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blushing-starker · 5 years ago

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Another holiday one: Peter and Pepper going caroling together and they visit Tony in the workshop. The bots are wearing Santa hats

"Peter, darling, you know you can get him anything and he'll be over the moon, right? He loves you and it'd kill Tony to know this is causing you so much stress. We could always do a joint gift if that helps? After caroling, the night is ours and so is the mall."

God, what did he do to deserve Miss Potts? She has a solution for all the problems in the world, never hesitates to take what she wants and could probably kick his ass twenty different ways without breaking a sweat. Just last night, she'd cocked her head, put on a disappointed face and Peter was done, defeated, tore himself away from Tony's side at the lab to devour some freshly baked pie Rhodey had dropped by. They'd been working for hours, basically a hair's breadth away from a breakthrough, but Miss Potts didn't like her boys tinkering too long without eating.

Now she's holding his hand like it isn't serious, like it doesn't set Peter's heart aflame because this is Pepper Potts, kind and strong and witty and amazing, showing affection in a public place without shame or fear. And yeah, Tony would never be cold to him outside, but the man's a koala when you earn his trust. Peter has to practically pry the billionaire off from Pepper when the CEO has a meeting to conquer (he's dating a CEO, he's dating a billionaire, he's dating a CEO, he's dating a-

"Sweetheart, I see the gears turning in that head of yours, same as Tony. What is it, Peter?" The snow starts to fall a bit harder and they quicken their pace, catch up with Nat, Bucky and Bruce as they line themselves up before the next porch, ready to start caroling their hearts out. Who'd have thought they enjoyed the season this much?

The others didn't come because decorating the tower and baking dessert for 20 plus people took a team effort. Peter had wrapped an arm around Miss Potts' waist and swung them to the car before they were snatched up by Steve to help in the kitchen. They'd been pressed pretty close, Peter not wanting to risk hurting his, what, lover? Girlfriend? His lover's wife? Either way, he had curled around the tall woman, tried to not jostle her too much in case she got sick. It had been nice. Very nice, really.

The whole thing had lasted maybe thirty seconds so yeah. Technically, this is the first time they've had physical contact for a relatively long period of time. He's eighteen now, not supposed to be getting so hyped and nervous over something as simple as holding hands and going caroling along a snow covered neighborhood adorned with a thousand Christmas lights. But, but he's always been a romantic at heart and the neon glow is reflected off of shiny snowflakes that taste like something pure and special, his teammates are joyous, look decades younger, Bucky's cat Alpine has stubbornly decided to crisscross his ankles and Miss Potts ' is just really fucking pretty, ok?

"Peter?" He gets why Tony can submit so easily to the force of nature that is Pepper Potts ; is rather sure it has something to do with honest eyes and a gentle way of loving broken men.

"Um, you're very pretty, Miss Potts," way to go, Peter. It's a wonder he and Tony even got together when they share one brain cell and it's mainly dedicated to superhero work. Or to Miss Potts.

She softens, tugs at him until they wrap around each other and then kisses him. Light, barely there kisses on pale cheeks, his eyelids, the curve of a red nose, under an unhinged jaw. Nat shoves the team forward, says the next house will probably give them candy while winking at Peter, grins when he turns scarlet. Bucky grumbles, "it's not exactly Halloween," but she yanks the supersoldier away from them so there's some semblance of privacy present.

Miss Potts sighs, sets her chin on his head and Peter short circuits right there, is delighted by the fact that she's taller than him, vows to buy her as many heels and high boots as possible because this is extremely nice and being tucked under her is a dream come true.

"You're so nice, Pete. I don't think Tony's gonna last a month before he says he loves you, not with someone so considerate and amazing. Nat bet it'd take me three months, but right now? Tony would take one look at me and say three weeks. We've been outside for a while, how about we head back home? See if our ridiculous baby got away with sneaking to the lab?"

Oh. Oh, is he supposed to speak after that? Function when she just sent his world tumbling down in a second or two? He inhales slowly, presses his frost bitten lips to a long neck and shivers when Miss Potts laughs, sound as pure and lovely as the freshly fallen snow around them.

---:---------:----------:---------:-----------:---------:--------:---------:---

On the way back home (HomeHomeHomeHomeHomeHome), he catches sight of a pretzel stand and nearly slams them into the side of a building. Miss Potts does that thing where she chuckles almost silently and maybe it'll take her three weeks but Peter's ready to declare his love for her right then, absolutely smitten and aware of it. He wonders if this is what Tony felt when he fell for Miss Potts. Wonders if his boyfriend would tell him all about it soon enough.

Miss Potts strokes his cheek, smile this side of sharp and mischievous. "Does my boy want something?" It's a soft question with a soft touch with a not so soft look in eyes that could tear him apart any day of the week. His web snaps and they tumble down to the street, are saved by the fact there's three feet of snow by the building's back entrance and they weren't that high up.

Peter gets a pretzel from Miss Potts.

------:--------:--------:--------:--------:--------:--------:--------:-------:-

Their lover (loverloverloverlover) is, in fact, hiding in the lab. There's a neon glow here, too, wrapped around Tony as he reassembles holograms, sketches new designs for the spider suit, revises old architecture plans with the gaze of a hawk.

"Anthony Potts, you put down that hologram right now! You were supposed to help out and decorate; not adjust Peter's suit. Again." Tony jolts back, clicks his fingers and everything disappears from the lab table as if Jarvis had never brought several of the genius' secret files to life. He looks like a little kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and Peter isn't gonna let him forget this for as long as they live.

There's plenty of space on the table now so he settles there, swings his legs up and down, grins up at a fidgeting Tony. "Anthony Potts is new." A cookie tray is tucked away behind a pile of papers and it's too tempting not to snack on one even if he just inhaled a pretzel.

"I can call you Peter Potts, too, you know. Don't tease him, I know you would've been here helping Tony out if we hadn't gone caroling."

It's Tony's turn to grin and Peter's turn to flush now. Two more cookies are snatched, shoved into his face. "I kind of like that. The Potts thing. It's nice."

Miss Potts crosses over to them, wraps a finger around the one curl he can never tame and pulls on it until he's leaning on her palm with the sudden urge to never leave the lab. "I'm glad you like it, Peter. Anthony here has to go clean the dining table, but we can cuddle on the couch to warm up before seeing what's already cooked. How's that sound?"

"It sounds like your husband is being punished for upgrading your boyfriend's suit and making sure he doesn't die fighting some weird alien dog." Tony huffs, steals Dum-E's Santa hat with a pout before dragging himself up the stairs to the kitchen. "I'm saving everyone's lives, but no. I gotta see Steve butcher a Christmas tradition."

"There's nothing wrong with how Steve cooks the meal."

"Tell that to my grandmother and nanny. Even Jarvis could cook better and he doesn't have any hands." Said A. I hums in a suspiciously noncommittal way as his creator starts yelling about blood being spilled if a single stain is found in his prized kitchen.

The bots all seem to sigh in relief, roll over to bump Peter's knee or shoulder as affectionately as Alpine. He patiently fixes their elf ears and hats, rubs a few bells clean from grease and motor oil because Tony probably hadn't noticed and wouldn't notice until they accidentally stained something. Don't ask him or Miss Potts how, but Tony's children could ruin a fifty thousand dollar couch with purple paint without there necessarily being a can of paint around the lab.

Miss Potts' plan of cuddling on the couch is derailed when they hear screeching and curses pertaining to five different languages coming from above. She sighs, takes Peter's hand and he already knows she'll come up with a solution. She always did.

(Maybe it was time to explain he'd already found their gifts, twin silver rings with all their initials engraved hidden in his coat pocket.)

(And then Tony starts shouting something in Italian, Steve might be reverting to an Irish accent, Alpine hops on the dining table to pounce on the chicken, Miss Potts has to yank her husband away from the oven, Bucky's hair nearly catches on fire and yeah, he'll just show them on New Year's.)

#peter parker #tony stark #pepper potts #ironspider #starker #peter x tony #peter parker x tony stark #i am sleepy #i forgot #once again #the ot3 name #my writing #thank you darling katie #katie bug #🐞#pepper x peter #pepper x tony

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7-wonders · 6 years ago

Text

Terms and Conditions May Apply

Summary: As if being presented as the wife of the Antichrist to the most influential people in the world at an exclusive event wasn't enough for you to handle, Satan may have a special surprise in store for you as well.

Word Count: 3548

A/N: I have no excuse for not having updated for a month other than the fact that my senior thesis has taken up basically ALL of my time. Special thanks to @trelaney for all of your help on this (and every) chapter of Mad Love! Comments, likes, and reblogs are always appreciated. Enjoy!

The night after your first day of classes, Michael utters the words that you were hoping never to hear. It had been such a nice evening, too. You had finally worn Michael down enough about cooking that he agreed to let you cook dinner for an evening. It was just a simple meal, pasta and marinara that your dad used to always make, but it was familiar, and made you feel at home in a way you hadn’t yet while living at “Langdon Manor,” as you call it. Ending up on the couch with Michael, your head in his lap as he reads some business papers and strokes your hair, smiling every time you laugh at the videos on your phone (you’re saving Michael’s introduction to Vine and TikTok for another day), was the perfect way to end the night. Of course, he had to ruin it by opening his mouth.

“I think it’s time for you to attend an official Cooperative function with me,” Michael says. You look up at him in horror, of which he can’t quite tell is real or fake.

“Michael!” you groan, sitting up so you’re level with him.

“(Y/N)!” he mocks, refusing to back down. “We’ve been married for, what, seven months now?”

“Nearly eight,” you remark dryly.

“Over half of a year. And in the time of our marriage, you’ve never once met with the Cooperative. You haven’t engaged with my father’s congregation since our wedding.” Michael sees the look on your face as you prepare to make a snarky comment about the congregation, so he hurries to make his next point. “These are necessary duties that you, as the wife of the Antichrist, must undertake. Need I remind you of our ‘contract?’ You had agreed to attend Cooperative functions and meetings with me. That time, my love, has come.”

You bristle at the pet name (no matter how long you’ll be married to Michael, you’ll never come to be a fan of them), but ignore it for now. “I don’t want to do it.”

“I understand that. I don’t want to either, but it’s something that we both must do.”

“What do you mean, you ‘don’t want to do it?’ Being worshipped by these people and commanding a room aren’t things you enjoy?”

“It’s a part of the title my father bestowed upon me. There is...a certain beauty to being the one prophesied in ancient times, but the blind devotion that a lot of these influential members of society who have sold their souls in order to gain power is disgusting, in a way. I don’t quite enjoy having them fawn over me in the hopes that I’ll grant them favors of some kind.”

“So then why do you go to these events if you don’t like them?”

“It gives my father’s followers something tangible to worship. In a way, my existence lets them know that selling their souls was not in vain. I am proof that my father’s plans are coming to fruition.” Michael tentatively reaches his hand out, slowly grabbing yours when you don’t pull away. “So? Will you come?”

You roll your eyes. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“I’m afraid not, but I figured I should at least ask you.” “Fine, but I don’t want to wear black to this thing. Or red. I want to be me, not the wife of the Antichrist.”

“You’re both, but I think we can work something out. The color scheme isn’t a requirement, merely...a suggestion.”

“A suggestion you make sure to enforce.” Standing up from the couch, your face softens slightly at the hurt look on Michael’s face. “I’m not mad, I’ve just gotta get some syllabus tests out of the way before I forget about them.”

“Don’t make plans for Friday, okay?” You nod, Michael kissing your hand before letting you leave for your room, where you proceed to sulk about having to go to a Satanist party while watching Netflix.

Friday arrives, much to your displeasure, bringing with it an army of stylists that the Cooperative has at its disposal. You somehow manage to stop them when they attempt to do your makeup heavily, conceding only to a semi-prominent eyeshadow look and lipstick. The dark pink, almost red shade goes with the one dress you didn’t automatically veto, a silky, emerald A-line dress with spaghetti straps that cinched at your waist before falling down to your ankles. The hairstylist, a man with platinum hair and the attitude to pull it off, had decided to leave your hair down after you had nearly yelled at him for trying some fancy updo. Looking in the mirror after they’ve forced you into a pair of heels, you have to admit that you do look pretty nice. It’s not a look that you would ever come up with yourself, but it suits you well.

Although Michael would never rush you, you’re sure he’s been waiting for a few minutes now. While his hair is always better than yours, his Antichrist powers probably provide him some extra minutes when it comes to getting ready. The stylists give you one last check before deeming you good to go, placing a clutch in your hands and ushering you out of your bedroom.

Michael’s waiting patiently in the foyer, idly checking his phone until he hears movement from the floor above. Pocketing the device, he glances up the stairs only for his eyes to widen as he fights to keep his jaw from dropping. You descend the stairs looking every bit the goddess he’s known you to be since the moment he laid eyes on you, and you smile shyly at his awed expression.

“Did they screw up that bad?” you joke, desperate to break him out of his stupor.

“No, you’re...stunning, (Y/N). Words could not possibly express just how beautiful you are.”

Your cheeks burn in embarrassment, and you gaze up at the ceiling to avoid looking him in the eyes. “Didn’t know you could be a sweet talker, Michael. Thanks. You clean up well yourself.”

He looks down at his outfit as if just now realizing he’s dressed. “I pale in comparison next to you.”

Considering he’s wearing a designer cloak and suit, you doubt that. Michael holds his arm out for you and you gratefully take it, ankles feeling weak from the heels that you’re in. Of course the Antichrist wouldn’t be rolling up to an event dedicated to him and his father in a car he’s driving, so the chauffeured vehicle is not a surprise.

Michael does an excellent job at distracting you on the drive to the classified location where the gala/event/rich people benefit will be held. Between playing you at 8 Ball on your phones--a game that he’s getting surprisingly good at--and debating you on the nuances of selling a person’s soul, you don’t realize you’ve arrived until the car comes to a stop.

“Just a moment,” Michael says to the driver, who puts the car in park and exits the vehicle, presumably so you and Michael can be alone. “Before we go in, there’s a few things you need to be aware of.”

“Please tell me there’s not going to be a human sacrifice in there,” you mutter.

“No sacrifices, I promise. I’ll handle most of the talking, but you might get a few questions from some curious members. Feel free to answer them if you would like, and if I deem their questions to be appropriate.”

“And if I don’t want to talk to them?”

“Just squeeze my hand and I’ll get rid of them.” Your eyes widen, and Michael chuckles before shaking his head. “Not like that, I’ll just tell them that they should enjoy the evening.”

��Anything else?”

“Cooperative members like to be very secretive about everything. Many who will be attending tonight are fine with fellow members knowing their identities, but some may be wearing masks. Don’t be alarmed at that, but definitely don’t ask them who they are.”

“Alright,” you smile. “I think I can handle that.”

“Oh, and don’t smile.”

“Don’t...smile?”

“While I love your smile, everyone here is beneath you. They’re not our friends, or people who deserve our kindness. Unless I smile, please try not to act friendly.”

“O--okay.” You’re less sure of yourself now, and it obviously shows as Michael takes your hand.

“Hey, you’re going to do great.”

“And if I don’t?”

Michael shakes his head. “Impossible. Are you ready?”

“No, but let’s go.” The door of the car swings open, the chauffeur innately knowing when Michael’s ready. He climbs out ahead of you and helps you out, making sure you’re not going to trip over your own feet before he lets go of your waist.

You grab his arm tightly as he leads you inside of what looks like some lavish country club. Two stoic guards stand on either side of the main entrance, staring straight ahead like you’re walking into Buckingham Palace. It’s difficult to hide your shock when you see the petite figure of Ms. Mead standing in the entryway, dark lips turned up in a smile.

“Ms. Mead,” Michael greets, kissing the woman who’s like his mother on the cheek.

She smiles, patting his face lovingly. “My sweet boy,” she says before turning to you, “and you look lovely as well, (Y/N).”

“Um, thank you?” You’re a little apprehensive, considering the last time you saw her, she stuck a needle in your neck.

“They’re ready to begin, Michael.” He nods, giving Ms. Mead one last smile before moving away with you.

“She didn’t seem to be nearly as angry as she usually is,” you note.

“She probably needs a new upgrade.” At your bewildered look, Michael elaborates. “The real Ms. Mead was taken from me by some enemies who believed that killing her would give them the chance to ‘convert’ me to good. The Ms. Mead you see today, and that you saw the night of our wedding, is an AI copy.”

“Holy shit, she’s a robot?”

Michael cringes at the term, but nods. “Yes, basically.”

A flurry of activity signifies that the Cooperative is ready for the son of their Lord to make his grand entrance. Michael looks you over once more, waiting until he’s absolutely sure that you’re ready to face his followers before he nods once to signal that you’re both ready. The voices that fill the room spill out once the doors are opened, Michael giving you hardly a moment to get nervous before walking in with you.

The voices fall silent when the doors open, eyes cast eagerly to Michael and, by extension, you. There’s two long tables that stretch the length of the room, chairs on either side of each one. A smaller table sits raised on a platform at the other end of the room, just big enough for two ornate chairs. Michael squeezes your hand, providing a much-needed grounding tool as you try not to look like your eyes are darting around the room.

Michael was right about some of the Cooperative members; their silver masks reflect the light of the room off of the surface, their entire faces obscured from view. Some of the members who decide not to mask their identity are not surprising to see here (you’re pretty sure you would have been more surprised if Donald Trump wasn’t a member of the Cooperative), but others make you internally squeal from excitement. Although Jared Leto’s always seemed like an intense guy, you didn’t think he was the type of person to have sold his soul to the Devil.

The room remains standing until you and Michael have taken your places at the table in front of everyone. Even after they sit, Michael’s firm hand keeps you from taking a seat. If he’s standing, you guess you’re standing as well.

To anybody watching from afar, Michael’s face is unreadable. Having spent so much time with him, however, you watch as something akin to a mask descends across his features. The Michael that you know--awkward, easily excited, and passionate to a fault--is gone, replaced by someone distant, perpetually angry, who knows for a fact that everyone here is beneath him.

“Welcome, esteemed members of the Cooperative. We are gathered here tonight at the request of my father, who wishes for me to convey to you his plans as we move ever closer to our end goal. As many of you are aware, plans are being drawn up for the Outposts and the Sanctuary, which is where everyone here, along with others who we deem valuable to the continuation of life on Earth, will ride out the end of the world.”

At this, you feel the blood run from your face. Although you’ve known that Michael, as the Antichrist, had plans to end the world on behalf of Satan, it’s jarring to hear him talk about it so plainly. If you’re being honest, you had almost forgotten that the apocalypse was a thing. After getting over being kidnapped to be his bride, you and Michael have become friends. Plus, it’s not as if he talks about Armageddon in front of you. This is the first you’re hearing, in detail, of his plans.

Next to you, Michael is still talking. “--I encourage you all to not worry too much, as we still have a couple of years, at least, until the world can be remade in Satan’s image with the cleansing fire of nuclear bombs. I imagine you may have a few questions. If they are not ignorant, answers you can learn from your colleagues, or flat-out stupid, then please feel free to ask.”

There’s a small murmur from the crowd as Cooperative members converse about the timeline, Michael narrowing his eyes at those in front of him. A couple of people raise their hands, asking questions about fortifications and possible side effects of fallout, which Michael answers effortlessly. It seems as though he’s been prepped on these possible questions, but you wouldn’t be too surprised if this was stuff he just inherently knew.

“Last, before you return to your cocktails and various material pleasures,” Michael squeezes your hand, and you look at him before realizing he wants you to be a part of whatever he’s saying, “my father had revealed to me a woman, who was meant to serve as my consort and stand by my side. Eight months ago, his wish was fulfilled when I married (Y/N), who stands here with me today. Everything else regarding our coupling is none of your goddamn business. Anything else?”

The room is dead silent, everyone being too petrified of their savior to even think of saying anything.

“Wonderful. Please, enjoy the rest of your evening with the bounties that Satan has provided us.” It takes a moment for the room to go back to normal, but you let out a sigh of relief when all of the pairs of eyes are off of you.

“Can we sit down now?” you whisper to Michael, who immediately nods and pulls your chair out for you.

“What did you think?” Michael’s eyes are wide and eager for your approval.

“If I didn’t know you, I would have been terrified of you.”

Michael smiles. “Good, that’s what I was going for.”

“Whoa, is that--” you’re ready to point out two very prominent celebrities doing coke off of each other when Michael shakes his head.

“Remember, these people are beneath you. You can be excited but don’t show it.”

“Fine,” you huff, “but why are people just doing drugs and kissing each other? That seems a little too crazy, even for a room full of Satanist celebrities.”

“Satan preaches giving into any of your desires. Even if it’s material things that only provide fleeting moments of what they believe to be pleasure, my father encourages it. I don’t enjoy watching these activities take place at every single Cooperative meeting, but as long as it doesn’t get out of hand, I don’t put a stop to it.”

There’s so many more questions that you want to ask him about the members of the Cooperative, but a couple of those said members approaching the table to pay their respects to the Antichrist cuts the conversation short. You play the part of the dutiful wife for Michael, greeting his followers and listening to the dull conversations of people starstruck to be in front of their messiah. It’s extremely easy to get overwhelmed in a situation like this, and you seize your chance during a slight lull after nearly an hour of talking to people.

“Michael,” you say gently, “I’m going to go and get some air.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just wanna go outside for a minute and check my phone.” Michael nods, kissing the back of your hand before letting go so that you can stand up.

The lobby’s much less crowded than the room you just came out of; a few stray Cooperative members linger and wait staff are in and out, but other than that you’re basically alone. You already feel like you can breathe again, a weight being lifted off of your chest now that you’re away from so many curious, intimidating people. Feeling how cold it is outside, you adapt your original plan and choose to sit on one of the benches inside instead.

There’s not much going on this Friday night, you notice as you check your phone. Everybody’s still getting back into the swing of school, and most of your friends opted to stay in and treat themselves instead of going out. You wish you were at home right now, snuggled up in a large blanket with your cat curled up next to you.

(You ignore the thought of Michael being there too, sitting on the other end of the couch and trying to get the cat to sit by him instead of you).

“Drink, ma’am?” Looking up from your phone, you see a waitress smiling and holding a tray with a single drink on it out towards you.

“Oh, I don’t know.” You’re unsure of what to do, Michael not having instructed you on whether you could or couldn’t drink at this event.

“It’s our house special tonight! And as you can see, it’s the last one I have.”

The drink, a red cocktail in a tall glass, does look pretty appealing, and one drink would surely help you to get through the rest of the night. “Mm, might as well! It’s only one drink, and I’m not a lightweight.”

Laughing lightly, the waitress hands you the cocktail. “Enjoy!”

“Thank you!”

She turns the corner, which means you’re not able to see as her eyes turn pitch black and her body starts convulsing. The waitress collapses to the ground as black smoke pours out of her mouth, ears, and nose, dissipating into the air just as quickly as it left her body. After a moment, the waitress stands back up, looking extremely disoriented as she grabs her tray and unsteadily walks towards the kitchen.

Sniffing the cocktail to make sure you’re not downing something especially disgusting, you’re instead greeted by the pleasant scent of cinnamon and apples. You shrug before taking a hesitant sip, happily finding that the drink tastes just as good as it smells. It’s almost better than any other cocktail you’ve previously tried, and you find yourself thinking that you’ll have to find the waitress and ask her for the name of this cocktail as you continue to consume the addictive drink. You’re enjoying your moment of solitude, sitting on your phone and enjoying a drink, so much that you don’t realize something’s wrong until it’s too late.

It starts with a slight ache in your head, followed by a ringing in your ears that begins to drown out any background noise. You feel dizzy, and drop your phone so you can place a hand on the bench to steady yourself. Your eyes can’t focus on anything, the walls seeming to morph in front of you as you close your eyes to assuage the nausea.

“Was I drugged?” you mutter to yourself, attempting to stand up but barely straightening your legs before you fall back down to your seat. “Maybe I should find Michael.”

The moment you think of Michael, it’s as if explosions start to rock your brain. You can’t think, and the ringing in your ears reverberates until it’s the only thing you can hear. All of your senses are gone, replaced by the pain of a thousand jackhammers in your head.

The explosions disappear just as quickly as they appeared, leaving you confused and disoriented. Everything feels off, like the world’s tilted before righting itself once more, but overcorrecting in the process. Trying to remember what you were doing before your sudden headache, the only thing you can come up with is Michael.

The name brings a smile to your face as your heart starts to beat quickly. Michael, the love of your life and your other half. What are you doing out here, when he’s in there by himself? You stand to return to him, the entire time not being able to shake the feeling that something’s extremely wrong.

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#michael langdon #michael langdon imagine #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x you #american horror story #american horror story imagine #american horror story apocalypse #american horror story imagines #AHS #ahs imagine #ahs imagines #ahs apocalypse

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cmescapade · 5 years ago

Photo

my long overview/review of ‘Star Wars: Journey to Batuu’ after forcing myself to play it almost nonstop

so i said i was going to amend what i said in response to this ask after playing to min/max shit so here is a tldr version of my opinion after playing:

I consider this pack to be a 2/10; It's enough to kill time as a temporary distraction, but not for long. There’s absolutely no replay value after going through all those missions as each outcome is ultimately the same by faction. There also doesn’t seem to be any negative outcomes for each prompt in the little “choose your adventure” pop ups--And if there is, it is extremely low since I have never gotten a negative outcome.

The aspirations are fair, and are the only things I found in this pack that’s anyway redeemable since I believe the rewards can be used well in conjunction with general solo/super-sim gameplay.

kinda sat on this for a while bc i wasn’t sure if i should post something so lengthy but then i remembered this is my blog n i can post my left toe if i wanted to

even tho i would never post a pic of my left toe anyway

.......at least for free. With the right price, however....

anyway more details under the cut if you’re interested bc i like to ramble :))

I decided to split this into 5 sections to organize my thoughts a little better. I’ll be separating my thoughts on each faction, the ships as a rabbit hole, the faction missions, the star wars aspirations, and then the breakdown of my 2/10 rating.

1. Factions

When you travel to Batuu, the game gives you a starting “mission” or quest to get you acclimated to the areas, and each area has a specific Faction associated with it.

And yes, you cannot live anywhere, nor are there any lots, as was already stated.

Every area has a similar makeup which has:

Control Panels

Supply Crates

1 non-rabbit hole area

1 interactable ship

The Black Spire Outpost is the biggest area and has:

Two places to grab food, three if you count the Cantina

Aside from the Cantina, the other areas are rabbit holes

The two eateries are:

Docking Bay 7

this one has the most food options

you’ll never go hungry in batuu because the cheapest items on the menu are Outpost Popcorn Mix and Water at 0 credits lmao

the other two foods not shown in the screenshot above are Yobshrimp Noodle Salad and Braised Shaak Roast

Ronto Roasters

This food place has two of the same options Docking Bay 7 has as well as two additional food items

Oga’s Cantina

The only area that you see the inside of

yea the bar serves batuu-only drinks too

also where you find the guy who would give you Scoundrel missions, Hondo Ohnaka.

You can essentially max your Scoundrel reputation without it hindering whichever side you wanna take, and you can keep it when you essentially max out your rep on either the Resistance or the First Order.

There aren’t any real pros to being a Scoundrel aside from some socialization interactions. It doesn’t do anything for initial Batuu gameplay aside from unlocking Scoundrel outfits in CAS and some upgrades for your droids, but this goes for all of your options (Resistance, First Order, & Scoundrel).

The Dwelling

This is a rabbit hole where your sim goes to sleep, pee, or shower… If not the closest bench.

It’s located opposite to the Cantina.

If you’re ever lost, there’s a spire you can sit/nap on right in front of it–or you can just wait till your sim wants to pee.

they’ll automatically run there

that’s… how i found it, tbh

Dok Ondar’s Den of Antiquities

Another rabbithole

This place sells items you can use to complete missions, like Dataspikes and a couple of Lightsaber parts

Majority of the inventory are decorative stuff to bring back with you

Savi’s Workshop

Right behind the antique shop is the lightsaber place where you can find more hilts, kyber crystals, and display cases for your lightsabers.

You can also click on the shop to start a lightsaber challenge.

Outside this area, you have the First Order District which has more supply crates and control panels than the other two neighborhoods, and a lot more activity–Makes sense since this is basically the hub for the First Order in general.

There’s only the Droid Depot in this area, and the only real shop that has use for credits. Food wise, there’s a food stall, and if your sim is stinky or tired, they’d basically disappear for a few minutes to recharge and come back.

Droid Depot

Each faction has specific Droid personality traits

Aside from “voices,” these personalities don’t do much

I guess the First Order one is a lot more zap-happy though

The Resistance Camp is even smaller. Like the other areas, it’s littered with supply crates, but only has one control panel and no shops. However, there’s a rabbit hole toward the back in the Caves.

This doesn’t lead you to anywhere interesting, and it’s just another ‘choose your own adventure’ kind of thing.

2. Ships

In the Black Spire Outpost, you’ll find the iconic Millennium Falcon. You can do kessel runs and explore in the Millennium Falcon with Chewbacca if you have a high Scoundrel reputation.

However, although I said you get to ride with Chewbacca, you don’t ever see him come out

He just kinda……………..stays there

and the prompts tell u he’s there

n ur gonna have to go with it and use the power of your imagination to believe he really do be there

In the First Order District, there’s the TIE Echelon, which functions the same way as the Millennium Falcon… But, you can’t do anything outside of exploring or using it for missions. This is how the X-Wing Starfighter in the Resistance Camp functions as well.

It’s all pretty copy and paste, but w/e, that’s how EA does it

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3. Missions

There may be several different missions per faction, but to no one’s surprise, they’re all literally the same one but worded differently.

Regular missions only have one plus (+) and one negative (-) icon

Regular Scoundrel missions only have one plus icon and no negatives since they don’t impact other factions

Each faction has a regular mission that pertains to:

Obtaining information

Exploring with the faction’s designated ship

Stealing from Supply Crates

Hacking a Control Panel

Yes………………….They’re very repetitive

You don’t have to do all of them though

You can spam the same one over and over as long as it fits the time slot

For example, the Resistance’s ship exploration mission is limited to only the day time and seems to disappear when it gets late in game

also there’s an error with the TIE Echelon where it’s missing a whole ass prompt

……As you can see, the options make no sense because the prompt is the same one that came before it 🥴

anyway…

Story Missions are the only missions that seem to differentiate from each faction.

All missions that pertain to the “story” are indicated with prerequisites of higher ranks within the faction

All of them give a double boost toward your faction

If it’s a Resistance story quest, it’ll always increase hostility from First Order members

Vice versa for the First Order faction

The Scoundrels are neutral, and do not impact any faction

It’s only the Resistance and First Order factions that have very similar plot lines

but I’m guessing it’s only like that since they’re supposed to follow the vague cause/effect the two of them have?

4. Aspirations

The initial Aspiration you get when you pick the Star Wars umbrella in CAS (or in game) is “Hope VS Order.” After completing this one aspiration, you unlock the 3 that pertain to each faction.

Paragon of Hope

Resistance aspiration

Reward trait gives a boost to Charisma skill building

This is probably nice for those careers that need Charisma to be high, like the Political and Business branches

Enforcer of Order

First Order aspiration

Lowers chances of “Death from Anger”

Since I like killing my sims, I think this aspiration is pointless lmao

Galactic Privateer

Scoundrel aspiration

“Sleight of Hand” reward trait

Unlocks pickpocketing outside of Criminal branch usage

Best one here tbh

Works outside of Batuu, you’ll steal simoleons instead of credits

Also you can cheat whenever u play Sabaac and no one will notice

5. Reevaluation of Initial Opinions

I’ll be going through my initial list from my Response to the Ask I got before. I originally stated that it seemed promising and it was a 3.5~4/10.

Aesthetics/Visual: my opinion is unchanged, it still made me sad i can’t have a little shanty house out there or rent a garbo lot, 0.5/5

The longer I played, the more I didn’t find any new animations

The lightsaber sparring slowly began to look like a mash between GF and RoM duels after a while

I still hate that the areas were beautiful (+0.5) but the interactive places forced cutaway

why do you wanna ruin my screenshots like this, man

CAS/BB still is hard to integrate–Unless your sim is a geek with figurines, the ship models might be nice to add to their collections

Otherwise……

….

I don’t have a follow up for that, sry

Gameplay: uhhh at least i found something i could use outside of Batuu, 1.5/5

I think that playing 3984729847 repetitive missions for a long period time really orientated me to the whole map

…but the fact that i had trouble the first time around still makes it not-user friendly

the issue I had with the resistance members not having an icon? It’s a thing, I guess

The resistance quests take you on a weird trip to “prove” yourself so i guess the icons are supposed to show that they’re “not” resistance members or something idk

they’re supposed to be the sneaky underdogs who wanna do good or w/e

I guess that’s immersive…….. +0.5

sry im first order trash

they also have “Ignite the Spark” and “Ask about Missions” both leading to the same mission screen……………….

convenience?? i guess??

missions are still confusing, made worse when the game itself glitches up a storm

there was one mission where i had to go to the cantina to find someone

and they wouldn’t spawn within the time frame………….

i had to go in and out for like 3 days until they actually spawned

i only knew this bc i arrested half the people in the cantina while i was bored

so anyone without a red bar was probably them lmfaoo

also, as i stated above……. there’s some mission errors in the prompts

Currency is still worthless.

Everything can be done by purely stealing from supply crates

Credits are only worth to blow it off on sabaac!

The only real need for credits is to have 1,000 so u can buy a droid

Then slam the rest of those credits on the table to bet bajillions on a game of sabaac!

Aspirations………. Useful +1

Despite them being sorta niche, they’re pretty decent

Can abuse the rewards for optimal gameplay for a super sim

Honestly i just love the pickpocketing reward off the Scoundrel aspiration, just because it works outside of Batuu (and that he didn’t have to be in the Criminal career for it either)

In total, my personal rating for this pack is 2/10.

It was nice, but I don’t really see this pack being replayable, considering that i did everything there was to do on Batuu in a single trip. Sure I could’ve taken my time, but since everything would end up the same anyway, it felt like it was set up to be a one-time gig.

At least with JA you’re moderately forced to return so you can collect treasures that are RNG–In JtB, you can snatch up all that you need on Batuu from grinding everything like a nutcase. There’s also chances of failure in JA, but on Batuu that percentage is almost little to none. The most you’ll ever get is a dazed moodlet that barely lasts, a negative relationship, and being escorted to a loading screen.

I feel like this pack could be a little better if there were more risks involved, but there are barely any that I encountered. It’s just another weird, rehashed cash grab by EA.

#star wars: journey to batuu #star wars #journey to batuu #SW: JtB #sims expansion review #i could just say its a disappointment #but tbh the whole game is a disappointment #if you're gonna ask why i still play ts4 if i find it disappointing #i'll have to answer that w:#the games i play are a reflection of me #and I'M a disappointment #😎

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sml8180 · 6 years ago

Text

Long Overdue Upgrades

This turned out WAY longer than I intended, and I have no regrets. Have some Cyborg!Eric, courtesy of a friend on one of the Discord servers I’m a part of.

Also, just a heads up for some medical unpleasantness, seeing as topics such as surgery are brought up.

Long Overdue Upgrades

One of the first things Google, Bing, and the extensions had noticed when they first met Eric Derekson was the fact that he had two prosthetic legs. Over time, they came to learn that he had lost his legs in the same crash that had snuffed out the lives of his brothers. It became clear early on that the prosthetics were on the cheap end, and likely weren’t fitted properly, going by how great of a parent Derek was. So, the androids all came together and got to work, even bringing Dr. Iplier and Dr. Schneeplestein into their plan.

It took them weeks of working practically non-stop, with all hands on deck. The work was frustrating, but it started to pay off when things finally started to come together and function properly. Every time the androids saw Eric walking around the manor, in the living area on the couch, or in Dr. Iplier’s office, likely dealing with the lingering phantom pain in his legs or the complications resulting from years of wearing ill-fitting prosthetics, it only served to act as fuel to their fire.

Finally, the androids all finished their work, and Bing went to find Eric while Dr. Iplier called Dr. Schneeplestein to come and lend an extra set of hands.

“Hey, little dude,” Bing addressed, finding Eric reading a book in the living area.

“Hm?” Eric hummed in question, looking up from his book towards the android. “What’s up, Bing?”

“I’ve got something to show you, come on,” Bing answered, hardly waiting for Eric to mark his page before he was starting to practically pull him along by the hand.

Eric allowed the android to lead him to the office he shared with Google and his extensions. He shut his eyes when they got to the door, as Bing requested it of him, and let the older Ego usher him inside with his hands on his shoulders. The younger Ego could hear some shuffling and whispers, though he couldn’t tell how many people were in the room.

“Okay, kid, open your eyes,” Bing requested. As Eric did as he was instructed, he let out a gasp, covering his mouth with his hand as he spotted Google, the extensions, Dr. Iplier, and Dr. Schneeplestein all standing by one of the work tables, upon which sat a pair of white lower legs. It was clear to him what exactly they were for.

“You guys… You m-made me new legs?” Eric stammered in disbelief, stepping forward to run his fingertips over the smooth surface of one of the legs.

“We did,” Google piped up. “You deserve far better than the cheap prosthetics your father provided to you. This set is one of a kind, made with similar materials and technology that makes up Bing, the extensions, and myself.”

“Ja!” Henrik interjected. “You vill have full natural mobility, and even be able to feel changes in temperature and touch, should all go according to plan.”

“A-according to plan?”

“Well, with how advanced these are,” Dr. Iplier began, “You will need to go through an operation for things to work properly. There is a set of cuffs that connect to the top portions of the legs, which will allow for sensation and natural movement. In theory, this could also help to manage your PLP.”

“Y-you really think s-s-so?” Eric was practically vibrating with excitement, at this point, especially as Dr. Iplier nodded in response to his question. “Um… What will the surgery involve…?”

Dr. Iplier picked up his tablet, which had been sitting on the table, and came over to Eric with it, tapping at the screen, with Henrik following behind him. “Basically, we’ll be going in and exposing the main nerve endings, neatening up the stump and smoothing the bone out a bit,” Dr. Iplier explained.

“From there,” Henrik jumped in, “Ve vill be making the primary connections between your nerves and the connecting cuffs. Once all connections are made, ze cuffs vill be set in place vith a handful of plates and screws, and your legs vill be wrapped up to heal.”

“It’ll take some time before you’ll be up and walking, but it’ll be worth it,” Dr. Iplier added.

“Okay… When will we do it…?”

“Well, Dark can easily arrange things so you have time off, seeing as you work for Wil and the twins. If you really wanted, we could go through with it tomorrow, so long as you think you can fast tonight,” Dr Iplier answered.

“I’d like that,” Eric confirmed, giving the doctor a little smile.

The rest of the day seemed to go by in a blurr for Eric, joy and excitement filling his heart. Night seemed to come quickly, and it went by just as fast. Soon, Eric was being lead to Dr. Iplier’s office within the manor by the doctor himself. He changed into a hospital gown and lay on the bed, while Dr. Iplier took his vitals. Google came in during this time, bringing the connecting cuffs for Eric’s legs with him, with Red and Green following him, and Henrik arrived not long after, speaking in a rapid-fire mix of English, German, and medical jargon with Dr. Iplier as he set aside his coat and got ready to scrub up for the operation.

“Alright, Eric,” Dr. Iplier addressed as he finished getting the IV into the young Ego’s arm. “I’m going to put the oxygen mask on you, and then I want you to count backwards from 50 for me. You don’t have to count out loud, I just want you to do it.”

“Okay,” Eric confirmed, lifting his head a bit and letting Dr. Iplier put the mask over his nose and mouth, starting to count backwards as he let his head rest on the pillow again.

50… 49… 48…

He was starting to feel tired, now, like he’d had a long day at work.

47… 46… 45…

His eyelids were starting to feel heavy, and his head was cloudy.

44… 43…

He was out cold.

The doctors, Google, Red, and Green were able to get to work. Green kept an eye on Eric’s vital signs as the others did what they needed to do. Red and Google make sure that the doctors had whatever they needed when they needed it, and the two doctors worked on Eric’s legs. They worked for hours, neatening up the ends of Eric’s natural legs, getting the framework needed to fix the cuffs in place where it needed to be, smoothing out the end of the bone. Once one leg was ready for the cuff, the doctors shifted positions, letting Google work on getting the cuff connected how it needed to be - he was more precise than any doctor could ever be, after all - and began to work on Eric’s other leg. Dr. Iplier followed Henrik’s lead when it came to the operation, seeing as he was the surgeon in the room. By late afternoon, they had finally finished, and wrapped up Eric’s legs so that he could recover.

When Eric woke up, it felt like he was waking up from a long nap. He blinked, groaning softly as he tried to recall where he was.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he heard a soft voice joke, followed by a quiet chuckle. Eric looked to his right, and smiled tiredly as he spotted Illinois by his side.

“Hey…” came his own soft reply, as he was still waking up.

Illinois smiled, lightly petting Eric’s hair. “Doc and Henrik say things went smoothly; Henrik said that this might’ve been the smoothest operation he’s done in a while.”

“That’s good,” Eric responded with a giggle.

Dr. Iplier approached the bed, hearing Illinois and Eric speaking. “Hey, there he is, awake and alert.”

“Hm…?”

“Well, awake, at least,” the doctor chuckled. He checked over a few things on the monitor beside Eric, and nodded to himself. “Everything’s stable. How’re you feeling, Eric?”

“Tired, kinda, um, kinda sore…” Eric muttered. His words were followed by a rumble coming from his stomach. “And hungry…”

“I’ll get you some soup or something, okay?” Illinois offered. With a nod from Eric, he placed a kiss on the tired Ego’s forehead and went to get him some food.

“Let’s sit you up,” Dr. Iplier dictated, helping Eric to sit up, propped up by a couple of pillows. “I think things are going to work out just fine, kid.”

Weeks went by with Eric recovering from the operation. He was sore and tired for the first three weeks or so, as Dr. Iplier kept him on painkillers, which he slowly weaned off of. Each time Dr. Iplier checked his legs, they seemed to be looking better and better. Illinois helped however he could; all the Egos did, really. Eric didn’t mind the time the healing process took - though he occasionally gave a small protest towards the others fussing over him - it was all leading up to the day he’d be able to start learning to walk with his new legs.

Finally, finally, Dr. Iplier and Dr. Schneeplestein gave Eric the green light to work with Google, Bing, and the extensions in order to get back on his feet. Illinois brought him to the Google office, carrying him in his arms (mostly just because Eric had asked him to, and he enjoyed carrying Eric, anyways), and the pair were greeted by Bing, who quickly ushered them inside. He had Illinois set Eric down on the surface of one of the work tables, and looked over the site where Eric’s legs met the cuffs.

“Okay, so, Doc gave us the green light to go ahead, this looks way better than we’d expected, and now is the time to get hyped,” Bing rambled, looking over Eric’s legs.

“What is going to happen,” Google interjected, cutting off Bing’s quick rambling. “Is that we’re going to connect the legs in two stages. First the primary connection, which is intended to keep the prosthetics in place and allow for movement, then the nerve connections, which will allow signals from the sensors to be transmitted to the brain,” he informed the younger Ego, watching as he nodded. “I will warn you now, Eric, that the nerve connection process will most likely be extremely painful. That is part of why we are doing this now, while Dr. Iplier still has you on some dosage of painkillers.”

“There… There isn’t another way…?” Eric questioned, wringing his yellow handkerchief in his hands.

“Not if you want to have any feeling in your legs,” Google answered bluntly. “The pain won’t last for long, if our calculations are correct.”

“Yeah!” Oliver chimed in, his chipper voice cutting off the level, serious drone of the main unit. “If we’re right, you’ll have a spike of pain right when we do it, but then it’ll dull down after a moment. It might be annoying for a bit, but that’ll mostly just be your body adjusting to everything.”

“O-okay…” Eric confirmed, taking a slow breath to try to steady his thoughts.

“You ready, little dude?” Bing asked, setting a hand on Eric’s shoulder.

“As I’ll ever be…” Eric answered.

The androids made quick work of making the primary connections, making sure to have Eric test the mobility of the ankle and toe joints as they went. Bing then moved behind him, resting one hand on the younger Ego’s left shoulder, taking hold of his left hand. Illinois took up a similar position on Eric’s right, while Green and Oliver positioned themselves at his legs to prevent any movement while Google and Red got ready to make the nerve connections.

“This is the part where it’s going to hurt, Eric,” Google informed him. “Brace yourself; we’ll connect both of them on the count of three.”

“Okay…” Eric responded, taking a deep breath as he turned his head towards Illinois, doing his best to brace himself for what he knew was going to happen.

“One… Two… Three!”

Eric couldn’t tell who had made the count. All he knew was that it hurt like Hell when the nerve connections were made. He let out a yell - practically screaming - as he tightly gripped Illinois and Oliver’s hands, tears welling up in his eyes and slipping down his cheeks. The connection burned and stung and felt like pins and needles in the worst way. It seemed to last for ages before he finally began to pull himself together, breathing heavily and paying no mind to the tears still rolling down his cheeks.

“It’s okay, you’re okay…” Eric could hear Illinois whispering reassurances in his ear, and he could feel the man rubbing his back.

“Connection complete, went off without a hitch,” Red stated, making a couple of notes for future reference.

“We will have to wait a couple of days for your body to adjust to the connection,” Google told Eric. “Then we’ll be able to make the adjustments so that you can feel things properly and possibly start walking again. For now, though, you should get some rest.”

That was all Eric needed to hear as he felt Illinois pick him up and carry him out of the office. The man was asleep before he was even set on his bed.

The next couple of days brought slow relief to Eric’s pain. His nerves were starting to calm, and though he was still sore, he was in far less pain than he was originally. He was feeling better with each passing day, and it only served to improve his mood even further. A couple of weeks went by of Eric continuing to recover, slowly making progress as he got used to having actual feeling in his legs for the first time in so long.

“You’ve been making great progress, dude,” Bing praised, ruffling Eric’s hair as the younger Ego sat in the Google office. “Think you’re ready to try walking on your own?”

“I think so,” Eric nodded. He’d been looking forward to walking without any sort of support from crutches or a cane or another person since this all started.

“We’ll help you down, then,” Oliver offered, coming to Eric’s left, while Bing shifted to his right.

“What’re you all up to in here?” Illinois questioned, coming to the doorway of the office.

“You’ll see in a minute! Stay there!” Eric excitedly told Illi, as Oliver and Bing helped him down from his spot on the table.

“Okay, okay. I’ll stay here,” Illi chuckled, leaning against the doorframe.

Eric stood upright, getting his balance before taking a hesitant step forward. Another step, this time a bit more certain, drew forth a fit of happy giggles from him, and he made his way towards Illinois. The adventurer straightened up, beaming as Eric walked towards him; it was the first time he’d walked without support since his operation was done. He caught Eric when he stumbled on the last step towards him, lifting him up in a hug and kissing him, beaming.

Google and Bing watched the pair, unable to hide their own smiles as they did. It seemed they had done well, and Eric’s life would only get even better as time went on, thanks to these long overdue upgrades.

#Markiplier Egos #Eric Derekson #Bingiplier #Googleplier #Dr. Iplier #AHWM Illinois #tw: medical unpleasantness #tw: surgery #Cyborg!Eric #chronic pain #Derek was a bad parent #long post

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comicteaparty · 6 years ago

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August 3rd-August 9th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from August 3rd, 2019 to August 9th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

Describe your comic’s setting. What made you choose this setting?

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

For https://oldmanandtheseawitch.tumblr.com/, I chose a very nebulous interbellum period because I felt like that sort of gave me the best of all worlds. At heart, I just love me some vintage settings, especially the early 20th century. I knew I wanted a setting without modern conveniences, not only because it helps the comic stand up to aging and reduces the risk of falling out of date, but presents its own challenges and advantages. But while I wanted a vintage setting, I also wanted one that I felt like hadn't been done before in regards to mermaid stories, which are almost always set either in modern days or in the rough time period of the Little Mermaid--1700s to early 1800s. Interbellum Scotland felt like a unique setting that was, at once, hearkening to classical mermaid settings with sailboats and old-timey fisherman, tiny fishing towns, but with some trapping familiar to modern readers even they have vintage twists, like telephones but with switchboards, cars but they're old model Ts, things like that. I also felt like this period brought some neat ideas. I've never seen mermaids dealing with old radios or model Ts or a setting that had just recovered from a brutal world war with trenches and ocean mines and diesel and radar. Transitioning from pastoral to industrialized. Where does this element of fantasy, the mermaid story, come into play and interact with this? And you'll see that, even between Witchy and Ainsley, things revolving around mermaids are more fantasy-based with monsters and magic, while things revolving around humans are more realistic and down to earth, wondering about income and walking to work and selling your goods and what's going on south in england. And over time, things start to overlap and entwine as their relationship progresses, magic seeping into the human world and the mundane seeping into the mermaid world.

But overall I just love drawing and researching vintage things. ;3 And Scotland's just pretty as heck.

Respheal

Galebound http://www.galebound.com/ takes place on a tidally-locked planet shortly before their equivalent to earth's industrial revolution. Steam engines are getting more popular, mostly used by merchants where the fixed wind and currents aren't helpful, and they're on the cusp of science and medical advancements that will make their planetary and magical system very problematic. The tidally-locked world came first, just 'cuz they're neat! Planets like that have one side constantly facing their sun so you get that whole fire-ice world with a narrow band of eternal twilight and safety in between. These type of planets, if they have a good atmosphere, also usually have a giant storm at the subsolar point. So I made that storm the carrier of their magic system, the Gale, because why not. This sorta setup causes some interesting narrative features, like the complete lack of night and seasons and huge swaths of the planet that are completely uninhabitable. The time period sort of just happened, but it worked out. I wanted it to take place later than sword-and-sorcery times, but it couldn't be too modern, so the early 19th century was about right. Also it sort of sets a time limit on fixing certain things, because certain scientific advances would make the magic system so ridiculously broken I don't think it could be salvaged ahahaha :'D(edited)

spacerocketbunny

http://www.ghostjunksickness.com/ the setting in GJS is in a universe that has a variety of different time period aesthetics in one. It takes on a retro futurism where there's outdated tech from the 80's and 90's but there's also spaceships and technological advancements to make travelling from one planet to the next into a day trip. There's aliens and a variety of different people that make humans a minority in the population in a very mixed and blended cultural mosaic. The main setting of the story, which is a planet called June7 is also a place recovering from a inexplicable catastrophe which destroyed a majority of the planet's surface. It's unstable and crumbling structures make it difficult for the residents to thrive and something like transient bounty hunters have pretty much taken over the main livelihood of the planet.

We wanted to make a really well lived in setting, so we took inspiration from a variety of different cultures and stories that the science-fiction genre hadn't quite delved into.

LadyLazuli

For Phantomarine, http://www.phantomarine.com/, the basic concept was simple - I like the ocean, and I like ghosts, so I mashed them together into a haunted ocean But I also love worlds where beauty and danger are close neighbors - in this case, a network of sacred lighthouses keeps swarms of hungry ghosts away from the living population of the sea. I love stories where civilian life is pretty uncomplicated and chill - I've got a nice tropical fantasy vibe going on in these last couple chapters - but there's always a massive danger element looming over everyone's head. What if those lighthouses fail? What if you fall overboard outside the barrier? All that relaxing energy can change to morbid tragedy in a flash...(edited)

LadyLazuli

In terms of rough time period, I've kept it incredibly vague, mostly for my own enjoyment I have sailboats and motorboats existing side by side, color cameras, radios, electricity... certainly not technologically advanced, but it's got some 19th-20th century bits-n-bobs here and there. It's a fantasy world, but more supernatural than magical - gods, ghosts, some humans with strange gifts, but more often than not, a very strong boundary between ordinary and extraordinary. It's a story where a few normal people get swept up into all sorts of divine shenanigans, and have to find their way through.

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

Finally getting a chance to read through phantomarine and I thought that blanket was familiar! Absolutely love the PNW-inspired outfit, @LadyLazuli !

LadyLazuli

AAH! Yes yes! I've spent far too much time at the Museum of Anthropology here in Vancouver to NOT be inspired by it. My world is truly a mishmash of cultures

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

OHHH I WANNA VISIT SO BAADD. I need to get my washington license upgraded so I can take a trip up there to the museum!(edited)

But your whole comic is a delight. <3 I'll be retweetin' it in a bit when I finish reading.

AntiBunny

AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ is pretty straight forward. The city is inspired by film noir, hardboiled comics, and detective novels. It's an old city, so everything should look weathered, especially the old town district where most of the stories take place, so it's all brick work, broken plaster, cracked window panes and such. To some degree I also take visual inspiration from the historic district in my home town, and surrounding areas.

MJ Massey

Black Ball http://welcometoblackball.com/ is set in an alternate 1920s in the New York area. Because of course you set a 1920s comic in New York! But also, I used to live in the metro area and loved it, so to me it was natural to have the setting there. There's a lot of good reference, and lots of sneaky places one can hide a speakeasy. There are a whole bunch of good historical references as well, which makes it easier.

snuffysam

Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/ is set in a deliberately anachronistic fantasy world. There are biplanes and 20's cars, but there's also online message boards and cell phones. Fashion makes no sense, climate makes no sense, etc. The reason I built the world like this is because I wanted to mix up my background designs (and crowd designs) between scenes, and making a world that has no real consistency was the best way to get away with this in my mind. One town has modern art and roller skates, another has tents and open-air shops, there's a city on a hexagonal grid with triangular skyscrapers, this city: http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/524/ uses a fractal pattern for its layout, etc.

Desnik

http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/ is based on the idea that a medieval fantasy can be MORE than a DnD piggyback ride. And like, the medieval time period was a couple thousand years, yo, there's differentiation between different time periods. I used it as an opportunity to revamp my worldbuilding techniques and I've learned a lot about frontier-style governments and societies that function without a central authority. Also marginalia are the best comics and no one can tell me otherwise.

Attila Polyák

The setting of Tales of Midgard https://talesofmidgard.com/ is at a glance pretty much what you’d expect a generic fantasy world to be. Aaaand in a way that is right. The setting is a world that used to be kinda medieval-Europe like a long time ago, magic became commonplace, and the world reacted. Instead of developing technology, like in the real world, magic became technology and ultimately it became so common that it satisfied the needs of everyone in every niche possible. And then modernization happened, because why wouldn't it? What we in real life call science and technology slowly got discovered and integrated with a magic-based economy. The end result is a world that looks a bit anachronistic but if you look at it more closely you’ll notice that most things either don’t have a real-life counterpart or if they do they actually mean very different things. This is the point where my main story takes place and the world we see in my comic.

Funari (Raison d'Etre)

Well for Raison d'Etre ( http://raisondetrecomic.com/ ) I was always inspired by anime and general Japanese culture/pop culture growing up, so I had a handle of 90s/00s Japan pretty well that I wanted to use it! I also grew up during the 00s as a teen so the fashions and stuff have stuck. Kinda giving off a sense of nostalgia with the memories that way. And the "Present Day"'s trends are just based off what I grew up with and what a future would look like if we re-cycled back to millennium pop culture, including the love for 60s/70s-inspired stuff, so it's a "neat mess" of that stuff

We haven't shown much of the other planes of existence yet, but we plan to soon. But the idea with those is alternate/fantastical takes on plain ol' Earth (the Middle Plane). Mildly so, though, as even Umbria and Celeste have evolved over time like Earth's denizens have. Little bits of modernization, and assimilation with Earth trends due to the eventual discovery of these planes by Earth's NKP folks.

KAME (commissions open!)

Describe your comic’s setting. What made you choose this setting? For http://tapas.io/series/dragonclawcomic I chose fantasy because I’ve always loved stories about epic adventures, and magical creatures, and I also love the elements from mythology that are often integrated into fantasy stories (gods and demons, heroes and villains, etc.). There’re so many wonderful worlds and characters and creatures that exist within a fantasy setting, and so many more you can create on your own, it’s overwhelming (I mean, Dragons, man, they’re awesome!). Probably one of the first things that got me into fantasy was the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon show, but recently and more importantly, the thing that inspired me to write my own story was the The Legend of Drizzt novels, which I absolutely love (and I’m thankful to my brother who sent me the first like 9 novels for me to read, when I didn’t know a thing about them, and now there are over 20?, I lost count, but I always look forward to the next book) and needless to say have and keep inspiring me a lot

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble #comic tea party #ctp

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crossguild · 7 years ago

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was writing this for a birthday and missed the deadline so it’s not actually done, but i turned it up again recently and liked it a lot! it’s basically the ‘gencio dimensional switch AU’ turned up to 11

> GIBRALTAR 04:42

Lúcio doesn't register anything specifically wrong with the situation until the hand at his chest curls over his own, followed by the brush of soft lips over the back of his neck. The gesture is familiar enough, and the shape of the body behind him is about the right size, the right shape but-- Lúcio flips on his desklamp, rolling his eyes at a noise of protest, and slides out of bed.

Maybe he could stand to be more careful but whatever else is off, he doesn't feel particularly threatened by this turn of events and Lúcio startles at the flash of bright green hair disappearing under the edge of his blanket. "Genji?" he says, reaching for the covers and pulling them back to reveal an owlishly squinting someone, their eyes still trying to adjust to the sudden light.

Lúcio would recognize those eyes anywhere, that sleepy quirk of his lips. The inflection of his voice in the gentle "Lúcio?" he responds with. His face is unscarred, body skin-and-muscle instead of carbon fiber and artificial sinew. Not-Genji looks around, eyes narrowing at the sight of an unfamiliar room, the single twin-sized bunk Lúcio had scrambled out of. He should've been on his feet, weapons drawn, in a fraction of the time it takes him to sit up, but the wary tension in his shoulders is all Genji. "Where is this?"

"Gibraltar," Lúcio says, arms crossing over his chest.

Not-Genji's brows furrow, a skeptical expression on his face. "In Europe?" he asks, as if there's some other Gibraltar. "Not New York?"

"What would we be doing in New York?"

"We live there."

Lúcio's been to New York. It's nothing like Gibraltar, much less the Watchpoint. "How could you mistake the Watchpoint for New York?" he laughs, promptly deciding that there's no Genji he could ever stay suspicious of.

"I thought," Genji answers slowly, with a sheepish smile, "that as long as I was with you, it doesn't matter where I am."

"Flatterer," Lúcio manages to say, his face growing warm. He watches Genji stand, the movements fluid and easy, brimming with confidence. None of his Genji's cautious deliberation, the keen precision of his cyborg body.

"I should let you get back to sleep," Genji says, absently tying the drawstring of his sweatpants and tugging the hem of his shirt back into place.

Lúcio tries not to look, but his eyes are drawn to the casual roll of Not-Genji's shoulders, that uncertainty in his expression at the thought of being on his own in an entirely new timeline-- the stubbornness in the line of his jaw, an absolute refusal to admit any shred of fear. "It's fine," Lúcio says, absently adjusting his locs to sit more comfortably under their wrap, "you can stay. But we should find Winston, maybe he'll know how to fix this."

Not-Genji's hand rises to cover his mouth. His brows furrow. "I wouldn't want to impose so late at night."

"It can wait a few hours." Lúcio catches Genji's hand as he staggers back to bed, tugging him toward it before releasing the other man and burrowing under the covers. "Are you really Genji?" he asks, shuffling back to make ample room.

"I take it," Not-Genji comments with a wry twist of his lips, "I look very different here."

"Where you're from, we're also..."

"Yes." Hesitating at the edge of the bed, Not-Genji leans down to regard the thoughtful frown on Lúcio's face, and takes a step back. "What's wrong, Lúcio?"

"You have a brother?"

"Hanzo."

Lúcio lifts the corner of the blanket, shifting until his back is pressed to the wall. "Why're you in New York and not with the Shimadas?"

Not-Genji joins him under the covers, keeping an awkward distance. "When we were younger," he says slowly, "Hanzo couldn't bring himself to kill me when I refused to assume responsibility for the family business. We left Japan together."

"Oh." Lúcio tries to imagine that particular sequence of events and turns over, screwing his eyes shut as the stranger behind him settles in. "Things happened differently for my Genji," he says.

Not-Genji stills, pulling the covers up to his shoulders. "Let's save this for tomorrow."

> GIBRALTAR 05:40

Lúcio kicks his feet, staring at not-Genji's back as the other man roots around in the Watchpoint refrigerator. They had both dozed for about an hour before Genji hauled himself out of bed and wandered to the kitchen, cheerfully insisting that he couldn't sleep and just had to explore. Lúcio's sense of responsibility had overridden his inclination to let this stranger wander aimlessly around the Watchpoint and he'd rolled out of bed as well.

It had only taken a few minutes of conversation to acclimate to calling the newcomer Genji, so long as Lúcio kept in mind that his Genji was apparently off working in a restaurant in the New York City of some other dimension. They'd drifted to the kitchen, where Genji promptly decided that he'd make breakfast-- for lack of anything else to do with his time. Besides, he's apparently used to waking up at this hour.

"The walk-in," Genji says, back turned, "would have more space."

Lúcio hasn't ever seen Genji turn his back to a stranger, but if he comes from a world where he doesn't have to consider the risk of being attacked from behind, Lúcio's glad for it. "I think Winston was using this little one," he answers from his spot on the counter, "but after the recall there's been a lot more people on base and we haven't switched over yet."

Genji turns around with an armful of fruit-- bananas, little containers of blueberries and raspberries-- and a tub of yogurt. Lúcio grins at the sight, then catches Genji's eye, brows rising at the understated smirk on his face. That other Lúcio must have the same taste.

Shaking his head, Genji looks away as he brings his loot to the counter and sets it beside Lúcio. "I see," he says.

Up close, the similarities between this Genji and the one he knows are more prominent-- down to the furrow of his brows. "What's wrong?" Lúcio asks, leaning back to rest his weight on his hands and craning his head for a better look. "You alright?"

Before answering, Genji pries open the tub of yogurt and sniffs its contents, nodding briefly in satisfaction before he moves away for a bowl. "You are really just like my Lúcio," he says, turning back. "Even the little things."

Whatever Lúcio's about to say next fades as someone enters the kitchen, pushing open the door as she shuffles in. Pharah yawns and greets Lúcio, then turns to Genji, blinking in confusion. "Hi," she says, quickly looking back at Lúcio. "Who's this?"

"You don't recognize me?" Genji says, pressing a hand over his heart, his expression the picture of wounded shock. "Fareeha," he laments, "I thought we were friends."

"Genji?"

"The one and only." Genji grins, turning to Pharah when she steps in close and pokes at his chest. "Well," he says after a beat, "maybe not only."

Briefly squeezing his arm, Pharah paces around him, sizing him up from every angle. "Is this an upgrade?" She ruffles his hair, rolling a tuft between her fingers as he ducks away. "A hologram? Hard light? Dr. Ziegler didn't say anything about it."

Lúcio swings his feet, tossing Genji a small plastic bear full of honey when he motions for it. "Dimension stuff."

"Oh." A pause, then, "Oh," as she realizes that she's been poking at a functional stranger. "That makes sense," she says, sheepishly ducking out of Genji's way when he slips around her for a plastic container of cereal.

"And I wouldn't say upgrade," Lúcio laughs, sliding off the counter and grabbing a spoon. He sidles up to Genji and leans over his arm, watching as he layers the cereal, fruit and yogurt into two bowls, finally drizzling a generous amount of honey over each.

"Hey," Genji snaps back, playfully scooping up both bowls and holding them well out of Lúcio's reach. He offers one to Pharah, over Lúcio's head, and asks, "Parfait for breakfast?"

Laughing, Pharah accepts the bowl and backs away. In the middle of the kitchen, Lúcio wraps both arms around Genji's elbow, suspending his weight on the limb until Genji gives in and his breakfast comes within reach.

> GIBRALTAR 09:40

Unsurprisingly, Genji and Lena hit it off while Winston tinkers with a teleporter pad he'd managed to procure after a brief skirmish with Vishkar agents on assignment in New Mexico.

Lúcio quietly notes that this Genji is-- chattier than his cyborg version. Even a green-haired Genji can't match Tracer for conversation, but he manages to keep up, referencing memes at a pace that would have Hana in stitches if she were around to hear them. Lúcio's been texting her updates and photos, but she'd left for a training exercise in Taiwan a week ago and isn't due to return until the end of the month.

Hanging back, Lúcio's eyes intermittently return to a lone, awkward figure lurking in the corner of the room. He notices Genji looking as well, clearly trying to devise a plan to talk to his brother for a bit before he's sent home. Hanzo has somehow managed to dodge every attempt while maintaining his presence-- his anguished expression notwithstanding. Lúcio can almost imagine what's going through his head, and briefly considers that neither of these professional ninjas are any good at poker faces.

Still, he'd promised his own Genji that he wouldn't interfere with his and Hanzo's relationship, so he sidles up to Winston instead. What he knows of programming isn't nearly enough to parse the code on screen, and he regards the perplexed expression on Winston's face with a frown. "I," the scientist says, turning to regard Genji and hand him a small beacon, "am not sure that this will take you where you're meant to be, but if it doesn't, just activate this beacon and you'll come back here."

"I see. Thank you."

"Well," says Lúcio, clapping Genji on the bicep, "it was good meeting you. Really. Breakfast was great."

"Likewise," Genji replies as Winston activates the teleporter and a blue portal opens above it. "Thank you for having me."

Genji turns to Lena, extending his arms toward her, and he grins at the surprise on her face. Still, she immediately steps closer, squeezing him tightly around his ribs. "Wish we'd had some more time to talk," she says. "Would've loved to get some recipes from you."

"Oh?" he retorts, laughing. "You cook here? Without burning the kitchen down?"

Lena flushes, smacking him lightly on the shoulder. "Well, Emily likes to!"

"Some things never change," Genji answers, nodding sagely. He ducks away from her next swipe, waving cheekily at the gathered crowd as he steps easily into the portal.

From the other side, this world's Genji stumbles out of the portal, still wearing an apron. He immediately backs away from the teleporter as he unties the string around his waist, and approaches Lúcio by Winston's console. Winston accepts the grateful pat on his shoulder, and Lúcio motions for the two of them to return to their room.

Hanzo makes to leave as well, half a second away from prompting the lab's doors to open when the teleporter hums again. Winston frowns, brows furrowing as he leans closer to the screen to read the string of errors his code had thrown. The actual content of the errors means nothing to Lúcio, but the screen of red exclamation points is never a good thing. He moves to the platform, prepared to manually deactivate the machine, but has to duck out of the way when two shapes appear in the opaque portal and materialize in a flash of blue light.

"Oh," says Winston, not sounding pleased at all.

Lúcio backpedals away from the two newcomers, one of them a leaner version of the Genji who'd just taken his leave-- younger too, upon closer inspection. Green hair and all. He seems to withdraw, radiating tension as he scans the room. The other gives Winston's lab a dispassionate once-over, brows raising in surprise at the faces present before he turns to Lúcio. Waiting a moment just to confirm that neither of them are about to be anti-mattered into nonexistence, Lúcio extends a hand for an older, mildly exasperated himself to shake. "Hi," he says.

"Hello hello," the other Lúcio replies, turning to check on his Genji when he releases Lúcio's hand. "Not gonna lie," he adds, the calm of his voice belying the deliberate caution in his movements, "I did not see this coming."

A second later, another flash of light on the other side of the teleporter. Chef Genji (as Lúcio's started to refer to him in his mind) reappears, this time with his own Lúcio in tow.

"I," chef Genji says, "didn't activate the beacon. It sent me to the right place."

"Oh," says cyborg Genji, regarding both new versions of himself.

Lúcio gestures at the age-swapped pair. "So how did these two get here?"

"It's possible," Winston groans, scanning his code, "that the streams got crossed, and when the program threw the error, it tried to recompile. Some of the values were retained and a few others were altered in the recursive loop. Uhm. Essentially, we pulled another two of you."

Lúcio mulls that over, pacing around the teleporter as the other Genjis and Lúcios introduce themselves to each other. "Hey," he says after a moment, ears still tuned to the whir of machinery, "did you stop the compilation?"

Winston lurches for his keyboard, but not before another flash of blue light, and yet another pair appearing in the room. He cancels the sequence, powers the teleporter down, and regards the last Lúcio and Genji. They look much like the New York versions, but Genji's dressed in a lean-cut grey suit with a light green, silk tie, his hair undyed. Lúcio stands apart from him, nearly a meter away-- completely unlike the closeness the other Lúcios allow.

Hanzo seems frozen in place, a deer in headlights as his expression slowly morphs to incredulity. He actually flees, the disappearance hard to note unless you were really paying attention, as Lúcio was.

"Alright," Winston says, trying to sound calm, "I know you're all wondering why you're here."

> GIBRALTAR 11:22

"I don't understand," the youngest Genji says, looking around. "Why are all the versions of me so different, but the Lúcios are all the same?" Then he pauses, turning a cheeky grin on his Lúcio. "Except for you. You are so old."

"Hey--"

"I think I can answer that." Genji-- the one who belongs in this dimension (who they've unanimously labeled Genji Prime)-- crosses his arms over his chest and leans back, hip braced against the counter. "Our lives have been almost entirely dictated by the choices that Hanzo made," he points out, "but the circumstances in which Lúcio could have met us... are very specific."

"My Hanzo could never have done that to me," chef Genji agrees, indicating the cyborg with a sympathetic tilt of his head. Prime had met that Hanzo briefly in his time in New York, almost at a loss as to how to respond to the indulgent big brother he'd known as a child, only ten years older and significantly less jaded. It'd been a bittersweet experience-- they were hardly rich and the work was a grind, but at least the crew at Sol seemed happy.

"Mine almost did," yakuza Genji confirms. He'd shrugged out of his blazer a while ago, and he rolls up his sleeve to show the scar on his arm, mottling his tattoo. "We reconciled," he says, "but it was a close call."

Young Genji frowns, looking nauseous, but he doesn't add anything. He does glance at his Lúcio, who's regarding Genji Prime with a thoughtful expression on his face. "Speaking of," the oldest Lúcio says, clapping young Genji on the shoulder, "you mind if I hit the archive room? I'm still trying to get a handle on this place."

"Of course." Prime Genji immediately flanks him, trailing Lúcio as he heads for the exit. Part of him wants to keep the newcomers from wandering off on their own; the rest of him wants to compare experiences. "I'll come with you."

True to form, Prime Lúcio claps his hands to draw everyone else's attention, instantly catching on to Genji's intent. "The rest of us can make lunch," he says, then punches restaurant Genji on the arm. "Chef here can take the lead on that."

That actually makes older Lúcio pause by the door, a wry twist to his lips as he seriously seems to reconsider a visit to Overwatch's records in favor of watching Genji cook. He glances at the cyborg, then shakes his head. "Man I'd hate to miss that," he says, giving the other versions of himself a meaningful look, "but I'll catch up."

"I'll save you something," young Genji pipes up, to a chorus of snickers (from Genjis) and affectionate chuckles (from Lúcios). He immediately flushes, jaw jutting forward as his Lúcio turns an indulgent grin on him. "I will," he insists, and scowls when the yakuza version of himself snorts.

"There's going to be enough for everyone," chef Genji cuts in, eyeing the smiles spreading across Lúcios' faces.

"Aw," Prime Lúcio says.

"We really appreciate that," manager Lúcio says.

"Yeah," the Lúcio who'd arrived with yakuza Genji adds, "that's really thoughtful."

"Let's go," cyborg Genji murmurs, his vents opening as his voice takes on a note of urgency; watching three Lúcios take pity on his younger self had immediately overwhelmed his capacity for secondhand embarrassment. "We might be done in time to help."

"Alright," older Lúcio says, his shoulders shaking with barely-suppressed laughter, "I'm with you."

> GIBRALTAR 11:50

Possibly out of respect for the weirdness of the situation, the rest of the team had elected to quash their curiosity and stay out of their way while chef Genji cooked lunch. He'd easily roped young Genji into cutting vegetables and the yakuza version to procure drinks-- playing to their strengths as he manually rolls out a length of pasta dough.

(Yakuza Genji had tried to escape the task by noting that he's never had to pair wine for a meal himself before, but he also roundly rejects two of his Lúcio's suggestions before wandering to the cabinet himself and selecting the best, oldest Chardonnay from it. A perfect complement to the seafood pasta chef Genji's in the midst of preparing.

"Hanzo stocked this cabinet," he'd said, laughing. "I don't think alcohol is usually allowed on UN bases, and these are his emergency picks, for when his favorite sake isn't available."

"He definitely had to tone it down in New York," chef Genji had replied, and they'd shared an exasperated, knowing look that Prime Lúcio's pretty sure his Genji's never worn.)

Manager Lúcio had dashed off to set up the cafeteria, announcing that if they were going to make a good first impression, they'd better blow the team away with a fantastic lunch. The other two hover by chef Genji's elbows, inundating him with everything from questions about technique and everyday life at home to offers to help. Both of them enthusiastically set to the tasks assigned to them-- various smaller chores to make the process smoother-- while Genji checks on sauces, his younger version's knifework, his pasta, and the seafood defrosting on the counter.

"Wow," Tracer comments as she bounds into the canteen, blinking to the buffet-style setup in the center, "look at that spread!"

Mccree and Pharah trail in after her, then Winston and Mei. Zarya and Zenyatta come last, the former having warmed up to Zenyatta after several missions together. They regularly schedule joint training sessions now, which is just as well for keeping the omnic occupied while Genji has his hands full with his alternate-timeline doubles.

"It's thanks to this guy," Prime Lúcio informs Lena, gesturing at chef Genji.

"Wow," she says, laughing as she grabs a plate and helps herself to a heap of pasta, "can we keep him?"

"He says they've really gotta get home," Lúcio sighs, "but I wish, right?"

Pharah approaches with a smile, her plate already loaded. "Lúcio," she mock-whispers, more than loud enough for everyone else to hear, "you lied to me! This one is definitely an upgrade."

"Hey!" Lúcio balks, shaking his head. Then, "I mean, I wouldn't complain if he wanted to stay, though."

"He could come back with me instead," another Lúcio-- the one who'd arrived with yakuza Genji-- volunteers.

Despite looking as if he's been ignoring the exchange, yakuza Genji looks over with a snappish, "Rude."

"Reyes isn't gonna be happy if we're no-shows for days," Lúcio demurs with a laugh, "but it might be alright if you send us back to right after we left? Time is weird."

"Well, that shouldn't be a problem." Here, it's Winston's turn to flash a cheeky smile, baring his fangs. "I think I've parsed the quantum signatures for each of your timelines," he explains, "it'll just take some testing to make sure you get there and stay there." Then he pauses, waiting to catch Lena's eye and prompt a little wave before he turns back to Lúcio. "The chronal differential is something I have plenty of experience with."

Chef Genji stands to the side, sleepily demolishing a croissant he'd found and toasted in lieu of eating anything he's actually cooked. He politely declines the plate his Lúcio tries to pass him, but accepts a sip of his wine. It takes nearly ten minutes of scanning the room for a familiar face before he speaks up, frowning. "Where's Hanzo?"

"He's usually up on the satellite array." Pharah points in its general direction. Regular aerial patrols around the Watchpoint are, after all, a great way to familiarize herself with the habits of her teammates. "Need a map?"

Genji nods, already gathering a few portions each of dishes his Hanzo, at least, likes. "I can find it," he says, hefting the container in his hands. "Thanks."

Lena sidles up to Prime Lúcio, gently bumping him on the shoulder with her own. "You think that's gonna help?"

"Honestly? I have no idea."

> GIBRALTAR 11:35

Lúcio leans back, scratching his chin as Genji flicks off the stream-- the cyborg's own recording of a Blackwatch assignment from nearly five years ago. It was a disconcerting experience, watching events unfold pretty much as he'd remembered them, but missing key elements (namely, himself). "I'm really not in here at all, huh," Lúcio murmurs.

"There is a dossier on my Lúcio," Genji volunteers, "but the timeline is different."

Leaning forward, Lúcio rests his elbows on his knees and drags his hands down his face. "Never thought I'd be back here again," he sighs, "but no one here knows me the way I know them. That's the worst part."

Genji stays still, watching. He's quiet-- much more like Lúcio himself than the gregarious, upbeat young Genji he knows. "I'm sorry," Genji says at last, sounding deeply sympathetic.

"For what?" Lúcio dismisses the idea with a forced, uneasy laugh. "It's not on you."

After a moment of silence, Genji decides not to allow that comment to slide. "I know," he says, gentle but firm. "But I also know what my time in Blackwatch meant to me, and I know it would be painful to have it all erased."

"Honestly, it wasn't even that good. Lot of stuff going on that never should've happened."

"But it shaped the person you are, so it's not so easily forgotten."

Lúcio bares his teeth. "Least someone here understands."

Genji looks between Lúcio and the backs of his hands, eyeing the panels that slide open to arm his shuriken. "My younger self will probably not understand you for many years," he tells him, amused against his better judgment. "Why you decided to help him, and why you decided to trust him."

"Does he have to?" Lúcio raises his brows, not expecting Genji's startled look, but not pretending, either, that he doesn't understand how and why the other man had ended up a cyborg. That familiar, ambitious shine in his eyes is no different from the Lúcio of this timeline, but it's tempered with age and experience, a calm focus. "No one should have to go through that."

Genji says nothing, not ignoring the words but slowly digesting them.

When the quiet drags on for just a beat too long, Lúcio taps his elbow. "What's on your mind, old Genji?"

"It's strange," Genji answers slowly, "to think of the person my Lúcio could be in ten years."

"I remember being his age," Lúcio says, laughing. "It's all about the music, and Brazil, and the music in Brazil right now."

"Oh," Genji answers, affection apparent in his voice, "I know."

#gencio #fic: ow

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videobun-gameblog · 7 years ago

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Ashen is a fun game so I want to get out a few thoughts on it just based on my first few hours:

Personal issue: Nioh and Monster Hunter have absolutely fucked up my ability to play anything with the Souls controls, though I think after a few hours I’ve finally adjusted with few mistakes

Good stuff:

1. Overall aesthetic: Simple, readable, pretty. Functional AND looks good. I was skeptical of the faceless characters and such initially but that seems to be deliberate and relevant so it’s not even JUST a dev limitation, but a limitation that’s inspired part of the overall design and it’s good.

2. Voice acting: Some characters talk a little slow and I’ve seen ONE instance of written dialogue not matching the voice (extra unspoken line in text) but other than that I was honestly surprised.

3. Hub: neat place that grows over time, I’ve seen people talk about this and have been slightly (but not majorly) spoiled, so I won’t (and can’t really) say anything else other than I’ve gotten a taste of it and it’s cool.

4. Lighting: Oh god, so you know how Dark Souls 2 and 3 promised way cooler stuff with the torch that actually never really came to fruition and DS2 only ever NEEDS it a few times and DS3 never? This game actually does it! And it’s good! Areas are actually dark without light (like, “can’t see shit” dark) but the light actually WORKS well as opposed to crap like the DS1 catacombs (and isn’t on a timer like DS2). It makes for an interesting visual effect/atmosphere as well as a solid mechanic. I really hope to see more of this done in the future, because so far it’s only bee useful for one dungeon and a handful of secrets.

Mixed stuff:

1. Story: Heavily Dark Souls inspired but with different and more directly explained/understood origin. It even does a similar opening of a straight up world lore dump. This has honestly kept me less invested because it feels like a little too close to its inspiration but the world is lived in and explained enough to be appreciated, also there’s meta “animation” (like, root word anima shit) in it which I’m kind of a sucker for so I love it, even if I’m letting some of the smaller details slip by.

2. Combat: You kinda end up coming across lots of enemy encampments as opposed to finding particularly designed encounters based on the map’s entire structure (with the exception of dungeons, which I’ve only found one), but because things are out in the open, each encounter can feel unique coming from a different angle. It reminds me a bit of Breath of the Wild, except like, the combat is better. Relative to Dark Souls, it feels to me more like “chunks” of Dark Souls maps sprinkled over an open field which is both a good and bad thing (more in point #3 below). Upgrade progression is mixed, but I have yet to see the results of it long term so all I’ll say for now is that upgrades are few but substantial, so it’s easy to become as powerful as necessary to progress, but also easy to immediately dip into being frustratingly underpowered simply by walking into the very next zone which can halt your progress fairly quickly (especially relevant in issue #3 below). I have a feeling like this will change a bit over time so that’s all I can say for now.

3. Map/missions/etc.: The world seems to be a mixed open/linear system with (relatively) small open segments scattered with bits of more tightly designed encounters/dungeons. The missions seem to be the guiding force for most events but you’re not absolutely drowning in them with dozens of map markers, instead so far it’s like, 3 at a time and you only really need to focus on one or two simultaneously. Unfortunately, the mission system seems to be so much of a guiding force that I haven’t once really felt the impulse to go out and explore entirely on my own. Instead I end up going towards mission points and clearing out nearby sections along the way, getting sidetracked for minutes at a time for a hidden item or two. I could be wrong but so far it seems you can’t NOT have any missions active unless you purposely ignore the next NPC dialogue for a quest, in which case you’ll still have them marked on your map to remind you that you’ve gotta talk to them. Further, HP/Stamina upgrades and useful function unlocks are directly related to mission progress, so if you want to avoid being underpowered, you should basically always be doing a mission. This mixed linear/open design somehow manages to flip flop constantly from being the best of both worlds to feeling noncommittal, so I really don’t know what to think. On one hand, you have have moments where you’re slowly figuring things out on your own, exploring new areas along the way to your destination and finding secrets in nice bite size chunks of open world design that avoids being overwhelming. Getting into a new area is always interesting, and you know there’s always going to be some new encounters or secrets to challenge you. On the other hand, sometimes you’re just retreading an area of fairly plain (yet pretty) open fields that don’t have enough majorly distinct landmarks to keep you from having to check your map more often than you should. I keep FEELING like I should be able to get the lay of the land in my head more easily than I am, but it doesn’t really stick the way things do in other games. At the same time, the small area sizes mitigate this problem so you’re not simply getting mindlessly/frustratingly lost, and the map markers obviously help a lot without being too obtrusive. It’s not BAD design by any means, but it doesn’t feel as solid as it should. Things are good when you come across an interesting encounter and are going through areas for the first time, but because it’s hard to remain interested in a location after a couple passes and because the missions are so necessary for progress, there isn’t much incentive to really go out on your own unless you’re backtracking for secret cleanup or are just a sucker for some of the visuals (which, to be fair, is a totally valid reason). One good point about this though is that the devs seem to be well aware of proper pacing so they don’t keep you in areas TOO long, but rather only so long as fatigue just starts to set in; you’re never overstaying your welcome, and it keeps things flowing nicely. This is one of those things that I really can’t tell what I’ll think of it in the end, so far it feels like a fairly balanced scale. I’m interested to see which direction it tips once I’m 20+ hours in, because there’s a lot of potential here for it to fall heavily one way or the other.

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theroseandcrown · 4 years ago

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The Rose & Crown: Chapter Fourteen (Part Two)

Rating: M Chapters: 14/24

Summary: The TARDIS arrives on a familiar planet and the Doctor’s memory is put to the test. History is being rewritten and now it is up to him to figure out how and why.

Read this story on another platform: Archive of Our Own Fan Fiction WattPad

Messaline, 6012

The TARDIS landed abruptly at its psychically charted destination despite the Doctor’s distracted thoughts having led the way. He found himself slightly amazed that the ship had been able to locate the new point of interest, yet was intrigued by the endless possibilities awaiting him outside the safety of his blue box. Having disabled most of the safety control systems, he felt as if he had wandered blindly into a dark and dangerous jungle armed only with his bare hands. Checking the view-screen, he raised a curious brow as the surrounding elements on the outside appeared to be somewhat familiar to him, though he could not determine where or when he had seen them before. A series of underground tunnels had encased them inside of its jagged stone walls. With the safeguards and nav-com turned off, it was impossible to determine what potential lifeforms could be lingering outside. Had it not been for his undying thirst for discovery and ever-increasing eagerness to explore their new surroundings, he would have forced himself to revise his previous coordinates without the unpredictability of his wandering mind. However, distractions aside, the TARDIS must have had some reason for bringing them there while his consciousness was interlinked within her interface.

“This is it, yeah?” Clara glanced over his shoulder towards the view-screen.

“Only one way to know for certain.” He tried his very best to sound as confident as possible as he placed the small audio device into his ear.

“I suppose there’s no point in trying to talk you out of this, is there?” She remained hopeful he’d change his mind as she plugged the second device into her ear.

“You’ll be able to see everything I see from right here.” He ignored her predictably disquieted glance as he pointed to the screen in front of them. “With the nav-com offline, we won’t be alerted to the presence of other lifeforms. So, I’ll need you to monitor the TARDIS surveillance system and keep an eye out for any potential threats.”

“Sounds easy enough. So I’m basically your spy.”

“Aren’t you the lucky one?” he teased. “Now remember, if something were to happen and I don’t make it back, you must use the telepathic interface to fly the TARDIS back home. Don’t hesitate, just go.”

“You want me to just abandon you here?”

“If it comes to that, yes.”

“Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that then.”

“And whatever you do, stay here.” He pointed a stern finger towards the floor. “No matter what happens out there, you must not leave the TARDIS. This is the safest place for you to be. Best to keep you out of trouble this time around.”

Clara found herself frowning at his words. Had it not been for his refusal to heed her warning of potential danger, they wouldn’t even be in this mess to begin with. However, she knew there would be plenty of time to remind him of how awfully infuriating he was once all of this was finally over. He headed for the door and cautiously pulled it open. “Doctor,” she called to him. His eyes turned to meet hers. “Be careful, okay? Don’t do anything stupid, like get yourself killed.” She tried to force a small smile of confidence on her face to mask the worry embedded throughout her emotions. Her currently over-sized matronly ensemble was the only thing sheltering her trembling body from his furrowed eyes. It took all of her energy to calm her nerves so as not to reveal how truly frightened she was at the thought of him never returning to her again.

“When have you ever known me to do anything stupid?”

“Seriously? Have you met you?” she quipped.

He responded to her humour with a rigorous brow. “Right. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it.” He exited the ship and closed the door securely behind him.

The subterranean cavern surrounding him was as familiar as taking a stroll inside one of his memories, one that hadn’t been visited in such a long time. A memory so unused it had nearly been forgotten. And yet, at the same time, he experienced an overwhelming sense of uneasiness as if something in the back of his mind was telling him he had been there before. He was left with the unfaltering sensation of déjà vu taunting him with fragmented visions derived from his scattered recollection of this planet they found themselves on. As he surveyed the dark space around him, he found himself relying almost solely on his extraordinary senses to take in all the extra details he might have been missing.

The aroma in the air was palpable and stale, a rich fragrance of minerals distributed from the ground underneath his feet. Even more noticeable was the soil itself. The path in front of him had become a tramping ground forged by several unmistakable sets of footprints marking the way out. A series of electrical wires ran like untamed vines branching out to bring life to the lights lining the bottom of the cavern walls. The only source of illumination throughout the darkness engulfing him. Lifting his sonic-screwdriver, he activated its torch setting allowing him to better observe the area around him. “Well, that’s interesting,” he spoke aloud.

“What is it? What have you found?” he heard her reply into his ear.

“These cables, their construction is fairly new. Which leads me to believe someone has been here very recently.” He carefully stepped over each wire and slowly headed deeper into the cave. “I’m going to attempt to locate their source. Whatever is powering these lights must not be far from here.”

“Just be careful, Doctor. Knowing our luck, this is probably a trap.”

The Doctor pushed forward. His memories began to awaken to the scene around him. Just ahead, he encountered a flickering light as if whatever it was attached to had been badly damaged. In the darkness, he could make out a sort of sealed glass structure, a chamber perhaps, embedded into the wall of the cave. The lights inside of it continued to flicker. Finally reaching the chamber, he raised his torch to better observe the malfunctioning electronics lining its exterior hatch. His consciousness suddenly accelerated to full throttle. The forgotten memories stored within him began to flood his thoughts. A wave of suppressed emotions hit him unexpectedly as he finally realized exactly where he was. He cautiously raised his hand to place it upon the surface of the glass. He closed his eyes and allowed the memories of this forgotten place to run its course through his mind. The voices of his past could be heard so clearly in his head it was as if they never left.

“Where did she come from?” Martha asked, still confused by the assault on her friend.

“From me,” he answered, still in shock by the young woman standing before him.

“From you? How? Who is she?” Donna interrupted, more confused than the others.

“Well, she’s... well, she’s my daughter.” His emotions teetered between denial and acceptance.

The young blonde woman stepped forward from inside the chamber and smiled towards the lengthy man in the strange brown jacket. “Hello, Dad.”

“Jenny,” he whispered. The pain of losing his loom-born daughter returned to him as if all memory of her had been stolen from his mind.

“Doctor?” he heard Clara respond. “Are you alright? Is someone there with you?”

Why did you bring me here, he asked himself of the ship’s decision to send them to this chosen location. Must I suffer these memories as well? Is it not enough that I’m doing everything in my power to save my remaining child’s life? He felt anger rising inside of him at the ship’s cruelness to send him there. Why this place? Why here, why now? What am I missing? He continued to ask as he attempted to find a reason behind this unwarranted detour. He combed through the events leading up to their departure and retraced his thoughts to before the TARDIS had dematerialized. Then it suddenly became so very clear. The final thing that entered his mind before their destination was received by the interface was the thought of holding his daughter in his arms. The TARDIS must have connected that emotion to the very last thing he experienced during his first visit to this place. The act of cradling his dying daughter and the memory of watching the vibrancy of her short-lived life fading from her body.

Upon opening his eyes, he began to take in all the details of the chamber’s construction as if trying to remember exactly how it felt to have stood in front of it two faces ago. Yet something strange caught his attention. The mechanism designed to pull DNA from a singular host had been altered. The chamber had also been upgraded with more advanced technology than it had been fitted with before. The Doctor felt the frown on his face deepen, realizing whoever was responsible for altering it had found a way to manipulate the chamber’s primary functions to successfully produce identical copies without needing the DNA of an original host.

“Doctor? Can you still hear me? Is everything alright?” Clara continued to call to him.

Something is wrong. This technology shouldn’t even exist yet. So why is it here? Beside the chamber, he could make out what appeared to be a small console station fitted with a narrow slot intended for a type of holographic disk. Approaching it, he scanned the console and activated its power setting. Its interface struggled to power up before displaying the uploaded contents of the disk in the form of a view-screen. The flickering image produced a detailed map of the cave and surrounding infrastructures. He had seen this map before. Though the technology had been upgraded, the layout of the building remained for the most part unchanged. That’s strange, he thought as he attempted to expand the map to a view of the planet. The image fluttered as its energy source began to drain more rapidly. Aiming his screwdriver towards the interface, he redirected as much power as he could from the surrounding area directly to the console. The view-screen quickly came alive with vibrancy. The detailed rendering of the degraded planet’s current condition filled every edge of the frame. Messaline, his suspicions now confirmed, but it can’t be!

Next to him, the lights continued to flicker inside the glass chamber. He could hear the small panel adjacent to the sealed door fluctuating as it attempted to draw more power to itself. The display and keypad were barely functioning as it faded in and out of life. He directed his attention towards the malfunctioning panel and scanned its hardware for a possible answer to who might have installed the upgraded systems. Suddenly, the panel started to spark as the electronics inside of it surged from extensive corrosion. “No, no, no!” he screamed at the panel. “Come on, don’t do this to me! I need to know!”

“Doctor? Tell me what’s going on. You’re starting to scare me.”

“I’m coming back to the TARDIS. We need to leave this planet immediately.”

“What? Why? Doctor, what is it? What did you see?”

“Something I shouldn’t have,” he answered, looking upon his reflection through the glass. “Clara, I-” he began to say before being interrupted by a loud bang as the panel suffered a complete system failure and exploded. It was as if it had been rigged to go off in the event any tampering had been detected. The small blast sent out a shock-wave which shattered the glass door of the chamber and nearly sent him flying to the other side of the cave. He managed to quickly raise his arm in time to protect his face from potential shrapnel before being thrown to the ground.

“Doctor?! Doctor, can you hear me?!” She called into her earpiece as the vibrations from the blast were felt from inside the ship. “Doctor! Are you there?! Answer me!” She pulled the view-screen towards her. The once clear image of the cave was now clouded by a thick layer of smoke and dust making it impossible to receive a clear visual. She had been blinded and completely cut off from the outside world. Whatever had happened, only one thing was certain. He was truly on his own now. “What’s happening out there?!” she yelled towards the silent Gallifreyan rings holding the time rotor together. “Don’t you dare go quiet on me! You are every bit as much to blame for us being here! He could be in danger right now, or worse!” The ship continued to play the silent game as Clara paced back and forth, unable to resist the horrid thoughts entering her mind of what may have happened to her best friend.

“Something’s wrong. He should have been back by now. He would have responded,” she spoke to the ship as if hoping for some kind of validation to her concerns over his well-being. When there wasn’t any, she found herself very afraid of how alone she felt at that moment. She continued to pace, nervously biting her thumb as she tried to come to terms with what he told her to do in case he didn’t come back to her. She shook the thought from her mind as a burst of confidence forced her to take drastic action. “That’s it. If you’re not going to help me, I’ll do it myself,” she asserted towards the interface. She headed to the travel bag and rummaged around for her jacket. Finding it, she quickly placed it on and started for the door when the TARDIS finally responded with a series of unfavourable noises.

“Yes, I know what he said and I don’t care!” she yelled back as she grabbed the handle and pulled, only to find it wouldn’t budge. She angrily spun around to face the console. “Open the door,” she demanded. The ship clattered with refusal. “Listen to me, you blue bucket of bolts and fancy whistles. I realize we haven’t always gotten on. You’ve hidden my bedroom. You’ve even put a leopard in my bathroom. But this, this isn’t about me. This is about the man we both love. And right now, he’s out there all alone and he needs our help. If he dies out there, it’s on you. I swear with every part of my being that if something happens to him, you will never be rid of me. I will never leave this ship even if it means I’ll die in here. You will spend the rest of your lonely existence without your Time Lord, carting around a bloody pile of bones while I haunt the inside of these walls for eternity. Just you and me, forever.” Her eyes were fierce, her voice threatening and angry. “So, what’s it gonna be?” The two of them were drowning in silence for a few moments as they squared off against each other for control over the situation. Suddenly, the door to the outside opened allowing the cool air from their surroundings to enter and pass through them. A small smile formed on the young woman’s face as she peered gratefully towards the living machine. “Thank you.” She then turned and exited through the threshold on a mission to find her friend.

Outside the ship, the Doctor coughed and fanned the smoke from his face as he approached the decimated panel to better assess the damage. Placing his hand to his ear, he called to his companion. “Clara? Are you alright?” The silence from the earpiece was concerning. “Clara, can you hear me? Clara!” he called again before realizing that their communication had been severed. He concluded the blast from the panel must have destroyed the circuits inside the earpiece and temporarily stranded them from each other.

“Doctor?” a voice echoed in the distance.

He was almost certain he imagined it as he peered through the fine airborne sediment towards the sound of the voice. He tapped his earpiece and called for his companion once more. “Clara, is that you?” he asked, hoping the audio device had somehow come back online. Through the thickened haze, a shadow quickly approached him. A spout of adrenaline arose from within him as he prepared to engage in possible combat with the unknown being.

“Doctor?” a feminine voice he recognized called out. “Doctor, are you alright? Where are you?!” She coughed and batted her way through to him.

He gave a sigh of relief followed by frustrated anger as he realized who the voice belonged to. “Clara! What are you doing out here?! I told you to stay on the TARDIS!” He headed to her and took hold of her arms as if trying to determine if she was indeed real and therefore stupid enough to be standing in front of him.

“What, and let you have all the fun?” she replied mid-breath.

“Ah, yes. You’ve finally discovered the truth. We’ve really come all this way because I’ve secretly been planning a much needed fun-filled weekend holiday for two. Surprise! I hope you like the view, very authentic. I give it at least three stars.” His furious temper and sarcasm had finally reached maximum capacity. “Now, will you please go back to the TARDIS!”

“I’m not going back there without you. I won’t let you do this alone,” she insisted, pulling herself from his grasp.

“Clara, as much as I appreciate your concern, I don’t think you quite understand the severity of the situation. This entire planet is a war zone and we are currently standing right in the middle of it! I will not allow you to put yourself and our child in danger so you can quench your thirst for adventure!”

“You said we needed to leave this planet. So you’re either coming back with me or taking me with you. Your choice,” she argued.

“I can’t leave, not yet. Something is terribly wrong here, some crucial point that I’m missing. I cannot in good conscious leave here until I discover exactly what that is. Somehow history is being changed. This entire planet should have been terraformed by now. Before I left here, there was peace between the species. This whole planet’s ecosystem had been completely transformed from a radioactive wasteland to an Earth-like paradise. According to the readings I obtained from their computer, it’s as if none of that ever happened. Which either means the war never ended and we are standing on an active battleground, or someone won.” He moved away from her and stepped towards the shattered chamber, sighing with frustration. “If my fears are correct, I believe a third party has played a hand at providing one side with an advantage over the other. The upgraded technology in this room alone proves it was not crafted by mankind nor is it of indigenous design. If someone has altered the course of events here, there’s no way to know for sure how many other things may have changed.” He pressed his hands on either side of the chamber’s frame and hung his head, submerging himself inside of his thoughts as if he were drowning in the fear rising within. He felt the comforting presence of his companion as she came up beside him. He didn’t need to read her expression to know she was growing more concerned by his words. He could sense the worry inside of her from an entire galaxy away. Yet, the real truth he now faced was just how foolish he felt to have believed this mission they were on would have ensured no resistance. “I need to follow this to the end, Clara. For all I know, it may already be too late. But I have to try. If Quynn is behind this, then there’s no telling what damage she has already caused to the fabrics of time. She must be stopped.”

Clara placed her hand on his shoulder and gently turned him around to face her. “Then we’ll do it together. Just like old times.” She leaned her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around his thin frame.

The Time Lord embraced her caring gesture and held her close to him. He gently ran his fingers through her brown hair and rested his cheek upon her head. “You and your infuriating stubbornness are going to be the death of me, I just know it.”

She laughed and held him tight. “By the way, what happened in here?” She took notice of the damaged equipment lying in pieces throughout the area. “Were you trying to blow yourself up again?”

“Very funny. Although I did discover that one should always ask for consent before probing around inside a computer’s secured interface. A lesson well learned.”

“Sound advice,” she teased, immersing herself in his warmth. “So,” she started, her eyes meeting his with a curious brow. “Who’s Jenny?”

Before he could respond, they were interrupted by a threatening voice from somewhere nearby which took them by surprise. “There they are! Open fire!” the voice commanded. Several armed men quickly stormed through the cloud of dust and smoke towards their location, completely blocking their access to the ship as they took aim. A chain of weapons fire commenced. Their ammunition tore blindly through the fog missing the Doctor and Clara by inches as the bullets ricocheted off the stone walls.

“Run, Clara!” the Doctor screamed, grabbing her hand and bolting deeper into the caverns. The soldiers’ footsteps could be heard closing in from behind.

“I’m starting to think this may have been a mistake!” she admitted, trying to keep up with the pace he set for them in her weakened state.

“‘Just like old times’, eh?” He was partially excited yet terrified all at the same time. “I hate soldiers. Don’t you hate soldiers?” he smiled, trying to make the best of their current situation.

“Yeah,” she agreed, becoming more breathless the farther they ran.

“Just keep running!” he urged. His hand tightened around hers, fearing one false move could mean the end of them at any moment. Rounding a corner, they noticed the soil beneath their feet had been reinforced with metal flooring. Their footsteps clanked loudly across its surface as they headed towards the next area. The jagged stone walls that once made up the cave had been reconstructed and moulded into a narrow corridor that emptied into a large abandoned theatre fitted with a domed ceiling. As the pair of them made their way to the centre of the room, they stopped and peered around for a suitable place to hide. “Over here!” he whispered, pulling her towards a stack of crates near an exit point and ducked behind them.

Clara took the opportunity of temporary rest to catch her breath. “What was that machine back there? Obviously something important to need this much protection.”

“A type of loom, very similar to the technology we used on Gallifrey to produce our offspring. I have a feeling someone has modified it, possibly to create an army of identical soldiers to win this war between the two species occupying this planet.”

“Are you sure? It looked a little small to fit a whole army in there.”

“Of course I’m sure! It’s the same machine that was used on myself to create my daughter Jenny the last time I was here.”

“Jenny? She’s the non-Gallifreyan child you told me about?”

“Yes, born by genetic transfer but still of my own flesh and blood.”

“Hang on, something doesn’t make sense. If you’re right about Quynn changing the course of history on this planet, if the war never ended, wouldn’t that mean you were never here? And if you were never here, then wouldn’t that mean Jenny never existed? So why can you still remember her?”

“For the same reason your memories began to resurface on Trenzalore when they shouldn’t have. Because nothing is ever really forgotten as long as you can still remember it.”

She opened her mouth to respond but was met with the warm touch of his hand as he covered her mouth to shush her. They watched and waited quietly as the soldiers who had been following them made their way into the room and began to search the area. The troop leader signalled for his men to separate into adjacent paths. The Time Lord and his companion found themselves alone in the room once more, not yet willing to move from the safety of the crates they hid behind. When all was quiet and clear, she pulled his hand from her face and finally spoke.

“So what now? Can we get back to the TARDIS from here?” she whispered.

“Well, we certainly can’t go back the way we came, but yes. There is another tunnel that will lead us there. Although, they’re sure to be guarding it in case we try to leave. I don’t know about you, but I’m really not in the mood to get shot today.”

“You said you’ve been here before. They must have some kind of weapons room or something.”

“That’s your plan?! You want to charge through them, guns blazing?”

“Do they have one or not, Doctor?” she asked again, becoming more agitated.

“Of course they do, it’s a war zone! But there’s no way of knowing if it’s in the same place. For all I know, it could be a broom cupboard now!”

“Which way?” She peered around the crates to locate the surrounding exits.

“Through there,” he pointed towards a corridor near them. “But we’ll never make it without being seen. It could be heavily guarded.”

She waited until the footsteps of the soldiers had become silent then removed herself from behind the crate. “Right then, let’s go,” she instructed, heading towards the next corridor.

“Clara! What are you doing?!” he called, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. His eyes were wide with fear. “Come back here immediately!”

“I’m getting us out of here. Are you coming or not?” She waited only a moment for him before proceeding towards the undiscovered hallway.

“Clara!” he called again. Realizing she wasn’t planning on coming back, he quickly left the safety of the crates to follow after her. Her quickened pace made it difficult to keep up which prevented him from preparing for any possible dangers ahead. The next corridor proved much longer than he remembered. As they rounded the corner, they were met by half a dozen armed soldiers stationed at the far end of the path. Their weapons were armed and ready to receive them. The events that followed happened so fast he hardly had time to react. His first instinct was to retreat the way they came. Yet Clara confidentially strode forward as they began to open fire on them. Raising his arms to protect his head from the slew of bullets flying around, he continued to scream her name in the hope she would come back to him. Despite the urgency in his voice, his companion maintained her current course towards their enemies as if she had become possessed - somehow unafraid of the severe possibility of being shot. His hearts and mind raced while she proceeded towards the gunfire as if she were purposely trying to get herself killed. The next door he came by he recognized immediately. Thinking quickly, he used his screwdriver on the handle. The door unlatched and flew open allowing him access inside. Before she could proceed any farther into certain death, he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the newly opened room. “Not that way! In here!” he insisted, flinging her inside like a rag doll. Looking towards the soldiers, he aimed his screwdriver above their heads and activated it. The piping above them burst open and exploded as the gases mixed with the electrical pulse being sent out. The last thing he witnessed before closing the door behind him was the image of screaming bodies flying in all directions as their lives were extinguished in flames.

He entered the room and glared in disbelief at the woman standing before him. Her eyes refused to meet his. Instead, she focused her attention on the room around them. Her distracted gaze made it clear that she had no recollection of how she got there. Whatever the reason for her lack of concern over her well-being, the fact that she had so determinedly put all three of them in danger enraged him. “Have you gone completely insane, or has pregnancy really made you this recklessly stupid? You could have been killed!”

“What makes you so sure they were aiming for me?” Her eyes maintained themselves away from his rage-filled expression.

He watched concernedly as she appeared to ignore his displeasure, becoming more disconnected from him every moment that passed. Every part of his being wanted to scream and lash out at her outrageous behaviour having led them to their current situation. His temper was unravelling. His hands shook from the adrenaline coursing through his system after having just murdered several people. He quickly hid his hands in his pockets and tried to calm his mind. He looked around the room to distract himself from how irate he felt towards her at that moment. They had indeed found the small armoury as she intended. The walls were thick and barren of any possible way out other than the way they had come. Multiple well-armoured crates had been sorted and stacked in rows along the floor creating a labyrinth of weaponry.

“So, here we are,” he announced, facetiously seething in sarcasm. “I can’t wait to see what else you have in store for us. Though it could be worse. We could be trapped in a small room with only one door while an army of soldiers gathers reinforcements with the intent to kill us.” She remained silent, hugging herself with crossed arms as fresh tears began to build in her eyes. As much as he wanted to comfort her, he was far too angry to allow her emotions to tamper with the thought of what she had done. This time she had gone too far. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed on the TARDIS? I told you not to leave. I had everything handled without you putting yourself directly in danger. Your job was to monitor the situation from inside and if necessary, take her far away from here. What were you even thinking?! Do you have any idea how furious I am with you?!”

“Are you sure it’s me you’re angry with?” She glanced his way, her eyes connecting to his with fierce intention. “You and I both know those soldiers bore Quynn’s insignia, which means her reach spans farther than we ever realized. She isn’t just building up her armies, she’s changing the course of history as you and I know it. What if she reaches Earth? What if she enslaves the entire human race? What if there is no stopping her?”

“Do you honestly believe I haven’t thought of that? That I haven’t been doing everything in my power to prevent her from becoming even stronger?” His anger grew rapidly as he spoke. The more he tried to control it, the harder it was to keep contained. She was testing his patience in more ways than one.

“What if it isn’t enough? What if she can’t be beaten? What if we’re already too late?”

“Forgive me. I must have forgotten how many wars you’ve fought in, how many armies you’ve commanded, how many innocent lives you’ve witnessed perish at the hands of an enemy much stronger than yourself yet somehow still prevailed. You wouldn’t know real sacrifice if it slapped you in the face! You cannot imagine what it’s like to have lost everything, to have done everything you could to save the lives of those who count on you most.”

“Not everything,” she noted, running her fingers along the surface of the crate in front of her. With the other hand, she undid the latch holding the crate closed and lifted the lid. Inside were a series of enhanced pistols, the clips loaded and ready for combat. She carefully lifted one from its holster and examined its intricate design in front of her.

“Clara, what are you doing?” he asked as a strange feeling of nervousness crept up from within him.

Her eyes met his again. Though her expression seemed almost apologetic in nature, there was also a sense of confidence and serenity he had never seen before. “What I have to do.” She instinctively released the safety from the weapon, its capabilities now fully armed and ready to fire. “All this time the answer has been staring us right in the face, yet you’ve refused to admit it. You’ve been so blinded by trying to save us that you couldn’t see the solution right in front of you.”

“Clara, whatever you think you’re doing-”

“I know exactly what I’m doing, Doctor,” she interrupted. Her calm demeanour did little to cease the rising distress growing inside of him. “I’m making the choice that you could not. I’m saving us.” She slowly brought the gun to her head and placed the barrel next to her temple.

His emotions fluctuated between sheer panic and shock at the sight of her actions. “Stop this at once! Have you gone mad?! What has gotten into you-?” he stopped himself, suddenly recalling his unborn child’s warning of his companion’s terribly dark secrets as they flashed into his mind. He had seen the pain thriving inside of her, yet had not known the depths of how far she would be willing to go. The guilt of not being able to cure her overwhelmed him. He could feel his time was running out. If he could not find a way to bring her back to him, he may lose her forever. “Ah, I understand now. So this was all part of your plan, was it? To fool me into bringing you here? This was never about wanting to help me defeat Quynn. You needed me to present the opportunity for you because you couldn’t do it alone. How long have you been planning this?”

“Since eighteen sixty-five. Since the moment you discovered Quynn was our daughter. The more I realized how powerful she was becoming the more I knew there was only one way to stop her before more people fell victim to her wrath. After Danny died, that feeling became even stronger. The darkness inside of me has only been growing, it’s only a matter of time before it takes over completely. I knew you would never allow any harm to come to me or the baby even if the entire universe was burning all around us. Can’t you see? Missy has finally succeeded in finding your weakness and using it against you. The only way to stop them both is to beat them at their own game.” Her hand began to tremble as her finger secured itself upon the trigger.

“Clara, please. Don’t do this.”

“You said so yourself. We could be trapped in this cyclical hell forever. How many times do you think we’ve been through this? How many times have we tried to stop her and failed? You can feel it, can’t you? I didn’t understand what it was before, but now I know. That feeling growing in the back of your mind telling you that you’ve done this all before, but you just can’t explain it. That’s how I feel all the time. It’s the feeling of living inside of a never-ending nightmare.” Her tears streamed down her face as the memory of her vivid dreams began to surface from their secured place in her mind. “If our daughter’s only reason for existing is to bring us together to conceive her so she can reign terror upon the universe for all of eternity, then this is the only way I see out of it.”

“There’s no guarantee this will even work, no way to know how far back the timeline may reset. It could cause time to completely collapse on itself, or nothing could happen and you’d just be dead. Are you willing to take that risk?”

“Yes,” she admitted with such confidence that it terrified him to his core. “I’d be willing to do whatever it takes to stop her, even if it means I’ll die. What’s one life worth compared to the billions I could be saving?”

“More than I am willing to give up.” He risked taking a step towards her. In her startled reaction to his movement, she stepped back from him as a look of warning flashed upon her face. His hearts beat faster than they ever had before. He’d rather be standing in front of an army of Cybermen or surrounded by Daleks than face the stand-off he was in between himself and his friend. “I’m begging you, don’t do this. We’ll find another way. We’ve come so far already.” He held out his shaking hands as a peaceful gesture and took another step towards her as his world began to crash down all around him. He was so scared of what she was about to do, he found it difficult to breathe. He could barely hear anything over the sound of his hearts pounding in his chest. He tried to remain calm, yet his entire body trembled as he drew closer to her. “How can you possibly ask this of me, to just stand here and allow you to murder yourself and our child right in front of me?” He could no longer control the tears forcing their way out over the thought of them dying by her hands. He was being torn apart. All the bravery and courage he held inside of him for so long had vanished leaving him alone with the frightened child-like innocence that remained. “I’ve already lost more than I can even bear. Please, don’t leave me here all alone,” he begged with every last ounce of his being as he dropped to his knees and buried his sobbing face in his hands.

The sight of her best friend’s crumpled form before her was unbearable. Her tears continued to fall as she contemplated everything she was doing. She had never been more scared than she was right at that moment. Yet, deep down, she knew she couldn’t allow him to cause her to doubt what she felt was their only option left. If there was any hope of releasing herself from her fate, she would have to be the stronger one. “You take more risks than anyone I’ve ever known. Tell me why I can’t be like you? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do this. If there’s even a chance we could escape this, why shouldn’t I take it?” she asked, gripping the pistol even tighter.

The Doctor lifted his head from his hands and allowed his tears to fall openly, finally exposing all of his weaknesses in front of her. He had come to terms with the thought that if this was truly what she wanted to do, if this was the last time he’d ever see her again, then there was no reason he could think of to continue to keep his feelings a secret any longer. He never would be able to live with himself if he allowed her to die without ever knowing how he felt about her. If their friendship must end, then it would be on his terms. There was only one thing left to do. One remaining ace up his sleeve he had been saving for the right moment. And there was no greater time than right now. “Because... I’m in love with you, Clara.”

She felt almost light-headed as if she had been holding her breath. His confession both startled and surprised her. Unsure if she simply imagined his words due to the emotional state she put herself through or if he genuinely declared what she thought he had, she finally spoke. “What did you say?” she asked, almost frightened of the answer.

“I said, I’m in love with you,” he confirmed. “I always have been. My face may have changed but how I feel about you has never faltered. From the very first moment I heard your voice to this moment right here right now, I always have and always will love you. You are my impossible soufflé girl, the mother of my child, the woman about to make me the happiest man in the universe by giving birth to our daughter, and I love you more deeply every day that passes for it.” He looked into her eyes and bore his hearts to her with the hope she’d understand how he felt. “Please, don’t take that away from me.”

Her grip on the pistol loosened as a river of tears came streaming down her face. Her heart was tearing apart as his words began to sink into her soul. The feelings she’d been denying and pushing away since his last body finally felt validation after all this time. Yet, a bigger part of her was so angry with him for daring to spare her from how he truly felt until this very moment. “Damn you, Doctor,” she cursed his entire existence both in mind and spirit. “Why tell me this now?”

“Because I’m afraid of what I will become without you,” he professed. His thoughts were spilling out uncontrollably as he finally released everything he’d been holding back from revealing to anyone. “If you die, I would spend every waking moment making sure our enemies paid for what they’ve done. There would be no rest until I had rained hell upon every last one of them. I’d break all of my own rules, I’d risk all of time and space, I’d let the stars burn, I’d watch as entire worlds collapsed on themselves while billions of voices screamed in agony. I’d give up all of who I am if it meant you’d live.”

His shocking confession bewildered her which prevented her from determining if there was any truth behind his words or if he was simply spewing idle threats merely out of desperation. “I don’t believe you. Your reign of terror would end with the sight of the first crying child and you know it.”

“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “None of you have any idea what I am truly capable of. Or did you believe Quynn was the worst thing to happen to anyone? You’ll never know true horror until you’ve seen a Time Lord on a quest for revenge. There would be no stopping me, nothing to hold me back from myself. There would be more suffering than you can even imagine. The universe has every right to fear me, as it should.”

For the first time, she found herself truly frightened of him. She had never heard him speak in such a way before. It was as if the man she had come to know and love had completely gone leaving her alone within the presence of his inner demons. “If that’s true, then Quynn was right. There is a monster hiding inside of you.”

A new sense of humiliation and shame in himself overwhelmed him at the harshness of her words. He felt defeated and powerless against the truth behind them as he fell forward onto his hands and braced his sobbing form at her feet. “Help me, Clara. I’m begging you. Don’t let me become that man.”

She stared at the fallen Time Lord below her as her emotions shattered into a million pieces. She realized he was right. There was so much more at stake for the universe than what Quynn had in store for it. If this plan didn’t work, she would be responsible for unleashing all the horrors within him no matter who stood in his way. There would be no one to stop him from himself. No one left to remind him of how to care for the lives of others. All that she had ever accomplished with him would be in vain as he chose the path of destruction over being who he needed to be. The thought of how important her life was for the survival of the entire universe was overwhelming. She was lost in thought. Her once trembling hand holding the weapon to her temple had long since calmed. She slowly lowered it into the crate and released it from her grasp. Glancing towards her fallen friend, she knelt in front of him and ran her fingers through his silver hair in an attempt to comfort him as he continued to sob in her presence.

He raised his head at her soothing touch. His eyes filled with tears as they instinctively met with her own. The emotion contained within her expression was unmistakable. He had seen it only once before in his last body. It could only be described as the look of undeniable love and compassion. His hands found their way to her waist as he gently rested his head against her belly and took in her warmth for all it was worth. The child fluttered and kicked from within her at his presence. His hands pressed carefully on either side of her as he experienced the sensation of movement within his palms. His hearts nearly burst with affection for her and her mother as they embraced each other. “I love you both so very much. Please, don’t take her away from me,” he pleaded with every drop of emotion remaining inside of his furrowed old body.

The love he displayed for them at that moment disarmed her from within as she gently wrapped her arms around him and cradled his head in her hands. She knew there would be no turning back now. Whatever their fate may be, only one thing was certain. They would face it together. “Well, old man.” She carefully tilted his head to meet her gaze. “What’s your plan for getting us out of here?”

#12th doctor #doctor who #doctor who fanfiction #twelfth doctor #the doctor #dr who #dr who fan fiction #dr who fanfiction #twelve/clara #clara oswald #whouffaldi

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years ago

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How Sony Forged, Then Squandered, Its Relationship With Linux Users

As companies innovate over time, they inevitably take things away. In the case of Apple’s M1 chip, for example, it took away the ability to upgrade basically anything.

As I wrote last year, the Apple Silicon shift is not its first move away from a CPU architecture, but its third, and the parallels between the transitions from PowerPC and Intel are interesting to watch in real time. Now, while it was the most influential company that offered PowerPC computers for sale, it was technically not the largest—not by a long shot.

The winner was technically the Nintendo Wii, which sold more than 100 million units during its seven-year history on the console market, all while rocking a variant of the PowerPC G3 processor line used in many early Macs. And it wasn’t alone: The Wii’s primary competitors in home video games at the time—the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3—also used architecture based on the PowerPC.

The PlayStation 3, while it did not best the Nintendo Wii, may have bested Apple at making the most popular PowerPC platform intended for a degree of general purpose computing … well, until Sony, under duress, threw that crown away.

Let’s talk about the complicated nature of Linux on game consoles—a story that gets particularly complicated when the discussion turns to what Sony did on the PS3.

Why Linux has always found a home on video game consoles

As operating systems go, Linux is a chameleon, one that can be installed on architectures both incredibly mainstream and absurdly obscure.

One architecture in the obscure category is SuperH, a chipset released by Hitachi in the 1990s that was used in three of Sega’s consoles—the 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast—and not many other places. Where it appeared, however, made a compelling case for a powerful 32-bit chip, one capable of powering Virtua Fighter and Crazy Taxi alike.

Despite the fact that SuperH (also known as SH) hasn’t seen an architectural update since the mid-2000s, its compressed instruction set approach to code directly inspired the evolution of modern ARM processors (to the point where ARM literally licensed the functionality from Hitachi), meaning that it has maintained a degree of relevance in the modern day.

And a number of Linux developers have helped to carry SuperH into the modern age after the chipset’s patents expired about five years ago.

“We didn’t have to write new code; we just had to dig some of it up and dust it off,” said Rob Landley, one of the developers that led the effort to revive SuperH as an open architecture under the “J-core” name.

Chipsets like these would be forgotten about if not for Linux helping to push them forward.

And often, this means that you can find Linux implementations for video game consoles (admittedly, of varying age and quality). The Dreamcast is a good example. With the device sporting a VGA port, a first-party keyboard, and an optional Ethernet adapter, it has a lot of the elements that could make it a good choice for installing some form of Linux. And well, people have. It’s not going to be as updated as an implementation on an x86 platform, or even a Raspberry Pi or Pine64 device. But in many ways the fact that it can be done at all makes it interesting to some.

Among common video game consoles, probably the earliest you’ll find a working Linux variant for is the original PlayStation, which relies on a MIPS architecture. But expect to do a lot of digging on old forums or in the Internet Archive for a copy, as it was released in 2001 and the sites that hosted it are long dead.

There have even been attempts on the Nintendo 64, though they started slowly.

Back in 2016, a guy named Alan Williams shared a YouTube clip that featured StarFox 64 getting overwritten on the screen using a GameShark to boot into a version of Linux … that immediately kernel panicked. That it displayed anything at all is impressive—this is challenging work, as shown by the fact that Alex Thorlton, a Linux kernel engineer who actually worked for SGI (the company that produced the N64 architecture) back in the day, recently tried doing the same thing in an emulator, and had to do a ton of research ahead of time to figure out what could be done.

And all that work built up to something tangible: At the very end of last month, as a Christmas present of sorts, a version of Linux for the Nintendo 64 was unofficially released by developer and Linux kernel contributor Lauri Kasanen. If you have a flash cart and a desire to see a terminal on the device you played GoldenEye on, you can find it on GitHub.

And to be clear, we’re not talking about polished Live CD variants of Linux here, but code that you have to compile yourself. (If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll find a port of Debian.) As the motivations of the console manufacturers was to prevent theft or cheating on their systems, these are not particularly easy endeavors. Modding might be required, or exploits of the original hardware, such as what Williams did.

With systems this old, it’s likely that people are messing with Linux out of personal curiosity or a desire to improve their technical skills, rather than a professional need.

But by the time of the sixth console generation, Linux development on video game consoles became less of a curiosity and more of something that could be genuinely usable. There were two reasons for this: One, the fact that the original Xbox was effectively a stock x86 PC with a fancy design—meaning that standard Linux distributions could run on the machine—and two, a downright shocking willingness by Sony to open up its PlayStation 2 to end users.

It was nice for a while, but eventually the door was bound to shut again.

$299

The cost of the PlayStation 2 Linux kit, which allowed owners of the device to use a variant of Linux on their system. Unlike a modern computer that could be booted from a USB drive or CD-ROM, the PS2 required a proprietary kit that was compatible with the company’s MIPS-based Emotion Engine chipset, and specifically blocked off access to the DVD drive, except for PlayStation games. This kit included a keyboard, mouse, VGA adapter, an ethernet adapter, and a hard drive, and additionally required an 8 MB memory card for installing the operating system. It made the system functional as a programming platform, though game-makers could only develop games for other people with the Linux kit, a very small portion of the total install base of the PlayStation 2, still the best-selling console of all time. (The Linux kit itself, however, is exceedingly rare, and sells on eBay above its original list price today.)

An example of Sony’s PlayStation 2 Linux kit, which uses the NeXT-inspired Window Maker interface. Image: Colin Keigher/Wikimedia Commons

Sony’s surprising openness to Linux on the PlayStation … at first

It’s really fascinating to consider that Sony, the company whose competing interests in content and hardware have likely played the biggest role in the rise of digital rights management, that once literally installed a rootkit on people’s computers, was so willing to give Linux a first-class citizen status on its consoles.

It feels like it shouldn’t be in Sony’s DNA, right?

But Sony had tried to leverage its position as a video game player to help build goodwill among developers, and adding Linux support to the PlayStation 2 was a good way to do that. It also helped that Sony had developed a development kit for the original PlayStation called the Net Yaroze, with the goal of helping to spur interest in development among hobbyist communities. (This was in sharp contrast to Nintendo’s traditional stance, which often discouraged unlicensed development.)

It was a good idea—and Sony’s move to block off the DVD-ROM drive, while limiting the console’s capabilities as a Linux machine, seemed like a fair compromise.

But then, when Sony released its follow-up to the PlayStation 2, it did something unexpected: It included a way to natively boot into alternative operating systems. The PlayStation 3 included a functionality called OtherOS, which allowed for easy booting into other operating systems. Why was it possible to use a Live CD with the PlayStation 3 but an unacceptable risk with the PlayStation 2? It comes down to how the boot process was implemented. Simply, it used virtual machines, which were supposed to limit access to the full system. As you may know about virtualization, it naturally comes with a performance hit—but the belief was it would keep the PS3 secure while still allowing for non-gaming use cases.

With Playstation 3 devices capable of running PowerPC-based variants of Linux such as Yellow Dog Linux, it created opportunities to stretch the console into use cases that took advantage of its unique multi-processor Cell architecture, which was seen as potentially beneficial in supercomputing applications. After all, a PS3 might have been expensive for a video console upon launch, but it was cheap as the basis of a supercomputing cluster. Its main CPU unit was faster than the CPU in the last-gen PowerBook, but also had a number of co-processors called Synergistic Processing Elements that, together, helped the architecture dwarf many personal computers at the time … in software that could take advantage of it.

It was a bet by Sony (and by extension, its chip supplier IBM) that it had created something so epic that it could draw in the technical community, along with potentially the next generation of developers. In a community Q&A with Slashdot, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, said that the goal was to make room for developers to have a way to learn skills using real hardware, to encourage their improvement. He cited his own growth when doing the same thing with the Commodore 64, how it allowed him to try new things while still trying to learn how to program.

“Now, those industry doors are largely closed by the nature of the video game systems themselves being closed,” he said. “So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent.”

That’s all well and good, but there was still a rub: “Now having said all that, we still have to protect the investment and intellectual property rights of the industry so we will always seek the best ways to secure and protect our devices from piracy and unauthorized hacking that damages the business.”

And, unfortunately for everyone involved, that’s exactly what happened. And Sony did not look good by the end of it.

“One of our key objectives with the new model is to pass on cost savings to the consumer with a lower retail price. Unfortunately in this case the cost of OtherOS install did not fit with the wider objective to offer a lower cost PS3.”

— A message from Sony discussing the company’s decision to remove OtherOS from its PS3 Slim models. Despite the decision not to support Linux in later versions of the PS3, Sony emphasized ongoing support for OtherOS at the time, according to The Register: “SCE is committed to continue the support for previously sold models that have the ‘install Other OS’ feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases.” That sound you hear is a broken promise.

The “fat” edition of the PS3, which had the OtherOS option available. Image: Evan Amos/Wikimedia Commons

Why Sony’s attempt to turn the PS3 into a computer turned into a case of corporate self-sabotage

Sony talked a big game upon the launch of the PS3, particularly when it came to whether the console was “hackable.” Sony very strongly implied it was not.

And for more than three years, that seemed to be the case. Well, until a hacker with a reputation decided to take a swing at it. The result killed Sony’s Linux efforts almost immediately and hurt the company’s homebrew-friendly reputation almost overnight.

The hacker that first found a way into the kingdom was Geohot, a.k.a. George Hotz. Hotz had gained a reputation as a master hacker after being one of the first to unlock and jailbreak an iPhone, and took it upon himself to find ways to exploit the console, which had a reputation for being tough to hack.

It took Hotz about five weeks to find a workaround, something he documented on a blog. The vulnerability, as you might guess by the fact that I’m writing this, involved the use of OtherOS. In a blog post revealing his success, he described how he attained hypervisor-level access to the system’s processor and full access to the system memory.

“Basically, I used hardware to open a small hole and then used software to make the hole the size of the system to get full read/write access,” he told The Register. “Right now, although the system is broken, I have great power. I can make the system do whatever I want.”

Geohot noted that in his initial announcement that there was a risk that Sony could remove features to rein in the hack.

“As far as the exploit goes, I’m not revealing it yet,” he wrote. “The theory isn’t really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder.”

He soon did release details on the exploit, and Sony responded with an aggressive firmware update. With Version 3.21 of the PS3 firmware, the company removed support for OtherOS entirely, citing security reasons, and informed users that if they did not agree to the upgrade, they would lose access to the PlayStation Network, games that relied on newer firmware, and access to copyright protected videos.

And because Sony apparently had no sense of irony, they literally released the update on April Fool’s Day in 2010.

(Side note: Poor Yellow Dog Linux, whose developers had banked its future on OtherOS being accessible … and were the first to reveal Sony’s plans to update the firmware.)

The loss of access to Linux on the PS3 didn’t affect most regular gamers, but the ones who were technically oriented were upset—and this slowly led to an escalation of energy against Sony in trying to break into the PS3.

Geohot played a role in this escalation—for example, helping to restore the OtherOS feature just days after Sony removed it. But he wasn’t alone. Others joined in, too.

Eventually, Sony brought in the legal team to take on Hotz, suing him and a secondary group, fail0verflow, for their efforts to jailbreak and reverse-engineer the console.

Hotz, at least at first, took the lawsuit in stride, posting a music video on YouTube where he rapped about the case, with a flow highlighting the fact that he is clearly a polymath.

But the legal action took some dark turns; at one point, a judge approved a subpoena that gave Sony access to the server logs and IP addresses of anyone who accessed Hotz’s blog, the one that detailed his exploit efforts. If it seems like it was over the top, that’s because it was.

Sony eventually settled with Hotz, who wrote this in a statement about the settlement: “It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier. I’m happy to have the litigation behind me.” Some, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, took it to be something of a gag order.

(Hotz later took his hacking abilities into the startup space, launching the artificial intelligence startup comma.ai, which specializes in autonomous driving solutions.)

This decision to go after Geohot cost the company goodwill for years afterward.

As Sony had specifically marketed the first model of the PlayStation 3 as having this ability to boot into Linux, it meant that some tinkerers spent hundreds of dollars on the machine for a feature they could no longer use. Perhaps it wasn’t the PS3’s primary use, but it nonetheless gave it daily-driver capabilities for some. You literally could get work done on a PS3, which had hardware that was pretty good for its day, so good that some out there feel that the Cell architecture was never truly utilized in full. One day, all of it was gone.

This created a mess of legal action, as people sued over losing access to something that a subset of them really liked. It was like Sony had shown that it cared about the little guy, but as soon as the little guy did something it didn’t like, it pulled the rug out.

(One point of irony here: Not long after Sony sued Hotz claiming violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the company faced a class-action suit accusing the company of violating the same law.)

Ultimately, the company agreed to a settlement, which took a few detours, but ultimately led to a class-action settlement for the roughly 10 million people that bought the original “fat” edition of the PS3.

That long-running class-action lawsuit could have been avoided had Sony taken another approach to handling OtherOS. It was as if all of the good things the company had done to embrace homebrew development had been forgotten overnight by a corporate culture arguably too focused on piracy, and people instead looked to the negative stuff like the heavy DRM and the rootkit scandal, and offered a heavy-handed dose of payback in the process.

Geohot’s formative efforts in jailbreaking the console eventually led to more in-depth hacking efforts by others that took the mantle, as Sony’s decisions made the PS3 a target. By 2012, a series of codes were released that allowed for the installation of custom firmware. To this day, you can mod an old PS3 to access (an admittedly older version of) Linux, and you can even do so with low-level hardware access OtherOS didn’t offer.

Sony’s efforts to stop its console from getting hacked led to it getting hacked more thoroughly than it might have … had it left Geohot and his blog alone.

five

The number of miles of wire that were used to connect the more than 1,700 PlayStation 3s used in the Condor Cluster, a project built by the U.S. Air Force to take advantage of the console’s supercomputing capabilities. As The Verge notes, many of the consoles used in the effort were sold directly to the Air Force by Sony after the company removed them from the market after the firmware update fiasco.

I think the lesson here is that people will hack your system no matter how many barricades you put up against it. Or at least try to.

There will always be folks who find ways to unlock the Nintendo Switch with pieces of 3D-printed plastic and paper clips.

But hacking requires motivation. In the case of the Switch, it is a console that looks like it can run Android really well, and some people want that. Geohot’s motivation was that the PS3 somehow managed to survive unhacked for more than three years, and after the iPhone, he was looking for a new medium to conquer. But the average user, if they’re even aware of hacking, often just wants access to additional capabilities—and not just for reasons of piracy.

Perhaps the company that has managed to find the perfect type of middle ground to this situation is Microsoft. The just-released Xbox Series S already has open-source emulation software on it, thanks to a move that Microsoft did starting with the Xbox One to make the platform more welcoming to developers: Any console can be made into a development console, as long as you’re willing to pay the $20 for that right.

As the console-modding-focused YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer noted in a recent video, this decision effectively removed many of the motivations for exploiting the Xbox One or Xbox Series architecture for those who want to screw around or learn. But it does so in a way that limits the system from being used in nefarious ways. It’s a church and state split: You can’t run a retail game in Dev Mode, nor can you run homebrew software in retail mode, and the apps that the Xbox supports in dev mode don’t allow low-level access to the hardware, meaning you’re leaving some performance on the table.

Nonetheless, the result is that on day one of the Xbox Series S being in stores, it is possible to run some really powerful emulators on the new consoles—which is honestly what hacked consoles are often used for anyway. And for the Geohots of the world, Microsoft has implemented a bounty program to convince them to use their skills for good. (Sony recently followed suit.)

Thanks to programs like these and notably strong security mechanisms, the seven-year-old Xbox One has yet to be jailbroken in a serious way, despite a hacking incident before the console’s launch that involved the theft of sensitive information related to the device.

Compare this to what happened with the PlayStation 3, where Sony’s decision to remove a developer-friendly feature eventually led the system to face more dramatic exploits than even Geohot was ever able to pull off himself (though not because of a lack of trying).

These days, PlayStation 3s are a common sight in e-waste settings, just like the Wii and the Xbox 360. The slim models and the fat models alike show up there in various states of disrepair. It would sure be nice if they could still be used for something.

One has to wonder if Sony could have figured out a way to de-escalate things.

How Sony Forged, Then Squandered, Its Relationship With Linux Users syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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megacircuit9universe · 6 years ago

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Self Driving Economy?

This entry is gonna sound a bit out of place, but with the subject of AI having just been touched on at the same time that the economy, and specifically, fears of a coming recession have been in the news... well, I have a theory that maybe is worth exploring, even if it turns out to be wrong.

I’m old enough to have experienced several recessions in America, but by far the two worst... and the two which most affected the course of my life, were the Dot.Com Bust in 2001, and then the Housing Bust which hit full force in 2008.

Before the former, during the Dot.Com Boom, all well respected economic authorities were honestly out there saying there was no reason the economy couldn’t keep growing forever. And when that bubble burst (in early 2001, months before 9/11) it really took everybody by surprise.

In retrospect, everybody saw that all the booming internet start up companies everybody was scrambling to invest in, lacked any plan for turning an actual profit. The internet was still too much of a wild west, and... like the actual wild west... sparked a kind of gold rush that for many, did not pan out.

But, that was okay because there was still one reliable thing that everybody could invest in, whether the economy was booming or busting... good old real estate! Home equity! Always keeps growing over time... like a law of physics.

And while the broken Internet economy slowly nursed itself back to health for five years after 2001... everybody got really hyper about houses. New ones were being built. Old ones were being flipped. And mortgage loans became easier and easier to get for more and more people... and home values began to dramatically inflate.

That modest old bungalow on the East side, which had taken many decades to get to where it was worth a modest 60K, overnight went up to 90K, then 120K.... just sitting there... without being renovated in any way.

It got to the point where any shoebox sitting on any plot of dirt was worth 100K automatically, and everything else was correspondingly overvalued across the spectrum, and across the country.

Once again, economists weren’t too worried. Maybe they seemed a bit less ecstatic than during the Dot.Com Bubble, but they weren’t super worried.

Until, BLAM! Housing prices suddenly began to slide for the first time in seventy years... which began happening in late 2006... leading to the big bank collapse two years later in the Fall of 2008.

So, I’m gonna stop here and make the analogy of the economy being like a car.

Like a car, it’s a complex machine with a lot of moving parts that performs best when it gets regular maintenance... is well oiled... and has plenty of fuel.

But also like a car... if it’s being driven by a drunk... or a maniac... then the rest doesn’t matter, because it’s going to crash.

So in 2001, the car crashed... and it was a pretty bad accident. And in 2008, it crashed even worse... actually bursting into flames and requiring all kinds of first responders to put out the fire, and do a ton of damage control.

But since 2008, something’s been different... since 2008, the car has driven longer and faster than in it’s whole history, without a crash, or even a minor fender bender.

and weirder still... over the past two years, with history’s worst President at the wheel... the drunkest of drunk drivers... the stock market has been plunging and peaking, plunging and peaking.... like a crazy roller coaster ride... and yet... it never crashes.

Most recently we just had what they call an “inverted yield curve” which... in this analogy, is basically a loop the loop... but we did not fly off the rails.

And, knowing as I do, how fragile the economy used to be... not just in the early 2000s, but all through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s... this weirdly unshakable stability is not just new... it's beyond belief, and should not be possible!

Unless... this is an upgraded car, that now has more safety and self-driving features than ever imagined before.

Hmmmm...

Now, clearly if such self-driving features exist, they were not put there by legislation... I mean... they did try to pass some legislation in the Obama years to keep a crash like 2008 from happening again, but most of that got watered down or actively repealed in years quickly to follow.

Rich people hate regulation, and are famous for never learning their lessons, after all.

But legislation is not the only form of regulation... there is also just... administrative policy... namely, in Obama’s case, policies that once again favored science and technology... as well as global economic integration.

Clinton era policy, in the late 1990s, gave us the World Wide Web to begin with, but it was early on Obama’s watch that we saw the advent of the smart phone, which, transformed the internet all over again, as well as technology in general... and both on a global scale.

This, in turn, not only globalized the economy like never before, but created whole new avenues for it to explore.

In the early 1990s, you were paid with a paper paycheck that you deposited at the physical bank and then... you kept track of your bank balance in your checkbook or in your head.

If you wanted to buy something you got in your car and spent the day shopping the different stores to see what they had and who had the best deal.

The biggest convenience you had back then was your ATM card, with which you could get cash to pay for your thing at the cash register, before lugging it home in your vehicle.

By the early 2000s, you probably had direct deposit, and could do your banking in real time on the desktop PC at home. You could pre-shop the stores by going to their websites, before getting in the car, and you also had a debit card that functioned anywhere the same as cash.

But that was nothing compared to what was possible in the twenty-teens.

Now, thanks to a hand held device 1000 times more powerful than my 2001 desktop PC, that I carry on my person wherever I go... and thanks to an economic infrastructure which has entirely grown around that device... I can bank wherever I am... I can shop, and purchase nearly anything wherever I am standing, and have it delivered to my doorstep... and I can also give my money to any person, or cause I feel like, instantly, in whatever increments I wish, large or small.

Also, I can be part of, say... a fandom... and just by being a fan of some franchise, like Iron Man, can enable Marvel to spend ten years on a cinematic universe that employs hundreds of thousands of people to make movies that bring in billions of dollars, and also support a secondary economy of comic book movie reviewers online, etc.

Money moves more freely in the twenty teens than ever before... on the dollars and cents level. If my nephew, 2000 miles away, needs twenty bucks, I can give it to him immediately, in bed, in my underwear.

If my favorite YouTube channel needs twenty bucks, I can give it to them. If Amazon allows me to buy some new socks with one click... or Pokemon Go wants to sell me a few extra pokeballs with another click... you can bet I’m clicking to buy that stuff right now!

But it’s not just pocket devices and people making impulse buys.

If that’s all it was, it would still be a much larger buffer against recession than we had in the days of old, when money didn’t move around so freely, so quickly.

No, there are also the algorithms.

Two of the most famous algorithms, the Google search algorithm, and the YouTube algorithm (YouTube is owned by Google) predate the era of the smart phone, but definitely have come into their own post smart phone.

And now we live in a world where every single app worth it’s salt has an algorithm designed to learn your preferences, help you discover more preferences you weren’t aware of before... and ultimately help you either make some kind of purchase, or at least bring your eyeballs to something that will profit from your having viewed and liked it.

And all the modern algorithms arise from theories of computer learning. They learn how better to serve both you, and their corporate masters. And this is done kind of inside a black box, where random tweaks are made to each new generation of algorithms... without knowing what the effect of that tweak might be, and then, the tweaked algorithms are field tested, with only the top performing ones left to survive and be tweaked again.

It’s a process very similar to the breeding of animals and plants that humans did throughout the history of civilization... starting with some basic forms... getting them to fuck... keeping the good ones we like, and letting the failures die out... without any need to understand the molecular details involved on the level of the DNA.

Who knows how exactly they bred the husky? Doesn’t matter. They pull sleds and love snow so... they can stay! Same with corn... how did we mutate grass into doing that? Not sure... but we worked it for a long time, and we got there.

So, by the time Donald Trump took office in 2017, we had a fully developed smart phone economy (no coincidence he’s the first president to be a problem on Twitter) and a next gen internet teeming with AI in the form of learning algorithms... growing more effective every day... at the one job they were all conceived to do...

...keep the money flowing.

This is all to say nothing of the algorithms that must be out there for stock traders online, by the way.

While retailers and app developers have been busy making it as easy as possible for everybody on Earth with an income and a bank account to move the tiniest amounts of money anywhere instantly... all of the investors out there, playing with the big money, have also come to rely more on their AI algorithms, than their own gut instincts.

Now... I’m not saying all of this makes the economy crash proof...

But all taken together, it makes the global economy a hell of a lot more crash resistant than it ever was before.

It’s a different kind of car now... such that if you have a crazy drunk driver like Donald Trump at the wheel... well... those pedals and that wheel are no longer direct input devices.

He can be as violent as he wants with them, but the computer... in this case, the sum total of all economic algorithms out there, now controlling the real levers of commerce automatically... all working toward the common goal of maintaining the status quo no matter what... just ignores violent inputs that fall outside a given range.

This results in a stock market that peaks one day, and plummets the next... with the overall effect being that the spikes and dips cancel out over the week, and even the loop-the-loops, like that inverted yield curve... are just momentary thrills that amount to nothing over the week or month.

Now, if I’m wrong about this... then I’m not totally wrong. I’m still right that more globalism and better technology has given us a more stable economy for longer than ever before.

So even if there is a crash... I’d say tech and globalism are still the way forward... maybe with some actual government regulation... depending on what exactly caused the crash?

Whatever the case... AI is the future and... within the next ten years, everybody’s gonna have a Jarvis who handles their affairs in ways that make today’s Alexa, Siri, etc... look like silly pull string talking dolls... and make us wonder how we ever survived without them.

READ: even acts as your primary council in a court of law... level of effective cyber assistant.

That is my crazy take on things tonight.

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ninjatitty · 6 years ago

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oodlyenough · 8 years ago

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fic: return on investment (1/2)

If Atlas were a baby, Fiona realizes, she would be its luxurious, jet-setting mother, travelling the world on a whim, and Rhys would be the live-in nanny doing all the actual childrearing.

Atlas needs money. Thanks to Felix, Fiona has four million dollars.

Rhys will probably regret this.

3.5k in this chapter. Mostly comedy, with a bit of drama to come. Post-game. Pretty exclusively about Rhys & Fiona’s relationship, with bit parts and cameos from Sasha, Vaughn and Yvette. Kudos to @shinyopals, @firstofoctober and @valoscope on Tumblr for humouring this idea long enough for it to grow as it has. Also on AO3.

Update: Part 2 on Tumblr | Part 2 on AO3

The first million of Felix’s nine is spent getting Fiona and Rhys back to Pandora after the Vault transports them half-way across the galaxy.

It’s not how Fiona imagined spending her first million dollars. It’s also not how she imagined her first visit to another planet. Or who she imagined visiting it with.

It does put an end to Rhys’ whining when he learns she has millions of dollars cash in her back pocket, though, so at least there's that.

“I didn't think Vaults were supposed to cost you money,” Rhys points out, ever so helpfully, as Fiona parts with a larger chunk of change than she's ever previously held.

“This was a dud,” Fiona reasons. “Obviously. The next one I find’ll be better.”

“Seriously? You still wanna be a Vault Hunter? After all this? You’re not all… Vault-ed out?”

Rhys looks at her like he's pretty sure that's stupid. Truthfully Fiona is pretty sure he's got a point, but it's not like he's one to talk.

“Hey, people with glass career ambitions shouldn’t throw stones.”

Rhys smirks. “Yeah, not sure that figure of speech really held up for you.”

“Whatever, just… shut up. You're lucky I'm nice enough to pay for your ticket, too.”

“Technically that’s money you stole from me and Vaughn, so…”

Fiona flips him off, upgrades her ticket to first class for the leg home and leaves him in coach.

That leaves eight million to split with Sasha.

Sudden wealth agrees with Sasha—or at least, Sasha agrees with sudden wealth.

She spends a chunk right away, on a tricked-out caravan that makes the old one look like a clown car, a sound system powerful enough to wake the dead, and at least a dozen guns that individually cost more money than any gun has any business costing.

Fiona understands the kid-in-a-candy-store impulse (Sasha nearly buys out one of those, too), but she’s older, arguably a little wiser, and definitely more patient. Besides, she might end up teleported across the universe again.

So instead she takes her four million, buys a new hat, and waits for an opportunity to present itself.

Rhys gets them all together with such forced nonchalance that it can only mean one thing: he wants something, and he is nervous to ask for it.

Fiona knows this, but she decides to let it play out anyway. Watching him squirm is funny.

Hours later, when Sasha and Vaughn are preoccupied with Sasha’s new motorbike, Rhys finally spits it out, and even though Fiona knew there was a request coming, she nearly chokes on her beer.

“You want me to what?”

“Invest,” he repeats, like it sounds any less insane the second time around. When her eyes remain as wide as dinner plates, he raises both index fingers. “I know, I know, I know, just—hear me out—”

He launches into a well-prepared sales pitch/slideshow/shameless plea, of which Fiona absorbs about twenty per cent through her haze of surprise, confusion and bewilderment.

When he’s finished, Fiona watches him closely through narrowed eyes. Her first question is, “Did you ask Sasha the same thing?”

“No.” He shifts in his seat under her scrutiny. “It seemed like a bad idea to… mix business and pleasure.”

“God.” Fiona just about gags. “I’ll give you the money if you promise never to call my sister ‘pleasure’ ever again.”

Rhys is disturbingly unperturbed, tilting his head with a grin. “Is that a deal?”

“I dunno…” Fiona tilts her chair onto its back legs and pushes back her hat so she can stare up in proper contemplation. “Would that mean I’d own Atlas?”

“Nah, there’s lots of different ways you can do it, you don’t have to be involved at all. Could just be a loan with interest, or—”

“I wanna own it,” Fiona decides.

“You… what?” he sputters. She can just about see the gears in his head grind to a halt—or the circuit boards, or whatever cybernetic garbage he’s got implanted in there. “No, you don’t.”

“Uh, yeah I do.”

“...Why?”

Fiona shrugs. She lets the front legs of her chair hit back against the ground with a thunk.

“Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Fiona: Vault Hunter, business owner.” She spreads both hands in the air as if she’s unfurling an imaginary banner.

Rhys stares at her, dumbfounded. After a second, he narrows his eyes. “You were that kid on the playground who had no interest in the toy truck until somebody else was playing with it, weren’t you?”

“Dunno. Didn’t grow up with a lot of toys. Or a playground.” She pouts, aiming for a guilt trip, but she must fumble the landing, because Rhys just rolls his eyes.

“You don’t want to own Atlas,” he insists.

“Sure I do.”

“Look, the interest rate I’ll give you—”

“Nope.” She leans across the table, her chin cradled in her bridged fingers, smirking. “Wanna own it.”

Rhys leans forward too, with an equally snide smirk, like he’s hoping to catch her in a bluff. Fiona realizes two things in quick succession: that this has become a game of chicken, and that she isn’t about to lose.

“Really? That’s really what you want. You really want equity, not interest, or a portion of the profits, or—”

“Really.” She slides one hand free and extends it across the table. “So, deal?”

Rhys’ narrowed, mismatched eyes study her face and then her outstretched hand, his jaw working in wordless contemplation.

Finally, with an aggravated huff, he grabs her hand in his. “Deal.”

Fiona grins, and tries to make sure her grip is as tight as his, even if her efforts are wasted on his prosthetic.

“Don’t worry,” she tells him, “I’ll still let you do all the work.”

Rhys shakes his head as he lets go, scowling. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Hey, hey, hey!” She points a finger in mock offense. “I’m a rich asshole.”

Once she signs on the dotted line, Fiona owns, technically, 51% of Atlas’ outstanding shares.

Majority shareholder. It sounds like it pains Rhys to say it.

Sasha asks what that means, exactly, and Fiona sort of shrugs, and Rhys groans very loudly and hits his forehead on the table.

If Atlas were a baby, Fiona realizes, she would be its luxurious, jet-setting mother, travelling the world on a whim, and Rhys would be the live-in nanny doing all the actual childrearing.

Rhys does not appreciate this metaphor as much as Fiona does.

He also doesn’t appreciate when Fiona refers to Atlas as her “hobby”, her “side hustle”, her “pet project”, or basically anything that describes it as “hers” at all.

This, of course, only encourages her to do it more often.

For the most part, though, she doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about Atlas. Vault Hunting is a pretty preoccupying gig. Rhys sends her updates, sometimes—because he thinks she might care or because he wants to make her feel guilty for her uninvolvement, she’s not really sure—and she sort of half-skims them. She hasn’t got the head for business, anyway. She’d rather get shot at than read a quarterly report. Literally.

“That’s why I’ve got loyal servants like you,” she tells him.

If looks could kill, and if those killing powers worked even through a vidlink, she’d definitely be dead by now.

Fiona leans back against the wall, one foot braced against it, and buffs her nail polish while a nervous-looking woman in a lab coat turns her back to Fiona, hand at her ear.

“Hi, yes, sorry to bother you,” the woman says, “it’s Sophie, from R&D?”

There must be a pause on the line, because Sophie shoots a skittish glance over her shoulder at Fiona.

Fiona waves.

Sophie turns away again immediately, and Fiona shakes her head. She isn’t even trying to be intimidating.

“Yes, hi,” Sophie says again, apparently transferred to another line. “I—no, no, there’s nothing on fire this time. There’s just, um, there’s a woman here? Who wants a tour of the lab?”

Fiona wonders if Sophie is one of the so-called Children of Helios, and if so, exactly how long it’s going to take for those children to stop hiding in their parents’ basement.

“I know we don’t do tours,” Sophie says, sounding a little irritated at the insinuation. It’s the most Fiona has liked her so far. “But she says she’s—well, she…” Sophie casts another helpless glance at Fiona, like she resents what Fiona’s presence is making her say. “She says she owns the place.” Sophie is still watching Fiona from the corner of her eye as she nods slowly to the voice on the other end of the line. “Right. Okay. Will do.”

Finally, Sophie turns to face Fiona properly.

“He says he’ll be down in a minute,” says Sophie.

Fiona grins, pushing herself up from the wall. “Great.”

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” is the first thing Rhys says to her, and Fiona snorts.

“Hi, Rhys, I’m fine, good to see you, too, it’s been so long,” she says pointedly, but he ignores her, moving straight to the door, his palm held out to interface with the control panel.

She watches him work, head tilted. They haven’t seen much of each other in recent months, each caught up in their personal whirlwinds. Fiona is finally starting to earn some respect, and Atlas is taking its first fledgling steps as an actual, functional business. Again. Vault Hunter, CEO. It’s been… busy.

The Rhys in front of her now is even starting to look the part, all expensive clothing and serious facial expressions and the perpetual vibration of someone who’s consumed way beyond the recommended daily intake of caffeine.

Fiona knows him, though, and she’s not so easily fooled.

“It’s really… not a great time for you to be here,” he admits to her as the door slides open. “I’ve got advertising proofs to approve, financials to look at, a couple big meetings that really need to go well, and shepherding you around is not exactly the prep I had planned.”

“Shepherding?” Fiona counters, following him through the doors. “Thought you’d be excited to show off.”

Rhys smiles thinly. “Yeah, well, you know, I would be! Just… kinda busy… trying not to lose all your money and torpedo my own career. Again.”

That sounds more like the Rhys she knows, always a little more awkward and uncertain than he tries to pretend. Fiona grins and claps him on the shoulder as they head into the lab.

“Tough. I want to see what my money’s paying for.”

Her money, it turns out, is paying for a number of things. The Atlas of yesteryear had a lot of irons in the fire, and in that regard, at least, Rhys’ is no different.

There’s a limited line of guns, the expensive sort that collectors pay exorbitant amounts of money to never use. Fiona asks if these were made explicitly to please Sasha, and Rhys gets a dumb look on his face and shrugs, which she takes as a yes.

They don’t keep the plantlife in the lab, he explains, which makes sense, but he assures her there’s a lot of it. Fiona remembers ten-foot carnivorous flowers and decides she’s not really missing out.

“Is it all still so… aggressive?” she asks, and Rhys sort of grins.

“Aggressive plantlife really agrees with Pandora,” he says, which she has to admit sounds true enough. “We’re working on fruit and stuff though, you can try some later.” Then something catches his eye, and he waves her forward eagerly. “Fi, come here.”

He introduces her to a frazzled woman named Hannah, standing on the outside of a tiny observation room. Through the window, a small, nondescript robot is holding what looks like a glorified button. Painted on the floor are two separate, coloured circles.

“We’ve been trying to learn more about the teleportation technology from the Vault of the Traveler,” Hannah tells her, and over Hannah’s shoulder, Rhys wiggles his eyebrows excitedly.

“Quick, easy interplanetary travel, right?” he prompts.

“Easy is one word for it.” Fiona tilts her head and raises an eyebrow. “Another is nauseating. Disorienting. Terrifying.”

Rhys dismisses it with a shrug. “I mean, it’s... probably less terrifying if you know it’s going to happen.” He sidles up next to her, full-on salesman. “Just think, though! Pandora to Dionysus in ten seconds.”

“Yeah, Dionysus will love that,” Fiona jokes, but it does sound pretty cool, now that he’s said it.

He scratches the back of his neck. “Well… we can worry about that later. It’s a work in progress.”

“I made some adjustments,” Hannah says, and then launches into a technical explanation that sounds like gibberish to Fiona. Rhys makes a good show of looking very attentive, but Fiona’s pretty sure he has no idea what any of it means, either.

By the end of it, Hannah’s holding up a remote control, and all three of them are watching the robot in the observation room curiously as Hannah holds up a remote control switch.

“It’s supposed to reappear in that blue circle, there,” Hannah explains.

The little robot dematerializes from its red circle and rematerializes almost instantly, in a bright flash of light, three feet into the air and nowhere near the blue circle. Before it can even hit the ground, it disappears again, reappears elsewhere, faster and faster, with non-stop bursts of blinding light, clattering around the room as it collides with the walls, floor and ceiling.

Finally, there’s a memorable slam against the window that sends them all flinching backwards. Hannah flips the switch the other way, and the robot falls from mid-air and lands on the floor.

Fiona cringes.

“It doesn’t, um, there’s no AI in that, or anything,” Rhys says hastily, though he looks a little horrified too. “It’s fine.”

With matching, pained thumbs up, they leave Hannah to her work.

Along with the guns and the experimental teleportation, there’s a variety of miscellaneous tech, small-ticket items that Rhys shows to Fiona with all the enthusiasm of a teenager working part-time at an amusement park.

Every employee they run into knows Rhys, and Rhys knows all of them, well enough that she thinks he might be cheating, but she never catches his ECHO eye lighting up.

None of them know Fiona, which leaves her the great pleasure of introducing herself as Rhys’ boss, reveling in their look of confusion and Rhys’ scowl.

“I mean they really should have heard of me,” Fiona tells him.

“They don’t have reason to,” Rhys says. “It’s not like you actually do any work here.”

“You could have posters. ‘The Woman Who Made This All Possible’.” When that fails to get a response, she nudges him with her elbow. “Or a statue.”

“I’m not building you a statue,” says Rhys flatly, a disappointing underreaction.

It’s unusual for Rhys not to take Fiona’s bait, and she frowns. “I feel like your heart’s not in this.”

Rhys ignores that, too. “Last lab’s up here, let’s just finish up.”

There’s not much to look at in the last section of the lab, except for various computer displays she doesn’t understand, some whiteboards covered in indecipherable writing, and various hunks of metal in various states of completion, largely unrecognizable to Fiona. She peers at a printed list of specifications, trying to make sense of it, her eyebrows knitted together.

“Is this an… arm?” she asks finally. When there’s no answer, she prompts, “Rhys?”

Nothing. When she looks up, it’s obvious she’s lost Rhys’ attention. He’s standing in the hall, staring in deep concentration at some display projected from his palm, his golden eye flickering wildly.

“Hey. Rhys.”

No luck. Fiona rolls her eyes.

“Mr. Robot,” she tries again, and this time she reaches up to flick the port at the side of his head.

The display from his palm flickers for a second, and Rhys reacts like he’s been shot, jumping away from her with a yelp and flailing both arms uselessly.

“God, don’t do that,” he scolds, glaring, and Fiona would maybe feel a little bit bad about it if his reaction were not so funny. “What? What do you want?”

“Food,” she says, aware of the sudden rumble in her stomach. “Where’s this fruit you promised me? Lunchtime!”

“Oh. Right.” He points to the exit doors behind him. “There’s a cafeteria that way. Keep going, hang a left, can’t miss it. You’ll find something.”

He turns to go the other way, already focusing on his palm display again, and Fiona catches him by the shoulder.

“What, you’re not shepherding me?” she asks.

“Can’t. Sorry. Busy.” He doesn’t even look up as pulls out of her grip and waves her off. “I think you can manage lunch on your own, Vault Hunter.”

Fiona watches him go and shakes her head.

“Jackass,” she mutters.

“This is Atlas food, and I own Atlas, mostly, so if you think about it, this is really already my food, and I shouldn’t have to pay.”

Fiona says it all clearly and slowly, with such a winning smile that surely no one could deny her.

The man serving food at the canteen does not look convinced. “Lady, I don’t even know who you are.”

Fiona’s about to explain why that’s really not her fault, and she’ll be speaking to the CEO about that, because it seems wrong, really, that she not get her due, and—

“It’s fine, Steve,” comes a voice from behind her. “She’s with me, just put it on my tab.”

Turning to face her unlikely saviour, Fiona finds Yvette, eyebrow arched, hands on her hips, and lips pulled into a smile. Steve mumbles something about executives looking out for each other, but he hands Fiona her tray of food without further complaint.

“Thanks,” says Fiona brightly, after Yvette’s grabbed her own food and lead them to a table. “Rhys basically abandoned me,” she adds.

Not that she’s feeling resentful, or anything.

“Yeah, he’s been a ghost recently,” Yvette says, sliding into a booth. “He always gets like this when he’s busy. He’d probably sleep in his office if your sister would let him get away with it. Vaughn and I used to stage interventions at Hyperion.”

The second she’s said it, she looks like she regrets it, a shadow passing over her face at the mention of Helios. Fiona pretends not to notice, studying her plate of food intensely.

“But anyway,” says Yvette, abruptly trying to regain control of the conversation, “I didn’t know you were visiting today!”

“It was a surprise.” Fiona takes a swig of her drink through her straw and raises her eyebrows. “You know, like a secret shopper. Gotta say, though, my tour guide gets a failing grade.”

Yvette laughs at that, and then she starts to catch Fiona up, filling her in on all the details Rhys had been too distracted to bother with. Atlas is doing a lot of work with cybernetics, Yvette explains, and at various price points. There are lots of people on Pandora who could use prosthetics like Rhys’ own, but not many who could pay for them. Trying to find the right balance of dexterity, function and affordability is the primary focus and current struggle of the R&D team.

“One of our suppliers is a real dick, too,” Yvette adds, matter-of-factly. “I know he’s trying to overcharge us. I’ve worked with him before.” She rips her piece of toast in half and points at Fiona with it. “That’s one of the meetings Rhys has been hyperventilating about.”

“He didn’t tell me any of this,” Fiona says, pulling the lid off of her soda cup to chase down the last drops of her drink with her straw.

Yvette only shrugs. “Like I said, he gets like that.” She pops the second half of her toast into her mouth. “Besides—it must be pretty boring compared to what you’re up to these days. You must have amazing stories.”

Fiona pushes the ice around in her empty cup. Vault Hunting, not unlike conning, is about ten percent the sweet thrill of victory, ninety percent guesswork and fumbling to cheat death in ways that are embarrassing to think about later.

Still, she doesn’t like to spoil the illusion.

“Oh yeah,” she says, looking up. “Totally. Great stories. The best stories.” Already she’s mentally fishing for anecdotes that lend themselves to her… more creative impulses. “This one time—”

Yvette shifts closer in anticipation, but when she glances at her watch she blanches. “Shit. Hold that thought. I should probably get back to work.” She rises easily from the booth and takes her tray with her. “Come see me before you leave, all right? I wanna hear about the Vault Hunting.”

“Will do.” Fiona leans back in her chair, one arm draped over the side of it. “Thanks for lunch.”

“Oh, don’t mention it,” Yvette winks as she drops her tray on the pile and walks backwards to the door. “Rhys pays that tab anyway.”

Part 2 on Tumblr | Part 2 on AO3

#borderlands #tales from the borderlands #fiona the con artist #rhys the company man #oodlyenough i write fic #can u believe i've now written two fics with the basic premise of 'man seeks business investors'

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