#infolink

[technowunderkind]

Me getting out my Vaclav jacket to add patches to it, hearing a few of the studs pop off and bounce onto the random electronic parts scattered on my floor, nearly knocking over my neglected bass guitar and ripping a poster while looking for them: method acting

[ghostyolive]

people who haven't played deus ex mankind divided don't even know how incredibly silly vaclav koller's emails are

"OH DEAR. I THINK I HEAR THEM" will permanently be in my brain. sir why tf would you keep typing. are you insane <3

[fedorasaurus]

I should do one of Foghorn Leghorn yelling at JC for getting captured by MJ12 but I can't think of how to write his funny rants lmao.

[hc-svnt-dracones95]

Her.

And then she doesn't sleep at night.

Which oc listens to horror podcasts?

[tertiaryunit]

JC sent the dog meme to Lawrence but he's sending this to Walton 100%

[rallamajoop]

I have too many feelings about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (3/3)

The story so far: we've covered gameplay and worldbuilding, we've covered story. Now I get to talk characters. And while I'm at it, go off on a tangent or two about some of my favourite touches from Human Revolution, and why I'm still in the habit of calling the hero of these games by his last name.

Characters

Much as I do love Jensen, it’s no secret that Francis Pritchard is my favourite character in this series. His snarky banter with Jensen during missions is so much of what made Human Revolution for me. When I later tried out the original 2001 Deus Ex, I even joked to a friend, “There’s this guy in my earpiece who keeps giving me straightforward, good advice. It just seems so unprofessional!”

Faridah Malik, Jensen’s pilot, is his other major human contact in HR – a friendly face to get him to and from different settings, and occasional voice in his earpiece as well. But it’s not just Malik and Pritchard you’ll be hearing from – you’ve got Jensen’s boss, Sarif, mocking him for his surprise that the SWAT penthouse villain has a panic room, plus so many other random contacts calling Jensen up and prompting ‘how did you get this number?’ complaints that I started to wonder if it was tattooed to the back of his neck.

I knew going into MD that Pritchard wasn’t returning (except in DLC). Halfway through the first mission, it began to dawn on me that Jensen’s new, aggressively-British, aug-hating coworker, Duncan MacCready, seemed to be being set up as the new Pritchard – ie, the asshole in his earpiece with whom he’ll gradually develop a grudging semi-friendship over the course of the game. This did not immediately enthuse me. Pritchard’s initial dislike of our hero may have been petty, but at least it was personal, seeing Jensen as an under-qualified nepotism hire. MacCready just hates anyone augmented, which would be pretty weaksauce even if Jensen had, y'know, ever actually chosen to being augmented to begin with.

It's not like it would be hard to come up with better reasons why someone might distrust Jensen: he's secretly working for a hacktavist network, was declared legally dead in circumstances he can't explain, and MacCready would be right to find him suspicious. But I knew MacCready was a popular character, so I resolved to give him a chance.

The reality proved much worse: love him or hate him, MacCready is hardly in the game at all. You can go talk to him in the office a bunch of times about why he hates cyborgs so much, but he’s only deployed with Jensen in the very first mission and the very last one. Jensen seems to have relationships with a number of his other new colleagues, but for most of the game, there’s no radio chatter at all. Infolink calls happen occasionally, but are vanishingly rare. Even when doing missions for the Collective – a group dominated by augmented hackers – Jensen’s left to fly relatively solo.

Jensen’s main contact at the Collective is Alex Vega, arguably the new Malik, at least in that she’s an augmented woman of colour and nominally a pilot (though she doesn’t actually do any flying for us) on friendly terms with Jensen. In fact, DXMD has given Vega a substantial redesign to make her less of the shallow Malik-clone she was in her "original" appearance, in the lesser known mobile game Deus Ex: The Fall. You can see her and Malik in the comparison below.

Yeah, there's really not a lot to set them apart. She's a pilot? Give her short brown hair like our last pilot, stick her in a flight suit, and call it a day.

As of MD, the new!Vega is black, does her hair completely differently, has more obvious augmentations, and doesn't live in a flight suit: okay, fine, no harm in giving the character some individuality (though why you'd insist on giving her the same name as the old Vega at that point I do not know).

But looks aside, it's on the characterisation front they've really let her down. There was never a lot to Malik beyond being straightforward, friendly and professional. But you do get an optional side-mission to help her solve a friend’s murder, and the big set-piece where she’ll die if you leave her and run like she tells you to (also the reason I’ll probably never get a certain achievement, but fuck it, I like Malik, I don’t need that achievement that much). Straightforward as Malik is, what makes her work for me is that it’s so easy to buy her as someone with her own life outside Jensen’s crazy world. It’s to the point where I almost don’t want to see her get dragged any deeper into the whole conspiracy plotline, because she’s so easy-going and normal she shouldn’t have to be. Basic as that is, when you’re having a reaction that strong to a character, they’ve done something right.

Vega, by comparison, clearly should be a much more memorable character – a pilot working full-time undercover for a top-secret hacktivist collective? But Vega too seems nice, and normal, and yet has no role in this story except to be Jensen’s contact. You can ask her a bit about her backstory, but it made so little impression I can’t remember it. She’s nominally so much more important than Malik, but she never gets to do anything as interesting as making up a nickname for him, hijacking a bunch of public TVs to get back at her friend’s killer, or make the tough decision to tell Jensen to leave her and run. She’s just there to deliver plot-relevant information.

Other characters fandom had led me to expect much more of were similar non-events. Koller, Jensen’s go-to guy for aug maintenance, is certainly a character, but not one that grabbed me, and he appears all of twice, neither time for very long. There's got to be a hell of a story as to why Jensen, an Interpol agent with connections to a whole network of augmented hackers, is going to a weirdo like Koller for aug maintenance, but the game doesn't seem to think that's a story worth sharing, so there goes another wasted avenue to do something interesting. Chikane, Jensen's actual pilot, has far more meat on his bones character-wise and more interaction with our hero. But he’s probably a traitor (I say ‘probably’ because the strongest hints are a coded message in a well-hidden safe, and finding it changes nothing), so there's not much point investing in what camaraderie they develop. Similar is Delara, an obvious Illuminati-plant who spends the game acting innocent and helpful enough to make you wonder if maybe she’s alright after all, only for an after-credits scene to reveal that, yup, she’s an Illuminati plant. Is this supposed to be a twist?

The one major character I did get decent value out of is Jim Miller, Jensen’s Interpol boss. Seeing a convincingly Aussie character in a position of authority in non-Aussie-made media is novel enough that I’m always going to get a kick out of it (even if his backstory does involve that whole ‘Australian civil war’ thing, which is hilarious in so many ways that I’m not sure non-Australians appreciate). Doesn’t hurt that Miller’s subtly queer too – hacking his computer will turn up info about his (ex-)husband and kids.

And that’s about it. There’s a local Prague underworld, but no-one involved is as enjoyable as either of the Tongs in HR, and agreeing to put yourself in their debt on Koller’s account means you’ll get to do a couple of extra side-quests, none of which will give your conscience much trouble. Is this really the best they can do?

When it came out, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was rightly criticised for a weak ending and some seriously ham-fisted attempts at worldbuilding and social commentary. I knew all that going in, and was still astounded by how bad it was at introducing its own ideas. But for all its flaws, I fell in love with its characters, and there were some touches that really stuck with me. I've had a whole mini-essay rolling around my brain for months just on the subtext it packs into who's on a first or last name basis with who – Jensen especially.

Our hero is ‘Jensen’ to most of his workmates (past and present), but ‘Adam’ to Megan and Sarif – Megan because they used to date, and Sarif because he’s the kind of friendly, personable boss who calls all his employees by their first names. But that familiarity takes on a whole other sinister dimension when you realise that Megan and Sarif are the same people responsible for basing their research on Jensen's DNA without his knowledge or consent (and in Sarif’s case, cutting off three perfectly good limbs while he was in a medical coma). Eliza – an AI who’s been watching him for god knows how long – calls him ‘Adam’ too. (So does Wayne Haas, the cop you have to talk your way past to get into the station, which is just more proof he’s Jensen’s bitter ex.)

Meanwhile, Pritchard and Malik – the two allies Jensen can trust to have his back – both call him ‘Jensen’. When Malik starts to get more familiar, it’s not by switching to first-name-basis, it’s by giving him a nickname (‘Spyboy’, which he responds to by calling her ‘Flygirl’). And that’s most of why I still default to calling the guy ‘Jensen’ myself: intended or otherwise, the game is pretty consistent in that the only people who call him by his first name have a serious lack of respect for his boundaries. I can’t tell you how intentional all that subtext was, but it shines through like a beacon.

He’s not the only example either. The game never tells us that Pritchard hates being called by his full first name, ‘Francis’, but it doesn’t have to – you can tell based on the way Jensen uses it (and it’s notable that he’s ‘Frank’ to Sarif, the ‘we’re all family here’-boss of the year). It’s a great little characterisation note for the both of them.

So you can imagine my disappointment that in DX:MD, most of Jensen’s new workmates just call him ‘Adam’. Maybe you could argue that now that unearned familiarity is going the other way, since here ‘Adam’ is the double-agent sneaking around under their noses – but then, Alex calls him ‘Adam’ too, and there’s nothing to suggest she’s shady. Miller and Duncan call him ‘Jensen’, which tracks with their characters and relationships, but I’ve long since hit the point where I can’t hear people calling this guy ‘Adam’ without twitching a little. Why are you calling him that? What are you really up to, you creep?

And this is just one thing I loved from that previous game that was lacking in the sequel. Pritchard and Malik may top my list of favourite characters, but it goes on and on. Tong Senior is more charismatic than any guy that shady has any right to be (and Tong Junior is just such a fantastic little shit), and Keitner deserved so much more screentime than she got. David Sarif is a fascinating mess of completely terrible person who still deserves real credit for standing up against the 'real' villains behind the scenes. Megan's level-headed conviction that she's doing the right thing even while working for incredibly shady people fascinates me. Quinn is great in both his personalities, and I even enjoyed Kavanagh and the sleezeball that is van Brugen so much more than I had any right to. There are compellingly grey characters all over this script, and the writers deserve serious credit for all of them.

But there’s no-one in Mankind Divided I enjoyed as much as the best players from HR. Including, I hate to say it, that one DLC which brought Pritchard back at last.

So, yeah. It's time to talk that last little footnote to this game.

The System Rift DLC

DX:HR had only one DLC mission, but it set a high standard, introduced some of my favourite characters (see above!), and contributed to the greater story in a big way. By comparison, MD has three DLC missions, and all have the exact same problems as the main campaign: there’s just nothing to invest in here. Do you actually care whether Jensen is able to save an undercover agent who’s gone native in some prison facility? Not once you’ve met the guy, trust me, he’s painfully bland. And that mission may actually be the strongest of the three.

The story justification for System Rift is as perfunctory as possible. Pritchard calls Jensen up out of the blue to call in a favour. He needs Jensen to recover some data from a bank vault, and along the way, you might find some evidence of shady insider trading between characters you’ve never met. And you have to ‘save Pritchard’s avatar’ from a virtual world, because reasons, which is exactly as trite as most attempts to build cyberspaces into gameplay. Oh, and you get to ride a funicular elevator at one point, because that’s about the level of what we get here as a callback.

As for new characters, you'll meet Shadowchild, a hacker friend of Pritchard, who I found depressingly dull. Attempts to characterise her mostly mean sitting through dialogue like “there are only a few hackers in a world who could do this, but fortunately for you I am one of them,” delivered in a relative monotone. Much as much as I enjoyed the fact that Miller was queer only if the player is paying attention to the details, doing the same thing again with Shadowchild just makes me feel like the writers don’t have the guts to make a character gay enough to risk upsetting the homophobes in their audience. It’s executed that much worse here too (look, I fully assumed whoever Shadowchild needed Jensen to leave that coded warning for must be someone she’d long since lost real contact with, because why the fuck would she need or trust a virtual stranger to do that for her real, current girlfriend when the stakes are this high? Come on!)

But what really kills this DLC for me is that Pritchard and Jensen’s relationship is given so little to work with. They’re not working together to find the people who put Jensen in hospital or tracking down the secrets of Jensen’s past this time. We’re not getting any insights into Pritchard’s past or hunting major Illuminati secrets either, there aren’t even innocent people in danger – there’s nothing personal here, nothing to invest in. The data Pritchard wants is a MacGuffin in the purest and most meaningless sense, and Jensen’s only helping because he owes a favour (and you won’t even know what for if you haven’t read the novel).

The fact Jensen’s now working for Pritchard directly ought to add new tension to their dynamic, but all it seems to do is throw a dampener over what grudging camaraderie they ever achieved. I do like that they've reached the point where Jensen doesn't even sound like he's sneering when he calls Pritchard 'Francis' anymore, but most of their banter was underwhelming – and dull as I found the core conflict of Black Light, even it delivered on that. Jensen is a surly asshole to Pritchard for no good reason from the moment he answers the call, and the idea that he’s pushing friends away to protect them is present but (at least for my money) underplayed. Pritchard, meanwhile, is here largely to deliver mission-related exposition. There were definitely exchanges I enjoyed ‒ I'm a shipper, I can't not like Jensen's last little 'take care of yourself' at the end ‒ but it's not much to hang a DLC on.

(And to be clear, if you did love System Rift for what it was, no judgement here. But goddamn, did you deserve something you could’ve loved so much more than this.)

So with all that said, where does that leave me for a conclusion? If the plan with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was to make the series more like the original Deus Ex, then for my money, they’ve succeeded ‒ at least in that the plot is uninvolving, the characters are bland, and their relationships don’t evolve in any interesting way. But even the original DX managed some memorable reveals and a gloriously weird multiple-choice ending, where the heros could tell themselves they’d taken down the Illuminati and cured the plague. Jensen’s grand success at the end of MD is that a key UN vote on augmented rights hasn’t made the currently shitty status quo any worse. Everything that Human Revolution did well is missing here, and everything it did badly is just as bad.

And yet, at the end of the day, my single biggest disappointment may be that this really is it. There’s probably never going to be another Deus Ex game. I don’t know how you’d save a franchise from a rut like this, and it’s naïve to imagine you can only go up from here – but apparently it’d take more than one lackluster entry to kill my investment. It’s a hell of a bummer to see it end on a game that seems so ashamed of everything its predecessor ever did well.

It's enough of a bummer that rather than leave my own impressions rest there, I'm replaying Deus Ex: Human Revolution now, and you know what? Turns out it's not all nostalgia that's making me remember the last game so much better, because I'm having a great time with it all over again. The side quests you can pick up are just as truly absurd as they ever were (sure, random hooker I just met, I'll plant drugs in this guy's apartment for you!), but the stakes feel meaningful, the character dynamics are fun, and Pritchard is back being his terrible, sassy self. My absurd quest for enough XP to unlock all the cool powers ASAP has me spending way, way too long trying to set up double-takedowns and carrying vending machines around the middle of Detroit police station to try and block the sightlines between the computer I'm hacking and all the cops standing around the same room. Look, this is apparently my idea of fun, don't judge me.

For over a year now, I've had a couple of unposted bits of Jensen/Pritchard fic sitting around, never quite completed, and replaying the game has reignited the motivation to get them into some kind of shape worth showing to people. Lord knows I don't have the power to uncancel this franchise, but at least letting my own unfinished fic see the light of day is something I can do.

[raynerberg]

Incident in block C (part 3/?)

First meeting ~ " - Who are you? You don't look like them, you're different. Did you come to kill me too... Or are you a victim like us, like me? Not important. A dark horse, it will be interesting to get you out of my way. - You are a... human... - I am NOT human! Not anymore. - I'm not gonna fight you! We are allies. - I have no allies, I don't need anyone. A pathetic bunch of liars and hypocrites. Are you ready to die?"

~

Notes:

Yes, my version of Dentons knows how to experience emotions, including fear for life (for those who don't know).

The brothers missed each other in one of the corridors where there is almost a complete blackout. Grayson caught Paul because Denton did not expect to meet an intelligent humanoid (the brothers weren't told that not all the subjects died).

Realizing that the humanoid could speak, Paul tried to get him to talk. At the same time, he tried to send his brother a distress signal via an infolink.

The frames of the story will be out of order, because everything depends on my mood and energy, but when the story logically ends, I will glue the frames like in a comic book (I will probably even write fan fiction, but this is not a fact). :)

[cchr11]

important infolink message

[eridanidreams]

WIP Wednesday

Tagging: @bearlytolerant, @silurisanguine, @aro-pancake, @fangbangerghoul, @atonalginger, @aislingdmdt, @fshenkoescape, @ninjaofnaps, @lisa-and-shadow, @a-cosmic-elf, @thatsgoodsquishy0, @hockeydemon42, @fomagranfalloon, @violenceandviolets, @therealgchu, @staticpallour and @artemis-crimson

Today, I'm putting the final touches on the next chapter of Odysseus Gambit and hammering the next chapter of stars through my fingers like grains of sand into shape, so what I have is a future draft chapter of Odysseus Gambit!

Adam swung the scope back, his finger trembling on the trigger. One more shot and he could end this farce. But Sloane was picking herself up, though her shoulder was bloody and her right arm hung limp.

«I always knew you were a coward,» she spat, the words coming through clear on the infolink. Lermontov darted in, swiping with his knife, and she slapped it away left-handed. «Not so easy when I’m not hanging like a butchered calf, is it?» The Russian stumbled back a few paces, the sneering arrogance finally replaced with fear, and Adam moved his finger back to the trigger guard.

Lermontov took a few more cautious steps backward; by now, he was only a few steps from the sarcophagus wall. Sloane matched him, step for step, a wounded lioness on the prowl. He snarled something—Adam, lip-reading, could only make out the word suka—and flung himself at her in an all-out attack. She swayed back—the knife scored a line of red along her ribs—and drove her fist into his chest in a blow that was all power, no grace. Lermontov had barely started to fold in upon himself when her left foot slammed into his gut hard enough to smash him through the crumbling concrete and metal behind him.

Adam’s brain itched in the way that suggested his cybereyes were picking up something that his visual cortex couldn’t understand. Lermontov struggled to his feet, a pale shadow backlit by a dim Cherenkov-blue radiance that somehow illuminated nothing. He took one faltering step toward daylight… Adam froze, scope riveted on the hole, as black hands coalesced out of the darkness and wrapped around Lermontov’s arms. Lermontov’s mouth opened in a soundless scream. Sloane’s heel caught on the cracked concrete and she fell, and all she did was scrabble backward, desperately away from that. There was something oddly fluid about those hands, blacker-than-black, like a black hole had taken form in flesh, swallowing everything around it. They were pulling Lermontov into the sarcophagus, inexorably, step by step… and then the white blur of his face melted into nothingness and nothing remained but the blue-edged darkness.

Below him, Sloane wavered to her feet. Her harsh breathing, punctuated by static, echoed in his infolink. She glanced down at her wrist, then shook her head and started looking around her. “You need to get out of there,” he rasped. She shook her head again.

“Can’t,” her voice crackled with static. “—patch that up.” As if on cue, the radiation alarms went off, keening like air-raid sirens.

“Shit,” he muttered. A quick scan of the area showed Lermontov’s goons running the hell away—well, he supposed he would too, if his boss had just gotten tossed into a nuclear reactor. He tossed the rifle aside and took the quick way down; he tried not to flinch at the way the Icarus rippled and flared and threw little aurorae around him.

Sloane was wrenching open one of the heavy lockers that dotted the area; she pulled out something that looked like a cross between a flare gun and a grenade launcher. “Get *crackle*ther one,” she said roughly. Adam threw himself into a dead run; ahead of him, Sloane had gotten closer than he liked to the sarcophagus. She braced the gun awkwardly on her left hip—he wondered why her Sentinel hadn’t healed the shoulder wound—and fired. It impacted at the top of the breach, releasing a viscous golden substance that oozed down and hardened quickly. Adam vaguely remembered reading something about that—as the sarcophagus decayed, and with the ongoing problems funding the New Safe Confinement structure, they’d had to find a stop-gap to quickly seal any breaches. He grabbed the second launcher on the run; oddly heavy for its size, its shells contained a boron-doped resin that cured quickly when exposed to hard radiation.

They worked quickly but meticulously, building the patch from the outside in, alert for—“Did you see—?” he muttered, covering a bit that looked just a little too dark.

“Yeah.” Her voice shook. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.” She fired a final shot, then tossed her launcher aside. “Out.”

Adam fired off his last shot. “Same. Let’s get the hell out of here.” He barely managed two steps before Sloane pressed an arm to her stomach and doubled over, vomiting helplessly. “Fuck!” He reached for her arm, but she waved him away.

“Radiation. Nothing to be done for it,” she grated. “Sentinel’s holding.” Her lips pulled back in a bloody death’s-head grin. “Not a lot of bone marrow left to poison, so that’s a plus.” She staggered, went down to a knee. “Jensen.” She waved him away a second time. “No time. Go. Exfil plan… B.” She coughed, spitting more bright blood. “I’ll… meet you at the RV point.”

Adam didn’t need his CASIE to know she was lying through her bloodied teeth.

[vlad-theimplier]

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

Have some Jensen-Pritchard snark! I ripped ShadowChild's entrance out of the events of Breach because a) she's cool, and I wanted her to pop up more than once; b) I needed to set up an augmentation trick anyway; c) I was already repurposing Breach; and d) see above Jensen¬Pritchard vibes. (That's the formal-logic NOT operator, FYI--seems more apropos than an ampersand.) Read the whole thing at https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

“Francis. What’ve I done to deserve this?”

“Good evening, Jensen. How’s Prague? I hope I’m not interrupting your busy schedule of brooding and kicking down doors.”

He took a slug of the new beer before responding. “How’d you know where I am?”

“I know you like to think you’re off the grid these days, but you do realize there’s a record when you use your credit chip or have a package sent to your apartment—nice slippers, I must say—and Interpol’s HR database is not their best-kept secret. Plus, I calibrated your systems. Every time you call or text, your infolink is broadcasting your position as well as your words. To me, at least.”

Jensen felt a muscle jump in his jaw. “So, you call just to chat, or…?”

“Six months ago, when the rest of the world thought you were dead and I helped you get back on your feet, I seemed to recall you saying, and I quote here, ‘I really owe you one, Pritchard.’” He forced his voice low and raspy.

Jensen rolled his eyes at the caricature. “I don’t recall saying it quite like that.” But he couldn’t deny that Pritchard had come through for him in a tight spot—and not just logistically. His chat with Sarif could have gone much worse without Pritchard’s righteous anger backing him up, and he might not have ever gotten mixed up with the Task Force or the Collective without that clearing of the air. Plus, almost anything would be better than stewing in his own aimless misery for a week. So he listened.

“Well, it just so happens there’s something in Prague that I need your help with. Tonight.”

No surprise. He took another swallow of beer. “Kinda busy.”

“Investigating TF29, I know. But if you help me with this, we’re even, I promise.”

“Fascinating. Still busy.”

“Come on, Jensen. You dropped in on me out of the blue with a depressed stranger, and I fed you, clothed you, put you up, patched things up with Sarif—”

“Sort of.”

“Okay, well, he paid you without making you sign anything. How much more did you want? Anyway, then I got you in the Collective’s good graces and helped you save your new cop buddies from a grisly and embarrassing death on that train. And let us not forget that, if not for my wise and thoughtful counsel, Faridah would have found out from someone else that you were back from the dead and promptly re-interred you.”

Jensen grunted.

“And through all of that, did I ever complain?”

“Yes. Loudly, if I recall.”

“Ugh. Well, be that as it may, I really think you’re overlooking a prime opportunity to do your two favorite things.”

He wondered what Pritchard thought those were. He wondered what he thought, himself. “Do tell.”

“Brooding and kicking in doors, of course. You get to brood over my onerous request, clearly so out-of-proportion to helping you extricate yourself from the rubble of your old life and get started on a new one.”

“Hah. What about the doors?”

“To a police station—a satellite location in Ver—uh, Verso-vise.”

Jensen sighed. “It’s pronounced Vr-sho-vi-tse, and we call them ‘precincts.’ You forget I’m a cop myself? I can’t just go busting down the door of the station.”

“I seem to recall you doing exactly that, back in Detroit. And besides, it’s for a good cause.”

Pritchard had him there, damn him. “Christ. Fine. What’s the cause?”

“A friend of mine was helping me with some research when she went dark. Based on what I’ve managed to access of the police files—surprisingly well-encrypted, by the by—they picked her up and took her to this ‘precinct’ of yours. But not officially.”

“No booking records? No charges filed?”

“Yes, those things. None of those. So you see why I’m worried.”

“This friend of yours.” Jensen put his credit chip down on the bar and twitched his head at the bartender. “She Augmented?”

“Precisely.”

“A hacker?”

“One of the best. Not as good as I am, of course, but very much in my league.”

“Of course. She got a name?”

“On the darknet, she goes by ‘ShadowChild.’ I don’t know her real name, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Jensen paid, stood, and collected his coat. “‘ShadowChild’? Jesus. So you want me to cross town, break into a police station, and break out an Augmented woman whose real name I don’t know before she gets disappeared by the PČR into Golem City?”

“Pretty much.”

“You know what she looks like, at least?”

“Um… her avatar is a stylized domino mask. Here.”

An image popped up in Jensen’s link of two blocky chevrons connected at the tips, like a pair of arrowheads. The left was black; the right, white. It didn’t look much like a mask to him. It was captioned “Shadow(hild,” with a parenthesis. Of course. “And this is supposed to help me… how?” he asked. He shouldered his way out the door as Pritchard stammered a non-reply.

Jensen exhaled in frustration and dug out a cigarette, shielding it from the wind that skirled between the old buildings and whipped his coat around his knees. “Fine. Forget it. Who needs intel anyway?” He cut the call on Pritchard’s indignant sputters and stalked into the night, trailing a plume of smoke.

[technowunderkind]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love ♥️

waaaah thank you!!! ;o; <3

i wish i had more finished deus ex fics to share, but so far all I have is this one, and I'm very proud of it still :]

From A to Ž Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Adam Jensen & Vaclav Koller Would it be the wrong time to ask, considering that he's know him for three months now? (Or because he's actively working on the mechanisms of his augmented hand?) Or would it be worse to keep this feeling of not knowing when he could just get clarification now, instead of risking getting it wrong after all this time? Finally, after annoying himself with his own internal debate, Jensen asks, “Koller, have I been saying your name wrong?”

Finally, after annoying himself with his own internal debate, Jensen asks, “Koller, have I been saying your name wrong

as for four others...

I've always liked the atmosphere I built here:

House of Microcosms Control (2019) Mentions of all main characters MICROCOSM ; a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much larger. People with more experience under their belt at the Bureau would always talk about how it felt like a second home. Others would say it felt like an entirely different world— like crossing the threshold to work was really crossing a threshold into something entirely new. The agreement was simply this: inside the house, it feels almost like another world or life. The House is a wilderness you are stranded in, and it may kill you before the life rafts get here. It is not so much an enemy like the Hiss is— an invader here to consume you— simply an ecosystem that you must learn to survive in.

I think this might be one of my best short works I've done:

The Bends Alan Wake, Control (2019) Emil Hartman “It’s called Decompression Sickness,” the weathered instructor had said. “But most people just call it the Bends. It can ruin your entire life, so it’s not worth the quick ascension.” Hartman hadn’t even been planning on using a diving license. But the research into the Lake, and Zane’s passion for it, made him seek out lessons. He stood in a humid, indoor pool, in a gaggle of other random learners, all donning wetsuits. “To make sure you all really get why, I’m going to break down each way the sickness can affect you, so you never let your ego get ahead of you when you dive.” Hartman was stretched.

This just felt necessary in some ways, for myself and the character of 47:

A Grave Decision Hitman Agent 47 & Lucas Grey There is no body to bury. Yet his mind keeps wandering back to the idea. A marker, of some kind. An untraditional gravestone. Or traditional. Oddly sentimental. But what better way to acknowledge to Providence, to the world, I was human, I was here.

This was really fun to explore and get into and is more recent!:

Hope, as Necessity Dishonored Corvo Attano & Samuel Beechworth Your eyes search the muck and algae with a fervor you didn't know you still had. You watch for shapes that bob and sway in the wake you leave as your boat carves through the murky waters. The water thuds up against the sides and bow, echoing softly in the thick, silent air. The ache clutching your heart is a mix of hope and inevitability. (The guilt sticks to your ribs like the harbor fog clings and wicks onto the fabric of your jacket.) You poisoned Corvo Attano. No getting around that fact.

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

I have this WIP setting about mechas which I am not being hyperfixated about but I do kinda like. It is unnamed for now but here's the introduction:

Alright so some work on the Mecha Project

The entire story is happening on an Earth-like planet. Turns out, biology is pretty rigid and Earth ain't such a unique snowflake as we thought.

Into the faaar g'damn future we send a stasis ship there, and arrive to a peaceful, unpopulated by sentient life planet. Name's pending but I think of something like New [insert name].

The planet is ruled by the United Sol Alliance (USA, on purpose) and is now beginning to build an eco-friendly high-tech civilization. Generations have passed but, due to a part of the huge information tanks being damaged, a part of Earth history and a lot of physics/inventions catalogues are lost, thus rendering humans on the new planet a bit uneducated on some matters.

The three continents of the planet are populated and everything is pretty much utopian. Clean air, alien life is quite similar to Earth's (four legs, fur, skin, general biology), trees also use chlorophyll but are toxic due to other not so pleasant chemicals, though it ain't much of a problem.

Then the Invasion began.

From outer space, unpredicted, came hard to spot ships with little to no electronics or energetic signature. Crashing on the surface, they started letting out the Kaiju.

These creatures are called just that - Kaiju - in tribute to the old Earth fiction. The thing though is that they aren't natural creatures; Engineered by some other species, they are living war machines meant to consume genetics of other species and use them for creation of new and newer lifeforms. This Kaiju Horde instantly becomes a threat to the human colony.

The first months of the invasion things were only heating up. Some human cities were destroyed, population slain. In return, alien motherships were targeted by hardcore artillery. But while humans were great in the distanced combat, easily sniping down huge beasts with absolutely wild railgun tech, they were helpless up close.

The kaiju could easily scale the distance between them and the human forces, beginning bloodshed in close quarters combat. Huge, muscular beasts perfected to destroy any creature or tech, they succeeded in putting down entire platoons of the USA (actually I might rethink that name).

Then there came a solution, seemingly out of nowhere. During one of the fights, a construction worker beat the beast to pulp using a non-battle mech meant for moving weights. Instantly labeled hero, the dude inspired the human forces to start the creation of war mechs.

So the arming race began. The mechs were slow as shit when on manual control, so they had to invest into neural linking. The PHIL link (Personal Helmet Infolink) was created and was truly still a complete mess. It was sensitive to any thought of the user, may you think of lemons or steamed hams, the helmet would try to interpret commands even when it doesn't have to and had bad lag which proved lethal.

Next went the RING, AMP-1 and AMP-2 links. Those were proven superior to both PHIL and manual.

The mech tech itself improved over the years. Beginning with bulky hardbodies, it evolved into sleek and agile softbodies which were highly capable of close quarter combat. Sooner or later, the profession of a mech pilot became very useful and high-paying.

For now, the human colonies on the three continents are split, but the times are a bit more easy on the front. The kaiju motherships (which act as factories) are far in the land, in the sectors beyond reach, and fortifications are built to hold them back.

That's attabout it. Here's a repost of the link and mech types:

MECH TYPES Softbody S Armored Softbody AS Clam C Hardbody H Semisoftbody SS

LINK TYPES RING (Redirecting Implanted Neural Gate) AMP-1 (Amputee Mech Personel Type 1) AMP-2 (Amputee Mech Personel Type 2) PHIL (Personal Helmet Infolink) Manual

An interesting parameter in mechs is the (neural) feedback.

It is the proprioception of the driver with the mech, the feeling of the mech's body and where it's bodyparts are. Manual mechs have no proprioception, so do the PHIL ones on the older models (new models at least provide a projection of the mech's pose for the driver to reference from).

RING has the best feedback sensitivity meaning the driver with a RING link make best DES and SPD (speed) builds. AMP-1 and AMP-2 are both roughly equal in feedback sensitivity, with AMP-2 being bit better due  to larger portions of the driver's limbs being "phantom", thus linked with the mech. PHIL is completely dogshit in providing feedback as mentioned before, and manual is equal to sitting in a tank and wondering what was that noise that just hit the left side of the hull. Yet feedback isn't tied to the link type but the mech type.

A hardbody mech has little to no feedback. It does count the angles under which the joints are bent and all that but those sensors can be easily broken, giving wrong info or none at all.

A softbody mech is best in providing feedback. Literally having a neural mesh that has sensitivity and allows the drivers to feel "touch", it also provides best proprioception and agility.

Other mech types are varying in feedback providing.

[fedorasaurus]

Things would be easier for JC Denton if only he had moderation tools for his Infolink.

Walton: I've activated your killsw--

JC: Blocked and reported, bozo! 😎👍

[kleiner-ghost]

A little epilogue I wrote for my JC.

[spoilers ahead]

Jamie activated her augs and ran though the maze of corridors. Tong was still going on about one thing or the other, still managing to bother her despite the failing satellite network.

Bob had locked the blast doors, and she fiddled with a multitool, her hands shaking as much as the ground below her from a mixture of anticipation and fear.

She almost choked on the night air when the doors did finally slide just enough to let her slip through.

Someone more sentimental might have cried, at their fate and at the fact that they wouldn't even get to see one last sunrise. But Jamie wasn't one those people. She hadn't had a drink in days, and the only thing she could feel right now was the pain in her lungs from all that toxic air she'd inhaled earlier, and a faint burning sensation on her hands from where they'd come in contact with the generators.

Tong shut up, and she knew it wouldn't be long now.

She headed to the cold, burnt, carcass of Jock's helicopter, and sat on the groud by it. There were still ATVs on site, but not a soul was left alive to use them.

She could've taken one, but she didn't see the point. There was nothing left for her out there. No more UNATCO, no more Illuminati, no more orders to take.

"Goodbye Paul." She whispered through her infolink.

And then the world burned in eternal darkness. But Jamie was no longer there to watch it.

[tertiaryunit]

Musings set after JC escapes from Unatco. Manderley is confronted by Lawrence about his inadequacy as head of the organization.

/ -------------------- /

[Liberty Island; 02:17; 2052]

Two men walked along the waterfront, side by side, illuminated by the few street lamps scattered along the path. They were the opposite of each other - one with silvery white hair, around seventy years old and a nervous expression; the other with jet-black hair gelled back, not one year older than twenty five and a voice as smug as his expression. 

“I can’t control a man’s mind!” 

Said the older man, almost pleading.

“Oh, you’re just not the right man for the job, Joe. You definitely can”

As amiable as Lawrence’s tone was, Manderley knew that was nothing less than a clear, violent threat - in his old age, he had seen his fair share of politicians using similar tactics. 

“I am sure my superior already told you about your new position at the Library of Congress. You should be happy” “As I told you earlier, I won’t be pushed into some obscure bureaucratic cubbyhole!” “Joe... First Paul Denton and now his brother... Both under your direct orders. You're lucky we don't send you to clean the toilets in the subway”

Manderley took a cigarette - that was the second package of the day and it  probably wouldn’t be the last either. He looked for his lighter and cursed when he realized he had forgotten it,

“Need a light?” “I didn’t know you smoked, mister Carter” “I don’t”

Joseph almost dropped the cigarette for the surprise of suddenly seeing it lit; the Agent hadn’t taken out any lighter from his pockets - in fact, his hands were still entwined together behind his back, as they had been for the whole time. “See Joe? You’re a bit too old for your position. You lack the nerve to face certain situations” - the Agent’s eyes pierced into Manderley’s like a pair of knives - “We need to replace you. We need to do what’s best for everyone”

The old man couldn’t help but laugh upon hearing that last sentence. A nervous, joyless laugh as if when a horrible truth finally makes its way into your mind after years of gaslighting and everything comes together.

“I see why Simons calls you boy now... Are you really this naive?!” “Excuse me?” 

Lawrence’s tone was as politely cold as it had always been; however Manderley was able to catch the faint crack in his voice - the crack that betrayed that hint of suspicion he had so desperately tried to suppress for so many years... 

“Do you think they care about what’s best for the country and its people? All that matters to your superiors are their own interests!”

Manderley ended his bitter laugh with a depressed sigh.  “Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad*... All you are is a victim. In no way innocent, but a victim none the less”  “I’m... I’m not!”

The MJ12 Agent was genuinely caught by surprise.  For a split second, the former Unatco director had a flash of himself affectionately lecturing one of his little nephews after catching them red-handed grabbing some cookies from a jar. Echoes from a past life. 

“I... You have no idea of what I can do, Manderley! I could kill by thinking about it! And you dare calling me a victim?!” “The MJ12 trained you so well, and yet... You can’t even recognize textbook grooming. Or maybe you chose to ignore it. If the rumors of what your superior does to you are true... I truly pity you” The Psychic froze trying to process those words. He would not have expected that act of... Concern? In all those years, those were the first words of comfort he had ever heard from someone. Words that meant something, unlike Walton’s. Manderley, who used to be afraid of him, gave the Psychic a friendly pat on the shoulder. 

“I know your father. You should talk to him. He’d understand” “I...” “Trust me, kid... he’d want to know”

It was the “Incoming Call” signal from Lawrence’s Infolink that broke his “trance”: Simons wasn’t happy. 

“I have heard enough. Lawrence. Kill him” “S-sir! I... I can’t... I can’t do it” Tears started falling down his eyes. He never cried in front of anyone in his life, nor he ever failed to follow an order - yet he knew very well what would have happened for disappointing him.

“I’ll deal with you sooner than you think, boy. Don’t let him get away at least. I’m coming“ “Y-yes, Sir”

Manderley didn’t know what the men had said to each other, but he offered Lawrence a tissue and sat down on a bench nearby to finish his cigarette. The young Agent followed him, trembling at the thought of what awaited him.

/ --------------------------------------- / Notes and references:

I don’t know, I think Manderley (being much older and wiser) than Lawrence would be empathetic towards him. He has sons and nephews, and I imagine seeing Larry break down like that would “trigger” something in him. Especially knowing he’s essentially been manipulated since birth.

Lawrence’s weak spot: showing that you care. Considering he’s been isolated from his family/friends and gaslighted for YEARS to make him dependent, seeing that there ARE people that show concern for others (even if they’re not friends) always wakes up something in him.

Adding here: Walton keeps Lawrence’s Infolink wiretapped. It makes sense for the former to keep the latter under control at all times, especially in the rare occasions they are not together - Lawrence learned to not close it off.  (Also no, Walton has never hit or beat Larry in any way, I don’t think he’s the type to do so. He... Uses other punishments) * The saying Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad, sometimes given in Latin as “Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat” (literally: Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason) is a reference to the heavy brainwashing and grooming Page/Simons do to Lawrence, which leads to the various abuses he’s subjected to.

An early version of the phrase Whom the gods would destroy... appears in verses 620–623 of Sophocles’ play Antigone:  "Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom God leads to destruction", which ties in to Lawrence’s justifying of both his actions and the abuse he’s going through.