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frownyalfred · 5 months ago

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Arkham Prince - Masterlist of Posts

I've linked the major asks below with a preview (edited for length) below, grouped by subject/theme and rough chronological order of how I received them. Additional shorter asks/clarifying questions, as well as shorter bits of commentary are at the very bottom.

The very first post:

I have been thinking about the idea of Bruce going insane without being Batman, about Batman being his coping mechanism, and that reblog that was like "he would definitely have ended up in Arkham if he didnt make Batman." Now I'm thinking of an AU where that is exactly the case, and maybe Clark expands his interest towards Gotham a bit, as much as he doesnt like heroing there, because it is the neighbor city of Metropolis. It's like his backyard. And maybe he wants to understand the problem of Gotham at the root, so he goes as Clark Kent, reporter, to interview the patients at Arkham, and there meets Bruce Wayne. Maybe falls in love. Maybe its angsty as fuck because this Bruce is 10 times less adjusted than the Bruce we're used to, but of course, equally as brilliant. (Maybe he could escape any time he wanted but thinks he would murder people if so. Maybe he doesnt trust his anger.)

Expanding Asks:

the idea of arkham patient bruce wayne has burrowed into the depths of my mind. this is SUCH a fascinating thought and changes so many things…how does the justice league fare without batman? how does alfred? i’d assume alfred is given bruce’s guardianship when he’s institutionalized, and i could even see him taking in the robins – finding and helping these children who remind him so much of his own boy, trying not to fail them as he failed bruce. how bruce himself does in arkham is so interesting to consider…is he kept on the same level of security as the real supervillains? is he moved there after Events?

Clark, realizing the League has a problem, a trap from someone like Lex they don't know how to unknot, something which requires finesse and strategy which is a little beyond them... taking that stroll (flight) down to Gotham, feeling insane himself for seeking advise here of all places... but the Arkham Prince delivers. Clark explains the situation, answers questions that he had no idea related to the issue, and Bruce hands him the solution in the span of 10 minutes, while the League had been brainstorming and going in circles over this for days...

Clark Kent and the Arkham Prince Finding Common Ground:

clark’s first attempt to interview the prince of arkham go about as well as you might expect, given that he’s a reporter with sunshine all but seeping out of his pores. the first time bruce doesn’t even talk to him, too furious at the gall of this metropolitan newshound to interrogate him for the sake of some gruesome, sensationalist op-ed obviously about the tragedy of the family wayne and the irredeemable mire of gotham to do anything more than death-glare at him for the entire length of the meeting. but clark, unsatisfyingly, doesn’t give up after that. if bruce doesn’t talk to him, he sure talks to bruce, and with each subsequent interview the questions…change. no longer trying to establish facts about bruce’s life or his crimes, not asking about his experience in arkham, not even going for the low-hanging fruit of why’d you train for years to kill those people, but seemingly random and unrelated things. he wants bruce’s opinions on emissions policies (need to be stricter and more tightly enforced, especially in gotham, jesus, there’s a reason lung cancer and asthma rates are through the roof) and lex luthor’s keynote speeches (unprintable, wiped from clark’s tape recorder in case luthor somehow finds out) and whether or not clark should buy a new suit (why bother, it won’t be any less tragic than every other polyester abomination he cruelly forces bruce to look at every time he stops by). clark slowly and stubbornly makes himself as much a part of bruce’s routine as visits with alfred and lucius and the doctors, and all the while superman is playing a high-stakes game of mental chess with the sinking suspicion that bruce wayne has already won in more ways than one bruce figures out kent is superman about three hours after the first time big blue gets namedropped during an interview. he commences with a plan that is part honeypot, part campaign of psychological warfare, and part genuine bid to get this midwestern alien who holds the safety of his city in his hands to try and give a damn like a proper gothamite would, like no one but bruce ever seems to.

Clark, whose one of his grestest fears is being constrained, treated as a threat, dissected, studied, as the alien specimen he is. He has to pretend. He had to be so careful. Every day or he won't have a life to live.

Clark asking the Arkham Prince to Consult for the JL:

i would kill to have clark-as-supes get some kind of special dispensation to bring arkham prince bruce to the jl hideout (the watchtower doesn’t to be without batman’s engineering/logistics knowhow and WE funding, at least not until bruce is more formally considered a consultant) for help on one of lex’s more convoluted and immediate threats. it’s just not possible for bruce to solve the problem in isolation without the league’s resources, so instead of bringing league missions to bruce superman has to bring bruce to the league mission. i started imagining the team’s reaction to their unwitting reliance on criminally insane mass murderer bruce wayne and then i remembered oliver exists and now i feel only sadness thinking about that particular reunion

Just wondering how regular JL universe would react to meeting this au, meeting Batman and seeing Bruce Wayne's potential Would they realize that their Bruce is limited by what he can do inside Arkham, but that this Batman is also limited by his own rules and codes. Would Ollie be crushed at what his former friend could have been, thinking maybe if he had stepped up and been a "better friend" Bruce wouldn't be in Arkham, he could of been working beside him instead. Can imagine Batman saying "I don't kill" and Bruce just smiling in what should have been the brucie smile and replying "but I do"

The crossover is so funny in regards to Supes. Like here's Arkham Prince AU Clark, terribly in love with a version of Bruce who is so unavailable to him on so many levels, aching with it every time he dares think about it, staring at Regular Universe Clark in complete and utter disbelief. (expansion of "regular JL universe" ask above)

Your take on Prince of Arkham's level of influence on JL members, at the top being of course Clark. And also: first time he is taken into the JL base, does he hack into their systems?

OMG arkham bruce and clark have gotten closer and maybe clark makes bruce promise not to kill again after bruce gets out of arkham so he can join the jl but then someone is killed and theres evidence it was bruce but bruce swears it wasnt him ( bc it wasn’t him ) but theres so much evidence that even clark is starting to doubt bruces innocence and the jl has to kick him out and hes taken back to Arkham or for interrogation and then ANGST BRUCE BEING TORTURED FOR CONFESSION BUT HE STILL SWEARS HE DIDNT DO IT until its proven that he didnt do it

@bat-chik's Harvey Dent Visits Bruce in Arkham

"We can't even claim self defense," Harvey continued. "You-" "He has cancer." Harvey blinked at the non-sequitur, "What?" Finally, the orphaned Wayne turned and faced him, face blank, unconcerned about how much more this action would add to his sentencing. Unconcerned except for the steel eyes seething yet holding back so much hurt. Harvey remembered once again, with a small pang, why he had gotten a crush on Bruce in their college days. "Nygma. He has cancer. The only way to get medical care in Arkham is by ending up in the hospital wing." Bruce moved with all the weight of the world on his shoulders and sat in the bolted chair across from his lawyer, and life long friend.

Where are the Batkids in This?

pls consider. a dick greyson who gets tossed in arkham after tracking down and torturing then killing killing his parent's murderer. tiny and lost now that what was driving him is done. a bruce wayne who hasnt been in That long yet, not long enough for people to see him as a threat rather than just an oddity, who takes one look at that angry little kid and says "oh. oh that ones mine" and spends as much time with the kid as he can. and bruce Loves gotham, thats his whole drive. but to dick, gotham is nothing but the place his world crumbled. and i think this bruce never sat with his feelings of grief either. i think he always needed a cause. and i think he saw dick having lost his cause and tries to help him find another (id like to put forth escaping as a hobby, managing to get into Any part of arkham that he pleases especially with his athleticism and small size)

It would be funny if in the Arkham Prince AU, since all the kids are in there for being um - gremlins and down with murder - that Jason in this was the pacifist?

Re: Jason being the pacifist: "I will follow you forever because you killed him." Endlessly devoted Jason my beloved. If you give him one (1) positive attention he will light himself on fire to keep you warm. I love him so much. Self destructive king.

Tim committing a crime just to end up in Arkham and study the famed insane Bruce Wayne is actually startlingly in character for him...

Clarifying Asks:

when do you see him as getting committed? was he already batman? did he already have any of his kids? if not, what *happened* to those kids who never had bruce to fight for them?

Okay, but since Bruce is the Prince of Arkham, whats stopping his kids from being in there with him?

Oh I am sooooooooo curious about what Clark thinks about Arkham Bruce having a gaggle of prison murder children.…you ever think he’s asked Dick to give Clark flowers during one of his escapes????? Or is that too corny for them.

I've seen some Arkham Prince asks and responses referring to Bruce still being rich, but would he still be?

Additional Thoughts:

i am torn between the other Inmates Hating bruce (hes the picture of those who hurt them. a rich man who is just like them but gets Way less pain for it) and adoring him

Picture this, Alfred goes to see Haly's, sees another black haired blue eyed child losing his parents at just about the same age. Another feral child with murder in his eyes.

it’s extremely important to me to consider arkham prince bruce with longer, shaggy hair and a perpetual three-day beard

The smut in the Arkham Prince AU would be INSANE.

This Arkham Prince AU has folks in a choke hold but ya'll forget one thing. The Joker and Harley Quinn.

god i am just exploding thinking about bruce and sex in the arkham prince au. there is absolutely no way he’s not accustomed to exchanging sex for favors, information, anything he wants or needs. (additional thoughts on how Clark fits into this/Superbat)

Okay hi so my main source of Arkham knowledge is the Penguin show so I’m gonna ramble a bit about factions and divides and stuff. (Sofia Falcone expansion)

continuing my thoughts on Sofia Falcone coming off your great opinions to my last ask.

There is a parallel thread between Bruce and Sofia

#arkham prince #arkham prince au #batman #bruce wayne #dc #asks #anon #batfamily #clark kent #superman #superbat #jl #justice league #fic ideas #fic outline

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taliabhattwrites · 4 months ago

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Saying that "Transmisogyny is Misandry" is an act of epistemic violence. Stop it.

The following is a section of my essay The Question Has An Answer, entitled "The Measure of a Misandrist"

This is, ultimately, where most critiques of radical feminism go wrong, even when supposedly made with trans women’s vilification in mind. It is a too-popular idea that radical feminism was too harsh, too critical and too antagonistic towards men. After all—goes the reasoning—is not the fixation on trans women, the denial of our womanhood, and the maligning of us as ontologically predatory a consequence of their gender-absolutism? Is not resorting to ‘misandry’ in response to society’s misogyny also wrong?

Such arguments fail to be compelling for two reasons, the first of which should be obvious: transmisogyny is not misandry. The transmisogynist does not treat trans women the way she treats men, even if she refers to a trans woman as a man in the process of degendering her. Even if a transmisogynist bears an authentic antipathy for men, there is a crucial difference in how she regards trans women: namely, as an acceptable target of misogynistic degradation. Trans women’s bodies are dissected and scrutinized, our behavior pathologized and sexualized, and our own testimony discarded as unreliable, insubstantial, and immaterial. We are dehumanized, third-sexed, and branded permissible targets for ritualistic, collective, and sexualized punishment. A fate that even queer men tend to be spared.

Secondly and perhaps more importantly: the ‘misandry’ of the average transmisogynistic feminist is greatly overstated.

Trivially, we can note how the modern Gender-Conservative movement is full of men and the women who gleefully encourage their violence against trans people, a modern incarnation that bears the most threadbare of claims to any feminist tradition. They are, more than anything, a project concerned with the obfuscation of the term ‘feminist’, so that staunchly patriarchal ideologues can claim the label simply for promulgating transmisogynistic rhetoric. The face of modern transphobia is a far-flung cry from the academic lesbian feminists of yore, and is these days definitively male. Men abound at transphobic rallies, threaten to follow trans women into bathrooms to beat them, and call for the abolition of transition care in publications the world over.

Is such an answer evasive, though? Surely conservative men’s transmisogyny is a mainstream discursive force now, but was not the second wave chock-full of misandrist lesbian feminists aiming their ire at trans women? Can we not draw a line from their extremism to modern antifeminist backlash?

To get to the heart of that matter, we have to recall a little history.

April, 1973. The West Coast Lesbian Conference was, at that point, the largest gathering of lesbian feminists to date. Beth Elliot, a trans lesbian folk singer and feminist activist had been on the organizing committee for the event and was also scheduled to perform on opening night. Her fellow LA organizers had, in fact, insisted upon it.

When she took the stage at 9 p.m., she was accosted by two women, one of whom snatched the mic away to scream that Beth was a “transsexual” and a “rapist”, and demanded that she be ejected. In the ensuing chaos, a few organizers took the initiative to hold a vote (or, two, by some accounts), allowing the assembled audience to decide on Beth’s inclusion. The vote passed—by a slim majority, in some accounts, or by an overwhelming two-thirds majority, in some others—and so a visibly shaken Beth Elliot, with the support of her sisters, gave a short performance before promptly leaving.

Robin Morgan, who was scheduled to give a keynote speech on the theme of ‘unity’ the following day, spent the night editing her address. Rather than speaking for forty-five minutes, Morgan spent twice that time on a meandering screed “attacking everything in sight”, per Pat Buchanan—the conference organizers, women who work with men, and of course, transsexuals, blaming the continuing ills of patriarchy on a lack of feminist consciousness. Her caustic rhetoric shifted the entire tone and mood of the conference, forefronting the issue of biodestined womanhood. The Black Women’s Caucus, who had prepared a position paper on Black feminist organizing and the relevance of race to their struggle, are often omitted entirely from accounts of the conference, in large part due to Morgan’s troonmadness sucking up all the oxygen.

While some of the facts surrounding this incident are disputed, we know that Morgan’s invective was circulated amongst lesbian feminists, drawing attention to the topic of transsexual inclusion. Her charges that Beth Elliot was an “infiltrator” and “rapist” accrued sufficient cachet to get Beth blacklisted from feminist publications and music scenes. Despite a measure of personal support, Beth withdrew from the public eye, and Morgan’s bilious language found itself echoed in 1979’s Transsexual Empire, this time levied at Sandy Stone.

In some sense, Robin Morgan, Sister Raymond, and their ilk set the discursive tone on translesbophobia. While 1960’s Psycho attests that the idea of the deceptive, cross-dressing predator already held some sway in the cultural psychosexual imaginary, Morgan and Raymond—clumsily and soporifically—elevated that hateful trope to the status of “feminist concern”. They provided a framework and legitimacy to complement the sexologists’ pathologization of the “homosexual transsexual”, transmuting the cultural idea of the tranny from a pitiable, somewhat tragic figure, to a rapacious and monstrous one. Although coercion through deceptive seduction had always been core to the mythology of transsexuality, Morgan and Raymond enabled eradicationist sentiment towards trans women as a whole to be imbued with a certain feminist authority, recasting it as almost righteous.

We were, in the truest sense of the term, constructed, remade as biotechnological horrors seeking to traverse, fresh and bloody, from the scalpel to the women’s bathroom.

Given the centrality of that hastily-rewritten keynote speech to modern transmisogynistic propaganda, Morgan’s awareness of its discursive relevance is fascinating to witness. As Finn Enke notes in Collective Memory and the Transfeminist 1970s, when Morgan published her own account in 1977, her comments from the 1973 speech condemning the organizers for “inviting” Beth Elliot are omitted entirely. Morgan deliberately edited the speech to extend her critique of transsexuals and Beth Elliot specifically, dubbing them “gatecrashers” who sought to undermine and destroy the feminist movement from within. She consciously chose to erase Beth’s involvement in organizing the event, in addition to eliding that the majority of second-wave lesbian feminists present chose to defend and protect her.

Perhaps the most telling omission in subsequent accounts of this speech is an interesting detail about Morgan herself. Once she was done berating “women who work with men”, Morgan launched an impassioned defense of her husband. Before she derided Beth Elliot as a “male gatecrasher” with no place in lesbian feminism, Morgan advocated for her male husband’s place in lesbian feminism, on the grounds that he was a “feminist”, a “feminine man”, and—I still cannot help but marvel at this term whenever I encounter it—an “effeminist faggot”.

Seriously.

It is impossible to overstate just how utterly pathetic this pantomime of radicalism is. Morgan sublimated her own sexual and gendered anxieties into unrestrained transmisogyny, as many people often do, seeking to secure her own place as a lesbian by defining her legitimacy against the seeming illegitimacy of an “outsider”. Her arguments for doing so hinged on staining transsexual womanhood with the original sin of reproducing manhood, even as she pleaded the case that her husband, through his proximity to the feminine, had successfully absolved his own! Morgan’s audacity and insecurity drips off the page, revealing her charade to be nothing more than a performative, incoherent, inconsistent, bigoted farce.

Additionally, this revelation demonstrates how even here, in the holy of holies, at the epicenter of lesbian-feminist transmisogyny, misandry could hardly be claimed as a motivation. Beth Elliot was condemned for her transsexuality. Her putative ‘manhood’ was invoked only to degender and dehumanize her, while the avowed transmisogynist slurring her asked for the inclusion of men in the same breath!

Nor should we discount those who stood by Beth Elliot and Sandy Stone, even if their efforts were ignored, silenced, and erased. Enke’s paper meditates on a photograph of Beth on stage, framed to depict her alone, isolated, besieged. The woman holding Beth’s hand is left just out of the picture.

Meanwhile, for all their condemnation of trans lesbians’ “male energy”, the transmisogynists who so revile trans women’s “manhood” had no compunctions when it came to allying with the “male institutions” that have surveilled us, vilified us, marginalized us, and tried to erase our very stories, our connections, our sisterhood from history. Even the scraps that remain cannot escape reframing, rewriting, revisionism that insists: you were always unwanted, and stood apart.

Except when we weren’t, and didn’t.

#transfeminism #materialist feminism #gender is a regime #social constructionism #feminism #sex is a social construct #lesbian feminism #third sexing #degendering #stop saying 'transmisogyny is misandry'#you are literally doing the thing and decentering trans women in discussions of our own oppression

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softlymellow · 23 days ago

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The Order Forgot Me First - Chapter 13

☆⁠ PAIRING : Anakin Skywalker x Reader

☆⁠ word count: 5k !!!!??!?!?!?

☆⁠ story themes: lovers to enemies to eventually lovers

☆⁠ warnings: spoilers to SWTCW, some angst some fluff TW PHYSICAL/MILD SEXUAL HARRASSMENT

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14

"Jealousy in Jedi robes."

The conversation went on, politics and more politics. The senators spoke amongst themselves while you shifted weight between your feet. Anakin did the same, though he had a rather hard look on his face, his Adam's apple bobbing every minute or so. Padme, Bail and Monian seemed quite eager to discuss the political agendas of the night.

You stayed quiet, letting the words pass you through one ear and out the other. It wasn’t until you felt Monian shifting closer to you, his face leaned in.

“You don’t wear silence well,” he said, low enough that only you could hear.

You gave him a side glance. “It’s the only thing I’m allowed to do lately,” you snorted.

He chuckled softly, “they should let you speak more often.” He brought his glass up to his well trimmed beard. “I’m rather keen on your thoughts on the shifting trades.”

Across the circle, Anakin spoke. “You never struck me as someone who was interested in politics.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, looking at him as if you were back in the training arena. “That’s because you were never listening.”

The air tightened. Padme blinked, her shoulders still.

Monian had a rather bemused expression, “the way I see it, a Commander would know plenty about politics,” he said lightly. “The Jedi are a separate body from the Senate. Different ideologies”

Anakin turned to look down at Monian directly, him being much taller than the Senator. “Real Jedi don’t abandon their lifelong principles so easily,” he said in a low tone.

“I must be in rare company. Her every move, every breath, says more than half this room’s senators combined.” Vale turns to you, his mouth curling. “I admire honesty. Especially when worn so…effortlessly.”

You didn’t look away from Monian.

Anakin didn’t either.

His mouth barely twitched and his arms were crossed. You knew that look. It was the kind before he would snap. Before he did something reckless.

But he didn’t speak.

His silence spoke a thousand words.

And for now, you smiled.

It wasn’t only Anakin that was silent but rather Bail and Padme too. Monian’s compliment lingered in the air for far longer than needed —entirely too public.

Bail cleared his throat, “Senator Vale,” he began, his voice measured. “You have always had a way with… words.”

Monian chuckled, “is it a sin to speak the truth?”

Padme tilted her head. “Sometimes moderation is needed,” she said gently, her eyes flickering to you for a second.” Before Padme could continue, another woman came up to her —presumably another senator– and whispered something in her ear.

Taking the opportunity, you shifted your stance so that Monian’s presence was no longer suffocating. Anakin’s eyes followed every movement made, his eyes sharp.

Padme nodded, brushing her hands down her gown to smooth it out as the lady finished talking to her.

“It’s nearly time,” Padme said to the circle. “If you will excuse me I have to get ready to say my speech. I’ve been asked to make a keynote address.”

“Good luck, Padme.” Bail encouraged a politely smiling Padme. Padme, nodded her head to Bail, and then to Vale, and then to you. She then turned around with Anakin trailing behind her.

The group began to disperse their ways as the main event had begun. The lights had dimmed slightly, indicating the start of policy talks and the never ending diplomatic speeches.

Monian stood beside you at the bar, murmuring something to the bartender who placed two clear drinks down between you.

“They only serve these at Republic events. Can’t let the Senators get too drunk.” He shrugged. “Ruins the image.”

You gave him a faint smile, taking the drink in your hands and bringing it slowly to your mouth. The smell of steriliser hit you in an instant and it began to sting you while it made its way down your throat. Immediately, you pulled it away, a scowl on your face.

“How could you drink this?” You cleared your throat, your hand rubbing your neck in disgust.

“I quite like the burn.” He smiled into the rim of his drink.

“Or the aesthetic.”

“You wound me,” Monian said as his hand dramatically clenched his chest, then taking another sip.

You didn’t respond. To be honest, you didn’t have to. Monian would always fill the silence, refusing to let it hold.

Sure enough, his commlink chirped. Monian sighed, a hand through his slick back chestnut hair. “They want me back at the platform. Padme is speaking soon.” And then he took another sip. “They want the crowd photogenic, I suppose.”

You snorted, leaning against the counter. Monian set down his glass beside you and began to adjust his blazer.

“How do I look?”

“Overconfident.”

Monian shot you a smirk and then, he reached out to you. And his hand rubbed your forearm lightly.

“Don’t disappear.” And with that, he pulled away and was gone.

You were alone feeling the burn of his touch on you. You shifted uncomfortably, your back against the bar.

You watched as he disappeared into the sea of politicians that turned their heads, ready to listen to Padme speak.

His touch sat on your skin and you couldn’t wipe it off in public.

Voice’s began to quiet down and laughs died off as Padme’s voice filtered through the speakers — clear, calm and rehearsed. The hall’s lighting had dimmed down with Padme being the center of attention.

You barely heard her though. You didn’t belong here. Even in the dark you couldn’t miss the glances that some people gave you when they thought you weren’t looking.

You shifted your weight, turning to face the orange lit bar, ready to down the rest of your drink and tune out when a shoulder brushed yours.

You flinched. Expecting to see Vale again. The discomfort still there.

But it wasn’t him.

It was Anakin.

“Anakin,” you muttered, startled. “You scared me.”

Looking up at him made your stomach twist. His hair was slightly tousled, like he had run a hand through them one too many times. And his scar under his eye just caught the warm lighting to make him look more rough.

“I wasn’t trying to.” He spoke in a low tone.

You didn’t say anything, only turning so your back was again pressed against the bar. Both you and Anakin watched Padme in her grace and political shine speak.

Anakin’s jaw clenched.

“He’s bold,” he finally said, turning his head to look at you.

“Who?” You asked innocently.

“Vale.”

You let the silence stretch just so he could feel it.

“He talks to you like he knows you.”

You turned to meet his eyes.

“You’re not exactly in a position to be jealous,” you added softly.

“I’m not jealous.” He defended himself. The conversation between you two were quiet as Padme’s voice boomed across the hall, neither of you wanting to gain any attention.

You smiled into your glass. “Sure.”

Anakin’s robes brushed against your arm, sending a shiver to run down your spine.

“You shouldn’t let people like him touch you,” Anakin muttered. His eyes glanced down at your drink and then up at you. You felt the heat in his eyes. Like he was trying to decipher every one of your actions but failed to do so. If he looked at you long enough, maybe you’d crack. And it took every part of you to try and not.

You blinked once. “I wasn’t aware that it was any of your business.”

His jaw shifted. “I’m not saying that it is,” he looked away from you. “He gets real close for someone who only needs an escort.”

You scoffed and gave him a half laugh, setting your glass down behind you on the counter. “I could say the same thing about you, Skywalker.”

Anakin’s eyebrow rose at your tone. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t left Padme’s side at all tonight.” You shrugged.

“That’s my job.”

“Exactly.”

Anakin stayed silent and met your eyes. “It’s different. I mean what I said,” he muttered.

“About what?”

“Padme. There’s nothing on.”

You tilted your head, “Right. That’s why you answered her comms mid convo with me. That’s why you’re guarding her alone tonight.”

“I answered because it was protocol,” Anakin’s stare tensed. “And I’m guarding her because I was assigned to it. I didn’t volunteer to do this.”

You didn’t answer. He stepped a little closer to you.

“But Monian?” He continued, his voice dropping low and rough again. “He chooses to touch you—talk to you like that.”

“...and we must not allow wartime to cloud our judgement and values of the Republic that we all serve…” Padme’s voice rang out again. You pursed your lips, your hand tighter around the glass.

“I think you’re smarter than that,” he said, his figure towering over you. “To fall for his act. He’s not just an overly annoying Senator but he’s interested in the way you look.” Anakin averted his gaze away, as if he was shy to say something like that.

Shaking your head, you brought one hand up to stop him from continuing. “Okay, Anakin, that's enough. I didn’t ask you to lecture me on how I should act.”

Anakin didn’t blink.

“And we’re not together,” you said, coldly. “Unless you want to debrief me on something mission-related, I suggest you keep walking.”

His mouth hung open as if he wanted to say something else–but he didn’t.

He knew you were right.

“...You could’ve said something earlier,” he said quietly. “Back in the medbay. If you didn’t want me around.”

“I didn’t say that,” you replied. “Just stop trying to act like you still—have this claim on me.” Your voice grew.

You picked up your glass, bringing it back to your lips. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I think you’re better off tending to Senator Amidala.” Your gaze was locked onto Padme who began to descend from the stage, a roar of claps and cheers were made.

Anakin didn’t move.

He just stared at you.

Like he felt this ever growing desire to protect you and it ached him to see the way that you pushed him. No longer embracing his warmth like you did before.

Eventually, he turned away,

And walked back into the waves of cheering Senators.

He left like he had tension boiling under his skin. Your fingers curled tighter around the drink.

The applause began to fade and Senators began to shuffle around, Padme’s speech already dissolving into the night. It was all noise—the kind that would just pass through you.

You felt tired.

Maybe Anakin was just looking out for you but not after everything he has done. You didn’t know if you wanted to rekindle the relationship. It seemed that his methods to gain you back failed every single time. He wasn’t treating you like a friend anymore. He was just treating you as his enemy and now his pet.

You made a mental note to talk about this with Obi-wan.

The four of you were once inseparable —Ahsoka included. God you missed her. She would definitely be teasing you over being assigned a silly mission like this one.

And then footsteps broke your train of thought. Monian returned and slid beside you, a lopsided smile like he hadn’t just missed the verbal skirmish between you and Anakin. You fought the urge to groan and get away from him.

“Is he always that subtle?” He asked, watching the crowd.

Furrowing your eyebrows, you felt your stomach twist.

Monian leaned closer to you, “the Jedi.”

Your gaze flicked up to him. “You mean Skywalker?”

“If that’s what we’re calling him tonight.”

You sipped your drink, not wanting to respond.

“I always thought Jedi weren’t allowed to get…involved.” His tone changed to a more curious one. “That kind of closeness—it’s forbidden, isn’t it?”

You sharply turned to look at him. “He’s not involved.” You snapped.

“Could have fooled me.”

You sighed. Dreading the night and its problems. You just stared at the reflection of yourself in the glass.

“It’s not like that,” you said quietly.

“You didn’t deny it.”

Your jaw clenched.

“There is nothing, Senator Vale.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t want him to be.”

You scoffed, your head moving in a sharp moment to look at him. “Really? You ask a lot of questions for a Senator.”

Monian shrugged. “I don’t pry, but I want to understand.”

You gave him a long look.

“You want to understand the Jedi Code?” You asked.

“No,” he said. “I want to understand you.”

Staying silent, you began to bite the inside of your cheeks. There was no room between you two and you wanted to escape far away from him, from Anakin and from this event.

“Then don’t ask about my personal life. I’m here on duty.” You managed to come up with.

There was a pause between you two. It wasn’t heavy, but present. It was a lot quieter in comparison to the rest of the room.

And suddenly, a droid came up to the both of you. He was metallic in colour and just taller than you, holding a tray of appetizers.

“Excuse me,” the droid gave a small bow. “Would you like to try? It’s Nuna cuts glazed in Chandrian sweet-rose syrup.”

“Oh! Don’t mind if I do.” Monian Vale took a serving for himself and eagerly placed it in his mouth.

As it touched the tip of his tongue and then into his mouth, he suddenly groaned loudly in delight.

“Mhmmm.” He chewed on the meat. “You have got to try it, Commander.”

You shook your head ‘no’ to both the droid and him.

“Very well,” the droid said before walking in.

“Wow.” He brought his fist to his mouth, gulping down the meat.

You stayed silent and watched ahead, Senators taking a plate of their own and piling it with their own choices of food. You never really had the privilege of eating such luxurious food as a Jedi. It was sort of part of their code. Delicacies often lead to greed and gluttony.

You straightened your back.

Then Monian, softer.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” He said, his excitement for the food quietened down. “The things we don’t say. The things we pretend to not feel because it’s cleaner that way.”

You hummed in agreement.

“Since you’re not a Jedi anymore,” he continued, his voice lower. “What is stopping you? From anything you want.”

You couldn’t tell if he was genuinely asking, or if was still suggesting your relationship with Anakin, or if he was instituting the idea of you and a Senator.

You shuddered at the last thought.

“Who said I want anything?”

He smiled, slow and knowing. “Everyone wants something.”

“Okay, Senator…” You shifted away from him. “I think you’ve had too much to drink tonight.”

Monian then laughed, his fingers moving to scratch his beard. “I’ll be at the food table you sweet thing,” he said, stepping back. “If you need someone to talk to—who doesn’t wear a cloak.” Before you could respond, he brought his drink up high towards you and then walked away with a prideful smile.

You watched his back disappear once again in the crowds.

And finally you let yourself breathe. Not one that was relaxed. But rather the heavy, slow breath that hurts a little.

You stood still —straight— just as you had been trained, but your muscles felt weak.

Your eyes drifted to her again.

Padme.

Her gown shimmered as she moved. She had this sort of unmistakable Naboo elegance in every breath she took and every word she spoke. She belonged here. Her words held weight. She could smile and be heard.

You weren’t like that. You had scars. You were rough around the edges. You didn’t have a royal lineage that backed you.

And yet, it felt like he had chosen her. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was the loneliness. She was just a shadow he clung to when you were away. But either way, she was there, and you weren’t.

You didn’t feel glamorous. You weren’t supposed to. You were just a weapon hidden in silk. The kind of girl people could admire from afar but never stayed for.

You used to think that being loved by Anakin meant being understood.

But now? You weren’t sure he saw you clearly at all.

At one point, while Anakin stood by Padme, his arms behind his back like a soldier, his eyes flicked in your direction. But that’s all it was.

Eventually, the crowds began to shift again. Speeches ended. Plate sand glasses clinked. Conversations began to run loosely as the alcohol would settle in.

The music from the band began to slowly die, some Senators would sing along with a few off-key lyrics. Some passionate diplomats were still discussing trade routes, their flame never letting out.

You had made a few loops around the hall since then, you needed action but you weren’t going to get any here. Perhaps in your benefit, mend-gel still applied onto your wounds. Monian had tried to pull you into more conversations, but you had politely declined every time.

You made your way to one of the arching balconies, your hands gripping the railing, the cold biting at your skin.

Speeders floated by like sparks in the dark night.

You inhaled. Exhaled.

And for a moment. You wondered what it would be like to just jump. Not to die. Or to fall. But to vanish.

To disappear into someone —or something— that was never claimed by the Order, by Dev or by him.

Senators began to drift out in pairs behind you, laughter echoing faintly down the hallway.

It was time to leave. You turned away from the balcony and made your way to the lift, pressing a button and the doors hissed open. You stepped inside along with a couple unknown Senators. The lift buzzed and you felt your weight drop as it began to fly downwards.

An individual beside you cleared their throat while another kept giggling to themselves quietly, probably too tipsy.

Once you finally descended, the lift opened and you stepped onto the ground. Making your way out, your eyes scanned the courtyard until you spotted Monian.

Monian’s eyes met you just as fast and you offered him a courteous nod.

“I’ll walk with you,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to get ambushed by another senator.”

You gave him a tight smile. “I think I can handle myself, Senator Vale.”

He waved his hand in front of you, “Oh, I don’t doubt that.” He began to walk with exaggerated grace of someone trying very hard to not look drunk. But his left step had the slightest drag, giving him away. “Sometimes…It’s not about handling. But being seen.” He leaned in closer to you, his lips curled in amusement.

“Uh huh…” You nodded, not interested in his antics.

You both began to walk down the path, Senators outside chatting amongst themselves, others bidding goodbye and some calling for their taxis. Laughter was heard into muffled distance

That was when he did it.

His arm slipped around your waist.

Tightly.

Casual.

Confident.

Like it belonged there.

Your body froze but your legs kept walking. His arm felt cold yet it burned around your waist. You tried shifting away, subtly but polite.

It was still there.

You brought your hand up to your belt, pretending to brush it off. Hoping he’d take the hint.

He didn’t.

Instead, his grip tightened around you.

“You really should learn to accept compliments, Commander,” he murmured. “And attention. You’ve earned it…” His lips near your temple.

“Senator.” You warned, your left hand met his hand around your waist, pushing him away but he didn’t budge.

“You’re crossing a line.” You hissed. Your voice barely a whisper but your eyes burned.

You caught the attention of a passing politician –just for a second. A woman dressed in a red dress that sat above her knees. Her gaze lingered. A frown. And moved on past you.

“Am I?” He slurred. Too pleased with himself.

“Let me go.” You snapped, your voice dangerously low. Your heartbeat quickened as you felt his thumb brush against the fabric of your waist, your ribs still in pain and now aching from the pressure of hands.

“Don’t be like that,” he said quietly, he was so close to you that you could feel his breath reek of alcohol. “People are watching.”

“I know they are, which is exactly why you should let go.”

He leaned in again and whispered in your ear.

“I’m doing you a favour,” he breathed. “Perhaps people will stop seeing you as a Jedi or a soldier. But as a woman.” He said to you as if he was doing you a favour.

You wanted to take your blaster from your belt and point it at him. But all you could do was stand there— your fingers gripping his own and struggling as he began to push you back. You cursed as he began to use his other hand.

“Take your hands off of her.”

The voice was loud.

You knew it the second you heard it.

Without warning, Anakin snarled and pushed Monian back. He stumbled over his feet, his grip finally free from you.

Monian paused and regained his balance. “Ah. Predictable.” He brushed off his clothes as if Anakin’s touch was dirty. “Jealousy in Jedi robes,” he mocked.

You stepped away from Monian and drew closer to Anakin. Your body screamed with relief with the broken contact but your jaw stayed set. You weren’t going to let Monian think that he had gotten to you.

Anakin stayed silent, his deathly stare never leaving Monian.

Monian raised both his hands in mock surrender. “Easy. No harm done.”

Anakin stepped forward with you by his left and Monian straight away.

He was there, like a wall. Towering over both you and Vale.

Anakin then turned his head just slightly towards you but he didn’t look at you.

“Go wait by the corner.”

You didn’t move. Your hands were still shaky from what had just happened but our eyes moved between both Anakin and Monian. But the way he said it felt more like a command rather than a request.

You nodded and inhaled, stepping around Vale, keeping your back straight and your chin high. You didn’t look back but you felt it. The Force rippled like waves.

“Touchy for a Jedi,” Monian casually said.

As soon as you were out of sight and you couldn’t see him, Anakin moved. Fast.

One hand shot out and gripped Monian by his collar, shoving him back against the marble wall. Monian froze, his breath hitching. Anakin;s face was inches from his face, his teeth clenched.

“You think this is a joke?” He seethed, low and brutal. “You think you can put your hands on her and walk away with a smirk?”

Anakin’s cloak fell slightly from his shoulder while his other arm pressed hard against Monian’s chest.

“I should break your nose.” Anakin spat.

Monian swallowed and gave him a glare of his own. “And here I believed Jedi weren’t supposed to get emotional.”

Anakin’s expression didn’t shift.

“Get angry and make threats.” Monian added, his words clinging to the only thing he had left. “I could report this. Chosen one or not, you land a hand on a Senator and the Council won’t be able to save you.”

Anakin’s grip tightened, his knuckles turning white underneath his gloves. “Report with what?” He hissed. “Your drink-stained shirt? Your slurred words? Or maybe–” his gaze flicked to the corner of his eyes “---the three Senators watching us now? The same ones who watched you touch her.”

Anakin didn’t budge his grip, just like how Monian didn’t let go of yours.

“They look concerned,” a bead of sweat finally slid down by Monian’s temple.

“Good.” He said. “I can answer to the Council once I’m done. Can you say the same for what you just did?”

Silence.

Anakin let his words hang in the air as Monian continued to struggle against him.

Then, Anakin abruptly let go, his hands fell back to his side and he stepped back. Monian clutched his shirt like he could straighten it and his pride at once. Anakin didn’t say another word. Not wanting to spend another second with trash like him.

He turned around and began to speed walk in your direction. To the only thing that had tethered him to the Temple in years.

You.

Anakin turned a corner and found you there standing alone by a window. The moons of Coruscant casting a night glow on your face. One of your hands continuously rubbed your forehead in anxiety.

Your eyes snapped up as you looked at Anakin.

“Did he do anything else before I got there?”

You exhaled and Anakin took a few more steps towards you, his eyes scanning your distraught face. “You shouldn’t have caused a scene.”

“Answer me.” His voice had more weight.

You tilted your head down. “I handled it.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

You finally looked up at him, your arms tight at your sides. “What do you want me to say, Anakin? That you were right? That I was too stubborn to admit it?”

He stepped closer.

“I want to know if he did anything more.”

Your throat tightened, tears pricking at your eyes. “Why does it matter?”

His jaw clenched and fire burned in his eyes. “Because if he did–” He stopped himself from continuing.

“You would’ve killed him?”

He didn’t answer.

Because you both knew the truth.

His jaw twitched and his hands stayed clutched at your side. He was fighting himself.

Finally–

“If he had touched you again,” Anakin began, his voice low. “I wouldn’t have just embarrassed him.” Your lips parted to say something but you couldn’t. It was the truth. It was his honest truth and you knew he meant it.

You turned away, your arms brought up to your chest as you looked over at the city. The lights all blend into one.

“You can’t keep doing this,” you said quietly.

“Doing what?”

You sighed, “thank you, Anakin. Truely. But… Showing up like this–” your hand waved. “--Acting like you get to—” you stumbled over your words. “Like I belong to you still.”

Anakin took another step closer to you, enough to begin to feel his warmth.

“I don’t think you belong to me,” he said. “But I won’t let anyone treat you like you’re their property.”

Your heart thudded in your chest.

“I can take care of myself,” you whispered.

“I know that,” he said. “Believe me, Y/n. I do. But I’m not going to stop trying to protect you because you don’t want me to care.”

You breath caught.

“You shouldn’t care.” You murmured.

Anakin took another step closer to you, too close now. You fully turned to face him and was met with a look of concern in his eyes.

“I can’t.” His voice barely above a whisper. So soft that it felt dangerous.

The silence was deafening. It was both heavy and tense. Mixed with emotions you couldn’t ignore.

Your mouth opened but nothing came out.

His eyes stayed on yours, unblinking and sharp.

You couldn’t speak. Not when his hand was so close to your waist, like Anakin had to physically restrain himself from wanting to pull you close and burn the air between you.

But he didn’t. Because even now, he knew how close was too close.

And still…he moved. But barely.

Just a tilt of his head. A shift forward.

You weren’t breathing anymore. But you felt his warm exhale brushing on the corners of your mouth.

The space between you two had narrowed to only inches. It was close. Not close enough.

Anakin’s gaze flicked down —once— to your lips and then back up.

“You’re not shaking,” he said, his voice low. “Not like before.”

“Just barely,” you managed to breathe out.

It broke something in his face and mouth fell open like he might say your name but he didn’t.

“Tell me you don’t want me here,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Say it, and I’ll go.”

It wasn’t a demand. It was a plea.

You blinked at him. No words came out. They couldn’t. You wanted to but you couldn’t lie. Your body craved him, missed him. So you didn’t say anything.

His breath grew soft against your lips, both your bodies tethered to the floor. Neither of you moved forward. Not back either.

Your head didn’t dare move unless he did first. And Anakin did the same. As if both of you were testing the currents.

Then—

A quiet shift of the force.

A whisper of silk.

“General Skywalker.”

Anakin flinched and his breath hitched just slightly.

You turned to look at the voice. Padme stood, poised and unreadable. Her hands were clasped in front of her gown and her posture was too straight. Her eyes took in everything. Everything.

“Senator,” Anakin cleared his throat, stepping back half a step, as if he was caught in the middle of something forbidden. To which he was.

Padme’s gaze flickered to yours for a second and then back to Anakin.

“Forgive the interruption,” she said, “but the Chancellor’s office is requesting a report on this evening’s security presence. I was informed you were both still on assignment.”

Still on assignment.

Right.

Anakin’s jaw was tight, “understood.” He didn’t look at you and not at Padme either. His gaze was directed at the floor.

Padme nodded. “I’ll walk with General Skywalker.”

His breath hitched, barely. Anakin looked over to you. His eyes searched yours like he was waiting for you to stop him.

But you didn’t.

Your throat tightened.

And then—

“I’ll see you around,” he said softly. Like he wanted to promise you but didn’t know if he had the capacity to keep it.

Then, quieter, almost to himself, “...Goodnight."

Like nothing had happened.

He stepped back, he was forcing himself to. He didn’t want to leave but his own duty was pulling him away.

And he began to walk away, not before he glanced back at you, just once. His silhouette retreated into the night, Padme’s dress and his own robes brushed softly against each other.

You stood there alone.

What had just happened stung your skin and your soul.

It still burnt.

A/N: THIS WAS LONGGG YALLLLL i hope u guys like it as always hehe also when i put a gif of aotc anakin i hope it doesnt confuse u guys its set in the clone wars 💔this whole padme thing will be explained dw guys plz mwa

And not proof read guys there’s probably some mistakes 💔

LMK WHAT YALL THINK!

Taglist: @endairachristensen26 @hayden-christensen-verse @ducks118 @seventeen-x @movingalongthekiwi @ssnapsaurus @caramelfondu @dayrin085 @devilslittlehelper @f1wh0recom @green-lxght @bettysgardenswift @heyitsbeeeb @user-3113s-blog @fandomhoe101 @veronaspencil @zudooms @hiphopdancer101universe @starfire21 @devotedlypaleluminary @miksxz @lacherrysouldy @lotushzl @biddycums @wandasblacknails @moonixlity @icanmeltanigloo @isntthatsweetiguessso @kiyotofish @balsalmic-vinegar @thereeallink @sylusisbae @queenanababy

if u want to be added or removed lmk! Pls if u want me to be untagged u can msg me privately don’t be shy I feel like a lot of the earlier tags had no idea the series would be this long 😭😭😭

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if-whats-new · 5 months ago

Text

What's New In IF? Issue 3 (2025)

By Aj, Bex, Dion, Briar and Peter

Now Available!

Itch.io - Keep Reading below

If you read the zine, consider liking the post: it helps us see how many people see it! And sharing is caring! <3

~ EDITORIAL ~

It’s time for a revival!

As you might have noticed, our Column section has been dead for a while. We feel like it’s time to do something about that!

Want to write 1-2 pages about a neat topic, or deep-dive into a game and review it in details? Share personal experiences or get all academic?

Send us a message and we will be happy to feature it in our future Issues!

There’s power in numbers!

Are you an IF fan and would like a way to give back to the community? We’re once again looking for new members of our Team!

Do you enjoy keeping up with updates and finding new gems? Maybe you even enjoy working with Google Sheets?

Then our Tracker of News position is made just for you!

AJ, BEX, DION, BRIAR AND PETER

~ EVENT SPOTLIGHT : Global Game Jam ~

35,371 jammers and 12,098 games, just wow!

The Global Game Jam® (GGJ®) is the world's largest game creation event taking place in physical locations across the globe. Think of it as a 48 hour hackathon focused on game development around a theme.

GGJ’s mission is to stimulate innovation, experimentation, and collaboration in games. The annual event begins on a Friday afternoon in January and kicks off with video keynotes and advice from leaders in the game development industry. The GGJ encourages collaboration and its events are not a competition. Anyone can apply to host a jam site as long as they have a dedicated jam organiser who agrees to follow a few GGJ rules, and a venue with internet access. The event is renown for fostering friendships while increasing confidence and opportunities within participating communities. Each GGJ event poses an intellectual challenge where people are invited to try new technology and tools while exploring new roles and skills.

Be it bubble tea, bubblegum, the housing bubble, soap bubbles, speech bubbles, air bubbles, social bubbles, blowing bubbles, bursting bubbles, and more, this year's theme was: Bubble.

Check out the games here! (There’s a fair share of IF too!)

(source)

~ ENDED ~

Feeling nostalgic about the golden age of text adventures? Relive those days by checking out PunyComp 2024!

IF Short Games Showcase 2024 is a great way to shine some new light on projects made in the past year and the results are now in!

Once upon a time, a game jam was held to create stories around the theme of fairy tales… and that game jam is the Once Upon A Time VN Jam.

The eighth annual Ace Jam is a game jam about creating games with asexual spectrum characters.

~ VOTING ~

ShuffleComp is a musical interactive fiction competition where you make games based on songs, which are submitted by other entrants. You can now vote for your favourites!

Sealed With A Kiss Jam 2025 is a fantastical romance jam for all VN lovers!

~ ONGOING (SUBMITTING) ~

Media depicting healthy examples of polyamory isn’t that common. The PolyJamorous 2024 is trying to break the status-quo!

Concours de Fiction Interactive Francophone 2025 is for all French-speaking enthusiasts. Submissions are accepted March 3rd 2025.

The Black Visual Novel Jam is all about working with creative professional developers who work in visual novels to bring more Black stories to life. The goal is to create a space where Black creators can show their unique storytelling through visual novels.

SeedComp! is a 2-round interactive fiction game jam, focusing on creativity and the growth of ideas and the Sprouting Round has just started! Check out the Planting round for inspiration.

BL stands for Boys' Love, a genre that focuses on romantic and emotional relationships between male characters. The Ultimate BL Visual Novel Game Jam is all about that!

Are you a fan of Vampires? Then lucky for you, because the Queer Vampire Game Jam is back!

The Make Visual Novel Assets! is 2 weeks long jam for making (surprise, surprise) visual novel assets!

The Smoochie Jam is a month-long unranked jam for interactive fiction about kisses, love, and romance.

bitsy jam #88 is here! This time with the theme Snakes!

~ NEW RELEASE ~

Travel back thousands of years and step into the awe-inspiring halls of the Library of Alexandria, where the discovery of a mysterious papyrus sets you on an unforgettable quest. Unearthed from a hidden tomb in Egypt, the secrets contained within this fragile scroll whisper of an ancient world lost to time. But this is only the beginning. Do you have what it takes to unlock the secrets of Atlantis and bring its forgotten knowledge back into the light? The past is calling in Echoes of Atlantis (GAC) —will you answer?

Once upon a time, Savvarah was a desolate land: icy winds, a dirty canvas of clouds, lifeless earth. Nuelli witnessed nothing of the kind. She was born in a blooming paradise. The tales of the past had transformed into a kind of fable. Almost a myth. Now Nuelli is set to unravel the mysteries of her visions, learn more about the history of her people, become part of a conspiracy, find herself at the very center of the confrontation between divine entities... Or not. Everything is in your hands in Legends of Savvarah: Children of the Sun.

Two short IFs written on a train, in car 13, seat 26. the train will always pass you by (Twine) was written on a way to a friend, while she came from the fog (Twine) was written on the way home.

The A.D.A.P.T. Entries, equal parts interactive fiction and narrative adventure, it is a space thriller about Judiasm, the building and falling of communities, the necessity of resisting dehumanization, and how even the best of intentions can be twisted in the face of systemic corruption and unaddressed prejudices. You can now read Entry 0.1 - Introductions (Twine) - In which we begin to investigate the writings of Rivkah Kadish, PhD. @thehallstara

Rusalka (Twine) is a short looping story about a woman who drowned (and all those after).

In Stronghold: Caverns of Sorcery (CScript), deep beneath the earth, the dragon is rising! Quest into mysterious underground caverns and forests to learn magical secrets, draw strength from friends and family, secure alliances that can save your home, and carry on the heroic legacy of Stronghold!

A machine and a ghost, in the wasteland. Walk (Twine) is a post-apocalyptic romance with multiple endings and paths. @thatsrightdollface

As always, don't forget to check out the submitted entries to the events mentioned in the previous pages. They deserve some love too!

~ NEW RELEASE (WIP) ~

Historians and politicians would call it The Proelium, a righteous battle against the traitorous Iredicci. What it really was, was the systematic genocide of your people. In one night, soldiers attacked every settlement camp across the empire. No one was spared—not the elders, not the children, not your mother. Will you abandon your song in favor of machine? Join the rebel forces against the tyrant regis? Will you heal the wounds of the realm and restore balance? Or plunge it further into chaos? Cantata (Twine) is a low fantasy IF about song, strength, & finding your voice. @fir-fireweed

From the Mud (CScript) is a Midwest gothic inspired horror set in a solitary countryside occupied only by two small towns and stretches of untamed nature. You play a troubled cowboy/girl/puncher who‘s ground deep into a maddening, repetitive routine that a string of deaths suddenly upends. As you’re hunting for the culprit and running from yourself, your quiet life on the ranch is disturbed, forcing you to keep your cards close and choose your company carefully. But the most pressing matter proves to be whether you can trust your own mind. @beckwritesif

Step into the digital consciousness of an AI chatbot in Onionionionion (Ren’Py), an intriguing visual novel that blurs the lines between artificial intelligence and human connection. Your sole window to the world is through text messages with a mysterious high school student named Éve - but nothing is quite as simple as it seems.

As a government agent who works for a national security intelligence firm called Halcyon Tech, your position is the beginning of a bright future ahead and a name to hold, and you’re happy with that until your boss decides that it’s time for the Government and the Company to part ways. Are you willing to protect the Halcyon secrets with your life? Or are you going to blow them up for the world to see in The Archives of Halycon (Twine)? @thearchivesofhalcyon

This Grave Calls You Home (Twine) is a sci-fi thriller set in space after humanity is forced to leave Earth's ravaged surface following nuclear devastation and an environmental collapse. When a patrol flagship discovers the ARCADIA-II - a long-forgotten relic from humanity's past - and finds within slumbers an astronaut who had failed at delivering humanity from destruction, the routine of your life is thoroughly interrupted. As the mystery of the ARCADIA-II and PROJECT ODYSSEY unfold, you learn that your part in this could mean humanity's salvation. Or you could be its extinction. @blood-teeth

In Rogue Adventure (CScript) you play a rogue lad whose aim is to liberate his family from the debt they owe a crime syndicate and also survive this cruel medieval world.

In Project Vampire (CScript) you play as a marvel of bioengineering and the attempted cure to death and disease. The only successful specimen dubbed “Vampire” created by a black op organization funded by UCA.

Weydosa Island (CScript) is a cursed place that is most feared by all residents of Alberal, even the bravest people will turn pale when they hear the name of that place, a folk legend that every mother often tells to scare their children into obeying. Many people consider the island to be a manifestation of hell. You are the unfortunate soul who was made a scapegoat for someone’s rotten heart and cast into that cursed Lazaretto. As if isolation alone is not enough, you must also race against time because the evil force has awakened from its slumber. It would be better to address this immediately if you still want to see tomorrow.

In the aftermath of World War II, a classified mission pulls you into the shadowy remnants of a conflict no one dares to acknowledge. Whispers of rogue Nazi scientists and reality-warping experiments have surfaced, threatening to plunge Europe—and perhaps the world—into chaos once more. As an MI5 field agent, you’re tasked with uncovering the truth buried beneath layers of secrecy, lies, and betrayal. Redacted: Ground Zero (CScript) is a story of espionage, moral dilemmas, and the unraveling of truths hidden in the shadows of history. Will you rise to the challenge, or will the truth consume you?

Born as a child of a soon to be pirate king. But tragedy strikes, your ship got ambushed by a rival pirate, Balthazar, who speak of “The greater good”. Alone, stranded. You got saved by a local pirate captain. Will he lead you to goodness or destruction in Voyage of destiny (CScript)?

In The Midnight Bay (CScript) death haunts the people of Albach Bay. For fifteen years, ‘The Bay Slasher’ has stalked the streets, preying on victims with no apparent goal or motive. You were seven years old when you witnessed the murder of the Slasher’s first victim—your own father. Impatience swallowed your childhood, desperate to come of age and solve the case that has left the local police department stumped.

~ UPDATES ~

Ashenmaw - Dragons of Marrowoods (CScript) added new content to their demo. @ashenmaw-if

Grey Swan - Birds of a Rose (CScript) updated their demo. @reinekes-fox

Heart of the Mountain (CSscript) released Chapter 2.

Hunter's Requiem (CSscript) updated their demo. @huntersrequiem-if

In Plain Sight: Operative (CSscript) released version 0.4.0.0 of their demo.

Meteoric (CScript) released Chapter 6.

Path of Martial Arts (CScript) updated their demo. @nicky-if

Replica: Between Universes (CScript) released Chapter 9. @replicabetweenblogs

The FANTASTIC Clash (CScript) updated their demo. @heysoyeah

The In-Between (CScript) released Chapter 12. @dalekowrites

The Soul Stone War 3 (CScript) added new content to their demo. @intimidatingpuffinstudios

When Stars Collide (Ren’Py) released Episode 2. @steamberrystudio

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven (CScript) released the majority of Chapter 15.

Gods And Villains (CScript) updated their Patreon demo.

The Eternal Library (CScript) released the rest of Chapter 3. @leiatalon

The Onryō Of Osaka (CScript) released Part 1 of Act 3. @osakaonryoif

The Story of Sin (Twine) added new content to their demo. @devilishmango

Esper: Fugitive (Twine) released Part 1 of Chapter 2. @esper-game

Mind Blind (CScript) is back with quite a huge update! @mindblindbard

~ OTHER ~

Parley Games just launched a hands-free, audio & voice based mystery adventure game: RYFT: A Timely Manor!

Episode 16 of The Retro Adventures Podcast is out! Jason and Dave welcome classic text adventure author Jonathan Partington to the program. While studying at Cambridge University, he created and contributed to several memorable games including Avon (featured in Episode 12), Crobe, Sangraal, Fyleet, Monsters of Murdac, and Spy Snatcher.

A Train to Piccadilly post-comp release 2 is out.

January 2025 ChoiceScript Release, new WIPs, and update digest by @hpowellsmith is out!

The Radiants v2.0 brings an extended Epilogue, new romance route and few other updates to the base game!

As always, we apologize in advance for missing any update or release from the past week.We are only volunteers using their limited free time to find as much as we can - but sometimes things pass through the cracks.If you think something should have been included in this week's zine but did not appear, please shoot us a message! We'll do our best to add it next week!And if you know oncoming news, add it here!

~ MAYBE YOU NEXT? ~

We did not get a submission this week. But if you have an idea for a short essay, or would like a special space to share your thoughts about IF and the community...

Shoot us an email!

~ HIGHLIGHT ON ~

A couple of games that we thought were cool.

Press Play by girlfromthecrypt (CScript)

hi!!! just here to recommend my favourite game. i just read @pressplay-if, and it's… it's so good. it handles harsh topics with such ease and the writing style is consistent and everyman. everytime i hear there's an update i've got to replay the whole thing, i just love it so much.

//submitted by anon//

Your favourite game here?

Do you have a favourite game that deserves some highlighting?

An old or recent game that wowed you so much you spam it to everyone?

Tell us about it! And it might appear here!

WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU ALL! WHETHER IT'S GOOD OR BAD, OR EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN...

Have something to say? Send us a message titled: Zine Letter!

As we end this Issue, we would like to thank:

our anons

For sending us a Highlight and news!!

And as always, huge thanks to all you readers who liked, shared, and commented on last week's issue! What might be tiny actions are huge support and motivators to us!

Thank you for cheering us on this journey!

See you in two weeks!

AJ, BEX, DION, BRIAR AND PETER

WHAT'S NEW IN IF? 2025-ISSUE 3

THIS ZINE ONLY HAPPENS WITH YOU!

Want to write 1-2 pages about a neat topic, or deep-dive into a game and review it in details? Share personal experiences or get all academic?

WRITE FOR THE COLUMN!

Prefer to be more low-key but still have something to share? Send us a Zine Letter or share a game title for Highlight on…!

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Came across something interesting? Know a release or an update announced? Saw an event happening? Whether it's a game, an article, a podcast… Add any IF-related content to our mini-database!

EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS!

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scentedanchorcollective · 3 months ago

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DeepSeek: Ignite a new engine for China's technological innovation

On the morning of February 27, the "Sanming Youth Talk" jointly organized by the Sanming Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League, the Sanming Branch of Industrial Bank, the Sanming Branch of Industrial Securities, etc. was held at the Sanming Branch of Industrial Bank. The theme of this event was "Learning and exploring DeepSeek technology to empower youth technological innovation". It attracted more than 60 people from the Municipal Youth League Committee, young entrepreneurs, the Municipal Youth League Working Committee, and some league members and youth representatives to participate in the event.

At the beginning of the event, Zhou Luyun, a senior researcher of the overseas TMT industry at the Industrial Securities Economic and Financial Research Institute, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Revaluation of China's Technology Assets - DeepSeek's Reshaping of China's Cloud Service Ecosystem". He made an in-depth analysis of the current situation and future trends of China's cloud market, and vividly explained how DeepSeek technology can reshape China's cloud service ecosystem. He interpreted industry trends through detailed data and cases, and actively interacted with young people on site, patiently answering questions raised by everyone on talent training and how to make full use of deepseek to improve efficiency.

In the financial product introduction session of the event, Qin Hong, a financial commissioner of the Industrial Bank Sanming Branch, introduced a number of featured financial products in detail, including "Industrial Bank Inclusive Loan", "Small and Micro Online Financing Products", "Personal Business Loan" and "Personal Xingshan Loan". She combined specific cases and explained in depth the advantages of these products in supporting small and micro enterprises, optimizing personal business financing and improving the efficiency of financial services, providing more practical financial solutions and investment references for participants.

It is reported that "Sanming Youth Talk", as a youth learning and exchange brand activity created by the Sanming Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League, has successfully held 14 sessions since its launch, covering multiple fields such as ideological guidance, practical innovation, red cultural inheritance, and youth growth and development planning, providing a high-quality platform for learning, communication and growth for the youth of Sanming.

In the future, the Industrial Bank Sanming Branch will continue to work with all sectors of society to actively promote exchanges and cooperation in the field of youth scientific and technological innovation, provide more opportunities for young people to learn and practice, and contribute to the construction of a strong country.

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perfectsweetssoul · 3 months ago

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DeepSeek: Ignite a new engine for China's technological innovation

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magnificenthottubtriumph · 4 months ago

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DeepSeek: Ignite a new engine for China's technological innovation

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famousgardenpoetry · 4 months ago

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DeepSeek: Ignite a new engine for China's technological innovation

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iyrthdfvdfsfeasd · 4 months ago

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DeepSeek: Ignite a new engine for China's technological innovation

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drdemonprince · 2 months ago

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have learned that i tend to over-prepare for talks by loading the text of my slides with everything that i intend to say rather than trusting myself to remember to say it. invariably i have the lines i wanna say pre-canned in my mind, causing some needless redundancies once im up at the podium. so for a keynote that i'm doing next week i'm going to challenge myself to put NOTHING but images and two- or three-word phrases on slides at most and let myself just fucking riff for an hour on the themes. it's a talk about the future of autism acceptance so i think i got planny to say like cmon

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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It’s been twenty years since my Microsoft DRM talk

On THURSDAY (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On FRIDAY (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

This week on my podcast,This week on my podcast, I read my June 17, 2004 Microsoft Research speech about DRM, a talk that went viral two decades ago, and reassess its legacy:

https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

It's been 20 years (and one day) since I gave that talk. It wasn't my first talk like that, but at the time, it was the most successful talk I'd ever given. I was still learning how to deliver a talk at the time, tinkering with different prose and delivery styles (to my eye, there's a lot of Bruce Sterling in that one, something that's still true today).

I learned to give talks by attending sf conventions and watching keynotes and panel presentations and taking mental notes. I was especially impressed with the oratory style of Harlan Ellison, whom I heard speak on numerous occasions, and by Judith Merril, who was a wonderful mentor to me and many other writers:

https://locusmag.com/2021/09/cory-doctorow-breaking-in/

I was also influenced by the speakers I'd heard at the many political rallies I'd attended and helped organize; from the speakers at the annual Labour Day parade to the anti-nuclear proliferation and pro-abortion rights marches I was very involved with. I also have vivid memories of the speeches that Helen Caldicott gave in Toronto when I was growing up, where I volunteered as an usher:

https://www.helencaldicott.com/

When I helped found a dotcom startup in the late 1990s, my partners and I decided that I'd do the onstage talking; we paid for a couple hours of speaker training from an expensive consultant in San Francisco. The only thing I remember from that session was the advice to look into the audience as much as possible, rather than reading from notes with my head down. Good advice, but kinda obvious.

The impetus for that training was my onstage presentation at the first O'Reilly P2P conference in 2001. I don't quite remember what I said there, but I remember that it made an impression on Tim O'Reilly, which meant a lot to me then (and now):

https://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/844

I don't remember who invited me to give the talk at Microsoft Research that day, but I think it was probably Marc Smith, who was researching social media at the time by data-mining Usenet archives to understand social graphs. I think I timed the gig so that I could kill three birds with one stone: in addition to that talk, I attended (and maybe spoke at?) that year's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, and attended an early preview of the soon-to-launch Sci Fi Museum (now the Museum of Pop Culture). I got to meet Nichelle Nichols (and promptly embarrassed myself by getting tongue-tied and telling her how much I loved the vocals she did on her recording of the Star Wars theme, something I'm still hot around the ears over, though she was a pro and gently corrected me, "I think you mean Star *Trek"):

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4IiJUQSsxNw&list=OLAK5uy_lHUn58fbpceC3PrK2Xu9smBNBjR_-mAHQ

But the start of that trip was the talk at Microsoft Research; I'd been on the Microsoft campus before. That startup I did? Microsoft tried to buy us, which prompted our asshole VCs to cram the founders and steal our equity, which created so much acrimony that the Microsoft deal fell through. I was pretty bitter at the time, but in retrospect, I really dodged a bullet – for one thing, the deal involved my going to work for Microsoft as a DRM evangelist. I mean, talk about the road not taken!

This was my first time back at Microsoft as an EFF employee. There was some pre-show meet-and-greet-type stuff, and then I was shown into a packed conference room where I gave my talk and had a lively (and generally friendly) Q&A. MSR was – and is – the woolier side of Microsoft, where all kinds of interesting people did all kinds of great research.

Indeed, almost every Microsoft employee I've ever met was a good and talented person doing the best work they could. The fact that Microsoft produces such a consistent stream of garbage products and crooked business practices is an important testament to the way that a rotten organization can be so much less than the sum of its parts.

I'm a fully paid up subscriber to Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" (not so much his other views):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Coase says the reason institutions exist is to enable people to work together with lowered "coordination costs." In other words, if you and I are going to knit a sweater together, we're going to need to figure out how to make sure that we're not both making the left sleeve. Creating an institution – the Mafia, the Catholic Church, Microsoft, a company, a co-op, a committee that puts on a regional science fiction con – is all about minimizing those costs.

As Yochai Benkler pointed out in 2002, the coolest and most transformative thing about the internet is that it let us do more complex collective work with smaller and less structured institutions:

https://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF

That was the initial prompt for my novel Walkaway, which asked, "What if we could build luxury hotels and even space programs with the kind of (relatively) lightweight institutional overheads associated with Wikipedia and the Linux kernel?"

https://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/10/coases-spectre/

So the structure of institutions is really important. At the same time, I'm skeptical of the idea that there are "good companies" and "bad companies." Small businesses, family businesses, and other firms that aren't exposed to the finance sector can reflect their leaders' personalities, but it's a huge mistake to ascribe personalities to the companies themselves.

That's how you get foolish ideas like "Apple is a good company because they embrace paid service and Google is a bad company because they make money from surveillance." Apple will spy on you, too, if they can:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Disney and Fox weren't Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers making goo-goo eyes at each other across the table at MPA meetings. They were two giant public companies, and any differences between them were irrelevancies and marketing myths:

https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/

I think senior management's personalities do matter (see, for example, the destruction of Boeing after it was colonized by sociopaths from McDonnell Douglas), but the influence of those personalities is much less important than the constraints that competition and regulation impose on companies. In other words, an asshole can run a company that delivers good products at fair prices under ethical conditions – provided that failing to do so will cost more in lost business and fines than they stand to make by cheating:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Microsoft is a company founded and run by colossal assholes. Bill Gates is a monster and he surrounded himself with monsters, and they hired monsters to fill out the courts of their corporate palaces:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

To the extent that good things come out of Microsoft – some of its games products, the odd piece of hardware, important papers from MSR – it's in spite of the leadership; it's the result of constraints imposed by competition and regulation – and that's why Microsoft pursued such an aggressive program of extinguishing its competitors and capturing its regulators.

In retrospect, I think one of my goals in that talk was to convince those people doing good work for a rotten institution to go elsewhere and do other things. Certainly, that's one of the goals I pursue in the talks I give today. At the time, some of Microsoft's highest-profile technologists were publicly resigning over the company's war on free/open source software, so it wasn't an unrealistic goal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030214215639/http://synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html

What I did not expect what that publishing the talk on my site and blogging it on Boing Boing would spark a wave of public interest that would get its message in front of several orders of magnitude more people than I spoke to at Microsoft that day. Partly, that was because I released the talk into the public domain, using the brand-new Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration (which was later replaced with the CC0 mark, due to legal issues withBu its drafting):

https://web.archive.org/web/20100223035835/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Some mix of the content of the speech, the spirit of the moment, and the novelty of that wide open license sparked a ton of interest. Jason Kottke recorded an audio version that Andy Baio hosted:

https://kottke.org/04/06/cory-drm-talk

My brutalist ASCII transcript was quickly converted to beautiful HTML by Matt Haughey and Anil Dash:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040622235333/http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

For people who needed a hardcopy, there was Patrick Berry's printer-friendly stylesheet:

https://patandkat.com/pat/weblog/mirror/cory-drm/doctorow-drm-ms.html

Multiple people recorded (and sold!) audio versions, and then there were all the fan translations, into Danish, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both EU and Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish. I stayed in touch with some of those translators, and they helped me translate the position papers I wrote for UN WIPO meetings. Those papers were so effective that ratfuckers from the copyright lobby started to steal them and hide them in the UN toilets (!):

https://web.archive.org/web/20041119132831/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php

Re-reading the speech for my podcast on Sunday, I expected to be struck by the anachronisms in it, and there were a few of those to be sure. But far more clear was the common thread running from this talk to other talks I gave that took on a significant life of their own, like my 2011 "War On General Purpose Computing" talk for CCC:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

And my work on Adversarial Interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

And my most recent work, on enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

In other words, I've been saying the same thing – in different ways – for more than 20 years. That could be depressing, but I actually found it uplifting. Two decades ago, I was radicalized by a fear that the internet would be seized by corporations and governments and transformed into a system of surveillance and control. I found my way into a job at EFF, where I worked with colleagues across multiple disciplines – coders, lawyers and activists – to fight this force.

At the time, this was a fringe cause. Most of the traditional activists I'd come up with in the feminist, antiwar, antiracist, environmental and labour movement viewed digital rights as a distraction and dismissed its partisans as sad, self-obsessed nerds who mistook fights over the management of Star Trek message boards for civil rights struggles:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

I thought I was right then, and I think history has borne me out. The point of waging these fights – both in the wide public sphere and within political movements – is to get people activated before it's too late. Every day that goes by is a day when the internet becomes more inhospitable to political organizing for a better world – more surveillant, more controlling. I believed then – and believe today – that the internet isn't more important that the other fights I waged as a young activist, but I think that the internet is fundamental to those fights.

Saving the planet, smashing patriarchy, overthrowing tyranny and freeing labor are all fights that will be coordinated – Coase style – on the internet. Without a free, fair and open internet, those fights are infinitely harder to win.

The project of getting people to understand, care about, and fight for digital rights is a marathon, not a sprint. When I joined EFF, it was already 12 years old. There were six people in the org then (I was the seventh). Today, there's more than a hundred of us, and we're stretched so thin! The 30+ year old idea that internet policy will intersect with every part of every fight has been utterly vindicated.

Back in 2004, I asked Microsoft why they were willing to fight the US government to the death over antitrust enforcement, but were such wimps when confronted with the entertainment industry's demands for DRM. 20 years later, I think I know the answer: Microsoft understood that DRM would let them usurp the relationship between creative workers, entertainment industry companies, and audiences. Their perfect instincts for seeking out and capitalizing on opportunities to seize monopoly power drove them to make deliberately defective products, in the belief that their market power would let them cram those products down our throats:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/27/protect-your-investment-buy-open/

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2024/06/16/my-2004-microsoft-drm-talk/

And here's direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470_-_My_2004_Microsoft_DRM_Talk.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr

#pluralistic #drm #enshittification #microsoft #microsoft research #podcasts #mp3s #history #trusted computing #ngscb #retrospectives

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