#firewall prices

[infinian]

Fortinet FortiGate | FG-60/61E-FWF | Bangalore - Chennai

[briarscreek]

task force 141 with a smart ass american informant who gets on their nerves sometimes

your help on their missions has now become a lot more frequent, but now they’ve warmed up to you and your comments have not gone away. they realize this is just who you are.

with gaz, you’re able to correct him every time he talks about details. it grinds his gears sometimes.

“left here, cap’n”

“no gaz, take a right. quicker evac—”

“i know where i’m—“

they get ambushed with like 10 more enemies on the left. they make quick work of them obviously. gaz sighs.

“not a word”

“i didn’t say shit” your amused tone was all he needed for the silent i told you so. after a while, he trusts you. you still correct him sometimes though.

price for some reason asks if you can hack into something every single time your faced with a firewall.

“think you can crack it?”

the file is open on their screen 0.2 seconds later with full access to it’s contents.

“i don’t know captain, can i?”

and that was your response, every single damn time.

johnny always eggs you on for shit not even related to the mission.

“i bet i can out drink ya, bonnie”

“try to hold some glasses of tennessee whiskey, then we’ll start talking johnny boy”

simon was a different story. he’d still go on with his stupid jokes.

“april showers bring may flowers but what do may flowers bring?”

“what ghost?”

“pilgrims”

you sigh.

“i can’t believe i get paid for this shit”

it’s normal for the men to not hear from you for a few days, obviously because you’re in a different time zone than them but now even laswell can’t get a hold of you.

and now they’re worried. big time.

<<PREVIOUS

NEXT>>

[shadow4-1]

I'm just imagining helping Gaz upgrade the firewalls on the personal tech of the 141, and accidentally catching glimpses of their search history.

Like, it's not like you're actively trying to look. But the program you're updating has to check all of the websites/servers the 141 has been perusing. If anything is compromised you need to know, Laswell needs to be informed, etc.

Despite his name, Soap's history is bar far the dirtiest and most extensive. His searches consist of pretty much everything that a normal weirdo guy would look up. You're able to ignore most of it but you notice he'd cleared part of his browser data at some point and well...you couldn't help yourself. You check and immediately regret it.

public airsoft fuck

gun tongue fucking

military boot cock stepping

You can't bear to see any more so you delete the rest of his search data for him and move on.

Gaz's search history is surprisingly very normal. You almost snort at how much of a difference it is compared to Soap's. You also come to the realization that he probably already cleared and deleted his history. Then you also realize he probably knows you're looking at everyone's history and probably chose to leave these behind. You feel your face grow hot as you glance down the very short list.

best friends bestfriend blowjob

next door neighbor anal

massage porn

You huff and keep going, next is Price. You breathe a sigh of relief, he only has a couple searches and none of them have demeaning expletives in them. You spare them a passing glance.

Paddling adult film

Thigh high models

You raise a brow. Thigh high models, you could understand, but "paddling"? Like...spanking? With a paddle? You swallow thickly and shake your head. The shibari makes you wince too. Figuring out your Captain was into rope bondage and spanking was too much knowledge for one person.

Shibari classes near me

And, just like you'd expected, Ghost had no search history. You breathe a sigh of relief and do a sweep of the rest of his phone. Nothing. No recently viewed caches, cookies, pictures, or anything. The phone was so well taken care of it might as well have been brand new. You went back to the main browsing page, but before you could close out the app, you notice the page has a bookmark. You open up the bookmark tab and low and behold, there's two links. They look shady but you check them out anyway.

The first one is a cam site. The host of the channel is offline, but judging by their many saved livestreams, they're very active. You decide to turn back, but a very specific thumbnail catches your eye. It's the cammer, but with their mouth stuffed full of a random man's cock. It wouldn't have stopped you in your tracks if a) the man's leg tattoo didn't look so familiar and b) if the cammer didn't look suspiciously like you.

You immediately clear all of the data on the phone, essentially factory resetting it. When Gaz comes back into the tech closet you shove at his chest. He just chuckles and shrugs.

You're never doing this again.

[camirawrites]

still logged in.

tw: doxxing, bullying, mild swearing

fem!reader

word count: 1303

part2

★ yandere!hacker who used to be that kid everyone called a genius, the one who solved logic puzzles for fun and finished coding bootcamps before puberty, but all that ever got him was jealousy and resentment. kids shoved him around in school hallways, told him he talked too much about things no one cared about, his teachers hated the way he made them look dumb. his parents didn’t understand, they thought he just needed to try harder to fit in.

★ yandere!hacker who got into the most prestigious college in his country, only to find out that he constantly felt understimulated. by semester three, he stopped showing up. by semester four, no one noticed he was gone.

★ yandere!hacker who stopped going outside altogether and learned how to disappear instead. the world made more sense from behind a monitor, where he could build his own version of reality, one with rules he understood and people he didn’t have to talk to.

★ yandere!hacker who only left his house for college exams and passed with flying colors. after graduating he didn't feel like becoming a corporate slave, waking up daily at 5 a.m just to reach office at 9 a.m and return home at 7 p.m if he was lucky. he didn't take well to authority, hr, the whole shtick. after all, they're all bullies who claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder, crushing any competition in their path, keeping the worker ants in their place and squashing anyone who dares defy their authority. he'd prefer doing something independent.

★ yandere!hacker who gets a sick kind of adrenaline rush every time he breaks a firewall, finds a forgotten backdoor, and when a secure server folds under his hands like wet paper. the deeper he digs, the more he starts to realize how valuable the things people try to hide really are. he becomes his own ecosystem, a one-man black market, hoarding stolen data and selling them like he's a merchant on the silk road. he doesn't ask who the buyers are or what they want to do with the information. he doesn't care. you want data? he'll sell it to you. for the right price. everyone pays, eventually.

★ yandere!hacker who wasn’t looking for anything in particular that night, just scrolling through a streaming site, hoping to kill some time, until he stumbled across a small stream with soft lighting and a laugh that made his chest ache. you were sitting there with your silly overlay and your chat full of inside jokes he didn’t get, and still, he couldn’t look away. your smile feels like static on his skin, something about your voice made him feel like there was more to life than codes and numbers, and he stayed for the whole stream without even realizing it.

★ yandere!hacker who starts watching every time you go live, even when his eyes burn from lack of sleep and he hasn’t eaten since yesterday. you talk to your chat like they’re your friends, like every username is a real person you care about, and he starts to wonder what it would feel like to have you say his name in that same tone. he clips every time you laugh, every time you thank a donor, every time you look just slightly off-camera. he stores the clips on his pc, replaying them every time you log off.

★ yandere!hacker who finds it adorable the way you call your fans "lovelies." you say it with that little sparkle in your voice. so bright, so warm, so damn cute.

★ yandere!hacker who creates a profile and starts sending cute little donations during your streams, just enough to be noticed, never enough to seem obsessive. he draws fanart too, even though his hands shake when he works on them, and he spends hours perfecting every detail, trying to emulate your favourite art style. when you react on stream, your face lighting up with surprise, he covers his mouth and nearly cries. you said his username out loud. you smiled at it. you said thank you.

★ yandere!hacker who starts sending more fanart, each piece improving upon the last. seeing your wide, bright eyes every time you see his gifts is enough to make his day. he sends you one extra special piece. you open it without much thought, without knowing it contains the key to your online space. it’s a banner art for your channel, in high quality, completely free to use. his message reads: “for my favorite lovely lady💌.” you gasp aloud, covering your mouth with your hands as you try to stop the tiny tears of gratitude from falling down your face. "thank you, ilovenekogirls420. it's... beautiful," you manage to say, trying your best to not laugh at the cringe username.

★ yandere!hacker whose breath hitches as you say his username. he finds it endearing, the way you try to keep your composure. but he's even happier that you let him walk right into your life. he can hear your breathing. your laughs. your hair as it brushes against your headphones.

you gave him the key.

you didn’t even know it.

★ yandere!hacker who knows your lock screen wallpaper now, hears the music you play when you're cleaning, watches the way you curl up on the bed to answer emails after a long stream. you cry sometimes when you think no one’s at home, rub your eyes with the heel of your hand, look so tired and so alone that it makes his throat tighten and fists shake with rage.

★ yandere!hacker who starts starts checking your inbox, your DM drafts, the brand messages that never get replies. he sees it all: the missed payments, the eviction notice, the sponsorship brand who ghosted you, the rude pr agent who brushes you off in the emails. he grits his teeth, enraged. those fuckers used you. they dared to mistreat the one person who he has grown fond of. there will be hell to pay.

★ yandere!hacker who snaps. he hacks into the sponsor’s internal communications system. he finds spreadsheets, payroll records, contracts. he reads their internal emails, their petty office complaints, their careless jokes about how easy it is to take advantage of small creators.

★ yandere!hacker who gets to work with an ice-cold demeanor. he publishes the ceo's address, phone number, social security number for the whole world to see. he posts anonymous leaks. he sends a whistleblower document to every major news outlet he can think of. even if he gets caught from being too sloppy, he doesn't care. he's doing it all for you. he wants justice for you.

★ yandere!hacker who grins as the company panics after a few days. he watches with amusement as they email you, offering to pay you back triple of what they owed, plus a huge bonus. it would be enough to cover living expenses for a whole year.

★ yandere!hacker who watches you cry on stream the next day, overwhelmed and grateful and stunned that someone, somewhere, had your back. you thank whoever helped you, call them your guardian angel. he stares at the screen for hours after the stream ends, hands shaking, whispering that he’d do it all over again if it meant you’d smile like that.

★ yandere!hacker who, for now, is content with how he handled the situation. the way he rewrote your reality from the shadows makes him feel useful, like he has a purpose again. he doesn’t need recognition, not yet. still, he hopes to break the digital boundary with you someday. he imagines what your voice would sound like in the same room, not filtered through a screen. he imagines reaching out, not through your phone, but with his actual hand. would you flinch? would you scream? would you understand?

only time will tell.

[milf-murdock]

I See Red (Part 1)

Simon "Ghost" Riley x 141!Reader

Part 2 can be found here

Summary: A tech expert lends her expertise to the 141 for a mission. It’s not her fault that she’s tall, beautiful, and perfect. But it is her fault that she can’t keep her goddamn hands to herself. How else are you supposed to react when you walk in to find her lips on your Ghost?   Warnings: allusions to cheating (not Ghost’s fault!! Sweet man has never done anything wrong in his life), swearing, angst (does it make it better if I promise all the fluff in the next chapter?) A/N: Well this has been on my brain for a while. I’m so thrilled to finally have this out into the world! The OGs know that this was one of my first prompts I came up with when I was first writing for Simon Riley. I guess we’ve come full circle <3 Thank you for all your support. Remember, your comments, tags, and messages mean the world to us writers! 

It’s surprising that the harsh grinding of your teeth isn’t audible given how hard you’re clenching your jaw. You watch in irritated silence as a tall curvy redhead named Bex leans over Ghost’s shoulder to peer down at the encrypted computer. 

She’s always so fucking close to him, to your Ghost. 

You steady your growing impatience by taking a swig of water, the thin plastic crinkling under your touch. 

“Hmm.” She leans in closer and you could tell Ghost is on edge. He wasn’t exactly the sort who tolerated too many people encroaching on his personal space. 

Clearly he makes an exception when it comes to gorgeous redheads though, you think to yourself before mentally chastising the thought.

The rational side of your brain knows that he’s more than likely just putting on a brave face because Bex is new to the team. Technically, you correct yourself, not an actual part of the team. She’s more like a short term contractor. Even you had to begrudgingly admit that the 141 needed her level of expertise to crack through the firewalls and get the intel needed to ensure success for the next part of your mission. After all, you risked your life getting the damn laptop. What good is it if you can’t even get into it?

You knew all of this. Logically. It made sense. Your team needed a military-grade computer expert. She was the most qualified for the job—the “best of the best” Price had said. Done. Fin. 

Except…

Except you just couldn’t get over the way her eyes always seemed to linger on Ghost. The way she’d accidentally brush up against him as they walked side by side through the hallway. The way she laughed a little too loud at his terrible Army jokes. And right now, the way her hand rests on his shoulder as she studies the screen. 

Your fist unconsciously clenches around your water bottle causing the ice cold water to gush over the loosened cap, spilling all over your lap. 

You let out a shout, jumping to your feet as the cold water soaks through your layers. Bex jumps as well, surprised by the outburst, stepping back from the mess. 

Simon is on his feet in a heartbeat. 

“You okay?” But not even his deep baritone, usually instantly calming, could soothe your irritation, now at an all time high.

“I’m fine,” you snap, crossing the briefing room in strides to toss the empty bottle in the bin.  Ghost watches you with careful eyes. Though his face is covered by his signature skull balaclava, you didn’t miss his appraising gaze as he tries to assess the situation—ever the tactician. 

You take a deep breath. “I’m fine,” you try again, aiming for a more pleasant tone. “Really. Just a slip of the hand.” 

“Well,” Bex scoffs, “You really should be more careful. We are dealing with electronics here, you know.” Her snarky tone has you nearly seeing red again, but you clench your jaw tight and plaster the friendliest smile you could muster, though you’re certain it must look more like a grimace. 

“Noted,” you grit out before turning your attention back to Ghost. “I’m gonna head to the barracks and grab a shower. Catch you later?” 

Ghost’s head bobs in a subtle nod, but his eyes are still looking at you with that quizzical expression on his face. He knows something is wrong. 

You just subtly shake your head in response, doing your best to a convey a “not now. We’ll talk later” with just a glance. Turning back to the door, you leave the two of them behind to tackle the task at hand. The sooner you crack the encryption and figured out where your target is, the sooner Bex can get the fuck out of here.

Walking across the base, you pinched the bridge of your nose between your fingers, internally scolding yourself for letting your temper get the best of you. The fresh, cool evening air helps calm your sour mood, and you do your best to reassure yourself. 

I’m sure it’s nothing.

 It’s all in your head. 

He probably doesn’t even like redheads.

You’re so caught up in your thoughts you don’t even see where you were going, which is exactly how you find yourself running face first into the brick wall of Johnny. 

Oomph. The air whooshes out of your lungs as two broad hands reach up to steady you. 

“Easy there, lass,” the Scottsman chuckles. “Watch where yer goin’ bonnie.” 

“Sorry Soap,” your cheeks feel warm with embarrassment. “Didn’t see you there. Lost in my own head.” 

“I’ll say!” Johnny claps a hand on your shoulder, the other balancing a stack of folders. “Hey, while I have you here, have ye seen LT?” 

“Yeah, he’s with Bex in the briefing room. They’re trying to tackle that computer we lifted from the last mission.” 

Soap nods. “More power to her. That shite doesn’t make any fucking sense to me.” 

“Yeah. She’s a real blessing to the team,” you grumble, unable to withhold your eye roll. 

“There’s that fiery sergeant I love so much,” Soap teases. “Am I getting a whiff a jealousy, hen?” 

“Don’t even get me started Soap or I swear to god—“

“Alright, alright,” Soap laughs good naturally, his free hand coming up in mock surrender.  “But hey, would you mind dropping off these files to LT? He needs to review them before our meeting with Laswell in a couple hours and I’ve got to meet up with Price now, don’t have time to trek all the way to the briefing room.” 

“Sure,” you do manage to hold back your sigh this time. “Happy to help.” And you are happy to help Soap—he’s a great friend to both you and Simon—you just aren’t too happy at the thought of seeing your new BFF Bex again so soon. At least the short walk had served its purpose in cooling your temper a bit. 

“You’re a treat, bonnie, I owe you one,” Soap smiles, giving your shoulder a firm pat before taking off in the opposite direction towards price’s office. 

You adjust the stack of sealed papers in your hands as your turned back around towards the briefing room and head across base. 

You quick steps have you approaching the briefing room soon enough. Surprisingly, the door is  left slightly ajar—you must not have shut it all the way when you stormed out of the room earlier, you reason.

You approach silently, softening your footsteps to avoid any kind of noise, a small voice in the back of your mind goading you to surreptitiously see how Bex might behave without an audience. You peer in the room to find Bex and Simon standing at the table, the computer screen lighting up in front of them. 

“We’re in!” Bex exclaims, her voice high pitched with excitement. 

You watch the scene unfold before you and it feels like the world is moving in slow motion. Bex turns her radiant expression up to face Simon, her hands moving upwards and tucking up under his balaclava, and then—in the blink of an eye—she raises it above his chin and presses a kiss to his lips. Simon’s hands reach up to grasp her wrists, already beginning to pull away, but it’s too late. 

You see everything. 

The papers fall to the floor with a crash, and both Simon and Bex jump apart, eyes flashing to the door. 

Bex at least has the good sense to look embarrassed by her actions, her face flushing bright red, eyes cast to the ground. 

“It’s not what it looks like,” Simon urges, pulling his mask back down in place. “Wait—“ 

You turn and walked out the door, the scene playing on a loop in your head. 

Her lips. Pressed up against Simon. Your Simon. His lips…kissing her back? The memory already warps, tinged with shades of red matching the shades of anger running through you. 

The rage fuels your steps as you run from the briefing room, desperate to get away.

Simon blinks at the empty space in the doorway, the space where you stood just a second ago, before this colossal shit storm descended. 

“Well, sorry we got interrupted,” Bex’s sultry voice breaks the silence, her small hand reaching towards Ghost’s glove. “Should we continue where we left off?”

“Touch me again, and you lose the whole goddamn hand,” Simon’s hardened voice is laced with the threat of violence. “Keep your bloody hands to yourself.” 

The blood drains from Bex’s face. 

With that, he storms out the door, following your trail. One thought playing on repeat in his mind: I can’t lose her. 

Masterlist ✧ Ask Box

Read Part 2 here ❤️

[armoredisopod]

Arknights Spring Festival 2025 PVs

New Operators

Surfer, 5* Agent Vanguard

It's sunny out, wanna go for a walk?

Xingzhu, 5* Welfare Abjurer Supporter

The pen is never sharp, but paper falls like it's flying.

Blaze the Igniting Spark, 6* Primal Caster

I'm back! Right then, it's signed with my real name, Gù Zhúhuáng. Oh Doctor, you don't have to call me anything different, you can still call me Blaze.

Yu, 6* Limited Primal Protector Defender

I'm not gonna give it away for free, hehe, but the price is negotiable.

Of all the flavors in the world, the fullness of life is the best them of all.

Operator Outfits Update

4 new additions for the Made by 0011 brand

Almond Platter - Almond

Prairie Pals - Bena

Youthful Journey - Zuo Le (21 OP)

Spring Feast - Shu (21 OP)

Operator Modules Update

Xingzhu being part of the Abjurer Supporter branch immediately gets her module

BLS-X module base effect increases her healing to 100% of her ATK

Earthshaker Guard branch gets 1 module type

Lin, Zuo Le and Chongyue get their second module

PLX-Y module base effect increases Lin's damage the more enemies are in her range (up to +15%)

SBL-Y module base effect allows Zuo Le to survive with 30% HP upon reaching 0 HP for the first time each deployment

FGT-Y module base effect increases Chongyue's ASPD by +10 when he is above 50% HP

Dusk and Eunectes get specialized modules

Dusk gets an Integrated Strategies module

Eunectes gets a Reclamation Algorithm module

Events and Stories

Such is the Joy of Our Reunion, the next installment of the Sui storyline taking place in the culinary city of Bai Zao

Regardless whether you are worried about family matters or matters of national security, when you're at the dinner table all that matters is a pair of chopsticks.

If you're alive, how come you're not eating properly? It's time for dinner. Go wash up and get ready to eat——

Operator Archives update for Yu, Lin, Wanqing and Grain Buds

Misc Stuff

New QoL features

New activity rooms that players can decorate, operators assigned to these rooms can be controlled and moved around the base, also players can use emojis here for fun

The reception room has been expanded and can be decorated with Reception Room exclusive decor items

Dualchips will only take 1 second to make in the Factory

Added dorm rotation locks, operators in the locked slot will not be affected by the dorm rotation button

Added remaining working time display for certain base facilities and a notification option for shift rotations and operators being fully rested in the settings

Performance upgrades for Workshop, Offices, Training Room, Elevators and other facilities

In-game mail players receive can be stamped and stored in the mail folder where players can review them

Added a Module Showroom where players can conveniently view and manage module information

Archetto, Iris and Beanstalk added to Recruitment

Blue Poison's [Shoal Beat] Outfit will be available in the certs shop to players that don't have it

Livestream Stuff

Showcased Yu, a 6* Primal Protector Defender that specializes in inflicting Burn buildup

First talent makes him deal Arts damage and Burn buildup to enemies he blocks and gives him Sanctuary while blocking

Second talent makes Yu recover HP and elemental HP every second when there is at least a certain amount of ally units on the field

Skill 1 passively makes him more likely to be attacked, when active it increases his Max HP & DEF and makes enemies that attack him take Burn buildup

Skill 2 increases his Block Count, ATK & DEF, makes his attacks deal Arts damage, and upon skill activation it immediately deals Arts damage to all enemies in his skill range and teleports all the hit ground enemies to his tile

Skill 3 increases his Max HP, ATK & DEF and makes his second talent apply to all operators, upon skill activation it generates a firewall that spans across the entire battlefield, operator attacks that deal Arts damage against enemies on the opposite side of the firewall will additionally deal Burn buildup based on Yu's ATK, enemy projectiles that hit the firewall have a chance to be nullified

Showcased Blaze the Igniting Spark, a 6* Primal Caster that takes advantage of Burn Burst

First talent activates when Burn Burst triggers on any enemy on the field, deal more Elemental damage to them based on Blaze's ATK and she recovers some HP

Second talent activates when Blaze is defeated, instead of retreating she will instead be knocked down and she gains a large amount of Barrier, she cannot attack or be healed while downed but she recovers HP every second, once fully healed she will revive and Stun all nearby enemies for a few seconds

S1 drops a fire field on the operator with highest Max HP in her range, it deals Arts damage every second and Burn buildup based on the damage dealt by the fire field, lasting for several seconds

S2 changes her range, increases her attack interval, increases her ATK and allows her to attack multiple targets at once, she loses HP with each attack but the enemies she attacks leaves a fire trail, enemies in the fire trail have reduced Movement Speed, receive Arts damage and Burn buildup based on the damage dealt by the fire trail

S3 changes her range, greatly shortens her attack interval, increases her ATK and makes her attacks AoE, if the enemies she hits are under Burn Burst status she deals additional Elemental damage to them, it is an ammo skill that makes her lose HP every second but when Burn Burst triggers on any enemy on the field she gains more ammo, skill can be deactivated manually

Showcased the event mechanic, Fire Stoves powered by chopstick enemies that have hit-based HP, chopsticks will go into one of the 2 stoves on the field depending on their state, enemy chopsticks can be attacked and converted into allied chopsticks and vice versa, when fully charged the allied stove will summon a spirit dragon that deals massive true damage to all enemies in its path

The cost required to spark Nian will be reduced to 200 starting from this event, the cost required to spark Skadi the Corrupting Heart will be reduced to 200 in the CN 6th anniversary event

Announced CC#3 Battleplan Extinguished Sins which is confirmed to have Ep14 enemies and mechanics

IS#3 will gain 3 more difficulty levels up to Surging Waves 18

Starting from SW16 there is a new feature where players can suppress Rejection effects and gain "Genomes" at the end of each battle

At SW17 Rejections will be replaced by Combined Rejections

At SW18, Elite and Leader enemies take -50% Physical and Arts damage for 20s after entering the field, and their ATK is increased by +30%

Rhodes Island Icebreaker Games will return with new features as an annual gamemode

Players can select their preferred play style before matches to obtain their preferred buffs and better communicate their gameplay to other players

Players can swap lineups

More levels and difficulties will be added to Regular Events

New balls and enemy units added to Positional Football

New mechanics and boss added to Bastion Defense

Players can take commemorative photos of their units with their teammates after the match

A new outfit for Vermeil and Originium Slug emojis are some of the rewards players can get from IG#1

Showcased the new base update features such as a music player that can change the background music in the base (limited to main menu background themes) and an info board that displays your friends that recently visited

Announced the next story collection event in involving Eblana, Talulah and Amiya

Teased the next event featuring Eblana

Announced Episode 15, the start of Act III of the main story where Rhodes Island returns to Rim Billiton and cliffhangers from Ep14 will be resolved

Announced an in-game event timeline that puts all the main story chapters, intermezzo, side stories and story collection in chronological order

[hwangjoanna]

Teasers for upcoming fics!

I don’t have an exact date these will be released but I’m hoping to finish my squid game AU before I post these but if any of them are finished before that then I may 🫶🏻

‘Hack Into My heart.’

slow burnish | office romance au | nerdy IT guy Hyunjin X Boss f!reader | colleagues to lovers | awkward, angst, love, smut. 18+ mdni.

Two Part One Shot

Beneath a composed exterior, the company’s powerful CEO Y/N thrives on control until a sudden cyberattack threatens to bring her entire empire crashing down. With her life’s work on the line, she turns to the only person who might save it: Hyunjin, the quiet and awkward but brilliant I.T. technician. In the glow of midnight monitors, unspoken tension simmers between them as Hyunjin works tirelessly to unravel the hack, his steady hands and sharp mind battling the digital enemy. Yet it’s the closeness of his determined, captivating boss that sends his heart racing. Y/n watches this soft-spoken genius pour himself into protecting her company, and with each passing hour she glimpses the passionate soul behind his shy exterior. As firewalls fall, so do the walls around their hearts.

‘Stray Things.’

slow burn | demon/devil au | dom/hyunjin X sub/f!reader | strangers to lovers? | dark romance | angst, love, smut, thriller, horror, gore, supernatural. 18+ mdni.

Mini-Series loosely based on Stephen King’s Novel ‘Needful Things.’

When Y/N is walking home from a work night out, the last thing she expected was to be drawn into the orbit of a mysterious antique shop and its even more enigmatic owner, Hyunjin. With hypnotic charm and a knowing smile. Stray Things, a quaint little store that seems to offer the perfect item for everyone who steps inside… for a price. Y/N is skeptical until she finds something on his shelves from her past. As her connection with Hyunjin deepens, so too does the darkness spreading through the town. Neighbors turn on each other. Secrets are unearthed. Whispers of bargains and debts begin to circulate. Caught between the pull of a man who knows her heart’s deepest longing and the growing realization that not everything is as it seems, she must decide: how much is she willing to pay for what she truly desires?

‘Only Lovers Left Alive.’

hyunlix | slow burn | dark romance | vampire au | sub/f!reader x hard dom/hyunjin x soft dom/felix | obsession, possession, mutual pining, love, smut, horror, violence, gore, dark themes. 18+mdni.

Mini Series loosely based on the film ‘Only lovers left alive.’

When Y/N moves to a quiet city for a fresh start and new job opportunity, she visits an old record shop tucked between forgotten streets and timeworn brick. There she meets Felix - charming, playful, disarming and Hyunjin, his silent tortured artist, brooding counterpart. She’s intrigued by the mystery of them, by their strange hours, their intensity, the way they seem to orbit each other like something ancient and unfinished. There’s something about them, something inhuman. Secrets and a hunger they’ve long tried to control and Y/N? She’s more than just temptation. She’s the breaking point neither of them saw coming.

All tag lists are open now! Please let me know which one you’d like to join, you’re welcome to join all three 🖤 I’m excited to share these with you as well as some exciting collabs that are currently in the pipeline!

Tag lists-

All 3 - @fairylix @hoes4minho @lilileen25 @akindaflora @tirena1

[diejager]

makarov hunting an/a (enemy? long assassin?) reader who doesn’t really want to work with him- reader knows their stuff, erasing tracks, setting up traps, etc- its a game

призрак Cw: canon-typical death, murder, assassination, mercenary, blood, tell me if I missed any.

You were a ghost —призрак in his mother-tongue. Appearing whenever you wanted and disappearing before anyone could find you, a phantom in the business of assassination, a killer without too high of a price. He’s watched the aftermath of your handiwork, the shows you played and the kills you made, they were a masterpiece he wanted to witness, to utilise for his goals. Even from the darkness of his solitary cell, locked away in the Gulag - the Zorgaya prison complex - he kept hearing about your endeavours.

You interest him, your brought out a certain excitement, made adrenaline pump in his blood, when you were first brought up. You were the a ghost - a wraith - that haunted the world, killing off men and women for the right number. You were a killer for hire, one of the best in the industry that even he - Vladimir Makarov - had attempted to recruit, to tie you down to his name and fame, to have you work for his purpose. Permanently.

But you were a slippery one, escaping whatever trap he carefully laid out for you, falling through his fingers, finding the smallest crack - mistake - in his plan that he once thought was full-proof. You were smart, feisty and skillful, able to see through his carefully crafted words for a hire, pushing past the firewall of his mind and planting a virus, corrupting his original purpose, rooting yourself into his sick mind. This feeling, the way his heart rammed against his rib when you sent a warning shot, or when you escaped from his grasp, this wasn’t love —no, he was a being detached from such frivolous affairs. He didn’t love. He couldn’t with his cold, dead heart. This was an obsession, Makarov obsessed over things, he knit picked, he stole and took apart.

Makarov was a being whose conscious transcended the likes of capitalist westerners who’ve corrupted his motherland, small-minded and parasitic politician who made the Soviet Union crumble to dust; whose forgone the primal needs that made humanity weak —vulnerable; Vladimir Makarov was better than any man.

That’s where stemmed his obsession with you, the need to hunt you down. You portrayed yourself as a being higher than him. A better strategist and killer than him. It went from word of mouth to ear, Makarov heard from the other guards and new inmate speak of you, you achievements, the spike in your demands and the people who were ready to give you an arm and leg to pay for your service. Powerful men and women routing you an undisclosed amount of money to kill of someone, to have them assassinated in their own bedroom, to be drowned in their own bathtub or to be poisoned by their own wine.

He had Konni keep a track on your work while he waited for the right time to be freed, jumping back to work once he landed in Russia. He took it on himself to follow your steps, he had a hand in every sector of the underworld, dabbing in everything to keep his hold over the world. He couldn’t find anything about you, neither your past nor your character, you were nameless and faceless, the hooded mask obscuring your face from the world. Makarov’s best couldn’t even track you through cameras and find your deposit account, it seemed as though you had a team of your own, working in the dark to keep your and their livelihood going.

You evaded his traps, able to figure out which deals were made by him as a ploy to catch you, to find the ghost that haunted his mind. You were a disease, a parasite that unknowingly clung to him. You knew him, the messages he received through the grapevines, taunting remarks and threats that made him see red. You were too skillful, erasing your steps, making it seem as if you were never there in the first place, uninvolved with it, but the world knew who committed the crime. This was a game - or so he liked to think - of cat and mouse, he preferred being the cat, the dangerous and cunning feline who stalked the small mouse, he had to swallow his pride and confess that he played the mouse as often as he played the cat, being hunted and narrowly escaping because you let him.

But this, this meeting was a surprise, to see his призрак stand before him, tempted by the proposition he had to offer you —without any underlying meaning or hidden thoughts.

“мы наконец встретились, Призрак.” (We finally meet, ghost.)

Taglist: @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @tallmanlover @distracteddragoness @vxnilla-hxrddrugs @konigsblog @havoc973 @im-making-an-effort @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @danielle143 @dont-mind-me-just-existing-sadly @tuttifuckinfruttifriday

[mariacallous]

When Germany’s election results were announced on Feb. 23 at the packed headquarters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Berlin, the hall erupted into wild rejoicing. The party’s leadership, among it frontperson Alice Weidel, and hundreds of supporters waving German flags immediately recognized the party’s 21 percent tally as a conspicuous victory—exactly twice its 2021 result—even though the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) won more votes by 8 percentage points, and with this the mandate to form a government.

Despite the fact that Germany’s other parties refuse to govern with it, the AfD—an extremist xenophobic party with ties to neo-Nazis—has definitively broken out of the margins and is positioned squarely at the center of German politics. It is now Germany’s second-strongest party; the largest opposition party in the Bundestag; the favored party of the working class; the no. 1 party in Germany’s eastern states; a darling of the new U.S. administration; and it also boasts representation in the regional legislatures of all but one German state and in the EU parliament, too, where it is buttressed by like-minded allies.

Perhaps, though, most critically: The election campaign illustrated just how fundamentally the AfD—as a party operating exclusively from opposition rows—can leverage a crude racist populism to swing the country’s political discourse and move rivals in its direction. The AfD’s cudgel was migration, which it wielded ruthlessly to force every other party (save the democratic socialist party, The Left) to harden their positions on the treatment of asylum-seekers, political asylum as such, policing practices, labor migration, and border policies. Every one of those parties paid a price at the urns for their acquiescence. The Left, on the other hand, was the only democratic party to significantly better its 2021 result and outperform the polls.

This applies to the CDU and Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, too—and will follow them into the chancellery. In response to the AfD’s drumbeat and a series of tragic, violent incidents involving asylum-seekers in Germany, Merz threw caution to the wind in late January, just weeks before the vote, to switch the campaign’s focus from the economy, Merz’s specialty, to migration, the AfD’s bugbear. Merz went so far as to propose a raft of measures restricting migration from the Bundestag floor with the help of AfD votes—a step he and other mainstream politicos pledged they would never take—thus further eroding the anti-AfD “firewall” that the centrist parties vowed to respect.

With eyes wide shut, the CDU walked into a trap that has spelled the marginalization or even disappearance of center-right parties across Europe: By taking up the call of the far right, Europe’s conservatives feed the extremists that voters ultimately deem more authentic or convincing on their own bread-and-butter issues—at the conservatives’ expense. While the CDU captured more votes than the AfD, its 28.5 percent showing counts as its second-lowest ever and several points below its polling before Merz’s controversial maneuver. Like in France, Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as across Central Europe, the center right’s adoption of far-right positions played right into the court of radicals. Election data shows that the CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD) lost voters to the AfD.

The CDU can’t claim a “resounding victory,” concluded ARD, Germany’s public broadcaster. “Instead, it is well above the worst-ever 2021 tally of 24 percent, but far below the 42 percent that Angela Merkel’s CDU captured in 2013. Why is that?” the broadcaster asked. “It’s a combination of the generally difficult situation, the aftereffects of the Merkel era, mistakes made by the CDU leadership, but certainly also competition from the right. … Merz’s goal was not to leave the topic of migration to the AfD. … Did this tactic work? The numbers suggest: probably not.”

“Parties such as the AfD thrive on the longing for authority and security, and the current government [led by SPD] conveyed the opposite,” opined the daily Tageszeitung. “This is where the incessant crisis rhetoric of the right, whose slogans of ‘foreigners out’ offer a simple solution using authoritarian means, catches on,” social psychologist Oliver Decker told the media outlet. The fact that the centrist parties have jumped on the migration issue has not weakened the AfD, but rather legitimized it, he concluded.

The AfD was born in 2013, not as an extremist party but as an EU-critical collection of nationally minded neoliberal economists who questioned Germany’s role in Europe’s 2009-10 financial crisis and the replacement of the Deutsche mark, Germany’s postwar currency, with the euro. But soon after its founding, the party started creeping to the right—its earliest successes happening in Germany’s eastern states, which have proved its bastion ever since. “Initially, the AfD appealed to older voters who considered themselves conservative but were disenchanted with Merkel,” Rüdiger Maas, the author of bestselling books on Germany, told FP.

The east was fertile soil for the increasingly hard-right party: Easterners expressed broad disappointment with unification, which they felt had treated them unfairly and turned them into second-class citizens. The east’s economic transition—a bill footed by the state to the tune of $2 trillion—resulted in rampant unemployment and, to this day, lower wages and living standards for those in the east. (That is, for those who didn’t flee it: Around 3.6 million people left.)

Moreover, the easterners had very little experience with migration, foreign cultures such as Islam, and coexistence with non-Germans. The first nonwhite migrants in the 1990s were often confronted with naked violence; a hard-right neo-Nazi scene flourished and even dominated rural locations. When over a million migrants streamed into Germany from 2015 to 2016, those who settled in the east faced hostility and deep-seated resentment. The AfD radicalized, as did the eastern Germans: above all, the non-college-educated, male, rural-situated, and over-40 voters, who constituted the party’s mainstay.

“From the very beginning, the AfD was a male party that appealed above all to men,” Daniela Rüther, an historian at Bochum University, told FP. “Like every völkische Bewegung (ethnically defined national movement) in German history, it puts the traditional family with its male-led hierarchy at the center of the community. Some of its gender policies are taken directly, one-to-one, from the Nazis.” The fact that the AfD is today led by a (gay) woman in Weidel only appears to be a contradiction, Rüther said. Were the AfD to come to power, she said, Weidel would be sidelined just as the female antagonist of Serena Joy is in the conservative revolution in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

As the AfD entered eastern German legislatures, it simultaneously shed its liberal sensibilities for an ever more hard-right archconservatism. The AfD swung sharply to the far right, adopting ever more radical positions on migration, Islam, the climate crisis, and foreign nationals in Germany, as well as an affinity for President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, latent antisemitism, and a rebuttal of Germany’s self-critical approach to its World War II past.

Its stunning electoral successes, however, first came in response to the refugee crisis. In 2016 and 2017, it stormed into regional legislatures in western Germany and then with tallies above 20 percent in several of the eastern states. In the east, a West German-born fortysomething and former schoolteacher named Björn Höcke gained prominence as the leader of the AfD’s most radical branch, called Der Flügel. Höcke made no bones about his sympathies for the Third Reich and disdain for Western-style democracy. Höcke, for example, referred to the Holocaust memorial in central Berlin as a “monument of shame,” the kind of breach of German taboo that many observers, including relative moderates in the party, thought would disqualify him from German politics. These views attracted the attention of Germany’s intelligence services, which put several of the eastern party branches, including Höcke’s, under surveillance.

On the contrary, Höcke and his allies helped the party chalk up ever larger tallies. In 2019, he led the Thuringia AfD to a 23 percent showing and then five years later to capture 33 percent of the vote—making it Thuringia’s strongest party, another milestone.

Yesterday, in Thuringia, Höcke took the party to a new record high: a full 38 percent of the vote. So tenuous are the democratic parties’ hold on Thuringia that they agreed last year to govern in a desperate, ungainly coalition of CDU, SPD, and the left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. But at least the firewall held. Another grim statistic: In the east, it’s no longer old voters who back the party but rather the youngest: One in three male voters under 24 cast their ballot for the AfD. “These young people grew up with the AfD,” Maas explained. “In many cases their parents were the first AfD voters. For them, the AfD was always part of the Bundestag, talk shows, regional politics.” Moreover, Maas said, this generation gets its politics from social media, mostly TikTok, which the far right (and the far left) swamped with their messages.

In yesterday’s poll—as in the June 2024 EU parliament vote—the AfD swept the five eastern states: its bright blue party color standing in stark contrast to the jet black of the western states, the CDU’s color. This is Germany: a country divided between democratic and undemocratic archconservatives. From the AfD’s point of view, a coalition between conservatives and the right makes all the sense in the world. It looks natural in light of the striking overlap, not least on migration. Their voters share similar concerns. But the Christian conservatives remain adamant that it will never happen. “Never again” was the promise of the postwar generation that Germany would never be home to a fascist politics again. As one of the placards at the anti-right demonstrations across Germany earlier this month proclaimed: “Never again is now.”

[kindersurprisebacterium]

Virgin (Simon Riley / Reader)

CW: virgin!simon, simon is bad at communicating, power imbalances, pining, vaginal fingering, vaginal sex, dry humping, loss of virginity

Gender Neutral AFAB Reader

WC: 3.7k

His shadow hung over me, dark and imposing. He was never close enough to graze against me, but close enough to feel his presence. He didn’t say a word to my during my first month on base, opting to silently glare at me from afar. Slowly, he crept closer and closer. Like a frog in boiling water, I grew acquainted with the feeling of being watched. 

Other recruits would laugh, calling him my “guard dog”, or asking if I took him out on a walk. I held my tongue, glancing back over my shoulder at the man. It was just a superior looking out for their corporal. 

My eyelids fluttered closed, fingers clenching around the bar. My quads strained, fibers pulling tight as I sunk into a squat. I pursed my lips, exhaling a steady stream of air. Tears welled in my eyes as lactic acid pooled in my muscles. 

“Fuck-” I gasped, head dropping to the floor. I pushed into my heels, straining against the weight. Pain ballooned in my limbs. My body didn’t move even an inch. 

A pair of arms slipped beneath my arms, wrapping around my chest. With a soft grunt from behind me, I was pulled to my feet. Sweat beaded down my forehead, damp strands of hair sticking to my skin. 

With a clatter, I pushed the bar back onto the rack. Thick fingertips skated over my skin before dropping to my side. Drawing in a shaky breath, I turned on my heels to face the man behind me. 

His balaclava was discarded, and replaced by a plain black surgical mask. Sticky strands of his short blonde hair hung in his face. His brown eyes were streaked with days-old eyeshadow. Heat rushed to my face. My eyes dropped to the ground, fingers fiddling with the dressings wrapped around my knuckles. 

“Thank you, L.T.” I mumbled, swallowing down my embarrassment. He simply grumbled in response, his boots thudding against the carpeted floor. 

-

“I’m just asking for a couple more days. I wasn’t expecting these firewalls to be so…intense…” I explained, clutching my laptop in my hands. My leg bobbed up and down, heel clicking against the vinyl flooring. 

Price thumbed through the pile of documents on the desk in front of him. His eyes narrowed as he scanned across the words. Huffing, he pushed the papers toward me, scattering the reports. I reached out, grabbing a few stray pages that fell to the ground. 

“I’m giving you twelve hours,” he clicked his tongue, “I’ve got a group of men en route to the facility, and if they don’t have access to the building, their deaths will be on you.” 

Nausea swelled in my throat. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. Clenching my jaw, I nodded, humming softly in agreement. I rose to my feet, the backs of my knees bumping against my chair. 

“Thank you, sir,” I nodded, turning on my heel. I extended one shaky hand, wrapping my fingers around the brass doorknob. A wave of cool air hit my flushed face as I pulled the thick mahogany door open. 

My eyes widened as a pair of deep brown irises locked onto mine. His hulking frame leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his broad chest. He stared at me through the narrow holes in the skull plate on his mask. I turned away, pursing my lips in a weak attempt to quell the quivering in my bottom lip. 

I could hear the door shut behind me as he slipped into the captain's office. Chewing on the inside of my lip, I started down the corridor. My heels clicked against the linoleum, echoing down the barren hall. 

Muffled voices caught my attention, stopping me in my tracks. I turned over my shoulder, glancing back at the office. I couldn’t make out the words, only the incoherent rumble of a deep voice. Simon’s voice. 

Shaking my head, I continued down the hall before tucking into my office. The warm, earthy scent of coffee greeted me as I stepped inside. My fingers wrapped around the armrest of my chair, tugging it toward me. The chair legs scraped against the tiles. Huffing, I sat down, pushing my laptop open.

A jumbled mess of code illuminated my screen. I stared at the lines of text, slowly blinking as I read the inputs over and over. My head slowly tilted forward, eyelids fluttering shut as my lack of sleep caught up with me. I gasped, sitting up straight, weakly shaking my head in a poor attempt to wake myself. My keyboard clacked as I typed in another line of code. 

“Access denied.”

I groaned, resting my cheek on the desk. The letters and numbers before me blurred, merging into incoherent symbols. If I just closed my eyes for a moment…just a minute or two…

“Hey.”

I groaned, turning to press my other cheek into the cold wood. 

“Corporal, you better not be sleeping on the job.”

I lifted my head, wiping the drool from my mouth with the back of my sleeve. A gloved hand rested on my desk, fingertips idly tapping against the oak. My lips curled down into a frown, my bottom lip quivering as I stared at the mess of files before me. Tears welled in my eyes, blurring the words on my screen. I sniffled, glancing up at the man before me. 

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” Thick tears ran down my cheeks, dripping onto the stack of papers before me. 

“Get some sleep, you look like hell.” I couldn’t see through the balaclava, but I knew he was frowning. His thick brows furrowed, eyes narrowing as he looked down at me. 

“I can’t, this is due in-”

“Thirty-six hours. He meant to say thirty-six. Not twelve,” he interrupted me, arms crossing over his chest. “I said, get some sleep, corporal. You can’t work like this.”

“Yes, sir,” I nodded, rising to my feet. 

As I pulled myself under the sheets, I didn’t bother to pay any mind to the shadow cast over my floor, or the fact that I left my door open. 

-

The computer chimed. I wrapped my fingers around the flash drive and pulled. Glancing over my shoulder, I reached out, placing the drive into my lieutenant's open hand. He curled his fingers around the device. 

“C’mon,” he grunted, nodding toward the door. I grasped my gun, keeping the body pressed tight to my hip. Simon leaned against the door frame, peering around the corner. He took a step forward, mumbling under his breath. I followed behind him, glancing over my shoulder, eyes scanning across the empty warehouse floor. 

His gloved hand grasped the doorknob. Above the unmarked door was an exit sign. The hinges softly creaked as he pushed the door open. 

“Clear,” he spoke just barely above a whisper. Parked just outside the exit was our car. The plates were blank, sides unmarked. I quickly pulled myself into the passenger side, shutting the door behind me. I grasped the seatbelt, glancing at my superior out of the corner of my eye. 

The engine roared to life as he turned the key. He gripped the shift with his gloved hand and pulled it into drive. Distant shouts drew my attention.

Shots rang out, blowing out the windows. My cheek met his thigh as he forcefully pulled me down. I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut. His fingers gripped my hair tight, holding me flush against his body.

“Fucking drive!” I shouted. 

Another gunshot erupted as he floored the gas pedal. The car started down the road with a roar from the engine. My fingernails dug into the worn leather seats, wheels squealing as he turned onto a main road. 

I sat up, glancing out the back window. Two figures dressed in military uniforms slowly faded into the horizon as Simon sped down the freeway. My chest heaved as I took in deep breaths. 

I glanced at my Lieutenant out of the corner of my eye. His knee bobbed as he tapped his heel against the floor. I folded my hands in my lap, pursing my lips tight. 

-

A soft knock drew my attention. I glanced up from my book, setting it down on my bedside table. I hummed, rising to my feet and slowly stalking toward the door. It was past sunset, and the rest of the barracks seemed to still. My fingers grasped the doorknob, twisting gently. 

I pulled the door open, stepping back once an imposing figure came into view. Simon stared down at me, his balaclava hiding his expression. My pulse raced, heart pounding in my ears. With a shaky voice, I invited him in, stepping aside for the man. He pushed the door shut as he stepped inside, only grunting softly. 

“I’m sorry for yelling at you, lieutenant. I was out of line, I shouldn’t have-”

His gloved hand slipped beneath his balaclava, tugging the knit fabric from his face. I stayed quiet, my gaze flicking across his face, taking in every bit of exposed skin. Thin white lines ran down his face, scars from years past. His nose was crooked, turned downward like a Greek statue. A thick patch of scar tissue ran under his jawline, which was well defined. His brown eyes stayed trained on me, watching me eagerly as I took in the sight before me. 

“You weren’t out of line,” he shook his head, reaching out to take my hand in his. His hand engulfed mine, fingers lacing with my own. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

His thumb gently stroked the back of my hand. His touch was gentle, unusually so for a man of his stature. He extended a shaky hand, only to pull back with a hum. Heat rushed to my face. I chewed the inside of my lip, biting back my thoughts. 

It was hard to ignore his heavy breaths, and his sweaty hands. Hard to ignore the dusty blush that settled on his cheeks. And even harder to ignore the open hand hesitantly reaching toward me. 

“Lieutenant, are you okay?” I tilted my head up to look at the man before me. 

“Simon. Call me Simon,” he urged, fingers flexing around my own. 

“Simon…” my gaze lowered to his lips, plush and scarred. My breath hitched as I felt his fingertips skate across my side. He draped his hand over my hip, fingers digging into my skin. 

“Can I…” his lips parted, but no sound escaped. I glanced down at his hand, resting my palm on his knuckles. I trailed my fingers upward over his forearm. My nails traced along the intricate ink adorning his pale skin, followed the swirls of black that blended in with his scars. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asked.

My hand broke from his grip, sliding up his chest. His breaths were heavy, brown eyes flicking across my face. I looped both of my arms around the back of his neck and pulled him down to my level. Standing on my toes, I leaned in, pressing my lips to his. My eyelids fluttered closed as his lips moved against mine. 

My heart raced, igniting a spark in my stomach. I felt dizzy, my thoughts fading away, replaced by the feeling of his plush lips. This had to be against the rules, a violation of boundaries, and yet I melted into his touch. A soft noise fell from my tongue as his hands slid down my back. 

I took a step back, pulling him toward me, and then another. My calves met the bed, brushing against my duvet. I broke away from his kiss, meeting his brown eyes as I sat at the edge of my bed. His brown eyes widened, lips parting in silent shock. 

“Sorry, are we going too fast?” I asked, bringing my hands to his. 

“No, I’m just…” his brows knitted, plush lips pursing into a thin line. “I’ve never…”

I narrowed my eyes at him. Never what? My gaze flicked to his hands, which were clenched tightly into fists. Then to his jeans, which his cock strained against. Then to his face. The blush on his cheeks had deepened, and his deep brown eyes couldn’t hold contact with mine. 

“You’re a virgin?” I asked. 

“Jesus, don’t say it like that,” he shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“It’s okay- It’s just…do you want to do this?” I crossed my legs, bringing them up onto the mattress. He nodded. The mattress creaked as he shifted his weight onto the bed. I wrapped my fingertips around his shirt collar and pulled tight. 

His kiss was more frantic, needier. I laid back against the pillows and crossed my ankles behind his back. A soft noise fell from his lips as he moved them against mine. I carded my fingers through his short blonde locks, tugging gently. 

He rocked his hips against mine, groaning into my mouth. His tongue swiped against my bottom lip, urging me to open. I parted my lips for him, moaning as his tongue slid against my own. He tasted like chewing tobacco and musk, staining my tongue with his flavor. 

I grasped the hem of his shirt, pulling it up over his stomach. His muscles flexed underneath my touch. I pulled the fabric over his broad shoulders, letting it drop beside our bodies. 

He stared down at me, his pupils dilated. My palms skated down his sides, over scars and burns from years ago. He felt rough under my touch, skin calloused and uneven. 

His hands slipped beneath my shirt, sliding over my stomach and up to my ribs. I grabbed the bunched fabric, freeing myself of it. His eyes widened as he took in my bare frame.

“You can touch me, Simon,” I grabbed his wrists, my fingers barely able to wrap around them, and brought his hands to my bare chest. His fingers dug into my skin, groping every bit of flesh he could reach. My back arched off of the mattress when he pinched one of my nipples between his fingers. 

I could feel his cock twitch from within the confines of his jeans. Every noise I made, every reaction, spurred one from him. His breath grew heavier, and the blush staining his cheeks crept down his neck to his toned chest. 

He sat back on his shins, bringing his hands to my shorts. I watched as he undid the button and slowly eased the fabric over my hips and down my thighs. I kicked the fabric off of my calves, letting the fabric fall to the ground with a thump. 

My knees fell apart, earning a muffled moan from the man before me. He reached out, running two fingers up my dripping core. A thin silver string of my arousal clung to his digits as he pulled them away. 

“How do I…” he went quiet, eyes fixated on my cunt. 

“I’ll show you, give me your hand.” I placed my hand over his, pushing on three of his digits. He curled the fingers inward, leaving just his index and middle finger. He watched eagerly as I brought his hand to my core, slowly circling them around my clit. A soft moan fell from my lips. He took control, keeping up with the pace I set and adding pressure against the nerves.

My head fell against the pillows, a string of moans slipping from my mouth. I rocked my hips against his hands, grinding against his fingers. His fingertips skated down my core before pushing past my entrance. My eyes fluttered closed as a dull burning built in my hips. His digits were thick, pressing against my walls and stretching me out. 

“Fuck-” I cursed under my breath, staring up at my lieutenant with half-lidded eyes. 

“I’m sorry, am I hurting you?” His brows furrowed.

“No- no, Simon. It feels good. Keep going,” I whined, my hips bucking against his hand. He leaned in, pressing his bare chest to mine. His lips met my neck, trailing gentle kisses across my skin. My hand slid up the back of his neck, tangling into his hair. 

Tension popped in my stomach. My thighs squeezed around his wrist. With a soft grunt, he pushed my legs apart, watching as I took every inch of his fingers. 

His pace quickened, pulling more desperate noises from my chest. It had been a while since anyone had touched me, and his thick fingers pressed against all the right spots inside of me. My cunt squelched around his digits as he pistoned them into me. 

“Faster-” I sputtered, hips absentmindedly grinding. I choked out a sob when he pressed the heel of his palm against my clit. His teeth sank into my neck, just enough to leave behind angry red marks. 

My vision blurred, head spinning as he fucked me with his fingers. I gripped the duvet beneath my body until my knuckles turned pale. Sweat beaded down my chest. Sticky strands of damp hair stuck to my forehead. 

“Oh, fuck- I’m gonna cum!” My words were punctuated with loud, unfiltered moans. His knuckles thumped against my thigh with every thrust. My arousal ran down his fingers, coating his skin. 

I tensed under his touch, muscles pulling tight like elastic. My back arched off of the bed, pushing my hips into his hand. My ears rang, tinnitus taking over as a wave of pleasure washed over my body. 

My chest heaved as I took in short, panting breaths. He pulled his fingers out of my cunt, pressing kisses along my jawline. I grabbed his chin between my fingers, pulling his lips to mine. He pulled away, a string of saliva connecting our parted lips. 

“So are you gonna fuck me or what?” I asked, my lips curling into a crooked smile. 

“I doubt I’ll last long,” he mumbled, glancing away from me. 

“I’m not expecting you to,” I shook my head. “But it doesn’t really matter, Simon.”

His brown eyes locked onto mine. I reached out, fingertips brushing along his belt. I hastily undid the buckle before pulling the leather from his belt loops. He undid the silver button at the front of his jeans and pushed the denim over his hips. 

His cock sprang out of its confines. My eyes widened as i took in the sight before me. He was thick enough that I knew it’d be a stretch. His cock was flushed, and pre cum beaded at his tip, running down his impressive length. 

I crossed my ankles behind his back and took his length in my hand. I guided his cock to my entrance, brushing his tip against my cunt. His eyelids fluttered closed, a heavy sigh falling from his parted lips. He pushed his hips forward, slowly sinking inside of me. 

I clenched my jaw as tension swelled between my hips. He sank another inch inside of me, stretching me out slowly. A moan fell from his parted lips, nose scrunching up as he took in the feeling of my fluttering cunt. 

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groaned, pressing a hasty open-mouthed kiss to my lips. I whined against his lips, my tongue sliding into his mouth. His hips stilled as he bottomed out inside of me. 

I felt undeniably full, stretched to the brim. My head felt like it was spinning. My cunt seized around his cock. He moaned, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck. 

“If you keep doing that I’m not gonna last-” he grunted, rolling his hips into me. My thighs squeezed his hips , holding his body flush to mine as he thrusted into me. 

His pace was fast and unrelenting. With every thrust his cock head nuzzled against my cervix. I squeezed my eyes shut, letting desperate noises fall from my tongue as he fucked me into the mattress. 

He cursed under his breath, babbling incoherently by my ear. His hands gripped my hips tight. He was sure to leave behind small round bruises, indents of his fingers against my skin. 

The mattress springs squealed beneath our weight, headboard thudding against the wall with every rough thrust of his hips. I raked my nails up his back, leaving a trail of red lines up to his collarbones. He nipped at my neck, sinking his teeth into my skin. I cried out, cunt clenching around his cock. 

“I’m gonna cum- fuck-” he sputtered. His pace grew erratic, hips thrusting deeper into me. My voice crescendoed, growing louder and louder as tension built in my abdomen. My eyes strained, rolling to the back of my head. 

Every nerve ending in my body pulsed, sending jolts of electricity down my limbs. His hips slammed against my own, body jolting under his touch. Static subsumed my limbs, pulling my aching frame tight. My vision went white, pulsing flashes curled around my peripherals. I parted my lips in a silent scream, my lungs stilling as he rocked me through my orgasm. 

Warmth spread through my insides, running down my inner thighs. His chest heaved as he took in gasps of air. His grip on my hips loosened, remaining as just a reminder of his presence. 

A soft noise fell from my spit soaked lips as my vision slowly came back. I glanced down at the figure laying on top of me. He stilled, cock softening inside of me. I carded my fingers through his damp hair, my other hand soothing over the angry marks I’d left on his pale skin. 

Our breaths evened out, heartbeats returning to a rested pace. He stayed put in my grasp, body pressed flush to my own. I hummed, pressing a soft kiss to his temple. A soft grunt left his chest. 

The mattress squeaked as he moved to lie on his side. His large arms wrapped around my waist, pulling my back against his chest. My lips curled into a smile as I basked in the warmth of his embrace. His lips met the back of my neck, pulling away only to speak. 

“I think we violated the code of conduct,” he mumbled, thick fingers splaying over my stomach. 

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” I said with a laugh.

He propped himself up on his elbow, tilting my head with his fingertips at my chin. His brown eyes flicked across my face, scanning for any trace of sarcasm, any hint that I was lying. 

“Do you mean that?” He asked, pursing his lips. 

“Course I do, Lieutenant.”

Masterlist

[aldryrththerainbowheart]

Chapter 2: When Red Hood Comes Knocking

Gotham City is no stranger to chaos. But the recent wave of violence sweeping through the city feels different, colder, and more unsettling. It wasn't the usual chaos; this was…different. Instead of the usual flamboyant theatrics of rogue villains, Gotham is witnessing a series of precise, calculated attacks that are leaving both the criminal underworld and innocent civilians reeling. Surgical strikes, executed with cold efficiency. A gun smuggling ring ripped apart at the docks, leaving behind neatly stacked crates of useless components instead of weapons. A drug lab in the Narrows, its entire digital infrastructure wiped clean, production crippled.

However, the precision stops there. A delivery driver caught in the crossfire at the docks, a low-level dealer left bleeding in an alley near the lab. The GCPD, stretched thin and already battling a crippling morale deficit, is struggling to maintain order, let alone unravel the mystery behind these escalating assaults.

"It's like watching a surgeon with a tremor," commented Detective Renee Montoya during her interview at GNN, frustration etched on her face. "They know where to cut and what to target, but their execution is… sloppy.” The news report was unwelcome but necessary background for our investigation.

At moments like these, Batman’s absence is felt more keenly than ever.

Back at the Belfry, the clock tower felt smaller, more claustrophobic than usual.

The Gotham Knights were stretched thin. Dick, Barbara, Tim, and Jason – trying to contain the spreading tendrils of this new kind of chaos. The city's wireless network was stuttering, plagued by glitches and outages, as if some unseen force was playing puppeteer with its digital arteries. Tim and Babs were running diagnostics day and night, but they were chasing ghosts. The disruptions were too sophisticated, too fleeting.

Not even the Watch knows what's going on. Some whisper of a new player entering the game, a shadowy organization with a vendetta against Gotham's underworld. Others suspect a rogue vigilante, someone taking the law into their own hands with a disregard for collateral damage. The lack of a clear motive and the seemingly random selection of targets only fuels the paranoia.

"They're hitting crime where it hurts, but they're leaving bodies in their wake," Dick said, pacing a tight circle in the tower’s central area. "This isn't justice, it's…execution."

Barbara, tethered to her screens, her face illuminated by the swirling data stream and surveillance feeds, sighed. "The intel they're acting on is flawless. They know the exact location of every drug den, every arms dealer, the security protocols, the patrol patterns, everything. Someone's feeding them information from the inside."

Tim, hunched over the Batcomputer, his fingers flying across the keyboard, his brow furrowed in concentration, muttered, "The network interference is…complex. Almost elegant, in a way. It's bypassing firewalls that should be impenetrable. It's like watching a master craftsman at work.”

"Elegant? People are getting hurt, Tim!" Jason snapped, running a hand through his already dishevelled hair. The damn helmet was doing a number on it, and the weight of the situation was pressing down on him. The anger simmered just below the surface, a volatile cocktail of frustration and the ever-present guilt.

Dick stopped pacing, his gaze locking onto Json’s, a flicker of something he couldn’t quite decipher in his usually cheerful blue eyes. "This… this feels familiar, Jason. The ruthlessness, the focus. It reminds me of…your early days."

The words hit Jason like a physical blow. His jaw tightened. "Don't you dare compare me to this, Dick. I learned my lesson. I paid the price. I don't leave innocent people in the dirt. And I sure as hell don't orchestrate executions." The words came out sharper than intended, laced with a defensiveness he couldn't quite control.

Dick visibly winced, the implication of his words stinging him as much as they stung Jason. He held up his hands in a gesture of appeasement. "I didn't mean... I just…" He trailed off, unable to articulate the unspoken past that haunted all of them. The air crackled with unspoken accusations and old sins. Dick hadn't accused Jason outright, but the shadow of his past hung heavy in the air. They were all haunted by ghosts, but Jason’s seemed to have a louder voice than the others.

Thankfully, Tim's voice cut through the tension. "Guys, I think I've got something!” he announced. He spun around in his chair, its wheels squeaking in protest. His eyes were wide with a mixture of excitement and concern. “I've traced some of the network disruptions back to a central source." He leaned forward. "Whoever's doing this is a genius. They're using a layered encryption I've never seen before. I'm losing the trace, though. We need to move, and fast." His voice dropped, brimming with urgency. "This is our only chance.”

"Alright," Dick said, his voice regaining its authority. "Who's going?"

Before he could even finish the question, Jason was already at his gear locker, pulling on my helmet. "I'm on it."

Jason didn’t wait for arguments. He just needed to get out of there, to chase down this lead, to prove to himself that whatever was happening, he wasn't part of it. This was a constant weight on his heart, and he was desperate to shed it.

Jason hit the streets, the roar of his motorcycle a welcome distraction from the voices in his head. Leather creaked against his skin as I leaned into the turns, the wind whipping past his face. He followed the digital breadcrumbs Tim had provided, each trace a faint glimmer in the murky depths of the dark web. The GPS glowed, guiding him through the labyrinthine streets. The encrypted comms used by the perpetrators, the data dumps of intercepted police frequencies – they all funneled back to one place, and Jason could only guess what or who could bring city to its knees in such a short time.

These weren't your garden-variety cyber attacks. This was something… different. Gotham had always been a city of uncertainty and chaos, where fists and bullets spoke louder than lines of code. But now, the very fabric of the city was being unwound, thread by digital thread. Power grids flickered erratically, communication lines were choked with encrypted gibberish, and even the security systems at Arkham Asylum had reportedly experienced a brief, terrifying hiccup.

He tightened his grip on the handlebars, the cold metal a familiar comfort against the rising tide of anger within him.

The GPS beeped, signaling a turn. He leaned into the curve, the bike responding with a satisfying growl. The closer he got to the signal's origin, the more agitated the city seemed to become.

He slammed on the brakes as a phalanx of GCPD cruisers blocked his path near the Gotham Docks. Blue and red lights pulsed, painting the rain in harsh, alternating hues. Officers, clad in riot gear, swarmed the area, their radios crackling with static and panicked voices.

"Hold it right there! Bike off, hands where we can see them!" a burly officer barked, his voice amplified through a megaphone.

Jason let out a low growl. This wasn't good. He considered blasting past them, but that would only escalate things. He powered down the bike, slowly raising his hands.

"Just passing through, Officer," he said, his voice modulator making him sound neutral, almost robotic. "What's the commotion?"

"Don't play dumb with us, vigilante," another officer shouted, leveling his weapon. "We know you're out here. And we're arresting anyone causing trouble tonight."

"Trouble? I'm fighting it," Jason retorted, his hand twitching towards his holster. He knew how this dance went. The GCPD, especially on edge like this, saw him as just another criminal.

Before the situation could escalate, a sleek, black sedan pulled up beside the cruisers. A man in a tailored suit, his face obscured by the shadows of the car, rolled down the window. It was Sal Maroni, one of Gotham's oldest and most ruthless crime lords.

"Officers," Maroni's gravelly voice cut through the night. "What seems to be the problem?"

The lead officer hesitated, clearly uncomfortable interacting with Maroni, but he still answered. "We're apprehending a vigilante, sir. Possible suspect in the recent… disturbances."

Maroni chuckled, a sound that sent a chill down Jason's spine. "Disturbances? Hardly. Seems like someone's finally leveling the playing field. Let him go, Officer. He's under my protection."

Jason raised an eyebrow behind his helmet. His protection? What was Maroni playing at?

The officer, clearly not wanting to cross Maroni, reluctantly nodded. "Alright, sir. But keep him in line."

The cruisers parted, and Jason found himself face-to-face with Maroni's driver.

"Get in," the driver instructed tersely. "The Boss wants a word."

Jason hesitated. Entanglement with Maroni was the last thing he needed. But curiosity, and the unspoken threat hanging in the air, won out. He holstered his weapon, leaving the Batcycle behind, and climbed into the back of the sedan.

As the car pulled away, Jason could hear the officers grumbling behind them. The city, already teetering on the edge, was now a three-way power struggle: the GCPD trying to maintain order, Maroni vying for control of the digital chaos, and him… trying to stop it all. And maybe, just maybe, get a piece of the pie for himself.

"So, Maroni," Jason said, his voice still modulated. "What exactly do you want with me?"

Maroni's silhouette remained unreadable. "The city's bleeding, Red Hood. Bleeding data. And you seem to know where the tourniquet is. Whoever's doing this has power, technology… assets that could be very valuable. I want them. And I believe you can help me find them."

Jason leaned back, a grim smile forming behind his helmet. "What makes you think I'd help you?"

"Because," Maroni said, his voice laced with menace, "Gotham's a city of choices. And you can choose to work with me… or against me. But trust me, Red Hood, you don't want to choose against me."

The car sped deeper into the heart of Gotham, leaving the rain and the flashing lights behind. Jason knew he was walking a very dangerous line. But sometimes, the only way to fight fire was with fire. And in Gotham, fire was Maroni's specialty. The car stopped at the location of Jason’s bike.

“Remember what I said, Hood,” was Maroni’s last words before the car sped away.

Jason's jaw clenched. Maroni wasn’t alone. This wasn't just a turf war; it was a scramble for control of the information, the power, that this digital chaos represented. Every villain with a modicum of tech savvy was hunting for the source.

As he revved his bike once again, he spotted a trio of goons, patched with the tell-tale signs of Freaks gang colors, lurking in an alleyway. They measured each other from a distance, the tension palpable in the air, but to Jason’s surprise, they just walked away. It seems that both of them have bigger fish to fry.

He sped off, leaving the goons in his dust. A couple blocks away, Red Hood roared past a GCPD cruiser, its siren a mournful wail in the distance. The cops were scrambling, their communication radios spitting static and fractured orders. His comm caught snippets: "…power outage Sector C…," "…firewall breach at Wayne Enterprises…," "…attempted data theft from Gotham General…"

This was getting messy. He has to find the source sooner rather than later.

After several minutes of speeding through Gotham, Jason finally found the source: a small, unassuming IT shop tucked away on the edge of Bristol. Neon signs flickered in the window, advertising "Data Recovery" and "Custom PC Builds." He cut the engine, the sudden silence amplifying the pounding in his ears. Jason peers through the shop windows for any sign of movement. A small flicker of light flashes in the back.

Without hesitation, he kicked open the door.

[theallianceofcelestials]

This will be long, but question time for the SEA series! (at eleven pm for me).

Can Eclipse play any instruments, sing, or have any odd or seemingly out of character hobbies? Did Eclipse work in the daycare alone. Will the family ever see what the daycare looked like, or will we maybe return to it, and does it loon the same as in Security Breach?

What is Sun's most prized piece of clothing for his cats and the weidest thing his brothers have fought over or about that he's had to break up? How effective is he at cleaning and what does he procrastinate most about doing/cleaning or complain

What is Moon's favorite invention, most useful invention, and something he will fiddle with to pass time? He also seems like the type to know dome pretty good party tricks.

What is the easiest meal for KC to make, and what's his and the individual family members' favorite meals? How often has he had to force one of his kids to go and clean themselves?

What's Lunar's favorite personal video game and videogame genres? Do they have a preferred chocolate type (i.e., milk chocolate, dark, cacao, white) and marshmallow size?

Does Solar Flare have a specified art style that it draws in or? Do they prefer to draw realistically or cartoonish, and have they tried digital art yet, will they?

Does Bloodmoon still prefer O- or a different blood type, and do they have a preferred type of meat? Do they have a bird type they like the most, and do they have a bone collection or keep they horns of, say the goats or cows that they've killed? Something the twins disagree on?

Please don't feel pressured to answer this right away, all of the questions, or at all. My questions are to help with your world building and my own understanding of your stories! Sorry if I missed any of the cast and my awful grammer!

Eclipse can sing, though not very well. He knows a couple lullabies. And yeah, he worked in the daycare alone, seeing as the daycare was making money off of it. And nah, it doesn't look like the security breach one. It looks less vibrant and is also cheaper looking. And the family at best will see it through Eclipse's memories, though that's unlikely. He has an iron grip on his worst traumas

Sun's most priced piece of clothing for his cats are silly socks he made specifically for them. The weirdest argument, to him at least, was the fight about Killcode's taste in men of all things. He's very efficient about cleaning, he's still a TSAMS Sun, he's still very neurotic about cleaning. He hates doing the dishes though. He just thinks it's a time waste what with dishwashers existing

Moon has a bunch of fidget toys that he made himself and he has his doll making which is what he fidgets with when he needs something to do. In his opinion his greatest invention is a better firewall for animatronics, which Eclipse takes full advantage of. And his useful inventions are all upgrades to stuff they already own, where he makes stuff more proficient. He also has a bunch of science facts and cool little experiments he can pull out anytime to impress people (tho he won't)

Objectively the easiest meal ever is salad. You just throw together a bunch of cool ingredients, maybe make a sauce and cook some simple meat, and bam, done. His favourite is szechuan beef with pasta, Eclipse's is lava cake, Solar Flare's is ramen, Bloodmoon likes bloody steak, Lunar loves nutella cupcakes, Sun loves goulash and Moon, ever the simple man he is, loves it when KC makes grilled sandwiches with this special spicy meat he makes. And it depends on the kid. Lunar's the one he has troubles with, all the rest are clean, yeah, even Bloodmoon surprisingly. But SEA Lunar's much cleaner than Canon Lunar, so that's not that big of a fight neither

Lunar really just loves stuff that grabs his attention and can keep it. For example, he really likes Don't Starve. His favourite chocolate is milk and white chocolate, and he loves all marshmallows

It draws in a realistic style because that's what makes most sense to it, but if a drawing is in a different style and it needs to finish it, see cat drawing, he'll perfectly replicate the style of the previous artist. And they haven't yet, simply because they don't have any big interest. They won't ever really draw digitally

Yes they do and they love wild meat. They love hunting birds of prey, finding irony in that and could also get two prey for the price of one if they time right. And in SEA first book I did write Bloodmoon started attempting to make jewellry, that's where the bones, horns, tusks, teeth, feathers, antlers and whatever else of animals they've hunted go. The twins disagree on their biggest fears. Bloody is scared of insects and Rusty is scared of mannequins. They disagree on those

Don't worry about the grammar! I'm quite bad at it myself, haha

Also, I've never really thought about most of these questions seeing as they aren't important in SEA, which I look at more like a story than an AU. It's just not an AU in my mind. I do appreciate the questions tho! Feel free to ask more! :)

[callmearcturus]

@vmprsm replied to your post “Raw MKV rip of Mission Impossible: Fallout:...”:

Theoretically, if one wanted their own copies of the MI movies safely on a hard drive....where would one go?

​I mean, there is a site where you can acquire a lot of movies via torrent. I tend to use (rot13) 1337k.gb and I got a heavily discounted Windscribe VPN subscription that I use on almost all of my devices.

But my thing is that... I want commentary reels and special features, and sometimes you'll download a movie but the fucking subtitles are either bad or they become desynced over time and I haaaaate it.

So I've been gathering bits and pieces over the past year to get a Plex system going in my house and it works like a fucking DREAM. But it requires some investment. If you just want to have a few local copies of your favorite movies, this is way overkill. But me, I am canceling all of my family's streaming services and pivoting to our Plex.

So what I have for actually getting the files:

I don't have this model but it's similar to this, a Pioneer External Blu-ray Reader. It sits on a little shelf and is connected to my PC by a USB cable. (I think I got mine for around 68 bucks so you can wait for a sale.)

I use MakeMKV which will rip the big honking raw files from a Blu-ray and leave them as matroshka (.mkv) files.

Because these raw files are ENORMOUS, I compress them in Handbrake. Handbrake is wildly powerful, can convert file formats and make them super small. I have my Handbrake set up special to dump all the non-English language subtitles and audio tracks to save space.

(SUPER BONUS TIP FOR HANDBRAKE: If you have a dedicated GPU, you can give Handbrake permission to use it, and it'll compress shit literally 10x faster, love it.)

At the moment, I am using a Western Digital portable 5TB external harddrive because it was one sale and I couldn't beat the price. Eventually, I want to upgrade to two 10TB HDDs so I can keep a full backup of everything I'm ripping. Because this is a bit of a time and energy commitment and I don't wanna lose all my progress here!

At first I was running Plex off my desktop PC and that worked totally fine, but my family hates having to touch my desktop to wake it up every time, so I very recently grabbed one of these guys:

This is a Beelink Mini PC S12 Pro. It is small enough to fit in my hand but it is a speedy little demon that runs Windows 11. (And eventually I am gonna use it to firewall out ads from our entire home network, I'm pumped for that project but ANYWAY.)

The upside of these mini boys is that instead of being a hefty workhorse like my main computer, this is small and has a low-power draw.

So I moved my Plex Media Server to the mini PC, plugged in my 5TB drive of movies, and now everyone in the house can easily stream anything I have added to the library.

This is what it looks like, if you're curious. Any device in the house that runs Plex and is signed in can select any movie or TV show I have and just watch it like it was Netflix or something.

A month ago, I has like.... 65 movies? Now I'm ripping a few and we're gonna break 100 soon.

"But Arc, where do you get so many blurays!"

My local library.

When I lived in Broward County, FL, I had an extravagantly wonderful library system. Tax dollars at fucking WORK, y'all. Now I live in Georgia and the library system is not nearly as good, but I have still gotten my hands on a frankly ridiculous amount of blurays. Every week I'm picking up 3 to 10 movies or shows, taking them home, making good copies, and returning them.

All of this is an investment and it is work. But as someone who built my computer, built my keyboard, cracked my 3DS and PS Vita-- this is fun to me! This is what I love to do. And through doing it, I've seen more movies in the past year than the last ten years put together.

So yeah, I can't recommend this to everyone, but if you wanna get out of your subscriptions and to just have high quality shit on demand, this is what I'm doing.

Cannot stress this enough tho, if this seems interesting to you: wait for sales. All the components here go on steep sale if you wait patiently. Take your time assembling the parts and keep in mind that shit is modular, you can upgrade parts later.

[eightmakesonebraincell]

mafia atz still on my mind!!!!!

ok imagine…

hongjoong who back hugs you while you hack into another mafia boss’ system because they were doing bad shit and kisses your neck slowly, implying a certain… activity to do later

seonghwa who returns home exhausted from his missions and just snuggles up to you with a dreamy smile, finally relaxing and all his tensions visibly disappearing

yunho who makes obnoxious, stupid, but silly sex jokes about you and him to the others, especially wooyoung after seeing his reaction the first time

yeosang who wraps his entire body around you when another mission goes wrong, kissing the top of your head when all is safe and rubs his thumbs over your cheeks

san who personally takes down each and every mafia member who betrayed you, having zero regrets whatsoever, even if they beg on their knees in front of him

mingi who helps clean up the bar, randomly beginning to hum a tune and eventually taking your hand and dancing with you while you’re both giggling uncontrollably

wooyoung who opens a pack of gummy bears while spending time with you during your shift, making them all stand to face you and claiming “it’s a gummy bear mafia!!!!!” with the cutest smile ever

jongho who makes up for all the lost years by singing a song he wrote when he first left because of how much he missed you every night before you sleep, knowing it always did the trick whenever you claim you weren’t sleepy

mafia ateez lives in my mind permanently

- mafia anon

kept this ask in my inbox for so long because i had to go hike a mountain, touch some grass and look at the sky after reading your ask. mafia!ateez fr make me feel things i'm gonna kiss you on the forehead for this

c/w: suggestive/nsfw, violence, crime, injuries, weapons

mafia!hongjoong sometimes likes to challenge your limits - intellectually and physically. his fingers are knuckle-deep inside of you as he watches you attempt to infiltrate past a complex firewall. “if you can get past it in the next ten minutes, i’ll give you a reward and let you cum on my fingers, kitten���

mafia!seonghwa is cold, calculating and terrifying to others, but is soft, nurturing and unguarded with you. the stoney expression on his face slips away as soon as he comes home and he opens his arms wide as you rush forward towards him. his mind becomes calm and silent when you drag him to the couch to lay his head down in your lap, your fingers gently running through his long hair

mafia!yunho deliberately uses his earpiece to flirt with you, knowing fully well that it flusters you and the members alike. he tells you, and the rest of the team by extension, that your ass looks good from where he’s perched three buildings across the street, watching over you through his sniper’s 8x scope

mafia!yeosang refuses to get the cut on his arm treated until you’ve been attended to, even though you barely received a scratch under his protection. you manage to convince yeosang that you’re okay and that he needs to get his arm looked at. but even then, yeosang sits you on his thighs and wraps his uninjured arm securely around your waist

mafia!san flips the safety off his gun as he aligns the barrel to the man’s forehead. around him, the rest of crescent lay dead already; their lives the price for betraying you. san pulls the trigger and you can see the immediate softening of his merciless gaze when he turns around to wrap you in his embrace. “you’ll always be safe with me, sweetheart”

mafia!mingi brings you a vintage record player the next time he visits, because you had offhandedly mentioned how nicely some music would add to the vibes of your bar. mingi deliberately selects slow jazz and R&B vinyls so that he has an excuse to sneak up behind you, grab your hand and twirl you into an intimate dance with him 

mafia!wooyoung lets out a dramatic wail each time you eat one of the gummy bears that he has just placed on your countertop. he demands that you give him a kiss on the cheek as compensation for murdering his mafia members in cold blood. wooyoung flushes the same shade of red as the gummy bear you just ate when you decide to kiss his lips this time

mafia!jongho tucks you in closer against his chest when you sleep because he knows you still get nightmares about your father, even if you claim that you’re fine. you really are, though, because there is nothing more comforting than the gentle rumbling of his chest against your cheek as he hums a lullaby he wrote for you

[darkmaga-returns]

For the past fifty years, Americans have been sold a fantasy: that global “free trade” would benefit everyone, everywhere.  That letting factories go abroad and turning our economy into a service-sector playground would somehow enrich us all.  That we could import our way to prosperity.

Well, we tried it.  What did we get?  We got ghost towns where manufacturing once thrived.  We got millions of Americans who don’t make anything but debt payments.  We got flooded with cheap junk made in sweatshops, while being lectured that we’re spoiled if we don’t appreciate the low prices.

But cheap stuff isn’t free.  It’s bought with the lives of underpaid workers overseas and the livelihoods of American workers here.  We’ve outsourced everything: our jobs, our dignity, even our sovereignty, all in the name of an economic theory no other country believes in.  And make no mistake: They never played fair.  China manipulates its currency, uses slave labor, and subsidizes everything.  The E.U. buries foreign goods in regulation.  Mexico slaps a hidden VAT on American products before they hit the shelf.  Meanwhile, we’re the only country foolish enough to unilaterally drop our economic defenses while calling it “leadership.”

If you ask the smug elite who benefit from this system, they’ll tell you tariffs are “regressive,” “backward,” or “isolationist.”  Nonsense.  Tariffs are a rational response to economic sabotage.  They are a firewall against exploitation.  They are the only tool left that says to foreign nations, “You don’t get to destroy our industries and walk away with our market.”

We’ve run a trade deficit every single year since 1975.  That’s not sustainable.  It’s not harmless.  It’s a bleed-out.  When you buy more than you sell for five decades, you don’t just lose wealth — you lose leverage, you lose competence, you lose your soul as a producing nation.

[mudora]

A few days ago, I re blogged a post describing the intense backlash Adobe is getting for certain policies involving permissions with their cloud services, and posted an article citing these agreements lack of changes until recently - and upon thinking on it for a few days, I AM noticing the apparent lack of transparency, especially since they updated those terms. But the lack of trust for Adobe remains true regardless, and further updates on this matter are far more alarming then the initial read. So, definitely try to find other programs then Adobe's products. I'll likely need to search for something myself. Sadly, I am mostly comfortable with photoshop's features, and clip studio does not work in the way that I like or prefer. I'm a user who likely does not spend as much yearly on a sub, since (and I'm not joking) my uncle does indeed work for Adobe as a programmer, and unfortunately has no clout to stop this higher level lunacy from happening. Though I might pay a smaller price tag, it doesn't change the fact that the price for their programs is astronomical. I'll likely keep using it and other software as I don't have many other options that work the way I'd like them to for my process. However some other options are always nice to look up on. Keep in mind, I am an advanced user, and simple photo manip tools are not going to cut it for painting/drawing/and visual development. I am keeping my eye on a few promising options. Thankfully for Photo manipulation and editing, there is plenty of good and free software to use. Some recs for those who can't just get off the burning Adobe Train - use your firewall to protect you from potential spying from their programs. On Windows, you can change these settings directly within your firewall settings. "No problem.

And for those wondering, on Windows both 10 & 11, go to Control Panel > Windows Defender > Advances Options > Manage Outgoing Connections > Add new rule.

From here you'll enter a wizard menu where you can pick and choose programs to block access to."

(credit to @kevinreijnders.bsky.social for this tip). I also suggest not to use the cloud for your file storage, and I rec getting a different storage device for your art files anyway, as you can take it with you anywhere you go with either an external hard drive, or usb memory stick.