Actually, there is... just hidden. "Francois Hibou" was meant to be Court of Owls member operating under a pseudonym. (Funfact: "Hibou" means "Owl" in French)
So that is a link but it's kind of a weak one. "Francois Hibou" does not exist even as an alias in DC comics. If you'd transplanted it into another setting no one would think it's connected to the Court of Owls. That being said, I will say that it is another link, if one that's kind of hard to pick up on.
As you said with one of your threadmarked "Informational" posts, Court of Owls deliberately "makes things" to make Gotham into "Supervillain-friendly environment"
I did say this and this is true. However I think you were a bit too direct in your portrayal of the Court and their manipulations. The Court generally speaking does not need to make supervillains directly, and will not do so because that gives a direct link to them and makes it really easy to put together that they "created" said villain. What they do is they create an environment that naturally encourages people to become supervillains without the Court ever needing to directly step in.
To use the Dr. Sleep story as an example, the Court should have no need to pay for Marcus Lepton's freedom through a proxy, when they've already spent decades setting up the court system in Gotham so that precedent and local laws will lead to disbarment from the profession but not permanent imprisonment. From there the general conditions of Gotham for someone unable to find legitimate work will naturally push someone towards desperation and thus make crime a lot more palatable. With enough weapons and tech already moving through Gotham that's not secured, a sufficiently intelligent individual can get their hands on chemicals and parts to make gadgets for supervillainy. From there supervillains naturally develop and other parts of the system the Court has set up ensure that supervillains generally don't get the death penalty and are kept in prisons they can escape from.
To get at what I'm doing, Gotham's been made a supervillain friendly environment, the Court basically doesn't need or want to directly step in to make supervillains too much, when they can instead build a system that does it passively and hides their involvement a lot better.
It's not so far out of the realms of plausibility but it is direct enough that I have to add an additional bit of story-telling, namely that the Court swiftly disposes of every member involved with the "Francois Hibou" stuff and a plausible explanation is cooked up so that it doesn't remain as a loose end threatening to blow open the whole conspiracy.
The Court does occasionally funnel money to people when necessary, but they're generally very subtle about it and don't want to actively push someone into doing something they aren't already interested in doing.
Edit: General rule of thumb for people wanting to write the Court and their manipulations. To use a metaphor, the Court doesn't manipulate people by pushing them down a certain road. Instead they quietly carve the environment in Gotham to make a certain road appealing and easy for people to choose of their own free will, and then make use of the people who end up going far enough down that road.
When you can avoid it, don't be direct. Instead make use of systems that have been put in place in Gotham for years and that the Court has had decades to set up to run the way they want them to.
Finishing, I feel that two of my biggest mistakes were:
1) Writing "half-asleep", so I wasn't aware that my "story" is so short.
2) Wanting to write "too much, too quickly" (whole backstory of Dr. Sleep in "one go") so it came out missing important (writing-wise) information
So I'll say my bit. I think you made a pretty reasonable mistake for a new writer who has a lot of ideas and is eager to get them out there. It's not an unusual mistake and I want to encourage you to continue trying to write, especially since the "too much, too quickly" mistake is one I made when I first was starting to write (predating anything I've posted on SV).
To get at what I'm doing, Gotham's been made a supervillain friendly environment, the Court basically doesn't need or want to directly step in to make supervillains too much, when they can instead build a system that does it passively and hides their involvement a lot better.
Ironically, this means that Court of Owls is doing reverse of what Quest!Lex is doing in Metropolis (Quest!Lex shapes environment of Metropolis to make crimes harder and less profitable, while Court of Owls shapes environment of Gotham to make crimes easier and more profitable)
Ironically, this means that Court of Owls is doing reverse of what Quest!Lex is doing in Metropolis (Quest!Lex shapes environment of Metropolis to make crimes harder and less profitable, while Court of Owls shapes environment of Gotham to make crimes easier and more profitable)
So I wouldn't say that the Court of Owls is doing the reverse as what Quest!Lex is doing, I actually think they are both doing something fairly similar.
Stuff like trying to get Kryptonite in as many devices as possible and making it really easy to get access to Kryptonite for use in a weapon, sponsoring Leslie Willis to spew anti-Superman rhetoric on the airwaves, and controlling the police station and building a culture of collaboration with and support of LexCorp is shaping the environment to make certain crimes in Metropolis much, much easier.
Quest!Lex has generally made crime less profitable in Metropolis, but you've also set the field so that supervillains like Toyman have a ton of advantages and are more likely to go after Superman with some crazy scheme. It's not quite the same thing as the Court of Owls, and Quest!Lex is way more obvious that he's the one making these changes (he's one guy doing this over a short frame of time, as opposed to multiple actors doing something across the decades), but they are doing something similar, at least in my opinion.
Edit: There are other differences but if Lex ever appears before the Court of Owls proper, I'm going to give the thread the opportunity to have Lex shit-talk the Court and say "I did what took you centuries in a few years and I did it better".
So I wouldn't say that the Court of Owls is doing the reverse as what Quest!Lex is doing, I actually think they are both doing something fairly similar.
Stuff like trying to get Kryptonite in as many devices as possible and making it really easy to get access to Kryptonite for use in a weapon, sponsoring Leslie Willis to spew anti-Superman rhetoric on the airwaves, and controlling the police station and building a culture of collaboration with and support of LexCorp is shaping the environment to make certain crimes in Metropolis much, much easier.
Quest!Lex has generally made crime less profitable in Metropolis, but you've also set the field so that supervillains like Toyman have a ton of advantages and are more likely to go after Superman with some crazy scheme. It's not quite the same thing as the Court of Owls, and Quest!Lex is way more obvious that he's the one making these changes (he's one guy doing this over a short frame of time, as opposed to multiple actors doing something across the decades), but they are doing something similar, at least in my opinion.
Edit: There are other differences but if Lex ever appears before the Court of Owls proper, I'm going to give the thread the opportunity to have Lex shit-talk the Court and say "I did what took you centuries in a few years and I did it better".
I think the key differences are in scale and deniability.
For the first, while the Court of Owls intentionally make crime in general easier and profitable in Gotham Lex has generally only made anti-Superman crime easier while also making regular crimes or god forbid crimes that target LexCorp significantly harder. After all while Lex does own the police he very rarely makes active use of that control and has invested a not insignificant amount of money into making them more effective.
For the second, while the Court of Owls has the benefit of not being a singular individual if their existence and membership were ever exposed it would be pretty easy for someone to realise what they're ere trying to do whereas Lex despite being more open about his manipulations has the excuse of genuinely making the city a nicer, safer place to live in the process.
Ultimately while there are a fair number of inescapable similarities I would say that Lex is generally more focused and with an actual end goal in mind not to mention that by not being destroying his city in the process he's managed to replicate several aspects of the Court while also managing to have the average citizen of Metropolis thank him for it.
Depending on your interpretation of quest!Lex you could argue that he's genuinely improving the lives of the people of Metropolis out of altruism (ish).
After all, altruistic behaviours have been shown to bring tangible benefits to those engaging in them, apart from improving societal cohesion, (which is probably why they evolved in the first place). Plus, a King must provide for his subjects, else he is unworthy and a miser.
Lex has... a number of goals that drive his philanthropy.
- He hates Superman, in a really deep, visceral way.
- He likes good PR. Having good PR makes it easier for him to get away with attacking Superman, especially diplomatically. It makes it easier to benefit from cooperation with heroic types. It provides cover for his sins. Good PR is just useful, useful stuff.
- Then there's this:
Lex really, really wants to be seen as the Savior of the Human Race. It's this whole thing with him. Actually, I think that may be the core difference between him and Cassandra, in some ways, and why she so much more horrible as a villain than he is. She can sort of vaguely appreciate the way in which PR helps you keep heroic types off your back, but she doesn't actually care about good reputation beyond that. For Lex, every time he is the obvious cause of making the world a better and brighter place, he gets that much more of that sweet, sweet acclaim.
Oh, and he has his pride. He is going to be better than his father, and everyone is going to know it.
Lex really, deeply cares about his reputation... but outside of that? He's a sociopath.
Dr. Marcus Lepton was walking to his apartment, but when he entered the stairwell, he encountered a situation typical for Gotham City. Maria, a young student who rented the apartment across from him, was arguing with some guy who looked like a drug addict. Marcus easily recognized that, given that he worked in Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic, where he had contact with "much too many" of drug addicts.
-"...es I need to tell you! You have money, you get drugs! No money, No drugs!"- shouted Maria, causing Marcus to disbelieve that he is only one that heard them.
It seems that luck didn't smile to Marcus, because as soon as drug addict realized his presence, he had lunged at him, while repeatedly shouting "Give me your money! Give me your money!". Due to fact that Marcus was frail 61 years old, he was easily pinned to the floor by his attacker, who then began to strangle him with his bare hands.
Only reason why he had avoided death, is because Maria had pulled a knife and began to repeatedly stab her "potential client" in the back, until he had slided down from Marcus, then to be sure, she slit dead drug addict's throats.
-"Sorry for this. You know how it is. Some people's brains are so, destroyed by drugs, that they forget that I'm not charity."- apologized Maria after helping Marcus stand up, then pulled several hundred dollar bills.
-"Thanks. If someone asks, I 'didn't saw anything'. By the way, If you want to get something to deal with 'cashless clients', I have something much subtler & less messy than a knife. I normally sell it 'under the table' disguised as canisters for handheld inhalers, but for you, I'm gonna make one disguised as canister for pepper spray can."- Marcus said to Maria, after taking the money, then continued his way to his apartament.
-"Weird. I remember people on the streets, talking about someone called 'Doctor Sleep' that operated out of Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic and sold drug based on augmented sleep gas, but this can't be Mr. Lepton. He is way too old for this busine... Whatever. One of rules of this city, is that snitches never live long." - loudly thought Maria, while watching back of Marcus ascending the stairs, before he had vanished behind a corner.
She then looked at corpse of dead drug addict lying on the floor, then began to drag him towards her car, that was on backyard of the building
-"That's good that I don't like skipping PE lessons."- Maria loudly thought
Hi everyone. I noticed something about Mystek, the Superhero
One of the contracts that were offered was:
-[ ] [Sign on] In exchange for getting the sponsorship for superheroics and their own private lab and equipment funded by LexCorp, Mystek will officially become a LexCorp employee and take orders from them. This option gets you Mystek as a hero unit. (Costs two slots)
Mystek uses powered armor, and is smart enough to upgrade it by herself. Mystek likely has good Learning, an expertise in power armor, and her equipment could be mass producible.
Hi everyone. I noticed something about Mystek, the Superhero
One of the contracts that were offered was:
Mystek uses powered armor, and is smart enough to upgrade it by herself. Mystek likely has good Learning, an expertise in power armor, and her equipment could be mass producible.
That's a good point that I hadn't considered before, especially since KC has said that they were one of the options on that list whose stat total exceeded 60.
I think a big part of people, me and included, hesitance around them is just how little we know about them but it's definitely worth keeping them in mind for the future, potentially as our own counter to Steel?
Mystek uses powered armor, and is smart enough to upgrade it by herself. Mystek likely has good Learning, an expertise in power armor, and her equipment could be mass producible.
Well, if she hasn't ben snapped up by someone else, it might be worth circling back around on her, yeah. "Give me a lab and a sponsorship" isn't a huge ask, though. She might be in the hands of some other megacorp at this point.
So commentary about another omake attempt. This one is significantly better than your first attempt. It's just a single conversation but there's a good amount of character in it and it does a lot to flesh out the Dr. Sleep character and how he came to be. It's not perfect but I do think this is a solid improvement over what came before.
Since English doesn't appear to be your first language (feel free to call me out if I'm wrong when stating this), I'm going to be a little more lenient on things than I normally would be in discussing some errors. My writing in Hebrew is pretty consistently atrocious so I'm trying to judge you by the standards I would like to be judged if someone read my writing in another language. As such a lot of the commentary is going to be about more structural and narrative stuff that I think is applicable (though I'll still comment on some grammar things as well).
So the age of Maria, I think came off a little weird to me. I think she's supposed to be a student in their early years of university, placing her at somewhere between 18 and 22. That would make sense for her both renting an apartment and her selling drugs to people. That being said the line about her "skipping PE Lessons" then becomes a little weird. I think it's meant to be sarcastic but PE, or physical education is not really a thing in most universities or colleges that is in any way mandatory. Even if you take a class with a physical component, rarely is it ever called "PE". My experiences in the USA's education system are not universalizable, but I personally stopped taking "PE classes" in middle school (I still did physical activities in a school environment, but that was joining the cross country team, not a formal class).
This doesn't by any means ruin anything, but I think it's a little unintentional weirdness that you have Maria worried about something that I don't think most college students are really concerned about that younger people would be and you get this confusion on my end. The phrase also comes from her thoughts so it's not a joke for someone else's benefit, and we don't have any indicator for what kind of thoughts this is besides "loud".
I can't suggest potential improvements without knowing what the intent of that line's inclusion was (which makes me feel like my commentary is less constructive than it should be), but I think you could clear up some of that unintentionally weirdness.
This actually reads to me as a direct translation from another language that doesn't make sense when switched over to English. The reason for my assumption that this is a literal translation is that a common phrase in Hebrew used to describe an excess of something (הרבה יותר מדי) literally translates the exact same way.
Generally speaking you would just write "too many" if you're describing objects like people or balls or apples, and "too much" when discussing things that can't be broken down into clearly divisible units like suffering or water or laughter. Additionally you don't need the quotation marks because it's not a term of art.
So I should have bolded the little dashes to make them a little more visible as they are the only thing wrong with this. You did it a few times with the quote when you don't need to. I'm by no means an expert in the use of the dashes, but I know you're not supposed to be doing this for quotes, and instead are unintentionally signaling that they are a disconnected idea from the rest of the sentence, which is incorrect.
I'd removed the dashes from the quotes where you have people speaking.
So I'm trying to avoid going too far in on the spelling and grammar stuff, but it should be "throat" not "throats" as Maria is only cutting one throat here.
-"Thanks. If someone asks, I 'didn't saw anything'. By the way, If you want to get something to deal with 'cashless clients', I have something much subtler & less messy than a knife. I normally sell it 'under the table' disguised as canisters for handheld inhalers, but for you, I'm gonna make one disguised as canister for pepper spray can."- Marcus said to Maria, after taking the money, then continued his way to his apartament.
-"Weird. I remember people on the streets, talking about someone called 'Doctor Sleep' that operated out of Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic and sold drug based on augmented sleep gas, but this can't be Mr. Lepton. He is way too old for this busine... Whatever. One of rules of this city, is that snitches never live long." - loudly thought Maria, while watching back of Marcus ascending the stairs, before he had vanished behind a corner.
Both of these sections have a similar issue where they frontload way too much of a statement into the first half and then cram several actions into the back half. A lot of the time what you can do is use multiple sentences to give things a little more flow. I'm going to admittedly fix some mistakes I'm not commenting on, but I think rewriting this section as follows would help break up the information and make it feel less like you're dumping everything all at once.
"Thanks, if someone asks, 'I didn't see anything'" Marcus said to Maria after taking the money "By the way if want to get something to deal with 'cashless clients' I have something much subtler & less messy than a knife. Normally I sell it 'under the table', disguised as cannisters for handheld inhalers, but for you I'll make one disguised as a canister of pepper spray."
Marcus then continued on to his apartment.
"Weird, I remember people on the streets talking about someone called 'Doctor Sleep' selling augmented sleep gas and operating out of the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic" Maria loudly thought "But there's no way it could be Mr. Lepton he's wat too old for this busine..."
Marie cut off continuing that line of thinking as she watched Marcus ascend the stairs to his apartment.
"Whatever, one of the rules of this city is that snitches never live long"
I didn't change or add too much information but by breaking up your sections and having that statements be woven around actions and actions are in separate sequential sentences, the entire thing flows a lot better.
So this is an impossible statement. Thoughts cannot be loud, as thoughts can't be heard without telepathy/mind reading. You can "think out loud" but that's not the same thing. Furthermore you used "loudly thought" on two sections in succession. As a general tool you want to vary what words you are using to communicate things.
Generally try to avoid using the same descriptor back to back and instead use some synonymous variation. I don't know if it's available on all versions of Microsoft Word (or even if you have the program) but if you happen to have the same version of Word as I do, you can highlight and write click on a word and select the "synonyms" option from the drop down menu that can often assist you with finding a word if your vocabulary isn't cutting it for producing enough variation.
Also if you want to see me do something similar, look at how often I cycle between "Inquired", "Queried" and "Questioned" in certain back and forth sections of conversation to see me trying to implement this in my own writing.
Now onto some thoughts about the story. I think this was a solid little vignette to show Dr. Sleep at a certain point in his career. That being said, to me at least, it felt like Maria was the more relevant character to this story. Marcus Lepton as written here doesn't really have his thoughts ever explained and he's fairly passive. Meanwhile we do get some insight into Maria's thought process and her contemplations and she takes a little more action.
I will say I don't think this fully escaped your previous issues with jumping to things a bit too fast. It's a lot better than the previous version, Maria's actions all make perfect sense to me and we get a good amount of her thought process, and while Dr. Sleep's less obvious to me, he seems to be behaving in an internally consistent manner within this story.
That being said how Maria concludes that Marcus Lepton is discussing "augmented sleep gas" when Lepton purposefully avoided saying it, only revealing that it comes in cannisters, isn't pepper spray, and can be used to deal with violent people looking to get a drug fix is completely missing. There are clues to what he's talking about but Maria instantly figures it out with no contemplation or clear in-universe indication. To me that section felt like a very clear point in which the hand of the author was forcing something rather than a character organically coming to the conclusion themselves.
I don't think having Maria assume it's "augmented sleep gas" is necessarily bad or wrong, but I do think you need to do a little more to show how she came to that conclusion in order to avoid it feeling jerky and a touch out of nowhere.
So regarding canonizing and threadmarking this. As is I'm not quite comfortable with threadmarking this. While I haven't discussed most of them, there are enough little errors and grammar mistakes that I don't feel comfortable threadmarking it. I tried to talk about the ones that I felt were more recurring and thus could be constructively tackled easier, but there are a lot of smaller errors that compound this. I do want to give some charity to you but as is I do not think that it's at a level I'd feel comfortable threadmarking it.
If you want, let me know (write @King crimson to signal me that a post is important for me to read), and I'll run through all of the issues I'd like edited/fixed before I threadmark and give exp for it.
That being said I actually don't have too much issues canonizing this. I haven't canonized the little blurb regarding his origin, but this vignette of Dr. Sleep and a young student who is also a drug dealer meeting each other and briefly interacting is perfectly fine slotting into the canon of the quest. None of them are important in the grand scheme of things, but once the omake gets cleaned up a touch, I'd be happy to canonize this.
So I stayed out of it because I thought the conversation was interesting and I didn't want to taint things with my input. That being said I do want to comment on a few things now that conversation has died down organically.
Lex really, really wants to be seen as the Savior of the Human Race. It's this whole thing with him. Actually, I think that may be the core difference between him and Cassandra, in some ways, and why she so much more horrible as a villain than he is. She can sort of vaguely appreciate the way in which PR helps you keep heroic types off your back, but she doesn't actually care about good reputation beyond that. For Lex, every time he is the obvious cause of making the world a better and brighter place, he gets that much more of that sweet, sweet acclaim.
So I think the discussion of differences between Lex and Cassandra is interesting. I broadly agree with the assertion that Cassandra doesn't care as much as Lex does about being seen as a savior of the human race.
I think an interesting thing to note in how Cassandra is characterized, is that she wants things because she basically wants to live up to her father's legacy. Cassandra (at least at this point in her life) wants to be who Lex thinks she could be, very badly. She doesn't care about being seen as a savior or making a ton of money much beyond utility and that it having it will make her be a better Luthor heir which is what she actually wants.
I think there's an interesting compare and contrast of how Lex and Cassandra have similar ego issues that cause them problems, how it manifests in them is pretty different in a few key ways.
Mystek uses powered armor, and is smart enough to upgrade it by herself. Mystek likely has good Learning, an expertise in power armor, and her equipment could be mass producible.
So I'll confirm that Mystek's value wasn't solely in her stats. I can't spoil things too much, but suffice to say her tech is actually really, really valuable.
Dr. Marcus Lepton was walking back to his apartment when he encountered a situation typical of Gotham City. In the stairwell, Maria, a young student who rented the apartment across from his, was arguing with a man who looked like a drug addict. Marcus recognized the type instantly—his work at the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic had given him far too much experience with drug addicts.
"...ou have money, you get drugs! No money, no drugs!" Maria shouted, her voice echoing through the stairwell. Marcus doubted he was the only one who could hear the commotion, but luck was not on his side.
As soon as the drug addict noticed him, the man lunged, shouting, "Give me your money! Give me your money!"
Marcus, a frail 61-year-old, was quickly overpowered and pinned to the floor. The attacker's hands clamped around his throat, and Marcus felt his vision begin to darken.
He only avoided death because Maria pulled a knife from her pocket and repeatedly stabbed her "potential client" in the back until he slumped off of Marcus. To ensure the man was truly dead, she slit his throat in one swift, practiced motion.
"Sorry about this," Maria said, helping Marcus to his feet. "You know how it is. Some people's brains are so fried from drugs they forget I'm not running a charity." She slipped several hundred-dollar bills into his hand as she spoke.
Marcus pocketed the money and replied, "Thanks. If anyone asks, I didn't see a thing. By the way, if you want something better to deal with 'cashless clients,' I've got something subtler and less messy than a knife. Normally, I sell it under the table disguised as canisters for handheld inhalers, but for you, I can make one look like a pepper spray canister."
With that, Marcus adjusted his coat and continued up the stairs to his apartment.
Maria stared after him, frowning slightly in confusion. "Weird. People on the street talk about someone within Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic selling drugs under alias of "Doctor Sleep"... No, that can't be Mr. Lepton. He's way too old for that kind of business... Whatever. Rule number one in Gotham: snitches don't live long."
She turned to the dead drug addict lying in the stairwell and sighed. Grabbing his arms, she began dragging the body toward her car, which she had parked behind the building.
"Good thing I never skipped P.E." Maria muttered to herself.
So second round review of this. This has been cleaned up enough that I feel comfortable canonizing this as an omake and awarding 500 exp. It teeters right at the edge of what I would consider acceptable (it's very short) but I would consider it acceptable.
All in all this is a solid enough little vignette.
"Weird. People on the street talk about someone within Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic selling drugs under alias of "Doctor Sleep"... No, that can't be Mr. Lepton. He's way too old for that kind of business... Whatever. Rule number one in Gotham: snitches don't live long."
So this is the one section that I very much don't like.
It's arguably a stylistic choice, but there are several emotional and cadence shifts within this one sentence. I don't like that it's unbroken, it feels crammed and disjointed. I think it's not especially great.
You'll still get the 500 exp, but I also want to make it clear that part of the reason why I'm giving this exp is because it's a genuinely solid improvement over the first two attempts and that I generally want omakes to be a little longer.
So good news folks. I have been quietly working on the update in the background for a while now. I don't want to promise anything but I've made significant forwards progress. I will likely be in a hiatus for a little longer, but if the stars align, you may be able to get the update out on Sunday. If not I'll post a teaser of some new stuff.
Once again no promises as to the actual update coming out (IRL stuff takes precedent), but I do want to reassure people that stuff is being worked on and moving forwards.
So some unfortunate news, the stars have basically done the opposite of align. Because I didn't save my work, and because of some technical thing I don't understand, the draft I was working on has been wiped. As such I both do not have enough to complete the update, and I will not be able to post an update. I know this sucks and I apologize that things keep going wrong. I'm going to try and catch up to where I was before but this setback is big enough that the update will be significantly delayed. I'm not getting it out today, and due to finals literally starting in a few days, my initial projections for when I'll get it done are actually pushed back.
So some unfortunate news, the stars have basically done the opposite of align. Because I didn't save my work, and because of some technical thing I don't understand, the draft I was working on has been wiped. As such I both do not have enough to complete the update, and I will not be able to post an update. I know this sucks and I apologize that things keep going wrong. I'm going to try and catch up to where I was before but this setback is big enough that the update will be significantly delayed. I'm not getting it out today, and due to finals literally starting in a few days, my initial projections for when I'll get it done are actually pushed back.
So some unfortunate news, the stars have basically done the opposite of align. Because I didn't save my work, and because of some technical thing I don't understand, the draft I was working on has been wiped. As such I both do not have enough to complete the update, and I will not be able to post an update. I know this sucks and I apologize that things keep going wrong. I'm going to try and catch up to where I was before but this setback is big enough that the update will be significantly delayed. I'm not getting it out today, and due to finals literally starting in a few days, my initial projections for when I'll get it done are actually pushed back.
So thank you for all of the well wishes. I feel like I'm kind of jerking you around emotionally but I have good news! Finals aren't over and I likely will not be able to post the chapter prior to the 18th but I figured I'd let you guys know about how things are shaking up.
Firstly and most importantly (at least to me), the research paper that I've been working on since early August is now completed. The thing was over forty pages long and had over 100 different footnote citations but it's finally over. This project was constantly eating at my desire to write for the quest and now that it's done, I hope I can be more productive (post finals of course).
Secondly, and the thing I think you guys will care about more, while I have not been able to recover the lost draft, I was able to recover a skeleton for this update so I was able to pretty quickly bang out a lot of words to start doing catch up work. This doesn't mean that there won't be a continuation of the hiatus, but it does mean that I have enough to give you guys another teaser for what is to come and that the hiatus will be shorter than expected. Thank you all for your patience.
With regards to this teaser, it's not the completed POV but it should give you a sense of what it's about. Hope you guys enjoy!
Barbara Gordon AKA Batgirl
Barbara's time with LexCorp was almost up. She didn't regret making the choice to leave the internship she had. LexCorp was an incredible place to work and Barbara was plenty aware of how incredible an opportunity it was to have someone like Ms. Smoak act as a mentor, but it didn't change the fact that it wasn't her calling. Computer science was a passion of hers, but big business wasn't what was going to change Gotham for the better.
Barbara relished being able to be Batgirl. Taking down bad guys, busting crimes, and stopping supervillains that regular cops were all things she relished. She wouldn't claim to be saving the city, Barbara was well aware that no one person could fix the issues in Gotham, but by handling the worst Gotham could throw at people, Barbara made it easier for ordinary systems to kick in and do their job and make a difference. And the systems had made a difference.
The gang problems weren't gone, but the worst of the Italian mafia had mostly been put behind bars. They were nowhere near the threat Barbara remembered them being way back when her dad had first stepped up to be the police commissioner. That was something to celebrate and hopefully as things got better the rest of the gangs would be headed the same way.
Really all that was left of the old school mob families that once ruled this city was Cosa Nostra. Admittedly some people would argue that the Penguin was a remnant of that time but Oswald Cobblepot was his own kind of crook, mixing in some of the worst parts of politicians, and arms dealers all while keeping himself clean enough that no one had brought him in on anything. The Penguin was a beast all his own in Barbara's opinion and one she wasn't prepared to tackle. Instead she'd be handling Cosa Nostra.
One of the heads of the organization, Stephen Mandragora apparently died in a house fire recently and with Batman out of town, it was up to her and Robin to ensure that nobody took advantage of the ensuing chaos. Robin was busy keeping an eye on the Menagerie for now, so it was up to Batgirl to keep an eye on some of the remnants of Cosa Nostra. In particular, she was watching Henry Aquista.
Henry was an old school gangster but he apparently was trying to adapt to the changing times by trying to find a few costumed crooks he found tolerable. Barbara had learned that he'd reached out to someone called "Ratcatcher" for information gathering, someone called "Big Uncle" in Metropolis for access to pieces of advanced tech, and most recently some guy claiming to be an actual-factual warlock. It was all cause for concern.
Ratcatcher had managed to get eyes inside GCPD headquarters, meaning Barbara was going to politely nag her dad to lay out some more traps, and Barbara did not want to go up against mobsters in mech suits. That being said the meeting with the warlock was a little more concerning.
Batgirl was currently sitting on a rooftop, watching the meeting through a drone. The audio and video was a little tinny, but that was the kind of compromise you made when you wanted to keep the drone stealthy.
I feel remarkably motivated to prove her wrong by doing just that post bane. On the other hand, I also want to spite Wayne industries somehow? Decisions decisions.
Does anyone know who this is, because I may have forgotten who this might be. (Certainly not Lex; he'd cringe himself to death if he ever went by a name like that.)
Does anyone know who this is, because I may have forgotten who this might be. (Certainly not Lex; he'd cringe himself to death if he ever went by a name like that.)
I should probably expand on this by saying that frank Gordon is apparently works both sides of the conflict in Gotham and being an arms dealer feeding the gangs excess Lexcorp or stars labs tech seems like a viable angle.
