#and one of their biggest donors

[ghost-bxrd]

The tags deserve to be seen !!!

Also can we pls take a moment to imagine how Bruce would stare mournfully at Jason the entire time, trying to drink in every single detail for when the concussion inevitably fades away?

And Jason is just getting more and more freaked out because Bruce keeps staring at him like a lunatic. And when he tries to move out of his field of vision, the guy’s heart monitor starts going crazy

Prompt:

Brucie Wayne gets into a mild accident in public (read-got hit by a car). And Batman would just walk it off (“it’s barely a bruise”), but Brucie obviously… can’t.

So he has to suffer the ordeal of having civilians call paramedics, getting fussed over, and having-

Having his dead son get into the back of the ambulance with him.

Oh- oh no. He must have hit his head worse than he thought. He thought he was past this…

[corellianhounds]

Aay’han

Chapter 1 - Remains to Be Seen

Media: Star Wars, set during in the era of the Clone Wars

Word Count: 4.6k

Rating: Gen.

Warnings: Topics include canon-typical violence/combat, death, blood and injury, organ transplants and similar medical topics, PTSD, survivor’s guilt, dehumanization of the clones and disrespect for the dead, very brief suicidal ideation.

Dividers: @/saradika-graphics

Summary: There are any number of reasons a man might change his name.

Inspiration came from these posts from @/fox-trot: Here, here, here, and here

There are any number of reasons a man might change his name.

During the war, those with the same face and the same armor who fought on the front lines often chose their own names, adopting different identifying markers for some measure of individuality in a sea of soldiers all crafted from the same man.

Captain Manukura was an adept pilot and commanding officer of 144 men, a man with dry humor and a quick turn of phrase who was consistently levelheaded and in control. His was a steady and reassuring presence in the face of calamity, even those not under his command instinctively looking to him for guidance in the most dire situations. He was a fine man, a natural leader, and the men in his company trusted and respected him, even when the calls he made were the difficult ones to accept. Though he did everything within his power to ensure as many of them made it back as possible, he also understood that he could not risk the lives of many for the lives of the few. That didn’t keep him from being the last one off the field, carrying or supporting whoever he could, and he held a somber reverence and respect for the dead, committing their names to memory and carrying their legacy through stories told of their lives.

There was a familiar parting farewell among many of the clones. The practice had traveled between battalions, a sort of hope for life after the war, but also a sense of honor, camaraderie, and acknowledgment towards their eventual deaths: Clasping one another’s forearms in farewell, one would say “Live free,” to which his brother would respond, “Die well.”

On the day of the incursion, Captain Manukura was at the front of the line when the Separatist ambush attacked. The skirmish lasted far longer than anybody anticipated, and it was only because of their proximity to medical personnel that they were able to save the ones they did.

Captain Manukura sustained heavy injuries in the field. The trooper who found him was fresh from the shuttles of Kamino and nearly vomited behind his mask at the sight of the captain, bloody and incapacitated. He would later recall that the captain had to have been in shock when he found him; Manu was somehow awake and lucid enough to tell the trooper he’d rather be killed with mercy by a fellow clone than by a Separatist, but the trooper refused to comply. There was a brief scrabble where Manu put up a surprising amount of resistance against CT-8956 as the young trooper tried to administer what analgesics the captain’s armor could still provide, and the trooper had to wrestle both blaster and (to his astute alarm) an invis market latheniol injector out of the captain’s remaining hand in quick succession to prevent him from greeting the void himself.

A medical droid had been dispatched as soon as the trooper pinged their location, and CT-8956 provided cover fire, seeing the captain’s transport back across the battlegrounds himself. The RMSU technicians set to work immediately, assessing the nerve and tissue damage to both the captain’s torso and what remained of his arm before determining that he was still fit and worth the trouble of surgery to receive transplants, and Captain Manukura was quickly stabilized and processed through the field’s operating tent, then medevac’d back towards the GAR’s planetary home base.

Manukura remembers floating somewhere in the indigo, star-filled space between life and death, surrounded by the lights of those who’d marched on before him. Two other troopers were there with him, though he didn’t recognize them. One it appeared had been part of the second battalion stationed on Engatuu, his armor demarcating him as a medic. The other was a gunner for one of the light utility speeders in the third company of Manu’s own regiment. Both of them had sad smiles, but they were warm in their regard of him, the gunner resting a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve still got some fight left in you,” the gunner said. “I’m afraid you can’t follow us yet, little brother.”

“Take care of the rest of us out there,” the medic bid him solemnly, and Manu nodded. Of course he would.

“Until we meet again,” the gunner said. Manu desperately wanted to ask their names but couldn’t find his voice. “Remember us. We’ll have your back.”

As the ink-filled void bled away into black, the lights winking out around him, the two men he hadn’t known in life faced him in a bid goodbye.

“Live free,” the gunner told him, pulling Manu in to press his forehead to his own.

But when Manu turned to the medic, the medic took hold of his right forearm and instead followed the farewell with a modification to the customary parting line.

“Live well.”

When Manukura awoke it was to dim lights and Kamino-white walls. The stark smell of antiseptic told him he was in the infirmary before the hum and beep of machinery did, and he flexed the pins and needles from his toes. One of the longnecks appeared above him, greeting him in that infuriatingly impassive voice, asking him standard questions regarding his vitals. His right arm was leaden and it felt like there was a weight on his stomach; he answered mechanically, wondering back at what had happened.

In the two weeks that followed Manu recovered remarkably well. He was visited by a few others in his company who had also been medevac’d, expressing their relief and well-wishes, and as his progress with the brief amount of physical therapy he was given improved, he was met by one of the Kaminoan mentops and one of the very few clone medics cleared in psychiatry who asked after his mental faculties, assessing his capability upon returning to the field.

“Any dietary, mood, or sleep cycle changes?”

“None I’ve noticed.”

“How’s the nerve damage? Do you feel any disconnect between the integrated pieces?”

Manu fought back a grimace at the word ‘pieces,’ shaking his head. “Everything seems normal.”

“And the arm?”

The captain rolled his shoulder experimentally, unimpeded. “Right as rain.”

The engagements on Engatuu proved to be a series of bitter, gruelling victories over the Separatists in the following months. Nearly a third of the original clone force stationed on the planet had been decimated, and Manu’s insistence on powering through his recovery would have been met with pushback if it weren’t for the fact he’d physically improved more rapidly than anticipated and his skills on the ground were in high demand. The captain appeared as alert and capable as ever and was cleared for active duty once the medical leave came to an end; the organs that had been replaced either in part or in full showed no signs of rejection or taxation under stress, and his right arm proved to be a seamless incorporation with very little cybernetic involvement.

Captain Manukura of his own volition made extensive and excruciatingly delicate inquiries tracking down the identities of the two men he now carried as part of himself. The topic of “recycled” clone bodies was a sensitive one and wasn’t openly discussed between the clones— It was at best considered to be in extremely poor taste to go digging into the medical practices used to sustain the GAR. Manu had always been as tactful as he was sharp though, and his rank and file afforded him the chance to call in a few favors, get behind some closed doors, and ask the right people the right questions. Through some carefully cross-referenced medical data, some off-the-books access to chief medical officers’ logs, and more than a few “acquisitions and losses” reports, he was able to narrow down the platoons of the two donor clones and made covert plans to meet with those close to them.

Warren was in his fourth tour and was incredibly well-liked by those in his company; his lieutenant said there had only ever been positive words spoken of him in his time on and off the field. His skill manning the artillery for the light utility ground speeders was notable even among the rest of the gunners, and while on leave it wasn’t uncommon to find him tinkering with equipment and vehicles. When asked why he put so much effort into fixing things that could easily be taken care of by droids, he’d jokingly respond with “If they don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy!”

At the end of the day Warren was frequently the one center stage mixing drinks and singing raucous songs that had the room laughing until last call. Utility and entertainment, it seemed, were as woven into his bones as fighting was.

Talus, the medic, had been in the GAR nearly as long as Manu had. He was described as having a commanding authority and no-nonsense personality, but he also had the most steadying presence and calming bedside manner his patients had ever seen. When his unit lost half their men his first mission off Kamino, Talus had taken charge as interim commanding officer, keeping the remaining men’s heads on straight, and was after that cross-trained as a ranger, gaining valuable skills in tracking and recovery. More than one of his fellow soldiers and superiors noted that they would have liked to see him as a commissioned officer, but Talus declined the promotions and negotiated against reassignments the entire time he’d served as a soldier, insisting that he was best suited for battlefield triage and casualty care.

Manu took in everything and thanked the soldiers for their time and willingness to indulge his questions.

Captain Manukura continued to serve active duty. He wasn’t one to remain idle and the men of his cadre needed him. He slotted back in place among them, spearheading ground operations for the most dangerous missions, fighting more fiercely than before with a vicious precision aimed at every Separatist battle droid and encampment. It became steadily apparent that Captain Manu’s strategy, perseverance, and fighting style was geared towards hitting first and hitting fast in an effort to see as many of his soldiers returned to him alive, and his dedication yielded visible results: more of Manu’s company survived to fight another day than any of the other captains’, and his men’s already-steadfast loyalty to him was stoked into aggressive hope and determination. Seasoned men and new additions alike grew tight-knit, working together as one unit, and their collective vigor and solidarity carried them, alive, through the battles that followed. Engatuu’s eventual surrender was a pyrrhic victory for the GAR, but it was a victory.

And the war carried on.

The captain didn’t speak much about his near-death experience. He had no arrogant sense of prideful heroism, flaunting his scars as a badge of honor, and it was only in glimpses that other soldiers saw the grafts covering a significant portion of his torso— They weren’t inclined to speculate as they normally did about fellow soldiers’ battle scars, rightly assuming that if Manu hadn’t addressed them in boast, he didn’t want them addressed in rumor. He was neither a self-conscious or vain man and he didn’t shy away from genuine questions they might have had regarding his injuries— they knew there was always the possibility something similar could happen to them and Manu had never believed that ignorance was bliss— but he rarely volunteered the information, unless to make the occasional macabre joke at his own expense. In addition to his blunt, clinical honesty was the subsequent gratitude he showed for all the brothers who had gone on before them. Talus and Warren were spoken highly of, their names gaining their own respect and mythos in stories passed between the ranks.

There were nights around the fire, though, when the stories the captain told of ghosts walking between them felt more like they came from first-hand experience than imagination.

Though it’s not often, Manu can just barely sense them sitting beside the fire or resting a hand on the shoulder of another weary soldier, or standing behind him and bolstering his resolve while running point. He feels a pull at his arm or jolt in his stomach when recklessness starts to run roughshod over his decisions, and as it brings him back to center he’s able to broaden his scope beyond impulsively jumping headlong into the fray. More than once he’s moved out of harm’s way without will or reason why, and sometimes he’ll stop in the middle of marching, sensing something none of the other men can feel before giving new orders that prove to be of vital benefit when all is said and done.

The only time Manu ever beat somebody within an inch of their life was on leave: someone overheard part of his story and had spat derisively, calling him minced meat.

The fight had to be recounted to him by others in the aftermath. In the moment, he’d felt nothing; the fugue state that took over blocked out his memory and emotions until he came to, streaked with blood and aching from adrenaline and exertion as his brothers finally wrested him off the bloodied civilian. The men hastily worked to minimize collateral damage as the Coruscant Guard was called in, but a crowd of bystanders had already gathered as they held the dazed captain back. They quickly crafted a scenario they hoped was believable enough to convince those present in the aftermath that it was a needlessly provoked fight both men were active participants in; it was the first time Manu realized his men were not only willing to follow his orders, but that they were prepared to go far beyond that just to protect him.

The trooper who’d done most of the talking hadn’t actually been there for the initial attack— He’d been drawn by the sound of shouting down one of the alleyways and came running when he recognized the voices. CT-8956’s assessment and informed mediation was the only thing to break Captain Manukura from his single-minded focus, and his remarkably quick thinking gave those present enough of a story to somehow convince the Guard the issue was not as severe as it appeared to be, in the hopes that Manukura would be granted leniency.

Standard disciplinary action would follow Manu’s evaluation, regardless: he was set to be shipped off to Kamino shortly after his detainment. Before he left, however, he managed to find the trooper who’d covered for him in the wake of the fight.

“Hey, shiny.”

The young trooper turned, glancing away from his datapad and around the hangar. A clone captain in white and maroon armor approached from the bay doors, escorted by two shocktroopers not far behind.

“Sir?”

“Are you the one responsible for intervening in the altercation caused by a clone officer against a Coruscanti civilian?”

The trooper went very still, his complexion paling even as his expression fought to remain neutral. “There was no clear instigator in the fight between the captain and the civilian,” he said diplomatically. “I believe the captain involved is facing a court-martial following his evaluation—”

“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you were the one who put a stop to the fight.”

“… Aye, sir. That was me.”

Manukura removed his helmet and tucked it under his left arm, extending his right to the trooper. The trooper gaped, recognizing Manu despite the recent haircut and shave returning him to regulation standard.

“What’s your name?”

“CT-8956, sir,” the trooper said, much more confused as he shook the captain’s hand.

“No, kid,” Manukura said. “What’s your name?”

“… It’s Benni, sir.”

“Thank you, Benni,” the captain said. “I’m… sorry that all your efforts have to show for their involvement is this.”

The assessment to determine whether or not Captain Manukura’s actions would be a one-time offense was conducted by the same Kaminoan and clone mentop duo who had assessed him post-op. It was only because of Manu’s recent military accomplishments and the clone medic’s initiative that Manukura hadn’t been subject to the involuntary reset immediately: the medic cited an interest in analyzing the captain’s behavior, wanting to see if it could be corrected less invasively first, if only because every reset came at a loss of a trooper’s experience tied to his memories, and Manukura had been a valuable asset prior to this one, outlying infraction on his record.

That’s what the medic told the Kaminoans, anyway.

They sat across from one another, silent in the observation room. Captain Manukura felt nothing and had refused to speak.

The clone, a man by the name of Caius, suggested that the captain might be more cooperative if it were just the two of them for a time. The Kaminoan was clearly opposed to the idea, but notated the request in the medical file before adjourning to the adjacent room. Manu wasn’t under the impression the mirror making up the entirety of the left wall was there for decorative purposes.

Manu watched Caius impassively, apparently unbothered by the tenuous position he was in. Caius wasn’t as out of touch with the soldiers serving on the ground as one might’ve thought, though— He was familiar with the resistance many of the older ones had towards being evaluated like the lab rats they were. He had a vested interest in seeing his brothers genuinely cared for, and he’d spent long enough navigating the Kaminoans’ regard of them to know what to say to keep the longnecks from picking up on what went unspoken between himself and his patients.

Caius sighed, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees as he spoke. “Manu— If they suspect you don’t have control over your emotional responses, we both know how it’ll end.”

“I have nothing to report,” Manu said quietly. “Recon me or don’t. Seems a shame to waste that much investment though.”

The medic resisted the urge to snort. He knew what the captain was doing.

“There are worse ends,” Caius said.

He lowered his voice. “If you’re only here out of obligation despite your recklessness or a lack of will to live, that’s your prerogative.”

“Thank you.”

“However,” Caius said. “Before you leave, I’d like to know what you think your brothers would say.”

Talus’s words echoed at the back of Manu’s mind, and his jaw worked in agitation.

The observation room was quiet for a long moment. Manukura remained rigid in his chair, otherwise unwavering.

“… I reacted poorly to the Republic civilian insulting the sacrifice so many of our soldiers have made, including the sacrifices they have no choice in making after their deaths,” he said finally, clinical despite the accusations in his words. “I apologize for my actions and accept whatever the consequences may be.”

Caius wasn’t happy with the deflection. He was doing everything he could to balance the tightrope walk between the Kaminoans’ assessment and Manu facing a mind-wipe or termination, but if Manu was capable of diplomacy and Caius could convince him to put in the work, he’d do everything in his power and then some to get the captain truly back on his feet.

“Play opossum for a bit,” Caius said quietly, switching to Mando’a. Manu’s eyes narrowed in suspicion; Caius estimated they had about twenty seconds before one of the Kaminoans interfered. He continued, keeping his tone light and inquisitive despite the fervent message he hoped would come across. “Convince them that you’re not a threat to others. Follow their instructions exactly as they’re given and don’t deviate from your duties. Keep your head down—” (and here Manu’s lip curled in disgust before he heard Caius power through) “— and you’ll be able to protect more of our men once they’re satisfied they can put you back in the field and trust you around civilians. Stop risking the life returned to you and find another way to honor the men who are gone, at least until they’ve cleared you again.”

“I know how to run the maze.”

“Good. Prove it.”

The Kaminoan mentop reappeared with obvious disapproval, but Caius switched back to his regular clinician’s persona before they could affirmatively detect that anything was amiss.

“You’ll have to go through the post-op program again,” he warned.

“Affirmative.”

“I might have some folks who can help, though.”

The group is much smaller than anticipated, and the infrequent meetings and occasional change of location help keep it from feeling obligatory. There’s about seven of them, give or take, depending on the day. Manukura does his best not to take his frustrations out on them. He’s candid about his emotional state in a detached sort of way, and it’s here he reveals that he actually had been experiencing some changes due to the transplants, despite what he’d told the Kaminoans. He now preferred black caf, and he was still working on evening out the callouses on the right palm. The medic’s hand seemed kinder than his own.

Despite the camaraderie he finds with the other clones, he keeps the near-death vision and the echoes of the fallen to himself.

As the days and meetings pass Manukura is evaluated up close and from afar by the Kaminoans. He knows they think they’re being subtle, but his insight and acuity on the battlefield has extended to a vigilance at camp, on base, and on leave. His awareness of his surroundings is constant— being able to tell when he was being watched was almost child’s play at this point.

Though his bonds with those in his company have grown stronger, the general barracks are a nightmare to navigate when he finds himself responding to every sound or disturbance. The battlefield was almost preferable because at least there he was assured that his paranoia was warranted. Sleeping in the outer rooms of the facilities on Kamino with the unending white noise of rain was worse than the barracks because then he couldn’t hear anything that might cause alarm, and that concerned him more.

Battlegrounds where he’s provided constant work give him focus. Though he’s been able to return to his leadership position with aplomb, he almost feels itchy and restless, wanting to do more— Piloting either on the ground or in the air feels too far removed from his men, and at the next meeting he’s able to make with the other transplant recipients, they’re the ones to suggest he put in for a transfer to search and rescue or battlefield triage. Manu mulls the idea over, thoughtful.

During a few of his stints on leave, he follows up with Caius’s instructions and schedules several meetings with one of his lieutenants; Markem was a strict and somewhat severe officer who often had to be reminded that field operations required flexibility as circumstances changed around them, but his fastidious nature made him a punctual man with a good work ethic and steady hand; there was a reason the men tolerated him with minimal grumbling and why Manukura didn’t overly criticize his fussiness. His precision in everything made him the ideal choice for Manu’s request.

“Are you hydrated? Did you bring something to keep you occupied?”

“Yes.”

“The front will take four sessions,” Markem said, outlining his sketches. “It’s best not to do all of it at once because it’s going to hurt to carry your full kit regardless of how long you have to recover. If you do the whole back you won’t be able to carry anything without—”

“I was blown to pieces, Markem. This will be fine.”

The lieutenant coughed, awkwardly clearing his throat. “Right. Okay. Uh, of the three, which do you want to start with?”

“The arm.”

“And you’re sure of the placement?”

“Positive.”

At his final evaluation with Caius, the captain answers the assessment questions succinctly and completely. Caius has his suspicions that Manukura hasn’t told him everything, but he doubts he could force anything more out of the captain without resorting to use of a Mairan bor, and he wouldn’t want the information under those circumstances anyway. What was most important was that Manu appeared to be more even-keeled and adjusted, and Caius made it clear to the captain that if he needed anything at all in the future, he need only ask.

The captain nods, thanking him, and Caius shows him to the door, where the captain casually mentions, “I’ve also decided to change my name.”

“Oh?” Caius asked. “What did you have in mind?”

“Stitches.”

From the Files of Nala Se, Chief Medical Scientist

> Altered Behavioral Patterns Post-Operation and Recovery Re: CT-5947

— Upon initial recovery, CT-5947 refused further treatment of field-surgery skin grafts which has resulted in cosmetic defections. This appears to minimally impede movement but does not appear to affect overall functionality: when asked to demonstrate various exercises the subject is capable of completing them without issue or complaint.

— CT-5947 has exhibited what we are told is called “gallows humor” among the regiments. Though concerning, his behavior has not been reported to especially discomfit the rest of the units, civilians, or people of authority he has come in contact with. If and when it occurs, it is usually within groups he is familiar with and is done with a controlled turn of phrase, suggesting he means for the joke to come at his own expense with the objective of humoring others. Reports from those who knew CT-5947 prior to his injuries indicate that his behavior is not so far off from his prior personality as to cause concern. Observation recommended, low priority.

— CT-5947 appears to favor his left hand in both active battles and simulations. He has not reported diminished faculty in what was formerly his dominant hand, prior to the Battle of Engatuu, nor have his reflexes or abilities diminished in performance or functionality. When asked to perform various tasks in a controlled environment CT-5947 is perfectly capable of executing the tasks with both his left and right hands. His commanding officers have not reported a deficit in performance. The favoring of his non-dominant hand opposed to the donor limb has been deemed a non-issue.

— It has been well-documented that clone units will sometimes express mild individuality in the form of surface-level changes to their appearance or adornment of their armor. CT-5947 has since acquired tattoos at the surgical sites of his transplants: the image of antiquated stitching appears in a band surrounding his upper right bicep as well as on sections of his torso and abdomen where the grafts have been integrated. It is unclear how he was able to determine the seam of integration on his right arm, as the attachment of the donor limb was done in a more controlled environment than that of his organ transplants, and both the subcutaneous and surface level nano-mesh allowed for complete and perfect transfer and integration of tissue. The donor units were both clones of exact likeness and construction, and there is nothing to indicate a distinguishing separation of anatomy.

Aforementioned embellishments have not resulted in negatively altered behavior and have been deemed a non-issue.

— It has been reported that CT-5947 has immersed himself in the study of various medical topics while on leave, off-duty, and during transportation. He has also assumed the duties of search and rescue personnel after individual battles. Behavior does not supersede designation or duties. Unit does not appear to be operating under diminished quality of performance. Maintained observation recommended; if the clone’s performance can be sustained without impediment, no further actions are required.

— Commanding officers report that CT-5947 has filed for an MOS transition to service in the medical division.

— Request was denied.

A/N

Aay’han: Mando’a. Meaning: Bittersweet remembrance and celebration, the mourning and joy after the death of a family member

All original characters. Engatuu is an original planet.

“Live free,” // “Die well.” comes from The Scorpion King.

There are a lot of themes I ended up identifying/wanting to incorporate as I was writing and it was difficult to edit this down to a one-shot, so it’s likely I’ll write more with these characters in the future. Lots to dig into here.

Next chapter >

[kindalikerackham]

sperm donor storyline my beloved.. no one treats you right

[rooksnooks]

Thank fucking god that the human body is 60% liquid because if there wasn't an explanation for how you could cut me open and find burning magma in there I would just die

[evelynnocto]

that expression implies that he's into it

This thumbnail is everything

[homunculus-argument]

Sometimes as an adult you think back to when you were a kid and think "holy shit that was close". Like the biggest major thing that persuaded me from having a baby at 15/16 was that the only realistically available sperm donor had brown eyes. Nothing wrong with brown eyes or reddish-brown hair, but I knew they were dominant genes and relatively rare where I live, so I wouldn't have plausible deniability of "it's not yours, fuck off" if he ever found out I have a kid with his colouring and wanted a paternity test.

Besides him, specifically, being a terrible choice, I just didn't want another parent involved at all in general, because in my whole life experience at that point, nobody ever helps you do things the way you want to do things, they're just there to try to make you do things the way they want you to do it. So the only way to have things be your own way is to have nobody else involved, and secrecy is the only way to privacy.

So my plan was pretty much exactly the same as that of an outdoor dog digging a nest under the porch to have a litter so that nobody touches them and nobody knows they're there. Managing them alone and biting anyone who tries to approach. But ultimately I came to the conclusion that if I didn't want a kid badly enough to be willing to go through with all that, I probably didn't one badly enough altogether, so I shouldn't have a kid at all.

Holy shit that kid would be fucked up by now.

[purpleparrot]

like i get all the outrage over celebrity nepo babies but like you all are gonna be real disappointed to learn there are nepo babies in every interest

[hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard]

Okay time for the PBS Kids essay

Read it under the cut!

:readmore:

In 1968, before there was PBS Kids proper, there was Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. While it came several decades before the children’s block, it laid the foundation for the themes and values present in every facet of the network’s history.

Mr. Roger famously hated children’s programming at the time. To him, it all was droll and useless. But he didn’t dissuade the medium entirely— he saw potential. Potential that led to a few smaller television jobs, and eventually the creation of Mr. Roger’s neighborhood.

Rogers didn’t invent educational TV for children, but he did perfect it. He poured real heart and soul into probably the most sincere, heartfelt program in history.

Honestly, he could have his own essay. The more things you learn about the real man of Mr. Rogers, the more you’ll like him.

Anyway, the biggest thing that makes PBS different is the fact that it earns money through grants, fundraisers, and private donors— not through sponsorships and merchandise sales. This way, PBS Kids can push programming that it feels is important, rather than programming that merely sells well.

This also means PBS is less afraid of pushing social boundaries. Money doesn’t go away when their shows become subjects of debate— and Mr. Rogers took full advantage of this.

For context, this was 1969. The Jim Crow era had just barely, barely ended. Pool segregation was still very much legal.

Mr. Rogers sharing a pool and a towel with the Black Mr. Clemmons was a pretty big deal at the time— especially on a show made for children.

Rogers was far from the untouchable sacred cow of today. When he was alive, he had a large number of detractors. Let’s just say that scene didn’t fly nicely by everyone.

Just one year after the debut of Mr. Roger’s came Sesame Street.

While Mr. Roger’s was made for all children, Sesame Street had the explicit goal of supplementing the education of underserved communities— especially inner-city Black (and later Latino) children.

While it was made to be accessible to children of all races and income levels, they definitely went the extra mile to make it something special for inner-city Black and Brown kids. (Why do you think it it’s “Sesame Street” and not “Sesame Cul-de-Sac”?)

At the time, a wholesome, sweet show set in a brownstone street was practically unheard of.

Jon Stone, the casting director, deliberately sought to make the cast as rich with color as he possibly could, bringing on a huge amount of Black talent such as Loretta Long, Matt Robinson, and Kevin Clash, as well as featuring Black celebrities as guest stars. Later, the show would expand its horizons, bringing on actors from Latino, Asian, Native American, and many more backgrounds.

White actors were and still are a minority on show.

In addition to letters and numbers, the purpose of Sesame Street is clear: make kids of color know that they’re smart, beautiful, and loved.

It doesn’t get more explicit than this.

I want to point out this comment because it’s funny

You’re telling me this bitch isn’t Hispanic???

Anyway, these two were followed up by Reading Rainbow in 1983. And guess what?

That’s right. Non-white focus.

These three shows, (along with other, lesser-known programs like Lamb-Chops Play Along, Newton’s Apple, and Shining Times Station (who featured Ringo Starr himself?? seriously how did that happen and why does no one talk about it) and some other nostalgic favorites like Bill Nye the Science guy, The Magic Schoolbus, Arthur, and Thomas the Tank Engine) aired on the new PTV block, which evolved into PBS Kids in 1999, bringing along Between the Lions, Dragon Tales, and many more.

Arthur is another stand-out that I’d like to talk about— it doesn’t have the same racial focus of Sesame Street, but it does focus on different income levels. The characters have various housing situations, from apartments to mansions to no home at all.

It also takes cues from Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s in regards to talking about tough topics, though as Arthur has a slightly older target audience, it discusses things through stories rather than talking directly to the audience.

Cancer, religion, workplace discrimination, along with current (at the time) events such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina are all discussed on the show.

Another big focus on Arthur is disability. For once, they don’t stick a character in a wheelchair and then pretend he’s not in a wheelchair. A striking number of major characters either develop or get diagnosed with physical disabilities and/or neurodivergences, such as asthma, severe food allergies, and dyslexia, and they deal with them in very realistic ways.

A handful of minor characters have more obvious disabilities, and THANK GOD they go beyond the trite messaging of “disabled people can do everything abled people can do! everyone clap now!”

One episode in particular has the awesome message of “holy shit stop trying to help me all the time— it’s patronizing as fuck. I can get around just fine without you stepping on eggshells and trying to be the hero all the fucking time”

There are sooo many other shows I could talk about, but I can’t write about them all. I’m definitely gonna point out some more standout ones, though.

Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat

Created by Chinese-American woman Amy Tang

Dragonfly TV

Features a multitude of female and non-white scientists to foster an interest in science with kids in those groups

Maya & Miguel

One of the network’s first Hispanic-led shows

SciGirls

I shouldn’t have to explain what the goal of this one was.

Molly of Denali

When was the last time you saw a show that treated Native Americans as people? Much less a children’s show? 90% of the cast is Athabascan, and the show revolves around Athabascan culture, not shying away from topics like boarding schools and modern-day racism. Most of the writers are also Athabascan, and the show even has an official Gwich’in dub!

It’s this commitment to real, authentic social justice that makes PBS Kids so much different from its competitors. Could you imagine the Paw Patrol dog looking at the camera and earnestly discussing what happened to George Floyd? I don’t think so— but Arthur talked specifically about it, Sesame Street did an hour long special about race in general, and the network itself made a 30 minute special.

Disney Jr. could never. (Other than trying to teach colorblindness, of course.)

I’m gonna have to cut this into two parts, since I just hit the image limit

[brailsthesmolgurl]

GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE

Here comes another angsty fluffy one-shot request by one of my readers. Featuring everyone's fav doctor, Zayne. Enjoy the story! Warnings: Angst but yes to Comfort

"How can you expect me to do my damn job but also expect me not to be hurt?" You gritted your teeth, eyes shooting daggers into Zayne's side profile. He seemed unbothered by you raising your voice slightly, either he is used to it, or he expected it. Or both.

"Then I would suggest you to quit your job." His words were finalised, no variations in tone or anything. Just a statement, a sentence with a full stop. Your eyes welled up with tears. How could he not understand? To at least give you the benefit of the doubt that accidents would happen in your line of job, but you would do your best to minimise it?

"I won't." You walked over to him and you noticed his head turned slightly to face you. "And I am done with you." You grabbed your bag off of his desk and you darted off towards the front door. Zayne got off of his chair to hold you back but before he could grab your hand, you threw him your statement. "I do not wish to see you ever again. Have a good life."

Zayne was out at a charity event hosted by Akso Hospital, to raise funds for the several orphanages at Linkon City. As usual, he was expected to give a speech in front of the crowd, but instead of being the lead cardiac surgeon for Akso, he shall be giving his speech as one of the biggest donors for this event.

But as of now, his time has yet to come, so he stood at one of the cocktail tables, watching the crowd of unfamiliar faces. Although he is one of the best cardiac surgeons, he was not known to be the friendliest amongst his colleagues so generally, not many people would go up and strike a conversation with him.

He finds his mind wandering, floating from what would be a good post-event dessert to what diagnosis he have yet to complete to you. It has been 6 months since the both of you had contacted one another. Zayne however, had tried to call you after you had left but to no avail. And surprisingly, you blocked him so he had no methods to reach out to you. He could have easily come over to your place, but with Zayne being Zayne, he would not intrude into someone else's property if he was not invited at first glance.

His phone vibrated from the inside of his suit, and he peeled apart the right side of his tailored suit to fish out his phone. He stared at the caller's name for quite a bit. Longer than a few seconds. 'Y/N' flashed on his phone's screen. He pressed the phone to his ear. "Hello."

"Zayne." You were huffing and panting, and he could hear your whimper through the line. "I need... I need your help." You tried to explain, one hand holding the phone to your ears while the other pressed up against the deep gash you have on the side of your hips. "Nobody was picking up... I had no choice..."

Your voice. It was breaking up in between chokes and whimpers and sharp inhales. Zayne knew you were hurt, and this time, it is much more severe than any other times when he was there to tend to your wounds. He knew this was coming. No, not the call. He figured you would uphold your ego so much that you would not reach out to him anymore just to prove him wrong. To prove to him that you could take care of yourself.

But look at you now. He knew that there shall be a day where he would have to treat you when you are at your worst condition. He could imagine you being pushed into the hospital, with tendrils of tubes surrounding your body; to administer blood, nutrients, oxygens and many other fluids that your body requires to achieve a stable condition. His mind got snapped back to reality when you no longer spoke on the other side of the line.

"Stay still." You heard someone talking, unsure whether if it was towards you. "Or else you might end up hurting yourself again."

Your eyelids felt heavy as you slowly opened them, taking in your surroundings. The last moment you remembered was you were at one of the danger zones and you were outnumbered by a couple of wanderers. You managed to defeat them with all of your might and yet they manage to give you a wound so nasty it robbed your ability to stand and walk.

The room that you are currently in does not smell sterile at all. In fact, it smells like a mix of lavender and with hints of coconuts. The room was lit only with lamp decors, the light bouncing off of the pristine white walls, tainting it with a shade of beige. The room is tidy and emits the vibes of a cosy home which reminds you of someone you knew.

"Did the concussion made you lost the ability to listen to simple instructions?" You snapped your head to the right side as you slowly sat yourself up and you could not stop your jaw from dropping mentally. Zayne is seated right next to you, an apple in hand and a knife in another, eyes focused on peeling the skin off of the apple. One of his many acquired skills.

Your palm smoothed over your hip and you winced, facial features scrunched together in pain as you realised how bad your wound is. "What happened?" You choked out, still awaiting for the stinging pain to wear off.

"You called me earlier and through the phone, I could tell that you were terribly injured." He brought the peeled apple up to his face, examining it closely before placing it down and taking the next apple to start peeling its skin off. "So I went over to save you."

"But..." You were embarassed, teeth biting onto your bottom lip. "With what I had done previously... you could have-"

"You called me after six months of not being in contact, and you expect me to do nothing with your calls for help?" He spoke, finally placing the half-peeled apple down onto the ceramic plate, a clink followed as he placed the knife down. He looked towards you, his hazel green eyes are only brown within such a dark room. But you could make out the soft gaze he was giving you. "Does it still hurt?"

Your cheeks were hot, your heartbeat ramping up when he got closer to you. "I will leave once I feel better." He quirked one of his thin eyebrows up, a signal of confusion. "As soon as I can walk, I mean." You turned your face away from him, but this time, his fingers were quick to catch your chin, pulling you back to stare at him.

"I'm afraid that might take a while." He lets go of your chin and pulled down the blanket slightly, enough for him to see the bandage wrapped around your hip, and enough for him to notice the bits of skin showing above your hip given he had to wrap your hips so clothing would only be in the way of his treatment. "Your wounds are quite deep this time around. I had used my evol to freeze and cut out some of the dead tissue but I think rest should be your first priority for now."

"Look, I called you because I couldn't reach out to anyone else okay? I will be out of your hair once all of this," you gestured at your wound. "is fully healed." Your chafed statement made him sighed, his fingers coming up to pinch the bridge of his sculpted nose. "So how long will this take? For me to heal?"

"I'm sorry." He muttered, the voice of his faltered alongside the wind chimes that he had hung by the windows. Your whole body was rigid, staring at the man in front of you, apologising to you out-of-the-blue. "It was selfish of me to ask you to quit your job and to not trust you in protecting yourself."

Your lips could not move, as if you were gagged by his remorse, his guilt, his regrets. Six months passed, and yet you did not took it any easier than him despite you were the one who chose to leave him and to never look back. You were the one who blocked him from contacting you entirely, you were the one who thought that he would at least cared about your passion for your work.

However, as a matter-of-fact, you can never forget about him. You always find yourself taking the long way home, purposely passing by Akso Hospital just to catch a glimpse of him. On lucky days, maybe you could catch him from a far distance, getting off of work. On unlucky days, you could still catch his black sedan car parked within the staff columns.

"When you called me, I expected the worst." Zayne's side profile is the only thing you could see now. "I tried contacting you after you had left, but the dial tone always ends, so I assumed that you have blocked me." Hearing how he had tried to reach out to you, your gut twisted, adding on to the pain that you are experiencing physically. "But I would understand if you would want to rest alone at your house instead of mine. I can schedule to send you back home tomorrow before I head off to the hospital."

"Zayne, I, I just couldn't believe it when you asked me to quit my job..." You trailed off, your eyes drooped as you felt your tears weighing them down. "I thought you would have known better that I am a deepspace hunter and that I will always be putting my life on the line."

Zayne leaned over, his shadow loomed over your figure and he placed his hand on the top of your head, slowly smoothing your hair behind your back. His touch was gentle, soothing to your skin. "And I should have trusted you instead of asking you to quit." You can feel the heat radiating from both of his hands cupping your cheeks, your face probably the size of an egg within his grasp. "When you were away, I find myself thinking about you and your safety a lot."

You agreed, your hand coming up to cup over his. The difference between both of your hands always a surprise to you. "I can't help but to want you as well, Zayne." His thumb caught the tear that streamed down your cheeks and he wiped it off. "I am sorry too, for having to walk out on you and on this relationship."

"Now, you should allow yourself to rest." Zayne's lips curled up into a small encouraging smile. He laid you down onto the bed slowly, hovering over you. "Would you still like me to fetch you back home tomorrow?" The shake of your head made him sighed in relief. "Then you should stay here, where I am capable of taking care of you." He peered down at you, his gentle gaze contradictory to his chiseled facial features. "Not only till you get better, but for the future too." The man then leaned down to claim your lips in a soft and longing kiss.

Tadaa! That is the end for this one-shot! It is fluff just as requested by my reader, so I hope this suffices you guys heart <3

[eyeheartboobiez]

𝐬𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐲!𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐧𝐞 𝐡𝐜𝐬

-> warnings: smut mention

-> a/n: are you able to pick up other people’s tabs at a bar? what even is a tab? idk. here are some unnecessarily long bruce hcs that i wrote at 1am

(edit): fun fact, this was the first set of sugar daddy!bruce hcs i wrote but ended up “scrapping” bcs i didn’t like the direction it was going in👨🏿‍🦯

• honestly, you don't know how either of you ended up in this situation

The drink in your hands was starting to sweat.

One of your professors had given you the chance to attend a charity event of one of his more high society friends. Of course, while you were beyond grateful, you can easily say you'd much rather be at home binging your favorite series.

So here you were, sipping on your fourth glass of the evening without a single clue how you were gonna pay for them all. Your social battery was beyond drained as you were sitting by yourself at the bar, just about ready to call it a night.

All the other socialites in the room, however, seemed to be having a blast talking about politics or stocks or whatever it was that rich people talk about. Well, all except for one.

• on one hand hand there was you, a broke college student just looking for someone to pay for her drinks

• on the other, there was the rich billionaire who was searching for someone worthy enough of his time

• bruce had noticed you sitting alone at the bar, lightly sipping on an amethyst martini:

He takes the night off from his batman duties, and this is how he decides to spend it?

Bruce couldn't wrap his head around it either. Alfred was actually the one who talked him into going to this party. With him being one of the top donors, he was basically obligated to attend at this point.

While all the other party goers were standing around talking amongst each other, the billionaire found himself off in the corner, eyes sweeping the room to find all its nearest exits. In the midst off his mental scan though, he saw you.

The dress you wore was simple, yet it somehow made you glow against the warm lighting. Despite all the commotion in the room, your presence alone practically drew him in like a moth to a flame.

If Bruce was gonna be here all night, he might as well make things interesting, right?

• you hadn't noticed him approaching until the chair next to you was being pulled out

• you were hesitant to open up to him at first

• because why in the hell was one of the richest men in gotham talking to you of all people

• but after a while, the two of you practically sprung into conversation, talking about almost anything and everything.

• after talking for what felt like hours he asks you:

"Would you perhaps like to continue this conversation back at my place?"

• with the way his index finger was gently caressing your hand, you just knew that if you left with this man, you both would be doing anything but talking

• while you usually weren't one to sleep with strangers, one night of some fun couldn’t hurt, right?

• plus you still needed to get these drinks paid for

"Only if you offer to pick up my tab."

• one thing led to another and you found yourself lying in one of the biggest beds of your life, getting fucked by one of the richest men in the world

• you and bruce ended up spending a very long night together. by the end of it, you both were practically comatose from it all

• the next morning, you woke up fully prepared to sign some sort of NDA and head on home

• or at least you were. until you felt the hot trail of kisses leading down from your neck

"Last night was incredible," The billionaire grumbled, the low murmur of his morning voice making butterflies appear in your stomach. Open-mouthed kisses continued to trail down the valley of your breasts, "I don't suppose you wanna do that again sometime, hm?"

• you almost had to pinch yourself to make sure you weren't still dreaming

• it was over breakfast that you both went over some of the necessary details neither of you seemed to bring up the night before

• you told him things about yourself like your age and how you typically didn't go home with strangers. you also ended up confessing how you were only at the same event as him because one of your professors gave you an invitation

• which then led to him asking what your major was

• …which led him to ask what university you attended

• ….which then led to him offering to pay off your college expenses

• like hold on. pause for a second.

• did he fr just offer to pay your whole tuition?

• was the pussy that good???

• before you could think too much about it, bruce made sure to let you know that this would be a small dip into a very big bucket for him

• all he asked for in return was to spend another night with you

• of course he didn't expect you to come to a decision right away, so after exchanging numbers, he drove you home to think it over

• to be honest though, it didn't take you very long to consider things

• i mean you were practically swimming in student loans over here

• immediately after you called to give him a confirmation, your phone pinged with a notification

bruce w. sent over $860.

‘buy something nice for yourself and meet me tomorrow at seven. don’t worry about transportation, i’ll arrange a car for you.’

• and after that the rest was history

• being bruce’s sugar baby was honestly one of the best decisions you’ve ever made

• after your second night with him was when he wanted to make things official between you two

• “official” pretty much meant that he would volunteer to be your personal bank as long as you continued to keep him company

• even though it all sounded great, you weren’t stupid.

• if you were to really go through with this you would need it written on paper. you wanted this shit documented

• so that’s exactly what he did

• by the end of the day, bruce had his lawyers make a drafted copy of the terms and conditions your so called “relationship” would entail (a draft that you were free to make changes to, of course)

• now that everything had been officially set in stone, most days you found yourself either attending charity events or maxing out his company credit card

• now if only bruce could tell you about a certain night job of his…

-> a/n: when i tell you these have been in my drafts for a MINUTE😭 i think imma make a fic about how their relationship develops but first i wanna write the next part to my jason smau series

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

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/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[caughtthedarkness93]

Not to do more Furiosaposting (and SPOILERS AHEAD), but a couple more things I noticed on a second viewing:

• I think Dementus is being honest about how he lost his family when Furiosa confronts him about it, and that's a big point the film is making. Furiosa isn't like Dementus when she finally chases him down. But she recognizes that she could become like him - a vile, cruel warlord who uses his own pain as an excuse to run roughshod all over the wasteland, smashing everything in her path, using her pain as an excuse to take from others. By that point, she's already a part of Immortan Joe's war machine. She is already complicit. And he does say to her that killing him won't give her what she wants. She resists the idea, but ultimately, it sure seems like she realizes he's right. And ultimately, that leads to her big choice - make a positive change rather than simply trying to hurt the people who hurt you. Granted, she still does do plenty of hurting the people who hurt her (Nice face you got there, Joe, be a shame if something happened to it). But the big, real legacy she builds is taking the Citadel in the name of a greater cause than fueling Immortan's cult of cruelty.

• Praetorian Jack is also complicit, honestly. And it's something he seems to recognize. He outright says that he's looking for a righteous cause. There's a lot we don't know about this man. He tells us very little of his history, nor do we know why he chooses to ride for Immortan Joe. But we do know that after meeting Furiosa, he wants to do everything in his power to help her. She becomes his righteous cause. So the whole film, Furiosa is kind of pulled between those two directions - Dementus, and Jack. Do you defeat the pain you carry by throwing it back to the people who gave it to you? Or do you seek a righteous cause to build it into something positive?

• Perhaps one of my biggest takeaways is related to Jack's death. It's not until Dementus kills Jack that Furiosa gets really set on revenge. Like she clearly loathes Dementus before that. Her first time meeting him as an adult, she goes straight for her gun. The camera highlights their relationship a lot, and I'm pretty sure her vengeful drive towards him has its own musical motif - listen for that driving, distorted noise that you hear sometimes. But revenge doesn't become her biggest driver until after Jack dies. Even as she feels clear hate and rage towards this man, she's still set on getting home all that time. But when Jack dies, she goes out of her way to try to kill him. And, relatedly, when Jack dies, she loses the arm that has her star map tattoo on it. So to put it another way, when she chooses to commit to vengeance, she loses her way.

• We need to consider perspective and narrator here, as this isn't like Fury Road where it's from the point of view of Max, who was directly there. Because this film's opening shot isn't of Furiosa. It's of another character - it's of the History Man. The first line belongs to him - "As the world falls around us. How must we brave it's cruelties?" The closing narration is his as well. Something that sticks in my head more and more is Dementus' ultimate fate. What gets me about it is that it feels implausible. Not only for Furiosa as a character, but for the way the series usually handles injuries. So George Miller was a paramedic before he was a filmmaker. In fact, his work as a paramedic is what partly inspired the first Mad Max film and what funded it. And in these films, Miller has put his medical knowledge to use. The characters' injuries are usually handled in a realistic way, with a few flights of fancy for people to make it through frankly absurd car wrecks. You see this especially in Fury Road, which takes the time to establish that Max is a universal donor twice so it makes sense to have him give a blood transfusion to Furiosa at the end. It talks about the ultimate effects of her collapsed lung and how to treat it. The injuries in these films feel realistic in a way movie wounds often don't. Dementus' final fate does feel a little complicatedly cruel for someone as pragmatic as Furiosa, but what really gets me is how medically implausible it is. We're supposed to believe that Dementus has been stuck in the citadel with a peach tree growing out of him for five years without dying? I...kinda don't. Why does this matter? I think it signals that aspects of the story fall to unreliable narration. These films are campfire stories from a world that fell and rose again. Always have been. But this one has a more direct narrator. The History Man is telling this story. It is filtered through his perspective.

• And that adds another layer to things, considering Furiosa and the History Man's backgrounds. We see the History Man, we see a guy who is clearly horrified by Dementus' actions. When Furiosa's mom is getting executed, he cries. He tells Furiosa that she needs to make herself indispensable - likely because he feels that it's the best way to protect her. But he still does Dementus' bidding, often without question or argument. In a word, the thing that ultimately separates the History Man from Furiosa is that where he was complicit until the very end, Furiosa chose to rebel.

• And I guess if I had to boil it all down, I think there's a great big takeaway from this film. Don't seek hope. Become hope.

Man, I love this movie.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Although Congress averted a government shutdown, Hakeem Jeffries' remarks about the attempt by a couple of "puppet masters" to overturn the bipartisan funding bill & GOP hypocrisy are still worth repeating.

"In our nation’s 248 year history, 25% of our nation’s debt was accumulated during the four years of the former president. 25%. How dare you lecture America about fiscal responsibility ever."

—Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), House minority leader

Below are some highlights from the transcript of Hakeem Jeffries' remarks before the House on 12/19/24, including his comments on:

The attempt by the "puppet masters" (i.e., Musk and Trump) to overturn the bipartisan government funding bill.

The history of how Democrats repeatedly had to clean up the fiscal messes that Republicans (the so-called party of "fiscal responsibility") created time and again because of their unfounded belief in tax cuts for the wealthy (i.e., "trickle down economics").

HAKEEM JEFFRIES: [Democrats and Republicans in Congress] reached a bipartisan agreement to fund the government, prevent a shutdown and meet the needs of the American people. We reached a bipartisan agreement to provide disaster assistance to people who had their lives turned upside down by extreme weather events hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and wildfires all across America. We reached a bipartisan agreement to be there for farmers and families, children, seniors, working-class Americans all across the country, the men and women who serve this country in uniform and our veterans.

House Republicans have abandoned that bipartisan agreement that we entered into in good faith. A bill that House Republicans negotiated, gave us your word that we were going to move forward together on behalf of the American people.... And then one or two puppet masters weigh in and the extreme MAGA Republicans decide to do the bidding of the wealthy, the well-off, the well-connected millionaires and billionaires, not working-class people all across America. The bill that is before us today is just part of an effort to shut down the government unless we, as representatives of the American people, bend to the will of just a handful of millionaires and billionaires because the provisions in this bill, particularly as it relates to suspending the debt ceiling for two years, are designed to bring about a massive tax cut unpaid for wealthy donors and for wealthy corporations for millionaires and billionaires who, clearly, some in this Congress are working for. And this bill is validation for it.

[added color is mine; all emphasized text is from Hakeem Jeffries' Congressional website]

[See more excerpts below the cut.]

HAKEEM JEFFRIES (Continued): Now, what’s been interesting to me is that for decades, the Republican Party has lectured America about fiscal responsibility, about the debt and the deficit. It’s always been phony. This bill proves it. One thing we do know is that every time a Republican president comes into office, the one thing we can count on Republicans to do is to pass a massive tax cut for wealthy Americans and, in the process, stick working-class Americans with the bill by raising the deficit and the debt. That’s what happened in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president. The biggest thing that he did was pass a massive tax cut for the wealthy and the well-off paid for by working families and middle class folks all across the country. Didn’t do anything for middle class Americans. Didn’t do anything to stimulate the economy.... I’ve come to the conclusion that trickle down economics simply means that middle class families, that working-class Americans may get a trickle, but they’re guaranteed to stay down. That’s what your economics are all about. Massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the well-off under President Reagan continued into President Bush. Bill Clinton comes to office, inherits a significant deficit, and under his stewardship, President Clinton turns a deficit into a surplus and passes that surplus to President George W Bush. The so-called party of fiscal responsibility.

And once again, we see the same exact playbook. Republicans inherit a surplus and they immediately blow it to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected, not provide relief to working-class Americans. A tax cut in 2001, unpaid for, and then a tax cut in 2003, unpaid for. And they continue to run up the debt and the deficit prosecuting two failed wars. The so-called party of fiscal responsibility. Want to lecture America, but your record speaks for itself.

President Obama comes in after mismanagement related to the prior administration, including helping to trigger the Great Recession, inherits the deficit from a Republican president of $1.5 trillion, as well as the Great Recession. And working under the leadership of President Obama, Democrats in the House and the Senate, the situation turned around and over an eight year period of time reduced the deficit by $1 trillion. From $1.5 trillion to $500 billion. Progress under Democratic leadership as it relates to getting America’s fiscal house in order. And then Donald Trump comes to office and again follows the same exact playbook... Republicans turned their attention to the GOP tax scam, where 83% of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1%. Why? To subsidize the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. And in the process of doing that, borrow $2.3 trillion added to our debt. Explode the deficit. So-called party of fiscal responsibility. In fact, this debt that we’re dealing with... that’s what this two-year suspension of the debt ceiling is all about. In our nation’s 248 year history, 25% of our nation’s debt was accumulated during the four years of the former president. 25%. How dare you lecture America about fiscal responsibility ever.

And then President Biden comes to office. Gets big things done for the American people on infrastructure, on the CHIPS and Science Act, standing up a clean energy economy, rescuing America from a once-in-a-century pandemic. Gets all of these big things done... and in the process, in his first two years, reduces the deficit by $1.7 trillion. And so we see a very clear pattern. The facts speak for themselves.... which bring us to this very moment. Because this bill is designed to set up the GOP tax scam 2.0. To stick the American people with a bill so you can continue to cut taxes for wealthy donors and well-connected corporations and jam working-class Americans. That’s what this bill today fundamentally is all about. That’s why Republicans are suspending the debt ceiling for two years, the so-called party of fiscal responsibility. And in addition to these massive tax cuts, we know how you want to pay for it. Many Republicans have said this in the public domain, that we want to end Social Security as we know it, end Medicare as we know it, end Medicaid as we know it, end nutritional assistance as we know it, not support our veterans. These are all the reasons why Democrats are opposed to this legislation. [...] Why would you eliminate funding for community health centers? That impacts the heartland of America, urban America, rural America, suburban America, small-town America, Appalachia.... Why would you cut funding for nutritional assistance for children in America? For seniors in America? For veterans in America? Why would you do that?.... This legislation actually cuts a program that was designed to help children and their parents detect cancer. Cruelty is the point. Why would you eliminate that program? We’re going to fight for the children of America.

And so, the reasons are too numerous to articulate.... But we’ve laid out the challenges with this bill, the phoniness in claiming that extreme MAGA Republicans are about working-class Americans or are the party of fiscal responsibility. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you run up the debt and the deficit, middle-class families pay, working-class families pay, and we are going to defend them. House Democrats are going to continue to fight for working families, middle-class families, all those who aspire to be part of the middle class, for the children of America, for the seniors of America, for the unions in America, for the veterans of America, for the least, the lost and the left behind, for the poor, the sick and the afflicted. We are going to continue to fight for everyday Americans. That is why we are voting no on this bill. And to stop this reckless, regressive and reactionary Republican shutdown. Vote no.

[added color is mine; all emphasized text is from Hakeem Jeffries' Congressional website]

[solarbird]

“Are we willing to fight for it?” Crowd: “YES!” “And when we fight?” Crowd: “WE WIN!” — Kamala Harris to campaign staff, 22 July 2024

That’s right, the “if we fight we win” isn’t from me this time. It’s from Kamala Harris, and I am kind of in shock.

One of the things I most feared about the “replace Biden” movement was the donor class yanking the party right again and hand-picking an all old white dudes ticket and absolutely tanking every chance we had of winning this election and stopping Trumpism for good.

Politically active Black people I know personally were expecting that to happen, because that kind of shit has happened so many times. And when political Black people talk about this shit in the Democratic party, you better listen, because their history on this stuff is solid.

I mean, that’s not the only reason I feared it, I have plenty of my own experience watching this same shit go down. But it’s a big one.

That – and all the many money and organisational problems I have described which would result – was about the biggest problem I had with replacing Biden. Particularly once it was clear the money people were moving on it so hard. I was so sure they’d do again what they’ve always done, slide the top of the ticket back to the “right,” repudiating so much economic and climate good the Biden administration has done, trying to haul us back to Clintinesque neoliberalism which would fail more spectacularly than ever before.

That’s also why I was an instant loud and dare I say it strident pivot to Harris when Biden actually did drop out – it was all to stop that money move from happening. That’s why I was out Sunday as loud and long as I could be, shouting, “WHITE PEOPLE, GET HER THE NOMINATION. FUCKING DO IT” while various usual clowns and dilettantes wibbled on demanding an ‘open convention’ and nattering about a ‘flash primary’ and going off about ‘not voting for a cop’ and the wretched spectre of Joe Manchin dipped a skeletal toe into the race.

None of that was an option. It’s still not an option. It had to be her; it has to be her.

And that speech I’m quoting shows why.

I’m still stunned. I never expected to hear a presidential candidate echoing my own words back at me.

I mean, Biden understands exactly what we’re dealing with – fash propaganda aside, he really is still all there, and his words show it. But he’s not able to frame it that way, it’s just not who he is. To see a candidate frame it like this… exactly like this… that’s something new. And I did not expect it.

I am so rarely truly surprised in politics. It has been a while since I have been surprised at all.

This has surprised me.

Another political writer I follow described her as the first Generation X candidate, and maybe that’s why. Technically she’s like two months too early for GenX, she’s in that transition zone, but y’know what? If she wants to grab that label I am fine with that, because those are some words from someone who fucking gets it. From someone who has figured it the fuck out.

Go watch her speech, particularly, oh… the “I know Donald Trump’s type” section starts around 19 minutes in, but the part after that, that’s where it really starts to matter, at 21:45. Here, I timestamped for you, hopefully it’ll work where you’re reading this and if not, just skip ahead:

I’ve been saying – this is the turning point year. The peak year of a fascist movement weakened but not destroyed by self-inflicted wounds of COVID, the last year of the backstop, the year after which we can start to win.

But still I expected that this year that we’d still have to fight under the old rules, playing the old games of the Baby Boom, even if I knew that one final year of holding would shatter it all, and let us make and play by new rules in ’26 and ’28.

Hence, one more year of the bulwark, one more year of the hold.

Until two days ago, on Sunday, July 21st, 2024, that was exactly how it was playing out.

Then a political miracle happened. Biden left the race and the donor class didn’t get their push to the right, and some of them apparently didn’t even want it because they dropped money again the moment Harris announced her campaign.

I guess maybe those rich bastards finally learned a thing or two about not throwing elections.

And that means…

…maybe we don’t have to wait ’til ’26 and ’28.

Maybe it’s not one last hold after all, before the spring.

Maybe the rules can change now.

Maybe Millennials and Zoomers are going to seize the moment this year.

If they do – if you do, if you go in, if you mean it, if you don’t waver and trip yourself up in details and personality and propaganda and purity tests and and and all of it…

…then…

…this year won’t just be a hold.

This year will be the fucking landslide we have needed for eight years now to wipe Trumpism and its like off the map for a century.

Wanna make that happen?

France and England have shown us the way, and christ, I want to make that happen.

How about you? You up for it? You ready to do the work?

Let’s go, then. Everybody.

All in.

104 days remain.

[imjustdelusionalok]

yandere dc: meeting camgirl! reader <3 pt. 2

Yuppp, this is the part two of my previous post <33 but this time she'll be meeting the rest of the batboys and kon! (reminder she has met some of them even from before!!)

if you get into the 'terry mcginnis' part and is confused on who he is, watch batman beyond bc hes the new batman and its sooo good and hes underrated <3

Anywho here it isss

BIG warning: this may more or less have the same amount of clownery as the last one so prepare my sweets and also my brain is fried so some parts might not make sense but i tried😔💔 please repost to support me i spent sm timee 😭

tim drake aka 'red robin':

Also one of your most biggest and creepiest faithful fans that you've ever had in your stream!

Hes a frequent donor AND victim to your relentless charms just like jason and dick.

Has met you before you decided to even become a cam girl, as you two both go to the same school AND classes too 🥰 (he may or may have not gotten bruce to manipulate the principal or some higher up into changing classes...)

he's like a lovesick highschool student who developed a crush, but this time more extreme.

While you on the otherhand, saw a weird looking boy staring at you with the most fullest smile you've ever seen. toothy, cheshire grin, and all-- (he ran away almost IMMEDIATELY when you saw him)

(...you also chased after him when he ran 💀 he was shooked, but stops once your hand grabs his shoulder and you ask him who he was)

"You >:D i saw you looking at me, who are you >:)"

...my, he never knew you were this bold... you really need to stop being so cute or your further fueling his delusions i swear--

You shake him. "Ow- okay-- my name's Tim--"

You then smile and drag a stunned but intrigued timothy with you.

...Are you perhaps some social butterfly, darling?...

From that moment on, tim's interest in you increases and a friendship between you and him bloomed! Hes so proud of himself for making the first move even though you did it first...

(Again, dont ask how darling lives in bludhaven, but meets tim and jason whose in gotham 💀 either think of her as having teleportation powers being the reason for the frequent back-and-forths or tim being so obssessed, he moves in bludhaven just to see reader--)

When i said creepy, i said c r e e p y. Even worse than klarion, thaddeus, and even dick who i said before was on another level 😦

Tim is both sweet, nervous, and shy... or at least, is how he shows himself for you.

he must look decent for you or how else would he make you reciprocate his feelings?

He's capable of changing in a blink of an eye so anybody who isn't his beloved, dont test him, okay? <3

He sits in the back with darling in class. In the back. You heard me.

Normally he'd be in the front to be able to see and listen better, but darling is a slacker so--

He sighs, looking at his rushed and poorly written notes. He doesnt even know what the topic is anymore, and it kinda looks like hieroglyphics--

Meanwhile, you on the otherhand, was cooking instant noodles with the others... with a pot AND a stove... D: (he loves you but damn he wants to cry rlly bad on how screwed you two are--)

As for the part where he finds out about your part-time job as a cam girl, this man was seething.

No honey, not at you, but at your parents-- how could they let their beautiful daughter do this?! Do they even care?!-- oh? What was that, darling?... Your parents were gone? i guess that explains it...

proceeds to feel bad for you, and wishes to look after you. But you being you, you remain so hardheaded. Why cant you let him love you?? why cant you quit that stupid job?! >:( (hes a bit hypocritical on this one since he literally donates thus further fueling you to go on)

Sigh... nevertheless, he realizes a bit that he can't persuade someone like you for now, so he donates in your live like the good friend he is...

Yeah, 'good friend'...

In the darkness of his room, he watches with unblinking eyes the way your body moves on his screen. You look so enticing, the way a bit of pink colors your cheeks, how every moan you give were light and breathy... simply fantastic. He sighs.

"Oh baby... what am i going to do with you?... <3"

Yandere rating: 100% on money, 38% for nuisance, 70% for humor (80% as red robin)

⋆˚✿˖°

conner kent aka 'superboy':

Ah yes, another top donor and one of your most perverted watchers out there.

Cocky, rebellious, womanizing... doll, you're just another girl for him to use in order to piss off tim since he loves pushing that man's patience so much.

Has probably met you through him too, as this man follows his best friend that has been, in his eyes, acting a bit too strange lately.

And he now knows why. You.

thinks you're absolutely adorable. the way you act out of impulse to the way you speak so brazenly to him, intrigues the kryptonian so much.

Hm, your going to be so much fun to play with <3

But unfortunately, the boy of steel did not know who he was up against.

"...Doll, what did you just say?--" it was 8 at night and he was in his best attire holding a bouquet of flowers. Not just your average red roses, but a well-thought out blend of daffodils, carnations, and tulips. just for you.

But right now, you're breaking his heart.

"Yeah Kon, i love you but no. i'm not dating you. Sorry."

...you don't have the right to say you love him.

"a-and why can't we date?--" he was so confused, these months spent trying to court you, all wasted.

"erm... im not interested, kon. yeah you're hot and you support me and all, but im gonna be honest with you... you're not my type. and plus..."

he feels his heart break even more when you continue.

"...I'm interested in someone. I've known them for so long Kon, and i would hurt them if i get with you."

...

"...sorry." you run away.

things with kon has never felt the same since. he no longer visits tim just to see you, only him. he ignores you too, not even a single glance being spared. but you swear you could feel cold blue eyes watching your figure sometimes...

...and then that happens. you see a message notification from him. conner.

'im sorry if i made things awkward between us. forgive me, doll? :('

your thumb hovered whether or not to answer. you made your decision.

'kay. wanna play dti? :3'

he's so glad you cant see him right now... crying pure tears of joy, and complete relief that you took the bait.

'okay :)'

just because he got rejected by you once that doesnt mean he's immediately gonna back down <33 and about that boy you like, who was it? can't you tell him and he'll give a quick visit to the very lucky guy...

Yandere rating: 100% on money, 49% for nuisance, 80% for humor (95% as superboy)

ᯓᡣ𐭩

damian wayne aka 'robin':

...knows the guy that you like.

he's genuinely angry at you, but mostly at your taste.

seriously, him? why not him instead...

frequently donates money and is also very dedicated in line.

(to save you trouble, most of the batfam is a big fan to you and are often your biggest donors. they wish to stop you from pursuing such a... scandalous, line of work but cant help but further support you the more they give money and get addicted to the content you make 😞💔)

discovered you on accident when a certain someone, *cough* tim, *cough* left their computer on without closing the tabs.

you cannot simply imagine the sheer shock that painted his face during that time, seeing someone, you, getting it on with another guy that seems all too familiar.

...and he cant help but get angry. (you'll all understand soon enough why he and kon hates reader's man and possible bf sm 😭)

meeting you face to face... thats a whole situation. tim immediately regrets bringing damian to see you because this man already went off on how much of a 'hoe', you are.

you can take a lot of things, but this boy rubs you off wrong.

"seriously, drake? your new friend is a prostitute? you drew the line making friends with that kryptonian clone, but this takes the cak--"

*slap.*

...that hurts. damian's hand slowly makes its way up to his cheek, where the red was starting to spring.

he looks at you like you were mad. you are, thanks to him. "...you... you little---"

he was held back by an angry but calmer kon despite being also insulted, whilst tim holds you comfortably.

"hey don't listen to damian over there, alright? :( he's just a bit--"

"I'm speaking facts here!-- hmpfh!" a hand covers his mouth.

"seriously tim, does he ever shut his mouth?" kon says.

he huffs. "no. and that's why i was considering bringing duct tape earlier, Kon."

...okay, maybe his first impression forever got him labelled as a bitch in your eyes, but damian tries to make it up to you in any way he can since he actually finds you decent after getting to know you. (think of those asian parents that after scolding you till you cry, they give you food but instead money in damian's version)

"...ahem."

no response.

"...AHEM."

you finally look up at him, and a bag was thrown straight at your face. "you stupid ass-- wait a minute." you look inside the bag and it was filled with... money.

you look up at damian, only to see his figure quickly dashing off and hide behind a wall where he would secretly try and take a peek for your reaction. you smile and give a thumbs up.

"...you aren't that bad, but try shutting your mouth most of the time, okay? :3 <3"

...the green in his eyes glinted... and he scoffs. typical damian wayne.

"...sure, prozzy-- HEY STOP CRYING--"

fierce but protective. rude but caring. that is what damian is towards you.

and that is how he'll always be as long as that man is around...

"i'll be with you. and i shall do everything in my power to ensure you do not end up with him!--" too late.

Yandere rating: 100% on money, 25% for nuisance, 78% for humor (89% as robin)

ִֶָ࣪☾.𔘓

terry mcginnis aka 'batman beyond':

...is the man that kon, damian, and the others have beef with.

how he's part of the main timeline in this is that all of the events before batman beyond happens earlier. (i also tweaked a few things in canon here so dont mind me)

terry's dad died before the entire 'Powers' situation, leading to Terry living with his mom earlier.

...terry also suffers from something.

at a young age, terry cannot feel any sort of emotions. remorse, empathy, such things were removed from him. he could only feel empty, comparable to having a large gaping hole inside his chest instead of a beating heart.

the boy ponders why he was cursed with such a thing, and why he could only feel pity and sadness. just a little.

...he thought he was unsavable. until--

his eyes lands on you, the girl who was playing on the playground's swing. (note: darling used to live in gotham as a kid)

...he gulps. pretty...

"you there, what's your name?" you asked. always the first one to make a move...

...and you sound nice.

"hm? well? :3"

...he decided to speak. "...terry. i'm terry... you?..."

you smile. "they call me (name), pretty right?" he could only nod. yes, it was very pretty...

i think everybody could guess how things go from then on.

he meets you, grows up with you, falls in love with you, and in the end lives happily with you... if only it weren't for his tendency to maim just about anyone who gets near you.

he's a dog, honey. but he's your rabid, vicious dog.

by the time he grows up, he's learned how to hide what he truly is from you, and the terry that we all come to know and love is now here.

charming, witty, humorous... terry mcginnis is nothing but an amorous boy for you... and you love it. (u match his freak sm)

in his eyes, you two are together <3 and its not even a lie you two are but you're too much in denial since you firmly believe he deserves better :( (tho thoughts like that dissapear when he and you yk ;))

absolutely hates it when you spend time with anyone, especially with his adopted siblings. dick, jason, tim, and damian? fuck no. (if you read the batman beyond comics, those two despise each other--)

...so expect those two to be at each other's necks.

and about the cam girl part, yup, this man knows. and like tim, he tries to persuade you to stop. you're a complicated person, he knows. either for money or fun, you do crazy shit like this every time... but this one's really serious.

"...look at me." you obey, eyes staring back at ocean blue ones. terry's eyes were always so pretty...

"...hehe, pretty eyed as ever, mcginnis..." and he can't help but smile slightly at your words.

"..." damn you, really. his soft spot for you is huge, and 99% of the time, you get off the hook easily.

in the end, he might have allowed you to do this... 'artist' stuff, but on one condition:

he gets to f*ck you on some parts.

you blink, cheeks starting to redden. "...what--" and just like that, your fate is sealed <3

...currently, you were on Live. the rest of your boy toys watched with envious yet very heated gazes as your pussy was getting demolished by his dick. the close up shots were so unnecessary, the way he roughly pummels into you was so--

'$10000 from GR4YS0N_68'

'GR4YS0N_68: ugh yea terry ruin that little bitches cunt'

terry grins, feeling you getting closer. the position you and him were in was perfect, babe... perfect for a pic.

his strong hand gently but firmly grabs your jaw, making you face the camera.

he whispers to you so closely."smile for the camera, sweetie."

you oblige, a broken smile on your lips. the stream abruptly ends.

no need for the public to know what you both are doing in private anymore...

Yandere rating: 100% on money, 0.0001% for nuisance, 90% for humor (100% as batman beyond)

(finally its finished 🤕 i have so many unfinished works huhu....)

(update: ill also try editing this too <3)

[heartfullofleeches]

[tw: mentions of death]

Last Carnis fact (for today)

So, quick tldr is Carnis is a lab experiment created with both human and cow dna to be a food supply and organ donor for the public. They heal at an insane rate and are effectively immortal. This project was later disbanded and all test subjects after Carnis were executed or moved to secret locations.

Now, you may ask how Carnis' siblings were able to be killed. The older Carnis grew, the more violent they became. Scientists saw the danger and basically installed a killswitch in later successful subjects where if their brains were damaged in one specific spot - they die for good.

Carnis came before this decision and therefore they are the only true immortal. Carnis is not aware of this, saw the deaths of their siblings and also believes they'll die if something happens to their head/brain.

Carnis asking for headpats from Reader is the biggest display of trust they can give.