#i read the peter centric ones and peter is like ‘the technology is a few decades behind’

[canthandlethishit]

i love how there’s this subtle jab at technological advancement between universes in mcu x dc fics

[aion-rsa]

The Unspoken Name's Map Proves It's A Different Kind of Fantasy

https://ift.tt/2V4HtH7

Orc-centric fantasy The Unspoken Name is a different kind of fantasy than has come before — and its map proves it!

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This article is sponsored by Tor Books.

Fantasy maps, which have been a staple of fiction for decades, can tell the reader a lot about the book's world, story, and even characters. Perhaps the most famous comes from The Hobbit, with its Dwarvish rune ciphers explained by the language-loving author in a brief translation guide on the next few pages. Or The Lord of the Rings, a version of which Peter Jackson used to create the fairytale atmosphere of his early 2000s adaptation of the journey from the Shire to Mordor. These maps give a reader their first taste of what the tone of the story might be like. What do the names sound like? What variety of languages and naming conventions exist in a fantastical world?

Some fantasy maps are present mostly for the reader’s convenience. They help the prospective reader navigate a journey that may switch back and forth through places with complicated names. Other fantasy books customize their maps to their characters. With typical J.R.R. Tolkein thoroughness, the map in The Hobbit includes careful calligraphy, delicately-drawn mountains, and the dwarven script clearly written over the rest afterward, with runes overlapping the inked mountains. (Depending on which edition you’re looking at, the effect is enhanced or reduced.) This is Thorin’s map, modified after the dwarves’ mountain was invaded by the dragon. In The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, the world map is studded with sociopolitical notes in the titular character’s voice (“stupid feudal marriage politics”).

A.K. Larkwood’s genre-bending fantasy The Unspoken Name, a new fantasy about an orc priestess turned wizard's assassin, does something a bit different with its map, signalling the ways in which it is doing something a bit different with the fantasy genre altogether...

The first big difference to notice in Csorwe’s map in The Unspoken Name is that it is unmistakably Csorwe’s. (In the real world, the map was created by Tim Paul.) So who is Csorwe, and what exactly is her story? Csorwe started her life as an orphaned orc picked up by the priestesses of the Unspoken One, an eldritch god fond of child sacrifices and the undead. She’s offered an escape from its thrall by Belthandros Sethennai, the known worlds’ foremost wizard.

Fast forward several years and Csorwe is Sethennai’s right-hand sword, charged with finding a magical object that can bring unprecedented power. The novel is the sort of chase-after-a-magical-object structure that is very common in fantasy, but in and around that chase is a study in characters who are all in one way or another in service to Sethennai or the supernatural. Csorwe begins to suspect that there’s more to life than helping Sethennai, and her choices about who to ally herself with drive the story.

Csorwe herself is straightforward and tough. She knows how to take and give damage, and isn’t interested in finery or study. This isn’t the kind of fantasy where these are innate orcish traits. In the world of The Unspoken Name, people can be humans, elves, or orcs (or, rarely, giant snakes), and they’re all varied people. Another main orc character is a wizard librarian. No, these are Csorwe traits, and they’re evident on the book’s map.

The first parts to notice about the map are the thick lines, of both rivers and words. Many (but not all) place names are written in blocky capitals. Like Csowrwe, they’re loud and big and straightforward. The handwriting varies. The drawings are also varied and sometimes simple. They’re perfectly readable, but lines are askew, sketched in, ending before or after they are supposed to. This isn’t a map made by a scribe to be a beautiful advertisement to travelers coming to see a fair city. It’s a functional record of places visited and places suspected to be worth visiting for work.

Then there are the thumbtacks-and-string lines, most of them connecting round portals. These caught my eye immediately because they set the map apart in an important way: it isn’t contiguous. Most locations are by themselves on a scrap of paper connected by thumbtacks, and each area has a portal. This immediately makes the reader wonder about the world-building. What are these portals? How easy or difficult is it to get through them?

read more: Ruin of the Kings is Must-Read Epic Fantasy

This is where the genre-bending comes in. In The Unspoken Name, there are roughly two kinds of magic: Wizards receive their magic from patron entities such as the Unspoken One. Magic can also be siphoned off into technological wonders, such as the portals and the ships that fly through them. The portals are used in various ways throughout the story, both as everyday conveyance and as magical weapons. Because of them, the physical distances between places don’t really matter. What matters is whether someone has made a portal between two cities.

Between the portals is the Maze, the space-between-spaces where worlds decay or collide. The book’s geography isn’t complicated; the story moves pretty linearly from one world to another. I was left sometimes wondering why these were different planar worlds at all rather than just different parts of one planet, but that turns out to be a world-building question the novel does eventually answer, thematically if not geographically. The way Csorwe gradually comes to understand more about the portals helps carry the reader along. And it is weird, with cities decaying into what look like weird works of art.

These separate places could have been conveyed on the map(s) as different pieces of paper and it would have been clever enough. The thumbtacks add a little more to really finish the effect. They’re really more nails than thumbtacks, stabbed into each paper with portal paths indicated by string like the PEPE SILVA conspiracy board. It gives the map a sense of life, with tacked-together urgency and piratical charm, as if it has all along been hanging on the wooden wall of a ship.

The tattered worlds of The Unspoken Name don’t need to be united, per se. They’re functioning well enough with the portal system. It’s the characters’ emotional connections to the world-building that makes the answers to the questions this map poses so interesting. By inviting questions the novel answers, The Unspoken Name’s map is a remarkable portal into the book.

The Unspoken Name is now available to purchase. Check out the full synopsis below...

A. K. Larkwood's The Unspoken Name is a stunning debut fantasy about an orc priestess turned wizard's assassin.

What if you knew how and when you will die?

Csorwe does—she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.

But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin—the wizard's loyal sword. Topple an empire, and help him reclaim his seat of power.

But Csorwe will soon learn—gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.

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Feature Megan Crouse

Feb 20, 2020

Fantasy Books

from Books https://ift.tt/2vUbD52

[tattooartistsblog]

The Evolution of Western Tattooing

I’ve had a weird summer but things have been in flux for almost 2 years now. Most of this coincides with my having children (who are fantastic) and being forced to travel a lot for work.

Along with these major life changes, I have also been going to school and doing a lot of reading about philosophical ideas. Lately, I have been reading some of the works from Peter Singer (Act Utilitarian). He is famous for many different thought experiments over the past 40+ years but the one I felt compelled to toss into this article was the drowning child problem. (Rewritten for simplicity - Source)

This experiment has many aspects but I will take only a single part of it to make a point further on:

“If you were walking by a stream and saw a child had fallen into the stream, would you stop and save that child from drowning?”

If you were to answer, “Yes, I would stop and save that child from drowning!”, ask yourself: Why?

Why would you take time out of your day, when your happiness and energies could be better spent increasing the experiences you only have one chance to obtain in this lifetime? If you spend time helping this child in need, you will never get that time back. How can you be sure that the child is a good person (here and forever forward) or that they will have a life of value? You have no idea. Yet, in most people’s case, they would take action to save a child because they are not (or do not want to be considered) what society would label a monster or heartless person.

I may have taken a bit of a leap there but, as a society (local or global), we look to the children as something pure and malleable. They are something that has been untouched by the efforts of work-life balance or the politic that make up our daily existence.

So let’s take another run at the previous thought experiment:

What if you are walking by a stream and you see two children drowning. You only have the ability to save a single child at a time. In saving one child you may neglect the other so there’s a chance that the other could perish.

If confronted with this dilemma, how would you act? How would you triage this? Would you check to see if one was bigger than the other in hopes that the bigger one may be able to save itself? Do you go to the closer or further one? Do you save a child based on hair color? Do you let them both drown? What if one was your own child? Or both?

Regardless of any action taken in this situation, a rational person must always attempt the best possible outcome, for any and all involved. Their actions must result in what gives the greatest utility to those involved, regardless of how it affects themselves. Without this effort, society is prone to disruption as the efforts of the individual fracture from the cohesion necessary for mutual benefit in society. When removing the idea of an individual ego, we are forced to look outside our own worldview to see how our actions create positives or negatives. This can be applied universally among groups of people, or people and the environment that they exist within.

The practice of considering what is good and bad by picking apart our actions seems to be less organic than it had in the past. In more recent years, I have observed a loss of identity, a greater hive-mind collective and a less objective society. Given our thought experiment above, I think there would be a greater crisis among members of society when presented with the need for immediate action. I believe this is due, in larger part, to social networks and the identity manufacturing that accompanies the use of such technology.

Social Networks

Our use of technology has been of benefit in many ways. We have been able to advance progress in every field of study. Schools are offered via institutions that have gone online; We can send correspondence across the world in milliseconds and we are able to modify genetic structures to assume a godlike control of the physical world. In most ways, technology has been of benefit for society but when applied individualistically, our lives have become a shadow of what is required to be a social being. Our use of social networks has removed the social aspects of society and is leading to the destruction of individuality altogether.

There are a few aspects of ethics and social networks that we can go over. First I look at social network. What I think is absurd about it and what people can do to avoid being sucked into the marketing machine I assume it to be. After that, a bit about language and how we can never be confident when presented with written/texted/typed representations. Finally we will look at what it means to be a responsible person when using these forms of social connections. Throughout this essay I will point out how to critically examine this social network machine and why we should offer a harsh critique to this new aspect of society.

Social Media and Responsible Viewing - My perspective

Social media is a linchpin of interpersonal connectedness in our modern world. Global citizens focus large amounts of their lives on the assumptions others will make when viewing an online portfolio of statements, pictures or videos of their lives. This exclusive access (in some ways, depending on your security settings) gives voyeurs an insight into your life. Your followers and prowlers can choose to live vicariously through you and you never know what they are up to behind their digital device’s screen..

The idea of being a “follower” of a person or brand has always struck me as weird, maybe even a little awkward. In fact, as soon as I had written “follower” above, with those appended quotation marks, I felt a little sick. Why is it that without these markings I am less provoked by an emotional response but with them I feel more separate from the connection? If we look to the past, in our societies, the label of being a “follower” had been attached to something crazy like Purple Kool-Aid or compounds with militant weapon caches. It was a descriptor that labeled a person as being unable to think for themselves.

Followers were always an integral part of a larger mass that, while being led, shook the critical inquiry that accompanies life and disposed the efforts of free thinking while idolizing individuals that benefited from their obeisance. Our lives now fit perfectly into the idea of being a “follower” and we choose to propagate this lack of critical thinking.

From tattooing to social media

I work as a tattoo artist and part time as a thinker. My focus in the tattoo industry is putting what you think looks good into your skin. It is a permanent adornment that creates a myriad of emotions for some, and is quasi cathartic to me when doing a procedure. As tattooers, we utilize artistic skills and technical knowledge to make our clients happy - when they have the urge to make a permanent change to their body. As a free thinker I am always trying to understand what surrounds me and what my place in the world is. Combining these two efforts has been very difficult at times as I am forced to reconcile my want for understanding with the needs of my clientele.

As a tattoo artist, the focus for the business in modern times has been trying to figure out how best to adorn our clients body with an ageless piece of art. When we make a design for the skin we are always looking forward to ensure a tattoo looks great for the next 15+ years. At least, this had been our effort in the past. We have slowly evolved away from this effort due to the amount of knowledge necessary when designing a piece. It is an insanely difficult endeavor.

Becoming a craftsperson

Growing as an artist combined the study and effort of generations who previously made mistakes so that the future could avoid them. The study of art, tattooing and the body was an immersive experience, wherein people wishing to achieve a mastery were forced to learn all aspects of the trade to become proficient. Once proficiency was obtained, a person practicing the craft was forced to understand their place in the industry. They developed their own “voice” in their artwork and honed this application so they could master their process. This process, once mastered, could be passed down to future generations and the art would evolve to fit a best practice that would ensure survivability and growth of the art form.

A mastery in tattooing included making pigment and needles; understanding and developing your tools of use; drafting and application of art to skin and the actual procedure; client management and running your business. Since the inception of regional and national supply companies, this practice of evolving a personal mastery has slowly devolved and an art-centric focus. The idea of mastery has shifted from the total knowledge accrued in a lifetime's work to something that can be obtained through social media acceptance and a single applicable style of art. An artisan’s efforts can be so focused that mastery can be achieved in as little as a year.

Short term benefits

The industry has evolved away from mastery due to the inconvenience of time in everyday life. In many ways, it has become easier to learn with the invention of technologies that make designing a tattoo far easier. We also have the ability to capture lost hours with premade, pre dispersed pigments (although the safety of such products is of question), premade needles and, what are treated as disposable tattoo machines and supplies, that can be delivered to your door in a matter of days. Suppliers became an integral part of the operations and, in time, grew to service the entire industry, on demand.

With an increased amount of free time, what were tattoo artists in search of a mastery going to do to fill the time? Newly freed time was applied to becoming a better artist and learning how better to market their products. This is not as it always was…

This shift in free time occurred (in the west) at about the same time media started showcasing a new wave of personalities who sported tattoos. After that, television shows started to come out that introduced legions of captivated viewers the inner workings of a tattoo shop and, through careful manipulations and editing, humanized the tattoo artist. What was once considered an evil, drug-riddled trade for bikers and sailors, was being broadcast on networks across the globe. Viewers were given the chance to learn about the trade, become attached to the artist’s personal struggles and see that tattooing wasn’t occupied by fat-white-dudes riding Harleys. It was the normal folk that were getting tattooed.

This progress of acceptance was amazing for the wallets of those who were already established, competent artists. The influx of tattoo clientele created a ripple effect, where shops that were previously hidden in a basement or the back of a barber shop, were expanding into strip malls and large common areas. The money rolling in was exponentially greater than anything that had been seen before. It was like a biker rally on steroids, and it was happening everyday, all year long.

With the exposure granted by TV and massive marketing campaigns, most tattoo shops became a place where hopeful artists would flock so as to gain a chance to be like the new stars on TV. Walking into a shop in the early 2000’s was not comparable to how things looked in the 80’s and 90’s. Church groups getting a tattoo for God were sitting next to Hells Angels getting a tattoo for Satan, and the hopeful apprentices walked into a scene that secreted a different lifestyle than previous generations. The industry was in the midst of an evolution.

The evolution

The free time that had been granted by the supply companies was again absent from the lives of tattoo artists everywhere as clients packed tattoo shop floors. Demands for new and exciting artwork forced tattooers to evolve into offering custom designs, otherwise they would lose the newly found financial security granted to them. That peaceful nights and weekdays off had vanished. They were being replaced with something tattooers were not prepared for:

Artwork. Lots of artwork.

With this influx of new client demands, shop owners were hungry to open up apprenticeships so new tattooers could fulfil the wants of clientele. Contrary to the demand placed on shop owners, the industry did not become easier to break into. Even if they were desperate, shop owners were what we call now, “old school”, and they were prone to distrusting new people in their shops. They had learned a trade that was far different than the one they resided in and, being overrun with new demands, they were a little cranky about the swift evolution of the industry. It became very difficult to train a new apprentice as the traditional tools and tricks one needed to acquire in an apprenticeship were, at times, meaningless or outdated. Couple this with the shop owners having been thrust into a position of needing to develop new skills, the apprentices were in a unique position to advocate for an exchange.

As soon as they were done scrubbing the toilet.

The exchange and eventual breakdown of the system

Most apprentices were not being utilized to the best of their abilities during the great expansion (I think I will coin that term for this era of tattooing). With new art being demanded by the increased clientele, apprentices were chosen based on their artistic abilities, as well as how their personalities meshed with shop owners. Artists were chosen based on what they were capable of artistically, not on their drive to become craftspeople. Due to this change, shop owners were placed in a role where the power dynamic would become upended and the masters of old were placed on a pedestal next to their apprentices.

In traditional apprenticeships, the master has acquired all necessary fundamental knowledge that will be passed down, as well as their own individual expression of the craft the have mastered. The apprentice is forced to learn by watching and asking questions. The apprentice is forced to learn at their own speed by slowly learning the foundational elements of the craft. But when confronted with the great expansion, shop owners were forced to take a demotion (in a way).

The master’s skills in artistry were subpar in comparison to those their agreed to train. They were put in a place where the apprentice, who had been chosen solely on how much the master was able to learn from their association, held as much power as the shop owner. The master and apprentice had become equals, and in doing so, masters, in desperate need of education, instilled a level of competency that was unearned by the new apprentice. It became easier for a new apprentice to challenge the master and, when conflicts arose, the exit of the apprentice did not accompany their exit from the industry, as it had in the past.

Tattoo Artists - The new masters

As the industry evolved and apprentices were forced out of shops that had started their apprenticeship, many of these new talents had little background knowledge of how to obtain mastery in the trade. The trade master being labeled as a tattooers had vanished. The new masters were tattoo artists.

These new masters had been promoted through the apprentice ranks quickly due to the shop owners need to grow as an artist. Their skills were traded for acceptance in the industry and a basic training the encompassed enough to ensure a modicum of quality in the least amount of time.

The new masters had been brought up in a time where “custom was king” and all the efforts of a tattooers were based solely on their artistic abilities. As the industry evolved, the passing of knowledge to the new masters left behind skills necessary to fully understand the craft.

Suppliers came in and filled the want of freedom for time consuming tasks. Shop owners outsourced all aspects of the operations so they could focus on their growth as an artist to meet the demands of clientele. This shift in applied mastery created a new baseline for artists wishing to join the industry. Art comes first. You can learn by mistake. As the new masters evolved and opened shops, previous shop owners were being run out of business by these dismissed, art focused new masters.

A break in the chain

The apprentice leaving with a lack of complete understanding left a rift in place where, historically, the master was invested in the success of their apprentice and was a part of their future expressions of the craft. By creating a situation where apprentices had moved into independent operations before fully understanding the craft, and by granting apprenticeships based solely on what they could take from the new generations, the masters of the past were dismissed and labelled as the outdated problems inside an evolving craft. To the new masters, the artistic skills of the past couldn’t compete with their own and they did not know what had been missed due to an incomplete education. In driving their own need of evolution towards a new expertise, the old masters created an environment where they were made obsolete.

The new masters had come into the craft without a bridge to the past. They were thrust into a position of power in an industry that was growing at an alarming rate. The new masters were left without a foundation for how to educate the next round of apprentices as mastery was only focused on a single aspect of the craft. Their own lack of apprenticeship was now something that had the potential to ruin the industry.

As it happened before, the growth in the industry made it difficult for these new masters to succeed, as they did not have a complete knowledge of the craft. They were bound to the failures of the previous generation, unable to make growth built on a solid foundation, and were forced to adapt to a new way that would leave a large gap in knowledge moving forward. Social media.

The evolution continues

In the last 10 years or so, tattooing has become something that is a part of who we are as individuals and allows us to better define who we are inside society. The efforts of the new masters created an industry in which a client had the freedom to design something that fit their personality. To the new masters, the collaboration between clients and artists was always present in the manufacture of designs. It was their goal to do something unique as this would set them apart from their competition. Not having a master to help guide their efforts had a positive effect on many in the industry in this way as customization became king. The individual voice of artists worldwide became more pronounced and defined the culture of tattooing we see today.

Without being tied to the techniques of the past, artists were able to push the boundaries in how designs were made and how they were applied. Innovations in style were consistently being shown through access made possible via social networks and were supported by the industry suppliers that made increasingly vivid products. These amazing feats of artistic ability led hungry artists, new to the craft, in making attempts to replicate these newly displayed tattoos. We had superstars of art in the industry, sponsored artists and a lifestyle that was being sold as a way to become something bigger and better than what had been seen before.

For the adventurous artist, there had been little effort to guide or instill a sense of mastery in the techniques being developed. Efforts to spread the information to the new generation were being hampered by what some have identified as “trade secrets “that were able to be purchased by going online, attending trade seminars or paying those in control of such knowledge to give wanting artists a tattoo.

For those who were unlucky, or had little funds to chase the information that was for sale, the guidance given was separate from this practice. Those without time or funds were told: practice on paper so you don’t make a mistake in the skin; clients will willingly give you money to learn on them; you can make mistakes; this is how we learn now; you must sacrifice your client to improve; you can be the best if you focus on one aspect of tattooing.

Social media makes it mark

Those in modern tattooing were faced with the dilemma of training the next generation of masters as the industry continued to grow and evolve. Art was still at the forefront and artistic applications of tattoos were continually being developed. The next generation came into their training in the same way the previous generation had, with a skill that was unknown to their masters; the use of social media as a way to market your ability.

What had happened before with the new apprentices happened again. The new masters fulfilled their obligations by developing the new apprentice in the same way they had been brought into the craft. Their teachings were focused on personal development in art. The training was focused on learning by making mistakes. The imbalance in the exchange of information continued to grow as the new masters exchanged their knowledge and the apprentice gave new techniques to improve the masters business. While this exchange happens, the apprentice slowly becomes detached from the master who is grooming their entry into an industry devoid of the history that holds the fabric of understanding together. There is not enough information left to pass along to the new members of the industry and a greater separation from the past occurs. The new apprentices are pushing the boundaries of evolution and leading the industry in a new direction, just as their were shown by the new masters. Alone.

I fear that this may continue to occur for the foreseeable future. With new innovations that accompany the growth of a new generation, there will always be a tool that the new apprentice can utilize to level the master-apprentice interaction. This aspect of devolution is ever apparent in modern western tattooing. Social media became the new tool that the new masters did not understand and the apprentice was able to utilize these evolutions of society to their favor.

The new class - social networks

We have delved into the idea that modern apprenticeships are undertaken by a master who has less than the necessary experience to pass along an adequate foundational understanding. Now let’s look to the future.

In my opinion, this degradation of knowledge has accelerated in the past decade This is due to the influence of social networks and mass media representations of the tattoo industry. The media is a tool with great power over the populations that choose to enjoy its benefits. Our civilizations have evolved in magnificent ways that allow transfer of knowledge and ideas at lightning speed. We have evolved to know each other over great distances. Our lives are moving towards the true expression of a global society wherein our lives are inextricably intertwined. We will be forced to fight common threats together or face extinction.

While all of this is going on, a cult of personality is raging rampant in many industries. People are held aloft based on “likes” and “followers” and trends that define the generation are bought and sold as commodities to the highest bidder. The media giants have shifted from those who presented ideas on television or radio to those who sell space on portable devices. The new idols of a generation are those who sell lifestyles or products that guarantee - fame if emulated or happiness and longevity if purchased. The lifestyles of the rich an famous are at your fingertips. If you like and follow, you can be a part of it.

Social Media and Ethical Standards

We are confronted with images of what we want by large technology companies that sell advertising space. This spaces of influence are available for a price and are gobbled up by those in society that wish to extort a level of control or influence on others. Advertising is a monster that has adapted to the changes in society better than any industry. Billions are spent so that companies know how to get you, the potential client, to purchase things you do not need. Social networks are a culmination of this knowledge, spanning decades, that collectively alter our perceptions to influence our behavior. As the tech companies has evolved, the idea of social connections have deteriorated as well. Now, our societies are more comparable to the 1984 version of existence. We love the Company and they will tell us what to do.

These companies have little regard to change their practices, regardless of the pressure civilizations, politicians or global alliances put on them. Not to be separated from the global society of this new age, the new class of tattooers are fully entrenched in their grasp. They have mastered navigating this new realm of representation and are rewriting the idea of success hand-in-hand with the social networks and they have brought this mastery to the table when negotiating their apprenticeship.

Social networks and influencers

Since the inception of social networks, our focus has slowly turned towards what I interpret as instant gratification of our cult of personality. We are focused on building followers like a non-sanctioned church. To do this, we develop a personality that is far separate from who we are in reality and sell a story that falsely implies our mastery.

Most of our efforts inside the social network realm are focused not on stealing money or selling products that are misleading or fake; our efforts are focused on building an Image…(dramatic typing there). They are here to influence opinions and trends and to manipulate the followers that hold them aloft. For a price, they can select a product and deliver its benefit to millions of enrapt individuals with nothing better to do than look at a screen while waiting for a social update.

Social networking Influencers are forced to make a product that has a limited shelf life as the media, being delivered to billions globally, must adapt to keep people's attention. The influencer’s focus is to bring in as many likes as possible and offer a service that is so exclusive that it has bloated industry. So many products are being represented by egocentric individuals who utilize their fame as a way to reconcile their high cost of service.

Influencers are skilled at building a persona that attracts people who are less than willing to think critically. Followers accept the image that is displayed on their phone/computer screen and seek validation of such images by evading critical inquiry. Validation is presented by agreements presented by influenced followers.

We see the numbers associated with an account and determine validity through insecurity. If numbers are great enough, those without mind enough to question will blindly follow representations put forth by the influencers to be a part of the “in crowd”. By denying inquiry, a person can be a part of something larger. They gain acceptance where otherwise they would be denied and, regardless if there is a physical presence to associate the person with the group, commenting on social networks allows users to segregate their ideals, likes, and beliefs to ensure less confrontation when interaction does occur.

Attempts to mislead

New apprentices or young artists in tattooing utilize social networks and media in the same way as influencers. Efforts made to display work that is impossible is a constant and misleads the public by imbuing a level of trust in clientele that is impossible to uphold, while misleading the populace under the guise of mastery. The new artists working towards mastery supplant the ideas of the past and extort a new version of true mastery. To obtain new mastery, follow these simple rules - The process and design are personal possessions of the artist. The client is no longer required to have input; they are canvasses utilized to impress or gain acceptance from competitors. This may seem Machiavellian in away but social networks are not a true representation of quality. The ability of a person to mislead the populace to increase personal value is theft.

We, as an industry cannot fault the new generation for taking such actions. This is our fault. We walked away from our responsibilities in search of fame and riches and were taken into the industry in the same vein. We are focused on personal growth rather than the growth of the industry collectively. The efforts of this new generation in utilizing ignorance to build a brand is reminiscent of how the new masters were used to gain artistic ability by previous generations. This epidemic is cyclic and the industry (as well as the majority of the world) is faced with a choice: Slow down and fix what is broken - or - kick it into high gear and get out before the ship sinks.

Sound familiar?

It’s all about appearance

When I go onto a social network, I am always presented with well groomed pages when searching for something entertaining. It is rare that I find many followers on pages that aren’t built to look a specific way and those that aren’t well groomed are not the first to appear in a search. When looking at my social networking pages, or those of some of my friends, we are not spending time developing an image or brand that represents our position in the world. Comparing our pages to influencers is like comparing fire and ice. Normal social media pages are utilized for updating close proximal relations and sharing statuses so friends and family can stay in touch with each other. Influencer pages are polished and are prime real estate for paying companies. I feel that this is due to grooming tactics these social networks have worked tirelessly to promote. In practice, you are attracted to a specific cult, or style, and the pages that have the most “followers” are delivering products more efficiently than others.

When a person joins a social networks, they only want to follow what mirrors what they feel mostly resembles who they are, what they like or who they wish to embody. In joining the ranks of a social media influencer, a person becomes attached to those who release entertaining material. Some wish to emulate it. For those who are bringing forth the next generation of tattooing, their ability to manipulate social networks has become key in their success and those who are not willing or able to competent on this new battlefield are left to fail.

Where the future lies

We are moving ever forward in society. Tattooing has evolved in so many ways that the art form it is today is a mere shadow of what it had once been, in some ways. Artists are marching forward towards a more efficient manner in delivering works of art to wanting clientele. Looking at social networks, tattooers are creating a platform wherein the “flash” of the past is what currently pays the bills. They are creating images, posting them online and clients are free to pick and choose the designs that hand on a digital wall. Social networking has turned our practices into a giant marketplace where social connections are ignored and the idea of customization is absent.

It’s funny when you look at it. We have come full circle and are reduced to the same practices that were commonplace before the great expansion. The only thing that is missing is the link to the past.

As the industry moves forward, they are confronted with a problem: Continue the march of progress and further remove themselves from the idea of mastery or, critically question the practices currently in use to rebuild the knowledge lost from the past.

Final Thoughts

I see the next generation of tattooers evolving in one of two ways: One Way. I see the same mistakes being remade again. The master will need skills from the apprentice therefore creating an imbalance in power during training. Once the apprentice feels they have gleaned enough knowledge, they will break from the master and lose a little more of the past as the industry evolves. This will continue until tattooing becomes something lost in the translation of society’s evolution. The Other Way. Tattooing slows down and becomes intertwined with the idea of mastery again. The new apprentices are given a full foundational experience when introduced to the industry and new knowledge is introduced as it becomes available. The industry works together in a way that promotes specialization and spreads knowledge effectively. Artists become attached to the process with their clientele. Insert a whole bunch of goodness!

This leads me back to the thought experiment we started with: If you come upon someone or something that is drowning, do you make an effort to save it?

Or do you just continue walking by?

Without our intervention in this industry, it will likely drown.

Hello and thanks for taking the time to read some of the ideas I have bouncing around in this “gettin’ -older” head. I haven’t written in awhile due to the work that was being put into the pigment articles. Funny enough, the depth of work that went into that study put me into a bit of a crisis. Professionals around the world were taking the time to talk with me and I feel so much more informed about the safety and efficacy of products that are being used in the U.S.

Authors Note*

Regarding the efforts moving forward with the website, I will stick to describing the ethics and philosophy of tattooing in the west (in my interpretation), tattoo history and some aspects of technical tattooing. I will not be doing the in-depth science articles that have little effect on people’s actions or choices. This may seem like a defeatist attitude, which is not something that I espouse, but in the future I may revisit them. If anyone is interested in what was found during my pigment research, please feel free to send me an email and I will give you a link to the references I had collected over the past 6 months.

[geekygirlexperience]

221B Con Panels are up! There’s more to 221B Con than just Sherlock Holmes!

If you want a convention that’s like 80% women, LGBTQA+ people, and just awesome, PLEASE CHECK OUT 221B CON! They just announced this year’s panels!

221B Con isn’t JUST an everything Sherlock Holmes convention. It also features other fandoms, LGBTQA+ panels, and writing workshops. Here’s some of the non-Sherlock panels they announced this year.

I’m applying for the Thrawn panel this year!!!

Thrawn - The Sherlock Holmes of Star Wars (And His Watson’s) - A look at the parallels between Grand Admiral Thrawn and Sherlock Holmes (and his various Watsons like Eli Vanto, Gilad Pellaeon, and Karyn Faro)

Fandom Panels:

-After Canon Ends - What happens to a fandom when there is no new canon? Why do some fandoms survive or even get stronger while others die? Is it the fabric of the original work or the fervor of the fandom that sustains it? Why does Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter fandom thrive when Battlestar Galactica and Babylon dwindle?

-Captain Marvel - Finally a Marvel movie headlined by a woman! Sorry Black Widow. We were rooting for you first.

-D&D Level 0 - A beginner’s guide to Dungeons and Dragons.

-Discrimination Within the Canon - From the KKK in the Five Orange Pips and the little girl in the Yellow Face to Holmes’s own dismissal of women, how do we square our love for Canon with the problematic nature of Victorian ideals? (While this s Sherlock Holmes centric, I’m sure other fandoms will be discussed)

-Doctor Who: A New Chapter - Moffatt is gone and we have a female doctor for the first time ever. How is the show holding up?

-The Good Place - I Kant Stop Watching!: Motherforking shirtballs! We’re renewed for a fourth season! Someone tell Janet to bring me a frozen yoghurt to celebrate!

-Kingdom Hearts - A discussion of Disney’s hit game.

-Legalities and Ethics of Fan Works - As creators become more aware of fan made content, what are the legal rights of the fan?

-The Magicians - A fan discussion of the hit Syfy show.

-McElroy Panel - A panel for all things McElroy-related. My Brother, My Brother and Me, The Adventure Zone, etc. Come in your favourite Taako cosplay, that’s what we really want to see right?

-MCU - A closer look at the Marvel Universe. Is Tony back from space? Is Peter okay?

-Representations of Women in Modern Science Fiction - From Ripley to Okoye, an in depth discussion of how women are viewed differently in science fiction and fantasy.

-Tabletop Gaming and Fandoms - Tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire, and Starfinder, have been around for decades. And the number of people that play have grown from a few people in a room to full conventions across the globe. Come join us as we discuss our favorite or even some lesser known tabletop games, what we love about them, and the fandoms born from them.

Tarzan in Cinema - Along with Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, Tarzan is one of the most adapted characters in movie history. Let’s discuss the good and the bad that came from these films.

-Yuri!!! On Ice in 2019 - What Will it Mean for the Fandom: With the anticipated new canon for Yuri!!! On Ice what will it mean for the fandom going forward?

 LGBTQA+ Panels:

-50 Shades of A - Asexuality in Fandom and Canon: This panel will discuss representations of asexuality in fandom and canon.

-Bitextuality in Sherlock Holmes - exploring the canon through the images that accompanied them.

-Polyshipping Time - More More More: Is more always better? It is in a polyfic! Come discuss the proliferation of plurality and passion.

-Queer Interpretations of Holmes and Watson - The beauty of Sherlock Holmes is the ability to adapt it to other times and places. The Canon is open to interpretation of many kinds. Come discuss the queering of Holmes and Watson in Canon and beyond.

Fanfiction and Writing Panels:

-ABO (18+) - ABO is one of the most discussed and misunderstood tropes in fan fiction today. Our panelists will discuss the where ABO began, where it is, and where it is going.

-Beyond Wikipedia - A crash course in research methods for the discerning writer.

-Co-Writing - The Ups and the Downs: Join our panelists as they discuss their experiences with co-writing, both positive and negative, and offer tips for making co-writing work.

-Cuddle Fic and Fluff - A look at the softer side of fanfiction.

-Every Disguise Is A Self Portrait: Healing Through Fic - A discussion of reading and writing fic as a method of obtaining support for self-discovery, personal growth and recovery. Helpful tips for writers having difficulty addressing important, yet uncomfortable, issues in their own work (homophobia, abuse, addiction).

-Fanfiction Panel - All ages discussion of fan works.

-Freaks in Love: Thank You, May I Have Another? - A discussion of bdsm, consensual kink, power dynamics, and the challenges of writing a scene. 18 and up (ID Required).

-How to Scrub Your Fanfiction - Are you interested in publishing your fan fiction as an original work? Panelists will give tips on how to rework a story to make it viable for publication.

-Insecurity, Imposter Syndrome and other Creative Pitfalls - Back by popular demand. Being a fanfiction writer or artist is hard. You put your stuff out there and hope for the best. But there's often that feeling of not measuring up, that your stuff isn't good enough, that nobody really cares. It's important to talk about this, because it's normal, and it's okay. Everyone starts from somewhere, and someone does want to read or look at your stuff.

-OCs Encouraged - How To Go From Writing Fanfic to Creating Your Own Novels -Authors give insight into moving into the publishing world.

-PWP Fic - We all know that adult themes abound in fanfiction but why do we interact with this specific type of media differently than things that would traditionally be deemed pornographic. 18 and up (ID Required).

-World Building for Writers - Creating in depth universes to play hosts to your characters. What are some pitfalls we have all faced and how do we get around them?

 Other Fun Panels You Should Check Out!

-221B Baking Street - Join us for a scrumptious panel on how Sherlock has inspired marshmallows, tea blending, and other foods.

-Anachronistic History - Research is always important in period pieces but modern storytelling and sci fi have made it possible to alter the rules of time. A look at out of place technologies in different historical eras.

-Communicating in a Meme Culture - A discussion of how millennial and Gen Z members use a collective and fast changing meme culture to communicate.

-Creativity and Neurodiversity - How does one take care of themselves while also creating, and how can one use the gifts that an unusual mind can give.

-Designing and Building an Original Costume - What do you do when you love Steampunk AND Disney, or Moulin Rouge AND Star Wars, or historical fashion AND superheroes? What if you have a great LARP character who needs a definitive “look?” Maybe you want to cosplay a non-human character, or an object! We've got you covered.

-Drug Use in the Victorian Era - It was a crazy time when opiates were readily available and women used cocaine for headaches. A discussion of drugs during the reign of Victoria. Spoiler alert: A 7% solution would have killed you.

-Edgar Allan Poe - As we observed the 170th anniversary of Poe’s death, let’s look back on his work and his contributions to detective fiction.

-Fandom Un-raveled: We’re Crafty – A look at online communities for Sherlock fans and fiber arts: knitting, crocheting, spinning and weaving.

-How to Make Podfics and Audiobooks - A How To guide for those starting out.

-Tattoos and Sherlock Holmes - A group discussion of Sherlock Holmes related tattoos and what they mean to you. Do you have a fandom tattoo? Come share your story.

-Teaching and Fandom - Many of us in fandom are teachers or Librarians, and no matter what subject we teach, fandom has influenced our teaching practice in many ways. In this panel, a group of educators will share ideas and talk about how participating in fandom has made us better teachers.

 AND there’s of course all of the many Sherlock Holmes panels too! All Sherlock Holmes welcome from the original canon to the Great Mouse Detective, House, Psyche, and all the actors too! Check it out at 221bcon.com

[bevioletskies]

you make my dreams

characters: peter/gamora, guardians-centric

summary: peter and gamora attempt to figure out the nuances of personal space on a cramped ship, now that they’re a couple. first things first? sleeping arrangements, and what to do about those reocurring nightmares of each other’s deaths. how fun.

word count: 15.6k

a/n: if you haven’t read the main fic, all you need to know is: a) the guardians attend a superhero school on earth, b) therefore they are in their early-to-mid 20s (except for rocket and groot), c) peter and gamora were fake-dating but are now dating for real, and d) they've been playing an "endless" game of twenty questions since they started fake-dating as a way of getting to know each other.

warning for the nightmare sequences that peter and gamora have. they're relatively angsty and sort of creepy, so if you want to avoid them, they're the paragraphs in full italics, and there's a summary of them in the endnotes.

fic title is from the song you make my dreams by daryl hall & john oates.

ao3 | tag | masterpost

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Gamora began as she strolled up the loading ramp of the Milano. It was a somewhat overcast Saturday afternoon, the school year was beginning again (which meant very little at the academy, being year-round regardless), and there was a sense of anticipation for new beginnings in the air.

“That’s good to hear,” Peter mumbled from where he was face-planted into the couch, limbs dangling over the edge. He had his ass kicked in fight training just a little over an hour ago, and had no intention of moving, no matter how bad the cushions smelled.

She frowned, dropping her bookbag with a loud thump right by his head, folding her arms over her chest. “Peter, we’ve only been dating for one week. Don’t let that be our record.”

He scrambled up into a sitting position like someone had lit him - or at the very least, the couch - on fire. “Right. Yes. Go on. Did I mention how nice your hair looks today, because wow - ”

Gamora let out a slow exhale of complete and utter exhaustion. They were all of sixty seconds into the conversation and she was already tempted to give up. “I’ve been thinking,” she huffed, “that we need to start talking about how to share space on the ship. We’ve never really talked about it before, and now that we’re romantically involved, it kind of...complicates things.”

“Complicates things?” Peter was confused. “I thought it would make things easier. Y’know, since we’ve been sharing a bed since before we started dating.”

She took a few steps back so she could sit across from him in the armchair, neatly folding one leg over the other, her face set in defiance. “Right. But doesn’t the change in our relationship heighten our emotional volatility? Do you really think we’re never going to fight again? Never going to want to sleep separately at any point in time?”

“We’ve got the dorms,” he protested.

“Only if we’re grounded. But what if we go on a mission, and we argue, and we have no desire to be in each other’s presence? Then what? Someone has to sleep on the couch?” He winced. The cushions really did smell kind of more than, well, absolutely terrible. He was eighty percent certain that Rocket had been experimenting with toxins in here. It would, at the very least, explain the suspicious oil stains. “And what if the fight lasts for more than a few days, or what if we break up?”

Peter deflated near instantly, hurt. “One week, and you’re already thinking about breaking up?”

Gamora reached to squeeze his hands reassuringly, her gaze softening. “Peter, I’m just trying to be practical. As much as I’d like to move into your room permanently, it’s not a good idea. There could be all sorts of complications in moving our relationship forward too quickly, and think of how it would affect the rest of the team if we spent too much time in each other’s company. It would give us more opportunities to clash. We wouldn’t be very good influences on Groot if he saw us fighting more than usual, and going back and forth between sharing a room and sleeping out here in the common area. We need to get used to being separate when we’re together.” Noting the storm beginning to form in Peter’s cloud-colored eyes, she leaned forward to rest her forehead against his. “And I’m not saying we’re anywhere near breaking up. The complete opposite, in fact.”

“I agree,” he murmured, pecking her briefly on the lips, pleased to feel her smiling into the kiss. “But what’re you suggesting?”

Still grinning, she pulled away. “A trial run. For this week, at least. Friday and Saturday, we share a bed. It’s the weekend, nothing stress-inducing should be happening - in theory. The rest of the week, we sleep separately, whether we’re here or back at the dorms.”

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try,” Peter allowed, gently tugging Gamora by the hand so she would join him on the couch. He slung an arm over the back of her shoulders, pulling her into him. She automatically moved to rest her hands on his chest, smiling up at him encouragingly. “So...that means we’re sharing tonight, right?”

“Did you have other plans?” she teased.

He lowered his head so his mouth was by her ear. “Plans for you, maybe,” he whispered. She shivered a little at the implications, leaning in to kiss him again, when -

“Can you two stop mackin’ for a second, and one of you get up here? Twig’s got himself tangled in the wires again,” Yondu called from the cockpit. Peter let out an annoyed groan, pressing a quick kiss into the crook of her jaw before standing up.

“My turn, I guess,” he grumbled. “It’s like we can’t go five minutes without being interrupted.”

______

Dinner, as always, was anything but peaceful, especially with the entire team sitting down together. Drax was convinced Groot had stolen one of his favorite knives, Rocket was out of bullet casings for at least three of his guns and wouldn’t stop bringing it up every two minutes, Yondu had somehow failed his very first quiz of the semester despite it being a “getting-to-know-you” icebreaker, and Nebula had found out about Mantis having a crush on a mysterious someone, and was, oddly enough, teasing her about it.

“And you can’t figure out if she feels the same way? Some empath you are,” Nebula snarked.

“Who even told you?” Mantis whined, burying her face in her hands.

“Leave her alone, Nebula,” Gamora sighed. “Drax, Groot had nothing to do with your stolen knife, I found it under the couch where you dropped it after our last sparring practice. Rocket, I don’t know how you managed to run out of bullet casings since we haven’t had a mission in two months, but you can make the trip to SHIELD quarters yourself. Yondu, I...have no words. You couldn’t even answer what your favorite color was?”

“Who has a favorite color?” Yondu exclaimed. “Is that a thing Terrans think about in their spare time? Seems like a waste of time t’ me.”

“Peter’s favorite color is red,” Gamora retorted easily. Peter smiled privately to himself, pleased that she had remembered.

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out,” Rocket snorted. “Just ‘cause you’re dating Quill now, don’t mean you’re the leading expert.”

“Anyways,” Gamora said a little louder than necessary. “If we can move past all of our petty problems, the Director has informed me that we’ve been taken off the mission roster until the month is through, aside from galaxy-wide emergencies. Apparently, Janet has been putting in a little toomuch effort into planning more school events since prom was so successful, so she has something called homecoming week starting soon. She doesn’t want anyone to go out of town unless it’s urgent. We should be financially covered though, since we came into quite a bit of money from the yearbook contest.”

“Yeah, and you won’t let nobody actually see it,” Yondu complained, tossing his fork down onto his plate with a loud clatter. “Where you hidin’ the money, Gamora?”

“I would speculate it is under Quill’s mattress,” Drax said thoughtfully.

“Why’s that?” Rocket asked, cocking his head in confusion.

“Because no one wants to go near Quill’s room, now that he and Gamora are...copulating,” Nebula smirked, leaning back in her chair triumphantly. “Who knows when he last washed those sheets?”

“I am Groot?”

“I am not telling you what she meant, Groot. Trust me, you don’t need the mental images I got going on right now.”

Peter turned to Gamora, a deadened expression in his usually mischievous eyes. “I have never wanted to bash my head into the wall as much as I do in this exact moment.” She only shot him a warning glare in return.

“No one’s getting their hands on the money,” she said as calmly as she could, though mentally she was writing a list of what order to punish the others in, and how exactly to do it. “We have to be responsible. It’s a lot of money, more than we’ve ever had at a time, but it’s not endless. We can’t afford to be frivolous.”

“You’re no fun, girl, you know that?” Yondu drawled.

“Hey, come on, she’s right,” Peter interjected defensively. “The money can go a long way if we spend it right. Long-term investments, you know?”

“Someone’s been paying attention in econ,” Nebula muttered.

“Thank you, Peter,” Gamora exhaled, relieved. It was comforting to know Peter was becoming more financially responsible, especially after the incident from when they had first arrived on Terra. (He may or may not have gotten too excited at discovering the advances in Nerf Blaster technology since he’d left Earth, and invested in about five too many toy guns. Gamora had to hide them in her dorm’s private bathroom cabinet, behind her tampons. To this day, she still couldn’t understand why boys were so afraid of feminine hygiene products.)

“But if I had to make one request…” he began. She immediately slapped a hand over his mouth.

“No,” she said firmly. “No toys.”

Sullen, Peter gently pushed her hand away and turned to Nebula. “And another thing,” he continued. “I mean, copulating? First of all, who even uses that word anymore, and secondly, we’ve been pretty polite about it since you guys also sleep on this ship - we’ve been sticking to the dorms. Mostly. Sometimes, the mood just hits.”

“Peter, I will do more than ‘just hit’ if you don’t stop talking right now,” Gamora hissed.

“I am Groot?”

“Seriously, I’m not explaining, so stop asking.”

“Oh, for the love of everything!” Gamora groaned, slumping forward onto the table.

“I am scared to find out if she feels the same way because I cannot handle that kind of stress!” Mantis wailed very suddenly, causing Nebula to jump. “I would not know what to do with myself if she does not, or worse, if she does!”

Drax reached across the table to pat her on the hand, a little awkwardly, but otherwise quite gentle, a stark contrast to his usually brutish way of showing affection. “I hope she finds you as disgusting, yet endearing, as I do,” he said sincerely.

It took another minute before Gamora recovered her composure and joined the conversation again. Honestly, they couldn’t even get through a single meal without it turning into dinner and a show.

______

After tucking Groot into bed (and reading him Goodnight Moon for the third time that week), Peter returned to his room to find Gamora lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wide awake. “Hey, you alright?”

“Of all the things I have been through, I don’t think I’ve ever been as exhausted as I am when I’m with the team,” she said slowly, causing Peter to chuckle. “And don’t think you’re off the hook just because you’re my boyfriend.”

He smiled goofily at her as he climbed into bed, immediately snuggling into her side. “I love it when you say that. Uh, the boyfriend part, not the other - you know what I mean.” He slid his arms around her waist, squeezing her hips affectionately. “I’m gonna miss being able to hold you like this every night.”

“It’s only an experiment for this week,” she relented, turning onto her side to face him, her gaze softening as their eyes met. “I just think we need to consider establishing boundaries before it complicates the team dynamic, so sleeping separately is a good start. And I worry about what might happen the next time we go on a mission, how much will change now that we have an added layer to our own relationship. Can we be objective anymore?”

“Um, I’m never objective,” Peter said, looking oddly proud of that very fact. “I care about all of you, and maybe this is selfish of me, but other than you know, me, I tend to put you first regardless. Well, depending on how Mantis or Groot are doing.”

“And that’s my point,” Gamora said softly, cupping his jaw, though she couldn’t help but smile at how easy it was for him to admit that he was looking out for her the most. She wasn’t sure how to vocalize the same sentiment in return, though he probably already knew she felt the same way. “Maybe we’re already too codependent to begin with. We need to not rely on each other to the point of being unable to function alone, you know?”

“I get it.” He bent to kiss her on the nose, causing her to scrunch up her face so adorably that Peter’s heart melted a little. He maintained she was both one of the deadliest and one of the cutest women in the entire galaxy, her reputation be damned. “I don’t want to be like that either. But I also don’t think that sharing a bed is what’s gonna make it or break it. There’s other stuff that are signs of dangerous codependency, like…” She interrupted him with a sudden yawn, stretching, letting out a soft mewl like a kitten. Peter was pretty sure he was a puddle at this point - he really did love her to no end. “...maybe we can talk about this when you aren’t exhausted,” he chuckled.

“Sorry,” she laughed. “I promise that wasn’t in response to what you were saying. But yes, we can talk about that another time. And I’ll concede by the end of the week if you’re right.” She pecked him quickly on the lips. “Goodnight, Peter.”

He couldn’t resist chasing after her mouth for one last kiss, enjoying the feel of her arms around his neck, pulling him in close. “Night, honey.”

______

Sunday passed by in a rather lazy fashion - the start of a new semester was always relatively slow - with the Guardians dispersed across campus, going about their day. Rocket took Groot with him to SHIELD so he could pick up his bullet casings, Drax went to the gym to get in some combat practice with Thor, Yondu holed himself up in the Milano’s cockpit so he could chat with Kraglin, and Mantis found herself being dragged around by Nebula who was strangely insistent on seeing who it was she liked.

Gamora managed to get Peter to go to the library so they could get a headstart on their homework, promising she would make out with him for five minutes on one of the plush leather couches in the secluded study area if he finished. (“Can I make a case for ten?” “No, Peter.”)

She could feel eyes on them as she sat closer than usual, laying her head on his shoulder after she had been long done, while Peter was still struggling through his abstract on psychological warfare. For some reason, she felt more self-conscious now than she had been when they were fake-dating and playing up their physical affection, despite the new emotional security in knowing that they really did love each other. Janet had slowed on her insistence of Snapchatting whenever they held hands in public, and Kamala no longer shrieked every single time she saw them kiss, but it was still unnerving to be watched, and to be known as the so-called cutest couple in school.

Peter’s voice broke her out of her reverie. “Hey, you wanna go grab an early dinner?”

Gamora glanced down at his laptop screen to see his word count was only half of what he needed. “But you haven’t finished.”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “Yeah, but you’re clearly uncomfortable. It’s the staring, right?”

She nodded, biting her lip in worry. “It’s like the beginning of our ‘relationship’ all over again,” she muttered, downcast. Then, a bit louder, “I could go for some food. But you better not hand in that abstract late, or Madame Hydra will kill you. And with her, anything’s a possibility.”

After a much more pleasant dinner than the previous night’s, on account of being completely alone, the two of them stretched out in a leisurely manner on the lawn by the quad, watching other students pass by every now and then, breathing in the crisp air of early autumn. Already, Gamora felt much more at ease, though there was a knot forming in the pit of her stomach at knowing she and Peter would have to separate by the end of the night. And maybe that was a sign, the kind she’d been dreading - that she already spent too much time with him, had become too reliant on his presence.

“Question number I-don’t-know-what-we’re-on,” Peter said, grabbing another fry from Gamora’s take-out container and getting a playful punch in the shoulder for his efforts. “If you had to pick one person on campus to be Nebula’s significant other, who would you pick?”

Gamora laughed. “Oh, that’s awful. I’m not sure, maybe Barnes? They both have metal appendages and long, regretful histories of assassination. That sounds like a match made in Hel.” She smacked Peter’s hand away before he could steal more of her food. “By the way, do you have any idea who Mantis has a crush on? I was unaware she was even spending time with anyone but us.”

“My baby sister’s growing up,” he sniffled dramatically, putting a hand over his heart. Gamora gave him a look that he was pretty sure translated to “you are ridiculous, please stop”. “No, I haven’t gotten any hints or anything. I wanna help her, though. I want her to be as happy as I am with you.”

“Your overly sappy nature is incorrigible,” she said fondly, moving a little closer so their shoulders were brushing. She laid a hand over his, fingers splayed across his chest, delighted to feel his heartbeat speed up a little at her gesture. “But you will hear no complaints from me.”

“Now can we make out?” Peter asked hopefully.

Gamora rolled her eyes, leaning in closer. “Find us somewhere quieter, and I’ll acquiesce.”

Apparently, the spot Peter had found them wasn’t quite secluded enough, as thirty minutes later, they were shooed off by Pepper, who gave them a stern talking-to about public displays of affection, but then admitted she was glad they had won Cutest Couple (“I’d never hear the end of it from Tony if Steve and Peggy won, trust me.”). They walked back to the dorms, feeling light as air, with Peter in particular letting out hysterical little giggles at recalling the murderous expression on Pepper’s face.

It was a little sobering, however, when they stopped outside her room, fingers loosely tangled together, as he slowly pressed her against the door, kissing her languidly, wishing he didn’t have to let go. “Peter,” Gamora said in that half-stern, half-affectionate manner she usually reserved for him and him alone. “You can’t come inside tonight.”

“There’s a dirty joke in there somewhere,” he mumbled, reluctantly pulling away.

“Remember how I vaguely threatened to break up with you yesterday? I’m getting that urge again,” she deadpanned, patting his chest. “You’re meeting me at the gym tomorrow, right?”

He sighed, apologetic. “I can’t, I have to meet Cindy at the café after class. We have a presentation on Friday.”

“Cindy Moon? What’s the presentation on?”

“Whether superhero origin stories have a positive or negative effect on the psychological health of said superhero. It’s actually a debate - I’m for positive, she’s for negative. Obviously.” He smiled teasingly at her. “Why do you wanna know if it’s Cindy Moon specifically?”

“Your insistence on turning my curiosity into jealousy is exhausting,” she frowned. “Anyways, I guess we won’t be seeing each other after all. I’m having dinner with Natasha and Elektra after sparring practice, so I won’t be going to the Milano tomorrow.”

“Aww.” He pulled her in for one last embrace. “Then I’ll text you after class?”

Gamora took a few steps into her room before turning to cast him a glance over her shoulder. “If you text me and leave poor Cindy to do all the work, I’ll just text her and have her yell at you on my behalf.”

“You have Cindy’s number?” Peter asked incredulously, but she simply gave him one last smile and shut the door in his face.

______

“Peter. Peter. Peter. Hey!”

“I didn’t do it!” He practically flew out of his seat upon being prodded in the arm with a pencil eraser. He looked around wildly before his eyes landed on Cindy, who didn’t look particularly impressed.

“Didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, did you?” She handed him a Starkbucks napkin (how Stark hadn’t been sued by Starbucks yet was beyond Peter) so he could wipe the drool off his sleeve.

“Your spidey sense tell you that?” he snapped a little louder than he meant to, though he accepted the napkin regardless.

“Wow, okay. You don’t get to talk to me like that,” Cindy retorted, narrowing her eyes at him.

Peter held up his hands in surrender before running them through his hair, sheepish. “Shit. Sorry, Cindy, that was mean of me. You’re right, I didn’t sleep well. Uh, me and Gamora, we’re trying this thing where we sleep separately, but I guess I’m not really used to it yet.”

She chewed thoughtfully on her pencil, confused. “What for?”

“She thinks we’ve been spending too much time together and wants to establish some boundaries before we get too codependent,” he said, glancing down at his laptop screen. Apparently, he’d nodded off on his keyboard and had typed about a hundred rows of zeroes in the process. Whoops.

“And she thinks sleeping in separate beds is gonna change that? Interesting,” Cindy hummed.

It was Peter’s turn to look at her suspiciously. “What?”

“Nothing, I just…” He waved a hand, indicating he wanted her to continue. “...maybe in another life, where you and her, or really any of us, aren’t the people that we are, it might be kind of weird to be around each other all the time. Like, there’s stories about people who get weirdly obsessed with their SOs and stop talking to their friends and family because they’re too busy being with them. But it’s not another life, it’s this one, where we’re so-called heroes, with varying degrees of messed-up backstories. And honestly, where else are you going to find someone who can love and understand you the way that she can? And I’m not trying to be nasty when I say that, Peter, but I’m saying it’s hard for us to be with someone who doesn’t get it. There’s a reason you feel everything so deeply about her, even moreso because you run a team together. I think it’s natural, and it’s not unhealthy, which I’m guessing is what she’s really worried about."

“So...you’re saying it’s justified,” he said slowly. They fell silent for a moment as he mulled it over - admittedly, there was a lot of truth in Cindy’s statement. Before becoming a Guardian, he had found it so easy to be around others that were nothing like him. Now, he was finding it harder and harder to have conversations with people that didn’t also spend their time saving the world. “Wait, are you just trying to get me to see your side of the argument so I’ll lose the debate?”

“Damn, you saw right through me,” she said sarcastically, snapping her fingers in defeat. He stared at her for a second before they both dissolved into laughter. Still, maybe Cindy was onto something.

______

Peter: hey, how was dinner with nat and elektra?

Gamora: good, we actually had some pleasant conversation for once instead of elektra telling us about her latest outing with ‘matthew’. also, no one stole my food this time

Gamora: you get lots done with cindy?

Peter: it’s not stealing, it’s sharing :p

Peter: yeah, we’re basically ready to go but we’re gonna do a runthrough during lunch on friday

Peter: k honestly i’m super tired right now but i just wanted to check to see how you were doing

Peter: so i’m gonna head to bed now and i’ll see you in class tomorrow

Peter: goodnight - love you :)

Gamora: goodnight, love you too

She plugged her phone into its charger and set it on her side table, rolling onto her back to fixate on the ceiling. It was still somewhat foreign to her to see and hear Peter declare his love for her so easily, like it was as natural as breathing, but she tried her best to return the sentiment whenever he did. She did love him, of course, and he knew that she did, but being the first to say it, however, was a different story.

The first week of their relationship hadn’t been the smoothest - after all, they had gotten pretty angry at each other only a couple days ago, when Peter didn’t want to go on a mission for the sake of keeping the team safe - but it surprised her how easy it was to be with him. Maybe it was because they had been faking a relationship for three months beforehand, or maybe it was the fact that it changed very little about their existing relationship.

Either way, Gamora still couldn’t help but worry that they were already too attached at the hip. She had no basis for what relationships were like, aside from those she witnessed on campus, and that of her mother and father (the little she could remember of them, anyway), but she wanted to be sure they were on a healthy road and not a downward spiral. There was no harm in being cautious, after all.

She settled down into her pillow, burying her nose into it and realizing it still smelled a bit like Peter’s shampoo. They had slept here a few nights ago when she had gotten a little desperate (she may have unbuckled his pants in the hallway, it wasn’t her proudest moment). Smiling to herself, she slowly drifted off to sleep.

Gamora was running - no, sprinting - through a thicket of tall grass, if she could call it that. It was nearly twice her height and incredibly dense, scratching her face and hands, but she didn’t care, couldn’t afford to pause, not when she could hear the desperate cries of poor Groot in the distance.

Still, it seemed like the grass was endless, dizzying to the point of causing hysteria. She stopped to rest, hunching over to support her hands on her knees, panting, nearly gasping for air, the atmosphere becoming thicker by the second. She had only been running for a minute, how could she possibly be tired already? Was there some poison making its way through her veins? An airborne virus, perhaps?

Another moment passed before she realized everything had gone silent. Not silent in the way a classroom fell quiet after a teacher hushed their students, but like her ears had been clamped over by an airtight seal, not a single whistle of wind or hum of a fly to be heard. Or, more importantly, the whimpers of an injured child, desperate for help. Gamora twisted around, nearly tripping over her own feet in desperation, longing to hear something, anything again, when she found her surroundings being whisked away like some twisted house of mirrors gone mad, replaced with something familiar, and yet all the more eerie.

She now stood in the quad of the academy, but the campus was empty as far as the eye could see. There was no rambunctious laughter, no loud conversations, no students whizzing by with their super speed or magic powers or whatever it was that made them so quick on their feet. It was clean, too - sterile, almost. No chewed gum stuck to the pavement, no buildup of food wrappers in the garbage cans. It also smelled too fresh, like someone had taken a can of pine-scented aerosol and doused the entire area with it in an attempt to hide something.

Gamora was almost mesmerized by the whole ordeal, entranced, even, when she heard a wheezing noise from behind her. Whipping around immediately, she was horrified to find herself looking at Peter, tied to the bulletin board, head lolling about like he no longer had any control of his neck, and judging by how the rest of him had gone limp, had no control over his motor functions, period. He was devoid of any visible injuries - bruises, cuts, scrapes, not even a drop of blood, but there was a blankness in his eyes that made her heart stop.

She was by his side in an instant, hands grasping at the ropes that bound him there, trying to find a knot or an end to pull him free. “Who did this to you?” she said frantically, tugging with every last bit of strength she had. It seemed like a very simple rope - the kind they used on Terra to teach young children how to tie knots - so she would usually be able to snap it like it was nothing, but it had no give at all, no slack anywhere for her to slip her fingers into.

"Th...Th…” His voice was frail, lacking the energy she’d come to expect of him, but she didn’t need him to complete his sentence to know who he was talking about.

“He’s here?” She tried her best to choke back the bile rising in her throat, burning hot. “Why is there no end on this rope?!”

“G...G’mora,” Peter panted, his fingers grasping at her but not quite finding their hold. “I...I love you.”

With a final raspy breath, hollow, echoing about in his chest, his chin dropped downwards, every last bit of posture he’d been struggling to keep going slack. “No,” she breathed, her hands moving to grab his jaw. “No, Peter...no...you can’t be...no…”

“NO!” Gamora shrieked, bolting upright. Gasping, she clutched at her own chest, thrashing about, legs tangling in her duvet as she tried to get her bearings. You’re in your dorm room, she told herself sternly, once the pounding sensation in her throat had ebbed. Even the voice in her mind seemed to be shaking. Her eyes flickered over to her phone. You fell asleep, it’s midnight, Peter went to bed two hours ago on the Milano. He’s okay. You’re okay.

Am I okay? Gamora wondered, shoving her bedsheets aside. Despite the cold sweat beginning to form on her brow bone, the rest of her was burning up like a furnace. She stripped off her hoodie and sweatpants - it seemed like a good idea at the time since it had been quite chilly outside when she returned to her room, but now it felt like she was drowning in excess fabric.

After turning on her bedroom light, she tentatively made her way over to her closet. She was hedging on whether to just sleep in her underwear when she found one of Peter’s T-shirts on the floor by her bookbag. She deliberated for all of ten seconds before picking it up and pulling it over her head, staring contemplatively into the mirror. She could practically hear Peter’s voice as he explained its significance to her (“Oh man, I should really show you Flash Gordon sometime, it’s incredible”), cracking a small smile as she did. “Screw attachments,” she said to herself, making eye contact in the mirror. “It’s just one night.” Her breath finally evening out, she climbed back into bed and settled back under the covers, managing to close her eyes once again.

______

Peter strolled into Professor Pym’s lab, whistling idly to himself as he settled down on one of the benches, when he felt fingertips grazing his bicep. Flinching slightly, he turned towards the perpetrator and relaxed instantly when he saw it was Gamora. “Hey you,” he said cheerfully. “You’re wearing my shirt.”

Gamora had indeed worn the shirt she slept in over her usual leather pants. “Do you want it back?” she asked as she sat next to him.

“I told you, I like it when you wear my clothes. Just don’t take literally everything I own,” he chuckled.

She nodded absentmindedly as she began unpacking her bookbag, laying everything out on her desk. “I think I’ll be sleeping on the Milano tonight,” she said as nonchalantly as she could. She hoped Peter wouldn’t notice the slight tremor in her voice, though he was usually pretty observant when it came to her. “My dorm room was oddly cold last night.”

“Did you check with your RA? The thermostat could be broken. Or maybe the boiler,” he suggested.

“That was the first thing I did,” she lied, neatly lining up her pens alongside her notebook. “They might need to bring in maintenance and see if there’s a draft anywhere. Regardless, I’m not taking my chances on freezing in my sleep.”

“Well, it’ll be good to have you back. Groot missed you at dinner last night. So did I, obviously.” Gamora bit her lip to hide a smile, though Peter’s shy grin in return only strengthened her fondness for him. She leaned over to quickly kiss his shoulder, just as Professor Pym strolled to the front of the room.

“Alright, students, there was a little mishap in the computer lab last night, and I don’t want to point any fingers, but there’s one student with a hankering - hankering - for arson and skulls, am I right, Mister Reyes…?”

After classes were over, Gamora convinced Peter to go to the gym with her before heading to the Milano for the rest of the evening. There was something peacefully domestic about being on the treadmills together despite not having any conversation, Peter with his headphones on as always, bopping his head enthusiastically and nearly falling off twice, while Gamora was listening to a TED Talk on her phone (Natasha had gotten her hooked, and it was her alternate way of learning about Terran knowledge and culture outside of Peter’s admittedly narrow influence). It almost made her forget about the sudden terror she had experienced last night.

“So, what’d you get up to after I went to bed?” Peter asked as they moved over to the weight benches. It was like he read her mind.

“Going after the paperwork from past jobs that you haven’t filed away yet,” she replied. It felt like every lie she told was making her tongue feel heavier in her mouth, She hated keeping things from him, but she wasn’t ready to admit defeat just yet, and she knew the moment she vocalized that something was wrong, Peter would start to fuss. “I didn’t realize the Director would require so much documentation.”

“I think that’s more Pepper’s doing than Fury’s,” he laughed, sitting on the floor in front of her. “I’ll spot you. Ready?”

To their relief, when they returned to the ship, the only ones on board were Rocket and Groot, the latter being a little sad, now that he was starting to shed leaves instead of grow them. The four of them had a surprisingly pleasant dinner, with minimal teasing from Rocket when Peter kissed Gamora in the kitchen. “You two are ridiculous,” Rocket said, waving a fork at them, though he didn’t look as put off by their romantic display as his tone would suggest. Groot was staring up at them with wide, puppy-like eyes from the kitchen counter, his mood instantly brightened at the sight.

Once the meal was over, Rocket went to put Groot to bed, and then was off to spend his night working on some weapons he didn’t want the others to know about that were stashed away in his room. Peter, on the other hand, requested Gamora spoon him on the couch while they watched a couple episodes of Happy Days on his holo-tab.

“You look tired,” she commented quietly, reaching around his back to gently pat his face. “I thought you went to bed early.”

“I did,” he protested, turning around to look at her. “One good night’s sleep isn’t gonna suddenly make me more awake.”

“Alright, I’ll concede,” she chuckled. “How was your day?”

“Good, good,” he nodded, resting their heads together, his eyes twinkling with warmth. “I had lunch with Mantis, I’m no closer to cracking the case on her crush. But asking questions makes her uncomfortable, so I’m not gonna be an ass about it. I also stopped by Avengers Hall to check out the announcements since Janet said something about peer tutoring. Figured I could use all the credentials I can get, you know? I didn’t sign up for anything yet, but I got a pamphlet if you wanna check it out. Oh, and…”

Eventually, she laid her head on his shoulder as he continued to talk, the even lilt of Peter’s voice rumbling through his body and keeping her heartbeat steady. She inhaled slowly, taking in the smell of his sweater. In all honesty, she had hated it the moment he had first put it on, having bought it last autumn - it was the sort of open-weave knit that snagged on hooks and corners, and made everything it came into contact with quite itchy, such as her own skin - but now, it just felt like home.

Gamora didn’t realize she had nodded off until Peter was shaking her shoulder, having set the tablet aside and was now supporting the entirety of her body weight, one hand on the small of her back, the other running through her hair. “Speaking of tired,” he chuckled. “Bedtime?”

“You’re quite comfortable,” she replied, yawning as she got off the couch. “I’ll see you in polisci tomorrow?” He nodded, patting her on the hip and kissing her goodnight before letting her go. Peter made a few last paces around the Milano, checking the doors and appliances, before heading back to his room.

He let out a somewhat disappointed exhale at the sight of his empty bed. Of course, he knew not to expect Gamora to be there, but he was half-hoping in her drowsy state, she would have returned to his room like she had been doing for weeks, acting on pure instinct. He turned off the light and climbed into his bunk, hating the way it felt to spread his limbs outwards and never brush against another person, to hear only the sound of his own breathing, the sheets cool to the touch at the presence of only one body.

Peter turned over onto his side, realizing he was occupying half of the mattress in the way he had become so used to, and promptly planted his face into the pillow, where he could smell the faint scent of Gamora’s shampoo. That, at the very least, gave him some comfort, allowing his muscles to relax as his eyes slid closed.

It was warm, the sort of warm that one only felt on a beach in the tropics. It made everything a little hazy, the air rippling with the lack of humidity, making one’s limbs feel oddly light, like it would be easy to lay flat on one’s back and float away into nothingness. Peter opened his eyes to find Gamora sitting cross-legged beside him, leaning over his prone form. “Hey.” He was disturbed to find that his voice sounded disembodied, as if he weren’t physically present. One glance down at his own hands relieved him of his fear, though they were a little cleaner than he remembered. Peter wasn’t a slob by any means, but he often had blisters from the way he gripped his dual blasters, and he had scraped knuckles after his latest combat training session. These hands - his hands? - were free of flaws.

“Good, you’re awake.” Her voice was sharper than his, blunt as the edge of her sword. It reminded him of the way she spoke to him when they first met - irritable, no-nonsense, condescending, almost. “We need to talk.”

“Uh, sure. What about?” He sat up, looking around. They appeared to be in some sort of sterile white room, the kind that made him think of evil lairs in futuristic movies, where they did unethical experiments on animals and humans. Shivering, he turned back to look at Gamora, noting the lifelessness in her expression. She had been so warm as of late, with her teasing grins and gentle smiles, that the utter blankness of her face made him feel colder than the room ever could.

“About breaking up.” She wasn’t meeting his eyes, instead electing to pull out her phone and start scrolling through...something.

“I - what? I thought you said we weren’t anywhere near - ”

“Your persistence may have won me over, but now I’m realizing how wrong you are for me,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Remember when you asked me what I looked for in a partner? Discipline, intelligence, level-headedness. You may have fooled me into seeing those qualities in you with your thoroughly detailed plans to pursue Thanos, but now I realize you’re still the immature, self-absorbed, impulsive child that you were when we first met. Not to mention your surprising lack of confidence in your own abilities, and your reliance on me to make yourself feel good about the decisions you’ve made. I’m supposed to be your girlfriend, and yet, you treat me like both your child and your parent. I’m not your pet project, and I’m not your mother, either. Your attempts to both take care of me and get me to take care of you are tired, your constant pursuit of physical intimacy with me is unwelcomed, and your crude sense of humor offends me. Therefore, I wish to be in this relationship no longer.”

It was like she had taken the Godslayer and pierced it straight through his heart. Frankly, Peter wished she had done that instead. “Gamora,” he choked. “You said I was different than how I was before - I’ve been trying so hard to be more responsible, for all of you - so I can take care of the team and be a good leader - but I know I failed you - please - “ He could feel his face growing hot, tears brewing in his eyes, his fingers trembling as he reached for her.

She got to her feet, looking away from her phone briefly so she could glance down at him like he was a particularly uninteresting bug she’d squashed beneath her shoe. Without another word, she turned and began walking away. He moved as if to stand as well, but found that he could not - his feet were now glued to the floor. Crying out desperately, he began tugging at his ankles, wondering why he was without shoes, and where they were, and what had happened, and what to do - when suddenly, something dropped out of the ceiling in front of Gamora, causing her to leap backward in shock.

It was Awesome Mix 2, the cassette tape that Ego had broken before Peter’s very eyes.

Brandy, you're a fine girl...what a good wife you would be...but my life, my lover, my lady is the sea…

“Gamora!” he yelled. He changed his strategy instantly, beginning to claw at the floor in a futile attempt to drag himself towards her. He could feel his fingernails breaking from sheer force, the pads of his fingertips starting to bleed. Peter froze when Ego suddenly appeared in a cloud of nothingness, crushing the tape under his foot into dust. “GAMORA!”

“Remember, Peter,” Ego said, his voice just as charmingly affable as ever, the sort of kindly voice that had gotten his son to follow him to his planet in the first place. “The girl is temporary.” With one swoop of his arm, he picked up Gamora by the neck and squeezed. Peter could only sob helplessly as she dissolved into ash, crumbling beneath Ego’s fingers.

“You already killed my mother,” he wept, slumping against the floor. “And now...my best friend...the girl that I love more than anything else...why? Why would you do this?”

“You’re letting the human side of you win, Peter,” Ego sing-songed, wagging a mocking finger at him. “We’re Celestials. Everything is temporary. We can’t let emotions get in the way of our one true purpose. If you don’t obey me, I’ll go after ol’ Yondu next. Or maybe Mantis. She did betray me, after all. And for what? Love?”

“You leave them alone,” Peter panted, struggling to prop himself up on his hands. “I don’t wanna be a Celestial, not if it makes me a maniac like you. Small ‘g’ or not, I ain’t playing god.”

“Shame,” Ego said, stroking his beard like he was in deep thought. “I always did like Yondu. Only met him a couple times when he was still with Stakar, but he was a feisty kid.”

“NO! DON’T HURT HIM!” Peter hollered, but Ego disappeared once more in a cloud of smoke.

His eyes flew open in shock, choking violently as he did, despite his mouth being bone dry. Peter began grasping around desperately until he found his Walkman, and with trembling hands, slid the headphones over his ears, hitting play.

And I love you so...the people ask me how...how I've lived till now...I tell them I don't know…

“Shit.” He began running his fingers through his hair, tugging at the strands like they’d offended him somehow. “That’s three nights in a row now.”

And yes I know how lonely life can be...the shadows follow me...and the night won't set me free...but I don't let the evening bring me down...now that you're around me...

______

Despite being more tired than usual, Peter practically sprinted to his morning class like he was going to be late (and he wasn’t, not this time). An unusual sense of relief flooded him upon seeing the telltale red fin, bobbing over the heads of their other classmates.

“Yondu,” he exclaimed, sitting down beside him and nearly tumbling out of the chair in his desperation. “You’re okay.”

Yondu’s eyebrows shot up immediately in suspicion. “Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I had a dream about Ego comin’ after you,” Peter confessed. “It’s stupid, but I was kinda worried I was gonna wake up and find that you were gone.”

“You’re right. That is stupid,” Yondu snorted. “I’m fine, boy, relax. Though you don’t sound so good yourself.”

“I mean, I’ve been better,” Peter said hesitantly. “Ego killed Gamora in the dream. That wasn’t so fun.”

“You two are ridiculous, you know that?” Yondu let out a hearty laugh like he was remembering a particularly funny joke, twirling his yaka arrow in a way that made the students around them look a little nervous.

“So I’ve heard,” Peter mumbled.

“I don’t mean no offense by it, honest. I still remember comin’ after you on Knowhere and gettin’ yelled at by her ‘cause you spent a lot of time talking shit about me. Guess she didn’t understand the...complicated parts of our relationship. But you been mooning after her ever since you met her, and now that you’re actually datin’, you’re still making a big deal outta everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the whole sleeping separately thing,” Yondu said, brandishing the arrow at Peter in a way that even made him jump. “Ain’t gonna make a bit of difference. You’re gonna be crazy about each other no matter what. So stop making yourselves miserable to prove a point. Y’all already did that when you were trying to pretend you weren’t in love, and look how that turned out!”

In lieu of a response, Peter glanced down at his phone. “I should text Mantis,” he mumbled. “Make sure she’s okay, too.”

“Fine. You don’t wanna talk about your girl. What’s this about peer tutoring I’m hearing?” Yondu leaned back in his seat, folding his arms, kicking his feet up onto the desk in a rather precarious manner.

“It’s a new thing they’re trying out,” Peter said as he tapped out a quick “doing the big brother thing and saying good morning” message to Mantis. “Some students have more experience in specific areas than others, so they wanted to do like, group sessions. And Gamora is still trying to get her fight clinic with Nebula off the ground, but she has to get it approved by the Director first.”

“What were you thinkin’ of? Gun-slinging? Weird-ass improvised strategies?”

“Communication and leadership, actually,” Peter replied, smiling a little at Mantis’s reply of “good morning :D”. She was the only other Guardian who used emojis as often as he did. “There’s also a family component to it, and you know, considering Groot’s basically like my kid, I can kind of help with that part, too. But, uh, I dunno if anyone considers me a good leader. They probably want Captain America or someone like him to tutor that class instead.”

His mind wandered back to what Gamora had said to him in the dream, all the harsh barbs she’d thrown his way, like she had taken millions of tiny needles and dug them into every square inch of his skin. It wasn’t like anything she said was new to him - it was all variations of things other people had said about him, or worse, to him - but it was the way she had said it, like she’d been dying to say it for weeks and wanted to get it all out in as little time as possible.

“I didn’t run the Eclector for too long, but I spent enough time with Stakar to know the diff’rence between good and bad leadership,” Yondu said sagely. “Bad leadership’s when people follow you ‘cause they’re afraid of what you’ll do if they don’t. Good leadership’s when people follow you because they know they the best version of themselves when they do. And that’s you in a nutshell, Quill. We’re all good because of you.”

“Weirdly nice of you, but I’ll take it,” Peter chuckled, clapping Yondu on the shoulder. “Thanks, Yondu. I don’t know why you keep ‘dad speech’-ing me but I think it’s actually starting to make me feel better.”

“You can talk yourself into a frenzy real easy,” Yondu shrugged, though he looked pleased. “Someone’s gotta get you outta your funk.”

By the time Peter arrived at his last class of the day, the usual spring in his step had returned, his mind occupied with thoughts of potential lesson plans for peer tutoring instead of the way the nightmare version of Ego (though really, wasn’t every version of him a nightmare?) had taken hold of his brain. He happily kissed Gamora hello, and was relieved to find that she didn’t notice anything different about him. Maybe they wouldn’t have to talk about this - he didn’t want her to get mad, or worse, worry about him unnecessarily.

They returned to the Milano in good spirits, discussing the semester’s curriculum and what their favorite classes had been so far. When they approached the loading bay, they could see Rocket and Groot sitting on the ramp, working on Rocket’s chemistry project together. Well, Groot was watching in rapt fascination. Rocket was trying his best not to swear every five seconds whenever he burnt his claws with the Bunsen burner. “Hey, should you be doing that out here?” Peter called.

“Live a little, Quill,” Rocket smirked, holding up his test tube as if to toast him. “No one ever got shit done by following the rules.”

“Nothing you said just now was true,” Gamora informed him haughtily, though she relaxed as Groot came running to wrap his arms around her ankles in greeting. She knelt to pick him up, bringing him closer to her face. “Hi, Groot. You have a good day today?”

“I am Groot,” he answered happily, nuzzling into her cheek. Smiling, she sat him back down next to Rocket, and she and Peter made their way onto the ship. To their surprise, Mantis was sitting on the couch with Drax and Nebula on either side, looking oddly flushed, her hands twisting in her lap.

“What’s going on?” Peter said, frowning. “Mantis, you okay?”

“We have almost cracked the case of Mantis’s infatuation,” Drax said eagerly. He sounded just as enthused as he did right before engaging in combat. “Would you care to help?”

“Drax,” Gamora said sternly, as Peter groaned behind her, slapping a hand over his forehead. “Leave her alone, both of you. If she wanted to tell you, she would.”

“Such a buzzkill, as always,” Nebula hummed, getting to her feet. “I thought you wanted me to take interest in the other’s lives.” Before she could retreat to her room, Gamora stepped forward to grab her sister’s wrist.

“Not at the expense of their comfort.” Gamora gestured at Mantis, who had curled into herself on the couch, looking just as withdrawn as the day they met her, like she wasn’t entirely all there. “Do your homework together, or help her make dinner, I don’t know. But do not emotionally torture her for your own pleasure.”

“Whatever.” Nebula made to move again, but Gamora only followed her down the corridor, her footsteps getting increasingly heavy.

“Nebula! I’m serious,” Gamora hissed, trapping her against the wall with her arm. “Mantis may seem more well-adjusted than you and I, but she grew up with a grand total of one person in her life, and I don’t need to tell you how screwed up he was. At least we had siblings to socialize with, as much as we despised them. She’s already experiencing new emotions for the first time by having her first crush, you don’t need to complicate it with your insistence on being hateful to everyone who happens to bore you.”

“She doesn’t bore me. Frankly, her romantic drama is far more interesting than yours,” Nebula retorted, rolling her eyes. There was something in the way Nebula had said it that made Gamora a little suspicious, as if...

“You don’t...like Mantis, do you?” Gamora hoped she didn’t look as uncomfortable as she felt asking it.

“Gods, no,” Nebula spat. “I just want her to get this over with already, or she’ll turn into Quill. His mopiness when he was convinced you didn’t like him was insufferable.”

“You want her to be happy,” Gamora translated, a grin beginning to form on her face. “Your persistence is admirable, but the way you’re going about it is not. Just leave her alone, and let her tell you about it when she’s ready, okay?” Nebula only grumbled and shoved her sister aside so she could make her way into her bedroom, though she didn’t slam the door quite as loudly as she usually did.

Still smiling, Gamora made her way back into the common area, only to be practically ambushed by Drax, who looked woefully ashamed of himself. “Gamora, I would like you to know that I have apologized to Mantis. Once again, my blunders have caused great distress to someone I care about, and I wanted to rectify it. It seems I still haven’t mastered the expectations of socialization.”

“You and everybody else in the galaxy,” Peter called from the couch, where he had an arm slung around Mantis. She looked completely at ease now, her sweet (if a little unsettling) smile having returned.

“Peter’s right, Drax, you aren’t expected to be perfect. But I appreciate you apologizing,” Gamora said, patting him on the arm. He smiled at her, nodding silently before moving into the kitchen to begin making dinner.

It was then that Yondu strolled on board, his boots clattering loudly against the metal grates as always, whistling idly, though his arrow remained tucked into his jacket. “Hey, losers,” he said cheerfully. Gamora rolled her eyes as she joined Peter and Mantis on the couch. “Quill, you tell Gamora ‘bout that nightmare of yours yet?”

“I - no, I - Yondu!” Peter exclaimed, agitated.

“Nightmare?” Gamora asked, leaning around Mantis to look at him. “What nightmare?”

“Dude, why’d you have to say that?” Peter groaned. Yondu held up his hands defensively as he threw himself down into the armchair across from them.

“Y’ told me about it, and you tell your girl everything. Figured I could bring it up just fine.”

“That doesn’t mean - ugh.”

“Peter. Your room, now,” Gamora said firmly, getting to her feet once again. Letting out a reluctant whine, he followed her down the corridor, ignoring Yondu’s wolf whistle trailing after them, and shut the door behind him. “Listen, I only ever ask for two things in relationships with other people. Trust, and honesty.”

“As you’ve said before,” he grumbled. She only gave him another warning glare in return. “You also said we were entitled to secrets.”

“Not if Yondu, of all people, cares enough to bring it up.” She sat on his bed, folding her arms over her chest. “Peter.”

“I don’t need you babying me, okay? I’m a grown man,” he shot back.

“Then start acting like one!” she yelled, causing him to reel in alarm. Sighing, she pinched the bridge of her nose, falling silent for a full minute before looking back up at him, despondent. “Look...I don’t...I don’t know how to be a girlfriend. I don’t know what the difference is between being your friend and being your girlfriend. So if I’m being overbearing, it’s because I care about you in more than one way. Does that make sense?”

Peter sat next to her, resting one hand in her lap, and using the other to tilt her chin upwards so their eyes could meet. “I don’t know how to be a boyfriend, either. But from what I can tell, there really isn’t a huge difference between being a friend or a partner. After all, people always say, ‘date your best friend’, and that’s what we’re doing, right?”

“It is,” she said quietly, a rueful smile crossing her face.

“The only difference for us, really, is the physical stuff.” He paused, remembering one of the things she had said to him in his nightmare. “Gamora...I’m not forcing you to have sex with me, am I?”

“What?”

“Like, you’re not just having sex with me because you think it’s what I want, right? It’s something that you want, too?”

“I thought I’ve vocalized my desire, my consent, and my enjoyment very thoroughly,” she murmured, squeezing his hand. “Peter, I just want to know. You’ve told me about your nightmares before, what’s different about this one?”

“They’re...not the kind of nightmares you want to be having when you’re trying to be independent.”

“You dreamt about me dying,” Gamora guessed. At his surprised expression, she added, “My nightmares are of your death as well. It wasn’t exactly a hard assumption to make.”

“You didn’t tell me you were having nightmares,” Peter said accusingly. “Come on, now.”

“You’re right.” She slouched a little, defeated. “I apologize. It’s hypocritical of me to ask you to be honest when I’m not being honest myself. I’ve been having a few bad nights in a row, the last two featuring your death.”

“How did I die?” He was almost scared to find out, though he could make a reasonable guess about what it would be.

“Thanos.” Exactly what he thought. “How did I die?”

“Ego.” He turned to lie on his back, gazing at the photos they’d taken over the course of their fake relationship that he’d stuck on his ceiling long ago. They hadn’t taken any pictures since they started dating for real, but neither felt like they had to - there was no need to prove their relationship anymore. Gamora laid down next to him, her eyes also traveling across the photos. He briefly wondered what she was thinking about. “There was some...stuff. That the nightmare version of you said to me.”

“Was it about me trying to baby you?”

“It was a lot more than that. It was stuff that hit really close to home, you know? And hearing it from you...so angry and tired…” His breath trembled slightly as he trailed off, unsure of what else he wanted to say. What else could he say, really, that wouldn’t make things worse?

“Like I was saying,” she whispered, staring almost unblinkingly at the ceiling. “I don’t know what it’s like to be in a relationship, but ours is only a week and a half old, and it already feels like we’ve put too much at stake here.”

“Comes with the job, I think,” Peter offered. “Cindy was telling me that she thinks it’s the life that we live that makes us feel everything more intensely. We’re still learning how to be together, so we can’t give up yet.” He turned to look at her. “New idea - Mantis used her powers to help my dad sleep, right? What if we got her to do the same for us, until we get so used to it that we can sleep without her help and without each other?”

“That’s quite clever of you,” she admitted, brightening. “We should try that tonight, then. But in the meantime…” In one fluid move, she’d rolled onto her side, gripped Peter’s shoulders, and pushed him down, her knees braced around his hips.

“W - what?” he stuttered dumbly.

Leaning in, Gamora murmured, “You’re worried that I’m not having sex with you because I want to, but because you want to. But ever since escaping Thanos’s clutches, I’ve never done anything I don’t want to do. Now, we’re in here alone, the others know not to disturb us when your door is closed, and dinner’s not for another few hours. But I’m already hungry, and I’d like to put your hesitation to rest.”

Peter let out a high-pitched squeak he wasn’t proud of, but once Gamora began sucking bruising kisses along the column of his throat, he was pretty sure he couldn’t be held responsible for any of the noises that escaped his mouth over the following hour.

“Your inclination to leave bites on Quill’s neck where others can see implies you think other girls will want to steal him away from you, and I can’t imagine anyone would find Quill attractive enough to do so,” Drax said to Gamora once they’d emerged from Peter’s bedroom for dinner.

“He has his admirers,” Gamora said dryly. At Drax’s raised eyebrow, she added, “I know, I was surprised, too.”

“Hey!” Peter exclaimed, but was immediately distracted by the basket of bread rolls Mantis had waved under his nose.

“Mantis, are you free tonight?” Gamora asked, wrinkling her nose a little at the sight of Peter stuffing his face with bread. “I was thinking we could do some homework together.”

Peter shot her a look of what are you up to?, to which Gamora answered with a cocked chin that clearly said trust me. “Oh,” Mantis said, a little surprised. “I did not have anything planned. Sure!”

After dinner was over, everyone slowly dispersed to their rooms, aside from Gamora and Mantis, who remained in the common area, set up on the couch, their books and papers spread across the coffee table. “I talked to Nebula about leaving you alone,” Gamora said after they’d been studiously quiet for about two hours. “She shouldn’t be bothering you anymore.”

Mantis let out a soft chuckle. “You and Peter are always trying so hard to protect me. I appreciate it, Gamora, but I am not that fragile.”

“Sure, but I also have the responsibility of taking care of Nebula as well,” Gamora replied. “She can’t go around thinking it’s okay to treat people like that.”

Hesitant, Mantis reached across the couch to lay a hand on Gamora’s knee. “You both had to be mean to survive, didn’t you?”

Gamora swallowed, but the lump in her throat that had suddenly formed didn’t seem to be going away. “Yes. Nebula more than me, since I was Thanos’s favorite daughter. If the others were cruel to me, Thanos would be cruel in return. It was not out of actual care for me, though, it was so I wouldn’t get caught up in fighting back.”

“I suppose that is where you and I differ,” Mantis said, smiling sadly as she leaned back against the armrest, removing her hand from Gamora’s leg. “You were raised to be ruthless, and I was raised to be submissive. But I do not think either of us are like that anymore. We are somewhere in the middle.”

“‘Ruthless’ is a generous word to use.” Gamora idly flipped through the pages of the article she was reading on her holo-tab, not really absorbing anything she was supposed to take in. “I agree, though. We’ve both grown substantially since becoming part of this team. It would be interesting to see who we become when we graduate.”

“I am secretly hoping we do not leave Terra once that happens,” Mantis confessed. “I know the Milano is our true base, but it has become so comforting here.”

“I always thought Peter wouldn’t want to come back because of his mother,” Gamora said thoughtfully. “You know, he hasn’t actually returned to his childhood home? To this place called ‘Missouri’?”

“Maybe it would be too painful for him. He could need time, or perhaps never return at all,” Mantis suggested.

“Or he’s waiting for the right time.” They both startled a little at the sound of Peter’s voice. He was descending the ladder from the cockpit, where he’d been running a software check for the past hour. “How’re my two favorite girls doing?”

“We’ve gotten quite a bit done,” Gamora shrugged, Mantis nodding eagerly in agreeance. “Milano’s okay?”

“She’s steady,” Peter replied, smiling. “So, Mantis, before I forget, we have a favor to ask of you…”

______

“Good morning!” Mantis said cheerfully as she practically skipped into the kitchen, stealing Peter’s multigrain bread from the toaster before his reflexes could kick in. She plopped it down onto a plate and began rummaging through the fridge for some strawberry jam. “Did you sleep alright?”

“Like a baby,” he beamed. He was in too good of a mood to berate her for toast-stealing. “I’ll bet Gamora would say the same if she were here, and didn’t leave for class super early like a crazy person. Thanks so much, Mantis.”

“No problem,” she grinned in return, settling down at the kitchen island, directly across from him. “You should have asked me earlier. I was not aware you were both having sleep troubles. I do not like seeing either of you in pain.”

“How did it work on my dad?” He leaned forward on his elbows a little. “You said he was occupied with the thoughts of his children and the so-called Expansion. How long could he go without your powers?”

The smile on Mantis’s face faded a little, her antennae drooping as she lowered her chin to fixate on her toast. She began picking at it, crumbling it between her fingernails, her appetite lost. “He did not need it that often at first,” she said reluctantly. “When I was a young girl, I could not do it as easily, so he only asked it of me when he was really overwhelmed. But as I grew older and stronger, he would ask me to use my powers every night. Sometimes, even more than once per day, if he exhausted his cosmic abilities and needed to take a nap. It was like a drug to him. He was addicted to what I could do, and I feel that if we had left him alive...who knows what he would have done to get me back.”

“So...it would actually be dangerous for us to ask you to do it every night?” Peter’s heart sank.

“I would only advise it perhaps once a week, and even then, it depends on the person,” Mantis said, apologetic. “If you have an addictive personality, then your reliance could develop by the third occurrence.”

“Dammit.” Peter stood and turned away from her, pacing over to the living area, rubbing at his temples, head bowed. They had come so close to a plausible solution - he should’ve known this was too easy.

“I am sorry,” Mantis whimpered, shoulders slumping in defeat. “I should have told you, but you both seemed so excited at finding an answer, that I did not want to turn you down. I did not want you to hate me.”

“Hey, no, Mantis, we could never hate you.” Peter almost half-sprinted back into the kitchen to put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s not your fault, okay? It’s our problem, not yours. You know, maybe this whole thing was a mistake to begin with.”

Mantis’s eyes widened. “You do not mean your relationship with Gamora is a mistake, do you?”

“No, no, of course not,” Peter said reassuringly, squeezing her shoulders one last time before stepping away. “But she might be right. We rushed headfirst into being together without talking about what it means.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you two are being very mature about it,” Mantis offered, smiling tentatively. “I do not think most couples would discuss these things until it is too late. But at the same time, I think you are both making it a problem before there is even a chance of it actually happening.”

“Honestly, that’s what I’ve been thinking too,” Peter admitted. “But you know how Gamora is about preparation and contingencies, and I don’t want to disappoint her.”

“Which is a sign you are very much in lo-o-o-ve,” Mantis sing-songed, the stiffness in her posture melting away in favor of playfully poking Peter in the cheek. Laughing, Peter swatted her away before moving to finally get another slice of toast going.

Predictably, Gamora wasn’t too pleased later that evening when everyone had returned to the Milano, in which Mantis confessed what she had been hiding from them. However, it was hard for her to remain mad at Mantis (it was hard for anyone to be mad at Mantis), and she forgave her by dinnertime. “Just don’t do that next time, okay?” Gamora said sternly. “Imagine the consequences if Peter had never asked.”

“I thought we was finally done with your relationship drama,” Yondu teased after the meal was over.

“We are never done being the ‘Quill and Gamora Show’, apparently,” Nebula sneered, kicking her feet up onto the length of the couch before Yondu could even consider sitting next to her. “Are you always going to be like this?”

“You know, for a bunch of people who tried really hard to get us together, you seem to have issues about us having issues, which, by the way - totally normal thing to happen for couples!” Peter exclaimed, accusatory.

“Let’s discuss something else,” Gamora said, joining him in the armchair, her eyes ablaze as she stared her sister down across the room, who seemed nonplussed, and as always, in a perpetual state of casual disinterest. “We’ve had a few jobs sent through the Director. We can put them off until October, but we should review them in advance and decide what to accept.”

“Whatever gets us units,” Rocket said gleefully, hopping onto the back of the chair to peer over Gamora’s head at her holo-tab. “Lemme amend that. Whatever gets us the most units. And none of them bullshit jobs with the Sovereign again.”

“Moving precious cargo?” Peter pointed at the one on the top of the screen. “That sounds a lot like ‘being shot at. Repeatedly’.”

“This one wants us to be bodyguards for a gala? That sounds vastly underwhelming and a misuse of our skills,” Drax said, hovering by Peter’s shoulder.

“What is this one about a duchess who claims to know you, Peter?” Mantis poked at the job in question, causing a profile to pop up. “Oh, she is very pretty.”

“Uhh - ”

“I am Groot!” A tiny wail caused everyone to jump, looking around wildly for the source of the crying. To their dismay, Groot had tripped over one of the metal grates (Peter really needed to make baby-proofing the ship one of his priorities) and gotten his hand stuck inside, and was now desperately tugging on his arm. Instead of leaping into action, Gamora found herself stumbling backward into the armchair. Peter shot her a perplexed glance before rushing over to help.

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay, Groot, just stop movin’ for a second,” he said soothingly, cupping his back. Rocket was already by Groot’s side with a screwdriver and a tub of grease he had grabbed at seemingly lightning speed. They worked in tense silence for a couple minutes, coating Groot’s arm with the grease and using the screwdriver to loosen the grate and ease him out. The others hovered nervously, except for Gamora who had seemingly frozen where she was. Finally, Groot was freed, immediately turning to bury his face into Rocket’s belly.

The others moved closer to console Groot - even Nebula was nearby, straining her neck to see how he was doing - but Gamora continued to remain seated until Peter kneeled in front of her, ducking his head slightly in an attempt to make eye contact. “Hey,” he murmured, reaching for her, but making no actual physical contact. “Can we talk? My room?”

Nodding wordlessly, she followed him down the corridor and, once again, sat on his bed as she did last time. “I dreamt that Groot was dying as well,” she said quietly, before he could ask.

“You don’t have to tell me - ”

“But I do,” she interrupted, letting out a hysterical laugh. “Because that’s what people in relationships do, right? They talk about their feelings, and spend all their free time with each other, and - ”

"Gamora.” He knelt in front of her again, cupping her face in his hands. “Breathe.”

They fell silent, aside from the steady, slow inhales and exhales as they took deep breaths together. “I feel like I’ve become an entirely different person, these past two years. But what kind of person am I?” she muttered, once the tremble in her chest had subsided.

“I can tell you what I think,” he offered. She nodded, wanting him to continue. “I think you’re someone who went from having to take care of herself to someone who wants to take care of others. But if I’m wrong…”

“That’s an apt description, if a little generous.” She smiled, bending to kiss Peter briefly. “I just feel like I’m not in control lately. Like I’ve turned over my emotions to be handled by everyone else, and I hate it.”

In all honesty, Gamora was angry at herself for being so emotionally volatile, and Peter could tell. She wasn’t used to losing control like this, to put it all out there for everyone else to see. She had gotten so used to watching Peter being so open - laughing, crying, making faces so full of expression, so full of life, that she had started to do it herself. Hell, they had all picked up so many of Peter’s mannerisms in their short time together, vocabulary that hadn’t existed to them previously, little quirks or habits that they had once thought to be annoying, and now had become subconsciously ingrained in their minds. It was like Nebula often said - Gamora had become too attached to ever let the others go, found it extraordinarily difficult to imagine a life without the team, and deemed it impossible to leave them behind.

“Then talk to me about it,” Peter said imploringly, his hands moving to rest on her lap. “Because you’re right. People in relationships talk. And somehow, we’re still really terrible at it. We never continued our conversation about signs of codependency, you know, the one we were trying to have on Saturday night?”

“Then what are we doing here? Are we healthy, or are we cause for concern?” she asked.

He didn’t respond immediately, instead electing to stand and then lie down on the bed, gesturing for her to join him. They rolled onto their sides, face-to-face, though didn’t touch. “Let’s find out.” At her furrowed brow, he chuckled softly and said, “Question. Do you think of me every minute of every day?”

The bluntness of his question caused her to snort. “What? No.”

“Do you always want me to be around?”

“Not necessarily, though I don’t mean that negatively,” she said slowly.

“Am I the only person who can make you happy?”

“You might make me the happiest, but you aren’t the only one.” Gamora was starting to catch on, another smile beginning to form on her face as she did so.

“Am I the only person you can talk to? About anything?”

“No. I have my sister and your sister.”

“Can you go an entire day without seeing me? Can you sleep without me being there?” Peter continued, determined.

A crease had formed between his eyebrows, and Gamora had the urge to reach out and smooth it away. “Yes to both,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t aware you were taking psychology this semester, Peter.”

“My answers are the same as yours,” he said, grinning. “So I’d say we’re fine. We’re co-leaders who happen to be a couple, but we don’t get weirdly obsessive over each other or fall apart without the other person around. That sounds perfectly healthy to me!”

She couldn’t help but grin back, relieved. Once he put it like that, it all seemed so simple. “So should we stop this stupid experiment of mine?”

“It’s not stupid.” He reached over to push her hair out of her face, tenderly tracing the silver in her cheekbones with the pads of his fingers. “You had good intentions. I just think we got ahead of ourselves here. I think we’ve just been worried about spending too much time together because we already hung out so much. But that’s because we were friends first.” He leaned in closer, their eyes locking. “Also, for the record? I’ve loved you for much longer than the three weeks it’s been since we first kissed.”

Gamora bit her lip, shuffling forwards so she could wrap her arms around his waist. He really did have a knack for throwing out casual statements of unfiltered sentiment like no one else did. It was the way he was in combat as well - catching people off-guard, throwing them off their game. But unlike his quips at villains, his words for her were always simply intangible tokens of affection. “Same,” she murmured, unable to form prose of her own. Maybe someday. “But what do you suggest we do now?”

“You said one week,” he shrugged. “So we’ll try it one more time tonight. No Mantis or anything. Let’s see what happens.”

“But you have your debate tomorrow,” she protested. “If you don’t sleep well…”

“One more time,” he repeated, kissing her forehead. “We’ll be okay. Also, I’ve been meaning to ask if you’ll come watch the debate? We’re the last pair to go, and you’d only have to leave class, like, ten minutes early - I mean, if you don’t want to, it’s not gonna be that interesting, but I just thought if maybe - ”

“Please stop,” she chuckled. “I’ll be there.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” She gave him a mischievous grin. “I’m curious to see how adequate you’ll be at making speeches under six minutes.”

______

Gamora stretched leisurely, yawning as she did so, rolling over onto her side and grabbing her phone off her side table. She hadn’t slept this well since Saturday night, even noticeably better than the previous night when Mantis had used her powers. Her back ached a little from the stiff mattress (they really needed to get a start on buying new ones), but she was otherwise well-rested, the dull strain in her eyes and sinuses from yesterday’s little meltdown having gone away with sleep.

She got dressed, grabbed an energy bar from the pantry, and made her way off the Milano to her first class, wondering what had changed. She had drifted off the minute her head hit the pillow, and only woke up once to get a drink of water. Her mind had been utterly clear, devoid of visions of a dying Peter or the horrid sounds of Groot’s pain, despite him being in very real pain yesterday. It was like her brain had forgotten about the whole ordeal in the first place, as if it hadn’t been plaguing her for the past three days, but that couldn’t have happened, could it?

Gamora went through all of her classes with relative ease, and received permission from Ares to leave combat class early to watch Peter’s debate (“You’ve already at the top of the class, just go already.”). She was weirdly nervous for him - he could make a damn good speech when the situation called for it, but a structured one could be cause for concern. He had come a long way from the rambling, oversharing, foot-in-the-mouth boy he had been when they first met, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t still worried about him going off-script.

She arrived at the lecture hall just in time to see Cindy sitting down after receiving polite applause for her opening statement. She scanned the room for open seats and was surprised to find one next to her very own sister. “I didn’t know you were taking this class,” Gamora whispered, slipping in beside her.

“I’m not,” Nebula replied, rolling her eyes. “Nothing good was on television, so I was hoping to get some entertainment out of watching Quill crash and burn.” Gamora could only shoot her a warning glare before the debate started again.

“The superhero origin story,” Peter began, taking his place at the center of the whiteboard. “It’s the kind of stuff that writers and creators can only dream of - and they have. At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s where we all started. And really, what determines where it ends? We carry so much of it with us, with every job we take, with every one person that we save.”

“Crash and burn, huh?” Gamora murmured, a sense of pride beginning to well up in her chest.

“I want to tell you a bit of a personal story. My origin story, if you will,” he added. “I don’t know how much you guys know about me - I’ve been told I talk a lot of crap - sorry professor - but I was kidnapped when I was a kid. Taken in by a bunch of super cool space pirates, just minutes after my mother died right in front of my eyes.” The room seemed to have sobered up, everyone falling silent as they watched Peter slowly pace around the front. “I managed to grow up pretty well-adjusted, pretty happy, all things considered. But what I wasn’t, was good.”

“I was never really concerned about being good. I didn’t think it was as important as being happy. I know, it sounds super selfish. But my priorities changed when I met the other Guardians, and after we did the whole save-the-world-and-be-awesome thing, I realized the kind of heroism I was capable of,” he continued. “You might be like, ‘what does this have to do with the psychological effects of your origins?’. ‘How does this prove that it’s a positive thing?’. ‘You’re just one example of a so-called good outcome from a bad history.’ But let me point out my teammates, and what they’ve also had to go through. I’m not saying that tragedy is a good thing - I don’t wanna romanticize trauma, because that shit’s not fun - sorry, professor - ”

“It could go all downhill from here.” Nebula sounded way too delighted for Gamora’s liking.

“I’d like to single out one person who really brings it home for me,” Peter said, trying his best not to make eye contact with the teacher, who was getting increasingly irritated. “My co-leader and best friend, Gamora.” He waved at her - she wasn’t even aware he’d seen her come in - causing several heads to turn. She sank a little deeper into her seat. Oh god, what was he doing? “I don’t think I have to tell you guys what she’s been through. I’m also not gonna tell you about her motivations, or her goals, or any of that stuff, because I don’t speak for her. That’s what gets me in trouble in the first place.” Laughter rippled through the crowd. Even Nebula looked somewhat pleased at the joke. “What I can tell you is who I saw when we first met, and who I see when I look at her now.”

“I saw a girl who suffered, and lost her family.” His voice broke a little on the last word. “I saw someone who had to take care of herself, and only herself, because that’s all she had left. But then she saw an opportunity to save other people, and she took it. Not because she wanted recognition or money, the way that I did, but because she knew despite all the awful things she had done in the past, she knew that this was the right thing to do. And that was it, really. She just happened to pick up a bunch of losers along the way, myself included.” More laughter rippled across the lecture hall. Gamora had leaned forward in anticipation at some point in Peter’s heartfelt story, gripping at the edges of the desk as it creaked, threatening to break under her fingers. “She was fierce and fearless. Diplomatic but headstrong, determined beyond belief. A real fighter, you know, and not just in combat. And guess what? She’s exactly like that now. The only difference is that she’s fighting for more than her own life. She’s fighting for the lives of everyone in the whole galaxy.”

“Quill is so incredibly gone for you, I may vomit,” Nebula commented.

“You might argue that her quote-unquote ‘backstory’ was finished when we arrived on Terra and joined this school, but I disagree. I think, like all of you, Gamora takes it with her every day of her life. The stuff she’s gone through, the life-changing moments that she’ll always remember. I think all of us carry a piece of our past with us because it’s what makes us who we are. Sometimes, it’s a physical item.” Peter turned to pick up his Walkman form the table, holding it up high for everyone to see. There were nods and smiles of recognition throughout the crowd. “Sometimes, it’s a memory. Or maybe it’s both, I dunno. And yeah, sometimes we need counseling, or therapy, or to beat up some bad guys to get us through the next day. But being able to wake up from a nightmare and still keep going is what makes us heroes.”

Gamora might have been biased, but she was pretty sure Peter’s applause was louder than Cindy’s as he sat back down at his desk. Nebula was quiet for the rest of the debate, and though her expression was relatively neutral, her silence spoke volumes to Gamora - she was impressed.

Cindy countered with several strong arguments of her own, the entire lecture hall tense with anticipation as they watched the two go back and forth. It was a spirited debate, though they kept it professional - Cindy and Peter were casual friends, there were no heated remarks made whatsoever. By the time they reached their closing statements, Gamora was smiling into her hands, attempting to hide it from Nebula before she could tease her further.

“There’s no denying that a lot of us have gone through some of the worst kind of pain to get to where we are now, and we probably don’t wanna remember it ever happened,” Peter said, making one last lap around the front of the room. “I’ve done things that I’m not proud of. I’m sure all of us have. But it’s naive to pretend that everything’s black and white - that we can divide every single event in our lives into good and bad. Which is why, in the end, I believe that where we come from isn’t something we just forget or shove aside. It shaped us, but it doesn’t define us. We can’t write off our histories and pretend we’ve been the people that we are this whole time. We can’t deny the things that have happened so we can be just a little bit happier now. We can talk to people about it, we can get help, but that’s where it all starts. Because we have to learn from our past - ” he waved the Walkman once more “ - to take charge of our own futures.” Peter smiled bashfully, almost shy. “Thank you.”

The lecture hall burst into polite applause - many students were starting to get bored by this point - as the professor approached Peter and Cindy to congratulate them on their successful debate. She then dismissed the entire class, causing most students to practically sprint out the door, hoping to catch the last rays of sunshine before early sunset. Gamora, on the other hand, made her way down to the front to approach Peter, who had his back to her as he packed his bag.

“I’m impressed,” she said, leaning against the table. Peter turned, his expression immediately softening upon seeing her. “I know you like to talk, but I have to admit - I didn’t think you would be very good at debate. You have a tendency to ramble.”

“I still do,” he chuckled, closing his bag and throwing it over his shoulder. He took her hand and began leading them out of the lecture hall. “I got a B minus.”

She frowned. “What, really?”

“Yeah. Prof was expecting me to look into more case studies to back up the facts, but there aren’t any on superhero psychology specifically - I mean, frankly, this school is the one writing those papers - which is why I went for real-life examples,” he replied, pausing to glance at her. “I had a pretty great muse.”

“Incorrigible,” she repeated, though she was blushing somewhat. “Your arguments. Were they part of what made you so confident about us being okay?”

“Sort of.” They passed through the rest of the campus, silent, as there was too much typical rowdy chaos happening around them - students chatting, showing off their powers, swapping study notes - the kind of noise that Gamora found herself glad to hear. Despite the occasional stare from other students, eyeing their clasped hands, she found she couldn’t be bothered by it anymore - she was pleased to be surrounded by people again, after knowing how eerie the school could be when it was utterly vacant.

The two of them didn’t get a chance to pick up their conversation again until they returned to the Milano, where the others were milling about, also engaging in rambunctious behavior. Sighing, Peter once again led Gamora to his room, ignoring the identical shit-eating grins on Rocket and Yondu’s faces that followed. “I think talking about everything that was bothering us and the kind of nightmares we were having literally made us sleep easier. When you first brought up sleeping alone, we probably got so stressed out about what could go wrong that it did go wrong. We didn’t have nightmares because we weren’t together, we had nightmares because we thought we would have nightmares.”

Gamora let out a defeated sigh, sprawling face-first across his mattress, unusually pliant. “I really don’t know what I’m doing,” she mumbled into his pillow.

“Hey, come on. Like I said, we’re learning together,” Peter said reassuringly, resting a hand on the small of her back. “We both have - or in my case, had - crazy homicidal dads, a laundry list of insecurities, and zero experience in relationships. Look how much we have in common!” He winced. “That was too much, wasn’t it.”

“Your sense of humor is odd and sometimes crude,” she began, turning to look at him consideringly. “But don’t tell anyone that I actually find you funny. I have a reputation to uphold.”

“So rude to me,” he faux-whined, laying down next to her, his entire arm now slung across her back. “Let’s make a deal. We stop talking about how bad we are at relationships, and instead talk about our actual relationship when stuff’s bothering us.”

“Okay,” she replied, smiling. “But I’m still terrible at being a girlfriend.”

“You help me deal with my crap, you’re really fun to hang out with, and you’re generally just a super cool, badass, all-around awesome person. For the record? You’re an amazing girlfriend.” Gamora chuckled, patting him on the chest affectionately. “By the way, this is the part where you tell me the same thing.”

“You’re adequate,” she responded teasingly. Her eyes flickered to meet his, holding steady, before leaning in to quickly peck him on the mouth. “And I love you.”

If he was surprised at her saying it first for the first time, he didn’t show it. “Love you too,” he mumbled, cupping her face. “Okay, so, here’s my plan for the rest of the night - we go back out into the living room, make out on the couch until the others get grossed out because it’s funny, then come back in here after dinner, we do homework like a bunch of bores until we fall asleep, and figure out the next step in our sleeping arrangements tomorrow.”

“Or we can determine it right now,” Gamora shrugged. “We share your bed, but I keep my room the way it is, for whenever we have fights. And I do mean ‘when’, and not ‘if’. I also get to steal your clothes whenever I want.

“I’m certainly not complaining,” Peter laughed, leaning in for another kiss. When they pulled apart, he looked oddly inquisitive. “Though I do have to ask about where you found my Flash Gordon shirt, because I swear I lost it, like, the week we got here…”

this one-shot was supposed to be like 8k words, but once again, like the main fic, peter and gamora just decided to have feelings all over the place and it turned out way longer than intended. hope you guys enjoyed it anyways!

some quick things - the song peter listened to after his nightmare was and i love you so by don mclean, which is a song peter has on his "for gamora" mixtape. also, there is a hint about the next one-shot hidden in here somewhere. finally, a brief summary of their nightmares if you skipped them over: gamora dreamed of hearing groot being hurt, and then witnessed peter dying (implied to be thanos's doing). peter dreamed of gamora listing all his insecurities as reasons to break up with him, and then ego showed up to kill her and threatened to go after the others.

once again, thank you for reading, likes and reblogs would be much appreciated, and I hope you're enjoying this series :)

[t-baba]

The most popular JavaScript links of 2019

#469 — January 3, 2020

Read on the Web

JavaScript Weekly

The holiday season is rapidly coming to a close and we're looking forward to not only a new year but the entirety of the Roaring Twenties. Rest assured, the JavaScript world is not going to look the same when 2030 turns up so watch this space! 😄

We'll be back as usual next week, but this week we're taking a look back at 2019 and the most popular things you clicked on. If you didn't read every issue in 2019 (we wouldn't expect you to!) you'll hopefully find a few things worth revisiting here.

Thanks for supporting us — we look forward to keeping you up-to-date in the years to come.

— Peter Cooper and the Cooperpress team

📈 Our most popular links of 2019:

1. The TypeScript Tax: A Cost vs Benefit Analysis — As much as we love JavaScript, this was really a strong year for TypeScript, with it seeming to become the de facto way to bring strong typing to JavaScript. Back in January, Eric Elliott asked "is it worth it?" and presented some critical, data-driven analysis to establish its viability. It was your most clicked link of 2019.

Eric Elliott

2. New ES2018 Features Every JavaScript Developer Should Know — We're now looking forward to ES2020 and we've had ES2019 in 2019 too, but this post remains packed with interesting examples of spread properties within object literals, asynchronous iterators and asynchronous iterables, Promise.prototype.finally, and other features that are still not exactly common to see in the wild.

Faraz Kelhini

The Complete ⚛️ React Learning Path — Take your React to the next level to find out what it is fully capable of with this comprehensive learning path.

Frontend Masters sponsor

3. 43 JavaScript Questions, With Their Answers Explained — Whether for fun or a job interview, this remains an interesting set of JavaScript-related questions, complete with explanations of the answers.

Lydia Hallie

4. I Don't Hate Arrow Functions (But..) — Arrow functions (=>), as introduced in ES6, have generally been a much welcomed addition to JavaScript but Kyle Simpson reminded us they’re not suitable in every scenario and created an ESLint plugin to help you keep a handle on their use.

Kyle Simpson

5. Responsible JavaScript: A Three Part Series — We originally only linked to part one of this great series where Jeremy Wagner plotted a course to avoid the unnecessary bloat and inaccessible patterns of modern JavaScript trends.. but now you can enjoy part 2 and part 3 too, where he went into more technical depth on bundling and handling third-party scripts.

Jeremy Wagner

6. What’s New in JavaScript — At this year’s Google I/O ’19, Mathias Bynens and Sathya Gunasekaran of the V8 team gave a fantastic 30 minute ‘state of the union’ talk on the state of JavaScript as a language and what new features are being baked in.

Google I/O video

💻 Jobs

JavaScript Developer at X-Team (Remote) — Work with the world's leading brands, from anywhere. Travel the world while being part of the most energizing community of developers.

X-Team

Senior Software Engineer, Frontend — Use the latest tech to mold an innovative, empathy-centric experience for creators to order fast, high-quality parts (forging space robots to animatronics).

Fictiv

Find a Job Through Vettery — Vettery is completely free for job seekers. Make a profile, name your salary, and connect with hiring managers from top employers.

Vettery

📘 The most popular articles & tutorials of 2019

The Cost of JavaScript in 2019 — Addy Osmani presented a 2019 update to his Cost of JavaScript in 2018 article in both video and article forms. If you still want to get a feel for where the true bottlenecks are with JavaScript, this is a must read.

Addy Osmani

Should We Rebrand 'JavaScript'? — This thoughpiece provoked quite a bit of discussion in the community over the problems (or not) with ‘JavaScript’ as a name. I think we'll see more on this front in 2020.

Kieran Potts

First Online Mentored Software Bootcamp w/ Job Guarantee — Get a job or your money back with Springboard’s online bootcamp. Benefit from 1:1 mentorship, our exclusive curriculum, and top career coaching.

Springboard (Software Engineering Career Track) sponsor

When Should You Be Using Web Workers? — Web Workers provide a way to run JavaScript in background threads in the browser and you’d think using them as much as possible would be a good thing.. right? Current frameworks make this tough, says Surma, who shows us why we should be working to change this ASAP.

Surma

Practical Ways to Write Better JavaScript — You’re not necessarily going to agree with all of them (e.g. “Use TypeScript”!) but this is a reasonably solid batch of points to think about overall.

Ryland Goldstein

JavaScript Symbols: But Why? — Not played with symbols (a new data type introduced with ES6) yet? This is a gentle way to get up to speed with not only what they are but why you might use them.

Thomas Hunter II

Make 2020 the Year to Master MongoDB. Try Studio 3T Today — Generate driver code for JavaScript, Python, Ruby and more? Build queries fast with our drag & drop editor? Of course.

Studio 3T sponsor

Using Native JavaScript Modules in Production Today — “now, thanks to some recent advances in bundler technology, it’s possible to deploy your production code as ES2015 modules—with both static and dynamic imports—and get better performance than all non-module options currently available.”

Philip Walton

7 Tricks with Resting and Spreading JavaScript Objects — Using modern JS features to merge objects, organize properties, and more.

Joel Thoms

📺 The most popular videos of 2019

▶  Why I Was Wrong About TypeScript — Smells like an opinion-driven talk, but actually covers the history behind compile-to-JS languages, how we got to a point where interest in TypeScript is growing strongly, and why it’s worth taking seriously.

TJ VanToll

▶  Why 0.1 + 0.2 === 0.30000000000000004: Implementing IEEE 754 in JS — Head to your node CLI right now and type in 0.1 + 0.2. If the answer confuses you, this is the video for you. And even if you know why, working with the building blocks behind floating point representations is just cool anyway.

Low Level JavaScript

Video Developer Report - Top Trends in Video Technology 2019

Bitmovin sponsor

▶  Keep Betting on JavaScript — Kyle Simpson presents a history lesson of JavaScript, looks at how a variety of features were (or weren’t) introduced, and compels us to think about the future of the Web and JavaScript as we contribute and ‘place bets’ on technologies.

Kyle Simpson

▶  A Look at Deno: A New(ish!) JavaScript Runtime — Ryan originally created Node about ten years ago but over the past couple of years he’s been working on Deno, a non-Node compatible, TypeScript-focused runtime with some interesting features. (Note: Poor audio until a few minutes in.) I suspect we'll hear a lot more about this in 2020.

Ryan Dahl

🔧 The most popular code & tool releases of 2019

Svelte 3 Released: Rethinking Reactivity — Svelte is one of the most interesting UI frameworks out there as it’s not scared of taking a unique approach. Rather than running in the browser, Svelte runs at build time, compiling your app into more efficient runtime JavaScript. Svelte 3 took some major steps forward, particularly in helping you write less code.

Rich Harris

Mithril.js 2: A JavaScript Framework for Building Brilliant Applications — Mithril is a really neat alternative to things like Vue, React or Angular. It’s very compact and fast (so ideal for mobile), runs a bit closer to vanilla JS than the alternatives, and is great for tying together vanilla JS libraries rather than needing its own alternatives.

Mithril

RunJS: A JavaScript 'Scratchpad' Tool for the Desktop — Write and run JavaScript instantly. Useful for learning, experimenting, or perhaps even creating screencasts, tweets, or similar educational content. Originally macOS only but now supports Windows and Linux too.

Luke Haas

Pixi.js 5: Create Beautiful 2D Web Experiences — Boasts the ‘fastest, most flexible 2D WebGL renderer’ to let you take advantage of hardware acceleration without getting involved in WebGL or 3D concerns. Check out demos for what the code looks like and what you’d use it for. There’s also a Pixi Playground for quickly crafting your own experiments.

PixiJS

Babylon.js 4.0: The (Very) Powerful WebGL Graphics Engine — Such a significant release that they released a 2 minute video trailer for it! Want to play? Enjoy this editable live demo.

Microsoft

Postwoman: An API Request Builder and Tester — A free alternative to Postman, a popular app for debugging and testing HTTP APIs. Postwoman works in the browser and supports HTTP and WebSocket requests as well as GraphQL. Insomnia is a similar tool if you want to run something as a desktop app.

Liyas Thomas

FlexSearch.js: A Full Text Search Library — Claims to outperform all of the alternatives while supporting features like multi-word matching and phonetic transformations. Happy in both the browser and Node.js.

Nextapps GmbH

Just: A JavaScript Task Library from Microsoft — If you’re familiar with Ruby’s rake, it’s a bit like that. Define tasks in JavaScript, run them with just (which works fine without installation using npx) and you get a bunch of nice features like logging and task composition.

Microsoft

Node-RED 1.0 Released — Node RED is a flow-based, visual programming tool (aimed primarily at hardware automation) that’s built on top of Node.js. Despite only reaching 1.0 in 2019, it’s a mature project used in numerous real world IoT projects.

Nick O'Leary

by via JavaScript Weekly https://ift.tt/2QHifL3

[biofunmy]

Should Neil Armstrong’s Bootprints Be on the Moon Forever?

[Read all Times reporting on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. | Sign up for the weekly Science Times email.]

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin visited the moon 50 years ago, they left roughly 100 objects behind, including a portion of their lunar lander, the American flag and, yes, various kinds of trash.

Those objects are still there, surrounded by rugged bootprints marking humanity’s first steps on another world. But that site, called Tranquillity Base, may not be as enduring as the legacy those prints represent.

“Is there anything stopping you from just driving over Neil Armstrong’s footprints?” said Steve Mirmina, a specialist in space law at Georgetown University. “No. There’s nothing. There’s no rule, there’s no U.S. domestic law, or no international treaty obligation to preserve them.”

In other words, anyone capable of visiting Tranquillity Base could alter what many believe to be an indispensable part of humanity’s heritage, a place that is analogous to archaeological sites on Earth.

“Where the objects are, how they’re sitting there — that tells the actual real story and history of humans on the moon,” said Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer and co-founder of the nonprofit organization For All Moonkind, which is developing an international framework for lunar site preservation.

You would not even have to go there to obliterate Armstrong’s footprints.

“Send a robot,” Mr. Mirmina said. “Just use some joysticks on the ground and drive over them.”

[Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar.]

Losing lunar historical sites is not an abstract concern. With a few crucial exceptions, what happens off-world stays off-world, and activities on the lunar surface are largely unregulated. Various private space actors have already demonstrated a proclivity for celestial shenanigans: Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, launched his car into space. Rocket Lab, the builder of small rockets, shot a disco ball-like object into orbit from New Zealand. And Vodafone has hinted at building a cell tower on the moon.

More seriously, a modern-day space race between governments and private companies is fast-tracking plans to return both humans and robotic landers to the lunar surface. One of those companies, PTScientists of Berlin, announced a plan to land near — and examine — the site of Apollo 17, where humans last traipsed across the lunar surface. Now, some are saying, it is time to get serious about preserving humanity’s heritage on the moon.

Preserving things that belong to no one

On Earth, multiple layers of legislation, both international and domestic, protect many sites of humanity’s heritage, an array including the megaliths at Stonehenge, Yosemite National Park and the recently listed Smith-Carter House in Madison, Tenn.

In space, it is different. As decreed by the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty in 1967 — signed by a multitude of nations while the United States and Soviet Union battled for primacy in orbit — space “shall be free for exploration and use by all,” with open access to all areas of celestial bodies.

Put simply, space is the province of humankind. No nation can “own” it or claim it, by means of use or occupation or otherwise.

That complicates setting up protected areas or restricting activities in or under the six Apollo landing sites. Or the spot where the Soviet Luna 2 spacecraft landed in 1959 and became the first human-made piece of hardware to touch another world. Or the site where, in January, China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft achieved the first landing on the far side of the moon.

“Arguably, by saying, ‘Oh, this bootprint is an artifact, don’t step on it’ — the U.S. would be making a territorial claim to the area where that bootprint is,” Ms. Hanlon said. “And as you can imagine, that would not be a very diplomatic thing to do.”

To be clear, she added, individual objects on the moon remain the property of the nations that put them there; that is laid out in Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty. (So, fair warning, retrieving and selling the golf balls Apollo 14’s Alan Shepard lobbed into oblivion or painting a smiley face on China’s Yutu rover will most likely land you in a world of trouble.)

But so far, there has not been an easy way to preserve the landing sites as they are, with moon buggy treads and footprints intact, in the way an archaeologist of the future might want to study them. Amending the Outer Space Treaty could take decades, and there is no other obvious route to an international agreement.

“We lose so much on Earth inadvertently,” said Beth O’Leary of New Mexico State University, an archaeologist who has proposed preserving humanity’s off-world history. “Here, we have the opportunity to plan for what to preserve for the future — it’s always bad to do things kind of in hindsight.”

How NASA tried to protect the Apollo sites

That does not mean people have not tried to protect humanity’s lunar heritage.

Attempts to classify the Apollo landing sites as American national parks failed precisely because that would violate the Outer Space Treaty. And the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which designates world heritage sites, usually considers nominations only by countries exercising sovereignty over their proposed site — which can therefore only be on Earth.

In July 2011, NASA issued a nonbinding set of recommendations aimed at preserving the six Apollo “heritage” sites and their associated artifacts. At the time, private teams were racing to be first on the lunar surface to claim the Google Lunar X Prize, and one of the contest’s bonus prizes would go to a spacecraft that visited an Apollo site.

Experts fear future visitors to the moon could be similarly motivated, and with perhaps less oversight.

“If you’re a couple of college students and you have a rover and iPhone, of course you’re going to want to drive around and go to the Apollo landing sites,” Mr. Mirmina said. “You’d want to take a photo of the first footprints, maybe see if the flag is still standing, or take a photo of all the bags of poop that NASA left behind on the moon.”

Thus NASA laid out guidelines for preserving those locations, including restrictions on overflights, boundaries for touchdown and a prohibition on close visits to the Apollo 11 and 17 sites because they “carry special historical and cultural significance.”

Then, the space agency reached an agreement with companies vying for the moon: They would need to abide by NASA’s guidelines if they wanted NASA support.

“It’s carefully written, and NASA actually found some fairly clever ways of trying to enforce that,” said Henry Hertzfeld, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Last year, the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House issued its own document outlining the necessity of securing those sites. But Dr. Hertzfeld says it is a long road to building a functional and enforceable international legal framework for preservation.

Yet in May, Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, introduced a bill, the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act, which directs any federal agency that issues licenses for lunar activities to require that companies comply with the 2011 NASA guidelines. The bill, co-sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, is headed for a vote in the full Senate.

“These are the first archaeological sites outside of planet Earth and as we move toward being a spacefaring society and civilization, it is only right that we protect those giant leaps,” Mr. Peters said. He added that “once they’re degraded, they’re lost forever to humanity.”

What is preserved, and who decides?

While many key moon sites are American, proponents say the endeavor to preserve lunar sites will not — and cannot — be America-centric.

“This is a very human story and we want people all over the world to embrace it as a human story,” Ms. Hanlon said.

But the fact that so many sites are the result of American achievements might portend trouble.

Restricting access to historical sites on the moon might “limit the freedom of exploration,” Mari Eldholm, government relations manager for PTScientists, said in an email, and could also be seen as one country appropriating something that belongs to all of humanity.

PTScientists is designing a mission to the Apollo 17 site. As envisioned, that mission would employ a lander and two lunar rovers. One goal would be investigating how Apollo artifacts have been affected by nearly 50 years in the lunar environment, which necessarily involves altering the site’s present state.

And right now, PTScientists could modify the Apollo 17 terrain in any way it wants — although Ms. Eldholm said the company would do its best to follow and respect NASA’s guidelines. But she emphasizes that an international conversation about balancing lunar preservation, exploration and freedom is essential.

“We believe there is a need for a discussion on who decides, and what, to preserve,” she said.

But there is no simple way to address preservation in today’s international arena.

“You get into the world political situation today and it’s not one of making treaties,” Dr. Hertzfeld said. “You’ve got more nations that are technically capable of accessing space, and doing a lot up there.”

Ms. Hanlon — whose group, For All Moonkind, continues raising the issue at United Nations assemblies — says that trying to protect those sites is worth the effort. Losing these records of humanity’s first accomplishments in space would be devastating for future generations, she said.

“We’ve done it wrong so many times on Earth, but we have a lot of examples and experiences to work from,” she said. “I think we can do it right on the moon and other celestial bodies.”

Sahred From Source link Arts

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[georgettebaker4569]

IT modernization: Fool’s Gold for Transformation and Gainshare

Contracting exemplars for digital transformation are not to be found in IT modernization deals

If your enterprise is expecting digital transformation from a service provider and the incentive in the contract is based on cost savings, you’re likely barking up the wrong deal tree. Why? Because it likely signals that the provider will be approaching it as a legacy IT system modernization engagement, rather than a true digital transformation.

And there’s a big difference between the two, as Everest Group’s Founder and CEO, Peter Bendor-Samuel, talked about in a recent Forbes blog post. He explained that while big IT deals may contain transformational elements such as moving legacy infrastructure to the cloud or DevOps adoption, they are IT modernization programs, not digital transformation, unless they are motivated by fundamental business model change.

Don’t get me wrong: although IT modernization programs are important and big, they are not transformational. And in a competitive environment where experience and reputation count, enterprises need to be able to spot the differences between reference projects driven by the need to modernize or integrate infrastructure and those that genuinely transform their business models.

Here’s some food for thought

At an analyst briefing a few days ago, a senior executive from a global service provider described its firm’s recently completed multi-year transformation project for a major European banking client. I asked him afterwards about the delivery incentives for contract that was inked back in 2014. Had he, the service provider, been incentivized on business model transformation, or just cost take-out? Was there any element of shared risk or outcome-based incentive?

He was delightfully candid: to his knowledge, there isn’t a single major ITO contract in Europe or North America in which a service provider has accepted a gainshare incentive, and his case was no different. Programs of this sort that are being completed now are all about modernization. They are cost reduction exercises, albeit on a huge scale, but they are not business transformation.

Indeed, exemplars of shared risk incentives are few and far between. Even those in the public domain, including IBM’s 10-year, $700 million contract with Etihad in 2015, and ACS/Atos’s 10-year $500 million contract with Allscripts Healthcare in 2011—which had significant transformation scope such as data center consolidation or private cloud implementation—may have shined with the fool’s gold of transformation, as they were likely driven and funded by cost reduction, not business model transformation.

There is one public domain deal that is a genuine transformation exemplar: IBM’s 10-year $1 billion deal with Banorte in Mexico, which started in 2013. It is a top-down, long-term vision, driven by a strategy to deliver value through a customer-centric focus, rather than a requirement to upgrade creaking technology and save cost. The original press release hints at shared risk, and a joint venture-like governance model, in the way it was to oversee the project and measure progress.

But Banorte is an exception. In Everest Group’s own experience of analyzing dozens of ITO contracts over the past three years, gainshare constructs are exceedingly rare in the digital transformation space. And the evidence base of completed digital business transformations, as opposed to completed IT modernizations, is pretty much non-existent.

To gain deeper insights into digital transformation contracting incentives, we will be conducting extensive research among enterprises over the next few months to investigate the mix of output versus outcome-based pricing metrics. Keep your eyes on this space to read more about how the best enterprises are evolving their outsourcing models in this new digital frontier.

The post IT modernization: Fool’s Gold for Transformation and Gainshare appeared first on Everest Group.

from pesonivt2a https://www.everestgrp.com/2018-02-modernization-fools-gold-transformation-gainshare-43546.html/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

<em> The Atlantic</em> Daily: A Wave of Revelations

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/the-atlantic-daily-a-wave-of-revelations/

The Atlantic Daily: A Wave of Revelations

What We’re Following

Lawmakers’ Moves: Sources close to Senator Orrin Hatch say the Utah Republican plans to retire when his term ends next year, and that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is planning to run for his seat. GOP insiders have been pushing for Hatch to step down, as some fear he would lose to an antiestablishment challenger in the 2018 primary. Meanwhile, prompted by President Trump’s belligerent statements against North Korea, three Democratic senators are introducing a bill to stop the president from being able to take military action against North Korea without approval from Congress.

The Trump Effect: New polling data from the Pew Research Center suggest that Trump has shaped not only his own party’s identity, but also that of the Democratic Party: Liberal voters’ views shifted sharply left after Trump came on the scene as a candidate. And while observers have been quick to call Trump’s actions “unprecedented,” the historian Julian E. Zelizer charts how many of his most controversial moves have deep political roots.

Sexual Harassment: On this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, the journalists Jodi Kantor and Katie Benner discuss their reporting on sexual harassment, including Kantor’s investigation of Harvey Weinstein, which launched a wave of revelations about disturbing behavior by powerful men in multiple industries. Among those men is Leon Wieseltier, the longtime literary editor of the New Republic (and a contributing editor at The Atlantic until today, when the magazine severed the relationship). Here are 11 women’s reflections on their experiences with Wieseltier.

—Rosa Inocencio Smith

Snapshot

In the latest Instagram cover contest, we challenge you to dress up your magazine for Halloween, include spreads from inside, and show us how you like to foster creativity in your life. To enter, snap a picture or Boomerang of your November 2017 issue, and share it on Instagram using this hashtag: #ReadingMyAtlantic. Find the official rules and prizes here, and follow us to see the winner in early November. (Emily Jan / The Atlantic)

Evening Read

Katherine Harvey retells what happened when the monks of Durham Cathedral Priory exhumed their patron saint, Cuthbert, in 1104:

What they reported finding was astonishing, given that Cuthbert had been dead for more than 400 years. His corpse was not merely undecayed, but flexible and lifelike. It was as if the saint were not dead, but sleeping.

The monks’ account was met with some skepticism. Undeterred, they repeated their inspection the following night, this time assisted by independent witnesses from other monasteries. One of them, Ralph of Séez, performed a thorough examination of the corpse. He first moved Cuthbert’s head around, proving that it was firmly attached to the torso. He then manipulated various parts of the body, including the ears, before taking the corpse by the head, shaking it, and raising it to a sitting position. Faced with such firm evidence, Cuthbert’s detractors gave way: This was indeed a miracle.

Keep reading here as Harvey explains what undecayed corpses meant to medieval Christians.

What Do You Know … About Culture?

Movies and TV shows are offering up new perspectives on topics rooted in the past. The film The Killing of a Sacred Deer tells a grim version of the Greek myth of Iphigenia, while NBC’s The Good Place is reinventing how pop culture engages with the ethics of Aristotle and Kant. Looking back to the 1980s, a recent documentary about George Michael—narrated by the late singer himself—provides some personal insight into his journey through stardom. And Stranger Things returns today with a more horror-centric telling of the goings-on in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana.

Can you remember the other key facts from this week’s culture coverage? Test your knowledge below:

1. Florie Hutchinson is attempting to add a women’s flat shoe to the Emoji—currently numbering ____________ —that already exist in the Unicode Standard.

Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.

2. American women could not own ____________ in their own name before 1974.

Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.

3. The rock-and-roll star ____________ claimed that Fats Domino was the true king of the genre.

Scroll down for the answer, or find it here.

—Tori Latham

Answers: 2,666 / credit cards / elvis presley

Poem of the Week

From our April 2006 issue, Mary Karr’s “Meditatio”:

In the back’s low hollow sometimes a weightless hand guides me, gentle pressure so I tack soft as a sailboat. (Go there)

Soften the space between your eyes (smudge of eucalyptus), the third eye opens.

Read more here.

Reader Response

Prompted by a Masthead member’s decision to talk publicly about her mental illness, Caroline Kitchener interviewed The Atlantic’s own Scott Stossel about his January/February 2014 cover story, “Surviving Anxiety.” A clinical psychologist remembers reading Stossel’s story the first time around:

I was so impressed with it that I made copies and gave them to several of my patients. His piece is a clear example of why personal stories like that are probably the most effective way of getting people to become more aware of the many issues involved in psychological and emotional difficulties.

Last June you wrote a piece about how difficult it was for many students who had to lose their therapist when they graduated from college. It made me think of how many therapists there are who see people for five, 10, or 20 years. Perhaps, because I worked in a city with few mental-health resources and a high demand for services, I always felt that if someone is “in treatment” for 10 years, while it can be beneficial to them in many ways, it shouldn’t be called therapy. To me, therapy implies that someone will get better. I don’t think mental-health professions have made as much progress as they could have in developing better treatments. Other sciences have been able to use many of the new technologies to improve almost every other area of treatment, but many of the basic treatments for anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder have barely improved over the last 25 years. Anyway, any mention of the issues is a help to the cause.

You can join the discussion with Atlantic editors and fellow readers in our new premium membership program, The Masthead. Sign up here.

Nouns

Augmented bodies, popcorn lung, royal cookbooks, gifted kids.

Time of Your Life

Happy birthday to Tamilore’s sister Lade (a year younger than Toy Story); to Steven (the same age as Michael Jordan); to Peter (twice the age of Facebook); and to Beverly, who shares a birthday with Virginia (both are a year younger than the Lord of the Rings).

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[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[aion-rsa]

Inside Awesome Con and Its Fan First Approach

http://bit.ly/2v6fOYd

We spoke with Ron Brister and Ben Penrod, the creators of Awesome Con, about what sets their show apart from other big fan conventions.

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Aaron Sagers

Apr 10, 2019

Geek Travel

This article is presented in partnership with Leftfield Media and AwesomeCon.

It happens nearly every weekend around the nation. Thousands of superheroes, villains, monsters, fantasy fellowships – and even a few civilians -- gather alongside the actors who portray the characters, and the creatives who give them life. They gather to dress up, share their love of fandom, hear experts talk, pursue holy grail collectibles, nab autographs, and photo ops.

This is the world of comic cons, and it is quite literally show business where pop culture comes to life. And for the past decade, in particular, business has been booming as more fandoms emerge, and genre content takes over box offices, networks, and streaming platforms.

That’s where Ron Brister and Ben Penrod come in, two lifelong fans, and founders, respectively, of Rose City Comic Con in Portland, Oregon, and Awesome Con in Washington, D.C. The two serve as partners behind Leftfield Media, an event company that hosts large scale conventions, which also includes Big Easy Con in New Orleans and Anime NYC.

Leftfield’s events features star talent; KJ Apa and Cole Sprouse of Riverdale, and casts from Cobra Kai, The Office, The Princess Bride, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and more are scheduled to appear at Awesome Con, which runs from April 26-28 in Washington DC. 

While the stars will be in attendance, the company has also distinguished itself with robust programming. For instance, they partner with Smithsonian magazine for Future Con, a block of panels highlighting the intersection of science, technology, and sci-fi. Then there is the generous comic book programming spotlighting industry guests, and the kid-focused Awesome Con Jr.

For a company dedicated to delivering a fan experience unique to each host city, Leftfield’s partners each approached the con business from very different backgrounds – and neither initially involved comic cons.

Brister’s fandom began when he was a military brat living in Japan. He became hooked on animation before returning to the United States around the age of eight, and obsessed over Robotech anime and G.I. Joe comics.

“My mom had got me a comic book subscription at a local comic book shop, Lady Jane’s, because I didn't enjoy reading and she wanted me to read,” says Brister. “But the Larry Hama silent G.I. Joe issue [#21] came out, and that really got me into comics.”

Similarly, for Penrod, it was also his mom that was the nerdy mentor, even though she wasn’t an “out in the crowd, open nerd.”

Penrod’s mother loved Star Wars, and that opened the door to his passion, which led to his love of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman: The Animated Series, and then buying and selling comics on eBay.

Penrod says he went from selling cars in 2008 to buying and flipping comic book collections, and had acquired a quarter million comics in his warehouse. Even though it never became a lucrative endeavor, it served as an intro to the convention scene.

read more: The Best Paranormal and UFO Conventions

“When I was growing up, the scene wasn't like it is now,” Penrod says. “There were cons around, but I grew up pretty poor, and didn't have the money to go out and do a lot of things like that, and I also didn't have anybody to go with, so I never really went to a con until I think 2009, and I was selling comics.”

“I didn't really experience the Con thing as a kid, either,” agrees Brister. “There was an old comic book show that took place, but I never went to it; I don't know if it just wasn't on my radar when I was a kid, or if we were just far enough outside of the city that my mom wasn’t willing to drive into Downtown Portland at the time, and in an area that had been not the safest of neighborhoods.”

Brister's first brush with the world of conventions took place while working for a comic book store in around 1991 – a job he took because it was across the street from the mall where his future wife worked.

“I remember working in the shop, and lo and behold, Todd McFarlane came into the shop," Brister says. "Image was just starting, and he came in to trade stuff like Spawn books because he had this Hot Wheels car that he was putting out and he was looking for hockey and baseball cards. So the first time I met a creator was in a comic book store outside of Portland, Oregon, and he was a guy just shopping for hockey and baseball cards, and had stuff to trade, just like anybody else.”

These early experiences where it wasn’t easy, or affordable, for them to get to cons proved formative for their work on Rose City, Awesome Con, and Leftfield as a whole. Rather than pay-to-play game tournaments, Brister said Leftfield offers “learn to play” tourneys, and strives to offer retro gaming, as well as diverse options in nostalgia, wrestling, and manga categories.

“We're not in the business of chasing down attendees for $500 photo ops with all the stars,” Brister says. “We feel like that market is being served by other organizations …[but] maybe people want to learn about how to break into comics or want to hear from Greg Rucka or Greg Capullo or Scott Snyder or Tom King on how they got into comics.”

As an organizer, Brister says the upwards of 120 hours of programming -- ranging from fan-submitted to “fun and goofy” to curated panels featuring astrophysicists -- is worthwhile for his attendees at Awesome Con “from an educational standpoint and from a value standpoint.”

“You can go to a ‘Learn to Draw Spider-Man’ panel, or you can go to a college level lesson or symposium on the evolution of Superman, or you can get on and listen to Erin Macdonald talk about the mechanics and the physics related to going to Mars,” Brister says. “And we're going to have the director of NASA at Awesome Con this year! What other comic con has the director of NASA?”

Penrod adds the programming reflects an important goal of Leftfield Media to host shows that represent the city they’re in.

“For Awesome Con to be special in D.C., it has to incorporate the city,” he says. “It has to stand out amongst all the other shows in the country, and be something you could only get in D.C.”

“We could have a big top tent, roll into cities, and just pop up like the circus and roll away, but that's not our modus operandi,” says Brister, who noted every city has its own vibe that must be catered to, from the “creative, well-read, comic-centric” fans of Portland, those who love science and pop culture in D.C., and the horror, nostalgia, and strong cosplay contingent of New Orleans.

read more: The Best Cosplays at Comic Con

Penrod says Leftfield also hosts events throughout the year, such as scavenger hunts, movie screenings, or events in local retailers designed to remain active in communities year-round. Brister jokes there is a strong connection between fan culture and beer culture – a connection he shares – and that Leftfield tries to create partnerships with local breweries in each city.

Not that Brister has much time for a cold one during a show, since he and Penrod are often running about, managing the fan experience.

However, both men have had their special comic con moments which eluded them as children.

Penrod says it always shocks him on some level when a big celebrity guest arrives at a con, as was the case with the Twelfth Doctor from Doctor Who. “I know that there's a contract, and they're advertised that they're coming to the show, but it's always not real until they actually show up.”

Penrod says he knew Peter Capaldi had checked into the hotel, and was on his way to the event. But then he met him.

“He comes through the door, and I introduce myself, and then he's got to go off and do his thing, and I just looked over at Peter, who works with us, and I'm like, ‘The Doctor is here! Like, The Doctor! He's actually here!’ So, we kinda geeked-out over that.”

Poignantly, Brister’s experience goes back to his mom, who supported his fandom in the first place.

“My parents had split up when I was a kid, after we got back from Japan, the one thing that my mom loved, and still loves to this day, the old Star Trek,” reflects Brister. “So when I had the ability to bring in William Shatner in a number of events, it was a cool seeing my mom's reaction to getting to meet him, and how genuinely nice to her he was -- it was probably one of the best experiences for me, being able to give her that experience.”

While not every fan may meet Captain Kirk, Brister’s story sums up the kind of memorable experience available to all attendees who visit the unique Leftfield Media events.

Awesome Con Events and Guests 

What makes Awesome Con so awesome? So glad you asked. The celebrity guest roster at this year’s event includes cast reunions for Star Trek: The Next Generation (Brent Spiner, Marina Sirtis, Wil Wheaton, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden), Weird Science (Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Kelly LeBrock), The Office (Kate Flannery, Creed Bratton, Oscar Nunez), Karate Kid/Cobra Kai (Ralpha Macchio, Martin Kove, William Zabka), and The Princess Bride (Cary Elwes, Wallace Shawn, Chris Sarandon), along with KJ Apa and Cole Sprouse of the hit show Riverdale. Marvel’s Netflix shows will be represented by The Punisher’s Jon Bernthal and Luke Cage’s Mike Colter and Theo Rossi.

As if that’s not enough, other celebrity guests include Val Kilmer, Jason Isaacs, Milo Ventimiglia, Tom Payne, “Weird” Al Yankovic, Mary McDonell, Michael Biehn, Tara Strong, Susan Egan, Greg Cipes, Sean Schemmel, Zach Callison, Phil Lamarr, and more!

- On the comic front, Awesome Con is gathering top talent from the industry including Clay Mann, Greg Capullo, Tim Sale, Amy Chu, sci-fi author extraordinaire Timothy Zahn, Kevin Maguire, Chrissie Zullo, Margueritte Bennett, Steve Orlando and more.

Both Oni Press and Adult Swim are bringing exclusive goodies to Awesome Con including a Rick And Morty #49 comic limited to 500 issues with a limited edition variant by Kyle Starks.

- Drink up (if you’re of legal age) the exclusive Awesome Con beer Hop Bot, from Atlas Brewery. But always be a responsible nerd.

With both Future Con, and Awesome Con Jr., the programming takes flight with science and culture focused panels involving the Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, and more -- with World War Z author Max Brooks bringing his zombie expertise to the show. Meanwhile, the programming for younger fans at Awesome Con Jr. include Dreamworks, and The National Wildlife Foundation.

Awesome Con runs from April 26-28 in Washington DC. Click here for more info!

from Books http://bit.ly/2X2EU61

[lightningwolf66]

Why Companies Need Business Intelligence

New Post has been published on http://app2chart.com/why-companies-need-business-intelligence/

Why Companies Need Business Intelligence

By Jose Allan Tan

“We need information but all we have is data!”

This is the message managers often complain about. If there is anything that IT has ever done right it is the ability to collect nearly every single bit of data imaginable — from data that is written or keyed-in to a computing device, to images like signatures and X-rays. We even record voice and video these days.

One manager told me over coffee: “I’ve got data coming out of my ears. I don’t know how to make sense of it!”

Part-time solutions have been around for many years. I say “part-time” because the solutions solve only “part of the problem, part of the time.” Product marketers have labeled these as business intelligence (BI) tools.

Wikipedia defines business intelligence as applications and technologies which are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information about their company operations.

The goal of BI tools is to allow anyone using the information provided to make better business decisions. But there are a few problems with traditional BI tools.

BI is mostly associated with report delivery. Usually there are few people within an organization who actually know how to use BI tools. These users hold on to this ‘control’ because they probably get a kick out of the power they have over others.

More importantly, such specialty creates job security. But the net effect has been dissatisfaction with what was purchased, and concern over making further investments in the future.

BI tools’ failure rests in the business unit’s failure to communicate their needs and IT’s failure to ask the right questions. The result is solutions that fail to deliver expectations.

“Previous perceptions of BI didn’t factor the value provided in managing and making sense of the information assets contained within every enterprise,” says V.R. Srivatsan, vice president of Asia South for Business Objects.

“However, this is changing as both technology and the business will with which to use it are maturing resulting in BI becoming a key business process driver within today’s enterprise,” Srivatsan adds.

BI wish list

Suganthi Shivkumar, managing director for ASEAN & India at Hyperion Solutions, notes that business managers want tools that give them increased insight into the dynamic nature of the global marketplace and allow them to identify areas of profitability.

They expect IT to unlock information that is potentially trapped between silos of applications scattered throughout the enterprise.

“Today’s regulatory institutions and business climate are very unforgiving towards any kind of expectation variances or financial discrepancies that may be construed as malfeasance or misconduct. This forces companies to put a lot of rigor in their planning and reporting processes. To produce reports with confidence is critical in the choice of BI tools,” Shivkumar says.

Having a single version of the truth is also just as important. Finally organizations want to have clear visibility of their operations including accurate demand-revenue-expenses forecasts to better deploy resources and capitalize on opportunities.

Business intelligence has emerged as a strategic initiative and investment priority for companies. But because departmental objectives vary, it would be easy to lose sight of the core objectives of the company and to deploy BI tools (sometimes from different vendors) to satisfy those needs.

The net result of such a strategy is a proliferation of disparate systems that not only do not effectively inter-operate with each other but complicate the matters.

The good news is that despite all the not-so-glorious past of BI tools, CEOs still believe that BI tools play an important role in today’s competitive environment.

Global competitive pressures, and mergers and acquisitions are putting constant pressures on restructuring and finding additional sources of profitability. CEOs want insight to help them steer the business through these turbulent times.

For decades companies have been spending millions on enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer resource management (CRM) and data warehousing (DW) tools. With so much information locked in repositories, CEOs are putting pressure on IT to unlock information trapped in those systems.

After Enron, it’s no longer enough to produce reports on time. Accuracy and consistency of reporting have become paramount and discrepancies can mean jail time for even the rich and powerful.

Who is responsible?

Changing the way things get done

Business intelligence has emerged as a top strategic initiative and investment priority for CEOs, but not surprisingly department objectives vary. Having learned from the past, IT is working to standardize on the type of tools it will deploy across the organization.

Users from across the business, not just managers, want quality information on demand, and are no longer willing to wait for IT to serve it. They also want the flexibility and ease of use in engaging tools that they are familiar with (the nearly ubiquitous use of Microsoft Office). And they want their information delivered consistently.

Business users need tools and solutions which not only can deliver information, but can manage information and produce information by integrating with their current systems. Finally they need to be able to tie operational information to financial information.

Minimizing the risk of failure

Business author and management expert Peter Drucker said there is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well. Why does this happen? Because people don’t understand the company plan or have visibility into how the business is performing.

It happens because people are not accountable for their part of the strategy, or can?t rely on their information to make good decisions.

One of the greatest failings of BI has been in how it gets deployed. Intelligence demand often starts out at a specific department where the scope is tactical and thus deployment is departmental in scope.

The result is a proliferation of tools serving the unique needs of specific departments. Unfortunately, the lack of consistent visibility across the enterprise means that these tools will have limited impact and may not even be aligned with the corporate objectives.

Have you read through a BI tool manual lately? You will notice that it isn’t designed to be used by a layman? Many of today’s BI tools are used by so-called power users who act as gatekeepers of the information. The result is BI tools do not get widespread adoption.

“BI tools must not be limited to those within an organization based on technical skills or of a certain department. To maximize the adoption of the BI tools within the organization, all employees should be given access to the information they need to make business decisions,” advises Shivkumar.

BI is no longer just about the report, but what’s IN the report. Just as business dynamics are constantly changing, BI tools must evolve from a report-centric to information-centric approach that delivers “actionable” insight.

Therefore, it needs to be universally recognized within the organization that BI supports improving performance. BI is a tool that is able to deal with the past, present and future and is the power to provide insight that leads to true competitive differentiation.

The only way to maximize the value of BI is to focus on the total picture — information management, production and delivery that ensures consistent information, and the ability for users to analyze and re-purpose data.

Only then can a standard be identified and adopted across the entire enterprise.

Peep at the future

The current software trend is that of Software as a Service (SaaS) and BI tools are not immune to this trend. In addition, search and web collaboration are functionalities embedded in what vendors are calling the Business Intelligence 2.0 revolution.

Srivatsan cites the example of an emergency room doctor who could use search within BI to scour a broad set of data sources to find out how many instances of food poisoning have been reported in the past 24 hours, where people are affected, and determine common causes.

This real-time access to trustworthy data could help medical professionals spot and prevent widespread outbreak of food-related illnesses.

Companies can also look forward to more collaborative BI such as instant messenger BI where a sales team could have an IM discussion over a dashboard that shows sales performance below objectives, thereby speeding the process for establishing the next steps for addressing the situation.

Imagine being able to call upon BI tools to provide analysis of data as it comes in. This is, after all, what business managers want — the ability to analyze and perform “what if” scenarios with data as it comes in from the field. No waiting for periods to close. What you have is the ability to make decisions at the right time, right place and in the right context.

Final advice

Gartner’s vice president for research, Andreas Bitterer believes that business intelligence needs to be a continuous process for it to be of value. So stop thinking of it as a project.

Srivatsan: “Few organizations have a comprehensive enterprise BI strategy or clearly defined BI standards. Companies with a patchwork of disparate BI technologies are facing the consequences, including, rising deployment, maintenance and training costs, inconsistent information, and frustrated employees who cannot get timely answers to business questions.

By reducing the number of BI tools, companies can save money, have confidence in and control over business data, and give employees the information they need to do their jobs well, he adds.

app marketing

[zuranimukherjeenudexn]

Why Companies Need Business Intelligence

New Post has been published on http://app2chart.com/why-companies-need-business-intelligence/

Why Companies Need Business Intelligence

By Jose Allan Tan

“We need information but all we have is data!”

This is the message managers often complain about. If there is anything that IT has ever done right it is the ability to collect nearly every single bit of data imaginable — from data that is written or keyed-in to a computing device, to images like signatures and X-rays. We even record voice and video these days.

One manager told me over coffee: “I’ve got data coming out of my ears. I don’t know how to make sense of it!”

Part-time solutions have been around for many years. I say “part-time” because the solutions solve only “part of the problem, part of the time.” Product marketers have labeled these as business intelligence (BI) tools.

Wikipedia defines business intelligence as applications and technologies which are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information about their company operations.

The goal of BI tools is to allow anyone using the information provided to make better business decisions. But there are a few problems with traditional BI tools.

BI is mostly associated with report delivery. Usually there are few people within an organization who actually know how to use BI tools. These users hold on to this ‘control’ because they probably get a kick out of the power they have over others.

More importantly, such specialty creates job security. But the net effect has been dissatisfaction with what was purchased, and concern over making further investments in the future.

BI tools’ failure rests in the business unit’s failure to communicate their needs and IT’s failure to ask the right questions. The result is solutions that fail to deliver expectations.

“Previous perceptions of BI didn’t factor the value provided in managing and making sense of the information assets contained within every enterprise,” says V.R. Srivatsan, vice president of Asia South for Business Objects.

“However, this is changing as both technology and the business will with which to use it are maturing resulting in BI becoming a key business process driver within today’s enterprise,” Srivatsan adds.

BI wish list

Suganthi Shivkumar, managing director for ASEAN & India at Hyperion Solutions, notes that business managers want tools that give them increased insight into the dynamic nature of the global marketplace and allow them to identify areas of profitability.

They expect IT to unlock information that is potentially trapped between silos of applications scattered throughout the enterprise.

“Today’s regulatory institutions and business climate are very unforgiving towards any kind of expectation variances or financial discrepancies that may be construed as malfeasance or misconduct. This forces companies to put a lot of rigor in their planning and reporting processes. To produce reports with confidence is critical in the choice of BI tools,” Shivkumar says.

Having a single version of the truth is also just as important. Finally organizations want to have clear visibility of their operations including accurate demand-revenue-expenses forecasts to better deploy resources and capitalize on opportunities.

Business intelligence has emerged as a strategic initiative and investment priority for companies. But because departmental objectives vary, it would be easy to lose sight of the core objectives of the company and to deploy BI tools (sometimes from different vendors) to satisfy those needs.

The net result of such a strategy is a proliferation of disparate systems that not only do not effectively inter-operate with each other but complicate the matters.

The good news is that despite all the not-so-glorious past of BI tools, CEOs still believe that BI tools play an important role in today’s competitive environment.

Global competitive pressures, and mergers and acquisitions are putting constant pressures on restructuring and finding additional sources of profitability. CEOs want insight to help them steer the business through these turbulent times.

For decades companies have been spending millions on enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer resource management (CRM) and data warehousing (DW) tools. With so much information locked in repositories, CEOs are putting pressure on IT to unlock information trapped in those systems.

After Enron, it’s no longer enough to produce reports on time. Accuracy and consistency of reporting have become paramount and discrepancies can mean jail time for even the rich and powerful.

Who is responsible?

Changing the way things get done

Business intelligence has emerged as a top strategic initiative and investment priority for CEOs, but not surprisingly department objectives vary. Having learned from the past, IT is working to standardize on the type of tools it will deploy across the organization.

Users from across the business, not just managers, want quality information on demand, and are no longer willing to wait for IT to serve it. They also want the flexibility and ease of use in engaging tools that they are familiar with (the nearly ubiquitous use of Microsoft Office). And they want their information delivered consistently.

Business users need tools and solutions which not only can deliver information, but can manage information and produce information by integrating with their current systems. Finally they need to be able to tie operational information to financial information.

Minimizing the risk of failure

Business author and management expert Peter Drucker said there is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well. Why does this happen? Because people don’t understand the company plan or have visibility into how the business is performing.

It happens because people are not accountable for their part of the strategy, or can?t rely on their information to make good decisions.

One of the greatest failings of BI has been in how it gets deployed. Intelligence demand often starts out at a specific department where the scope is tactical and thus deployment is departmental in scope.

The result is a proliferation of tools serving the unique needs of specific departments. Unfortunately, the lack of consistent visibility across the enterprise means that these tools will have limited impact and may not even be aligned with the corporate objectives.

Have you read through a BI tool manual lately? You will notice that it isn’t designed to be used by a layman? Many of today’s BI tools are used by so-called power users who act as gatekeepers of the information. The result is BI tools do not get widespread adoption.

“BI tools must not be limited to those within an organization based on technical skills or of a certain department. To maximize the adoption of the BI tools within the organization, all employees should be given access to the information they need to make business decisions,” advises Shivkumar.

BI is no longer just about the report, but what’s IN the report. Just as business dynamics are constantly changing, BI tools must evolve from a report-centric to information-centric approach that delivers “actionable” insight.

Therefore, it needs to be universally recognized within the organization that BI supports improving performance. BI is a tool that is able to deal with the past, present and future and is the power to provide insight that leads to true competitive differentiation.

The only way to maximize the value of BI is to focus on the total picture — information management, production and delivery that ensures consistent information, and the ability for users to analyze and re-purpose data.

Only then can a standard be identified and adopted across the entire enterprise.

Peep at the future

The current software trend is that of Software as a Service (SaaS) and BI tools are not immune to this trend. In addition, search and web collaboration are functionalities embedded in what vendors are calling the Business Intelligence 2.0 revolution.

Srivatsan cites the example of an emergency room doctor who could use search within BI to scour a broad set of data sources to find out how many instances of food poisoning have been reported in the past 24 hours, where people are affected, and determine common causes.

This real-time access to trustworthy data could help medical professionals spot and prevent widespread outbreak of food-related illnesses.

Companies can also look forward to more collaborative BI such as instant messenger BI where a sales team could have an IM discussion over a dashboard that shows sales performance below objectives, thereby speeding the process for establishing the next steps for addressing the situation.

Imagine being able to call upon BI tools to provide analysis of data as it comes in. This is, after all, what business managers want — the ability to analyze and perform “what if” scenarios with data as it comes in from the field. No waiting for periods to close. What you have is the ability to make decisions at the right time, right place and in the right context.

Final advice

Gartner’s vice president for research, Andreas Bitterer believes that business intelligence needs to be a continuous process for it to be of value. So stop thinking of it as a project.

Srivatsan: “Few organizations have a comprehensive enterprise BI strategy or clearly defined BI standards. Companies with a patchwork of disparate BI technologies are facing the consequences, including, rising deployment, maintenance and training costs, inconsistent information, and frustrated employees who cannot get timely answers to business questions.

By reducing the number of BI tools, companies can save money, have confidence in and control over business data, and give employees the information they need to do their jobs well, he adds.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]