#sometimes subtly odd and Off is more effective than complete chaos

[irregularbillcipher]

screwball can make herself look more like a flatlander or a draconequus and like, she has once or twice for funsies, but everyone thinks it's really funny that she looks nothing like either of her dads. also being a pony throws people off and works well for bits sometimes and she thinks it's neat that she looks like a pony but a Little Off in a kind of unsettling way so she usually just stays as a pony

[holydragon2808]

The Last of Us Part II: Abby and Plot Review (Sometimes, The Straightforward Approach Really is the Best Way to Execute a Story) MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR BOTH GAMES!

Yo, fellow gamers and geeks alike! How goes it? Don’t mind me. Just the dragon coming out of her den to rant/review within the realm of geek culture yet again. Since the beginning of The Last of Us Part II’s release, there have been some pretty strong opinions on the plot of the game (to put it lightly….).

I’m still in the middle of completing the game myself, but I’ve pretty much been spoiled the entire story anyway, enough to express my opinion about certain aspects of the game, particularly my feelings on the odd narrative framing choice for what (IMO) should have been a fairly straight forward executed plot line. I was going to wait until I’ve completed the game for myself, but time just doesn’t allow for a lot of gameplay for me at the moment, so I’m writing this review fairly prematurely (though I have watched everything on youtube). I’ll probably post a part II of this review after I finish the story for myself if anything changes.

Anyway, based on what I’ve personally seen and heard (both from personal gameplay and online), my main opinion (so far) is that the ideas, the themes, and the concept behind TLoU II’s story itself are overall decent to me.

However, the way Neil Druckmann and the rest of Naughty Dog chose to frame the narrative is decidedly not.

And a large part of it IMO is how they chose to implement this new character named Abby in the story. Not to mention the over reliance on shock value, and trying too hard to illicit certain emotions and reactions from the player, rather than just trusting the content to steer the narrative and giving the player space to have their own personal experience with the story, something the first game understood and did very well.

Needless to say, there will be MASSIVE SPOILERS for both TLoU I and TLoU II plots from this point onwards. Last chance to back out the den now!

To try and make my point, the original game did a wonderful job of establishing its dark premise, its major characters and getting the player emotionally invested in wanting to know more about both from the outset with a good prologue set up, taking place 20 years before the main time period of the story proper.

During the prologue of the first TLoU, we (as the player) are introduced to (main character) Joel and his cute, young, (but sadly ill-fated) daughter Sarah shortly before the outbreak of the Cordyceps plague. The player gets the opportunity to see Joel at probably his “(moral) best” in the game prior to everything going to hell (and even then the game still establishes the darker parts of his overprotectiveness rather well).

We see him depicted as a very loving and protective father, hardworking, and just generally and average everyday guy (neither “good” or “bad” just “normal”) trying to make a living in the world as he’s talking to his brother (Tommy) on the phone trying to secure a business deal. And then the world begins falling apart at the seams with the trio forced to flee from their now infected neighborhood, doing whatever it takes to get out alive (even if it means now they have to kill other people, something neither probably would have fathom doing prior to the outbreak), setting up a very miserable, but soon to be familiar pattern for them and any other people determined to survive in this devastated world.

Unfortunately, just as they make their way out of the area, Sarah is fatally shot by a soldier tasked with killing any stragglers in an attempt to contain the chaos. And all Joel can do is watch the light leave his “baby girl’s” eyes….

During this short, but very meaningful first hour or so of the game, we have Joel’s dynamic with his biological daughter established (a very fun-loving and healthy and overall heartwarming bond between them), the overall sibling yin-yang world perspectives between Tommy and Joel (how the former is more idealistic and more willing to help others even amidst a crisis, while the latter is cynical, lives more in the moment, and primarily focused on the survival of himself and his closest family) and how those respective character traits subtly foreshadow several major events to come between Tommy and Joel, how and why they eventually drifted apart from one another over the years, as well as the latter’s final choice regarding Ellie and the Fireflies in the finale.

Also by this point, we as the player are invested in these characters from the jump, and have a good idea of what’s going on in the larger scheme of the story (and the direction it’s going….pretty bleak but engaging), and what’s to come so that by the time we’re at the end of the prologue and Joel is getting emotionally shattered by the death of his only daughter, we as the player are right there with him. It was clear that Naughty Dog wanted to make the player sad and emotionally invested in the moment.

The difference in the first game from the second is that the creators seemed more willing to trust their own content to carry and convey the emotional weight of the story and the scene. Shock value is still very much there in the prologue (Sarah’s death was somehow expected and out of nowhere at the same time and it worked because it was just heartbreaking to see such an innocent and nice girl gunned down in her youth), but it’s not the sole driving factor behind the scene itself. Then we jump 20 years into the present day, the world is a very different place and Joel is a very different person.

He’s not the most likable, moral, or friendliest old dude around, but his brutality, his cruelty, his bitter resentment towards humanity over the course of the game is very understandable and the player has been given the time to understand the deeper nuances of his character and establish a bond with him and understand his later feelings and actions regarding Ellie and the Fireflies at the end of the game. His actions certainly weren’t “right” but they were definitely human and understandable.

Well, certainly a lot more understandable/human than it would have been had the game opened with Joel dooming all of humanity from a cure by killing all the doctors with no other context and then trying to force us to empathize with him after the fact.

That’s the problem with Abby’s implementation at the core of the second game’s story, and sadly, it’s enough to mar nearly the entire experience. When Abby first appears, we as the player know nothing about her (and I mean nothing. We don’t even get her name until at least an hour or so after controlling her. That’s not the best introduction for a soon to be major character….).

We get nothing about her, then she kills Joel from the jump (about barely 3 hours into the game), and puts Ellie on a warpath and all of it goes down from there. By this point, we still know nothing about Abby (but hey, at least we as the player get a name before she bashes Joel’s brains in with a golf club). And not only do we not know anything about her, but Naughty Dog didn’t realize that this framing choice effectively prevented the player from wanting to know or care about her as a character.

At this point, later forcing the player to later control her and empathize with her for 10-12 hours is out of the question. She should have remained squarely in the villain role (from Ellie’s point of view). The shock value of Joel’s murder is there as they wanted (whether good or bad is up to the player), but without knowing anything about Abby beforehand, all it really does is completely alienate Abby from the player before we could have gotten a chance to know anything about her, or even want to know anything about her. That’s what I meant earlier about TLoU II not giving the player space to understand and relate/connect to/with the newly introduced characters, to have the scenes and the content convey the emotional intent without the need of these unnecessary forced framing choices and over the top shock value instances.

Seriously, how hard would it have been to let the player know from the outset that Abby was associated with the Fireflies, and that her father was the lead surgeon that Joel killed to rescue Ellie five years ago? From what I understand, it’s several hours into the game before this information comes to light.

The game makes the mistake of introducing Abby in such a way that the narrative (almost to an absurd degree) assumes that the player is already invested in her. We’re not. We’ve literally just met her. And we as the player are given no room to get emotionally invested in her as a character, and when the game finally realizes that “oh, without some context on this matter, no one will care about Abby” (roughly 12 or so hours after the fact from what I’m understanding) it feels like it’s too little too late. 

We as the player never received the opportunity to understand who she is, who she’s after, what her deal is, nothing prior to the controversial murder scene (it all happens after the fact, but by then, people are typically closed off from truly caring or able to change their minds about her so the whole 10 run feels more like a slog narratively rather than a deep, engaging “walk a mile in this person’s shoes” thing. 

We’re just forced to continuously bounce back and forth between controlling her and Ellie throughout the game from the beginning. That’s honestly not the best story structure….ND....you can’t shove Abby down our throats later and expect us to truly care about her. That’s not how it works. And even the whole “well, we wanted the player to hate Abby” thing falls apart because the later scenes where we’re forced to control her feel very unnatural and are often trying too hard to FORCE the player to empathize with her rather than just again, trusting the content to allow us that (again, give the player some space to experience the narrative, build things/people up better, stop relying on shock value without the adequate suspense) for ourselves in a more natural way like with the characters and the way they were presented in the first game.

And Why? Because Naughty Dog was so focused on trying far too hard to illicit certain reactions/emotions from the player. Yes, the overall framing of Joel’s untimely murder at Abby’s hand is bold and (to a point) brilliant in getting us to feel exactly (and I do mean EXACTLY) what Ellie feels in that moment because she doesn’t know any more about this Abby chick than we do. That definitely works for getting us to feel something for Ellie and truly understanding her pain and sorrow in the moment, however, in the larger scheme of the narrative, it was unnecessary. We’re ALREADY just as emotionally invested in Ellie as a character by this point as we are Joel. They are both returning characters.

If they knew that they were going to have Abby (an entirely newly introduced character) kill off one of their major (returning) characters in the first few hours of the game, and ESPECIALLY if we were going to be forced to control her later, then all of their efforts should have been made into making Abby as emotionally understood as possible from the very beginning. This easily could have been rectified with a montage, or a playable prologue or something explaining exactly who she is and her friends were. THEN have her kill Joel somewhere in the middle of the game (while having her conflicted over doing so in part because he saved her life multiple times). People would have still hated her as you wanted ND, but her story is much more understandable and less convoluted and infuriating for the player to experience (and not in the genius way that you think, but just in the “bad story structured way”). The canon structure of Part II might have worked for a novel, or a movie or TV show or something. 

This is a story driven VIDEO GAME. Players directly experience the narrative, not just read or watch it. It has to work in a way that doesn’t feel like an outright HATE message directed to the player themselves. There’s a difference in “exploring the themes of hatred and revenge” in a game, and “deliberately creating something that people are going to despise” (something Druckmann said. He literally said that he’d rather people passionately hate the game rather than just saying “eh, it was ok”). 

To me, I think it would have been more conducive to focus their efforts on creating an experience that people would ultimately LOVE TO PLAY AS A GAME, as Naughty Dog explored the themes of hatred/revenge solely within the realm of the game’s content, rather than this borderline preachy way they presented this current flop of a story. Just IMO.

It’s sad too, because it would have been a great opportunity for Naughty Dog to fill in some of the gaps in the first game regarding the Fireflies, getting more of major key moments from the Fireflies’ point of view (since their movement was largely in the background of the first game, but still prominent enough) and she could have served as an interesting foil or something to both Ellie and Joel.

Abby is a character who lost her father at the hands of Joel, while Ellie never knew hers and found a father figure in the very man who took Abby’s father away from her. Joel in the first game was depicted as a man who had largely given up on humanity after everything that happened to him, more than likely didn’t believe humanity deserved a cure, or at least damn sure that to him it wasn’t worth losing Ellie over, and killed a lot of the Fireflies to rescue her.

Abby had a direct connection with the group, her father probably a hero in her eyes for still wanting to do the right thing and help humanity (what was left of it anyway) and was brutally murdered by someone who, by all accounts was nothing but a thuggish criminal and smuggler from her point of view.

All of those things could have been compelling and made Abby more understandable and relatable from the start. Would her killing Joel in such a brutal fashion so early in the game still have been bad? Absolutely. However, to me, the difference in knowing who she is and what her deal is before hand would have at least given the player the space to decide how much so for themselves. The overall framing choice of the narrative made this story more convoluted than it needed to be unfortunately. I get what Druckmann was going for overall, but the over reliance on shock value and screwing around with the player’s emotions in this game ultimately came at the cost of good story structure in the process. Sometimes, the straightforward approach is the best way to execute a story….

Well, that’s it for part one of my review. What do you all think? Agree? Disagree? Let me know what your thoughts are on the matter. But for now, I will return to my Den. Thanks for reading! If you liked this review, then stay tuned for my follow up after I complete the game.

Edit: Part II of my review is up! If you liked this, and want to read about how I would have personally structured this story, here’s the link to that!

[terabitweb]

Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Doug Olenick

If you work in the IT trenches, there has likely come a moment while you were sitting in your office, reviewing the latest news about current phishing campaigns, when you suddenly looked up and cast your eyes across the floor, pondering a very basic question: just what are your users doing with all those malicious emails that you know are washing up in their inboxes despite your best efforts to stem the tide?

Most organizations these days have deployed multiple layers of security to monitor and protect their networks, servers, and endpoints. But no matter how good your anti-virus and Exchange security software is, no matter how granular the logging available for review may be, you know there are two things you still can’t guarantee.

You can’t guarantee that your users will never be forced to deal with increasingly sophisticated malicious emails, all of them driven by proven social engineering schemes cooked up and road-tested by malicious parties.

Worse, you can’t tell your boss that you have deep insight how your users are actually handling those phishing emails. The best you can do is wait for all your organization’s various layers of security to alert you that something is amiss (and then hope it isn’t too late to head off disaster).

So, as you watch your users staring intently at their screens, it’s difficult not to wonder: just what are they doing?

Let us show you, using actual phishing emails reported by customers who have deployed the Phish Alert Button (PAB). In what follows we will take you through all-too-common examples of what we see users doing every day when handling phishing emails. Fair warning: it ain’t pretty.

Say It Ain’t So, Joe!

When your users show up for work every day, most of them have one primary concern: doing their jobs as quickly, efficiently and effectively as they can. Although they have been told that security should be on their minds, most will have little experience dealing with savvy bad actors. And the decisions they make when actually confronted with live phishing emails reflect that inexperience.

One of more common decisions that employees make when they encounter suspicious emails is to hit the Reply button in order to confirm that those worrisome emails are, in fact, safe to open.

What all too many of these employees do not realize, however, is that the answers they receive will be from bad guys operating from compromised emails accounts. And you can guess what these fraud artists are telling your users.

Some of these bad guys are so confident in their ability to pull the wool over your users’ eyes that they’re even willing to subtly taunt them.

When users see a familiar name in the From: line of an email, the temptation to trust what comes from those familiar email accounts will be powerful.

Sharing the Wealth

Another common behavior we see among users dealing with malicious emails is a troubling tendency to share and forward those emails, most of them laden with malicious links or attachments. And every person who receives those emails represents another opportunity for the bad guys to capture login credentials or drop malware inside your network.

Many users forward on malicious emails without little awareness that in doing so they are doing the work of malicious parties. This particular user, having received a fake court notice with a malicious, thought it only reasonable to alert his boss. The boss, of course, opened the malicious attachment straightaway.

Even when users do suspect that danger may be lurking within emails they have received, they still forward those malicious emails to others. When they do, they inadvertently kick off a chain of forwards, exposing multiple users to malicious links and attachments.

Consider this senior consultant at an engineering consulting firm who receives a fake invoice phish and proceeds to sets off a chain of forwards by instructing a junior consultant to look into it.

The whole mess eventually lands in the lap of a lowly “Receptionist/Office Assistant” working in completely different office.

Note that at this point multiple employees have likely clicked the malicious link and absolutely no one has checked the original email with IT, despite suggestions to do just that.

Asking for More

Users can remain oblivious to email-borne threats even in the face of obvious alarms — like odd behavior when they attempt to open malicious attachments and links. Determined to do their jobs, such users can find themselves blithely inviting malicious actors to provide them with still more opportunities to compromise their PCs as well as the networks of their employers.

We recently observed this depressing phenomenon after users received a phishing email delivered unwittingly by Dropbox itself and pointing to a malicious file hosted on a compromised Dropbox account. A number of users confused by that malicious file ended up posting their email addresses to a virtual “wall of shame”:

Indeed, we often see users stymied by the inexplicable behavior of malicious links and attachments demonstrating their willingness to go the extra mile to get their hands on files they do not realize are malicious.

Pleading Ignorance

And then there are the users who simply throw up their hands when the bad guys ask them to engage in dangerous behavior. This particular user tried to plead ignorance when asked by the bad guys to assist with a wire fraud scheme.

Unsurprisingly, the bad guy in this case was having none of it. Fortunately, the user here clicked the Phish Alert Button (PAB) instead of forwarding this request to others in his organization who might have been able to perform the wire transfer.

Eager Beavers

Not many users are willing to resort to the ignorance excuse when dealing with bad guys posing as senior executives within their organization, though. It is much more common to observe users all too willing and eager to spring into action when the bad guys come calling.

One of the more alarming cases we witnessed recently involved an employee named Ashley, who fell victim to one of the more prevalent phishing campaigns currently in use: the iTunes gift card phish.

Asked by a bad guy posing as her boss to purchase a whopping twenty $100.00 iTunes gift cards, Ashley promptly hopped in her car and drove around town, hitting multiple stores (because no single store would allow her to buy more than four or five cards at a time), then sitting in her car and emailing screenshots of each card’s scratch-off code. Worse she put the entire $2000.00 in gift cards on her own personal credit card.

Targeted in yet another form of CEO fraud phishing, Phyllis was so helpful in getting her boss’s direct deposit data changed that even the bad guys posing as her boss were impressed, wishing her “compliments of the seasons.”

Decidedly less impressed was her actual boss, who found that Phyllis was handing over his paycheck to the bad guys when she helpfully cc’ed his work email address:

Ignoring the Obvious

Some users are just clueless and overly eager to get stuff done or keep their bosses happy. Others, however, deliberately ignore obvious signs of trouble when handling malicious emails. And while it’s one thing to ignore red flags when opening a link or attachment on one’s own PC, it’s quite another to blow through an explicit warning from an anti-virus program, as this employee did…

…and then request the bad guys themselves send on that same malware to one of the organization’s customers or clients. Once again, this kind of response simply provides the bad guys more opportunities to sow destruction and chaos.

Unfortunately, it’s not just lay users who are prone to ignoring malicious threats, even when those threats are staring them in the face. Less experienced IT employees are perfectly capable of doing much the same.

We had to chuckle at this response from one organization’s help desk when a user reported the opening salvo in an obvious email scam:

Yes, the malicious party spoofing Pastor Paul would almost undoubtedly be asking for “donations,” just not the charitable kind.

There’s also something darkly humorous in this exchange between another user and his organization’s help desk. When the user received a fake invoice phish from the compromised email account of someone named “Joseph F,” he had several good reasons to suspect a rat, not the least of which was the fact that the organization’s anti-virus had flagged the attachment as malicious. But there was another reason.

The bad guys have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Even they, however, haven’t quite figured out how to get dead guys to send emails from six feet under.

Users (sometimes) Get a Clue

As depressing as it can be to watch users scoring “own goals” for Team Bad Guys, we do occasionally see signs of hope. Sometimes users do manage to come up with the right answers when the bad guys come knocking — even if does take a few minutes for the light bulb to blink on.

Consider this user, who received a fairly standard CEO fraud email requesting her to change the direct deposit details for the head of finance.

Apparently Kim chewed a bit more on her lighthearted observation — the proverbial gears turning in her mind — before deciding to report this phishing email to her IT department via the Phish Alert Button (PAB).

Bad Guys Get a Clue

The bad guys can also think on their feet, though. Like poor Ashley, whose encounter with the bad guys we considered earlier, Matt also found himself bamboozled into providing close to $2000.00 in iTunes gift cards to a malicious actor spoofing one of his bosses.

Not being an idiot, the bad guy quickly realized he had hooked a sucker and made the obvious play.

Conclusion

Your users and employees are your organization’s greatest strength. Those same employees, however, can also prove to be your biggest headache — a real life bonified security threat — if they haven’t been properly trained on how to recognize and respond to the malicious emails landing in their inboxes on a daily basis.

Instead of sitting in your office, wondering what your employees and users are doing and dreading the next sign that malware is inside the wire or your company’s bank accounts drained, a better course of action is to turn your users into security assets. Step your users through New-school Security Awareness Training, test their resilience in face of threats through simulated phishing campaigns, then give them the tools to report phishing emails directly to your IT department so that you and your users can live in the light instead dreading disaster in the dark.

The post It’s raining phishes out there. do you know what your users are doing? appeared first on SC Media.

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Go to Source Author: Doug Olenick It’s raining phishes out there. do you know what your users are doing? Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Doug Olenick If you work in the IT trenches, there has likely come a…

[ruffsficstuffplace]

Reunions (Part 17): The Shadow Council

Note: WELL, this update took an entire year to get here. With Descendants 2 renewing my interest, and interested comments long after I initially abandoned this project, I'll get back to it, hopefully for good this time with all the new tools and inspiration I've picked up along the way.

Chapters will be shorter from now on, by the way, ranging from 1,500 to 2,000 words each. A big contributor to my original fatigue was that each chapter just got way too long, and I was having unrealistic expectations about my progress.

I'll attempt a once a week update, no set day of the week.

The room was large and circular in shape, two semi-circle tables lined with chairs of various designs, all arranged around a throne on a raised dais. Bright LED bulbs cast everything in a cold, white light, letting nothing hide in darkness or ambiguity, the faces and features of all the occupants cast in sharp relief. They varied greatly in appearance, except for their eyes:

All wizened and aged by time, wisdom, and things no person should ever have to bear witness to.

This was Auradon's Shadow Council, the one government organization that did not appear in the public lists, whose existence was known only to a select few. They were the people that constantly asked themselves the questions:

“What can go wrong now? What will? And what are we going to do about it?”

Preferably, the solutions were discrete and seen to completion long before it becomes a large enough issue to merit the public's attention, but they were amenable to brute force and blatant, often dangerous and questionable measures if necessary.

Their numbers were handpicked from all over Auradon, both before and after the Great Uniting. Spy masters and mistresses; directors of intelligence agencies; beings who had lived for milennia and silently, subtly dictated and guided the destinies of the societies and world around them for their own mysterious reasons; generals and other heads of militaries, both private and state; even former criminal masterminds and heads of powerful organizations who hadn't been too proud to exchange their empires to escape the Isle.

To say that they were a diverse group of many opinions and points of view was an understatement. However, for all their differences, they all managed to reach a consensus or a compromise at some point, delivered by their spokesperson:

Xiao Jing, “The Jade Dragon” and “The Opium Empress” in her past life, living proof that Ruthlessness, Efficiency, and Cunning knew no gender.

Everyone stood up to greet Ben and pay him the proper respects, as he entered the room just after his escort of elite guards. He managed a pitiful smile and a limp wave as he made his way to his second throne.

After he slumped into it, the Council reseated themselves—except for Xiao, who moved from her seat to just before Ben, her beloved tablet in the crook of her arm.

She bowed. “Your highness.”

“Give me the good news,” Ben muttered.

“Islander Rehabilitation success rate remain at 87%, with a 2-3% margin of error. The 7% that have strayed have not done anything serious enough to merit another round of life sentences on the Isle, prolonged imprisonment here exceeding three weeks at the worst, or lawsuits in amounts higher than a few hundred silver dollars, at the absolute worst.

“Economically: losses are down, spending is up, and the surge of new businesses, consumers, and the Islanders' pursuits to raise their standard of living promise to sustain it for decades yet. Waste and inefficiency is down now that demand is so high and visible, and even states like Cinderellasburg are now keenly aware of the environmental effects of their consumption, and are reacting accordingly.

“There are concerns over our agricultural lands and present infrastructures’ capability to sustain this growth, let alone feed our people in the long term, but the loosening of the restrictions on magic, and the innovation the Islanders are spurring should help.”

Ben nodded. “What's the bad news?”

“Of the remaining 6%, we fear they are beginning to organize, biding their time gathering resources and waiting for the opportunity to revive their criminal enterprises, if on a small scale for now.”

Ben shot up in his seat. “What?! How?!”

Xiao scowled. "We VASTLY underestimated just how creative, resourceful, and determined the Islanders can be. Though we have been accounting for their incredible ability to survive and sometimes thrive with literal table scraps and refuse, we did not realize how quickly they could gain access to larger supply chains, and more worryingly, the funding of independent entities.”

Ben frowned. “Can we track them? Can we stop them from supplying them?” He paused. “Do we even know who they are...?”

Xiao nodded her head sadly. “Even if they were corporate entities, it'd be difficult to outright impossible. Our taxation laws and monitoring are not nearly as strict or thorough as those BGU, given the extreme to outright lack of fraudulent spending, misleading records, or outright evasion. What few discrepancies we have found tend to have no records, presumably due to personal favours between the entities involved, one-time offenses, or just negligence.

“It would also be difficult to open up an investigation without any strong proof of criminal involvement—by which time, we fear that the damage may have already been done. And this isn't even getting into the political repercussions of accusing someone of funding subversives...”

“So we're basically forced to sit here and wait as people from within our borders are helping undermine the security and the peace, possibly overthrow the government and take over the world,” Ben said flatly as he slumped down yet again.

Xiao nodded. “Precisely,” she said. “Speaking from personal experience: thriving legitimate businesses are almost as valuable as more lucrative criminal enterprises—cutting out the money laundry saves so much time and manpower, along with reducing interest from the authorities.”

“That's not an encouraging piece of information!” Ben cried.

Xiao hummed. “It's our reality, Your Highness. On an encouraging note: we still have full-coverage of most every business transaction that happens in Auradon, even with the influx of Islander activity; if anything, it's even more reliable than before with how much more chatty and prone to gossip the latter are about their indiscretions and anomalies.

“Should someone be attempting large scale movement of resources, or anything else suspicious, we will hear about it.”

“That's great!” Ben said, brightening up. “Should we start outfitting and mobilizing the Royal Guard, or will that overstretch the budget?”

Xiao raised a finger. “I was just about to get to that, Your Highness...”

Ben's face turned gloomy once more. "Let me guess: Dog?”

"Yes: his ability to effortlessly crush, outsmart, and outmaneuver literal armies of our best has given the Islanders great hope that they, too, can slip through the cracks in our defenses, and has the general populace in serious concern over their safety.

“And this is not going into the effect it's had on the political level…” Xiao muttered as she pressed some buttons on her tablet.

One of the projectors on Ben's throne activated, and beamed a screen right before his eyes.

The scene was that of a political rally, somewhere in Bayou de new Orleans from the mostly white and black residents in the crowd, and the odd swamp creature in the mix, the alligators most prominently. On a stage was one Mayor John Mark Sweeney, from the annotations.

“This rally was held just a day after the terror attack in New Hope, but the dissent and the unease has been brewing since Dog's unexpected arrival,” Xiao explained.

The video began to play, in the middle of his speech.

“… But now, my family, my friends, we have been proven wrong, so very wrong!

“The first and last defense against all Evil has been thwarted, for on an invader was not only able to outwit, outmaneuver, and outfight our brave soldiers, he did it all while vastly outnumbered and with a frozen tuna! Who uses a frozen tuna to fight literally a hundred soldiers at once, and expect to win?

“That invader did, and boy, did he make his point to all of us!”

“My family, my friends, who knows how many more like him lurk among us waiting to strike? Who knows when they will target not our guards, with their swords and their training and their bravery, but innocent, unarmed, helpless civilians?  Who knows if the Guards can even protect us?!

“Who will save us now?! Who will keep our streets safe, our businesses safe, our children and loved ones safe? Who will make sure we can sleep soundly at night, and let us keep our doors unlocked, our windows open, and our arms stretched out in welcome to all visitors?

“My family, my friends… we can save ourselves!

“We can band together, standing for us, for Auradon, for what is Right and Good in this world! And as your mayor: I will happily throw myself on the front-line for you all! Stand as our vanguard! Be the one who will step forward into this scary, unknown future with my head held up high!”

“My family, my friends: Sweeney Will Save You!”

The crowd went into an uproar, crying, whistling, and howling their support for Sweeney. Ben noticed distinctly uncomfortable looking faces from the crowd, folks who were plently scruffy and dressed in similar looking, plainly designed clothes:

Islanders.

He felt a churning in his stomach and shut off the projector himself.

“Psychological profiling, and our digging into his history points that he is most definitely completely honest and well-intentioned in his belief about the impending threat of chaos, crime, and lawlessness. He is even more sure that he is the only person for the job, that his plan won't fail catastrophically, or have far-reaching, unintended consequences.

“In other words, a Messiah Complex.”

Ben sighed, and put his hand to his face. “Nothing's more dangerous than a man on a divine mission...”

“Indeed,” Xiao said gravely. “Let us hope that the rest of Auradon have taken the lessons of Judge Frollo and Paris to heart.”

Ben put his hand down. “Are we really that outmatched in case we have that sort of situation on our hands?”

“No. By our analysis, our guards are doing well enough,” Xiao replied.

“Describe 'Well enough.'”

“Our soliders are mostly incompetent, with only a handful of highly skilled individuals distributed all throughout the states—but the Islanders are more or less in the same situation, which makes us evenly matched.

“Our home advantage in resources, intelligence, and manpower tilt the odds greatly in our favour, so long as the Islanders threatening a relapse into crime remain the minority, and the very worst of them remain imprisoned.

“Retraining and reeducation of our guards to be better prepared for real-life scenarios are well under way, not to mention that the Islanders themselves have been a most unexpected and valuable boon in leads and insider information to potential problems and suspicious activity—no honour among thieves indeed, especially if the minority's actions threaten the all of their ability to stay off the Isle.

“So, your majesty Benjamin, after much research, discussion, and reflection, we of the Shadow Council can confidently say:

“Auradon is fucked.”

Ben smiled, before he realized what she'd said and he scrambled in his seat. “Wait, what?! I thought we had a handle on the crime situation with the guards!”

“Technically speaking, we do! But the seeds of Fear have been sown all throughout our dear nation and all our citizens, Auradonian or Islander, and believe me when I say that Fear never let silly things like facts and statistics influence its decisions.

Xiao pointed to one of her colleauges. “As General Woolhearth so aptly put it in our discussions earlier--”

“Buckle up your seatbelt and put on you crash helmet, boys and girls, we're in for a wild ride and there's no tellin' when it will end,” General Woolhearth repeated, grinning underneath his impressive full beard.

Ben frowned, already feeling his eyebags grow darker, and his hair and eyes lose some of their luster. The meeting continued, going into the specifics of their future plans and countermeasures, discussions on how to solve this impending crisis in the short and long term, and getting a handle on the most urgent ones before they worsened still.

Then, the Shadow Council was dismissed, slinking back into the darkness to wherever they stayed, be they penthouse apartments in the highest skyscrapers, nondescript lodgings in the slums, or even alternate dimensions.

Ben retired to his room that night, but he slept not a wink, unable to relax with the burden pressing down on his shoulders…

… One that would only grow more overwhelming as the days passed, starting with the news about a certain public outburst making waves all over Auradon.