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ay0nha · 3 months ago

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Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds | Lucius Verus Aurelius

SUMMARY: "Your brethren trust you, you are the embodiment of redemption.” They spoke around Lucius, spewing anything in hopes of saturating his mind. “Where is your image of hope? Where is the person who will relieve you of the grief you share with your people? Where is your Empress?"

PAIRING: Lucius Verus Aurelius x f!reader (arranged marriage for political reasons)

WORD COUNT: 2.4K

WARNINGS: canon-typical things, not much, mentions of alcohol, old-timey language, Google-accurate Roman empire things, dancing, arranged marriage, talks of lineage, angsty-ish, quotes from various people like Nina Simone and Octavia Butler sprinkled into dialogue, etc.

A/N: I quickly wrote this in a few days with the amazing help of @astrd00. This is just sort of an introduction to my fic idea so apologies if it's a little boring. Arranged marriage trope sort of colleagues to friends to lovers. Let me know if you'd like to be tagged for future parts. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE comment it really helps me to keep going! More to come, enjoy!

The Latin translates to: a water drop hollows a stone, not by force but by frequent falling.

Everyone clung to the fog of death in the air with stiff fingers, unwilling to let their proof of newly promised freedom go. They celebrated in the streets, disregarding the savagery that occurred only months ago. The public enjoyed the amnesia, looking to Lucius not solely for responsibility but as a new object to place culpability.

Yet, the heaviness permeated Lucius’ marrow. He hid it well behind the mask of authority. Even a sharp eye would miss the way it restrained him, intentionally ignorant of a flaw in their new leader.

It might have even been seen as a strategic move, a way to humanize the gladiator who seemed to defy the Gods. Strategy outside the arena was new, different from the portrayed brute that dusted his hands with sand. What lay in his palms now was similar to that of a child’s heart, beating rapidly with a not-yet-known burden of life. It was heavy and warm, begging for unwavering loyalty from its possessor.

Lucius remained delicate with his hold, but the heart wanted more from him. Strength and honor would soon no longer suffice. It needed sustenance worthy of devotion and destruction. His eyes were steady on this phantom heart until those around him required his attention.

“Emperor—” A magistrate repeated, voice raising enough to tease an echo. The new title sat heavily on Lucius’ shoulders, contorting his body into a position that mimicked Atlas. “Our suggestion should not be taken lightly, it is for the prosperity of your Rome.”

Scrutiny wasn’t found in his tone or bitterness behind the remark but rather in genuine regard. However, there was an intention behind the ownership of Rome, a hint at the generational promise.

“The public can wonder, speculate, but they do not see beyond the issue.” He continued, watching the twitch on Lucius’ face. “You may not like the mere thought, but gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo.” The magistrate paused, his words lingering. “How much longer until Rome is hollow once again?”

“This order is a fallacy.” Lucius finally made contact, eyes surveying those around him. “There is a need for trust, yes. And yet, you ask for deception?”

“You misunderstand us, Emperor.” Another member of the senate spoke, hoping to alleviate tension. “There would be no deception in this union, only fortification of the reigning; an image for the people to find themselves in.”

“Your brethren trust you, you are the embodiment of redemption.” They spoke around Lucius, spewing anything in hopes of saturating his mind. “Where is your image of hope? Where is the person who will relieve you of the grief you share with your people? Where is your Empress?”

—

You smiled through the wine-fueled chattering of the ceremony, appeasing those who had just witnessed your union, but your focus moved beyond the conversation and revelry. Above you was a darkened sky that mimicked night. Rain poured down, tempting you to fall prey to its numbing hold.

The Gods are favoring your union, you were told when the sky opened. Divine intervention.

But you knew the Gods were fickle, always testing your will against temptation. It was a test sent for you, one that an elaborate wedding and an emperor declaring your shared existence hid well.

So you ignored the call of the humidity, being dutiful to your new role as empress. People bowed to you and nearly cried at how beautifully you paired with your new counterpart. Even as you sat on the marble throne beside Lucius you couldn’t deny their exactness.

“Don’t worry, they’ll soon pass out from the wine.” You spoke softly, eyes ahead at your guests as you spoke to your husband. His grip on your hand fidgeted exposing his anxiety.

Lucius paused, determining if honesty was worthwhile. His self-awareness was enough to remind him how unfamiliar he was with the environment that consumed his senses.

“It is for them.” You nodded ahead to the crowd. The room was hot from the amount of bodies swirling around. “Remind yourself of this when their faith falters.”

Lucius looked at you, attention trained on your profile. Even with a soft veil over your features, you were so absolute.

“I know my purpose here. You are still learning yours.” You continued. “All I ask of you is that when they falter you place your trust in our bond.”

“I will place it where it is due.” There was your gladiator. The defiance comforted you.

“Those around you are untroubled by that; all they crave is to spit on the fallen. It doesn’t matter if you are one of them, they are quick to turn.” You sharpened. “Be careful; join the sinful and you will be remembered with spite and desperation.”

You spoke of hidden things, of politics that lingered like venom in the bloodstream of the empire. Lucius knew not to mistake your words for ulterior motives. You were direct in your vows to further his image of a new Rome, it was why you were chosen to be by his side. Your mind was clear. You read the room perfectly, unraveling every detail of what was inherited.

“My legacy does not motivate me,” Lucius stated. His ears attuned to you and you only, enraptured in how deeply you spoke as if it was a common thought. “I will not look to them for fame.”

“You will, conscious or not. And once you do, you will not be able to look away.” You smiled pitifully as though you knew something he didn’t. “Just as they watched you fight, you misunderstand the impact of what is before you.”

“You believe that little of me?” There was a swirl of censure in his chest despite the small smile pulling at his lips.

“There is opportunity to win, but that is a fool’s goal—

“To win?” Lucius scoffed. “Even you have been mislead, then. Thinking that there is a conquest waiting to happen.”

“I do not wish to insult you.” Your thumb adjusted against his fingers. It was in your nature to be candid, but at times you placed your frustrations unfairly. You softened. “Your promise of growth will help amend this.”

Lucius wished to pull away from you. He needed to think, to be separated from the feigned festivities adjoined to love. This was love; love created not between two people, but shared by you and him for Rome.

That was not to say you were birds of a feather.

Your strengths were found in your experience. Although young, you were no novice to how to hold your chin high while delivering truths to the senate. You learned from your uncle, an official who raised you on the true meaning of government. You were clever. The public viewed you as such. You were of noble status and fit to stand before them.

What you lacked was a specific connection that Lucius brought to the people. He was one of them, raised humbly, hands worn from the earth’s harvest and war forced upon him. Lucius spoke well to them, building comradery with every way of life.

“I would never ask you to compromise your beliefs. I know better than to think you’d behave.” You teased at his rebellion, hoping the guard that was up would calm. “Besides, a well-mannered lover is an offense.”

“We are not lovers.” It was sterile in tone but revealed emotions long since buried.

“And we are not enemies.” You were quick, reading between his words to find the insult.

“My lord!” A raspy voice begged for attention. “My lady!”

You stood, bowing politely to the affluent man before you. He took advantage of the night; jewels adorned every finger that pulled at the elaborate fabric of his outfit.

“It is time.” The rasp withered when he lowered to speak to you directly. His arms went wide as if inviting a hug, but he spun skillfully to face the audience.

“Time?” Lucius looked to you.

The man boomed over the forgotten rain. ““It is time!”

Standing, you didn’t release Lucius’ hand. There was resistance on his end, wanting to remain sedentary and silent to wait out the rest of the night.

“Our dance.” You answered to his wide eyes. Your guests cheered, clearing space. “It is customary to rise together and move as one. It will complete the ceremony.”

He rose at your words, not much of a choice otherwise than to follow.

The fabric of your dress swam behind you, kissing the floor with each step toward the middle of the marble floor. The dress looked like water cascading down your body, hiding each bend and swell of your body. Yet, it highlighted something else, something deeper. It was subtle but powerful, like the way a garden seemed to breathe life into a space.

“May the rain create a river to fertility.” The man held a contagious grin that spread around the room.

Prosperity and posterity. This is what they wanted. Lucius alone was not enough. The bloodline was more important than a single figure. It hadn’t needed to be discussed as it was the obvious forethought for your unification.

The officials of the republic were more concerned about your fecundity and frame than the knowledge you held. It was a typical belief, one that you expected. Your fingers itched to bring your willingness to support the new decree to play and if this was your path to it, so be it.

You remained clinical at the thought. It was a means to an end rather than something to be meditated on. The way Lucius hardened at the man’s words told a story from another perspective where the political became personal. You did not miss the ring on his pinky that rubbed against a new gold one.

“Does the great gladiator know how to dance?” Your voice flowed to Lucius only knowing the opportunity rarely presented itself.

The music shifted from something fast-paced to something more melodic that would encourage you both to move swiftly but attractively. You knew your words would hit a nerve, but it was strategic to motivate Lucius’ hesitant hands.

“It is a back and forth. A push and pull.” You guided your hand to press against his palm, meeting together as if you were to pray. “Just like the arena, no?”

Lucius’ eyebrows pinched together. Not out of curiosity or frustration. He was genuine in his response.

“Rarely is a touch this…subdued.�� Soft.

“Shall I spin you in circles, then?” Your painted lips were easier to see now that Lucius was close. He saw as they rose through your veil with the quip. “Disorientate you to the point of submission?”

Your arms weaved behind your back still connected to Lucius’. The dance was simple, one practiced as children. There were very few steps and wistful gestures that even the familiar still enjoyed.

“Those are my only options? Coercion or blind fealty.”

It left little room for interpretation or defiance. The statement came without hesitation but held pent-up sentiment veiled by familiar poise. You vetted his blank gaze for proper determination of his upset.

It was odd to see Lucius so close, your memory had failed to cast such a strong light on him. Once overgrown hair had been trimmed to only curl at the nape of his neck. Dirt was cleared from every line of his face. He was still rugged, but you saw through the exterior to find a boy.

A boy who had been stripped of child-like wonderment and care. Instead, he held his broad shoulders high and an expression that lingered from his exile. Lucius’ skin perked every time your dress acted as a barrier between the two of you, a warning that whatever you offered had to be earned.

“I do not ask much of you, Emperor...” You put it simply, knowing your worth and wisdom. You needed to be promised his word that against anything you would be beside each other. “...so I will not ask again.”

“You are not satisfied with the trust of the marriage alone,” Lucius stated his question like an observation. “You wish I promise myself to you in ways which I may not be able to provide.”

“Able or willing?”

Your faces were close, noses mirroring each other as you turned on beat. You could feel the warmth of your frustration start in your chest, only to spread across your skin as goosebumps.

“The past and the future press so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.” You spoke again before he could answer. “You must decide where you belong.”

The music returned to Lucius’ ears. Its melody weighed down your words, letting them settle deeply in his mind. His head spun with thoughts busy on reasoning. Perhaps he was too guarded for his own good, but he’d gotten himself this far relying only on himself. He had held in a great deal. Often he felt he couldn't speak until the waters overflowed their banks and broke through the dam.

Those around him garnered support, but this was different. You understood what freedom was; it meant no fear. Fear rolled right off of you. Fear was like a pet to you: something you picked up to get a better look at but that you soon grew tired of.

The music slowed coming to an end. Lucius removed his hands from your body but didn’t venture far. His calloused fingertips followed the seam of your soft veil to meet the laced end. Once there, he gently revealed your true manner.

Your features were accentuated by an internal glow. There was no modesty in your gaze, it shattered any notion of strength. There was no insight into your emotions. What Lucius found was someone gifted. It was a marvel he hadn’t heard of you until you presented yourself as the wise option for him to marry.

Although you ran in many circles, your name wasn’t whispered among the council. They didn’t believe beauty and wit could fit within the reach of a woman. Yet, here you stood. A new challenge to be accepted. Lucius resisted the urge to swallow quick breaths as if he were going to endure a blow from Viggo. His body agitated in preparation, but looking at you so wholly all he could muster was concession.

“You have my word.”

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darling-flora · 3 months ago

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feather 2

max x yn!singer - social media au

fc: sabrina carpenter

part 1 : HERE

notes: please please please let me know what ya think !!! ❣ rt's are appreciated !!! (i used google translate for some dutch words, so let me know if anything's wrong!!)

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maxverstappen1

Liked by yourinstagram, charles_leclerc and 6,559,944 others

maxverstappen1 3 🏆

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user1 wait is y/n taller or is max shorter ??

↳yourinstagram 7 inch heels 🫣...

user2 PARENTS !!!!

user3 first picture needs to be framed 🥺

yourinstagram love youuuuu 💙

user4 MY GOAT 🐐

user5 TIME FOR 4 🏆🏆🏆🏆

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yourinstagram

Liked by maxverstappen1, user1 and 8,959,914 others

yourinstagram quick trip.... 💋💙

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user1 never looked better !!!

user2 cuties 😪

maxverstappen1 best date ever ❤

liked by yourinstagram

user3 bro why aren't they ever paparazzied together?? like is it PR??? he was papped with his ex....

↳user4 because his ex called the paparazzi..... ↳user5 they both rarely get papped when they are alone so it's the same when they're together, he was ALWAYS papped with his ex so..... put 2 and 2 together 🙃

user6 wearing 7 inch heels only to still be shorter then max🤭

danielricciardo max looks so yummy 🤤

↳yourinstagram he is 😉 ↳danielricciardo ew ↳yourinstagram YOU started it ?? ↳user7 😭😭?

user8 two goats 😋

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yourinstagram

Liked by maxverstappen1, user1 and 8,959,914 others

yourinstagram coachellaaaa weekend 1 & 2 what a dream !! these were two of the most electrifying shows I've ever played 💙!!!!, and I can’t believe you guys were already singing along to espresso (more to come soon 😉). I feel so incredibly lucky to of gotten the honor to perform for you all. thank you to everyone who came to watch and everyone watching at home!!!!

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user1 you ate that mama 🤩

maxverstappen1 wow wow wow my mooie meisje (pretty girl)

maxverstappen1 every time i see you it's like seeing you for the first time

maxverstappen1 y/nchella is going to be the only thing on my mind for awhile....

↳user2 BRO you have practice in CHINA in TWO DAYS ????? IT'S A SPRINT WEEKEND TOO ?!?!?!?!? ↳maxverstappen1 y/n on the mind while driving helps me win ↳user2 ..... ↳user2 i respect it 🤝

maxverstappen1 love you my mooie meisje (pretty girl)

↳yourinstagram love youuuu 😚 ↳yourinstagram i'll be waiting for you in miami 😉 ↳user3 ohhh they freaky 🤭

user4 i've NEVER seen max comment like this before holyyyyy 😭💀

user5 WAIT i thought espresso was a "cute little song" but are we getting a new album soon??

↳user6 she got out of a sh1tty relationship then got into a healthy relationship so i think she has a few things to write about.....😭

user7 espresso the hit that you are!!!!!!!!!

user8 the woman that you are wow wow wow 🤯

user9 the vocals !! the fits !! and the FACE !! TENS across the board 😩

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voguemagazine

Liked by user1, user2 and 1,959,944 others

voguemagazine While we're patiently waiting for the release of Y/n's album Short n' Sweet, lets go behind the scenes of the 2nd single "Please Please Please"s music video which featured L/n's boyfriend and Three Time Formula One Champion of World Max Verstappen.

"I ended the last video getting arrested, so naturally I thought it would be satisfying to start the 'Please Please Please' video in jail", said the singer. "I liked the idea of falling in love with a convict and being shocked and embarrassed every time he commits crimes. I was sooo lucky to get Max Verstappen in the video 'cause he's a busy guy but I was a little unsure who I wanted to play the guy who I was falling in love with, then I realized "why not have the guy your in love with be the love interest?" and he was instantly down." said the singer after the music video was released.

The video’s director said "The amount of energy and effort he put in while also being conscious of being out of the way or it not being about him, it was great. It’s hard to cast people in general, but to get them that dedicated is unique." he added "During the first few takes before Max got used to having to act, anytime he'd look at Y/n he'd smile and almost like melt so we had to give him a few pointers but after that he killed it" video’s director said about Verstappen.

The director added "The two were professional on camera but after the camera cut they'd laugh and behave as any other couple, it’s super weird and very meta. They’re essentially playing themselves in this really elevated and theatrical way that is not themselves at all. Now there was this responsibility because they’re a couple and they’re being filmed together for the first time in this kind of really big way, so that responsibility of doing them both justice and making them both look amazing and making sure that people understand that this is fiction while keeping it light and lovely became the priority."

Read more -> HERE

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user1 this bts just told me that they are crazy in love 😭❤

user2 my favorite part was when dua and callum broke up a day after the music video came out

↳user3 then got back together.... just messy 😭 ↳user2 they are prob gonna break up again after the albums out 🤫

user4 max being down to do this is so iconic, also him posting her any chance he gets is my favorite thing!!

user5 it's SOOOO refreshing to see that she's so much more happier in this relationship !! and the fact that he isn't afraid to talk about her

↳user6 they do it very tastefully too!! like anytime i hear something that they've said about each other it always seems so genuine and love filled 🥺❤ ↳user5 this!!! anytime her ex was asked about her he was always so annoyed but when she was asked she would always praise him but he just never did the same 😕

user7 STOPPPP the picture of her hiding behind him is so cute

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yourinstagram

Liked by maxverstappen1, user1 and 10,959,944 others

yourinstagram Short n’ Sweet is officially yours now!!!

i feel extremely lucky that each time i write a new record i learn a little bit more about myself, and can create from that place. the making of short n’ sweet was one of the most special, honest, up and down, stupid and fun experiences of my life.

thank you to my brilliant talented friends, writers, producers, mixers, engineers, and creative minds that helped me bring this world and these songs to life. not a serious thought was thunk yet somehow they were.. lol i love you all and am so grateful.

I will keep this short n sweet buuuut more soon. go listen now and i hope you love it as much as i do❤

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user1 Your mind ❤️!

maxverstappen1 love you so much. So so proud of you 💙

↳yourinstagram love love love love youuuu , ty for being you 💙

user2 So endlessly proud of you

oscarpiastri Ahhhhhh I'm obsessed!!

↳yourinstagram TYYYYYYY Mr. Pastry 😁

user3 So proud of you and love you endlessly. Can't pick a favorite!!!

user4 i was already obsessed two seconds in to the first song like wow… you are truly unreal. my favorite album to exist

danielricciardo most perfect album of all time

↳yourinstagram ty dannyy ☺

user5 short n sweet = no skips 💋

user6 Wowowow I didn’t skip a single song in this album. 💿 loooove it so much angel.

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maxverstappen1

Liked by yourinstagram, charles_leclerc and 9,559,944 others

maxverstappen1 So so so proud of you, Short n' Sweet has been on repeat from the second i heard it. Seeing how hard you've worked and how much of yourself you've put into this and being by your side every step of the way has been such a pleasure.

love you y/n 💙

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maxverstappen1 also, would happily fulfill your wishes of making you juno yourinstagram 😁

↳maxverstappen1 or try some freaky positions... ↳user1 MAXX ?? ↳redbullracing Max, please think of the sponsor's.... ↳maxverstappen1 I'm opening the door to new sponsors.... ↳yourinstagram STOPPPP ↳yourinstagram their gonna take away your social media privilege's 😭 ↳user2 are we ignoring the fact that max said he'd happily impregnate Y/N ?????

user3 the first and last picture's are so cute 😪

user4 i need to be in a relationship NOW 😠

user5 he loves her so bad.... im gonna be single forever 😩

user6 IF A MAN WANTED TOO, HE WOULD!!!

user7 these pic's almost make you forget she's getting freaky deaky on the album

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enews

Liked by user1, user2 and 1,869,944 others

enews 🚨 BREAKING 🚨 Callum Turner and Dua Lipa have called it quits after a year of on and off dating. The timeline of when the two started dating is unclear but after a dinner in Los Angeles where the two seemed to be having problems the pair left the restaurant at the same time but in separate cars.

Only a day after the break up Turner was seen with a mystery blonde women while Dua Lipa was seen at an airport heading for London.

The relationship seemed to of become rocky after Y/n L/n released her singles "Espresso" and "Please Please Please". Then with the release of Y/n L/n's album Short n’ Sweet which contains multiple songs that are about their relationship.

Do you think it's a "Coincidence" they've broken up multiple time's around the releases' of Y/n L/n's music ?

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user1 just MESSSYYYY people omg

user2 i do NOT feel bad for either of them 😭

↳user like he fumbled y/n so badddd ↳user also he found a BLONDE girl RIGHT after breaking up with dua.... like im giggling 🤭

user3 a "year of on and of dating" is killinggggg me 💀😂

user4 "you're running so fast from the hearts that you're breakin'" she really clocked his ass 😭

user5 the blonde is allegedly dua's friend..... 😭💀

↳user1 not him pulling a leclerc 🤭

user6 both nobody's without y/n....

user7 "oh, wow, you just broke up again" 😭

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yourinstagram

Liked by maxverstappen1, user1 and 10,559,944 others

yourinstagram p2 in zandvoort 💙

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user1 SHES BACK AT THE RACES !!!

user2 i know this DIVA 💜!!

maxverstappen1 the most important attendee at any race 😚

↳yourinstagram cutie😘 ↳user3 please be mindful that most of us are single....

user4 no one else could be as iconic of a wag as you are 🙂‍↕️

user5 y/n photo dump is always gonna eat 😩

whitneypeak 😚🤞

user6 move over max

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enews

Liked by user1, user2 and 1,869,944 others

enews Callum Turner spoke out about his relationship's being in the spotlight, while Turner and Y/n L/n's relationship was private, Callum and Dua Lipa's relationship was a public whirlwind of an on and off relationship.

"I know that people are always going to be curious especially when it's two famous people being seen together [...] I knew that she was going to write music because it's what she does [...] you know she'll do whatever to help her career [...] at the end of they day i wish her all the best."

Y/n L/n has been in a relationship with Three Time Formula One Champion of World Max Verstappen for over a year, the pair haven spoken very highly of each other and the two have supported each other’s careers. While some of her songs off her recent album Short n’ Sweet like Taste, Coincidence, and Dumb & Poetic are about Turner, the more playful and loving songs like Espresso, Bed Chem, and Juno are about Verstappen.

What do you think about Turners comments?

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user1 "two famous people" when no one knew who he was until they started dating....

↳user2 i remember a director saying they didn't know who he was, then y/n introduced callum to the director, the director knew who she was because his daughter was a fan... 🤭

user3 he cheated on y/n then had the balls to say "she'll do whatever to help her career" ????? he needs to be serious

user4 "If you don't wanna cry to my music, don't make me hate you prolifically" 🫣

user5 bro can't even say her name he knows he fumbled 😭

user6 he should've kept his mouth shut 🙄

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max1.jpg

Liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc and 1,335,690 others

max1.jpg no need to wish because she is/has it

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user1 WHACK #HIM AGAIN MAX!!

user2 if i was dating y/n i too would post her every second i got

user3 WAIT did yall get a puppy

↳max1.jpg we have FOUR cats, we do not need a dog... ↳yourinstagram you hate me 😔 ↳max1.jpg maybe after the tour... ↳yourinstagram YIPPEE 🥳

user4 HE'S SO PETTY OMG 😭

user5 thank you max for standing up for our girlfriend 😚 THAT guy needed to be humbled

↳max1.jpg 🫡

user6 he lovessss her so much 😪

user7 im the reason for 1 billion streams btw😁

user8 "at the end of they day i wish her all the best" and max shut his ass up 🤭

user9 the only woman ever 🙂‍↕️ (im a woman)

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months ago

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The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

If you are even slightly plugged into the doings and goings on in this tired old world of ours, then you have heard that Google has lost its antitrust case against the DOJ Antitrust Division, and is now an official, no-foolin', convicted monopolist.

This is huge. Epochal. The DOJ, under the leadership of the fire-breathing trustbuster Jonathan Kanter, has done something that was inconceivable four years ago when he was appointed. On Kanter's first day on the job as head of the Antitrust Division, he addressed his gathered prosecutors and asked them to raise their hands if they'd never lost a case.

It was a canny trap. As the proud, victorious DOJ lawyers thrust their arms into the air, Kanter quoted James Comey, who did the same thing on his first day on the job as DA for the Southern District of New York: "You people are the chickenshit club." A federal prosecutor who never loses a case is a prosecutor who only goes after easy targets, and leave the worst offenders (who can mount a serious defense) unscathed.

Under Kanter, the Antitrust Division has been anything but a Chickenshit Club. They've gone after the biggest game, the hardest targets, and with Google, they bagged the hardest target of all.

Again: this is huge:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist

But also: this is just the start.

Now that Google is convicted, the court needs to decide what to do about it. Courts have lots of leeway when it comes to addressing a finding of lawbreaking. They can impose "conduct remedies" ("don't do that anymore"). These are generally considered weaksauce, because they're hard to administer. When you tell a company like Google to stop doing something, you need to expend a lot of energy to make sure they're following orders. Conduct remedies are as much a punishment for the government (which has to spend millions closely observing the company to ensure compliance) as they are for the firms involved.

But the court could also order Google to stop doing certain things. For example, since the ruling finds that Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying other entities – Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, AT&T, etc – to be the default search, the court could order them to stop doing that. At the very least, that's a lot easier to monitor.

The big guns, though are the structural remedies. The court could order Google to sell off parts of its business, like its ad-tech stack, through which it represents both buyers and sellers in a marketplace it owns, and with whom it competes as a buyer and a seller. There's already proposed, bipartisan legislation to do this (how bipartisan? Its two main co-sponsors are Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

All of these things, and more, are on the table:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-monopoly-judge-amit-mehta-options/

We'll get a better sense of what the judge is likely to order in the fall, but the case could drag out for quite some time, as Google appeals the verdict, then tries for the Supreme Court, then appeals the remedy, and so on and so on. Dragging things out in the hopes of running out the clock is a time-honored tradition in tech antitrust. IBM dragged out its antitrust appeals for 12 years, from 1970 to 1982 (they called it "Antitrust's Vietnam"). This is an expensive gambit: IBM outspent the entire DOJ Antitrust Division for 12 consecutive years, hiring more lawyers to fight the DOJ than the DOJ employed to run all of its antitrust enforcement, nationwide. But it worked. IBM hung in there until Reagan got elected and ordered his AG to drop the case.

This is the same trick Microsoft pulled in the nineties. The case went to trial in 1998, and Microsoft lost in 1999. They appealed, and dragged out the proceedings until GW Bush stole the presidency in 2000 and dropped the case in 2001.

I am 100% certain that there are lawyers at Google thinking about this: "OK, say we put a few hundred million behind Trump-affiliated PACs, wait until he's president, have a little meeting with Attorney General Andrew Tate, and convince him to drop the case. Worked for IBM, worked for Microsoft, it'll work for us. And it'll be a bargain."

That's one way things could go wrong, but it's hardly the only way. In his ruling, Judge Mehta rejected the DOJ's argument that in illegally creating and maintaining its monopoly, Google harmed its users' privacy by foreclosing on the possibility of a rival that didn't rely on commercial surveillance.

The judge repeats some of the most cherished and absurd canards of the marketing industry, like the idea that people actually like advertisements, provided that they're relevant, so spying on people is actually doing them a favor by making it easier to target the right ads to them.

First of all, this is just obvious self-serving rubbish that the advertising industry has been repeating since the days when it was waging a massive campaign against the TV remote on the grounds that people would "steal" TV by changing the channel when the ads came on. If "relevant" advertising was so great, then no one would reach for the remote – or better still, they'd change the channel when the show came back on, looking for more ads. People don't like advertising. And they hate "relevant" advertising that targets their private behaviors and views. They find it creepy.

Remember when Apple offered users a one-click opt-out from Facebook spying, the most sophisticated commercial surveillance system in human history, whose entire purpose was to deliver "relevant" advertising? More than 96% of Apple's customers opted out of surveillance. Even the most Hayek-pilled economist has to admit that this is a a hell of a "revealed preference." People don't want "relevant" advertising. Period.

The judge's credulous repetition of this obvious nonsense is doubly disturbing in light of the nature of the monopoly charge against Google – that the company had monopolized the advertising market.

Don't get me wrong: Google has monopolized the advertising market. They operate a "full stack" ad-tech shop. By controlling the tools that sellers and buyers use, and the marketplace where they use them, Google steals billions from advertisers and publishers. And that's before you factor in Jedi Blue, the illegal collusive arrangement the company has with Facebook, by which they carved up the market to increase their profits, gouge advertisers, starve publishers, and keep out smaller rivals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

One effect of Google's monopoly power is a global privacy crisis. In regions with strong privacy laws (like the EU), Google uses flags of convenience (looking at you, Ireland) to break the law with impunity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

In the rest of the world, Google works with other members of the surveillance cartel to prevent the passage of privacy laws. That's why the USA hasn't had a new federal privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling newspaper reporters about the VHS cassettes you took home:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

The lack of privacy law and privacy enforcement means that Google can inflict untold privacy harms on billions of people around the world. Everything we do, everywhere we go online and offline, every relationship we have, everything we buy and say and do – it's all collected and stored and mined and used against us. The immediate harm here is the haunting sense that you are always under observation, a violation of your fundamental human rights that prevents you from ever being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism

The harms of surveillance aren't merely spiritual and psychological – they're material and immediate. The commercial surveillance industry provides the raw feedstock for a parade of horribles, from stalkers and bounty hunters turning up on their targets' front doors to cops rounding up demonstrators with location data from their phones to identity thieves tricking their marks by using leaked or purchased private information as convincers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

The problem with Google's monopolization of the surveillance business model is that they're spying on us. But for a certain kind of competition wonk, the problem is that Google is monopolizing the violation of our human rights, and we need to use competition law to "democratize" commercial surveillance.

This is deeply perverse, but it represents a central split in competition theory. Some trustbusters fetishize competition for its own sake, on the theory that it makes companies better and more efficient. But there are some things we don't want companies to be better at, like violating our human rights. We want to ban human rights violations, not improve them.

For other trustbusters – like me – the point of competition enforcement isn't merely to make companies offer better products, it's to make companies small enough to hold account through the enforcement of democratic laws. I want to break – and break up – Google because I want to end its ability to bigfoot privacy law so that we can finally root out the cancer of commercial surveillance. I don't want to make Google smaller so that other surveillance companies can get in on the game.

There is a real danger that this could emerge from this decision, and that's a danger we need to guard against. Last month, Google shocked the technical world by announcing that it would not follow through on its years-long promise to kill third-party cookies, one of the most pernicious and dangerous tools of commercial surveillance. The reason for this volte-face appears to be concern that the EU would view killing third-party cookies as anticompetitive, since Google intended to maintain commercial surveillance using its Orwellian "Privacy Sandbox" technology in Chrome, with the effect that everyone except Google would find it harder to spy on us as we used the internet:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/googles-trail-of-crumbs

It's true! This is anticompetitive. But the answer isn't to preserve the universal power of tech companies large and small to violate our human rights – it's to ban everyone, especially Google, from spying on us!

This current in competition law is still on the fringe, but the Google case – which finds the company illegally dominating surveillance advertising, but rejects the idea that surveillance is itself a harm – offers an opportunity for this bad idea to go from the fringe to the center.

If that happens, look out.

Take "attribution," an obscure bit of ad-tech jargon disguising a jaw-droppingly terrible practice. "Attribution" is when an ad-tech company shows you an ad, and then follows you everywhere you go, monitoring everything you do, to determine whether the ad convinced you to buy something. I mean that literally: they're combining location data generated by your phone and captured by Bluetooth and wifi receivers with data from your credit card to follow you everywhere and log everything, so that they can prove to a merchant that you bought something.

This is unspeakably grotesque. It should be illegal. In many parts of the world, it is illegal, but it is so lucrative that monopolists like Google can buy off the enforcers and get away with it. What's more, only the very largest corporations have the resources to surveil you so closely and invasively that they can perform this "service."

But again, some competition wonks look at this situation and say, "Well, that's not right, we need to make sure that everyone can do attribution." This was a (completely mad) premise in the (otherwise very good) 2020 Competition and Markets Authority market-study on "Online platforms and digital advertising":

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf

This (again, otherwise sensible) document veers completely off the rails whenever the subject of attribution comes up. At one point, the authors propose that the law should allow corporations to spy on people who opt out of commercial surveillance, provided that this spying is undertaken for the sole purpose of attribution.

But it gets even worse: by the end of the document, the authors propose a "user ID intervention" to give every Briton a permanent, government-issued advertising identifier to make it easier for smaller companies to do attribution.

Look, I understand why advertisers like attribution and are willing to preferentially take their business to companies that can perform it. But the fact that merchants want to be able to peer into every corner of our lives to figure out how well their ads are performing is no basis for permitting them to do so – much less intervening in the market to make it even easier so more commercial snoops can get their noses in our business!

This is an idea that keeps popping up, like in this editorial by a UK lawyer, where he proposes fixing "Google's dominance of online advertising" by making it possible for everyone to track us using the commercial surveillance identifiers created and monopolized by the ad-tech duopoly and the mobile tech duopoly:

https://www.thesling.org/what-to-do-about-googles-dominance-of-online-advertising/

Those companies are doing something rotten. In dominating ads, they have stolen billions from publishers and advertisers. Then they used those billions to capture our democratic process and ensure that our human rights weren't being defended as they plundered our private data and put us in harm's way.

Advertising will adapt. The marketing bros know this is coming. They're already discussing how to live in a world where you can't measure clicks and you can't attribute actions (e.g. the world from the first advertisements up until the early 2000s):

https://sparktoro.com/blog/attribution-is-dying-clicks-are-dying-marketing-is-going-back-to-the-20th-century/

An equitable solution to Google's monopoly will not run though our right to privacy. We don't solve the Google monopoly by creating competition in surveillance. The reason to get rid of Google's monopoly is to make it easier to end surveillance.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

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

#pluralistic #google #antitrust #monopolies #remedies #ad-tech #competition #power #doj v google #attribution

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spacelazarwolf · 1 year ago

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in honor of that anon who said jews have done nothing for the world, here’s a non exhaustive list of things we’ve done for the world:

arts, fashion, and lifestyle:

jeans - levi strauss

modern bras - ida rosenthal

sewing machines - isaac merritt singer

modern film industry - carl laemmle (universal pictures), adolph zukor (paramount pictures), william fox (fox film forporation), louis b. mayer (mgm - metro-goldwyn-mayer), harry, sam, albert, and jack warners (warner bros.), steven spielberg, mel brooks, marx brothers

operetta - jacques offenbach

comic books - stan lee

graphic novels - will eisner

teddy bears - morris and rose michtom

influential musicians - irving berlin, stephen sondheim, benny goodman, george gershwin, paul simon, itzhak perlman, leonard bernstein, bob dylan, leonard cohen

artists - mark rothko

actors - elizabeth taylor, jerry lewis, barbara streisand

comedians - lenny bruce, joan rivers, jerry seinfeld

authors - judy blume, tony kushner, allen ginsberg, walter mosley

culture:

esperanto - ludwik lazar zamenhof

feminism - betty friedan, gloria steinem, ruth bader ginsberg

queer and trans rights - larry kramer, harvey milk, leslie feinberg, abby stein, kate bornstein, frank kameny, judith butler

international women's day - clara zetkin

principles of journalizm, statue of liberty, and pulitzer prize - joseph pulitzer

"the new colossus" - emma lazarus

universal declaration of human rights - rene samuel cassin

holocaust remembrance and human rights activism - elie wiesel

workers rights - louis brandeis, rose schneiderman

public health care, women's rights, and children's rights - lillian wald

racial equity - rabbi abraham joshua heschel, julius rosenwald, andrew goodman, michael schwerner

political theory - hannah arendt

disability rights - judith heumann

black lives matter slogan and movement - alicia garza

#metoo movement - jodi kantor

institute of sexology - magnus hirschfeld

technology:

word processing computers - evelyn berezin

facebook - mark zuckerberg

console video game system - ralph henry baer

cell phones - amos edward joel jr., martin cooper

3d - leonard lipton

telephone - philipp reis

fax machines - arthur korn

microphone - emile berliner

gramophone - emile berliner

television - boris rosing

barcodes - norman joseph woodland and bernard silver

secret communication system, which is the foundation of the technology used for wifi - hedy lamarr

three laws of robotics - isaac asimov

cybernetics - norbert wiener

helicopters - emile berliner

BASIC (programming language) - john george kemeny

google - sergey mikhaylovich brin and larry page

VCR - jerome lemelson

fax machine - jerome lemelson

telegraph - samuel finley breese morse

morse code - samuel finley breese morse

bulletproof glass - edouard benedictus

electric motor and electroplating - boris semyonovich jacobi

nuclear powered submarine - hyman george rickover

the internet - paul baran

icq instant messenger - arik vardi, yair goldfinger,, sefi vigiser, amnon amir

color photography - leopold godowsky and leopold mannes

world's first computer - herman goldstine

modern computer architecture - john von neumann

bittorrent - bram cohen

voip internet telephony - alon cohen

data archiving - phil katz, eugene roshal, abraham lempel, jacob ziv

nemeth code - abraham nemeth

holography - dennis gabor

laser - theodor maiman

instant photo sharing online - philippe kahn

first automobile - siegfried samuel marcus

electrical maglev road - boris petrovich weinberg

drip irrigation - simcha blass

ballpoint pen and automatic gearbox - laszlo biro

photo booth - anatol marco josepho

medicine:

pacemakers and defibrillators - louise robinovitch

defibrillators - bernard lown

anti-plague and anti-cholera vaccines - vladimir aronovich khavkin

polio vaccine - jonas salk

test for diagnosis of syphilis - august paul von wasserman

test for typhoid fever - ferdinand widal

penicillin - ernst boris chain

pregnancy test - barnhard zondek

antiretroviral drug to treat aids and fight rejection in organ transplants - gertrude elion

discovery of hepatitis c virus - harvey alter

chemotherapy - paul ehrlich

discovery of prions - stanley prusiner

psychoanalysis - sigmund freud

rubber condoms - julius fromm

birth control pill - gregory goodwin pincus

asorbic acid (vitamin c) - tadeusz reichstein

blood groups and rh blood factor - karl landsteiner

acyclovir (treatment for infections caused by herpes virus) - gertrude elion

vitamins - caismir funk

technique for measuring blood insulin levils - rosalyn sussman yalow

antigen for hepatitus - baruch samuel blumberg

a bone fusion technique - gavriil abramovich ilizarov

homeopathy - christian friedrich samuel hahnemann

aspirin - arthur ernst eichengrun

science:

theory of relativity - albert einstein

theory of the electromagnetic field - james maxwell

quantum mechanics - max born, gustav ludwig hertz

quantum theory of gravity - matvei bronstein

microbiology - ferdinand julius cohn

neuropsychology - alexander romanovich luria

counters for x-rays and gamma rays - robert hofstadter

genetic engineering - paul berg

discovery of the antiproton - emilio gino segre

discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation - arno allan penzias

discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe - adam riess and saul merlmutter

discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity - roger penrose

discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of the milky way - andrea ghez

modern cosmology and the big bang theory - alexander alexandrovich friedmann

stainless steel - hans goldschmidt

gas powered vehicles

interferometer - albert abraham michelson

discovery of the source of energy production in stars - hans albrecht bethe

proved poincare conjecture - grigori yakovlevich perelman

biochemistry - otto fritz meyerhof

electron-positron collider - bruno touschek

#jewish #jumblr #am yisrael fucking chai

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dyke-in-crisis · 8 months ago

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in honor of the slenderverse documentary AND new darkharvest video..heres the lanky guy haunting my brain since I was camping in some creepy forest in Sweden around 2010 and one of the kids kept showing me google images of badly photoshopped faceless people and told me I would hear breathing behind me right before the slender man snatches me and drags me into the forest 👍 rest assured I have fond memories of lost sleep this vacation and obviously became obsessed with args and found footage horror in my teen years as a result. good times.

comms | patreon

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f1amour · 4 months ago

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˖ ࣪ 𖥔 BED CHEM

pairing | charles leclerc x singer!reader

face claim | olivia rodrigo

content warnings | some social media au, birthday sex, unprotected sex, oral, fingering, praise kink, soft dom!charles, edging, dirty talk, public sex, restroom sex, car sex —18+ only, minors do not interact

authors note | another belated birthday story but hope you guys enjoy!! maybe this’ll bring good luck for todays race :))

─────────────────────────

liked by charles_leclerc, arthur_leclerc, lilymhe, and 1,938,733 others

yourusername my everything. my world. all in one. i will always be thankful to be so lucky that i have found a love that will last a lifetime. meeting you was like listening to a song for the first time and knowing it would be my favorite. it’s you today and tomorrow, forever and always, in another world and universe; it’ll always be you. happiest of birthdays my charlie. i love you. 💌🧸

view commmets below…

user1 your honor i love them

user2 “meeting you was like listening to a song for the first time knowing it would be my favorite.” FUCK I WANT A LOVE LIKE THEIRS

charles_leclerc mon amour. mon soleil. ma lune. mon étoile. merci de m'aimer et d'être mon meilleur ami. tu es le meilleur cadeau que je puisse jamais avoir. je t'aime maintenant et dans tous les univers. [my love. my sun. my moon. my star. thank you for loving me and being my best friend. you are the best gift i could ever have. i love you now and in every universe.]

yourusername charlie🥹🥹 i love you so bad, baby. (thank you google translate🤞🏼)

user3 the best gift i could ever have…i aspire to have someone love me like this one day

arthur_leclerc you guy make me sick.

yourusername applications open someone please date my brother in law so he could stop third wheeling with us!!

arthur_leclerc fuck you i got 200 message requests now because of this🖕🏼

yourusername ur welcome 😙

user4 the relationship she has with his family is so cute and hilarious😭 the fact she calls them in laws🥹

lilymhe alex is crying after seeing your post.

yourusername mission accomplished 🫡 thank you and alex_albon for setting us up 🫶🏼

alex_albon okay so when is the wedding?

charles_leclerc soon😉

yourusername YOU HAVENT EVEN ASKED ME?!

charles_leclerc i know but soon…i know you’ll be my wife

lilymhe great he’s crying again

user4 i can’t believe they’ve been dating four years now it’s CRAZY

─────────────────────────

yourusername posted three stories!

slide 1/3 surprise!! my new single bed chem is out now dedicated to my favorite libra

slide 2/3 bed chem music video out at midnight, can you guess who the special guest is?

slide 3/3 the day that we met he was wearing this white jacket and now four years later he wore it once again for the music video…hope you guys enjoy it as much as i did ;)

─────────────────────────

AUSTIN, TEXAS. 2024.

“what if someone hears us?” you breathe out shakily while charles’ lips are attached to your neck. his hands digging into your hips giving it a soft squeeze before he spins your around almost bending you over the counter and facing the mirror.

“has that ever stopped us? come on, baby. it is my birthday after all and you said i can have whatever i want. what i want is you,” his fingers slip under your skirt, pushing your panties to the side, “i think you want it too. you’re soaked for me.” charles kisses your shoulders as he adds two fingers, slowly stretching you out with your eyes connected to his through the mirror.

“remember our first date? you were practically begging for me to fuck you on the table right there in front of everyone. but only i get to ever see you like this, a mess for me,” he taunts, fingers moving deep inside of you, curling against your g-spot as he pushes your face to the side pulling you in for a deep kiss until you were both gasping for air.

“charlie, wanna cum…please,” you choke out, already feeling close with your walls fluttering around him. you push yourself against him already feeling his cock through his pants, you needed him.

"uh uh, baby," he purrs, "tonight is my night so i want you to cum all over my cock. before that i wanna come in your pretty mouth. on your knees, cherie.” he slowly pulls his fingers out and you moan at the loss of fullness before he’s tapping your ass signaling to kneel on the cold tiles.

charles’ eyes grow darker as you sink down on your knees and pull his pants down, his cock springs free. without notice you wrap your lips around the tip of him and his pre-cum coats your tongue as you take him further.

“mon dieu bébé, ta bouche est tellement parfaite. merde,” his hand tangle in your hair and around the back of your neck. your hand wraps around whatever doesn’t fit in your mouth and you speed up your movements, “shit. ‘m gonna cum mon amour.” he groans as you hollow your cheeks around him.

with just a few more strokes before thick ropes of cum fill your mouth, charles’ head thrown back in pleasure catching his breath before helping you up. he wipes the tears off your face gives you a sweet kiss teeth clashing as you both smile, “i love you so much.” laughter now fills the restroom as you jinx each other with the sentence.

his hand intertwined with yours after fixing each other’s appearance you walk out of the restroom and go back to sit down at the dinner where some of the other drivers and their partners were seated.

“fucking finally! you filthy whores we’ve been waiting 20 minutes for you guys. couldn’t you wait until after dessert!” max curses at the two of you and you give him the finger before sitting next to charles and lily right beside you,

“i got my dessert already.” you chuckle leaning your head on charles, his hand resting on your thigh. the rest of the group doesn’t mind, seeing the two of you with a smitten smile obviously enjoying yourselves but their faces turn sour at max’s next comment, “yeah, a salty one.”

“max!”

─────────────────────────

after dinner you all headed out to your own cars and to the club where the real birthday celebrations would start for charles. however, you had one small wish to make on your behalf despite it not being your day. “don’t pout at me, baby. what’s wrong?” charles rubbed his thumb on your knee as he drove to the next destination.

“what’s wrong? you didn’t let me cum! i gave you a fucking blowjob with my knees on a filthy floor and i don’t get to cum? it’s your birthday but…i’m mad. i gave you a song, an entire album this year, i gave you leo, and what do i get? nothing!” you cross your arms and push his hand away.

“my love, is that why you’re upset? fine,” he takes a quick turn into an empty parking lot and you look at him confused because this certainly wasn’t the club you had booked. “charles, this isn’t the—.” you stop when he undoes your seatbelt and places you on his lap.

“have your way with me, ma chérie,” he leans in pulling you into a kiss, his hands on your face as you deepen the kiss and roll your hips against his causing him to let out a groan. clothes are quickly shrugged off to where your aching pussy rubs against his hardened cock.

his cock slipping in as you let yourself moan as he stretches you, “you take me so well," he grunts. "that’s my girl, just relax for me. gonna give you exactly what you want.”

now fully seated on charles, cock deep inside of you as he holds your face in his hands, “j'aime toujours à quel point tu es jolie quand je t'ai comme ça. [always love how pretty you look when i have you like this].” he grunts letting you rock your hips against him.

“still don’t know what you’re saying but i love how you talk to me in french,” you press your lips to his as he squeezes your hips. he thrusts up meeting your movements as well causing you both to let out loud moans as the car shakes, “tu me prends si bien, chérie. [you take me so well, sweetheart.]”

"don't stop, please, don't stop." you whimper feeling one of his hands pull away from your hip but gasp when it goes to your clit adding pressure to it, “charlie,” your moans coming out loud and needy, grabbing onto his shoulder and fucking yourself harder on him.

charles can’t help but let out a string of curse words mixed in french and italian. you have no idea what he is saying other than his usual pet names for you but it has you close to your orgasm and he could tell, “that’s it, baby. taking my cock so well give me a little more and you can cum.” he grabs you close to him your chest pressed against his as he forces himself up into you hitting your sweet spot with every thrust.

“cum with me, pretty girl.” a small nod and you capture his lips in yours letting out a moan against his soft lips as you reach your orgasm. a loud groan escapes his chest as he empties himself inside you.

you let a few minutes pass as you both catch your breaths and share a few sweet kisses, “best birthday ever, from my favorite gift ever. i love you,” charles smiles at you, his cock still buried deep inside you making the moment much more intimate for you, “i you, charlie.” you kiss his nose which makes him let out a low chuckle.

“we should probably get going before—.” as charles speaks up about heading to the club some bright car lights shine in your faces causing you to wince. you jump up startled when you hear a knock on the window, “fuck! mon amour…still inside you,” charles groans feeling your walls clench around his cock.

“you guys have been gone for an hour! we get it you like to fuck but we couldn’t get into the club until you arrived. i need a fucking drink!” max yells through the window stressed as if you had missed an importat meeting. in his eyes, you did.

however, his little tantrum caused the two of you to throw yourselves into a fit of giggles as he curses in dutch the only words you can understand are gin & tonic. “best birthday.” charles repeats, his loving smile directed at you. his best gift ever.

#f1 amour works #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc texts #charles leclerc #charles leclerc drabble #charles leclerc one shot #charles leclerc smut #charles leclerc x singer!reader

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hpowellsmith · 3 months ago

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Honor Bound: Guard students and secrets at an elite school!

Protect an exclusive boarding school and rebuild your life after scandal as a military bodyguard for the children of the rich and famous! Return to the world of Crème de la Crème, this time as a military officer in the Republic of Teran.

Honor Bound is an interactive novel by Harris Powell-Smith where your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based, 595,000 words and hundreds of choices, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

You've built a promising career in the Teranese military, a force which has not seen major engagement in decades but which holds vast influence. Thanks to an injury, you're no longer in the field. Thanks to the complicated (read: scandalous) circumstances of that injury, you've been quietly reassigned as a bodyguard for the teenage child of a famous scientist. This should be an easy assignment: your charge is at boarding school in the wilderness, an exclusive sanctuary where the children of the rich and powerful become artists and scientists of the future. The school sits close to your own hometown, so you'll be familiar with the area. Finally, you can recover your health and get your career back on track.

But danger is closing in, and peril can come from inside as well as out. What secret projects are your colleagues pursuing in the dead of night? What is your commanding officer not telling you? Bandits lurk in the wilderness—including one of your childhood friends!—and natural disasters constantly threaten the fragile environment. And then there's the danger to your heart, from the complicated feelings that come from returning to your birthplace, and from adjusting to the new reality of your life. Can you really go home again?

Build a warm community and bond with your colleagues, or impress everyone with your aloof competence. Chase ambition to receive glowing reports and get your life back on track—or become such a disaster that only bandits will tolerate your presence. Or, just maybe, you will have to risk it all for the sake of doing the right thing.

Play as male, female, or nonbinary; cis or trans; gay, straight, or bisexual; asexual and/or aromantic; allosexual and/or alloromantic; monogamous or polyamorous.

Customize your age: play a junior officer in your 20s, a mid-ranking officer in your 30s, or a senior officer in your 40s.

Befriend or romance a severe military officer; a bold, easygoing outdoors expert; a determined and overworked priest; an earnest but scatterbrained fellow bodyguard; a childhood friend turned disgraced bandit; or the anxious, serious widowed parent of your charge.

Pet the dog, the cat, or both.

Meet the main characters of Crème de la Crème, Royal Affairs, and Noblesse Oblige, and find out what their lives are like now!

Shape the school life of your teenage charge: encourage her to make friends or sabotage her rivals; let her slack off or push her to achieve; and get caught up in boarding-school drama.

Unearth and thwart shadowy schemes—or join in the scheming for your own gain.

How far will you go for ambition, duty, and your country?

#interactive fiction #choice of games #honor bound #creme de la creme series #choicescript game #interactive novel #romance games #amare games #indie games #text games #dashingdon

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currentfandomkick · 2 months ago

Text

Based on this post

Tim tried not to remember.

But when you die the first time from electrocution and get dosed with enough ecto-everything the first time you die, electricity becomes a memory trigger.

Static shocks from a sweater just reminds you of shock wars with someone warm, no specific images.

Somedays when you get hit with Nightwing’s escrima sticks, even low level, you get a flicker of fighting some Discount Dracula and brush it off as a hallucination.

A few rogues hit him with live wires in the rain. Those were always bad. Flickers of people in googles and the worst neon jumpsuits hovering over him, saying words he couldn’t hear. He always felt floaty after, and hid at Drake Manor in his parents’ closet.

His mom’s perfume and Dad’s rank colognes were grounding. those hallucinations were getting worse, sure, but you’re Robin, and as Robin you can’t let Batman down.

Nightwing needs a brother that he can trust to handle Bruce’s depression, suicidal-by-vigilantism, and escalating violence. Nightwing holds everyone else together. Tim can hold just himself and Bruce together and give Alfred a break.

Tim can do it, he swears. He can’t fill growing void Jason’s death left, but he can make supports for Bruce’s crumbling everything. He can be a safety net for Alfred, who is never given grieving space for his lost loved one. He can be the no-drama little brother Nightwing needs after Jason’s death.

But he will not touch being Bruce’s son. Especially after the JJ incident and the memory influx. Bruce is too much like Jack as Brucie, too much like Fruitloop as Batman.

Tim is not Alfred’s grandson or son. He’s a co-parent for Bruce in his time of need (and bullying the man back into someone Jason had loved once). Alfred can be his friend, bug not family.

Tim always honored the dead and mourns them, even when they don’t remember him. Even those that never knew him stretching centuries back. He learned from this life’s parents that bonds are sacred and their loss devastating. They showed him in archeology and actions.

And Tim, he. He’s doing okay.

After the Joker and Freakshow merging into one personas he was shocked over and over.

He heard Freakshow say to kill Sam in the memory.

Vlad strapping him down and zapping him over and over again. His parents vivisecting him despite his screams. Jazz killing them and helping him escape, only to die in Tucker and Sam’s arms in the car. Again.

He killed the Joker then and there. Gun shot.

After the Joker got him and he escaped, he was doing Fine, really! Spectra overlaid on Harley at times, cooing he’s a creepy boy with freaky little powers and his misery is her favorite food.

He has to be useful. Keep Bruce’s head above water. Keep Nightwing from worrying about him. Be the easy kid and he’s loved (conditionally).

His dad only showed up and spoke to him about sports he couldn’t get into, but his new step-mom softened him. He can admit to missing and mourning mom while relaxing so much with Dana.

Dana noticed him flinching at lightning, gave him a noise machine, and offered to get him noise cancelling headphones.

When he admitted his hearing got ‘a lot better lately’ as quietly as he could, she hugged him and told him she’d break the meta abilities to Jack for him.

It wasn’t like Tim hid the ‘tortured by Joker for a few weeks’ thing. Dad knew it was Tim that was nabbed. He also knew Tim was in a Robin costume for a cosplay contest, and found out afterwards how… well, Tim being Robin was.

There are a lot of open secrets in the family. In the extended Drake family, that includes the first Black Canary was Diana Drake, who had too-sticky fingers and was disowned when she kept failing to either improve in hiding it or stop. The meta abilities were low on Tim’s list of priorities as existing… breaking it to Bruce was a hard no-go. So mastering them quickly was key.

Dana asked if he’d tested his vocal range.

Tim had not.

They started with a piano to check. Tim… Tim went far above and below where Dana could hear as they switched to everything from dog whistles to playing with infrasound.

Jack walked in at some-point and they didn’t notice.

Tim was busy working out if hearing echolocation from the Caves’ bats is why he started getting annoyed when he was there that he finally saw Jack sitting there, watching Dana test him.

Tim braced for yelling.

He got a hug. And his Dad holding him too tight while whispering “please don’t leave like Diana”

Tim did break a bit. Not for long, but enough.

Jack finding the Robin suit was not on Tim’s bingo card during the time he was debating coming clean to his fellow Just Us members about his meta-awakening.

Nor was going to Wayne Manor to let Bruce know he was planning to take a break from Robin for personal reasons, only to find his Dad holding Bruce at gun point and demanding Bruce “stay the fuck away from my son”

Jack did hit Bruce with the butt of his gun after Bruce muttered something Tim didn’t hear.

Jack drove them back, the silence tight around his throat. Everything in him demanded he scream to get this growing thing out.

He slammed his hands over his mouth.

Dad pulled over and helped him to a warehouse, feigning needing to vomit.

Tim kept the pitch above human hearing as he screamed, screamed down and was shaking all over.

Jack rubbed his own ears for a moment before helping a collapsing Tim back to the car.

Jack called Tim out sick and the three had a Talk about him being Robin. Especially with his powers emerging.

“Look, B doesn’t know. None of his masks do.” He’d have heard it from Bruce by now if he had. “Nightwing doesn’t either.”

“Batgirl, and the purple one, if they know they’ll tell that prick—”

“Jack,” Dana warned. “Tim, does anyone have any reason to suspect anything?”

Tim took a deep breath and sighed. “No one but us. Diana did a good job severing traceable links back, and I’m not even sure if the current Black Canary knows her mom was from Gotham or believes the cover Diana gave out.”

Jack’s shoulders dropped as the tension drained out of him. “That’s, that’s good.”

“… you have to apologize for the gun at somepoint,” Tim grumbled.

“Not if you’re not Robin.”

“… i may have been debating dropping Robin and toying with making a new alias again.”

“… is this another Mr. Sarcastic thing,” Dana whispered to him.

“Dana!”

“What? I’m not detective but i did do my research young man,” she teased while jabbing a finger at him playfully.

“I—Tim what am I looking at, why is there no armor, and how are you bald?”

“Hahaha, how about we pretend that stint didn’t happen and go over conditions for me solving crimes—we all know i’ll find a way and my team is notorious for international incidents on low stakes, let alone what we’re willing to do for each other.”

Jack and Dana shared a look.

“No Batman.”

“No heroing in Gotham,” Dana added to Tim’s surprise. “Not until we have a better idea on scope, triggers and how you can control and manage your abilities as well as how out you want to be as a meta, in each identity. You can’t unring a bell.”

Tim sighed. “Got it, got it… so i can go on missions with Young Justice still?”

“I’m writing a note that Batman is not allowed near you,” Jack insisted. “He’s not willing to do what it takes to keep you alive.”

Tim took a deep breath before agreeing to that term, and asking to update Alfred and Dick on the matter.

Jack moved to stop him but Dana gave him the go ahead.

Alfred accepted the situation for what it was. Dick offered to sponsor him in the hero community in Bruce’s stead, and reminded him the Titans are always happy to have him, Robin or not.

Jack rolled his eyes but let it slide.

“So Young Justice Missions…”

“Is there an adult on the team?”

“Red tornado is our supervisor,” Tim answered quickly.

“…fine.”

“And Titan missions?”

“They’re adults, they can keep an eye on you,” Jack conceded easily. “Maybe one of them can help with the new,” Jack gestured to all of Tim.

Tim huffed at him. “Thanks dad, really means a lot.”

Jack waved him off. “Weapons check at the window, supervision on missions, and we keep working with your powers. You can tell who you choose, but if you want to be out as a hero, you will be making a new name and will not be patrolling Gotham under this roof, am i understood?”

Tim paused. “So in college I can or—“

“Tim,” Dana warned.

Tim sighed. “Got it… but i can still do casework that’s not in the field?”

“As long as they can’t trace you.”

“Great! And shit, I’ll have to let my rogues know.”

“ ‘your’ rogues?” Jack echoed in disbelief.

Tim smiled at Jack. “Yeah. Some are just mine, especially Anarchy. And Nygma is going to be so bored without me.”

Jack looked at the ceiling. “You just had to be Robin, didn’t you.”

Tim smiled. “Someone needed to, and its not hard to be light to Batman’s dark after the last one.”

The silence hung again. “No dying on me,” Jack warned Tim. “I’m serious.”

Details were ironed out on the days to come. Dana made him promise to call daily while he stayed with the Titans. To not run from her and Jack, please. He also had daily pitch practice, and was given noise dampening headphones as a disability aide for a general sensory disorder so Tim could better focus in classes.

Jack still didn’t trust Batman/Bruce for shit.

…And Tim can’t fault him. Not when he knows his dad wasnt joking about being willing to kill to give Tim a chance at being safe. And that the man who killed mom and put Dad into physical therapy died in jail a few weeks before they moved from a mansion to an apartment.

Tim isnt stupid. Drakes kill to keep their own safe. Bats don’t.

Tim…. Tim doesnt want to, and Dad respects it. Dana isnt the killing type, but won’t stop Jack or whoever he hires.

Joker’s persistent living status AFTER killing the second Robin didn’t endear Bruce to Jack in the slightest. Tim being tortured for weeks and awakening the family meta-gene only soured whatever mild distaste remained into visceral disgust.

Stephanie became Gotham’s Robin while Tim is now the YJ’s and Titan’s was the only compromise Jack would make.

Jack’s rules made more sense as Tim’s… memories(?) from his last life began to spill out. The mundanities of school and home were easily manageable. Making small memory shrines to his late friends in his last life soothed an ache in his chest. Tucker had a sand timer and random bits and bobs for tech, Sam got a few house plants and his old camera. Jazz had a teddy bear and a few psychology papers he thought she might enjoy. Dani got fudge and a few language books with a world map. He still felt guilty for not stopping her death. Technus got an old handheld he didn’t use anymore, Ember got incense and he played indi rock for her. Dora got a dragon figurine and a Disney princess folder with some dress designs he thought she’d like. Pandora has a few batarangs he scavenged and fixed. Frostbite’s was by the icemaker, and was gifted herbal tea blends in ice cube form.

Dana called it grieving and encouraged him to let it happen and let himself feel. He… tried not to think about Jack and Maddie.

Tim trippled down on cold cases to cope. Jack began to turn off the internet after 3 am, only to work again after 9.

He was managing. And working out pitches and how they relate to his emotional state.

The problem came with training at the Tower as Robin, the boy with no powers and working through joker trauma.

During a spar with Dick, Tim had a flashback to Dani’s End and Perfect Danny melting. His own fucking Death too!

It was vomit inducing.

He came to to Nightwing crowding him and murmuring, “breathe with me baby bird”

They didnt talk about it after.

Tim noticed Dick stopped using electricity during their spars altogether, and carefully stayed a certain distance from him in the field. Static picked up on it and Tim shook his head when he moved to talk about it. He just. Needed a bit more time.

He hated himself for it. For the concern causing and being so… useless.

He grabbed another stack of cold cases in Bludhaven and kept solving them, as Tim, Robin and left ghem for Dick to handle.

Dana and him would practice his range at home. Piano ready.

He forgot that plants snitch to Ivy.

Ivy tapping his window to state the dandelions found his singing ‘annoying’ and he’d be getting lessons in singing for plants “or else” was an experience he did not need, nor was he reporting to anyone until a few days later.

Dad took a deep breath and asked him if this is what he wanted.

Dana offered to move closer to her home town and job hunt there if it made Tim more comfortable.

Ultimately Tim ended up getting lessons in plant language from Ivy, as he could hear them anyways. It could be useful for when he works out a new vigilante identity in the future.

Stephanie catching him at Ivy’s while her big boy “Denny” was arguing with Tim about if Tim can shatter concrete with a scream yet given his voice is cracking every other word lately was not in his plans.

Stephanie was about to ask what was going on when Ivy chimed in with “now Timmy, Benny isn’t wrong about it if we go with a thin layer of concrete and you put some effort into it. You can go very low and it does freak out people when you follow the angry tree hum. Now, if you scream that it should be destructive—didn’t a cousin of yours have the same meta ability?”

Tim denied it as keeping cousin Diana’s secret was a family thing. Ivy finding it out with how hidden it had been was not in the cards. Stephanie overhearing was also far from ideal.

Ivy let it go eventually, and demanded Tim do more community service for the beaches. He had no objections, and just asked if she could not implicate him in her next murder spree.

Ivy agreed to ‘think about it’ before letting Tim go after he finished reorganizing some of her chemicals and cleaning her tools. Their agreed ‘payment’ for his lessons in plant language and her interest in his meta abilities being vocal based but having a major change in his hearing.

He wasn’t the first meta she’d taken an interest in helping, and Tim saw signs of others, bumping into a few before and none of them saying shit.

Stephanie met up with him a block away from Ivy’s lair.

She hit him like Sam used to. And agreed to say nothing until he gave the word.

Her reminding him of Sam ached in a way he wasn’t prepared for. Her agreeing to say nothing relaxed him more than he realized he needed to.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. But Ivy for help?”

“Plants outted me. Apparently my singing is disturbing.”

“It is, the plants have good taste.”

He let himself feel normal for a bit. Ivy doesn’t out metas or use them. She is going to kill though, and probably ask for a few warehouses as payment or bribery for her silence on his skills at a later date… which Tim could give her in a few years time as those were in the trust set up by his mother before her death.

Her offerings were given by everyone at home. Dana left her baked goods. Tim left his grades by her shrine when he wasn’t closing cases—the solved ones were left there for a day or so before he’d change them out. Dad spoke to her sometimes, getting her up-to-date on the gossip in their field and new achievements from colleagues they liked and failures from those she despised.

It was comforting.

Dad even knew Tim was planning to do landback with a chunk of ‘wasteland’ that the company kept dumping on, and was planning to rehab it beforehand. If he had slipped an army of sunflower seeds there a while back and gave Ivy a tip about it well… she was willing to trade info on a few cases that he fed back to Stephanie as Robin. Ivy may also catch him working a few cold cases now and then.

He’s aware she’s a dangerous rogue and will continue to kill. He also knows that when he focused on solving a string of women’s deaths and located the (still living) killer that the man was dead after their lesson, and before he submitted his findings to the GCPD cold cases department.

He’s not stupid. He knows she prefers to kill. But he doesn’t.

It makes working with the Titans on weekends awkward when Nightwing begins to notice Tim responding before the others and frowning into the air when the grass gives him tips on when events take place and for incoming company.

No one presses him on it. Static bumps his shoulder and passed a ‘talk when you’re ready’ note to him.

Then the fact Ivy did not hit him with cuddle pollen but did hit Stephanie as Robin and threw them in a room together was just plain embarrassing.

It also meant Ivy figured Tim or Robin had a crush on the other and just. Why?

He finally understood how Sam felt during Ember’s first appearance and he was made to lovestick… sort of. Stephanie koalaing him until they broke out and he managed to get them to one of the quieter Paramedics two blocks over wasnt the same. But close enough.

Dana did get the alert about him being near the attack, and she looked at him too much like Jazz had when she was concerned for his wellbeing.

He wondered what Tucker would say to all this. Two lives and two sets of parents later, and the one who checks him first is the step mom closer to Babs’ age than his father’s.

There’s a million jokes Tucker could make about that.

Dana and Dad had a talk about it, and Tim knew it was written just so he didnt hear it. He hears so much more lately its maddening some days.

He was given the upcoming three-day weekend to stay with the Titans, and Dana suggested asking Raven for tips on managing reincarnation memories.

Dad said he called for a “Jazz, Sam and Tucker” in his sleep a lot. A “Valerie ” on occasion too.

He wanted to melt into a puddle.

Dad muttering he’d find his first parents’ souls and get back at them his damn self didn’t help in the slightest… nor did seeing Dana hide Constantine’s business card in her tampon drawer.

He gave in a bit. His friends can’t know yet, not while he’s working it out. And Raven is Dick’s friend—it would get back to him too fast for Tim’s liking.

He knocked on the door.

“Tim?”

“Hey Virgil, is now an okay time for that talk?”

—

That’s what i got for now. May do another part if anyone is interested.

Also let me know if i missed any tags

#dpxdc #long post #reincarnated danny #danny reincarnated at Tim #tim drake #good dad jack #good mom dana #my writing

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ekingston · 1 month ago

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Hello! So sorry to bother, but have you had any updates on the Word-Stream/Speechify situation?

Just one: like I posted on Xitter and Bluesky last night, as of yesterday afternoon, the links to individual works as they were listed on WordStream are gone from both Google and Bing. Hurray, right? Surely we’re all sick of this whole debacle and there’s far more important things to worry about. If all is well that ends well, surely there’s no need to still be angry.

Well, I am. Here’s why:

When I checked on Wednesday, the links to my own work on WordStream were still listed. So rather than it taking a week after Cliff Weitzman first hid the fanwork from view, it took a little over a week from the moment he first promised privately that they would be deleted. Which, fine. Perhaps Cliff didn’t really know what he was talking about when he gave that timeframe. Or maybe he told a little white lie to create the impression that he always intended to do the right thing. It seems more likely to me, though, that Cliff still believed—even after the backlash he received—that he would get away with honoring only individual takedown requests. Or worse, that he needed just a little bit more time with the stolen material to figure out an alternative way to profit off it—preferably without us noticing, this time.

But who knows? I certainly don’t! All we can do is speculate, because publicly, Cliff Weitzman has remained completely silent on his copyright infringements. All we got was the initial justifications he and his sockpuppet accounts used in comments on the original Reddit and Tumblr posts. After those were so understandably ill-received, Cliff only ever communicated with a few individual authors who contacted him directly and repeatedly, blocking people who addressed the issue on Twitter and quietly distancing himself from WordStream by deleting a blog he’d posted to Speechify.com dated December 20th—where Cliff promoted WordStream’s platform specifically to fanfiction readers. (See my enormous timeline post for details and screenshots of said posts before they were taken down.)

And this is why I’m still angry: As long as Cliff Weitzman faces no real consequences for his actions, he won’t see a need to own up to his mistake; and as long as he’s able to delay taking responsibility, this isn’t over. This didn’t end well.

After all, wasn’t this the next-best scenario for Cliff, second only to him turning WordStream into a (for him) effortless, infinite money-making machine? He took something we provided for free and fed it to AI so he could more easily put it behind a paywall; we found out and protested; Cliff quietly erased all evidence of his crime; and we went—almost equally quietly—away.

I want to make sure you know that I continue to be genuinely amazed and intensely grateful for how quickly the news about WordStream’s copyright infringement was shared—and continues to be shared—throughout fandom, on tumblr in particular. If it hadn’t been for our collective outcry here and on Reddit, WordStream would very likely still be up in its original form, and Weitzman would be reaping the benefits (those subscription prices were steep) today.

But it’s been frustrating to see that, with the exception of mentions in articles on Substack and Fansplaining (the latter of which is a particularly awesome and thorough read on fandom’s decontextualization) and a Fanlore listing, our outrage never really spilled out beyond the safely insulated, out-of-the-way spaces that are tumblr, a handful of subreddits and bluesky. And I believe that—unfortunately—we are collectively responsible for that part, as well.

Most of us seemed content to only spread the word by circulating the same two posts on tumblr. (Have we all given up completely on every other social media platform? Am I the only remaining straggler?) And soon after Cliff Weitzman hid WordStream’s fanfiction category from view, our interest in the issue took a sharp dive even there. Are we genuinely deceived into believing the issue has been fully resolved? Do we truly fail to realize that Weitzman’s refusal to admit that what he did was wrong left the door wide open for the next greed-driven tech bro to wander through? Or is the true naivety in thinking that, as a community, we can keep this kind of attack on fandom from happening again? Has our disillusionment already gotten that bad?

However the situation spins out from here, Cliff’s actions will set a precedent. If we fail to show Cliff and his ilk that attempts to profit off fandom’s unpaid labor have consequences, their tech companies will keep trying until something eventually sticks. They might be a little smarter about it next time; obscure their sources a bit better, maybe leave the titles and the authors’ names off. Or maybe they’ll go a bolder route: maybe next time they cross the line they’ll do it boldly enough for IP holders to take notice and stop tolerating fanwork entirely.

Doesn’t that make you angry, too?

There’s this whole other mess of thoughts I would love to be able to untangle about how commercial influence is contributing to the steady erosion of fandom’s foundations, but I’m tired, and other people have said it all much more eloquently than I ever could. Seriously, go read that article on Fansplaining. Or listen to the podcast version of it. Better yet, as long as you’re wearing your noise-canceling headphones, go listen to a podfic of one of your favorite fandoms’ works, and enjoy the collaborative joy and creativity of the people who Cliff Weitzman refuses to believe exist. (In one of Speechify’s other blogs, Cliff claims there are only 272 podfics on AO3. Would you like to run that ChatGPT prompt again, Cliff?). Honestly, much like Cliff Weitzman’s infuriating denial of the fact that fandom fucking has this covered, thank you very much, there’s so. Many. More. Things for us to talk about. There’s the connotations of WordStream’s dubious ‘upload’ button, for instance, or the fact that the app scraped (and in some cases, allegedly, still lists) copyright-protected original fiction as well, or WordStream’s complete lack of contact information, which is illegal for an internationally operating app. And oh! Has anyone reported more thoroughly on Cliff’s app’s options to ‘simplify’ or ‘modernize’ uploaded works, or—my own very favorite abomination—to translate them into something Cliff calls ‘Gen-Z Language’? Much like his atrocious AI book covers, it would be hilarious, if it didn’t make steam come out of my ears.

Anyway, there it is. I highly recommend you do all of that. And then, if you aren’t familiar with it already, go do some research re: fair use and your rights as the copyright owner of your works. A good number of people commenting on this controversy expressed stunned surprise or fearful hesitation about claiming any sort of ownership of their fanfiction. The more informed we are about our rights, the more willing we will be to defend them.

Please don’t stop writing or sharing your work. If you can’t bring yourself to work on your WIPs today (trust me, I get it), post about this situation instead. Tweets, skeets, whateverthefucks—about WordStream’s theft, about how this reflects on Speechify’s already shady business practices, about how Cliff’s actions and justifications have personally affected you. You’re welcome to share or copy my posts on these platforms, but since Cliff already blocked me, I very much prefer you post your own. If you do, call Cliff Weitzman by his full name and tag or include both WordStream and Speechify to ensure Weitzman will recognize he has both a personal as well as a professional stake in handling the situation with integrity. Leave your concerns in reviews on the Speechify app. (We weren’t provided with a more appropriate place to put them, after all!) Consider calling for a Speechify boycott until Cliff accepts accountability for his actions.

Do avoid making exaggerated claims, and don’t call for physical retaliation against Cliff’s person or his property. We don’t want to give him or Speechify even the weakest of grounds to claim defamation or threats of violence. Focus on the facts: they’re incriminating enough by themselves. Show Cliff that we’re determined to keep bringing up his company’s wrongdoings in public spaces until he demonstrates that he understands why taking these freely shared fanworks and monetizing them was wrong, and takes steps to ensure it won’t happen again.

One last thing—and this is really more of a general reminder—please stop suggesting I handle this situation for you. People have come to me asking for action items. The resulting flashbacks to my days as an office assistant were extremely upsetting. In all seriousness, casting me as some sort of coordinator or driving force behind this backlash actively hurts the cause. Not only does it downplay fandom’s collective efforts, it also makes our message extremely vulnerable. It would be all too easy for Cliff to silence one singular source. Wikipedia will not maintain mentions of this controversy as long as it leads only to Easter Kingston’s attempt to summarize what happened as it was happening. You only know my name because I stumbled upon WordStream’s theft and decided to get my friends involved. I am not more knowledgeable, more skilled or more angrily invested in this issue than you are (or can, or should, be). I draw pictures and I write stories and I worry about the shift I’m seeing in fandom after having been on this ride for even a few pre-livejournal rounds.

I’m not going to stop doing any of those things. But I am going to allow myself to step away for a bit, make my wife dinner, and catch up on our shows.

I trust you’ve got it from here.

#word-stream #cliff weitzman #plagiarism #speechify #AO3 #writers on tumblr #fanfiction #independent authors #web scraping #fandom activism #ask me things!#(which is my ask tag please don’t send me asks about things i’ve already answered in the main post)#anonymous

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oh-obrien · 3 months ago

Text

GRID ACE 0.5

GAMER READER x Lestappen SMAU

Summary: Reader is a Red Bull e-sports athlete who happens to catch the attention of two particular drivers with her streams.

All pictures are from Pinterest and reader has various face claims!!

Part five and I promised this one would be the last but I’m a slut for this pairing apparently and can keep going🤭

Look for one or two more parts!

Also look out for a Maxiel college SMAU!!

Comment to be tagged ☺️

Masterlist / Previous Part / Next Part (my links aren’t working right now I’ll be fixing it tonight 😊)

Xx.y/n.xX just posted

Las Vegas, Nevada

Liked by Yourbestfriend, Landonorris, and 45,688 others

Xx.y/n.xX , @ yourbestfriend and the grid... not sold separately.

Yourbestfriend shop the package deal today!

-> Danielricciardo it's like those American stores that sell huge amounts of things!

-> Xx.y/n.xX today on @ Danielricciardo can't google the correct terms: Big Box Stores

-> Landonorris to be fair he isn't American and he's trying

-> Xx.y/n.xX hey, @ landonorris. Five. Seconds.

-> Oscarpiastri great now he's crying in the corner

-> Danielricciardo @ landonorris crying in the club (the hotel bathroom) because he just received the most devastating news ever (y/n was a bitch) even though it was expected (y/n is a bitch every day)

-> Yourbestfriend WOAH WOAH WOAH DANNY BOY. She might me a bitch but she's my bitch.

-> Maxverstappen1 my bitch.

-> Charles_leclerc ours*

User1 MY PARENTS ARE PARENTING IN THE COMMENTS

-> User2 sometimes I forget they're actually dating and then they whip out that

-> User3 no because Max and Charles will just say our girlfriend sometimes and my brain like factory resets

-> User4 NO LIKE Y/N LITERALLY SAID MY BOYFRIENDS ON STREAM THE OTHER DAY AND I WAS KICKING MY FEET GIGGLING

-> Landonorris imagine how tired we are of it.

->User1 LANDO NO

-> Georgerussell63 imagine how tired we are.

-> User5 I’m D E A D GEORGE TOO

f1 you all better be ready to race next weekend after this one

-> Redbullracing what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

-> McLaren we don’t want to hear wedding bells only car engines

-> Scuderiaferrari VROOOOOOOM

-> Xx.y/n.xX they’ll all be in tip top racing shape for next weekend 🫡

-> User1 EXCUSE ME WEDDING BELLS???

User6 I’m trying to tell who on the grid is out all together.

User7 I WANT TO KNOW WHOS FINGER HAS THAT FAT ROCK ON IT IN THE SECOND PICTURE.

-> User8 THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TRYING TO FIGIRE OUT TOO. THERES TWO THOUGH SO LIKE???

-> User7 I feel like it can’t be Y/N she always has really fun nails and they just hard launched like a few weeks ago

-> User9 my boyfriend is a RB mechanic and says this has been going on for well over a year now

-> User10 it always makes me mildly uncomfy when people speculate about this stuff

-> User7 girl sit down they’re public figures

-> User10 it can really easily just be a friend out with them and one one of the drivers SO’s though

-> User11 Y/N in her gold digger era bagging two F1 drivers

-> Xx.y/n.xX my contract from professional gaming ensures I don’t need to “bag” anyone thank you very much. Sorry you can’t find one man to love you let alone two ☕️

-> User12 OH MY GOD THAT IS INSANE

-> User13 period Queen 👑

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

Landonorris just added to their story

Story Replies:

DanielRicciardo : you’re going to be in trouble for this one

Landonorris : Danny boy, Max posted it with me while Charles and y/n were on their bathroom break.

Georgerussell63 : Today on Lando breaks the internet

Landonorris : it’s my duty 🫡

Xx.y/n.xX : If I wasn’t so hungover right now I’d be mad about this.

Landonorris : your lovely fiancé told me I should post it

Xx.y/n.xX : my lovely fiancé was almost as drunk as I was and his judgement was impaired

Landonorris : no, max was actually pretty in his right mind.

Xx.y/n.xX : if he wasn’t out getting me and Char coffee right now I’d be more mad about this

Yourbestfriend : best man 🤝🏻 maid of honor 🤝🏻 being menaces to society

Landonorris : you know it sweetheart

Yourbestfriend : sweetheart?

Landonorris : did I stutter ?

Yourbestfriend : 🫣

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

User1 E X C U S E M E?????? I know we all went FERAL over Lando’s post last night but WHAT??

-> User2 I just assumed it was one of his friends. I did not realize the rest of the grid was there

-> User3 I bartended for most of the event last night and I can tell you they brought out the club and if you KNEW who it was you’d go INSANE!

-> User1 GIRL YOU CANNOT JUST SAY THAT

-> User3 the couple was ALL OVER each other.

User4 REMBER Y/N’s INSTA THE OTHER DAY??? We NEED to figure out whose hand that ring was on!!!

-> User5 my vote is on Max, Charles and Y/N

-> User6 Y/N’s Val team was posting on their stories that they were in Vegas a couple days ago, why else would they be there?

-> User7 Y/N’s best friend has also been posting that she’s in Vegas.

-> User5 she’s been traveling with the grid also, I think there’s something else going on there with her and a driver as well.

F1forthegirls BREAKING : an unnamed source has confirmed that the party was for Y/N, Max and Charles. The source c confirms that Land and Yourbestfriend rented out the club, set up catering and tapped most of the grid to help decorate.

-> User8 NO FUCKING WAY THIS IS TRUE

-> User9 Until my mother confirms absolutely nothing is true!

-> User10 WHEN DID THEY GET TOGETHER THIS IS INSANE

-> User3 they were like a bunch of love drunk idiots last night it’s definitely real. Those boys WORSHIP her

-> User11 WE NEED MORE DETAILS @ user3

-> User3 nah they deserve to keep is mostly private! They haven’t even announced yet and this leaked!

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

Xx.y/n.xX just posted

Las Vegas, Nevada

Xx.y/n.xX Max and Charles have the best pit crews but I have the best “I Do” crew.

User14 I AM SO SORRY BUT W H A T THE ACTUAL FUCK

-> Xx.y/n.xX ahh you can’t say fuck, penalty.

-> User14 HELLO???

Danielricciardo I made a great pick with the last decorations

-> Xx.y/n.xX 🙄

-> Landonorris I HELPED

-> Xx.y/n.xX no boys allowed ✋🏻❌

Yourbestfriend girly really goes for it with the hard launches

-> Xx.y/n.xX it’s my specialty 🤭

User15 are we just not going to ask when this happened???

-> User16 so it was totally y/n in her last post with the MASSIVE engagement ring

-> User17 it looks like a stack my bet is she got two rings actually

-> User18 each boy would’ve definitely gotten her one

-> User19 I NEED THE DETAILS!!!

-> User20 I want to know when they ACTUALLY got together being that they’re apparently ENGAGED now??

Maxverstappen1 what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

-> Charles_leclerc no you just party too hard to remember

-> Georgerussell63 actually @ oscarpiastri and I needed to drag you and Y/N out of the club, Max was perfectly fine.

-> Maxverstappen1 exactly.

-> User21 WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT LOVE DRUNK MAX GIGGLING WHILE HE FOLLOWS THEM BACK TO THE HOTEL

-> Xx.y/n.xX @ Landonorris drop the vid!!!

Redbullgaming excuse me that’s OUR top frag we’d like to keep her!!!

-> Redbullracing actually she’s coming home with me

-> Scuderiaferrari I feel like we deserve a place in this conversation now also

Yourteammate1 THE BEST WEEKEND 🍾 🎊

-> Yourteammate2 THE BEST BRIDE TO BE

Valorantesports Whatever they’re doing I like it!

-> Xx.y/n.xX admin pulling out the Neon vocie lines 🥹🫶🏻

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

Charles_leclerc just posted

Tagged @ Xx.y/n.xX, @ maxverstappen1

Comments on this post have been limited

Liked by Landonorris, yourbestfriend, and 1.23M others

Charles_leclerc Together is a wonderful place to be

Xx.y/n.xX Forever and ever and ever!!

Maxverstappen1 of course this is the picture you picked

-> Charles_leclerc it happens to be one of my favorites

-> Xx.y/n.xX they’re all my favorites

Landonorris ITS HAPPENING STAY CALM! STAY CALM!

-> Danielricciardo he is not calm

-> Oscarpiastri he’s definitely not calm

Scuderiaferrari CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR FUTURE FERRARI ROYALTY (and max too we guess)

-> Redbullracing truce?

-> Scuderiaferrari we’re still coming for that world championship

Carlossainz55 🍾🎊🥳 Congratulations!!

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒

Maxverstappen1 just posted

Tagged @ Xx.y/n.xX, @ charles_leclerc

Comments on this post have been limited

Liked by redbullracing , georgerussell63 and 1.83M others

Maxverstappen1 My favorite place is next to you

-> Xx.y/n.xX and Char*

-> charles_leclerc AND CHAR!

DanielRicciardo let the festivities begin!

-> Xx.y/n.xX Danny’s in his wedding planner era

-> DanielRicciardo at your service m’lady

Redbullgaming Two world champions and a soon to be world champion? UNSTOPPABLE!

-> Maxverstappen1 Hell yeah! My crew delivers!

-> Valorantesports Max Verstappen three time world champion pulling out OUR voice lines? AHHHHH

-> Xx.y/n.xX you’re not ready for Max’s Geckko main arc.

Lewishamilton Congrats, mate! Lucky to have gotten a front row seat to your story.

-> Xx.y/n.xX 🫶🏻

Tag list : @that-one-little-soybean @menagerofmischief @delululeclerc @evermoreandroyalblue @tsnelf7 @dukeofjjune

#max verstappen #max verstappen imagine #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #formula 1 fanfic #charles leclerc imagine #formula 1 imagine #f1 smau #charles lecrelc x reader #max verstappen x reader #lestappen #reader x lestappen #lestappen imagine #lestappen x reader

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lewisvinga · 10 months ago

Text

forever | yuki tsunoda x fem! reader

summary; yuki finally reveals his relationship with japans top figure skater. everyone assumes that it’s a fairly recent relationship until a certain detail is revealed

fc; rika kihira

warnings; google translated japanese

taglist; @namgification @louvrepool @locelscs @thehufflepuffavenger1 @minseok-smaus @goldenmclaren @ollieshifts @lavisenri @graciewrote @xoscar03 @c-losur3

note; requested !

masterlist !

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

liked by yukitsunoda0511, pierregasly, and others !

yourusername: (๑>◡<๑) ♡

tagged; yukitsunoda0511

yukitsunoda0511: 🤍🤍 liked by yourusername !

username: omg not y/n FINALLYYY posting yuki 😭😭

username: they’re still w the new relationship vibes i adore them pls ur honor !!

username: he’s so bf y/n u lucky woman

pierregasly: stay away from my yuki!

yourusername: stay away from my kika!

username: 😭

username: my new fave relationship 💞

username: y/n and yuki both being japanese is soooo cute is sooo cute to me

username: MY LOVES THEY’RE SO CUTE😖😖😖😖

username: the new couple honeymoon phase and love them ur honor pls 😞😞

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

liked by yourusername, pierregasly, and others !

yukitsunoda0511: forever grateful we were put in the same kindergarten class many years ago. forever grateful to be your boyfriend. happy 4 year anniversary, my y/n. 愛してます❤️ [i love you]

tagged; yourusername

yourusername: awwwww yuki☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️

yourusername: happy 4 years!! i love youu(´ ε ` )♡

yukitsunoda0511: to forever ❤️❤️❤️❤️

pierregasly: simp

francisca.cgomes: oh shut up, pierre! let them celebrate their anniversary in peace 🙄🙄🙄🙄

yukitsunoda0511: he’s just grumpy i’m cooking for y/n tonight and not him 😁

pierregasly: i’m the other woman 🕊️

username: TJEY’BE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR HOOQWWWW LONG??

username: and here we were thinking it was a new relationship 😭😭

username: ok but y/n is the coolest

username: anyone see pierre’s comment? lmaoooo

pierregasly: this is not a laughing matter when yuki told me forever!

yukitsunoda0511: to our FRIENDSHIP, i’ve known y/n longer than u

yourusername: 😁😁😁😁

pierregasly: let a man grieve, y/n!!

#formula one x reader #f1 x reader #f1 smau #f1 scenario #formula one scenarios #f1 imagine #formula one imagines #formula one imagine #f1 scenarios #yuki tsunoda scenarios #yuki tsunoda social media au #yuki tsunoda smau #yuki tsunoda x reader #yuki tsunoda imagine

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bth3cowboi · 11 months ago

Text

love conjeture, lh44 x reader

masterlist

pairing: lewis hamilton x mathematician!reader

summary: sometimes algorithms win championships, other times they help find love. (social media au)

mercedesamgf1

liked by yninmath, georgerussell63 and 879.301 others

mercedesamgf1 This year we want to give a special thank-you to Dr. Yn Ln! With the creation of her new algorithm focused on data analysis and her extensive collaboration this season our view in analytics evolved to unimaginable levels. We are forever grateful for her contributions and what they mean for the future of Formula 1. Thanks again Dr. Ln, and good luck with the thesis! 😎💻

tagged yninmath;

see all comments

yninmath thank you for the opportunity🫡💙 it was an honor to work alongside this great team

mercedesamgf1 👏💙

user1 omg work girlll!!

user2 just googled her and im going crazy like how do you have 3 phds at 27😭?

user3 graduated super early too shes kind of a genius lol

lewishamilton thank you miss yn💙

yninmath your welcome sir champion🥹

user4 ok this is cuteee

user5 you should be thanking him bffr

georgerussell63 Outstanding!🙌 Make sure to come back Dr. Yn

yninmath oh but the travelling😮‍💨

lewishamilton nah you’ll make it back

yninmath if you say so haha

yninmath

liked by lewishamilton and others

yninmath currently picking up trash couches, writing thesis and remembering the friends ive made along the way 🤓💘

on a serious note, if anyone is interested in reading about topology feel free to read my new paper abt it (link in bio #influencer)

tagged bestfriend, roscoelovescoco;

see all comments

roscoelovescoco working’s hard🐾😵‍💫

yninmath or hardly working🤔

bestfriend surprised the couch didnt bring rats or something

yninmath no rats or fleas!!! its been a great couch #trashcouch #luckygirls

bestfriend please never use # again

user1 great paper dr yn😍 is there any way I could get your paper on the hodge conjeture for academical porpouses? magazines are too expensive, help a girl out🙏

yninmath dm me girl that should be free so make sure your class gets it too

user2 dr yn youre saving the nyu maths class of 25’🫡

lewishamilton no rest on break miss yn?

yninmath you know me already haha💞

user3 suspicious…

user4 what? they cant be just friends?

user5 I thought she worked for merecedes, what is this?

user6 she was only there to develop part of her thesis tho still won them another championship

liked by lewishamilton

f1paddockgossip

liked by pierregasly and 903.443 others

f1paddockgossip BREAKING! Lewis Hamilton was caught while vacationing in France with mathematician and Mercedes’ collaborator Dr. Yn Ln. The pair are rumored to be in a months-long relationship already, starting in the middle of last season.

see all comments

user1 NOOOOO

user2 isnt she like way younger than him? weird

user3 shes literally a grown woman lol she can be with whoever she pleases

user4 no cause they actually look really cute🥹 so happy for them

user5 right! she seems super nice

user6 i just know that man is confused everytime she talks numbers lmao the curse of dating a stem girlie

lewishamilton

liked by yninmath, f1 and 3.478.139 others

lewishamilton congrats on the finished thesis miss yn😉💙 love you

comments have been limited

yninmath love u and ty for the championship😘 would have failed otherwise

lewishamilton 😂😂

lewishamilton anything for my girl

yninmath 🥹

yninmath

liked by mercedesamgf1, lewishamilton and others

yninmath you best believe he sat on the #trashcouch #dearlordwhenigettoheaven

comments have been limited

bestfriend did it have fleas lewishamilton?

lewishamilton no but I was worried

yninmath booo tomatoes

bestfriend just buy a new one please

yninmath i believe in sustentability🫡🍃

lewishamilton there has to be a limit

lewishamilton ❤️❤️

yninmath love you sm

liked by lewishamilton

——

a/n: ty for reading and i hope you enjoyed🩷 maybe ill be writing more for different drivers soon, so if anyone is interesed keep that in mind!

#f1 #lewis hamilton #lh44 #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 smau #f1 x you #lewis hamilton x reader

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