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deltaengineering · 6 years

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Summer Anime 2018 Part 1: Nurupo

I feel bad for calling last season weak now, since that turned out okay, what with Megalobox, Hinamatsuri and Rokuhoudou (the best show you didn’t watch). Maybe this is a lesson to not be so negative, but all the positivity in the world can’t make this season look good. To balance it out, I’ll be bringing along some hot opinions from people getting paid to see the bright side this time.

P.S. Part 2 is here.

Island

What: A very Frontwing version of When They Cry, apparently. Awesome McCooldude wakes up on an island full of pliant girls and/or dark secrets.

✅ looks alright

❌ story is tryhard mystery nonsense based on convenient amnesia, very unlikely to deliver

❌❌ an absolutely terrible cast of generic VN characters, enjoy your common route hijinks with them

❌❌ Frontwing being Frontwing, please see picture.

ANN sez: “This episode accomplishes the two things that it absolutely must for the series to have a chance of succeeding: it makes the main trio of girls endearing enough and layers on some intriguing mysteries.”

Hanebad!

What: Some girls take badminton very seriously. Somewhere between genocide and extinction level event seriously.

✅ well animated and directed

✅ there appears to be more to the characters than nothing at all, so the overbearing presence of the drama llama might actually pay off

❌ has a tendency to wallow in ostentatious KyoAni-style presentational kitsch

❌ speaking of which, making the cast of Euphonium look like a bunch of carefree slackers by comparison is not a good thing

ANN sez: “From the lush colors of their school's flowers to the alienating saturation and long shots of their gym hallways, every mood HANEBADO strives for is captured perfectly through its visual storytelling, and solidified through fundamentally sturdy dialogue and plotting.”

Senjuushi

What: Touken Ranbu with firearms.

❌ This is a cute boys doing cute things anime set against a backdrop of global thermonuclear war and combining the ultra seriousness of ufotable TR with the slice of life tone of Doga Kobo TR makes for a very, let’s say, “uneven” experience.

❌ Unsurprisingly, it has the production values of neither of the above and looks like crap instead.

❌❌ The localized title is “The Thousand Musketeers” and given the reckless pace in which it introduces pointless characters, it might actually hit that number in 12 episodes.

❌❌ Mobile game character designs must be stopped, for fuck’s sake

ANN sez: “The story itself has some promise, especially if you're a fan of antique guns.“

Shichisei no Subaru

What: VRMMO light novel garbage about MMO newtypes.

❌ High tier light novel tropes like “u die in the game u die 4 real”, grade schooler magical girlfriends and demigod abilities

❌ Yes, the characters start as grade schoolers and then there’s a timeskip where they become high schoolers. They don’t change at all, which is either cutting commentary on arrested development or an indication of how good this show’s writing is.

❌ Ideas like permadeath in an MMO and giving good players a stake in the game company are hilariously stupid even by this genre’s standards.

❌ You’ve seen this exact cast of characters before, likely in better shows.

❌❌ There’s really no single egregiously bad aspect, but the stank of mediocrity is so overwhelming as to deserve a double minus all of its own.

ANN sez: “This episode banks heavily on the appeal of its mysteries, but those mysteries actually are pretty appealing, and I ultimately respect this episode's choice to introduce so much of its world and characters before getting to the real conceit.”

Banana Fish

What: A well regarded classic manga about New York’s seedy gang underbelly of drugs and violence. And BL.

✅ ✅ Looks good. Like actually, legitimately good. Animation, character design, directing, this show is quality.

❌ Updating the setting to contemporary times seems like a not so great idea since everything about this is deeply steeped in the mid-80s gang violence and drugs panic, no matter how many smartphones get used.

♎ The pacing is ultra fast. While I will admit that I’ll take that over a snoozefest (especially in a seasonal rundown), if this wants to be a legitimate high tier anime it needs to let the atmosphere breathe more. 24 episodes isn’t much for a 19-volume manga.

❌ I’ve praised MAPPA for promising first episodes before, and then I got the likes of Yuri on Ice and Virgin Soul out of it. This is not an anime original so it will be harder to fuck up, but life finds a way - especially given the need for condensing the story as noted above.

❌ Ultimately, just being a classy production with proven writing isn’t the be-all-end-all; quality aside, I still have to like what it does, and I’m not sure what amounts to a homoerotic 80s crime B-thriller is exactly in my wheelhouse.

✅ What else are you gonna watch this season?

ANN sez: “The one negative I can foresee is that one character is portrayed as a fairly stereotypical gay sexual predator, and this story pitches itself consistently as a seedier exploration of its boys' love subject matter, so it's reasonable to expect these kinds of details going forward.”

Yume Oukoku to Nemureru 100-nin no Ouji-sama

What: Girls get their wish-fulfilment isekai nonsense too, it’s just a pretty pointless definition when you can just say “basic otome harem” instead. But sure, nondescript girl wakes up in fantasy dream universe where she has a magical trait that makes a large number of princes desire her. Call it what you like.

♎ Successfully avoids the most obnoxious otome harem and isekai tropes, but that just makes it even more bland

❌ lots of exposition about an universe that is hardly complicated and transparently an excuse anyway

❌ Main character is agreeable but exceptionally boring

❌ The princes are all generically princely and very little else

❌❌ combine that with sluggish pacing and this might be the most boring show so far, which is not an easy feat

ANN sez: “There were also some neat details here and there that I particularly appreciated, like the fact that our heroine is actually a working adult, as well as the idea that rather than being “trapped in a new world” she's in truth been returned to her home.”

Back Street Girls

What: A trio of yakuza thugs get a forced sex change because their boss wants to be an idol producer. It’s funny, laugh.

❌ This is not the warm, fuzzy trans acceptance anime you’ve been looking for, to put it mildly. I am not easily offended, but it would have to be pretty darn good to outrun this premise. Yeah, about that...

❌❌ runs its one joke (idols are not supposed to be thugs, like, at all!) into the ground before it exceeds a 3-minute short runtime; is actually 24 minutes long anyway. Hope you really like that joke.

❌❌ the execution of said joke is the pits of anime comedy, nothing but reaction faces and shouting

❌❌ production values are basically non-existent, at most you can say that they took the time to color in those manga panels

❌ learning that Chiaki Kon is directing this pile is just sad, put THAT in your auteur pipe and smoke it.

ANN sez: Nothing, since western licensors mysteriously chose to skip this one. Really a shame because I was looking forward to the outrage.

Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu

What: It has “Isekai” and “Maou” in the title so what do you fucking think. What it doesn’t tell you is that it’s also about an MMO, for the full LN shitter nuclear triad.

❌❌ It’s about a loser otaku who gets trapped in his MMO wherein he has the mostest hax, complete with complementary slave pettan catgirl and slave oppai elf

❌❌ This is meant to be funny because he’s too much of a dweeb to put his penis where his mouth is.

❌ Technically better executed than Death March or Isekai Smartphone, so it gets one single minus for effort.

ANN sez: “The idea that Takuma is so insecure about talking to other people that he can only comfortably speak in the voice of his demon lord character is ingenious in a dramatic sense and endearing in a personal one, while Takuma's clear understanding of his personal failings makes him far more sympathetic than the genre's usual snarky protagonists.”

Satsuriku no Tenshi

What: Early teen girl checks herself into Silent Hill General Hospital for grief counselling.

✅ Atmosphere works reasonably well; it’s creepy where it needs to be, which is everywhere and all the time.

❌ The girl is a nonfactor blob and the tough guy she gets paired up with is an annoying chuuni edgelord (it is called 𝔄𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔩𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥 after all), which is not promising for the long run

❌ So obviously based on a run-of-the-mill spoopy RPGmaker freeware game you can practically see the floor tiles.

❌❌ 24 solid minutes of Getting Cornered By A Rape Metaphor quickly goes from unsettling to incredibly tedious.

❌❌ There’s really nowhere for this to go, given how unoriginal everything is; at best it’s going to be “it was all a dream”, at worst “everyone was dead all along, please feel sad now”.

ANN sez: “The design of the facility is one of those fanciful every-level-is-a-different-setting worlds, but the artistic effort strongly pushes the creepiness factor with a design aesthetic that suggests age, decay, and neglect.“

Harukana Receive

What: Girls play beach volleyball in scenic Okinawa, some light sports drama seems to be on the horizon.

✅ Looks just good enough

✅ Girls are just cute and likeable enough

❌ the sports aspect is weak; maybe I’m just spoiled on Emiya-san’s incredible beach volleyball scene right now, but even when not compared to a top tier studio ostentatiously flaunting the budget of their fucking cooking short the match here isn’t very compelling.

♎ where Hanebad has a bad case of the cereals, this may have the opposite problem of being too cotton candy to be worth it

✅ “good enough” is not a ringing endorsement, but counts for something when being just okay will net you a third or possibly second place of the season.

ANN sez: “This is, of course, all just conjecture right now. ”

Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro

What: We took Nichijou and replaced the surrealism with video game references and the production values with donkey dung. Let’s see if delta notices!

❌❌ Production values are not optional when you want to be Nichijou; it being astoundingly over the top and imbued with impeccable timing is a (or even the) main part of Nichijou’s appeal. Without them you’re left with basic reactionface manzai over awkward situations, the king of comedy.

❌❌ Suffice it to say, this show is 100% trying to be funny, while also 100% not succeeding at being funny.

❌Asscreed is a more original tentpole to rotate your first episode around than the usual Dragon Quest, but not by much.

♎ neurotic nerd main character that is little more than a bundle of social anxieties will be #relatable to anime professionals, observe:

ANN sez: “Chio's overthinking in this situation is both hilarious and painfully true-to-life, with her furious strategizing coming across as both absurd and very familiar to anyone who's not comfortable in conversation.”

Planet With

Wat: Appears to be a tokusatsu/crypto-mecha show aimed at the younger set, with the gimmick being that our protagonist is (initially?) on the side of the villains(?).

✅ Pretty wacky, actually. It definitely doesn’t neatly fit in your square notions of what an anime is, man (unless you’ve watched FLCL).

❌ It seems very uncertain whether the wackiness is in service of anything. It might be To Be Heroine, or it might just be Heybot with fewer fart jokes.

♎ Furthermore, it wants to be intriguing and sort of is, but merely being intriguing is not that hard - you just make no sense and hope for the best. This has the not making sense part down, do you feel lucky?

❌ tries to build up characters by immediately going for the sad flashbacks, which I never like, especially if the rest of the show is eIDLIVE-level nonsense.

❌ Looks mostly fiiiiiine, but is also full of subpar CG

ANN sez: “So if the heroes are fighting against someone who just wants peace, then what does that make them? And more importantly, if they find out that the bears aren't evil, will they stop?”

Hataraku Saibou

What: A cutesy educational comedy about the workings of a human body.

✅ Well made, characters are cute, topic is interesting.

❌ Educational aspect can get in the way; I’m not suddenly giving heavy exposition a pass just because it’s trying to teach me something, especially if it’s things I basically already know.

♎ Will have to show if it can keep coming up with good scenarios. The lung infection in episode 1 was alright and so will probably be the skin cut in the preview, but beyond that I’m not sure what’s left for red and white blood cells to do. I’m not expecting a show with this tone to tackle things like retroviruses, if you know what I mean.

♎ An actual storyline seems like too much to expect, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but not a positive either.

✅ Doesn’t rock my socks off but is an easily watchable show with a fine idea and high production values, which again is hard to say no to right now.

ANN sez: “But since it culminates in one of my favorite scenes from the manga, visualizing sneezing as shooting a torpedo out your nose, I can forgive the random gendering of cells.”

Ongaku Shoujo

What: DEEN are getting in on the idol mobile game anime biz too.

✅ The main character’s gimmick is that apart from being A Honk, she can’t sing for shit; this is moderately funny.

❌ It might have counted for more if that hadn’t come out seconds before the episode ended. Even if it isn’t a momentous twist, it was more of a point of interest than the incredibly bland leadup to it had.

❌ Yeah, “Ongaku Shoujo” is an entirely indicative name of how generic this show is: Music + girls, indeed. I assume “Idols” was taken.

❌ I’m still not sure what the ideal cast size of a show like this is, but 12 idols is Idolmaster turf and as such too many. They have personalities? I think?

❌ a very small handful of cuts aside, woeful production quality; I know picking on DEEN is 2ez but this is not their finest work. Animation snobs can feel proud that there’s no CG dancing here, for the rest of us it’s an object lesson on why CG is the lesser of two evils.

✅ Tumbling SR cards in the ED (which is probably actually the OP) made me laugh; this show can’t even afford URs.

❌❌ Overall, just another idol show. Large cast plus presence of a P-san marks it as Im@s-type – but if you're in the market for an Idolmaster clone with bad looks, I would recommend Wake Up Girls instead because that’s at least pretty real at points.

ANN sez: They’re out for the weekend, ask again later. I suspect it’s nothing funny.

#anime #impressions #summer2018 #banana fish #island #senjuushi #hanebad #shichisei no subaru #yume oukoku to nemureru 100 nin no ouji sama #Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu #back street girls #satsuriko no tenshi #harukana receive #chio-chan no tsuugakuro #planet with #hataraku saibou #ongaku shoujo

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

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By any reasonable measure, the neoliberal dream lies in tatters. In 2008 poorly regulated financial markets yielded a world-historic financial collapse. One generation, weaned on reveries of home ownership as the coveted badge of economic independence and old-fashioned American striving, has been plunged into foreclosure, bankruptcy, and worse. And a successor generation of aspiring college students is now discovering that their equally toxic student-loan dossiers are condemning them to lifetimes of debt. Both before and after 2008, ours has been an economic order that, largely designed to reward paper speculation and penalize work, produces neither significant job growth nor wages that keep pace with productivity. Meanwhile, the only feints at resurrecting our nation’s crumbling civic life that have gained any traction are putatively market-based reforms in education, transportation, health care, and environmental policy, which have been, reliably as ever, riddled with corruption, fraud, incompetence, and (at best) inefficiency. The Grand Guignol of deregulation continues apace.

In one dismal week this past spring, for example, a virtually unregulated fertilizer facility immolated several blocks of West, Texas, claiming at least fourteen lives (a number that would have been much higher had the junior high school adjoining the site been in session at the time of the explosion), while a shoddily constructed and militantly unregulated complex of textile factories collapsed in Savar, Bangladesh, with a death toll of more than 1,100 workers.

In the face of all this catastrophism, the placid certainties of neoliberal ideology rattle on as though nothing has happened. Remarkably, our governing elites have decided to greet a moment of existential reckoning for most of their guiding dogmas by incanting with redoubled force the basic catechism of the neoliberal faith: reduced government spending, full privatization of social goods formerly administered by the public sphere, and a socialization of risk for the upper class. When the jobs economy ground to a functional halt, our leadership class first adopted an anemic stimulus plan, and then embarked on a death spiral of austerity-minded bids to decommission government spending at the very moment it was most urgently required—measures seemingly designed to undo whatever prospective gains the stimulus might have yielded. It’s a bit as though the board of directors of the Fukushima nuclear facility in the tsunami-ravaged Japanese interior decided to go on a reactor-building spree on a floodplain, or on the lip of an active volcano.

So now, five years into a crippling economic downturn without even the conceptual framework for a genuine, broad-based, jobs-driven recovery shored up by boosts in federal spending and public services, the public legacy of these times appears to be a long series of metaphoric euphemisms for brain-locked policy inertia: the debt ceiling, the fiscal cliff, the sequestration, the shutdown, the grand bargain. Laid side by side, all these coinages bring to mind the claustrophobic imagery of a kidnapping montage from a noir gangster film—and it is, indeed, no great exaggeration to say that the imaginative heart of our public life is now hostage to a grinding, miniaturizing agenda of neoliberal market idolatry. As our pundit class has tirelessly flogged the non-dramas surrounding the official government’s non-confrontations over the degree and depth of the inevitable brokered deal to bring yet more austerity to the flailing American economy, we civilian observers can be forgiven for suspecting that there is, in fact, no “there” there. For all their sound and fury, these set-tos proceed from the same basic premises on both sides, and produce the same outcome: studied retreat from any sense of official economic accountability for, well, anything.

...You’d think that our recent bruising encounters with the devastating fallout from the deregulators’ handiwork in the housing market of the early aughts should, by rights, render Friedman’s complaints about the public sector’s assaults on market virtue the deadest of dead letters. But, if anything, the ritual defense of the market’s sovereign prerogative has dug in that much more intractably as its basic coordinates have been discredited. As critics such as Dean Baker routinely point out, the stalled recovery out of the Great Recession is almost exclusively a function of the failure of our neoliberal economic establishment to speak honestly about a collapsed housing bubble that created a yawning shortfall in demand—a shortfall that, amid the paralysis of credit markets in the same recession, could be jumpstarted only by government stimulus.

All sorts of absurdities have flowed from this magisterial breakdown in comprehension. Since the neoliberal catechism holds that stimulative government spending can never be justified in the long run, much of our debate over the recovery’s prospective course has been given over to speculative nonsense. Chief among these talismanic invocations of free-market faith is the great question of how to placate the jittery job creators. At virtually every turn in the course of debate over how steeply to cut government spending in this recession, our sachems of neoliberal orthodoxy have insisted that any revenue-enhancing move the government so much as contemplated would spook business leaders into mothballing plans to expand operations and add jobs. It became the all-purpose worst-case scenario of first resort. If health care reform passed, if federal deficits expanded, or if marginal tax rates were permitted to rise for the vapors-prone investor class, why, then the whole prospect of a broad-based economic recovery was as good as shot.[*]

And since neoliberalism is most notably a global—or properly speaking, the globalizing—ideology, such pat distortions of economic reality are no longer confined to the Anglo-American political economy. Nor are they confined to strictly cognitive errors in policymaking. The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh has yielded commentary from neoliberals that might well merit entry into the psychiatric profession’s DSM-5 as textbook illustrations of moral aphasia. Here, after all, was a tragedy that would appall even the darkest Victorian imaginings of a Charles Dickens or a Karl Marx: factory workers earning a monthly wage of $38 crowded into a structurally unsound multistory facility built on a foundation of sand above a drained pond. Three stories of the factory had been hastily erected on top of an already unsound existing structure just to house the fresh battalions of underpaid workers demanded by bottom-feeding international textile contractors.

Government inspectors repeatedly demanded that the facility be shuttered on safety grounds, but the plant’s proprietors ignored their citations, reckoning that the short-term gains of maintaining peak production outweighed the negligible threat of a fine or safety citation. Nor was there likely to be any pressure from Western bastions of enlightenment and human rights. The ceremonial stream of Astroturf labor-and-safety-inspecting delegations from Western nations made zero note of the cracked and teetering foundations of the Rana Plaza structure. Lorenz Berzau, the managing director of one such industry consortium (the Business Social Compliance Initiative), primly told the Wall Street Journal that the group isn’t an engineering concern—and what’s more, “it’s very important not to expect too much from the social audit” that his group and other Western overseers conduct on production facilities. And, as Dave Jamieson and Emran Hossain reported in the Huffington Post, labor organizers have long since learned that the auditing groups serve largely as pro forma conduits of impression management for consumer markets in the West. The auditing of manufacturing facilities in the developing world “ends up catering more to the brands involved than the workers toiling on the line,” Jamieson and Hossain write.

Yes, factory owners and managers well understand the permissible bounds of discourse in such Potemkin-style inquiries—and instruct their workforce accordingly. “What to say to the auditors always comes from the owners,” a Bangladeshi line worker named Suruj Miah told the two reporters. “The owners in most cases would warn workers not to say negative things about the factories. Workers are left without a choice.” Sumi Abedin, one of the survivors of an earlier disaster—a factory fire in the nearby Tazreen plant that claimed the lives of 112 workers in November 2012—told the Huffington Post that on the day of an international audit team’s visit, management compelled workers to wear T-shirts designating them as members of a nonexistent fire safety committee, and had them brandishing prop fire-extinguishing equipment that plant managers had procured only for the duration of the audit.

What this disaster ought to have driven through the neoliberal consensus’s collective solar plexus is something close to the polar opposite of its cherished, evidence-proof theory of the captive regulator: a largely cosmetic global watchdog effort funded overwhelmingly by private-sector concerns, far from delivering oversight and accountability, has incentivized fraud and negligence. And conveniently enough, it’s the race-to-the-bottom competitive forces unleashed by the global workplace that ritually sanctify all of this routine dishonesty. In their malignant neglect of worker safety measures, local factory managers are able to cite the same market pressures to maximize production and profit that have prevented the ornamental Western groups conducting audits of workplace safety practices from releasing their findings to the workers at risk of being killed by the neoliberal regime of global manufacturing.

Still, the dogmas of neoliberal market prerogative are far sturdier than a collapsing factory or a raging fire on the production line. If the dogmatists have thrown overboard Hayek-era intellectual values like experimentation and skepticism, at least they can stave off their inevitable extinction by shoring up Friedman-era platitudes and, from the mantles of the nation’s most prestigious universities and op-ed shops, try to pass them off as the nation’s highest common sense. So former University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who helped found the influential law and economics movement that essentially transposed the shibboleths of public choice theory into legal doctrine, has patiently explained that the just and measured response to the collapse of Rana Plaza is to seek enforcement of preexisting building codes across the Bangladeshi private sector. Writing on the heels of the disaster, in the Hoover Institution’s web journal, Defining Ideas, Epstein takes pains to rule out the passage of any “new laws” to improve worker-safety standards or international monitoring efforts.In other words: Bangladeshi workers can either be more safe or starve more rapidly.But lest even this minimal recourse to regulation sound like too heady a plunge into statist remedies, Professor Epstein also cautions that the aggrieved and grieving workers in the Bangladeshi garment trade must not veer recklessly into unionism or other non-market-approved modes of worker self-determination. After all, he reasons, “in order to stave a shutdown off by improving factory safety, the savvy firm will have to raise its asking price from foreign purchasers . . . and may have to lower wages to remain competitive.” (This is another classic myth of the neoliberal faith—the rational “trade-off” between personal safety and wages that the independent broker makes when he or she contracts with an employer to freely exchange time and skills for wages. Only, of course, the notion of such rational choice has been reduced to a bitter farce in workplaces such as Rana Plaza, where the basic human rights of workers are only acknowledged theatrically, for the purposes of Potemkin auditing tours.) A more activist approach to the crisis in global worker safety would create intolerable distress to Epstein’s utopian vision of the carefully calibrated relations of global market production. Sure, the EU might ban exports of clothes bearing the taint of labor exploitation—but such a measure would just perversely create “undeserved economic protection” for EU economies that are net clothing exporters (and by implication, would deprive consumers of the sacred right to the cheapest possible attire that bullied and undercompensated labor can provide).

Neoliberalism, the Revolution in Reverse

#this one goes #essays #*

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secondaryaftermathhq · 5 years

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Welcome to the secondary aftermath

Hi! I thought a good place to start would be to make an introduction post to explain what the point of this blog is.

So first off, what is Secondary Aftermath?

Secondary aftermath is the name of the TV show I’m currently writing. I don’t know what’s going to happen with it - it may sit on my laptop for the rest of time, it may get picked up and actually put into production, I could end up doing it myself, I don’t know.

The title is a work in progress (and bonus points if you get the reference) but for now I’m happy with it. I’ve got 4 seasons mapped out so far but I’m confident I can go further, currently I’m finishing writing season 1 but I keep getting sidetracked by designing characters and writing parts of the later seasons that I’m SUPER excited for. I also have a prequel series surrounding Aliana’s time in Denver and everything that happened before she met the gang that sits in my brain, constantly knocking on the walls to remind me I need to write it. It’s fun.

I made this blog because I’m going stir crazy having this entire world inside my head with nobody to share it with. I realise nobody might even seen this account but at least I know it’s out there this way.

What’s the plot?

...So here’s the thing. I suck at descriptions. Really, really suck at descriptions. Here’s the short version:

Superpowers, robots, clones, bowling for soup, lgbt+ representation, My Chemical Romance and all the 2000’s alternative music you can take. That’s the best I can offer without making it over complicated. I’ll do a more detailed description below for season 1 but I can’t promise it’ll be great.

“Felix, Kurt, Rory and Vince are 4 people with different superpowers (I’m gonna do a detailed character post soon) who live in a gas station. The gas station is outside the town Felix and Kurt used to live in before it got burnt and all the residents were kidnapped 6 years ago. When Felix goes back to the town to get an important part for the car, they find Kayla cowering as she hides from the very people that took Felix’s town. After years of trying to find the people that committed the crime, they finally have a lead to chase - except that lead is now chasing them.

The group leave the station and head north, where they encounter the straight talking Aliana and her motorbike. After listening to Aliana explain that she can help them stop the bad guys and discovering she is also a special like the rest of the group, they agree to go with her to another abandoned town where Angus is waiting for them.

Together they make plans to stop the evil Planetary Inc. (more bonus points for getting the reference) and release all the captured citizens of various towns in the area whilst keeping Kayla safe, but it won’t be that simple. When the right hand man of Planetary’s leader shows up wanting to help, the group discover more about the company’s history in a day than they had in 6 years and trust is called into question.”

I like to keep a lot of things hidden so that’s a pretty vague description but I think it covers the basics of season 1. I might update it in future idk.

Who are the characters?

So like I said, I’ll do a detailed characters post soon where I give more information about each individual but for now I offer you some blurbs -

Felix

Felix can only be described as a non-binary sweetheart. They deserve the world and I’ll fight anyone that fucks with them. Their powers are that they can conjure force fields and play music as loud as possible. They feel responsible for what happened to the town and have spent the last 6 years trying to make it right, with no luck. They’re a total worry wart. The kind of person who would start vibrating if they found out someone they cared about was anything less than 100% happy. They act as the leader of the group but they’re not the firm type. Mcr stan if I ever saw one.

Kurt/K

Felix’s best friend, they’re inseparable. He also feels responsible for what happened but he’s better at hiding it. Kurt is the voice of reason within the group, when everyone else wants to act first and think later, he’s the one that sets them straight. His power is that he can conjure elements from his hands and control the weather within the area he’s located. Kurt’s the friend you go to when you’ve had a day from hell and just need someone to sit and listen to you without any interruption or judgement.

Rory

Imagine if you could capture chaos in a jar and eat it. That’s Rory. He used to be a doctor before he joined Felix and Kurt at the station which is handy because his powers are he can heal anything and see places in real time within his head. Rory is Vince’s boyfriend and it seems like they never stop arguing but god help you if you say something rude about one of them in the presence in the other. Rory seems tough but he’s seen some shit and been through some shit, it’s what got him and Vince bonding at first. The last person you’d expect to be giving sage advice but he’s actually really good at it. Rory’s brought some unsavoury characters to the station in the past but the group never hold it against him.

Vince/Vinnie

The only reason Rory hasn’t died yet. Vince is seen as “the strong one” of the group, he’s actually a big softie and a good man but that’s exactly why he’s the last person you’d want to piss off. His power is he can look into people’s memories to find the information he needs. Vince lost his daughter and her mother a year before finding the station after an experiment conducted by Planetary went horribly wrong, despite all that, he’s in good spirits and likes to look on the bright side of life.

Aliana

She’ll buy you dinner then poison your wine. Aliana is a no-nonsense, speak her mind kind of gal. Her power is that she can turn invisible which has helped her a lot when hiding from Planetary Inc. in the past. She’s “married” to Angus and lives in an abandoned town, courtesy of Planetary, a couple hours from the Station. Aliana briefly worked for Planetary at a pop-up research facility in Denver and struck up a good friendship with Phoenix before it all went pear shaped and she was forced to flee back home, where she found her own town abandoned.

Angus

We need to put bells on his ankles because you barely notice he’s in the room until he speaks. Angus prefers to observe than participate, he keeps to himself and doesn’t judge you on anything you share with him. He’s just full of wisdom. His power is that he can spawn in multiple places, giving him eyes and ears everywhere. Angus can be found caring for Kayla when the others are out dealing with Planetary, he prefers to deal with the logical side of things rather than the physical side.

Kayla

She literally didn’t ask for any of this but Nolan just had to bring a kid into this didn’t he. Ugh. Kayla is an absolute sweetheart who doesn’t really know what’s happening, she just knows the bad men are after her. Kayla was artificially born within the facility 4 years ago, but they had managed to rapidly speed up her aging so she was closer to the age at which children gain their powers. Kayla was the first success I.e the first person to be given powers without being born into them. Her power is that she can start and stop time but for obvious reasons, she’s not having the best time controlling them yet.

(The)Phoenix

He’s made some big mistakes in the past but he’s trying to turn himself around and regain Aliana’s friendship. He’s Nolan’s right hand man and ex-boyfriend, he spent many years dedicated to the cause but after Nolan’s experiment killed Vince’s town and they broke up, things went downhill. Phoenix is a tricky one, you’re never really sure what side he’s on and even when you think you know, there’s always room for doubt. He rarely makes sense and likes to keep you on your toes by never telling you the whole story. He originally never had powers but after Kayla, they found the right formula and he was able to acquire his own. His power is that he’s able to manipulate the minds of others to make them say and do whatever he wants them to, which is why you can never fully trust him.

Nolan

This is all I’m willing to say on the matter.

Lindsey

I love her. I love her so much. Lindsey is a bass player in Felix’s favourite band who also coincidentally met Aliana when she was flying into Denver and became her best friend. Lindsey, along with her brother Tiger, helped Aliana and Phoenix in solving the mystery surrounding Planetary Inc. when Aliana worked for them. After Aliana was forced to leave without saying goodbye, Lindsey and Tiger were captured by Planetary but escaped after they were given powers of their own and Lindsey acquired her robot arm. Lindsey lost her left arm after a cockup on Planetary’s part during testing and was quickly given a robotic prosthetic arm by the facility in Denver. Her power is similar to Aliana’s, by request, she can camouflage to anything.

Tiger

On this show we support and cover trans individuals. Tiger is ftm and has cool lilac hair. As stated above, he helped the group when Aliana was in Denver and became good friends with her like his sister. Tiger plays lead guitar in the band with Lindsey and is often found with a book or a knife, it depends on the day. He’s a total sweetheart that would do anything for almost anyone if they asked. Tiger’s power is that he can sprout wings and fly, he can also produce balls of energy that reaaaally pack a punch.

The other stuff

I can’t really think of what else to say about the show? I’ve got drawings of the characters that I’ll definitely post, they’re not amazing in terms of detail but they’re simple enough that my level of talent can manage it and they look nice. I don’t actually expect anyone to pay attention to this account but if anyone wants to know more or has questions, shoot. I’ll be using the hashtag ‘#Release the secondary aftermath’ on all my posts (unless I think of a better one, in which case I’ll update this) so you can find everything there

#secondary aftermath #intro post #release the secondary aftermath

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mobilenamic · 7 years

Text

Applying the Blockchain in the Supply Chain Domain – A Practical Introduction [blockcentric #2]

Our article series “blockcentric” discusses Blockchain-related technology, projects, organization and business concerns. It contains knowledge and findings from our work but also news from the area.

We are looking forward to your feedback on the column and exciting discussions about your use cases.

The range of potential use cases around blockchains is tremendous. Subtracting all nonsensical and fantasy use cases, we still end up with a significant number of application domains that actually do make sense. Narrowing them down further to theses that seem to add a lot of value to us, we end up with just a few, one of them being in the area of the supply chain domain.

In short, we do have many players that do not trust each other, a lot of intermediaries, a lot of transactions that need to be tracked, and a bunch of issues that are still not being satisfactorily resolved. For a more comprehensive overview of the situation, you can find some background information in the article ‘Unblocking the Supply Chain with Blockchain’

Blockchain-enabled supply chain platform

With this in mind, we started to dig deeper into this problem domain and strived to create a solution-approach that will create added value for the industry. The feature set of the implementation roadmap is divided into value-adding and enabling features.

With this set of aspects, we have an end-to-end process in mind that starts at the production facility, touches warehouses, logistics, services and continues at the end-user. What is charming about the approach is that it is quite modular and can be approached step by step. For Digital Ownership Certificates, for example, you won’t need to implement the Trusted Maintenance Tracking or Collaborative Product Master Data Modules. Let’s have a look at the idea of each module.

Components of the platform

Digital Ownership Certificates

The foundation of the platform is the digital mirror asset, a digital equivalent to the physical asset. You can imagine the digital ownership certificate like an official vehicle registration document (Fahrzeugbrief) that officially entitles ownership. The blockchain permits to securely store an ownership relation by storing physical properties of the asset, such as a serial number, to the wallet of the owner. Due to the nature of the smart contracts, this cannot be manipulated, altered, or duplicated. Neither by the owner nor by third parties. Only legitimate transactions can take place, such as passing on an asset to the next owner.

Asset & Assembly Tracking

By having the ownership certificate and a transaction to pass on assets, it becomes reasonable to track down assets in the supply chain. For each transaction, you get the involved parties and the timestamps for free. Furthermore, some blockchain implementations do allow to look for events that will notify you on each next step. Nowadays, a lot of worry in the supply chain goes into the area of traceability. It’s the law! Here a short introduction into EU regulations. Traceability becomes hard as soon as you compose products from components. In the blockchain this can be achieved by building a smart contract tree, referencing to different assets. Transactions will become heavily expensive, due to the fact that each time an assembly is passed on, each asset ownership certificate has to be updated. As an alternative, assemblies will be a special form of a meta asset that needs only one ownership certificate. While the first form allows for easier ‘dis-assembly’, the second form is cheaper. In any case, it simply means that you need to be able to track down parts of assemblies and backtrack them to their origin.

Proof of Origin

An interesting sub-use case that we will have a closer look at in another article is the proof of origin. Basically, this is the original product that someone wants to sell me. Along with these questions, side use cases like warranty tracking becomes available. The proof of origin intends to tackle product piracy by giving a strong hint if the asset in question isan original, and this is done for both sides – producer and end customer. The end customer sometimes has difficulties to tell if this ‘product’, e.g. a piece of art or luxury watch, is an original. For the manufacturer, there have been cases where supposed clients asked for the manufacturer’s warranty while having a pirated product at hand with real identification insignia.

Trusted Maintenance Tracking

Maintenance plays a vital role for the after sales services of delivered products. Maintenance can have different intentions: ensuring safety, a prerequisite for manufacturer’s warranty, providing on-top service to the clients as a value-adding service. For each of the motivations it is important that the maintenance activities are recorded with a reference of time with correct content and remain unmanipulated for the future. Furthermore, the owner does not trust the third party maintenance staff and the manufacturer trusts neither the owner nor the maintenance staff since both have the motivation to cheat. The process in the case of the elevator inspection would be the following: The maintenance staff would

identify the asset to inspect according to his work plan or by scanning the asset ID

the maintenance agreement smart contract is attached to the asset as agreed upon between manufacturer and end user

the service staff performs and documents its work tasks, work effort, replacement parts, … and performs a confirming transaction in the blockchain

the owner signs the transaction, like an ordinary work slip, confirming that the work has been performed and that the given effort was correct.

From now on, the data remains unchangeable in the blockchain for all time and can be used for all kinds of follow-up tasks.

Integrated Financial Transaction

One aspect of follow-up tasks would be integrated financial transactions. If we focus on the third party maintenance clerk, he has to be paid for his work hours. Due to the fact that smart contracts allow for atomic/indivisible linking of data transactions and financial transactions, it is possible to pay him his amount of cryptocurrency at the moment the elevator owner confirms the completion of the task. The amount could be determined according to the smart contract between him and the manufacturer. Often you do not want to pay in volatile cryptocurrency. This is when you need to use a second blockchain that is bound to a real value or you integrate a service that acts e.g. as a cryptocurrency-to-paypal gateway.

Distributed Product Master Data

Finally, we have some intermediaries in the supply chain that might become replaced in the future. One key intermediary, e.g. for the whole retail sector, is the service provider that standardizes, collects, and re-distributes product master data, e.g. title, description, pictures, ISBN, … . This data is aggregated in central data pools and re-distributed to everyone who needs the content to populate the ERP systems and online stores. Often both sides, the product manufacturer and the retailer, will have to pay for the service to get a centralized data pool. If you are interested in how these pools work today, you can have a look at http://ift.tt/2zztUkO or http://ift.tt/2h4NJKb. Blockchains will flip this relation in the near future. It is not only possible to build a distributed network to deliver product information for a fraction of the cost, but it is also possible to implement smart contracts that allow for a decentralized standardization gremium.

Trusted Devices

Trusted devices in our terms are devices that are involved in a step in the supply chain that changes the state of the blockchain. For example spawning a digital mirror asset on the blockchain at the moment that a physical asset is produced. Or automatically updating the tracking information in case of a goods delivery. Trusted devices have a cryptographic identity and should be misuse-resistant.

Production Integration

In order to bring the platform to life, it is necessary to industrialize the generation of digital mirror assets. This is done by deeply integrating into production lines. Our approach allows for two ways:

The use of a dedicated physical trusted device with a cryptographic identity that generates serial numbers and creates digital ownership certificates.

A headless approach that integrates into the production bus systems, which in turn takes serial number information from existing marking systems, e.g. etching, laser, needle, printer, …

Asset Management Platform

The asset management platform allows manufacturers or owners of assets to manage their assets. It is a web interface that enables them to check for transaction history, originality, or to transfer the asset to another owner. It is your go-to point to manage everything. We will have a look at a concrete example in an upcoming post. One key to the success of the asset management platform and to the whole supply chain platform is that you do not feel that you are working on the blockchain. What does it mean? Well, blockchain technology must be totally transparent at all times. It should behave like any non-blockchain system, only exploiting the beneficial properties around decentralization, trust, persistence, etc. .

In-the-field Interface

Summing up user experience is key to obtaining acceptance from the user base. This also means that things that are done in this field should not be implemented to run on a desktop computer. Furthermore, tech such as beacons, NFC, and QR Codes should be used to identify assets and support the process. A concrete example is the use of a mobile interface to access asset information and to log maintenance activities.

Conclusion

The blockchain-enabled supply chain platform is far from being complete by now and a work in progress. You have probably developed your own ideas while reading about the different use cases and parts of the platform. If you can relate to one or another topic, please let us know. I would like to hear your comments and amendments. Feel free to drop me a few lines: [email protected] and follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/kherings

Previously published blockcentric posts

The post Applying the Blockchain in the Supply Chain Domain – A Practical Introduction [blockcentric #2] appeared first on codecentric AG Blog.

Applying the Blockchain in the Supply Chain Domain – A Practical Introduction [blockcentric #2] published first on http://ift.tt/2vCN0WJ

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iyarpage · 7 years

Text

Applying the Blockchain in the Supply Chain Domain – A Practical Introduction [blockcentric #2]

We are looking forward to your feedback on the column and exciting discussions about your use cases.

Blockchain-enabled supply chain platform

Components of the platform

Digital Ownership Certificates

Asset & Assembly Tracking

Proof of Origin

Trusted Maintenance Tracking

identify the asset to inspect according to his work plan or by scanning the asset ID

the maintenance agreement smart contract is attached to the asset as agreed upon between manufacturer and end user

the service staff performs and documents its work tasks, work effort, replacement parts, … and performs a confirming transaction in the blockchain

the owner signs the transaction, like an ordinary work slip, confirming that the work has been performed and that the given effort was correct.

From now on, the data remains unchangeable in the blockchain for all time and can be used for all kinds of follow-up tasks.

Integrated Financial Transaction

Distributed Product Master Data

Trusted Devices

Production Integration

The use of a dedicated physical trusted device with a cryptographic identity that generates serial numbers and creates digital ownership certificates.

A headless approach that integrates into the production bus systems, which in turn takes serial number information from existing marking systems, e.g. etching, laser, needle, printer, …

Asset Management Platform

In-the-field Interface

Conclusion

Previously published blockcentric posts

The post Applying the Blockchain in the Supply Chain Domain – A Practical Introduction [blockcentric #2] appeared first on codecentric AG Blog.

Applying the Blockchain in the Supply Chain Domain – A Practical Introduction [blockcentric #2] published first on http://ift.tt/2fA8nUr

0 notes

anavoliselenu · 7 years

Text

Complete me chapter 10

My phone rings, and I balance the flowers on top of the condiment bar so that I can retrieve it from my purse.

Monica taps a fingertip on her screenplay. “I better get back to this. But I’m so glad I figured it out. Maybe I’ll see you again. I come here all the time.”

“Sure,” I say, as I answer the call.

“Well, Texas? Are you a proud new business owner?”

“Evelyn! Hang on a sec.” I wave goodbye to Monica, then tuck the phone under my chin and pick the flowers back up. I use a hip to push out the door, then start off down the wide sidewalk back toward my office. “Can you believe it?” I ask. “I feel all grown up.”

“I’m proud of you,” she says. “And I mean that in a totally non-patronizing way.”

“In that case, thank you.” I actually preen a bit from her words. I fell in love with Evelyn Dodge the moment I met her. She’s tough and no-nonsense and says what she thinks. I’ve pretty much decided I want to be her when I grow up.

“So tell me about the place.”

I describe it to her in detail, then mention that Giselle is going to come by later to talk art.

“I probably owe you an apology for that,” she says. “I know she’s not high on your list these days, but she seemed pretty intent on making it up to you.”

“No, no,” I say. “It’s fine. I’ve got my jealousy all reined in, and I know she feels bad about what happened.” To be honest, I can’t help but wonder if she didn’t let the truth about the painting slip to someone else who then shot off their mouth to a reporter. I don’t mention my theory to Evelyn, though, because I’m afraid she might float the possibility by Giselle. And if it’s true, I don’t see the point in making her feel worse than she already does.

“So when can I see it?” Evelyn asks.

“It? You mean the office?”

“You’re there now, I assume?”

“On my way back from Starbucks.”

“Good. Give me the address. I’m in the area. I’ll be right over.”

She arrives less than twenty minutes later, bursting into my office after being announced by the building’s very efficient receptionist. “Not bad,” she says, looking around. “Not bad at all.”

“You’re completely transparent, you know,” I say. “There is no way that you were in the area. Sherman Oaks? You? Sorry. Just not buying it.”

“Busted,” she says with a grin. “No, the truth is I had a meeting with a director friend, and he’s doing reshoots all day at Universal. But I would have come to see you, anyway. We have business to discuss, Texas, and I’m damn sure not letting someone else steal my thunder as your very first client.”

“In that case,” I say as I ease behind my desk, “pull up a chair and let’s talk about it.”

We end up going down the street to a deli where we spend a full two hours chatting and eating and—at least on Evelyn’s side of the table—drinking our way into the afternoon.

“I talked to Charlie today,” she says as she stabs at the piece of cheesecake we’ve ordered to split for dessert. “Couldn’t get him to give me the details of why he’s still in Munich, but he did mention that Sofia’s on the loose again.” She shakes her head in exasperation. “I swear, it’s a wonder that girl didn’t drive Justin out of his head ages ago.”

“So she’s always been like this?”

“Oh, yeah. Smart as a whip, that one. Reminds me of you in a lot of ways. But she doesn’t have your backbone, she’s never learned to cope, and she runs instead of fighting.”

I’m shaking my head slowly. Backbone? Coping? Who the hell does Evelyn think she’s looking at?

“Don’t you pull that with me,” Evelyn says, eyeing me knowingly. “You’re a survivor, Texas, and we both know it. I never played the bullshit card with my clients, and I sure as hell don’t do it with my friends. And it’s a damn good thing you’re a survivor, too. Because no one else could last a week with our boy.”

That makes me grin. And, honestly, so do her words. Because the more I think about them, the more I realize how true they are. Yes, I’ve got some ginormous issues, but I’ve been tackling them. And for the most part, I’ve been beating them.

“I can tell you the exact way it’ll play out when she finally turns up, too. Justin will head over to London to make sure she’s okay and get her admitted to yet another facility. And the press will start speculating that Justin’s tossing Sofia aside in favor of you. Or vice versa.”

“Tossing her aside? But they’re not together. Justin told me they haven’t been together since they were kids.”

“When has the truth ever bothered the press? Every time they’re photographed together, the London papers practically have them engaged. It’ll be more interesting this time around, now that you’re in the picture.”

“Interesting isn’t the word I’d choose,” I say dryly.

“If you can’t make them stop, at least let them entertain you,” she says. And I have to admit, that’s probably good advice.

“Speaking of speculation,” she continues, “the rumors are also flying that I’m returning to agenting.”

“Are you?”

“Fuck no,” she says, with a sound that is somewhere between a guffaw and a snort. “But my old firm’s been doing the full-court press, trying to get me back behind a phone and a desk. And you know what? Who knows. Maybe if they sweeten the pot enough I’ll reconsider. Right now I’m just amusing myself watching them run around talking up potential projects. Like yours,” she adds with a wicked grin.

“Mine? My what?”

“Take your pick, Texas. There are producers salivating to get you on reality TV. And there are at least half a dozen companies looking to hire you to do product endorsements. Want to be the face of a makeup line? I could arrange it like that,” she says with a saucy snap of her fingers.

I just shake my head. “This is the weirdest city.”

Evelyn snorts. “Hell, yes it is.”

“If they’re just looking for a face, tell them to look at Jamie’s. I look better in real life than I do on film, but Jamie was made for the camera.”

“Good point there, Texas.” I’m joking, but I’m not entirely sure Evelyn realizes that.

I’m still buzzing from sugar and conversation when Evelyn heads back to Malibu and I return to my office. I study the portfolio of Blaine’s work that she left with me and make a few notes for the app she wants me to design. I want it to stand out—to have more functionality than simply as a portable display case—and I am so engrossed in brainstorming that I don’t realize the time until the intercom buzzes and the receptionist tells me that a Ms. Reynard is in the lobby.

“Oh, right. Send her on back.” I remain seated when she comes in—I’m the boss, after all—and greet her with my Professional Selena smile. Another perk of my horrific childhood—I am well-versed at hiding my emotions under a variety of tried and true pageant-quality smiles. So I am confident that Giselle has no idea that I’m still wary—or that tiny seeds of jealousy remain buried just below the surface, ready to sprout if she says the wrong thing or looks at Justin with the slightest hint of attraction.

The truth is, I don’t want to be wary or jealous. I don’t like that girl, and I don’t want to be that girl. But I can’t flush from my mind the simple truth that she did date Justin—and that where Justin is concerned, “date” most likely means “screwed.”

“Selena!” she chirps as she comes through my door, and I have to force myself to up the wattage on my smile. Giselle reminds me of Audrey Hepburn—her hair, her frame, her poise. I do not usually get intimidated around other women, but around Giselle, I feel off my game, and I can’t help but think that this is a huge mistake.

If she notices my hesitation, she’s kind enough not to say anything. Instead, she focuses on the space, her eyes roving over the empty walls and the furniture before landing back on me. “It’s a great space,” she says. “Small, but airy and well laid out. This beige on the walls is hideous, so that’s the first thing we’ll want to change. Then we’ll want to hang some art. Not too much. Probably one large piece to anchor the room, and then a few smaller pieces to provide some balance. I have some artists in mind—I’ll bring a portfolio by the next time I come. And some paint chips, too. Something professional, but bright. Maybe a pale yellow,” she adds, almost to herself.

I glance around, trying to imagine the walls in yellow. I have to admit, it might look nice.

She seems to realize she’s gone into the zone, and aims a ten-thousand megawatt smile in my direction. “Thanks again for letting me do this.”

“Sure,” I say. “I have to be honest. The rent on this place isn’t bad, but it’s more than I planned to spend my first year out of the gate. I don’t know that I can justify a decorating expense, too.”

She drops gracefully into one of the molded plastic guest chairs. “No, no. You misunderstand me. This is my treat. Well, for the first year. Then if you want to keep the canvases, you can either buy them or we can discuss a lease. As for the painting, this place is a shoebox—no offense—and I’m sure I already have the perfect color in storage.”

I tilt my head, trying to process this. “Giselle, I know that you didn’t mean to upset me when you told Bruce about the portrait. If you owe me anything, it’s an apology, and you’ve already done that.” I don’t mention Justin or my little stabs of jealousy. Other than having a history with him, she’s done nothing to incite the little green monster.

“I appreciate that, I really do. But I want to do this. I know how much all the press bothered you, and I can’t help but think that maybe that’s my doing, too.”

I sit up straighter. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I obviously wasn’t thinking. What if Bruce said something? What if I told someone else and just don’t remember? What if someone overheard us talking?”

Her words echo my earlier thoughts. “Even if that’s what happened, it’s blown over. And, honestly, Giselle, I don’t want to stick my nose into your business, but can you really afford to work for free?”

For the first time her expression loses some of the long-lost-girlfriend cheerfulness, and I know that I have hit a nerve. What I’m not sure is if I’ve crossed a line. I’m about to apologize and tell her that it’s none of my business and if she wants to work for free, then more power to her, but she continues before I have the chance to speak.

“The truth is that I can’t afford to make ends meet with just the gallery. I know that Justin and Evelyn aren’t gossiping about me, but at the same time, people talk, so I’m sure you’ve heard that my divorce is not, well, pleasant.”

She pauses, and I smile and murmur the appropriate condolences.

“Be careful of men,” she says darkly. “Fuck them, but don’t trust them. Not any of them.” She looks hard at me. “That’s a lesson I should have learned before I married Bruce. It sure as hell applied to the men in my life back then. All of them,” she adds.

“I couldn’t live like that,” I say coldly. I’m not sure if she’s trying to be a bitch or do the girl-bonding thing, but I don’t care. I don’t want to think about the fact that she dated Justin, much less discuss it. And I sure as hell don’t want to hear about why I shouldn’t trust him.

She exhales and slouches a bit so that she no longer looks like one of LA’s beautiful people but like a harried commuter. “Sorry. I’m too bitter by half. The point is that I need to increase my cash flow, and so I’m ramping up my design work again. And I could use this—doing your office, I mean. I don’t want to be crude, but having Justin Stark’s girlfriend on my client list isn’t going to hurt my business.”

Strangely, that makes me feel better. I don’t particularly want to be friends with Giselle, and I’m relieved to realize that she isn’t looking to be besties with me, either. Business is different, though, and if she wants to bling out my office so she can promote her talent, then as far as I’m concerned that’s a win-win. Especially if she can do most of the work when I’m not actually in the office.

“All right,” I say. “I guess we have a deal.”

“Fabulous.” Her bright smile has returned, banishing the look of defeat. “I’ll pull some material together and give you a call. In the meantime,” she adds as she rises to her feet, “be sure and give Justin a kiss for me.”

She sweeps out of my office, and I watch her go, bemused. After a moment, I shrug it off. If she’s playing games, I’m not going to get drawn in. And if I’m imagining things—well, then I really need to get over it.

I spend another hour making notes for Blaine’s app, but then I can’t take it anymore. The sun is setting outside my window, and I still haven’t heard from Justin. I try his office, but Sylvia tells me that he’s still in meetings. “It’s been a crazy day,” she says. “Since he just got back, everyone wanted a piece of his time.”

I can’t help but smile. I understand the feeling.

“He should be done soon, though,” she says. “Shall I have him call you?”

I tell her not to bother, and then switch over to my messaging app to send him a text. To the CEO of Stark International from the CEO of Fairchild Development: Regarding my previous request for an appointment, does this evening fit on your calendar?

I don’t expect a quick reply and am surprised when my phone pings almost immediately. I think I can squeeze you in.

I practically trip over my fingers typing the reply. I’ll be right over.

No. I will. I have plans for your new office . . .

I smile in anticipation and wonder how I’ll survive the time between now and when he arrives.

Since I can’t concentrate on work with the prospect of Justin’s pending arrival hanging over my head, I abandon Evelyn’s art app in favor of going through my emails and clearing them out. I make the mistake of opening the one my mother sent while I was in Munich. The one that tells me that I really should work on my personal skills, because ignoring her calls and emails is simply rude and not the way she raised me. I see that your current fling got away with murder, she writes. Hopefully that means you’ll quit playing Florence Nightingale to his troubles. It’s simply a waste of time, and there are any number of men who are equally as eligible. Honestly, Nichole, once you pass the ten million dollar mark, one man is essentially the same as any other. Think about what I’ve said. And call me. Kisses, Mother

I want to delete it. Right at that moment, actually, I want to delete it even more than I want to breathe. I don’t want that woman in my head. She may not have ever taken a knife to my flesh, but I know without any doubt that she bears as much responsibility for the scars on my hips and thighs as I do. I want to delete that email and prove to myself that I’ve moved on.

I want to . . . but somehow I can’t quite manage.

Fuck.

I slam the top down on my laptop, not bothering to close any of my programs.

“Bad first day?”

I look up to find Justin leaning against the door frame. He’s dressed for the office in a tailored gray suit, white shirt, and a burgandy tie, and he looks for all the world like a long, tall drink of sin. “Not anymore,” I say. “How did you get in?”

“Apparently your receptionist reads the papers. She knows we’re together.”

I lean back in my desk chair and eye him. “Are we?”

He steps inside my office, then pulls my door shut behind him. He pauses, then very deliberately locks the door. “We are.”

“Well,” I say as I feel the temperature rise between us. “That’s very good to know.”

“You look very authoritative behind that desk, Ms. Fairchild,” he says, then glances around the small office. “So this is where the magic happens?”

I’m grinning. Whatever remnants of gloom remain from my mother’s email have been firmly swept away. “It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”

“It’s wonderful,” he says. “I’m so proud of you. Tell me all about your first day.”

I give him the rundown on the lease and on Giselle. I can hear the lilt in my voice, the excitement from setting off on this new adventure. And I see my own happiness reflected in Justin’s smile. “I even have my first client,” I add, then tell him about Evelyn’s app for Blaine.

“You’re amazing,” he says.

“It feels good. You were right,” I add. “I took the plunge and it feels great.”

“I knew it would,” he says, then lowers his voice to add, “I thought of you today.” He strides toward me as he speaks. The room is small, and it doesn’t take him long to cross to my desk. “I pictured you the way you were last night.”

“Oh.” I swallow as the temperature in the room rises.

“Then I pictured you like that here. Naked and bound and ready for me. Wanting me.” He comes around the desk, his eyes never leaving my face. I feel my pulse beat in my neck, and I’m having a little trouble breathing.

“I—oh. Yes.”

“It’s intoxicating, you know.”

I squirm a bit in the desk chair. As far as I’m concerned, it’s his voice that’s intoxicating. “Um, what is?”

His eyes dance with heat and humor as he leans forward and puts both his palms on my desktop. “Knowing that I can bring a powerful woman like you to her knees. A woman with her own company, her own empire. Knowing that I can make her wet with my words. That my voice can make her nipples peak and her clit tingle. That I can shove her skirt up and turn her over her very own desk and spank that perfect white ass until it glows and then, when the scent of her arousal covers the desk and fills the room, I can fuck her until she comes so hard she screams for mercy.”

“Oh, God, Justin . . . ” My blood is pulsing, my body quivering.

“Stand up, Selena. Go over toward the window.”

Though I’m not entirely sure my legs will hold me up, I comply. He looks me up and down. The high-heeled red pumps, the tailored skirt, the silk shell under a light summer jacket.

His eyes never leave mine as he sits in one of the guest chairs. “Take off the jacket.”

I do, tossing it over the arm of my chair behind the desk.

“Now the skirt.”

There is a challenge in his voice, and I know that he expects me to protest. To tell him this is my office and that I have a receptionist just a few feet outside that door. I don’t. This is exactly what I want, too, so I reach behind me, tug down the zipper, and let the skirt fall to the floor, revealing the red thong panties.

He says nothing, but I can see the heat building in his eyes, and my body responds immediately, my sex quickening, my nipples getting tight and hard beneath the lace of my bra. “Well, Mr. Stark,” I say as I slowly walk toward him. “What do you want from me now?”

His answering smile is like a slow caress, and ripples of desire break through me like foam upon a sandy shore. “Stop,” he says, when I am about five feet from him.

I do, my heart pounding with anticipation.

He lifts a finger and makes a spinning motion. I roll my eyes, but take a step forward, do a runway-style turn, and then repeat the process, effectively rotating a full three-hundred-sixty degrees for him. I put my hand on a cocked hip and tilt my head. “Like what you see?”

“Oh, yes,” he says. He leans back in the chair, his casual posture belied by the tension I see in his face and shoulders, and by the firm slant of his mouth. His gaze flicks over me, and I swallow, hyperaware of my body’s reaction. Of how I react whenever I’m around this man. No wonder he always says that I glow. Justin is like a switch, and it is he who turns me on.

The thong is wet against my sex, and the pressure makes me even more needy. It’s not the thong I want touching me—it’s Justin. He, however, remains resolutely still, his hands resting on the arms of that uncomfortable chair as he examines every inch of me, his gaze lingering at that tiny triangle of material.

“Spread your legs—that’s my girl. Now stay still for just a moment.”

My skin prickles, as if my body is anticipating his touch and is protesting that his hands aren’t upon me and his cock isn’t deep inside me. Then his eyes drift lower still. I don’t move, even though I know what he is seeing. The scars. Not too long ago, I would have curled up on the floor and cried if someone looked at me so intently. Hell, that is exactly what I did when Justin did that very thing. Sometimes it amazes me how fast my world has changed with Justin in it. And not just my world, but me. He’s my anchor. Something to hold on to as I dig deep inside myself to find a strength I never even knew existed.

Somehow, though, Justin always knew that it was there. More, he trusted that I would find it, too.

He has always seen so much. Not just the beauty queen. Not just the scars. He’s seen all of me, and no matter whether I’m in panties and high heels or the most couture of evening gowns, I am always standing naked before him.

Once upon a time, I would have found that thought terrifying. Now, I take comfort in it.

But this is not a moment for deep reflection, nor do I want to think about scars or strength or the battles that we have fought. All I want is Justin. And I want him right now.

Boldly, I take a step toward him.

“No,” he says. “Stop.”

“Stop?”

He arches a brow.

I cock my head a bit to indicate I understand, then raise a brow. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl. Now spread your legs, just a little. That’s right,” he says when I comply. “Stay like that.”

I am about two feet from him, and breathing hard. He is sitting in the chair, which puts him about eye level with the red swath of material that barely covers my sex.

Slowly, he lifts his eyes. “There’s something I want,” he says.

Shock waves cut through my body, because I want it, too. I want Justin inside me. I want his cock in my mouth, in my cunt. I want him to whisper to me, to make love with words in that extraordinary way that he has. I want him to fuck me so hard and so deep that I cry out from that singularly exquisite pleasure that is wrapped up in pain.

Most of all, I want him to touch me.

I start to take a step toward him, but he stops me with a single shake of his head. It is a miracle that I don’t weep with frustration.

“Not that,” he says.

I swallow, suddenly uncertain. “Then what?”

“I want to watch.”

“Justin . . . ” I have touched myself for him before, but not like this. Not like a show. I swallow, a little bit embarrassed, but undeniably excited, too.

“Close your eyes,” he orders.

“Why?”

“Because I said to.”

I close my eyes.

“Good girl. Now take off your top. Do it slowly. Take the hem, and hold it as you trail your fingers up. That’s it, just like that.”

I do as he says, trying to breathe steadily as I slowly peel the silk blouse off. It’s not easy, and I feel my stomach twitch with my breath, with the intimate touch of my own fingers.

“Imagine it’s me,” he says. “My hands easing your shirt off. My hands cupping your breasts, pulling the cup of your bra down so that you spill out over the top. That’s it,” he says, as I follow his lead and adjust the cups to expose my breasts and nipples. “Do you feel my touch? The way I’m tugging your nipples? The way I’m stroking my fingertip over your areolae?”

My breasts are full and heavy, my nipples puckered with desire. I pull gently on my nipples and the corresponding tug in my sex makes me gasp.

“Justin—”

“I know, baby. You can feel it, can’t you. The way your sex throbs. How hard your clit is.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve done this before, remember? Our first night. You in the back of my limo, and I was miles away on my phone and so hard I thought I’d explode.”

I nod. It’s one of my most vivid memories. I was drunk and heady with lust, but I was alone and I could fool myself into believing that the extent of my arousal was my own secret.

Now, there is no hiding how turned on I am. And even though this is Justin, who has seen me at my most wanton, my most needy, it has always been for him that I have opened myself. Now, it is my own touch that I am craving. My touch, and his words. I feel naughty. Reckless. And, so help me, I want him to take me all the way. I want to finger myself until I come in front of him—and when I do, I want to open my eyes and see my own passion reflected right there on his face.

“I didn’t have the pleasure of watching then. I intend to enjoy it now.”

“Yes. Yes.” It’s the only word I can manage. It’s the only word that fills my head.

“Slide your right hand down. Take your time, baby. You have such soft skin, I want you to feel it. To touch it.”

Once again, I comply. I keep my left hand on my breast, almost like an anchor, then spread my right so that my palm grazes my belly, my pelvis, and then my fingers dip under the band of my thong. I bite my lower lip as my hand slides over, then moan as my fingertip brushes my clit before easing farther down to soft, slippery flesh.

“Open your eyes,” Justin orders. “Look at me and touch yourself.”

“I—” But my words die on my lips when I open my eyes and see his face—the bold heat in his eyes, the flush of his skin. His hands are on the armrests of the chair, and he is gripping it so tightly I can see the whites of his knuckles. And his cock is so hard beneath his tailored trousers that I am afraid it will split a seam.

“Fuck me,” I whisper. “We both know you want to.”

“More than anything,” he says as our eyes meet and lock. Sparks burst through me merely from the connection of our gazes, and the heat grows in anticipation of his touch. “But no,” he says, making me want to weep. “This is about you. I want you to feel it, too.”

“Feel what?”

“The pleasure I take from your body,” he says simply. “I want to watch. I want to lose myself in the vision of you.” As if in illustration of his words, his eyes drag slowly over me. “Don’t stop, baby. Slide your fingers inside. Tease your clit. Let me see it. Let me watch the way your skin moves when you’re about to come. Each tiny gasp, each shudder. The way you drag your teeth over your lower lip. The flush that colors your skin before orgasm, and the just-fucked look in your eyes after you come.”

I am so hot, so wet, and I do as he says, fingerfucking myself hard and then lightly teasing my clit. I am dizzy with lust, and I reach out with my other hand, taking it off my breast so that I can clutch the side of my desk to steady myself.

“Oh, God, Selena. Do you know how much watching you turns me on? How hot you make me? I have only begun to memorize the bits and pieces that make up you. You are my obsession.”

“Yes,” I whisper. “Oh, yes.”

The sharp shrill of my phone fills the room, and I jump. “Don’t stop,” he orders. “Just ignore it.”

I do, too lost in this sensual haze to care about something as foolish as a phone. I grind my hips in time with the rings, then keep going even after it stops. I hear the ping that indicates a voice mail, followed by the buzz of a text message.

I manage to stifle the urge to throw my phone out the window.

“Don’t even think about it, baby. Just this. Just us. You’re so close, Selena. God, I can see it on your face, in the way your lips are parted. Imagine it’s my mouth on your cunt, my tongue stroking you, tasting you. Baby, you taste so good.”

I whimper, so close, but not quite there, and my hips grind against my own hand. Soon, soon, so very soo—

“Ms. Fairchild?”

The receptionist’s voice bursts through the speaker, and I jump, feeling guilty and exposed, even as Justin bites out a curse.

“Ignore it,” he growls, but the voice continues, unable to hear our side of the conversation.

“Mr. Stark’s assistant is on the phone,” she says, as cold fingers of dread trail up my spine. “Apparently a Ms. Archer has been trying to reach you. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”

Chapter Seventeen

I release Justin’s hand and burst through the door to Jamie’s tiny room on the third floor of the San Bernadino hospital, then sag with relief when I see her sitting up in bed watching SpongeBob. There’s a nasty bruise rising on her left cheek, and a white bandage taped across her forehead. Other than that, though, she looks intact, and for the first time since Sylvia called, I breathe easily.

“I’m sorry!” she says the second she sees us. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“But are you okay?” Thanks to Justin’s helicopter, it didn’t take us that long to get here, but I still spent the entire flight imagining the worst. Now I rush to her side and wince at the bruise that covers one arm, then disappears under her hospital gown.

“I’m banged up, but I’ll be fine. Really. But—I mean—oh, shit.” She glances Justin’s way. “Oh, God, Justin. The Ferrari’s toast. I totally fucked up.”

“You’re not badly hurt,” he says, moving to my side. He twines the fingers of one hand with mine, then takes Jamie’s hand in his other. “That’s all that matters.”

“Is the other driver okay?” I ask.

“It was just me,” she says, her voice as anguished as I’ve ever heard it. “I’m such a fucking loser.”

I am fighting hard not to cry. “You’re not, and you know it. It was an accident,” I say, but Jamie just shakes her head and doesn’t meet my eyes.

I frown and glance at Justin, who looks at least as concerned as I feel.

“So tell me what happened,” I say gently. I ease up to sit on the edge of the bed and Justin pulls up a chair. I put my foot on the seat cushion beside his leg, and he rests his hand on my ankle, just below the platinum and emerald bracelet. I focus on his touch, grateful for his strength and so desperately relieved that he is here with me.

Jamie sniffles and drags the back of her hand under her nose. “I went down the mountain to go check out some happy hours,” she says. “I mean, I had this frigging awesome car, so why not, right? And I met this guy and he was so totally hot.” She looks toward Justin and shrugs almost apologetically.

“Would you like me to step out?”

Her eyes widen. “No! I mean, you deserve to know how I totaled your car. And it’s not like my reputation doesn’t precede me, right?”

Justin, wisely, stays silent.

“Go on,” I prompt.

“Well, there were sparks, you know? And I haven’t banged anyone since Raine except for that one time with Douglas,” she says, referring to our horndog of a neighbor. “Honest,” she adds, holding her hand up in a Boy Scout salute. “I was practically a nun while you two were in Germany. Anyway, he needed a ride home, and I was happy to oblige because, well, why wouldn’t I be? And that part was great. And the part after was great, too,” she adds, cutting her eyes toward Justin.

I get it. For that matter, I’m sure Justin gets it, too. She fucked the guy. A perfect stranger. But this isn’t the time for yet another lecture, and I bite back my reprimands and instead say simply, “Go on.”

“So I’m lying there, right? And it’s nice. I mean he’s nice. Or at least, I think he is. Until this alarm clock beside the bed goes off. Then he sits up and starts pulling on his clothes.”

I catch Justin’s eye. I do not like the direction this is heading, and I already know that it ends badly.

“I ask him why he’s getting dressed, and he snaps at me to hurry. Because his wife—his fucking wife—is going to be home soon and I need to get the hell out of there.”

“Oh, Jamie . . .”

“I know, I know. Believe me, I know. But right then I was just pissed. And scared, because he tells me his wife’s a cop. I mean, seriously, it’s like a goddamned movie of the week or something.” She draws in a deep breath. “So I’m hurrying, right? And he’s pushing me to move faster, and he’s basically turned into this total asshole. And I swear, if she wasn’t a woman who carried a gun I would have stayed and told her that her fucktard of a husband screwed around. But I’m not keen on getting shot and he’s practically screaming at me by now.”

“And somehow the wife caused the accident?”

Jamie shakes her head. “Other than by coming home and scaring the crap out of me? No. But I pull out of his house and I head down the street to get out of the subdivision and back to the main road. I’m distracted, and I know I’m driving faster than I should, and—oh, Justin—I’m so, so sorry. But that was it. Just too fast. I wasn’t being reckless, I swear to God. But when I turn the corner, this other car is pulling out. They couldn’t have planned the timing better if they tried. I mean, it was like they were just waiting for me to come, which is stupid, right, but that’s just the kind of day I was having. So I swerve, and I lose control and I wrap the car around this huge stone fence that marks the edge of the development. The airbags did their thing, but I still managed to bang my head.” She presses her fingertips to the bandage on her forehead. “I’m not even sure what I hit it on.”

Her shoulders rise and fall as she takes a deep breath. “So that’s it. The whole thing was my fault. I was pissed off and driving too fast and the whole goddamn thing is because I spread my legs for some fucking stranger who only wanted a quick lay while his wife was off catching bad guys.”

I know she wants me to console her. To tell her it wasn’t her fault at all. And sure, that kind of accident can happen to anyone. But Jamie has fucked around for too long, with me and everyone else telling her that it can only end in trouble. I’m not about to say “I told you so,” but I’m also not going to tell her it’s no big deal and that it could have happened to anyone.

“You scared the shit out of me, James,” I finally say, and feel the tears well in my eyes again. “What would I do if something happened to you?”

Jamie got lucky—that’s the basic, bottom-line, absolute fact. A few inches in another direction, a few miles per hour faster, a little bit of oil on the road—just one tiny change and things could have been much, much worse.

I shiver, unnerved by the direction of my thoughts. By the knowledge that I could not stand to lose my friend. And by the certainty that if the worst happens, it is the sharp steel of a blade that I will crave—and if Justin is not beside me, then it is a blade that I will turn to.

Unnerved, I squeeze my hands tight, feeling my nails dig into my palms. Justin’s hand tightens around my ankle.

I sigh and savor the connection. For right then, it is enough.

When the nurse comes in to take Jamie’s vitals, Justin goes out into the hallway to find someone who can bring pillows and extra blankets. There is a hideously uncomfortable chair in the room that pulls out into a hideously uncomfortable bed, and that is where I am sleeping tonight, curled up tight against Justin’s side.

Despite the uncomfortable bed and the nurse visits that wake us every three hours or so, I am actually somewhat refreshed when I’m awakened the next morning by the smell of strong, slightly burned coffee.

“Nectar of the gods,” Justin says as he presses the Styrofoam cup into my eager hand. I sip it, make a face, and take another long swallow.

“The gods aren’t too picky this morning,” I say.

He brushes a kiss across my lips. “I’m sure Edward will be happy to stop for a latte.”

I frown, confused. “Why is Edward here?”

“I’m sending you and Jamie home in the limo.”

“We’re not riding back with you?” I hear the near-whine in my voice and immediately wish I could take it back. Yes, it’s Saturday, but the man has an empire to run, and he’s already been away from it for far too long. “Sorry,” I say. “I know you have to work.”

“There are things I need to take care of,” he says, and something in his tone catches my attention. “I’m going to San Diego,” he adds, obviously noticing my frown.

“Oh.” His father lives in San Diego, and I realize that he is going to confront the man about the photos sent to the court. I do not envy him the trip. My mother may have failed Parenting 101, but Jeremiah Stark never even took the class. “Hurry back,” I say, even though what I want to do is throw my arms around him and keep him safe. I do not want to see his heart wounded any more than it already is. And yet at the same time, I’m silently cheering inside. He could have so easily told me that he had business meetings, but instead he let me in. “I love you,” I say.

He cups my chin and tugs me in for a kiss. “Stop worrying. I’ll be fine.”

I nod, desperately hoping that he is right about that.

Since the cogs of the medical establishment do not turn quickly, it’s a full two hours before Jamie and I are finally settled in the limo. “If I have a mimosa, are you going to lecture me?” Jamie asks.

“I haven’t lectured you at all,” I reply indignantly. “I’ve been extremely non-lecturey. And it’s not like you have a drinking problem, James.”

“You’re right,” she says as she pours two and passes me one. I’m not really in the mood, but I take it anyway. Best friend solidarity and all that. “I don’t have a drinking problem; I have a fucking problem.”

I happen to agree, so I wisely say nothing and just take a sip from my mimosa. Since Jamie is a reasonably observant person who happens to know me well, my silence isn’t lost on her. She shrugs. “I know,” she says. “Nothing you haven’t been telling me for years.”

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” I say. “You were lucky, James. But this could have been bad.”

She doesn’t meet my eyes. I’m not surprised. Jamie has moments of self-awareness, but long contemplation is not her strong suit. But at least the wheels are turning.

“I called Ollie,” she says. I blink, confused by the transition. “I’m elaborating on my fucking problem,” she says, by way of explanation. “I called him after Raine got me fired from the commercial.”

“Oh, Jamie,” I say. “You promised me. For that matter, he promised me. He told me there wasn’t anything going on with you two anymore.”

“Wait. You talked to him? When?”

“He was in Germany,” I say. “The firm sent him over to help with the trial. You didn’t know?”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him. Not since . . . well, not since he came over that night.”

“You called him.” It’s not just a statement. It’s an accusation. Hell, it’s a reprobation.

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