele, is a way of heightening our visceral responses to racism, exploitation, inequality. But Weil’s genre is action comedy, and the comedy in Hunters falls pretty flat. Dick jokes and scatological gags—some harrowingly visual—are constant. I’m not scandalized by this kind of humor, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it were confined to Jonah and his teen pals (one of whom is called “Bootyhole”). Instead, we hear it from good guys, bad guys, young, old and everyone in between.

These aren’t the only characterizations that feel shallow or underdeveloped. Millie so closely resembles the righteous, earnest detective characters in network procedurals that her scenes almost seem spliced in from a different show. Opting to portray the Nazis as a hierarchy of cartoon villains, Weil makes them so uniformly crafty and fearsome that you can imagine contemporary neo-Nazis watching Hunters and feeling pretty good about their forebears. More disappointing are the Jewish characters, whose personalities are largely accumulations of benign stereotypes, religious factoids and firsthand or inherited trauma. Gefilte fish comes up so often, you’d think every Jew on the planet devoured those gelatinous gray discs daily. Though I wasn’t alive, much less in New York, in 1977, I did grow up Jewish among Jews of Meyer’s and Jonah’s generations, and for me these depictions (like gefilte fish) didn’t pass the smell test.

It seems obvious that caricatures of Jews, even affectionate ones, don’t make a very effective case against antisemitism. But the show also makes subtler, equally unfortunate choices in the way it represents racism. When it’s convenient to the story, anti-Jewish prejudice appears to eclipse or even erase the violence and discrimination nonwhite characters face—such as when Jonah’s black female love interest is dating a belligerent white guy who calls Jonah a “kike.”

Amazon Studios, Prime Video—Christopher SaundersJerrika Hinton in ‘Hunters’

The show’s biggest problem is the garbled messages it sends about violence and revenge. Like Tarantino, Weil palpably savors the suffering of Nazis and wants viewers to do the same. (There’s one particularly gross torture scene whose pleasures Amazon has cautioned me against “spoiling” with a description here.) And I’m not above admitting that I frequently felt a thrilling sense of poetic justice at the sight of mass murderers dying the same gruesome deaths they inflicted on millions of innocent victims. Yet Hunters also shows us those tragic deaths—both in flashbacks to the concentration camps and through the resurgent Reich’s crimes in its new home. Often they’re rendered glibly enough to be indistinguishable from the righteous kills. In a scene set amid the ironic brightness of a bowling alley, Travis, a near-omniscient villain of Coen Brothers proportions, smashes a guy’s teeth in with a bowling ball.

To his credit, Weil’s intention isn’t really to conflate genocide with vengeance for same. In interviews, he talks about growing up with a grandmother who survived the Holocaust and how as a kid her stories sounded to him like “the stuff of comic books and superheroes,” tales of “great good but grand evil.” He’s said that he hopes Hunters can provide “catharsis” and “wish fulfillment.” But he’s also observed that it “becomes this story that lives not in black and white, but in the gray and that murky morality,” posing the question: “If we hunt these monsters, do we risk becoming them ourselves?” Some of that ambivalence comes through in Jonah’s queasiness about becoming a killer, which inspires an intriguing but all-too-brief consideration of whether it’s possible to be a superhero—to be a good person who can stomach massacring bad people—if you don’t harbor considerable darkness of your own. But mostly, the show’s choice to make all forms of violence entertaining overshadows that nuance. At worst, Hunters can lose its antifascist chutzpah and start to come across as equal-opportunity sadistic.

It’s an unfortunate—perhaps the single most unfortunate—fact of life in 2020 that Nazis have recently goose-stepped their way into mainstream American politics, and thus that stories about killing them have begun to resonate as subversive for the first time in our history. That shouldn’t render them off-limits for the entertainment industry. (Just last year, HBO’s comic-book adaptation Watchmen used the superhero genre to launch a withering critique of white supremacy and its insidious, systemic influence in the U.S.) But it does mean that storytellers across media need to be cognizant of the moral and political undertones of their portrayals to an extent that Weil and co-showrunner Nikki Toscano don’t seem to have been. I trust that they as well as Peele, a busy filmmaker whose level of creative input here is unclear, have their hearts in the right place. It’s just a shame that there seems to be so much distance between what Hunters wants to say and what it actually expresses.

[baw74fanfic]

Chapter 5 - Planning the Future

Jingyu leaned over to grab his phone, and sat up quickly. It was already past 11am. "Hey, it's past 11 and we haven't heard from Li Hao or Zheng. We should get up, get some food, and find out what's going on."

Weizhou and Jingyu climbed out of bed and hopped in the shower. Their bathroom had what could be called a shower room, as opposed to a stall. With three shower heads dumping hot water out, the room could turn into a steam room pretty quickly. They showered quickly and got ready. In the kitchenette, breakfast goods had been laid out, awaiting them.

"Hey Li Hao, our two lovebirds have emerged!" Zheng Ge yelled out. From the living area around the corner, Li Hao yelled back, "It's about time!"

Jingyu playfully sneered at Zheng as he grabbed a steamed pork bun and a cup of tea. Zhou decided to tackle the intricately designed automatic coffee machine.

"Why didn't you call or message me?" Jingyu asked Zheng.

"We're just giving you a hard time. We felt it was better to let you two have as much downtime as possible, given the coming days.", he replied.

"Well even though Zhou's feeling better, I don't want to push it too much."

"Don't I have a say in what I can or cannot do, you big oaf?" Weizhou joined in.

Jingyu's glance told him enough, while Li Hao walked in.

Weizhou demurred, "But let's keep things on the lighter side, if possible, while I'm recuperating." he instructed the two managers.

Li Hao smiled, "It'll be fine. I've already put out the word that you are sick, and that's the reason for the sudden cancellations in your schedule, Weizhou. It buys us time, and frankly, it's not spinning anything."

Jingyu went straight to the point, "Zheng Ge, I know when we renegotiated my contract with you, I had a clause put in that allowed you to break the contract risk-free, should you feel your reputation and or business suffer from dealing with me. I don't know if you remember, so I wanted to remind you that is still an option."

"Of course I remember, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that the path I want to take with this, is to be open about it. And I'm fully aware what that may mean for my future career. And Weizhou's, for that matter." Jingyu worriedly glanced at Zhou.

"And I'm with him." Weizhou added.

The two managers exchanged glances, and Zheng Ge replied, "After your phone call to each other the other morning, Li Hao and I both understood where you two stand." Zheng then looks at Jingyu, "And I understand what you are saying. But I'm not leaving."

Jingyu smiled. He thought Zheng Ge would say as much, he felt like he needed to press the issue anyway.

Li Hao continued, "That's why we decided to circle the wagons here, together. Zheng and I are not new to this world, and understand what the path ahead may bring. We're here for you two."

"Thank you." Weizhou replied solemnly. Jingyu nodded in agreement. "So, what's next?"

Li Hao answered, "It all depends on how you want to take this. The way I, well, we see it, is you can address the issue publicly and fade to a private life together.... Or address the issue publicly and become a lightning rod on the issue, working publicly to change the system."

"And whichever path you choose, we'll support you 100%." added Zheng Ge.

"While it may seem like a short period of time, we think you should at least begin to publicly address the issue tomorrow. You don't have to decide on the final path forward, but you have some hard thinking to do. So while Zheng and I take today to make some visits around the city, you two will have a meeting with the Digital Crimes Unit Chief here at 3pm, and then the rest of the day......and night, to talk." Li Hao gave a grave smile to them.

And with that, Zheng and Li Hao prepared to leave. "We should be back around 10pm. we'll be in touch. And please, don't leave the hotel." The door shut and a quiet blanket descended over a room that had been busy just a moment ago.

Jingyu was sitting on a couch, and across from him, Weizhou plopped down on a matching couch facing him. Their eyes met, and each let out a long sigh.

"To be honest, the idea of retiring early and living a private life is very appealing to me." Jingyu broke the silence. "But I also know that would be like death to you." He forced a smile.

Weizhou winced. "Yes, but I want you to be happy."

"As long as I'm with you, I am. So it sounds like we're taking the approach of becoming political, eh?" Jingyu replied.

Weizhou didn't like that idea, either. He was a musician, a singer, an artist. But he was also aware that there's a higher calling here.

"As long as there are people buying my music, and as long as there are people hiring you for roles, we're ok. Yes, a controversy will always be hanging around our necks, but I'm ok with that." Weizhou was rambling...

"Our experience with 'Addicted' has shown us it isn't that easy, babe. The bans hang over us like a dark cloud. We're a risk, now." Jingyu frankly spoke.

The two faded into a long moment of silence. After 15 minutes, Jingyu perked up.

"There's a third option. We leave China." he threw the idea out.

Weizhou didn't immediately discount the idea. In fact, he rather liked it. "Where would we go? Japan? Korea? Thailand?"

"Or the United States." Jingyu replied.

Weizhou smirked. That would be a slap in the face of the China government. He could see it now, headlines around the world, "Two rising young stars from China seek political asylum in the U.S.". Another, "China's treatment of two famous homosexuals spurs human rights questions."

"What if we don't decide, and make decisions as they arise?" Weizhou asked hopefully.

"That is certainly an option, as well. We've already structured our finances in a way that makes it possible to access if we had to leave the country." Jingyu agreed. The new breed of up and coming stars in China all followed a similar route for their newfound wealth.

Weizhou continued, "I think there's too much unknown right now to make an informed decision. We can go the route of being a catalyst for change here in China, but should our prospects dry up here, we always have the ability to leave for a better life internationally."

Weizhou looked over to Jingyu, who was deep in thought. The way Jingyu's eyebrows knitted together in that quintessential Jingyu manner... "What are you thinking about, babe?" he asked.

Jingyu stirred from his thoughts and look at Weizhou and smiled. "I'm remembering the first time we met. How I walked into Chai's office, and saw you, and thinking how strong your handshake was. Never in a million years did I think I would fall in love with a guy, yet here we are."

Weizhou smiled, and fondly remembered the moment. "I remember doing research on you prior to our meeting. Chai and I were concerned at your lack of acting training. Did you know after our meeting, and reading the first few lines together, what I said to Chai after you left?" Jingyu shook his head no.

"As soon as the door shut behind you, I turned to Chai and told her we just found our Gu Hai."

"You did?!" a surprised Jingyu replied. "I thought Chai made that decision!"

"Well she ultimately made that call, but I gave her the idea, but she readily agreed." Weizhou admitted.

The two sat in silence as they remembered that first moment together. The start of their journey that has led to this point.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The doorbell to the suites rang shortly after 3pm. Jingyu answered and let the Chief from the Digital Crimes Unit inside, along with his two assistants. Weizhou had been on the phone with his family in the bedroom, and emerged to meet the visitors.

After initial pleasantries were exchanged, the officer began to brief the two on the progression of the case.

"As you two are aware, your private texts were stolen from Xu Weizhou's phone and posted online. From that posting we were able to trace the IP to Hong Kong. From there, it's a dead end. I won't go into highly technical details, but the point of presence of the last trace was a VPN-randomizer service. They covered their trail very well, which gives us some clues. Now, I need from both of you a list of individuals, companies, or entities who may hold ill-will towards you. We'll cross-check your lists, and try to narrow down where we have to investigate."

"Of course, we can provide you with those lists before you leave." Jingyu answered, Weizhou nodding in agreement. Weizhou then asked, "What's a VPN-... whatever you called it?"

"VPN-randomizer," the officer answered. "It stands for Virtual Private Network, it's a way for someone to hide their origination. You could think of it as erasing your footprints that you're leaving when you walk."

The officer continued. "Here's my business card with direct line. Call immediately if you hear from someone suspicious. We ask that you limit who gets your new phone numbers. I've given your agents a run-down of what we've discussed, as well as how much you can say publicly."

Weizhou had to ask, "Sir, can you tell us if there are any suspects that hold a special interest, so far?"

The officer pursed his lips and a grim face appeared. "I hate to admit this, but I'm learning more from what isn't there, then from what is. Meaning, whoever perpetrated this act is well-connected, and smart. I'm not ruling out that it was government-backed."

This news hit both the boys like a ton of bricks. Even though they both were aware of how high the stakes were, this was a stark reminder.

With that, the officer and assistants handed them pads of paper and pens to being making their lists. Both were very short, and mostly contained examples of those bad individuals that had tried to slander their reputations once they became more well-known. After the visitors took their leave, it was 5pm.

"Are you hungry?" Jingyu asked.

"Not really, how about you?"

"Same."

Weizhou stood up and walked over to the large windows overlooking the city.

"My parents are upset. My father had obscenities hurled at him in public today. They're worried for me. For us." Weizhou had been open about he and Jingyu to his family. They had even hosted Jingyu a couple of times.

Jingyu winced. It hurt him that the fallout was negatively affecting others. He could feel his anger welling up. He had learned to control it, but it was there still. But the sadness about the situation was there, as well.

After a few minutes of silence... he tried to give another out:

"It's not too late. You can say no, and this can all," *ahem*, "be a short memory in a long and successful career." His voice cracked in the middle, betraying his emotional state.

From behind, Jingyu saw Weizhou's head drop down. It then shook side to side, and he turned around and walked over to Jingyu. Kneeling before him on the couch, Weizhou looked up into the man's eyes; his own eyes stern, but still showing a softness towards his love. He grabbed Jingyu's hands, and through gritted teeth said,

"When are you going to learn, you big fool, that I love you more than anyone or anything in this world. Including myself. And I want to spend my life with you. Until we grow old, and die. Forever. Do you understand?"

Jingyu swallowed, and nodded. He then felt those emotions he's been trying to swallow, start to come up. This has happened before, like at the Bangkok Fan Meeting. In front of thousands in the packed auditorium. He hated that he can't control it, he had never been like that before. But since meeting his Zhou Zhou, his private heart was out in the open on his sleeve. Laid bare for all to see. And here it was, happening again. First his eyes welled up, then the pressure behind his face grew, and the flush rose up his neck. He smiled, but really it was a smile to cover the emotion that is escaping. Weizhou's eyes, witnessing this, softened more and he clucked his tongue. He pulled Jingyu in for a hug. Jingyu, thankful to not have to show his face to Weizhou like this, squeezed him close, the tears falling large and heavy onto Weizhou's shoulder and back. He sniffled, and sighed loudly.

"Look at what you fucking do to me."

Weizhou laughed, and squeezed Jingyu back.

[iolitemoth]

#one piece#carrying out the will of D is carrying out the kingdoms goal or something similar?#because it's an interesting observation how most of the characters with D are pirates#garp and saul were marines but saul defected because he knew what was going on wasnt right#garp is a weirdo though#but i dont think he likes what's going on with the celestials either seeing that he's still a vice admiral instead of stepping up#im sure he couldve easily been an admiral long ago#but being one means being bound to the celestials#he probably gets more freedom as a vice#but i just think it's interesting that most D's are against the government#and those that are they government tries pretty hard to erase that initial#changing gol d to gold and getting mad when the publishers didnt remove it from luffy's poster#despite what seemed like several requests to do so#they're afraid of the public seeing the initial D despite the public not knowing squat about it (or seemingly care)#and if nika was originally from this kingdom it's just like#doflamingo's words during marineford yknow?#whoever wins this battle becomes justice?#hence why most D's are pirates or against the government?#i wonder what the kingdoms name was#and if it started with a D

ooooh! i’m not really caught up with the series, but this is a really cool idea! given what we know about the world and the government (+ the series as a whole) this feels like it could definitely be a thing

What if similar to the celestial dragons being the descendants of the original 20 kings, those who carry the initial D are the descendants of the lost kingdom? And that's why the celestials are scared of them?

[itsfinancethings]

February 17, 2020 at 12:01AM

If your aim is to tell a nuanced story about heroism, historical trauma and revenge, it’s probably best to keep Nazis—by which I mean the literal perpetrators of the Holocaust—out of it. From a thematic perspective, it’s very hard to win with these guys. Depict them as brilliant, bloodless killing machines, and you’ll burnish their terrifying mythology; choose instead to paint them as dimwitted, incompetent henchmen, and you’re liable to trivialize the suffering and deaths of millions. A few beloved films that take aim at Nazis have managed to avoid these traps by sacrificing emotional realism in favor of off-the-wall satire (The Producers) or sheer catharsis (Inglourious Basterds). Unfortunately, Amazon’s Hunters tries to juggle all three modes, for the duration of a 10-episode TV series, without anything approaching Mel Brooks’ wit or Quentin Tarantino’s technical flair.

Created by relative newcomer David Weil, Hunters will arrive on Prime Video on Friday, Feb. 21 with the imprimatur of executive producer Jordan Peele. It’s set in 1977—that culturally dense year remembered for Star Wars, punk, disco and the Son of Sam murders—and our hero is a young Jewish Brooklynite, Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman of Percy Jackson fame). Though he’d ideally be in college putting his prodigious smarts to use, Jonah is living at home, working in a comic store and moonlighting as the city’s most inept weed dealer in order to support the Holocaust-survivor grandma (Jeannie Berlin) who raised him. But there’s more to this doting matriarch than Jonah knows, until tragedy strikes and he meets her friend Meyer Offerman (the great Al Pacino, overdoing the stock old-Jewish-guy mannerisms a bit) and gets drawn into a squad of vigilantes assassinating members of a vast network of Nazis living under assumed names in the U.S.

Elsewhere in a 90-minute premiere that feels longer, a suburban-Maryland barbecue ends in a cartoonish burst of gunfire. Homegrown Nazi psycho Travis Leich (Greg Austin) calmly delivers wicked white-supremacist monologues in between calmly committing horrific acts of violence. And Millie Malone (Grey’s Anatomy alum Jerrika Hinton), a black woman struggling to earn respect in the overwhelmingly white, male FBI, is sent to Florida to investigate the murder of an elderly, female NASA scientist. The network of undercover Nazis starts to take shape, as does their evil plot to bring about a Fourth Reich on American soil.

Christopher Saunders/Amazon

Inspired in part by real mid-20th-century Nazi hunters and the shameful U.S. government initiative Operation Paperclip, Hunters shares with Peele’s movies an effort to use fun, propulsive genre storytelling as a vehicle for serious social commentary. Horror, for Peele, is a way of heightening our visceral responses to racism, exploitation, inequality. But Weil’s genre is action comedy, and the comedy in Hunters falls pretty flat. Dick jokes and scatological gags—some harrowingly visual—are constant. I’m not scandalized by this kind of humor, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it were confined to Jonah and his teen pals (one of whom is called “Bootyhole”). Instead, we hear it from good guys, bad guys, young, old and everyone in between.

These aren’t the only characterizations that feel shallow or underdeveloped. Millie so closely resembles the righteous, earnest detective characters in network procedurals that her scenes almost seem spliced in from a different show. Opting to portray the Nazis as a hierarchy of cartoon villains, Weil makes them so uniformly crafty and fearsome that you can imagine contemporary neo-Nazis watching Hunters and feeling pretty good about their forebears. More disappointing are the Jewish characters, whose personalities are largely accumulations of benign stereotypes, religious factoids and firsthand or inherited trauma. Gefilte fish comes up so often, you’d think every Jew on the planet devoured those gelatinous gray discs daily. Though I wasn’t alive, much less in New York, in 1977, I did grow up Jewish among Jews of Meyer’s and Jonah’s generations, and for me these depictions (like gefilte fish) didn’t pass the smell test.

It seems obvious that caricatures of Jews, even affectionate ones, don’t make a very effective case against antisemitism. But the show also makes subtler, equally unfortunate choices in the way it represents racism. When it’s convenient to the story, anti-Jewish prejudice appears to eclipse or even erase the violence and discrimination nonwhite characters face—such as when Jonah’s black female love interest is dating a belligerent white guy who calls Jonah a “kike.”

Amazon Studios, Prime Video—Christopher SaundersJerrika Hinton in ‘Hunters’

The show’s biggest problem is the garbled messages it sends about violence and revenge. Like Tarantino, Weil palpably savors the suffering of Nazis and wants viewers to do the same. (There’s one particularly gross torture scene whose pleasures Amazon has cautioned me against “spoiling” with a description here.) And I’m not above admitting that I frequently felt a thrilling sense of poetic justice at the sight of mass murderers dying the same gruesome deaths they inflicted on millions of innocent victims. Yet Hunters also shows us those tragic deaths—both in flashbacks to the concentration camps and through the resurgent Reich’s crimes in its new home. Often they’re rendered glibly enough to be indistinguishable from the righteous kills. In a scene set amid the ironic brightness of a bowling alley, Travis, a near-omniscient villain of Coen Brothers proportions, smashes a guy’s teeth in with a bowling ball.

To his credit, Weil’s intention isn’t really to conflate genocide with vengeance for same. In interviews, he talks about growing up with a grandmother who survived the Holocaust and how as a kid her stories sounded to him like “the stuff of comic books and superheroes,” tales of “great good but grand evil.” He’s said that he hopes Hunters can provide “catharsis” and “wish fulfillment.” But he’s also observed that it “becomes this story that lives not in black and white, but in the gray and that murky morality,” posing the question: “If we hunt these monsters, do we risk becoming them ourselves?” Some of that ambivalence comes through in Jonah’s queasiness about becoming a killer, which inspires an intriguing but all-too-brief consideration of whether it’s possible to be a superhero—to be a good person who can stomach massacring bad people—if you don’t harbor considerable darkness of your own. But mostly, the show’s choice to make all forms of violence entertaining overshadows that nuance. At worst, Hunters can lose its antifascist chutzpah and start to come across as equal-opportunity sadistic.

It’s an unfortunate—perhaps the single most unfortunate—fact of life in 2020 that Nazis have recently goose-stepped their way into mainstream American politics, and thus that stories about killing them have begun to resonate as subversive for the first time in our history. That shouldn’t render them off-limits for the entertainment industry. (Just last year, HBO’s comic-book adaptation Watchmen used the superhero genre to launch a withering critique of white supremacy and its insidious, systemic influence in the U.S.) But it does mean that storytellers across media need to be cognizant of the moral and political undertones of their portrayals to an extent that Weil and co-showrunner Nikki Toscano don’t seem to have been. I trust that they as well as Peele, a busy filmmaker whose level of creative input here is unclear, have their hearts in the right place. It’s just a shame that there seems to be so much distance between what Hunters wants to say and what it actually expresses.