#tho I think part of it may be a purposeful commentary on how we treat characters vs real people even in a story we buy in2 very genuinely

[synonymsforstupidity]

'Kris being an outcast who likes freaking people out means they must be a Bad Person™️ and thus taking their free will and piloting them like a puppet is actually Good™️ morally speaking'

How about I eat your skin how bout that

[i-want-my-iwtv]

How has the purge affected u?

[Apologies in advance for the Wall of Text™, I feel like longposting, sorry for the dash coverage, I didn’t think I had this much to say about this… And I probably shouldn’t do this, probably should have kept this to a flippant “It sucks!” with a VC meme, but I haven’t shared much publicly lately… now feels like a singularly poignant time to do so.]

NO CUTS WE LONGPOST LIKE MEN

It’s strange. I think running and participating in the @vcsecretgifts exchange (not finished yet!), and backing up that blog and this one for preservation (not finished yet!), helped take my mind off it! I’ve been busy with @wicked-felina coordinating substitute Santas, so I haven’t had much chance to indulge in it like a participant yet, but I did see that my recipient liked my gift, and that was heartwarming! I’ll reply properly when I have the peace of mind for it (yes I could be doing it now but this is the gear I want to be on right now), and I haven’t had a chance to read the gift from my own Santa, I’m saving that as a treat!

I did the #Log/ffProt/st, that helped. The purge is/was creatively stifling, somewhat, too, bc even though I don’t produce NS/FW stuff myself (I WANT TO, THO), I do reblog it, and support it, I see other artists and writers affected by it, and I felt and still feel helpless, unable to protect them. One of our VC fandom members who draws slash art has been shadowbanned, that I know of. It’s frustrating that the morality & purity police seem to have won this battle, but they haven’t won the war. We’ll take our garbage underground if we have to. 

How crushing to wake up to one’s blog(s) just canceled w/o explanation? We were given 2 weeks’ notice? To pack up our “nasty” stuff and leave? 

[X]

There’s nothing wrong with NS/FW stuff, adult ppl should be able to talk about it, fantasize about it, make art and write fiction about it, have kinks and explore them. I never bought the “if you like it in fiction you support it in reality!” argument, just like with all dangerous things we like in fiction but wouldn’t want in reality. 

“… Fiction is how we both study and de-fang our monsters. To lock violent fiction away, or to close our eyes to it, is to give our monsters and our fears undeserved power and richer hunting grounds.” - Warren Ellis [X]

But I’ve fought those battles and there’s no point in engaging in unwinnable debate with ppl who are committed to misunderstanding me and twisting my words into a strawman they can easily knock over.  

It’s baffling that it’s an unpopular opinion that minors should be allowed to learn about sex, as much as they learn about how to (eventually) drive a car, manage alcohol consumption, defend themselves against violence, handle medication or recreational drugs, all these things that are potentially and not inherently dangerous to them, that they’ll be faced with in the Real World. I remember there were religious rituals in my youth where children could taste alcohol a little bit, it was exposure to an adult thing in a safe space, among other adults. Is this really all about Protecting the Children? Really? Or is it about mental domination? What it looks like to me is a self-proclaimed Particular Authority who wants to keep minors (and adults) submissive and reliant on that Particular Authority, it’s so much easier to keep them submissive and reliant to that same Particular Authority as adults. It’s always been about power. 

And I’m seeing that the communities most affected by the purge are AFAB ppl and LGBTQIA+. It’s misogynistic, LGBTQIA+-phobic. The fact that tungle reportedly blocked archivists from saving blogs before the NS/FW purge is just pouring salt in the wound.

I’ve started following these refugee/evicted tumblr ppl where they’ve migrated to. I’m trying to keep track of them. I’m in the @fiction-is-not-reality2 discord server, keeping my eye out for the next alternative platform.

Leading up to the purge I considered blasting a bunch of smut as a last hurrah, and I did reblog some Controversial™ stuff, just in case my blog was going to be deleted, but then, I lost steam on that. Why put in extra effort and get deleted anyway? Why poke the bear, and deliberately get deleted for it? Most of my blog is SFW, anyway.

I preserved my blog, the gifts blog, and just for archival purposes I should have been doing that all along, so it was good for my own historical safekeeping… so much good commentary and fanworks here, in the past 5+ years! Collecting the scraps just like I’d done in 1994, when there were articles about the IWTV movie and I wanted all of them, I especially wanted the illustrations and caricatures in the magazines (which was really validating of my interest in some way, fanart that was published, essentially!). And I had my folder of Deviantart I liked, of course. So I packed up my blog here to preserve it, it’s on wordpress now, iwantmyiwtv.com, with a lame layout, but I’ve got the tags showing, where fanart that’s blocked here can still be seen on WP.

I’m rambling. 

The purge reminded me that all this, as we know it, could and will be gone someday. Purges have done that before, especially to our fandom, attacked by its own canon author. We’ve survived this before. 

I’ve been on tungle since July ‘13. I’ve made and lost some wonderful friends here, some have moved on to other fandoms, or we’ve had partings of the ways. The fanart in this fandom, my memes, have been spread all over, I see them on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter. When this blog is deleted, either by content flagging or by tumblr finally keeling over, our stuff is going to outlive us all.  

Who even made this one? One of the vintage memes. Maybe their watermark was long ago cropped off, or maybe they hadn’t put it on:

^It was used in a meme here, but I don’t think that was the OP, it’s gotta be more than 4 yrs old. Pretty sure the “JUDGING YOU” in Impact font was around Twilight time, which came out in 2008. This meme is still floating around, it’s still amusing to ppl all these years later. Someone’s stroke of inspiration, and we may never know who it was, but we enjoy it, it’s part of the worn fabric of the fandom.

Will ppl remember me when/if I’m gone? I don’t need to be remembered, it’s enough that I was here at one point, and encouraged ppl to make fanworks, that I helped bring ppl together. I don’t need them to know it was me, specifically, or know much about me, this blog was never meant to be about me. Those I brought together might remember how they met. There are those who have seen behind the curtain and I hope to hang onto them as long as possible.

If/When this all disappears, I want ppl to know how much I enjoyed interacting with ppl through asks, the chat feature. I’ve missed answering asks, and I’ve missed the feeling of seeing new ask alerts without having to brace myself for Discourse. I’ve missed seeing that anon icon as a friendly, but shy, human being, rather than a living person who’s in pain, somewhere else in the world, throwing bricks through my window. Someone who’s suffering bc they’re not getting the attention they need, truly, someone who deserves to be loved, someone who needs validation for their opinions on things, and wanted mine, but I couldn’t give it. I’m only human, too. I made this blog for 15 year old me, who couldn’t find enough VC fanworks, so I set out to collect, make, and encourage them, but all in the spirit of optimism, bc that’s what I got out of canon. 15 year old me drew self esteem from those books. That’s the only person I ever wanted to please with this thing and that girl is still my priority. 

We’ll survive this purge, we’ve done it before. Hold onto the ppl who you’ve made connections with. I’ll be here as long as I can. 

Most importantly, I’m not letting the morality & purity police tell me what ’m allowed to learn about, make fanworks about, or enjoy in published or fan fiction, etc. 

[playchoices]

Inside Choices: Growing from “Rant Ahead, Be Aware”

While looking through Tumblr posts this week, one of the longer response posts caught my eye. The post was well written and though titled “Rant ahead”, was a well reasoned commentary on things that bother the post’s author. Since the post brought up many points that other players have also expressed, I thought replying as a blog post so everyone has a chance to see the response would be appropriate.

Thank you to lauraotaku2234 both for your thoughts and for permission to share it in our blog. The post is bolded below.

From the Tumblr post “Rant ahead, be aware”:

I just love how Pixelberry reblogs fanart and nice messages about the game. But when fans are actually pointing out errors and mistake the game has done… they just ignore it. They have decided to close a bubble to them.

This is a very fair point. Our team really does read a lot of the feedback generated by our players. But even though we may be working on fixes or things that address the critiques, most of the time people on our  team don’t give a firm answer for fear of making a situation worse or suggesting something that might end up not happening in the future. Because I lead the team, I have a lot more latitude in responding to critiques, but I’ve been focused on a lot of different projects which means that I haven’t responded as often as I should.

I hope this post helps to provide some more light on many of the below issues.

Now, there is a difference between the: “We want more diamond options” and the “James situation”. Here’s why:

On the diamond thing, I doubt PB will change that, mainly because they get their money from us buying diamonds, the more options we get, the least money they make. So its understandable. Yet, the money they make is supposedly to get better staff and equipment so the game can improve and be better. A year has already passed and I still can’t find what the improvement is or was.

You’re correct, it is harder for us to change the diamond economy. We have been experimenting with different options that try to balance our ability with making money and giving players a better experience. As a player, myself, I totally get the complaints. I don’t have anything new to announce right now, but we are working on different features and will see if things like rewarding diamonds for watching ads will help in providing that balance.

It also makes sense that you and other players can’t find what improvements have been made. But I’m hoping that is partially because we’ve been slowly building and rolling out improvements over time and that you’ve gotten used to some of those changes.

One of our most popular requests is launching more weekly content. And in the past year, the biggest change we’ve made by far is expanding from 3 books at launch to a much more robust library. When we first launched Choices, we had about 10 people writing with two new chapters per week. We now have over 30 writers and sometimes release as many as 6 new chapters a week with other new series in production, too. Along with all these writers, we’ve added more artists, producers, testers, and other roles to increasing our capacity for weekly storytelling.

It’s something you can’t see, but when I walk through the doors into our offices, I love hearing the buzz in our office and seeing all the people working together on Choices. And when all the writers assemble for their weekly “Writer’s Meeting,” I still get the chills seeing so many writers gathered around a long table talking about how they can improve their craft together.

So, I hope you really do believe we’ve been investing a lot in growing our team because we treat the future of Choices very seriously.

(As an aside, some people on the team have suggested maybe doing a Fan meet-up in the office - in the Bay Area in California - or maybe sending writers to different book conferences next year, so that maybe some of you can see that growth in person, too.)

Now… The James thing. PB common, you can do better than that. I wouldn’t be upset if you they gave us an actual reason as of why. Also, we need an explanation about what “other characters” means. Will the rest of the character change too? Will it only be a few one’s? I’m replaying every single finished book to find what other faces may have been changed. It has to be done, I don’t want to play The Royal Romance to find you changed Hana’s character appearance just… because.

You are right. We should have told you about the change ahead of time. Also, I wish I could go into more details about the change, but in my previous post, I tried to say as much about why we made the change as I already could. We know this really upset many of you. We understand. It’s our bad for disappointing you.

In regards to “other characters”, we have not rolled out the changes yet, but our Tumblr fandom is pretty clued into what other characters will likely be changed. We will make specific references to those characters when it happens. We will not be changing any other Love Interests (LIs), so Hana and others are safe.

The only book I’m not replaying is ROE, why? Because is a waste to my keys and time. The storyline got old really fast. It was actually a really good story, and I remember the First Book Finale actually left people with their mouths open, but they ruined it when they brought a third book, and now a fourth. I mean, it’s a plot that can be solved with a Snap. Adding more tasks as a way of length[en]ing the story was a stupid move and only brought fans rage. Most fans agree with me when I say: Endless Summer should have as many books as The Freshman, The Crown and The Flame shouldn’t have ended in the third book, The Haunting of Braidwood Manor should’ve been longer, Most Wanted deserves a second book, and even tho The Freshman is my favorite series, The Sophomore plot isn’t going anywhere, it’s like Love Hacks at its beginnings and it’s tiring.

As I mentioned before, Most Wanted 2 must happen. It’s the book every fan is waiting for, including me. It has an amazing storyline with amazing characters, yet, they decided to shut it out, and even erase it from their AppStore/PlayStore menu.

It’s pretty clear that much of the Tumblr fandom has the least love for Rules of Engagement (ROE.) But we have other fan groups and other people who really like this series. Just as we actively try to promote diversity in our characters, we do try to balance the resources we put into genres for various fandoms and individuals playing through our stories. We aim to have something for everyone, and all of our writers pour their hearts into everything they work on.

As the RoE series wrapped up, the writers of ROE moved on to a “mini-book” that would tie the series up in the right way. The book will probably finish too quickly for fans of ROE and not fast enough for fans of other series, but this book length fit the purposes of the story arc. Also because we have such a wide variety of writers, each with their unique storytelling talents and skills, continuing a romance series such as RoE doesn’t actually affect some Tumblr fandom favorites, like Endless Summer or Most Wanted.

Part of what we’re trying to do with Choices is to try new series and genres which is why we sometimes will end, or pause a series faster than fans want so that we can try new things. Most Wanted didn’t do as well financially as our other two launch series, so we moved that team onto Endless Summer and LoveHacks, where they could excel at leading new projects. One of those writers, Andrew, has moved onto managing another project. But Luke continues to be a part of Book 2 and 3 of Endless Summer (which we are aiming to start releasing in December.) And Owen is working on a secret new project, now that LoveHacks has completed!

I really do hope and think that when it makes sense, we will start work on Most Wanted 2. But it will be a matter of the right timing in terms of having one or more of the original team ready and balancing the start of Most Wanted 2 versus other new series we want to start. Dave and Sam will eventually return.

I respect Pixelberry as a company a lot. But with these changes and empty storylines, I just wonder where the old Pixelberry went. It seems like they just ran out of imagination to make stories, so they just continue old ones and create new ones with similar plots but shorter books that in the end everyone likes.

Thank you for respecting us. It’s clear in the thoughtfulness of your “rant” and in the praises and critiques of our fandom. Even when you think we’re ignoring you, we hear many, many of the messages. And I admit that some of the critiques really hurt and sometimes the ones that hurt the most are the ones that ring the most true. But we also recognize the strength of the critiques often is also a measure of how much our fandom cares.

I really, truly hope that as we release new chapters, books, and series that you’ll see that the creative wells of our teams has not run dry. And when a writer is being blocked, a designer is confused by the path forward, or a tester doesn’t know how to reproduce a problem, the creativity of the fandom often breaks that block, clears the path, and helps us keep moving forward. Whether it’s beautiful art, all the “Jomes” jokes, Brian’s Ask Blogs, the many forms of Cetus, faceclaims (yes, it’s okay to keep doing them), and other posts, your creativity motivates us.

As you continue to share on Tumblr or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, we’ll continue reading, digesting, and modifying our plans. But if you have specific problems or want to ensure we hear what you have to say, I encourage you to contact us directly via our in-game Help. Or if the game is down, reach out via Contact us via our website. We have experienced Player Specialists who listen, solve, tally, describe, and share your thoughts with the right people on our team. They are the first to alert the rest of the team to major problems and Trina, the leader of that team, also shares motivating, poignant, or key messages to the whole studio. Also you can tweet story related questions to @PlayChoices. Jessica will often check with individual writing teams to see if it’s something they can answer.

To all of our fandom everywhere, thank you for your love. We understood that love isn’t just fun and compliments, but it also comes with teasing and obstacles. And the best love comes with hard talks, accountability, and growth. When we stumble, we promise to honor our side of the relationship by continuing to learn and grow. And we hope that you will continue to rant, tease, and grow with us.

On behalf of our whole team,

Oliver

[solarbird]

Old Soldiers, Chapter 17: do not hold any of it back

I'm writing this thing and even I'm being surprised at how much Pharmacy milage is in this chapter.

[AO3 link]

Fareeha read the letter again, face grim, shaking a little, enraged. How dare she. How dare she?!

"Angela! Come here, please!" she called into the other room. This will have to go to all of Overwatch, but... she should know, first.

"Fareeha? Are you all right? You sound..." Her wife leaned around the doorframe and saw that, in fact, her wife was tightly, rigidly angry. "Oh, no. What is it, liebchen?"

"Come here, and hold me, while you read this."

Angela stepped quickly forward to the flying agent's chair and wrapped her arms around her neck, reading over her shoulder. "...I... I... this has to go to the entire team."

"I know. I wanted you to see it first."

"Do not hold any of it back, send it unedited."

"That is not why." The Egyptian turned in her chair to face her wife. "I've decided. I will do it. I want to do it, now. How long will it take to prepare a set of nanites for me?"

Angela gasped, and covered her mouth with her left hand, her heart leaping, and she stepped half a step back, then threw herself around her wife, holding her tight, so tight, so unready for that declaration. "I... That is not the reaction I..."

Fareeha held her wife gently, pulling her head against her strong shoulders, her eyes closed, brushing her fingers through her wife's hair. "I know."

"But... why? I am..." The doctor took a long, deep breath, and pulled back. "I... have committed a serious ethical lapse - it was not my first - and ... I have wanted this for too long. I, I have to be sure. I have to know. You are not doing this just to spite your mother?"

Fareeha laughed, a little bitterly. "No."

"Have I put pressure on you? Have I been..."

Fareeha chuckled and smiled. "No."

"Then... why? Why now?"

Her wife grew quite sombre, quite quickly. "I..." She pursed her lips and looked at the floor, and did not speak for a moment, and then not for another moment, and not for another moment after that. She covered her eyes with her hands, then covered her entire face, sliding her palms slowly down, collecting her thoughts. Softly, looking up, but to the distance, she began, "I was always taught life had phases, and that it mattered to go through all of them." She bit her lip. "That they all have a purpose. That everything has a time, and a place, and that all the phases of life are equally valuable, in different ways. Part of that is... that age brings wisdom."

"I do not disagree," said her wife, softly.

"Mother - Ana - believed in that, particularly. That the wisdom of age is important to humanity. That there is value - and knowledge - in understanding the decay of time, in understanding" - she looked at her own strong arms, and her own strong hands - "that this does not endure."

Angela Ziegler nodded, and her expression subtly changed, as her thoughts raced ahead of her wife's speech.

"I have lived long enough to understand that, at least, a little. But - if she... if this is what she calls wisdom..." She glared back to the screen, with its softly glowing text, anger in her eyes. "This is not wisdom, it is insanity." Her gaze whipped back to her wife, and she looked deep into her eyes. "Is this what awaits me in old age? This... paranoia? This capriciousness? This... madness? I will have no part of it. I beg you to save me from this."

Angela met her wife's sight, falling into the dark pools of her eyes, reaching across to her wife, touching her cheek and chin and hair. "I have wanted nothing more in my life." She closed her own eyes, for a moment, and opened them again. "But ... I have to do this correctly."

"Whatever this is," she gestured to the text on the display, "it is not genetic. If it is environmental, it is not in you. You carry nothing that makes this inevitable, or even likely. I do not know what has happened to your mother, but ... I do not think, not even for a moment, that you would share her fate."

Fareeha nodded. "Good." Slowly, she looked down again, contemplating Angela's declaration carefully for seconds, then for a minute, then for another, before looking back up. "But it doesn't change my decision. The only reason - the only true reason - I have said no, is my belief in what she taught me." She reached over, and touched the display, with its texts, with its threat. "I no longer have good cause to think it has value."

"I'm sorry," said her wife. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm not," said her lover. "Illusions do not suit me." She shrugged. "Besides, it's not like you can't turn the nanites off."

"No," acknowledged the doctor. "But they will begin repairs immediately. You will lose your scars, over a period of weeks. They are part of your life, your experience, and they will fade completely, over time."

The younger soldier nodded. "They are mostly hidden, anyway."

"Not from me," smiled the doctor. "I treasure them, as they are a part of you."

The flying officer snorted. "They hurt in rainy weather, you know that. They bother me every time we visit my father. This one, in particular," she pointed to the left side of her ribcage, "I will be most glad to see this one gone."

"You will look younger. Not very much, but somewhat. Overwatch ignores it, in me - but they may not, in a field soldier. In you."

"I will demonstrate to them that I do not care what they think."

"Then you are absolutely sure?"

"Yes," she said, mind clearly made up. "I have no idea what it takes to start the process. If I could take the first dose, receive the first infusion, whatever the procedure might be - if I could do it right now, this very instant, I would."

"You're sure."

"Yes."

"Right now."

"Yes."

Angela laughed, just a little - "I have been waiting to do this for so long..." - and sat in her wife's lap, and kissed her, breathlessly, tightly, hard. Her lips tingled against her wife's, like electrics, but without the shock, and Fareeha felt her pulse quicken, and it felt to the rocketeer almost as if their hearts were moving into sync as the electrics moved across her skin, and her eyes widened as the low, persistent, ignored ache in her left shoulder faded, and she realised... Now. And she pulled her wife against her, harder, and they kissed until neither could avoid breaking away for a breath, as hard as they fought against it, and so they broke away, both panting, both shaking, just a little.

"That... was not what I expected... in a nanite delivery system." She laughed, in little huffs, feeling somehow light, somehow bubbly, all over. "But I approve of it."

Her wife took a deep breath, giggling throughout, no, more than that, but she did not have words for the kind of burbling elation running through her mind. "I," she laughed, "I thought it would be a gift on our honeymoon, but I've kept it to myself until you were ready... I am so happy... but... how do you feel?"

The Egyptian laughed, and pulled her wife back against her body. "I feel, doctor, like I need another dose."

Angela grinned broadly, eyes alight like stars. "You don't, but - isn't it convenient I just happen to have one ready?" She leaned in, and they kissed again, 'till nothing else mattered at all.

Two hours later, Fareeha forwarded Ana's message to the rest of Overwatch, flagged "Mission Critical - Urgent," recommending most strongly that regular Embassy staff be warned, that Swiss and UN authorities be notified, and that Athena step up security on all exterior access points. "If Ana Amari has decided to play it like this," she said, in her forward, "we need to take her seriously. I will do what I can to talk her back to sensibility, but this is a threat, and it should be treated as such. And so, unfortunately, should she."

-----

Venom ignored her mail. Venom often ignored her mail, particularly her Overwatch mail, when she wasn't at Overwatch, when she wasn't playing Tracer. Venom liked not being in charge - despite being on Talon's executive council - and while at Overwatch, if push came to shove, she was in charge, and she knew it. But she couldn't keep ignoring Winston forever, no matter how much she didn't feel like talking to him, and so, eventually, she didn't.

The assassin hit [Acknowledge Signal] on her padd, and jumped in first, saying, "Fine," exasperation in her voice. "I'm here. First things first tho', did Angela tell you..."

"Check your mail. Right now. I'll wait."

Lena glared, angry again. "No. First. Did Angela tell you what happened?"

"Yes," said the scientist, "We know. The whole team. We know all of it, I'm pretty sure. She offered her resignation, I refused to accept it. Lena, check your mail right now. It's important."

Lena looked sideways at Winston, anger in her eyes, but pulled up her Overwatch mail in another window. "That's quite the thread you've... got..." She blinked. "...oh."

The scientist nodded. "That's why I haven't been letting you cool down. I'm sorry, but you can see why."

"Wow," said the Talon assassin. "This is bad." She read Ana's mail - and Fareeha's commentary and recommendations - again. Or maybe, she thought to herself, it's good. Maybe now they'll just step aside. She looked back towards Winston. "Do you know what this means?"

"Fareeha is trying to talk to her. No luck so far, but she's still trying."

"Do you know what this means? Winston, I need to know."

"...yes. I do."

"Good." She sighed and shook her head. "I tried, luv. I really did. I could've solved this weeks ago. But I was nice, and I played it your way... and look where it's got us."

"We don't know that. And I don't like your way of handling these things. I'll never like it, and I'll never not prefer our way, and I'll never stop insisting we get first shot, when it's our jurisdiction. But..." he looked down and to his left. "You had a right to know about this mail. Even if I knew how you'd react. Even if I knew what you'd do."

You made sure I was informed, the assassin realised. You didn't delete the mail. You even called my attention to it. She breathed. Bloody hell, this has to be hard on you.

Lena's face softened a little, and she smiled a sad smile. "Thanks, big guy." She closed her eyes. "I need to talk to Angela - using my codes. I'll drop a new set of keys in the usual place; she'll need access to that drop, or you'll need to ferry the files." She looked back at her old friend. "Will you do that for me?"

The ambassador nodded, deciding not to ask why. "I will."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not. You're glad you've got a reason."

Venom snorted. "Fair cop. I really am sorry, though. Not for what we're gonna do, but for how hard it is on ya."

"This is not the first time I've had to be a little complicit... but it may be the most difficult."

Lena nodded. "I didn't want..." Damn you, Morrison - do you have to destroy everything you touch? "I didn't want to put you in that position again. That's all."

"Look, Lena," said the scientist. "Just don't go out of your way. Not with Ana. I know what Jack's done, that's one thing, but Ana..." he said miserably, "Do what you have to, just... don't be extra about it. Can you at least do that for me, if not for Fareeha? Please?"

The Talon agent thought about it, hard. If we can get the video, if we can get that damned gun of hers before she hands off imagery... then she's just another batty old conspiracy theorist who doesn't make any sense. And we don't risk losing Pharah. She gave Winston a dubious look - the most dubious of looks - and set her upper lip, but nodded, just a little. "I'll try. No promises."

"None expected," he said, knowing it was the best he'd get.

She pressed a few buttons on her padd. "I've dropped new codes for Angela. You'll relay 'em?"

"She'll have them in a few minutes."

"Thanks, big guy. For all of it, but... particularly for not trying to hide this from me."

"These were colleagues of mine once, Lena. Yours, as well. Don't make me regret this any more than I already do. Please."

"Gloves off, luv. We're gonna do what's needed." She shook her head, and tapped the tabletop in front of her. "But I'll do my best t' keep it to that."

"Thank you."

"Thank me when it's over - if y'still want to. Y'may not. But right now..." She put her hands on the table. "I need to debrief my team."

"Good luck," Winston said, "...I think."

Lena smiled, ruefully. "Best I'll get?"

"Best I've got to give. Winston out."