#the-cryptic-syndicate | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

Text

Pluralistic is four

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and then SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

Four years ago, I started pluralistic.net, my post-Boing Boing, solo blog project: an ad-free, tracker-free site that anyone can republish, commercially or noncommercially. It's been a wild four years, featuring over 1,150 editions, many consisting of multiple articles:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/

As a project, Pluralistic has been a roaring success. I've published multiple, significant "breakout" articles that popularized obscure, important, highly technical ideas, most notably "adversarial interoperability":

http://pluralistic.net/tag/adversarial-interoperability

"End-to-end" as a remedy for multiple internet ripoffs, including as a superior alternative to link-taxes as a means of saving the news industry from Big Tech predation:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/e2e/

and, of course, "enshittification":

https://pluralistic.net/tag/enshittification/

These are emblematic of the sorts of ideas that I've spent the past 20+ years trying to popularize in tech-policy debates dominated by technologically illiterate policy ideas ("abolish Section 230!") and politically illiterate technical ideas (so many to choose from, but let's just say "cryptocurrency"). They require that the reader come along for a lot of cross-disciplinary analysis that often gets deep into the weeds. These are some of the hardest ideas to convey, but nuanced proposals and critiques that work on both political and technical axes are the best hope we have of successfully weathering the polycrisis.

Blogging has always been a part of this project. For nearly 20 years, I posted nearly every day on Boing Boing – 53,906 posts in all! – taking note of everything that seemed important. Keeping a "writer's notebook" in public imposes an unbeatable rigor, since you can't slack off and leave notes so brief and cryptic that they neither lodge in your subconscious nor form a record clear enough to refer to in future. By contrast, keeping public notes produces both a subconscious, supersaturated solution of fragmentary ideas that rattle around, periodically cohering into nucleii that crystallize into full-blown ideas for stories, novels, essays, speeches and nonfiction books. What's more, those ripened ideas are supported by a searchable database of everything I've thought about the subject, often annotated by readers and other writers who've commented on the posts. I call this "The Memex Method":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Pluralistic marks a new phase in my deployment of the Memex Method. With 50K+ notes in a database, I've gradually turned Pluralistic into a forum for far more synthetic, longer-form work that pulls on threads from decades of research into nothing in particular and everything that seemed important.

Pluralistic is also an experiment in retaining control over my destiny – but not my work. Rather than hitching my ability to reach an audience through a platform that can be enshittified at the whim of a mercurial, infantile billionaire or their venal, callous shareholders, Pluralistic is published web-first, on a site I control, and then syndicated to every platform that matters to me. It's a process called POSSE (Post Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/#hfbd

I want to spread the ideas I fight for, so I post them everywhere, and license them Creative Commons Attribution-Only, encouraging others to repost them. Lots of small sites do this, but so do large ones. Notably, Wired picked up my first breakout piece on enshittification and republished it under the CC terms:

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

This was a really interesting process. On the one hand, I didn't get paid for this feature, which did really well for Wired. On the other hand, nearly 30 years of writing for Wired makes me doubtful that I could have gotten this piece out in the form it emerged, without substantially toning down (or, if you prefer, neutering) the rhetoric that made that piece more persuasive. A commissioning editor from one of the largest newspapers in the world got in touch with me after it came out and said they wished they'd published it – but also that they knew they couldn't possibly have done so. By publishing the story first on my blog, proving its audience, and establishing its canonical form, I was able to get it amplified by a service with a much bigger platform than me, without having to compromise on the form.

That republication gave me the much-maligned "exposure" – but it also carried the message to places it wouldn't have reached on its own. I don't write – have never written – solely as an income source. As both an artist and an activist, connecting with audiences has always been co-equal in my mind with earning my living. That's why I don't do a lot of film-writing: it pays well, but most of it never sees the light of day. It's also why I stopped writing for ad agencies: it paid well, but it didn't matter to me or my audience. To mangle Dr Johnson: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote solely for money."

The open nature of this blog, with its many open syndication channels, creates multidirectional pathways for evaluating and refining my attempts at making my ideas understood and my art land. My posts often circle back to points I made earlier, incorporating useful feedback from readers and colleagues, sure, but also anticipating and rebutting those areas where critics have convinced others in various forums. Vanity searching is unjustly maligned: I learn a ton about how to make by work better by lurking in Reddit comments, Hacker News, Twitter, Slashdot, Metafilter and other forums. I also take a sneaky pleasure in knowing that the persistent trolls who reliably pop up to grind their weird axes about me (sometimes referencing blog posts I made decades ago) have taught me how to neutralize them in advance, and it's delightful to see them try their same old lines, only to have other commentators point out that my latest piece makes it absolutely undeniable how wrong they are. Living well is the best revenge, indeed.

Four years. I've been writing Pluralistic for four years. During that time, I've published eight books – and beyond any doubt, Pluralistic helped me get those books into readers' hands. But far more importantly, during that time, I've written nine books – and contracted for a tenth – as the Memex Method paid off again and again.

I don't know how long I'll do Pluralistic for, but I don't foresee stopping any time soon. What's more, no matter what happens to Pluralistic, I can't ever see giving up on the Memex Method, keeping notes in public and making them work for me.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis

#pluralistic #blogging #anniversaries #memex method

81 notes · View notes

lapsedgamer · 2 months

Text

Paradise Killer (Nintendo Switch)

A systems based murder mystery visual novel in a vaporwave Lovecraftian u/dys/topia. Lady Love Dies is summoned from exile to solve the murder of the leaders of the Syndicate, immortal humans who meddle with banished gods in their mission to create an island Paradise. In the search for answers you re-establish connections to old friends and feel out the new state of affairs. Who would stand to benefit? Who had the opportunity? And - whisper it - did the Council have it coming?

Island Sequence 24 is as densely structured a setting as anything in the Metroid Prime series. Backtracking between suspects and crime scenes soon encourages a bit of off-path first-person platforming, which the game is surprisingly well attuned to. Like Samus, Lady Love Dies moves with presence and is immune to fall damage, and the compact setting makes accidental detours tolerable. It’s a pleasure to simply explore this place for its own sake, soaking up the lush audio and juicy-crunchy visual design, but these excursions yield lost objects which offer an insight in to the millennia-long history of the Syndicate, or advance your investigation.

For a game with no prescribed structure, major revelations arrive at a steady rhythm, inconsistencies implying alternative explanations that hint at motives that must be investigated further. Your crime solving computer Starlight organises evidence and testimony but the assembly of these facts in to the truth of the crime occurs entirely in the player’s head - to the point that, famously, there is no prescribed answer.

The pull of the central mystery and the cryptic setting grow as you attune yourself. A full sense of the Island and its occupants arrives as the mystery behind the murders becomes clear, leading to a dramatic and satisfying trial sequence where Lady Love Dies doesn’t so much build her case as bury her chosen suspects under it.

Holding the truth is a unique kind of power, and power is this game’s main preoccupation. There’s nowhere you can’t go, nothing you can’t say, and by the coda, nothing you can’t do in pursuit of justice. And it feels good.

#kaizen game works #fellow traveller #paradise killer #Nintendo switch

9 notes · View notes

hexonthepeach · 10 months

Text

a gentle tongue breaketh the bone | 3: returned

pairing: fem hybrid fox omega!reader/hybrid Alpha!nct 127

tags: reverse harem, non-traditional omegaverse hybrid! cyberpunk au, pack dynamics, polyamory, slowburn/slowbuild, angst & hurt/comfort, heavy content warnings inc. torture, graphic violence, suicidal ideation, explicit sexual content

summary: the year is 2127. decades of eugenics and warfare have led to the rise of designated populations: the ruler Alphas and their rare, prized omegas sequestered from the Beta population. in the aftermath of the War of the Two Tigers, New Goryeo ushers in an Imperial dynasty determined not by birthright but by the alliance of the Syndicate's clancorps to choose the best pack of your generation. you are destined to take your place within the Imperial harem as a queen, and–perhaps–Imperatrix herself

but you have a secret, written into your skin and bones–one that could easily kill you, depending on who finds it out

ten years ago you chose your Alpha and their pack in a fateful meeting

now, you must make them choose you

[masterlist & glossary] [read on AO3] [0: prologue] [1: escape, again] [2: lost and found]

wc: 4.3k

chapter warnings: minor violence, suicidal ideation/attempt

recommended listening: i can't breathe - gwsn

[6 years ago]

You had to wait, you had to bide your time. It wasn't long for you to recover from your injuries but you'd been locked away for your own good.

They'd promised you a ceremony for your presentation. No funeral for your mother, of course. You'd be forced to wear the mourning white for the years that followed—a punishment and a reminder.

You'd sat in your sleek quarters watching the Betafax channels for any mention of her name, her death, but the only coverage was of you. Your rescue, your confirmation as 36th in line for the throne.

First in line for something much less appealing.

You'd bloomed, you'd flowered, you'd come of age–all the disgustingly coded ways of saying your true nature as an omega had appeared.

As suspected by genetic analysis and the forma amicus of your ears and tail, you were the first cross fox of your clan to appear since your grandmother, the Imperatrix herself. That Queen who still lived much like you would, locked away from the world, a precious relic to gather dust.

A fate that was planned for you, no doubt, if you survived birthing as many future heirs as they chose you to as head of the Imperial harem.

It wasn't clear yet which of your cousins would ascend to the ceremonial seat but you'd been separated from them your entire life and would have to be kept away now, until your body adjusted. Even with blockers your scent was like the sweetest drug to any Alpha–the risk of accidental marking or even worse was too high.

No, you had an entire building and island to yourself and an army of beta staff to wait on you hand and foot. No delicacy or luxury was beyond your reach, you could have anything your heart desired.

But not that one thing: catching a glimpse of clouds moving beyond the iridescent Dome was the closest to freedom you could aspire to.

Animals cornered or caged sometimes hurt themselves but you knew that wasn’t an option, not with one of the many Alpha eunuchs they had on staff to relay orders or instructions to you.

The curse of your kind, genetically engineered over hundreds of generations for submission, to never refuse a command.

You were lucky to have some training from your mother in how to mentally unwind an order to ignore it, like slipping free of a lasso, but you knew better than to show them your ability. You were sure it would be much better used after you had found a means for escape.

With hindsight you can recognize that the plan you'd formed in your teenager's brain had been under an influence you'd deliberately been uneducated on, that even your mother had not warned you of outside of a cryptic "never let them bite first".

You had gone forward with your fool's mission with the confidence of a child instead, the day burned in your memory.

Three years after your mother's passing you were allowed your debut. Your aunts and cousins and handmaids had helped dress you in a perfectly crafted reconstruction of a thousands-year-old garment, your head weighed down with artificial hair extensions and real gold and gems. All these accouterments worth nothing to you without the power they were meant to invoke.

Veiled in sheer pink and royal blue, you'd been led to a dais to be spoken over in front of the entire Syndicate–each clancorp represented in traditional military dress and formal attire. You'd made it through the ceremony–blinded by the bright lights separating you from the crowds of invited gentry and Betafax representatives.

Once you'd found an opening, ditching your guard, you'd fled through the stone-floored corridors of the Old Palace to chase that familiar whiff of musk that had haunted you all day.

The same scent that you'd woken up with in your nose from nightmares was now bright and real, along with the feeling of being burnt from the inside.

His scent. An impossible chemistry in your brain, like fireflies dancing over a meadow, reaching out for each other in the dark. Some trails were old but most were new, and you understood he eluded you deliberately when you found yourself circling through the labyrinth of the museum that served as the external face of the Imperial antechambers.

Here the spectacle of history was laid out in holographic overlays of ancient bamboo forests and gardens, all made false by the genetic manipulation dulling their true scents.

A deer-scarer mechanism tapped out a rhythm in a nearby water feature as your ears listened for footsteps, met only with the distant roar of the party outside. Then you heard it–the soft buzz of a comm, quickly silenced.

"I know you're here," you say, aloud, emboldened by the chase. "You can't hide from me."

Nothing but a sharp, quiet laugh. Your gaze darts in its direction, finding a closed, wooden screen leading into an inner chamber. You pull the metal latch and find it locked from the inside. You press your face to the holes to catch the air that passes through.

It hits you like a heatwave drifting from a sunbaked road: delightful, mouthwatering citrus over toasted oolong tea, leather and tobacco steeped in night-blooming jasmine. It's as comforting as a featherdown pillow and your body relaxes even as your underdeveloped brain shrieks with warning.

You've trapped an apex predator in this room–one of the many libraries where real books deteriorate in hermetically-closed boxes. He's there, a shadow pacing, and you have him cornered.

At your mercy, finally.

"What do you want?" That voice echoes in your mind, the first words he'd spoken to you carved in much deeper over years of solitude.

"You owe me," you say, boldly. "A life for a life."

"Because I saved you?" You think he might be surprised by the way the sentence upends, the lilt in his voice.

"Not my life." You feel tears well in your eyes and will them away, breath shuddering in your chest. "You let my mother die."

He lets out another jaded laugh at your expense.

You fist your hand with its jeweled metal claws against the ancient wood, scraping it raw.

"You didn't go after her," you accuse. "You could have saved her."

"You have less than a minute until every person in this place comes to find you," he warns. "What do you want?"

The words die on your breath, tongue wetting dry lips and tasting the gossamer veil laying over your face.

What do you want so badly you'd stalk past armed guards and servants to find? The treasure more valuable to you than anything you wore, or anything kept whole after a thousand years?

Fangs that had held your spine and dragged you meters through a rushing torrent to life. Whiskers skittering over your forehead, a puff of breath as the beast checked you for a pulse.

Or was it the mouth against yours when he forced air into your lungs, brought back from the dead with that same taste on your tongue?

Your kind healed faster, grew faster, but your recovery would be a lifetime. The scars on your face and neck and back are old but just as fresh to you in memory, the ones in your heart threatening to break open now.

"Take me away from here, please," you beg. The word lies unspoken between you and will remain there, though implied.

Please, Alpha.

"She’s in the museum," he says, the faint crackle of a response unheard over the rush of blood in your head. "Sedation required."

You throw yourself at the panel, breaking nails and kicking through layers of silk for all it will do to help the itching and burning in your veins.

"Bastard," you hiss. "I curse you."

"Go to sleep," he responds. The tone isn't one you're used to but the influence is the same, and those stitches you'd hand sewn with care and time snap like they're made of cheap string.

"I hate you," you shout. "You killed her."

"Be quiet," he says, voice cracking. You slump against the door, eye fixed on a dark form lined in light through the knotted symmetry of the woodwork. For a moment you feel him as if he were right beside you, palm outstretched against yours.

"I hate you," you repeat, quietly–as he'd asked you to, so must you obey. "You ruined my life."

"Be strong," he murmurs. "Go to sleep."

"You should have let me die," you say, eyelids shuttering. "You should have . . ."

You wake somewhere over an outer zone, knowing it not from the view of the city through the transparent belly of the AV but the sight of the green-lit hemisphere of the Dome so many clicks away through the windows.

You're strapped in tight, grateful to find the other occupants of the craft don't appear to be anyone you know–unfamiliar faces made familiar only by that shared scent.

You haven't been given a live headset so you have to read the lips of the men next to you, chasing their eyes, meeting and coming back to you.

The helipad you land on appears to be a former hospital. A smaller AV and an autocar touch down half a building away as condensation drifts from the blacktop.

It's dark, and quiet, but the engine is kept on and the slow thunk thunk of the AV's ringed blades are a good metronome to steady your breathing.

Beyond the fact that you're going back, something is horribly wrong.

Your mouth is open and your tongue is dry, panting as the chills hit you. It's cold, yes, but it's been cold for days now in the slow climb from the flood zone and you've been fine with an extra layer of insulation.

Now there's something heavy in your bones, a syrupy slowness that grips you when you finally find your senses. Without the rush of air from the flight the trace molecules hit your oversensitized olfactory system. Dopamine and serotonin flood your brain, hormones circulate by blood–all things you were prepared for but have never truly felt.

That familiar scent is warm, almost wet. Bergamot and camphor, deadly as you imagine it to be. Your skin burns hotter with each panting breath. You begin to shiver, clutching your dirt-stained fatigues and the muscle beneath.

You just need to get away, you think. You need to get away before you inevitably hunt him down again.

He can't be present because you would have stripped yourself of every buckle and strap to seek him out. There's no resistance left in you after years of fantasizing what it would taste like to have his scent on you again.

No, you think. You can't let the animal inside reduce your autonomy yet. You can overcome this distraction.

Nausea roils your gut, makes your head spin as the rush of late winter air from the door opening brings you a myriad of smells.

Outside the Dome everything is overwhelming, even if you'd learned quickly to tune it out living with eight other designated without access to regular bathing.

But it hadn't been overwhelming this way–where suddenly your eyes are streaming from the burn in your sinuses. The worst part of it all is that you need it–each whiff clearing your head like breathing in the steam from your morning tea.

Your mouth is watering and your belly flutters. Even more embarrassing is the telltale bloom of your own body's interest, that pheromonal response automatic. You know you're scenting by the pomegranate and lotus flower that exudes from your skin.

You curl in on yourself, not realizing that you're whining until black boots pound from the cockpit, a helmeted figure crouching over you and pulling your headgear off so you can hear.

"Are you alright?" The voice is familiar–the young Canid with the impish face again. Haechan. He checks your pulse and pulls back as if stung, shaking his head. You glance up to see a look of horror as he puts distance between you, almost reluctantly.

"I'll get our doctor," he says. "Can you sit tight for me?"

You nod, swallowing a mouthful of saliva, grateful he isn't using commands.

"Everyone out, now," Haechan barks, grabbing protective respirators and tossing them to the two others in the back. You catch a glimpse of eyes growing wide as they catch your scent before they scatter out the door towards the others.

"Taeil!" You hear the shout easily with the aircraft powered down.

You don't wait for him to come to you with another of those injections. You fumble out of your safety harness, clutching your protective headgear. Slipping out the opening, you pause only to grab one of those half-face respirators.

Outside a small group of men stands over bright strips of lights marking the landing pad, thankfully upwind. Compulsion has you moving near them without registering your own steps, stopping the moment you realize you're moving out of cover.

You put on the mask and hide behind one of the AV's blunted wings, adjusting the straps to fit tightly over the back of your skull under your sensitive ears.

"I think she's having a breakthrough," Haechan says, distorted through the mask, bending over like he's going to puke. You press against the cold metal behind you as six pairs of eyes turn in your direction.

"Get more masks and the emergency kit from the back-up," Taeil orders. The two men who'd been your escort break off towards the other ship.

"How is this possible?" The Alpha who speaks next has a voice that floods you with familiarity.

You watch him round on the doctor, slender body wrapped tight in a thick black winter coat with a hat shoved down over his head. Unlike the others he's not donning a mask.

"I gave her a month's supply," Taeil says, calmly, rummaging through his field kit. "You know why."

"Know what?" Jungwoo asks, swaying slightly as he looks back towards you. You see the green-gold reflection of his eyes in the dark and flatten yourself even further into the shadows, holding your breath.

"Is this why you pulled them from the field?" There's another, taller Alpha wearing a suit, face barely visible beneath his mask and a set of designer AR eyewear.

"I'll explain later, Doyoung," the leader says. "Right now we need to figure out what to do with her."

"Now we know why they didn't tell us the target."

"We can't take her back in this state," Taeil says, standing up. "I'll give her another 50 mls but it's just holding off the inevitable."

"Hey, we need to leave. Now." The other soldier has returned, wearing a mask but clearly agitated. "Hope you insured that conscript because we've got a situation in there, Yuta's keeping them separated–"

"Shit," Doyoung says, holding his forehead. "Can we take our AV?"

"Too contaminated. We'll have to take the autocar."

"Alright. Haechan takes the conscript with Team F, Taeil and I will go with Team C for treatment."

"You can fly, right?" Jungwoo asks, clapping Haechan on the shoulder as he stands up, shakily.

"I got a noseful, man. I've never . . . Yeah. I think so. How exactly are you okay, Mark?"

"Just spray yourself down with a blocker before you get back on board. You reek," the other man–Mark–says, cringing under the mask as he smells his shoulder. "Gross."

"Is that what set them off?" Jungwoo asks.

"No questions," The small Alpha interrupts, back turned to you. "Doyoung, I'll need you to arrange the meetup. Preferably outdoors.”

You take advantage of the heated discussion that follows to slip under the wing and around the side of the aircraft, your breathing loud beneath the mask. Once you feel you're safe you break for the edge of the roof.

Adrenaline has you heading to the center, away from the others knowing the safer entry or exit has to lie in the middle near the ancient elevator shaft you'd caught sight of.

You hear shouting but can't hear the words distinctly–not with the noise-cancellation of your switched-off headset. Then you glance behind you to see a lanky shadow jogging your way. You skitter onto the concrete wall, buffeted by the wind.

The move is effective, Jungwoo slows his approach–gloved hand stretched out in front of him in the red lights.

"We're not going to hurt you," you think he shouts, voice wispy through the headset. "Get down."

You take a step back, threateningly, glaring at him and making a silence gesture.

His eyes widen in what looks like concern, halting while the others catch up–Taeil first to run up beside him. Under the circumstances he appears calm, eyes narrowed beneath his AR glasses.

"Get down," the other Alpha shouts, prompting you to look over your shoulder as you scoot back.

"She can't hear you." Jungwoo shakes his head.

You lower your mask, immediately flooded by canine fear scents.

"I can read lips," you shout. "One more order and I'll jump."

"Don't be afraid, ____."

The suited men have caught up, and it's then that you understand why the leader seems so familiar. You should have recognized him immediately by the clean scent of your own kind drifting to you but you'd been distracted.

He's removed his hat, revealing orange-furred ears, angled back in submission against darker red hair.

Cousin. Your mother's second eldest brother's only son, former Crown Prince, Lee Taeyong.

"I need you to get down, ____," he says, joining you cautiously–hands raised.

You shake your head, breathing through your mouth. "I can't go back. I'd rather die than go back."

You're surprised to see a sympathetic expression screw up his delicate face.

"I know," he says, pausing just out of reach. "I'll help you. But you need to get down."

"I can't go back. They'll kill me anyway. If you won't let me go just let me die."

Taeyong shakes his head, eyes glassy. Behind him you can see Doyoung and Taeil staring at you with what you can only assume is detached frustration. Jungwoo looks just as concerned, glancing back at the other aircraft as it continues to power up.

"You don't have to, ____. We can help you."

"I can't trust you," you whimper. "I don't even know you."

"I promise on our grandmother's life," he says, stretching out his gloved hand. "We will help you."

You start to cry involuntarily, startled by the emotion. You're tired and being eaten from the inside out by an inferno you can't control. For the first time on this horrible, aborted journey you feel like someone might actually care about you–you, not just your utility.

"I can't trust you," you sob. "I can't."

The wind pushes like a lover's hand against you, other eddies whipping up from the void at your back. It's a long drop, and while you aren't afraid of heights you are afraid of the decision ahead.

You understand too well what that regret looks like–you'd seen it on your mother's face as the life left her eyes.

You take a searching step, trying to find that last flicker of courage inside you to either fall or run. The decision is made for you, your balance lost. For a moment you feel that terrifying weightlessness of hanging mid-air.

Just one moment of peace, accepting what is to come–

–and then your entire body is thrown to the side, rolling with a much larger impact onto the roof and across the painted asphalt. Your headgear is torn off, your body flaring in white-hot pain and need as you’re pinned to the ground by something enormous.

Dying at the bottom of fifteen stories would have been more merciful, you think.

The amber eyes of a black-furred beast stare down at you, white teeth inches from your face.

You don't have to read the unchecked aggression of the big cat to know he wants to kill you, his ears flat against his skull and nose wrinkled in a rumbling hiss. But, as before, you feel no fear held down by him. You're close enough to taste his heavy musk, to see the rose-shaped spots emerging from dark fur in a familiar pattern.

You cry silently as his hot exhalations blow over your cheeks, drying the tears to your flushed skin.

"Please don't let them take me back," you whisper.

He snarls, moisture flecking your skin.

"Let her go," Taeyong says, an echo from another time and place. Distantly you're surprised at his tone—something missing, replaced by anxiety.

You're too busy reaching up to drift your fingers over that fur, soft but short and rough–the powerful neck muscles twisting as he directs his anger at the other Alphas.

Yes, he can protect you, you think dazedly. You hadn’t wished or hoped for it but now that he's here beside you all those years of powerlessness are just a diluted memory.

You can finally be safe.

You just have to be sure.

"Come out, please," you say, and all 200lbs of deadly mass shudders with your touch, resisting the request.

You see actual fear in the jaguar's eyes as he whips away, growling between you and the others like a much smaller cat.

"Come out," you repeat, sitting up and chasing him with an outstretched hand. It works too easily, like a miracle, pushing him out of jimseung so quickly there's an explosion of heat from the shift, roar cut short.

The person hidden beneath the fur collapses to the roof on hands and knees, naked, steam curling up red and yellow and blue in the shifting lights.

You unconsciously move towards him but are held back, grabbed from behind.

"Relax," Jungwoo says, and your body freezes, vision flashing white with rage and concern.

"No, no, no," you whine, struggling as Taeil injects you again. "Don't take him away from me."

Someone rushes forward to throw their coat protectively over the other man–Doyoung, you realize as he turns to look up at the pack leader with a shocked expression.

"What in the hell is going on, Taeyong?" He hisses through clenched teeth.

Taeil slaps a bandage over your bruised elbow ditch after subjecting you to a second needle. You're limp in Jungwoo's hold by the time he moves to the man on the ground.

"Shock," Taeil says as he passes by Taeyong, kneeling down beside Doyoung and checking the Felid’s pulse. "Shifted out too fast. He'll be fine in a few minutes. We should move him before he wakes up."

"And who is going to do that?" Doyoung says, eyeing the much-larger body.

"You. Help him get a stretcher," Taeyong says, looking up at Jungwoo. “And tell the others to stay in the conscript. We’ll need all of F Team to bring him back."

Jungwoo lets you slip to the cold roof, and you immediately crawl forward until Taeyong drops in front of you to hold you tight.

You whimper loudly, reaching towards the limp body, tears flowing freely along with words in a babble. "Let me go, he's cold, he needs me, don't hurt him please don't hurt him–"

"He's fine," Taeyong assures, hand smoothing down your ears in a calming gesture. "We'll take care of him. And you. I promise."

"We ‘d be better off getting rid of her," Taeil says, tossing out more medications and an IV pack from his field kit. You snarl at him, immediately disarmed when he laughs at you. It's the first time you've seen the older Alpha smile and if you didn't hate him for subjecting you to countless treatments you'd almost be pleased.

"That's not an option," Taeyong sighs. "I’ll have to tell them. We're in this mess because we didn't."

"It's not your choice," the doctor says, struggling to roll the larger man over onto his back and tucking the coat around him.

You muster a last burst of energy to break free of Taeyong's loose grasp and crawl across the roof to your target, Taeil falling back more out of surprise than fear. You drop down over the wide chest, checking his breathing with your own breath held.

"Let her be," Taeyong says. "She's just acting on instinct."

"Watch her. Don't let her mark him. He's already going to have a hard enough time when he wakes up."

Once you're assured he's just sleeping you relax against his side, sedation setting in. You nuzzle into his exposed collarbone, kissing moisture from his clammy skin.

"Wake up, please, wake up," you plead with your protector. "Please don't let them get rid of me."

"We won't–" Taeyong's next words are cut off when the man beneath you wakes with a start, eyes flying open.

Fully human now you can read the emotions that you've been feeling through his scent and your side of the bond since coming into proximity with him again.

"Youngho," you say, the word invested with equal parts tentative hope and despair. You lift your heavy head to find his fluttering gaze, his brown eyes still mostly copper.

Confusion. Awareness like an ice bath. And then a twisting in the pit of your stomach–the no, no, no rejection of reality from your inner beast as the familiar knife's edge of loathing saws into you.

His hate is so strong that you want to retreat, you want to be able to lift yourself enough to throw yourself off the nearest edge just to no longer be in his sight. But you're boneless, half on him, whipped by the breeze as he stirs beneath you.

An echo of resentment flares in your breast now that your human side is in control. You've avoided him this long, why had he come hunting for you?

He could have let you go to the farthest ends of the earth, he could have let you fall.

He'd ruined your life yet again.

And all you can do is cling to him. You're too far gone in your preheat–a breakthrough, Haechan had called it. You've never been allowed one, hadn’t even feared one with the small stash you'd collected to supplement the military-grade pills Garam had given you.

It feels like heaven and hell are warring for your soul as you look into his eyes. You relish the movement of his body beneath the thick wool coat, buttons embedding in your cheek when he lifts you both up.

Johnny's too close and too real for you to remember that you never wanted to see him again in your lifetime.

He holds you for a moment, flinching away from the hand that rises to his face. His lips are pulled back in the same grimace of his beast, eyes narrowed under a heavy brow.

He hates you. It would have been better if you just died.

Once your strength returns you'll find a way. Some instrument in your gilded cage to take you out. A white sheet to hang yourself or a pin to sink into your throat.

"Just kill me then," you say, earnestly, your speech too slurred for the words to register in the way you want them to.

"What?" Johnny breathes.

"Kill me," you repeat, thankful for the sedatives when the cold rooftop meets your face–tossed aside, as always.

[previous] [next]

#agtbtb #nct x reader #nct 127 x reader #nct 127 fic #nct 127 fanfic #nct 127 omegaverse #nct 127 cyberpunk au #nct 127 imagines #nct fic #nct imagines

28 notes · View notes

randomfoggytiger · 7 months

Text

"You Don't Know the First Thing About Me"

(Fictober, Day 19)

******

When he was lamentably green, the truth was shut away-- trickled out only to desperate men and only in doses so small as to drive them further insane. He sat, he stood, and he listened, eagerly trying to fill in a patchwork of names and events, the past and the future.

Then he was assigned. Then he had a partner.

Then they had the gall to wag a finger at him, wrestle him away from his first big break, and stuff him back into a dark closet somewhere until Bill Mulder’s death.

All in all, Krycek wasn't sorry that his first round with the Syndicate ended with a car bomb and bitter feelings.

*****

Survival, Krycek decided, hinged on which truth you picked-- a lie to the world or a lie to yourself. He chose to fool the world, knowing they changed their truth every 3-5 business days, anyway. Weak, blind, close-minded drones who wanted their 'i's dotted, their 't's crossed, and their worldviews unchallenged by the widening realities of the universe. So, he played their game: caught and tossed back the ball they threw, showed them exactly what they wanted to see, told them exactly what they wanted to hear.

*****

What he learned in the Consortium’s charm school was to win friends and influence people. What he learned from his black-lunged superior was to carpe diem his way into any complication possible. What he hadn't quite learned on his own was how to get out of it.

Single-minded Mulder, foolish old men, and out-of-touch aliens chased tails, circled each other, and howled at the moon day after day, year after year-- and had nothing to show for it. He was especially disappointed with the vastly narrow-minded scope of his former partner (Krycek had given up old ciggie Spender for loss years ago when he'd stuttered "thank you, yes, thank you" over the phone.) It took Mulder nearly four years to finally stop and listen when Krycek told him what no one else would-- “There is no truth, they just make it up as they go along"-- and by then Mulder didn't want to listen.

The Consortium really did pick ‘em.

Krycek had to admit, though, that their microscopic self-indulgence had done one thing right. They’d created a woman as warm-blooded and cold hearted as himself and let her loose to wreak havoc on his life.

At the game table of allies and foes, Marita was the master: effective because she was impersonal, believable because she was polished. She’d paid him one compliment in their entire sorry acquaintance: dragged out of a train by Jeffrey Spender and into the getaway car by Krycek, Marita locked her sickly, tortured eyes on his and spat, “They'll die because they don't understand what we do.” He’d let the cryptic compliment slide-- it was probably an accurate though open-ended statement, after all-- but neither was sorry the rest of the ride was in silence.

******

Jeffrey Spender: one of those sudden plays of fate. Pushed in, given a job he hated, pushed back out; and when he resisted, Jeff got a bullet to the skull.

Apparently, not all the Syndicate had been crisped.

His loss.

Funny how Jeffy boy only fumbled around long enough to trade loyalties and die the hero's death. He didn't know the game, didn't care to learn the rules, and got cut out like a rookie.

Better to be a thrill-seeking fool than a virtuous one, Krycek reasoned: virtue grew out of a conscience; and a conscience was a fickle asset, liable to get you killed over the smallest twinge. So, he let the ethical humbugs have their fun fingerpainting with morality, watched them crawl over glass to prove that their tormented existence was bettered by a few lines they wouldn't cross. No need to go out of his way for any of them.

They always come crawling back.

*****

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2023, and @fictober-event

#txf #fic #Fictober #Day 19 #2023 #mine #“You Don't Know the First Thing About Me”#Krycek #Mulder #CSM #Consortium #Syndicate #xf fanfic #xfiles #x-files

18 notes · View notes

teecupangel · 1 year

Note

This is messy but—

Desmond ended in AC Syndicate and poses as a pub owner and serves drinks and unfortunately it became popular cause of his drinks (and maybe his charm and good looks) which made it a hot spot for the Rooks to get drunk and Jacob keeps flirting with him either drunk or sober.

His area of the pub is the safest place with little crimes and somehow Templars activity is diminished there. And Henry and Evie is suspicious of it and Jacob just wanna know how who is the mastermind and recruit them in the gang.

Desmond will be a safe space for the unchrins, giving food and fixed and clean clothes (Desmond can sew) and prostitutes will go to him for shelter and protection from bastard men and just help anyone in need

Any drunkards in his bar rioting and Desmond is simply cleaning with broom and going "Sir, please go home" and the drunks pick a fight with him and just get beat by him using the said broom.

Do you think Desmond would visit the Kenway Mansion or leave cryptic messages to help the creed?

Oh yes, pub owner Desmond is (chef’s kiss). Awkward flirting from Jacob which he just stares down with a look of “I have all of Ezio’s memories which includes his disastrous flirting with Christina and his suave flirting with Sofia. This is child’s play” which Jacob thinks of as a challenge.

Also, the urchins liked to tell him all the gossips they hear because he gives them sweeties if they do (they get free meals regardless if they have any gossips or not)

Then there’s this…

======================================

It was annoying having to wade through the sewers just to escape Lucy Thorne and her underlings. But, at least, Evie was able to recover what may prove to be the key they need to find the Shroud.

And also spend some time with Mr Henry Greene.

Still, it left a bitter taste on her lips knowing that Lucy Thorne would find Edward Kenway’s hidden room filled with the history of both the Kenway family and the British Brotherhood.

They got out of the sewers and Evie was about to suggest they get a carriage to leave as soon as possible since they were still near the mansion when they both noticed the commotion.

By the entrance of the Kenway mansion itself.

Evie and Henry looked at each other before nodding silently, making their way to join the crowd standing in front. They stayed in the crowd but managed to get a clear view of what was happening inside.

“Get your hands off me!”

Evie’s eyes widened as she saw police officers escorting Lucy Thorne and her underlings out of the mansion, clamping their hands in cuffs before escorting them to one of the many police carriages that were stationed in the courtyard.

“Please, Miss Thorne, do not make this harder for you.” Evie recognized Frederick Abberline almost immediately as the chief inspector stood in front of Thorne, “We have you for trespassing, breaking and entering…”

Abberline looked at the small journal he had as he added, “Destruction of private property, intent to steal…”

“Oh, sorry!” A young man exclaimed as he bumped into Evie. Evie stumbled slightly and the young man continued to say, “Sorry, you okay? I’m… I need to go.”

Evie watched as the young man walked towards Abberline as Thorne shouted, “Trespassing! This mansion belongs to-”

“The Kenways.” The young man cut her off and stood next to Abberline, smiling at him as he said, “Thank you so much, Freddie. When I saw all these people walking inside my home, I…”

“Well…” The young man smiled at all the officers as he said gratefully, “It’s good to know that we have officers we can trust.”

One of Thorne’s men blinked as he recognized him, “Desmond? From Bad Weather?”

“The pub?” Another man asked as he frowned.

“You’re taking the word of a pub owner?!” Thorne shouted.

“This is Mister Desmond Kenway.” Abberline introduced the young man, “The current head of the Kenway family and the owner of the mansion you just tried to steal from.”

“That’s impossible!” Thorne shouted, “This house-”

“Belonged to my great grandfather, Haytham Kenway who inherited it from my great great grandfather Edward Kenway.” Desmond cut her off, “Later, great grandpappy gave it to his sister, Jennifer Scott, who died childless.”

“But not before giving this house to my grandfather Ratonhnhaké:ton.” Desmond recounted, “The mansion has been abandoned since my great grand aunt’s death but it never left the family.”

Desmond took a step towards Thorne as he added with slightly narrowed eyes, “No matter what certain… rodents believe.”

Desmond waved his hand at the mansion as he continued, “I inherited it from my grandfather together with the entire…”

Desmond turned to glare at Thorne as he stated, “... history that comes with it and the Kenway name.”

Desmond turned to Abberline as he said, “I plan to press charges against everyone, of course, and…”

Desmond glanced at all the other officers as he promised, “I will do everything in my power as a Kenway to make sure anyone who helped them or will try to help them will be punished accordingly as well.”

The police officers glanced at one another and kept quiet while Desmond smiled at Abberline as he said, “I’ll leave this into your capable hands, chief inspector.”

“Yes, sir.” Abberline nodded before turning to face the other police officers, “Let’s get all of them to the station!”

“Now if you’ll excuse me.” Desmond turned and stared straight at Evie as he raised his hand, showing the golden disc she just had moments ago, as he said, “I believe I have a few little fledgelings that I need to talk to.”

Desmond’s lips curved into an amused smile and he nodded his head towards the mansion before walking inside.

Evie and Henry turned to look at one another before Henry said, “Well… I think we just got ourselves a meeting with Mister Desmond Kenway.”

Evie grimaced as he realized that this was the same ‘Desmond’ that Jacob had been awkwardly flirting with since they got to London. She could already hear Jacob’s ‘You talked to him without me?!’.

=======================

Before anyone assumes this is Desmond getting reborn as Connor's grandson. Nah. Desmond forged all those papers. This is straight up Desmond time traveling. XD

#desmond totes got the shroud already #i decided to focus on evie for this one because i already wrote about jacob on the other ask i posted today #so no this isn't gonna be a yew branch thing #sorry #assassin's creed #desmond miles #evie frye #henry green #jayadeep mir #lucy thorne #ask and answer #teecup writes/has a plot

128 notes · View notes

silo1013 · 1 year

Note

need you to talk about the “the red and the black” scene like what are your first thoughts

YESSSS YES OF COURSE….

first of all this scene is gay. just to get that out of the way now. i know we all know it is but it’s worth reiterating.

second of all even outside of that particular connotation this scene is also just extremely visually and impressionally odd. it’s intense! it’s charged! it’s creepy and weird! the entire sequence has a delightful strangeness to it—the almost nonexistent lighting turns mulder and krycek into living shadows, both their voices are hushed and quiet as if they’re afraid someone else is going to hear them even though they’re in mulder’s apartment alone, it’s shot in a way that makes them look like they’re across the room from each other even though they can’t be more than a foot apart. it makes it seem not real, like a dream that mulder is having that he won’t be able to wake from until it’s done with him; mulder’s night-dark living room becomes his tired mindscape, krycek a warped reflection of himself.

the cryptic note that “things are looking up” lends an air of delicious cinema to it all—it’s so incongruous it loops back around to being perfectly in keeping. it’s the sort of thing you’d expect from a spy novel, a murder mystery, a point-and-click escape-the-room video game. it’s really not the kind of thing that the syndicate does but it IS something you get the sense that the well manicured man would do, which is cool, because it makes it seem like krycek’s new boss is sort of… monitoring the entire interaction, which in turn makes the fact that mulder and krycek are acting like they’re being watched even more interesting. there’s a sort of surreal quality to the entire scene that is very obviously and abruptly shattered by the arrival of scully to mulder’s apartment—she turns on the lights, breaks the spell, brings mulder back down to earth by injecting the situation with a syringe full of reality like she almost always does.

you and i have definitely tossed this around before but the emotional crux of this scene i think very heavily leans on the sort of like. bizarre innate Understanding. that mulder and krycek have with each other. even though it sort of feels like neither of them WANT to have it? like, krycek isn’t here of his own accord—we can infer that the well manicured man has sent him—but his boss is probably not ordering him to present the information to mulder in this specific weird way. i doubt the well manicured man cares how krycek tells mulder anything as long as he does it. krycek is here because he was told to be, but he’s here in this way, as the silhouette in the dark corner, the monster under the bed, the man-upon-the-stair-who-wasn’t-there, because… of course he is. like, he has to be. neither he nor mulder have a choice in the matter—they can’t just walk up to each other and have a conversation the way they may have used to, because they’re literally no longer capable of it within the confines of the story. they have to play mind games, they have to lunge from the shadows and leave cryptic clues and beat the shit out of each other over and over because something, in a weird cosmic way, is always demanding it.

krycek gives mulder a kiss—an action which has several purposes, one of which IS definitely to fuck with mulder. i think krycek thinks that mulder will be more likely to believe him if he does something that throws mulder off balance, because unpredictability is paradoxically what mulder has grown to expect from krycek, to the point where it reassures mulder (who’s currently mentally kind of off balance anyway) that this is, like, still the same person he thinks it is. i think it’s probably a taunt on some level, and maybe also a legitimate expression of …. not affection exactly, but comraderie? in whatever weird way krycek is experiencing it. even though mulder has no idea yet what they’re now comrades in or why. it feels like a joke that krycek is having with himself.

he then gives mulder his gun and proceeds to fully turn his back on him to leave—it’s another game he has to play, and he knows mulder isn’t going to shoot him. mulder can never be straight with krycek because metanarratively speaking krycek is mulder, and mulder is historically not good at being straight with himself, but mulder also could never. like. i think he’s CAPABLE of doing that to himself but i don’t think he would be able to rationalize it. just like he couldn’t rationalize the idea of killing krycek—and in fact, he never does! it’s actually kind of funny how they’re physically not allowed to be honest and stop fucking with each other (even if it’s for one of them to kill the other!) because something will not let them, and they know this, and it’s making both of them, like, visibly insanely angry. this is where they always end up, somehow, for some reason, in endless different permutations forever, until someone else shoots one of them. destiny and fate and how to throw a curve ball.

they (being mulder and scully) talk about this in quagmire, sort of, and i think something that contributes to the sort of vaguely tragic nature of mulder as a character is the fact that for him, sometimes the pursuit of truth is what he lives for, not so much the truth itself. catching big blue would have invoked the same emotional response as catching the giant alligator, because big blue itself is not what matters—what matters is the mystery, and either way, the mystery is over. that phenomenon is what krycek is representing in this scene; that’s his metaphorical purpose, independent of his relationship to mulder as a character and as a person. it’s a very interesting parallel to the scene of scully and jeffrey spender in the x files office, which we can assume even might be happening concurrently. scully’s disquiet over the situation with ruskin dam, her experience with regression hypnosis, etc is leading her closer towards finally starting to believe, but spender showing her that tape pours a pitcher of water over the burgeoning spark. at the same time, mulder thinks he’s finally found the truth—the truth being that it’s all a lie—and it’s left him disappointed, empty, cold. his flames have gone out. krycek brings news that the mystery might not actually be solved, holding a match to the cooling embers, rekindling the fire that mulder has lost. the episode casts both spender and krycek less as men and more as metaphors, agents of thought, and it ends, maybe disappointingly, with mulder and scully back where they started, in the places the powers that be always seem to want them—mulder the believer, scully the skeptic.

lastly, independent of the feeling of the scene, i want to mention the stuff that’s actually being talked about. obviously i haven’t finished the show yet so YMMV on how much you agree with me at this point, but in my opinion this part of the show (i.e. mid season five) is where they seem to start losing their handle on the myth arc. the stuff about planned alien colonization, “interstellar war”, it’s kind of cartoonish and dumb and i don’t really like it. i’ve mentioned before that i wish the central conflict of the myth arc was slightly more down to earth (lol); i would have preferred something a bit less, i don’t know, fantastical. maybe instead of the aliens planning to invade and colonize the earth, they’re just exploring. they’re not harmless by any means (i think the whole idea of the black oil was absolutely marvelous and arguably i think that sort of thing is scarier when it’s not something actively malicious but rather something that just causes harm by existing) but they don’t care enough about us to gun for us. the conflict maybe comes even from the government; they’re picking up the stuff the aliens leave behind (technology, biomatter, etc) and using it for their own purposes (human experimentation, military applications), probably in ways that benefit them politically or financially, and the conflict comes from what they’ve done to people in their efforts to cover it up. just stuff i think about

sorry this got long and took forever i had more to say than i thought i did. tl;dr great scene with a very fascinating vibe from a great episode with a very fascinating vibe. alexa, play “i’ve got all this ringing in my ears but none on my fingers” by fall out boy

#the red and the black #ily mk feel free to send asks like this whenever i loooove talking about shit

27 notes · View notes