So first Deedee was forced to be emotional about tech support, and then when she met up with Huntress the tigress-Exotic shared some technical emotional support. Before the lovely squeak had a tipple, of course, and after that, might need some shoulder and trunk support.

...does Huntress' body have or her implants contain prosthetic predigestive ethanol blood cleansers? I don't know if I'd want to tell a tigress with a physique that could outdo a bodybuilder, weightlifter, and a martial artist-wrestler she couldn't get drunk and await her reaction if she'd had a trying day and desired some beverages. At least I'd hope such an implant could be toggled off and on, but in the Dark Future of the Cyberpunk world, the only thing that's admirably fair is chaos.

-2Paw.

Huntress does have some toxin filters in her body, though those are more geared agsinst more dangerous things than alcohol.

She tends to be more of a 'one drink only' sort of person, though (much like me): she really really doesn't like the idea of not being in control of her own body (she can't control much else, so hangs on to what she can). So even before she got upgraded, she never even drank enough to get tipsy. If she could notice that her body was being affected, she'd already had enough.

The fact that her mother was a fairly heavy social drinker was also an example of why not to be.

I didn't know that about Huntress' mother, but I can imagine it was one more thing her daughter has kept at arms' length along with the Corp lifestyle that made her formative years so unbearable. I suspected that if Huntress does have any chemical breakdown or filtering block implants, they'd be designed more for keeping out from her organ systems and circulatory system potentially and immediately lethal viral or chemical agents, and something like a 'drinker's remedy' would be more of a cosmetic addition, a luxury that could be afforded but avoided entirely if you don't get yourself sloshed on a regular basis in the first place.

I never grew up with alcohol in my home, and we've spoken before about why in particular I never started drinking when I became of legal drinking age here in Canada; my neurochemistry with or without the medication I take- though with the latter, I am much more vulnerable to the disruptive and depressive effects of ethanol on my brain chemistry- is not remotedly suited or by modern modified design to habitual or social alcoholic beverage drinking, and certainly not to getting roaring drunk.

I could have a drink if I wanted to- as in a single drink- a small glass of wine, a reasonable pint of beer, or a small amount of stronger liquor. That would be within reason and if kept to that limit, would not hurt me but I think if I was going to drink alcohol, I would sample it at home, where I'm close to a water closet I can count on and can trust, and a Mum and brother likewise, and my bed, plenty of water and food if needed as well. The other limitation I have is flavour and strength of taste; I have tried alcohol in the past but the taste has been so strong and so ethyl-acrid I can't remember swallowing a single mouthful without tremendous effort and focus mouth-and-throat sensory control.

"If she could notice that her body was being affected, she'd already had enough."

"...she really really doesn't like the idea of not being in control of her own body (she can't control much else, so hangs on to what she can)."

On both counts, Huntress and her respect for and care in listening to her body and what it tells her, and her reasonable and practical response to that is very much like mine. I know when I've become overstimulated, keenly so, whether it's because of enjoying sugar or caffeine, or in a social situation where my love of company rises but I temper it with how far or close I can come to the set bar of tolerances and amount of psychic fuel I have, sensory and psychologically. You I think, my starcat and her person, have similar limits and your handling social situations and a set amount of psychological juice are not far by context from mine.

And she's got gorgeous feet that I can't help ogling and admiring when she chooses to doff her footwear. I'll risk her growling or glaring at me or worse, if you'd care to tell her that for me.

-2Paw.

Huntress' mother never shows up in the novel (though the mother's younger brother does) but she was pretty much a corporate executive from being born into the family that founded the company, a social drinker as part of being 'one of the boys' originally, then got worse with that after being forced out of her position through internal politics. So things did not go well.

Though for Huntress herself it's a much because she's a fighter and anything that messes with her reaction times can be a matter of life or death.

Personally, part of it is that I'm not fond of the taste of beer, and partly just that I have an over-active sense of balance and anything that interferes with that gets really uncomfortable for me.

Also, unlike some folks, my parents were pretty open about alcohol and I'd had small amounts to drink before reaching legal age, so there was no mystery and no urge to experiment when I got to University.

As for Huntress' feet, her reaction would probably be along the lines of "usually people only get introduced to my feet when I'm kicking them." As someone who practiced Capoeira, she does tend to be pretty active with them.

I remember you telling me about Huntress' parents, that her mother had been forced out with appropriately Cyberpunk-future suddenness and abrupt change and transition from the high-end corporate position she'd held and maintained at a company her family had once founded.

When my Da worked in finance- once holding a very powerful position, legal and corporate, as a senior division vice-president at Canada Life when I was growing up in the 1980s- he was routinely expected by his peers and custom to share beverages at gatherings and in pricy restaurants, something he could do and afford money-wise but in his case moderation or plain teetotaling was a matter of physical health for him, as he was diagnosed with diabetes in his thirties, the type not requiring insulin injections but still required strict care in how much sugar or carbohydrates he ingested, and that included grain spirits and fermented fruit alcohol.

Heck, for him something like any added sugar in coffee or a condiment like tomato ketchup or HP Sauce/brown sauce was an extremely rare treat. The soda pop I had at home until I was in high school was diet soda, and I was so used to Diet Orange Crush or Diet President's Choice Orange Soda and Diet Sprite- Da's favourite three pops, he generally didn't like cola so Pepsi and Coke I never had at home until long after that- that eventually tasting sugar Sprite was almost unbearably sweet for me.

It's like having maple syrup instead of table syrup, or butter rather than oleomargarine on pancakes or toaster waffles; the taste isn't bad but the starkness in how different either of them taste to the Imperial tub margarine and Aunt Jemima bottled fructose syrup I've almost always had at home makes their alternates taste, well, alien and strange to me. Exotic, disturbingly so, without being unpleasant. (I do like Exotics, of course, Huntress and DeeDee included.)

That you mention both Huntress' Capoeira training and footwork, your own studies in martial arts and dance- and Jenora-you and your love of the dance and being a star-dancer cat IC- make me think your hypervigilance in balance and your sense of it therein IRL is reflected in your OCs and their own sensory palette and limits, which to be fair is not at all strange to me, knowing how many parallels there are between Twopaw IC and myself IRL, and the OCs I've developed and share my creative writing and drawn storytelling-realms since my first days in tabletop gaming during the late 1980s.

I think the only proscribed way I could tempt fate and get Huntress to plant and smoosh her feet in my face (hypothetically speaking) would be to anger or irritate her enough with my persistence that she'd give up and say to herself, "Let's give the wolf what he wants," grumpily, and I would not ask her handsel of making her upset or disturbing Huntress just for my selfish indulgence, any more than I would deliberately harass or hurt you to indulge myself. Like you, and like myself, Huntress has more than enough problems of her own in her modern life, and the baggage of memory and trauma she often keeps at a distance and to resolve what she can of it over time. Deliberate cruelty or unkindness on my part or anyone else's would not be a gift to her, nor remotely resolution.

I know what it's like to be strong as steel but full of human feeling, love and hurt, horror and grief and the stirred ashes of hope inside, to be vulnerable beyond therein the armoured shell of who I am and what I am. In that way among many, I feel very sure I know Huntress, if I may beg her and your pardon.

-2Paw.

Most of my characters have bits of me in them; it's hard to write them as believable people with motivations otherwise. Jenora and Sara in particular pretty much right brain/left brain aspects of me.

I was trying to write Huntress as someone with what was practically PTSD, in particular 'flattened affect' as a symptom. She tends to not react emotionally to things. It's not a particularly healthy way to live.

When you described to me how Sara and Jenora, specifically, are equidistant faces upon the same psychic coin that reflects your IRL personality and neuroserology, even personal preferences and habits contextually translated to both of them, it made perfect sense to me that Jenora and Sara presented themelves each as gestalt of your strongest right-brain and left-brain components, the Dancer and the Engineer. Both feeling deeply and loving life, artists both in their own fashion and strengths of profession and craft. A colossal star-dancer and a titaness of technical skill, on each their own path of building and creative expression.

But- I add, very, very strongly- Jenora Feuer and Sara Watterson are both heroes and superheroes, risen to purpose by the needs of others, even in just a kind word or warm touch and company: "A hero can be anyone." There are some narratives of tremendous profundity in the Nolan Trilogy of Batman movies, but the final thing that Bruce Wayne ever said to another living person in costume, alive as Bruce Wayne himself, suggested he knew the words all his life and they gave him purpose, but he needed to find the right time and person to opine it to and share it with, before he spoke them to someone else.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/flat-affect

I did not know that component of a person's mental health profile had its own name, but I am familiar with it in my own psychiatric journey, and I watch for it keenly to take care of and minister to when it arises in me. It's hardest to spot 'flat affect', from the outside in or personal note, when you're feeling motivated and clear-headed, ironically enough. You can easily mistake it for an excess of clarity or even positivity in the form of confidence or productivity, and you can be feeling good enough and not realize it's hiding behind part of your positive thought.

Based on what you've told me about Huntress, her family and personal past over the last few years of discussion here on FurAffinity, and in F-List and Discord chat, I have little doubt that the trauma she was forced to experience, to witness and internalize led to significant enough disturbance in her formative years and youth that would result in PTSD or complex-PTSD, the latter of which I'm personally familiar with stemming from events beginning in my childhood until the my late teens. And stuff that deep will be very hard to permanently or wholly resolve, not that that's anything profound of me to say.

In a way, if I may posit and beg both your and Huntress' pardon, is Huntress herself- both the life and career she's chosen, and her Exotic prosthetic body and biosculpting work- her own coping mechanism, perhaps even her own self-medication and therapy to ease the horror of who she was and what she remembers, an attempt at personal resolution to what once was by being and becoming something else? If someone is hurt and terribly vulnerable, could not someone choose to literally become a tigress to attempt to feel whole and strong again, if modern technology allowed that to them?

I wholly believe William Blake's poem was not meant literally, but as observational metaphor. If anyone can be a hero, then anyone can be a tiger, or a tigress. And sometimes a tigress makes both a close, loving companion and a seeing-eye and feeling-heart cat-sister, in a world where one cannot see or is not allowed to clearly see past their pain.

-2Paw.

"Huntress-woman, tiger-striped,
In Night City's holoformic light,
What fateful prey doth ye hunt,
To confront your fearful symmetry?"

-2Paw.

I'm not an IT person, how did she fix the problem? What sort of reactions does she get having turned herself into a humanoid mouse, out of curiosity?

I didn't really go into detail on that, yeah, for multiple reasons including not wanting to go over much multiple times, so anything she would be explaining to Huntress I didn't want to explain in detail. Mostly what I had in my head was that somebody had done a database report by extracting every line from the database and then testing them separately rather than using a properly copied SQL query to extract only the lines that were needed. So Deedee just fixed the original request to only do what was necessary rather than trying to do everything.

(Yes, I have done SQL work before, and one of the primary rules is always to minimize the number of times you have to go back and forth with the database. The ideal is always to find a way to specify exactly what you want with one request.)

As for the humanoid mouse part, I was taking a bit of a cue from the Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 tabletop game; one of the books there had rules for full-body 'exotic' biosculpting like that. Basically the technology became available if you had enough money, and it was a fad for a few years. Deedee did it as part of otherwise erasing her old identity. Since she's far from the only one who had done this sort of thing, the reaction from others tends to be along the line of 'oh, one of those' rather than anything major or personal.

That said, it was a fad, and since she's still like that when it isn't 'cool' anymore, she's also obviously not one of the really rich people who can afford to constantly update their looks.

Ah OK, I see, thank you.

Ho-ly... SOMEONE ELSE WAS INSPIRED BY THE SAME THING!!!

Hallelujah! All these years, I thought I was the only one who took that ONE little bit from CP2020 and built an entire WORLD around it! I've written two books in a bio/cyber-punk world centered around biosculpting! ^_^

Heh. I know there was an adventure in Challenge magazine based on those rules from Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0 as well, involving a bordello where all the workers had animal 'exotic' biosculpts done.

If you check on the 'Huntress (and friends)' folder link above, you'll see several other art commissions I've had of the same set of characters. I have an 80+K word novel that's in dire need of cleanup and editing with Huntress and Deedee being the main characters.

Very nice story and it is great to read about Dee Dee again. So IT could be blackmailed by hackers. "If you don't pay such and such, we will show your company what you are doing..or rather, not doing for them."

*laughs* Probably. Though in this case admitting to a crime to start with isn't a great bargaining position. Deedee figures they likely won't even notice she made changes if they're that incompetent.

And frankly, she'll be happier never having to think about them again anyway.

*chuckles... you got lots and lots of comments and that's a good thing... I enjoyed the story as I always do...

*hugs...

Vix

Thanks. Trying to get back into the swing of writing again.

This universe appears very much to have a growing case of 'Freelance IT'.

Glad to see the stories appearing again!

Well, let's be honest, many companies aren't going to actually pay their employees enough to get good ones anyway. Contractors cost more, but since that's not a fixed cost it can be ignored at budget time.

And generally IT departments won't be able to do much if fixing the problem requires breaking into a client's computer to fix it either.

That's a tried and true type of corporate espionage...get hired by the competition and do shoddy work for them.

Problem is that runs into a whole lot of issues with 'it can be hard to tell the difference between incompetence and malice'.