#look at who is organizing and their affiliations

[cinemaocd]

Every Protest Has

Outside provocateurs starting property damage, and violence.

Hardened activists/Professional protestors that are out to get strategically arrested. Usually <10 people.

The groups with almost no connection with the cause being protested who try to make it about themselves.

The cops starting shit. Escalating to militarized police response.

Street theater.

Privileged people starting shit with the cops putting marginalized folks in even more danger.

Surveillance.

Private Security

FBI informants

Counter protestors not in a formal protest group but scattered around the margins, making themselves visible to the media but also on or near public transport so that they can intimidate people coming/going to the protest

"Non-lethal" crowd control methods.

People with bullhorns who should not have them. Ever.

and finally but probably most importantly:

Every protest has

been mischaracterized, often wildly so, by the media.

[devils-yui]

Reposting this from a friend bc I think it is VERY important to know of this, and for immigrants, and other possible victims of the ICE Raids happening right now

Here’s to also a very huge edit, from the list of very helpful people who have been reblogging and providing more info.

I’m not as well informed but I will be relaying the information and tagging each person who added onto this post:

@onthedriftinthetardis -

The phone number in the first photo is ONLY for Orange County, California!

Look up your local ACLU affiliate here

@6feetunderwater -

It always makes me nervous to see a reporting phone number passed around without any links to verify it, so the number in the first pic can be found on the site for the Orange County Rapid Response Network, which is "an interconnected system of non-profit and grassroots organizations, civil rights attorneys, law school clinics, and individuals working together to respond to dehumanizing immigration enforcement activities and policies in Orange County"

@geekerypeekery -

The second warrant is not fake, but is an administrative rather than judicial warrant, and has no constitutional authority to bypass Fourth Amendment protections - in other words, it does not entitle the bearer to enter and search your home. It simply authorizes agents of the issuing department to contact you. Always ask to see the warrant before opening your door!

In addition to the ACLU links, try contacting the National Immigration Law Center https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Warrants-Subpoenas-Facts.pdf

@american-anger -

The phone number listed here is specific to Orange County in California, but you can look up other California counties here:

CALIFORNIA RAPID RESPONSE NETWORKS

@beaniebaneenie -

Unpleasant reminder: within 100 miles of the border (which is home to 200 million people and virtually all major cities in the US), ICE does not need a warrant to enter your home, your car, to search anything, or even to arrest you.

You are not automatically safe just because they don't have a real warrant.

The best and safest thing you can do is learn to have escape routes- quick ways to get out of the house or area you're in if you find out ICE or CBP are around. Those of us who do have documentation? Time for us to step the fuck up.

Film any interaction. Every interaction. If you're able, step into the conversation and be a Karen/Kyle- weaponize your privilege for Good. If you get asked about people? Use positive but vague statements so you a) cannot be caught in a lie, and b) do not give any information away.

"I don't know them that well, but I don't tend to socialize much. They seem great to me."

"I can't remember the last time I saw them."

"Maybe they speak another language, I can't remember details. But I picked up Duolingo during the pandemic and tons of other people did too."

"I'm not sure."

"I'm sorry, I can't help you."

Even if you're somewhere the 100-mile Exception doesn't apply and a warrant is in fact needed? I don't expect ICE and CBP to play by the rules for long, if at all. I fully expect this to get ugly, and fast.

Cheeto has already declared an emergency of national security at the border, and is mobilizing the military to have jurisdiction over a huge swath of the country. It's essentially tantamount to martial law. And it's only been four days.

Gear up for a long, hard fight. This is gonna be a marathon, not a sprint.

— I am leaving all of this as an edit because on the off chance someone does find the posts that have these people specifically reblogging, I don’t want it to be too late. So I’m comprising it all here

Here are a few other people’s reblogs I thought were important:

Thank you @onthedriftinthetardis @6feetunderwater @geekerypeekery @american-anger @beaniebaneenie @bunnychiffon @dubiouslynamed @trisockatops @witchy-disaster for contributing and helping me make this a more well-informed post. Thank you so much

[searchingforserendipity25]

it's a good thing conclave didn't waste any time on making the stories about catholic orders and their in-fighting. and probably i shouldn't either because i am not informed enough about it to go on at length. pls take all of this w a grain of salt.

but i know in my heart of hearts that aldo bellini is a progressive liberal jesuit, the holy father's specialest most progressive liberal italian-american jesuit.

look at him. look at his glasses. those are the glasses of a man who did his dissertation on reinterpreting loyola through a contemporary reformist lens. academic wunderkid. has sooo much beef w the editors of american jesuit weekly. possibly the events of conclave are occurring in a better more beautiful world where aldo bellini is the editor of american jesuit weekly.

the late holy father for sure was a progressive jesuit also. vr pope francis coded. and low-key set him up as a successor. for a while, that seemed nearly a sure thing in some circles.

but there is the fact. well. the fact that everyone is tired, done and tired of jesuits, progressive or otherwise.

this among other factors meant he couldn't consider him the best option, besides whatever character judgement and uncanny machievallien prediction he came up with.

adeyemi has that benedictine swag which makes his potential election particularly seem like a breath of fresh air + reliable + lots of influence. tremblay is giving dominican drip and dominican corruption. and dominican flop. his nespresso machine? it's giving dominican also.

tedesco has to be an italian-founded order member. most hypocrital salesian of all times maybe?? this is unrelated to the fact that i was nearly enrolled in a salesian primary school and the weirdly panopticon-ish playground didn't pass the vibe check. and also because: consider tedesco rising in the ranks of an order created to help migrant workers...someone kick him in the head for me pls.

who even knows about benítez. i want to say franciscan but that might be just too on the nose. cistercian?? honestly it would work well if he is also without affiliation.

this lens does make lawrence's homily being interpreted as a campaign speech more understandable (and particularly funny).

because, as far as anyone can tell, he's fully running as an independent candidate. zero platform besides - if i fuck up i'll apologize and do better and be held accountable, which is more than any of you probably would.

and because he stands alone, he can be held accountable. he can belong to all, and not one faction only. as far as anyone can tell, he's burning bridges with bellini and rocking the status quo.

he is speaking to/from a place of frustration with institutional inertia and factionalism, he is using his position as dean to bravely promote a platform for internal change in the curia, he is offering doubt as an alternative to certainty, he is pulling an absolute wildcard move.

pity he didn't mean it.

pity the the only order lawrence is interested in joining is the most hardcore discalced carmelite experience possible.

you know how some people look into luxurious real estate listings like it's porn? that's lawrence w tiny monasteries. the sort of minuscule organization with not enough people for management to be necessary. too small for politics. as close to erasure as you can get in this world: no need to be useful.

serving god by existing only to meditate on him. a narrow slant of a life, at that. barely taking up space, barely casting a shadow.

his favorite is a decrepit wreck of a place in the middle of southern spain, nowhere. no wifi no speaking aloud no possessions. no shoes no food. no nothing, only prayer. and a big big sky overhead.

maybe that will fix his issues with reaching god. if that doesn't work he'll probably just wander into the tabernas desert and become an hermit. works for some people, supposedly; plenty of order founders seem to believe so, anyway.

[almostempty]

psa clint isn’t joel miller and if you’re flattening him into a joel archetype we need to talk about race again

i’m aware they both wear plaid, have a daughter, battle with grief, and are hot covered in blood and enacting violence

this isn’t a callout i just don’t remember where i saw these specific posts about the red handkerchief and clint as a ‘blue collar’ man. but i know i’ve seen plenty of clint = joel posts floating around. 

AND i wasn’t going to say anything bc i thought i was just being gatekeepy bc i didn’t wanna see clint get the dbf treatment which would be my personal problem and i can happily write about him on my own blog how i want etc etc and i know i don’t have to read anyone else’s takes BUT then i thought about it and once again…it’s always about race…

edit: i apologize for using such a specific example without reaching out to the person that made the post—i could have taken the time to find it before using it as a launching point, that's on me. the handkerchief post wasn’t part of a huge fic or broader take on clint’s character (sorry for the jumpscare).

it did, however, stick out to me as a strong illustration of how important cultural context is. the issue is systemic not interpersonal. the rest of my examples weren't based on any one post—the blue-collar, marlboro man, works-with-his-hands, joel-coded/lana del rey-coded/ethel cain-coded vibes have been everywhere: fics, tags, comments, posts, tiktok edits. i know there’s nuance in fandom culture—tropes, memes like “close enough, welcome back joel/javi,” “____ coded” jokes, music, etc. and if we can understand that level of context for internet culture, we can understand the importance of racial context too, right?

i stand by the rest of what i said and will continue to argue that cultural context matters if you consider yourself an anti-racist reader or writer.* re: the post i saw somewhere about someone having a head canon about clint having a red handkerchief as a snot rag - sorry i forgot where i saw it and this isn’t an attack on whoever wrote that, but an fyi to anyone thinking about him the same way… if you’re writing a latino man in 1987 oakland—especially someone working street-level jobs or tied to criminal economies—and you think a red bandana is just a ‘snot rag,’ you’re missing major context

fyi, in 1987, color politics were not optional if you were a man of color in california. even though bloods (red) and crips (blue) originated in LA, their color codes and the larger gang culture around them were already known across the state. in northern california specifically, norteños (tied to the nuestra familia prison gang) wore red. their rivals, sureños (tied to the mexican mafia), wore blue. 

who cares? well, even though oakland wasn’t dominated by bloods and crips the way LA was (in part due to the black panthers), it had its own street crews, plus a heavy norteño/sureño influence by the mid-80s. even outside organized gangs, the association between red and gang affiliation was strong enough that wearing a red bandana could get you profiled, targeted, or attacked—by cops, by other crews, or by random people trying to read your allegiance.

if you were a latino man in oakland in the 80s—like clint—you wouldn’t carry a red bandana by accident. it would be flagging. even if you weren’t affiliated. as a street smart guy, survival would mean being hyper-aware of how you present yourself, especially in neighborhoods policed by gang dynamics and racial profiling. cops would use color displays like a bandana as probable cause for harassment searches or worse during the height of the ‘war on drugs�� and the crack epidemic. 

characters like clint—latino, working-class, street-adjacent—would have understood the consequences of being read wrong. this doesn’t mean no one ever had cloths, handkerchiefs, or functional rags. it means the color and the way you carried it mattered: what pocket, what visibility, how deliberate it looked.

throwing a red bandana in your pocket wasn’t neutral. it wasn’t folksy. it wasn’t just blue-collar roughness. it was a risk, and survival was about reading the street, not walking through it like color codes didn’t apply to you.

clint wouldn’t casually rock a red bandana like a cowboy. latino men have never had the privilege of being casual about how they're read in public, especially not in a city like oakland, especially not in the 1980s.

re: clint as a ‘blue collar’ character there’s a difference between being ‘blue collar’ and being trapped in criminalized labor. wearing a plaid shirt and working with your hands doesn’t automatically make someone a blue-collar worker in the traditional sense. 

blue collar historically refers to wage labor—construction, manufacturing, trade work—where the worker is paid (poorly) but still operating within the boundaries of legal employment. union jobs. often unionized labor, tied to systems that, at least in theory, protected workers through collective bargaining, benefits, and job security. those protections were never equally available, especially to workers of color, but they existed as part of the larger working-class structure. 

clint’s labor isn’t protected. it isn’t recognized. it’s criminalized. he’s not just a man doing rough work for low pay—he’s disposable labor, surviving in a system that sees him as expendable from the start. calling him ‘blue collar’ erases the fact that he’s not inside the working class safety net. he’s on the outside, paying off debt with violence he didn’t choose.

it carries a specific context of class exploitation, yes, but it’s still different from the kind of criminal coercion characters like clint are caught in.

clint is not a proud working man making an honest living. his entire arc in freaky tales is about being forced into violent labor to pay off inherited debt he had no choice in. he is not rough and gritty because he chose a rugged life. 

he is rough because he was born into a system designed to keep him indebted, desperate, and expendable. he’s not working a blue collar job—he’s surviving in a criminal economy that feeds off people like him, using violence he doesn’t even want to enact just to stay afloat.

flattening clint into a vague ‘marlboro man’ archetype (joel coded)—rough clothes, kind heart, good intentions—it strips away everything sharp and painful about his actual story. it whitewashes the complexity of being a latino man criminalized by birth and survival, not by choice. it reframes his struggle as a generic americana fantasy about working-class virtue, when what’s actually at stake is how structural violence forces people into roles they never asked for.

especially when it’s a latino character, this flattening isn’t neutral. it erases the realities of racialized labor, racialized criminalization, and survival. clint’s tragedy isn’t that he’s a gruff tough guy with a soft interior. his tragedy is that he was forced to become violent in order to pay off a life he was never allowed to own, and he carries that weight without any guarantee of getting free.

you can’t understand clint if you don’t understand that. and if you’re not willing to sit with that discomfort, what you’re writing isn’t really him—it’s just a projection of a character he was never allowed to be.

clint and joel might overlap in aesthetics, being single girl dads, and physical strength—but reducing clint to a copy of joel misses everything that actually defines who he is, and why his story matters.

joel miller is a texas man—a man shaped by frontier mythology, southern survivalism, deep mistrust, and violent individualism. he is, by his own admission, a man whose grief and guilt hollowed him out so badly that even his brother was scared of him. he’s not just traumatized; he’s actively dangerous, closed off, and isolated. his story is about losing his humanity and clawing parts of it back, maybe too late.

clint is not that. clint is an oakland man—east bay, west coast, working-class and criminalized, not because he chose violence but because he was born into debt he could never pay off. he’s an underdog, not an antihero. 

he’s soft with his woman, he lights up under her attention. he’s goofy in the video store with the clerk. he’s not some hardened loner who scares everyone around him. he’s just a man trying to survive a system that was designed to use him up.

when you flatten clint into joel, you’re misreading two characters with different emotional cores and fetishizing the aesthetics of pain and ruggedness while ignoring race, class, place, and survival context.

clint isn't a texas cowboy. he’s not steeped in frontier violence or manifest destiny myths. he’s a west coast underdog who knows every step he takes could get him crushed, and he still tries to protect the people he loves without letting it rot him from the inside out.

the tragedy of joel is that the world took everything from him and he let it turn him into something colder, crueler.

the tragedy of clint is that the world gave him no choice- he says he was born into breaking bones to pay off his father’s debt, and he still tries to hold onto his softness anyway.

if you can’t tell the difference, you’re not seeing clint, you’re just projecting a fetishized joel trope onto another character… 

[charlietheepicwriter7]

Teen Villain Alliance

Chapter 1 - Damian

Despite his proficiency in the skill, Damian hated spying on the Teen Villain Alliance. 

Having appeared two years ago in alliance with Klarion Bleak, the Teen Villain Alliance, or TVA, quickly made themselves known as little more than pests, often rushing in to assist other young adult criminals or harass Justice League officials. Father wanted to investigate when they first appeared, but with Todd’s reveal and Damian himself coming to take his place as Robin, he’d been… busy. 

Which allowed the TVA to flourish into a respected criminal enterprise. No vault was safe, no hero strong enough. A group had even banded together to take down Superman! And while there was no lasting damage other than some bizarre markings on the Kryptoian’s face, it was enough to prove these teenagers as a threat. 

Damian, as much as it galled him, was not the first chosen to infiltrate. Martian Manhunter, shapeshifted into a meta fourteen-year-old girl, tried and was identified as a hero on sight. The Teen Titans and Young Justice got closer, actually able to talk to the villains about joining, but “it was like they could smell the hero on us,” Beast Boy had explained. “I don't know how else to explain it.”

Most likely, the TVA kept tabs on the Justice League and affiliated organizations. They needed someone fresh, someone who wasn’t a hero.

Damian had been more than willing to volunteer. 

Introducing himself as Damian Al Ghul, the recently escaped Heir to the Demon Head, he’d been accepted immediately despite having approached the group mid-heist. All he had to do was extrapolate about how Grandfather’s assassins were chasing him, and the Wolf—a designation given to the members of the TVA’s inner circle—allowed him to join, but he was forced to stay with the hacker of the group while the heist commenced with no interference from a hero.

Damian had been confident. He’d gotten so far in mere minutes when a member of the Justice League, and even Drake, couldn’t get past the first few questions. He’d have the Teen Villain Alliance dismantled within the week.

Then Manson, as the Wolf had introduced herself, took out a device that transported them all to another dimension. Which was where the main base of the Alliance was. And none of his communication devices or trackers worked there. 

Damian had only been able to update the Justice League a few times since his tenure as a spy began. Superman had reassured him it was fine, that there had been plenty of missions were communication was infrequent, but after a month of living in the TVA Base in the Infinite Realms, Damian hated not being able to contact his father easily. And in return, Father and Drake had taken to interrogating him for as long as possible the couple of times he was outside Headquarters. 

(Phantom’s Haunt is what the TVA members called it. It was Phantom Dark’s home that he opened up to them all. Damian didn’t know how to feel about that.)

Damian had only been able to contact Father three times in his four weeks undercover, each time on a supply run… which was essentially just a grocery trip for the Haunt. The first time Damian had slipped away to the bathroom and called, Father had been… furious. He’d thought Damian’s lack of updates was on purpose. It had been five minutes before Damian could correct him. 

He wished Grayson had answered during any of his updates, but he was on a mission in space and wouldn’t be back for another two weeks. 

In those four months, Damian was still the newest member, and had yet to be involved in the truly illegal aspects of the organization. All the information he’d gathered purely administrative, like how Duulaman, a reincarnated pharaoh turned hacker, stole money from various billionaires and government organizations to fund their plans. He’d yet to be involved with anything serious. 

He wasn’t allowed on serious missions either. He only had the supply runs to look forward to, and those only occurred once a month. 

His other objective, to undermine the Teen Villain Alliance and spur a mutiny, was also going poorly. The children he surrounded himself with were fanatically loyal to the Alliance, citing Phantom and his harem as the reason they were alive today. Even those who weren’t directly rescued were loyal. One such child, a boy named Kyd Wyckyd, had confessed to turning to a life of crime due to his terrifying meta abilities and their effects on his appearance. 

But the TVA took him in after the collapse of HIVE Academy. He hadn’t participated in a crime since, preferring to work with the Wolf named Jasmine who led individual and group therapy sessions for the villains. Jasmine had tried multiple times to convince her therapy sessions—more like brainwashing sessions—but Damian had stayed strong in the face of adversary. 

Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be much more Damian could do. He tried to push, to get involved with the criminal aspect of the organization, but the Wolves blocked him at every turn, saying he was “too young.” That he needed “stability” and to “rely on them to keep him safe.”

Perhaps Damian oversold the danger of the League of Assassins. 

For now, Damian hid in his room in Phantom’s Haunt. His castle. Even the magnificence of the compound he grew up in couldn’t compare to the headquarters. There were an infinite number of rooms—”as many as we need,” Phantom had told him—that changed based on the user’s preferences. Right now, Damian’s room looked like a cave. The Batcave, to be precise, though he didn’t allow references to his Father and legacy. 

He was hiding because Manson had suggested he attend some of the classes held in the libraries—there were four libraries at the moment. Classes were taught by ghosts under Phantom’s control and weren’t mandatory, but “everyone’s worried about the lack of structure in your life.”

He tried to tell himself it was because he didn’t want to be brainwashed by Phantom’s lackeys, and that he already knew everything they were going to teach. But in truth… Damian was anxious. Attending school at the Haunt felt too permanent, too much like he was planning to stay. He hadn’t gotten the choice to attend school back in Gotham, with Father acting like he would compromise their identities around children. He wasn’t that petty. 

Someone knocked on his door. “Damian? Are you inside?” 

Sighing, Damian stood up and opened the door. “Dr. Fenton. Am I needed for anything?”

Dr. Daniel Fenton was another Wolf, another member of the harem Phantom had built around him, twenty years old and not an actual doctor but everyone called him that anyway. While Damian had yet to see Fenton and Phantom in the same place, Damian was keeping a detailed record of how the Wolves’ polyamourous relationship worked. Phantom and Fenton both dated Manson and Duualman, though they didn’t seem to be dating each other or Jasmine. Klarion often inserted himself into those relationships for hugs and hand-holding, but only seemed to kiss Jasmine. 

“Actually, yes.” Damian’s lips parted in surprise. “I wanted to talk to you about something down in my lab. Would you join me?”

Fenton’s lab was off-limits to low level members of the TVA. He was the engineer, the creator of all their weapons of destruction. Fenton had no minions, while Manson had her thieves, Duualman had his hackers, Jasmine had her helpers, Klarion had his witches, and Phantom had his fighters. 

Fenton was alone. 

Isolated. 

Damian agreed. 

Fenton led him to the depths below the castle, past the never-used dungeon and through a secret door into a surprisingly bright and airy lab. He caught Damian looking through a window that displayed one of the Haunt’s many gardens, an impossible feat for being so far underground. “Magic castle, remember,” Fenton chided him. “Those work as portals that lead to the garden too, so it’s an easy one-way exit.”

Damian scoffed, abashed that he’d been caught so easily. From a glance, the lab was perfectly maintained, with every piece of equipment assigned to an outline meant to indicate where it belonged. As he walked further into the room, Fenton made slight adjustments to his tools, meticulously shifting them back into place. It looked more like a set than a laboratory. 

But then, Damian observed Fenton. The twenty-year-old relaxed as he put his space back into order, nudging the screwdrivers and beakers back into their designated outlines. As he worked, the sleeve of his lab coat road up, revealing a glimpse of lichtenberg scars before it was hidden again. 

Finally done, Fenton turned back to Damian. “My sister, Jazz, has told me that you’re not attending individual or group therapy sessions, is that correct?”

Well, that revealed a  lot of information. Ignoring the fact that Fenton and Jasmine were apparently siblings, Damian replied, “I do not see a reason to attend. If this meeting is an attempt to force me–”

Fenton held his hands up in surrender. “No, I would never. Therapy doesn’t work if the person receiving it doesn’t want it. But you haven’t been attending any of your classes either, and Phantom has mentioned that you don’t hang out with the other kids. Are you settling in alright? I know the others are a few years older than you, so it might be harder for you to connect with them.”

Damian chewed on the question. While part of him was furious that someone, especially a villain like Fenton, was concerned about him and discussed him with his fellows, the other part… wasn’t. It was true; he was having difficulty connecting with the villains. Damian didn’t particularly want to, but it would make his mission easier. 

He chose a neutral answer. “In the League of Assassins… I was the only child in the entire compound. Other children weren’t allowed inside, not unless their parents did something wrong. And those children…”

“Were used against their parents?” Fenton offered when he struggled to find the words. 

“Precisely. It’s not in my nature to associate with children.”

Fenton nodded in understanding, stroking his chin in thought. “That does present a conundrum alright. How unfortunate; the task I needed your help with requires you to interact with at least some of the others, but if you’re that uncomfortable with the idea, then I could find someone else.”

Damian stared at the man in suspicion. “What task?” he demanded to know. If this was a way to get more information for father, he needed to know. But if this was another trap to get him into therapy…

“You’ve probably noticed by now, but I’m the only Wolf without someone working under me. Sam has her Bats, Tucker has his Flies, Jazz has her Rats, Klarion has his Strays, and Phantom has the TVA as a whole. The others have been pressuring me to create my own group, but babysitting a group of teens in a lab where anything could explode is just asking for trouble.”

Damian stepped away from the nearest device. Fenton continued, “However, I think a group dedicated to investigation would work much better. Here in the Infinite Realms, we’re very isolated from the human world, so my research on competing inventors is always lacking. Tuck and Sam help, but Tucker has his own hacking projects, and Sam targets financially viable targets instead of labs.”

“You want me to be a member of your new… group?” Damian read in between the lines of what Fenton was saying. Surely Father would be proud of him for gaining information about Fenton’s inventions and targets—

“I want you to lead the group.”

His glare dropped right off his face in shock. “Lead?” he whispered. 

“That’s right,” Daniel agreed. “It’s not conventional and I barely got the others to agree, but Damian, you’re one of the best trained villains to ever join the TVA. Yeah, you’re really young, but you are serious and professional. To be honest, most of the kids we take in don’t take our work seriously. It’s not a bad thing, but I need a leader who is willing to keep their group in line. Infiltration and information gathering can be very dangerous, and I need someone who can keep the team safe.”

Daniel trusted him enough for that? Father didn’t trust him enough to be his partner; honestly, Father didn’t even trust him enough to introduce Damian to the world as his son! Perhaps he was aggressive towards the interlopers in his home, but he wasn’t going to stab a civilian!

And while Damian didn’t understand why Daniel was so cautious around what amounted to breaking and entering, he wanted Damian to lead. He trusted Damian for that. 

And Damian was going to take back whatever information Fenton revealed back to his father, like a hunting dog to its master. 

Daniel continued, “Of course, this is still a few months off from being necessary. But that should give you plenty of time to attend some classes to prepare you more! One on leadership skills, one on modern technology, one on basic magic and wards, maybe a refresher on hacking… Knowing you, you’ll test out of them in a few weeks, but the main point is to find other people to join our team. I’m looking for four other team members, and while I am looking for certain traits and skills, it's up to you to decide who you want on the team.” Daniel placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “So, what do you think?”

He’d betray Daniel by saying yes. He’d betray Father by saying no. 

He made his choice. 

Damian looked up at Daniel, determination set into his face. “I won’t let you down.”

Daniel smiled. “I know you won’t. You couldn’t if you tried.”

[momo-minomo]

Fic Fairy Friday: Batfamily Shenanigans

This week's fic rec post is dedicated to the Batfamily just BEING a family. The snark, the annoying nagging, the overprotectiveness, etc. I feel like we don't get to see the Batfamily together and friendly nearly enough. Some of these would fit in the comics, some are more Wayne Family Adventures coded, and some are full on AU. Enjoy!

The Fic Fairy Friday Masterpost

Code Bat by Listentothelittlebird

Summary:

Within Gotham, the Bats are a tight-knit group - family - that runs like clockwork. Outside of Gotham, none of their teammates know they’re related. This series explores the shenanigans that the Bats get up to, as well as how this distinction would affect canon.

Momo's Notes: This one is a series rather than a single fic and I love it so much. When Dick first decides he wants to break away from Batman's shadow Bruce agrees to keep their affiliation with each other secret, with one caveat. If either of them call a 'code bat' the other drops everything immediately and comes to help. As they add on to the family the secrets they're keeping from their non-Gotham friends and teammates piles up but it serves to keep the younger, less trained members of the family safe from the older heroes' enemies so they keep it going, each new family member agreeing to the Code Bat protocol when outside of Gotham, complete with entirely different hero names and costumes. It's interesting seeing a Justice League, Titans, Outsiders, Outlaws, and Young Justice that has no idea the Batfamily even a thing even as certain team members sometimes act super shifty when dealing with other teams or after getting a sudden, secret message.

I'm not a villain, I swear! by CoyoteFang1987

Summary:

Tim wakes up in a world in which Batman doesn't exist. And by consequence, the Robins never became heroes. Dick is a Talon, Jason is Red Hood (a villain), and Damian is a League of Assassins assassin. And Tim apparently is a hero called Draken, who, frankly, sucks at being a hero. And in this weird alternate reality, something big is brewing and Batman isn't here to keep the Justice League from tearing itself apart. Tim is really really done with everything. Dick, Jason, and Damian aren't helping. Tim really really hates magic as well.

Momo's Notes: Tim, Dick, Jason, and Damian all wake up in a world where Batman doesn't exist, Bruce Wayne might be the new Lex Luthor, and 3/4 of the Batfam appear to be villains working for various organizations. There's a lot of fun shenanigans going on in this one and all four brothers have good relationships with each other so we get to see them being effortlessly badass together. The Dick/Wally in this is also adorable.

You, Me, and the Humanity in Between by JUBE514

Summary:

Bruce doesn’t know what’s wrong with his child, but he’s pretty sure kids aren’t meant to work like this. From the day he had looked up into the tops of the circus tent and saw a frightened mirror image of a boy who had just experienced the worst day of his life, Bruce had instantly gone into emergency mode. The Gotham PD had wanted to pass the boy off into the care of the circus. The circus had mumbled underneath their breaths about superstitions, about not having a boy like that with them, about not being able to handle something like Dick. So GCPD, not knowing what to do, had started talking about one of the handful of overburdened boy homes that handles a majority of Gotham’s unlucky orphans. All the while, the camera lights flash bright and loud, wanting to know everything. Bruce couldn’t let that happen. Not then, not ever again.

Momo's Notes: This is one of the most unique cryptid AUs I think I've ever read. Bruce's only human child in this is Damian and the variety of magical creature the older 3 batbros are is really neat. The way their abilities and nature interact with each other is also really sweet. For anyone who's a sucker for good dad Bruce, this one is sure to make you happy.

Keep Losing Sleep by incogneat_oh

Summary:

“When’d you last sleep?” Jay asks, curious. “Eleven years ago,” Tim says, at the same time as Dick says, “Tuesday.”

Momo's Notes: In a family as traumatized as this, it makes sense that more than one of them would have trouble sleeping. This is super short but a lovely little glance into the family just being there for each other when sleep won't come.

Brightly Colored Adhesive Papers by LuminaStarCrest

Summary:

Tim liked to show people that he loves them by leaving around sticky notes. Or, 5 times Tim left sticky notes for others to find, and 1 time he found sticky notes that he didn’t write

Momo's Notes: Another one that's short but sweet! My favorite part in this is probably the pure sass between Tim and Jason but Tim doing his emotional support Robin thing and making Bruce get some damn sleep is a close second lol

Cannonball by SunnyBlue

Summary:

Why is it always Tim that disappears? If it was any of the rest of them, it would be a lot less concerning. It’s not like Tim can’t hold his own in a fight — he’s a Bat, after all — but the kid has a tendency to form the craziest plans out of all of them, which often ends up putting him in the craziest situations. When Tim goes missing, it usually means he’s in some deep shit, and Tim in deep shit means Jason scrambling every time. Without fail. This fucking kid. Tim is missing and his brothers track him down and bring him home. Also everybody loves each other and isn't so incredibly emotionally constipated because I just want them to be happy and because I'm the author and I said so.

Momo's Notes: I kinda love Jason's pov in friendly Batfam fics. This one is Jason and Dick terrified and furious as they rush to Tim's rescue with bonus points for the quick bit of Tim and Damian bonding the author added.

Loading and Aspect Ratio by JUBE514

Summary:

So, it didn’t start out like this. Alfred would scoff at the statement, about how Bruce was trying to justify the whole situation to himself. It had started out as a simple design, black everything with black outlines and black hood. It got a little more intense as the world went on, got wind of his ghost on the streets, and became scared of The Bat . So Bruce got a little more creative with it, Alfred and him had a good laugh over the name, the scare, and Alfred had a vicious streak of humor that he had passed onto his ward- So now the suit had a visible bat-theme, an insignia to drape in the shadows and to paint across the streets of Gotham. It only took a year into the whole charade of heroism for Bruce to overhear a conversation between some goons- some low level thug hired by the Riddler this week- about nothing at all pertaining to what the hell the Riddler was doing in the sewers but instead: “ The Batman can fly, you know, I’ve seen his wings.” -- A world where nobody has wings, but people think they do, and that changes everything.

Momo's Notes: This is another fun AU with lots of Batfamily bonding and badassery. Bruce makes his cape wing shaped to further scare the hell out of Gotham criminals but it's little baby Dickie, freshly adopted and traumatized, who convinces him to make them actual capable of flight. The Batfam never claimed to be metas but the rest of the world, especially the Justice League, decided that's what they were anyway. It came in clutch tho. The main pairing in this is SuperBat and they are freaking adorable.

The Waynes, Damsels in Distress by hitthedeck

Summary:

Roses are red, violets are blue, Bruce Wayne and his kids get kidnapped every other week. Some things are just universal, undeniable facts of life.Or, in which Bruce Wayne is still Batman and his kids are still Robins, but they keep letting themselves get kidnapped because they think it's funny.

Momo's Notes: People forget that Bruce Wayne raised Dick Grayson to be how he is and the two of them share the same warped sense of humor that let them shout puns while beating up criminals and put "Bat" in front of freaking EVERYTHING with a straight face. This fic is just the Batfam fucking with the JLA for their own sick amusement. I love them.

Here's a Reminder (That You Haven't Fallen Through the Cracks) by popsunner

Summary:

If it’s a salesperson, he’ll shove them a hundred dollar tip and tell them to go away, if it’s some religious do gooder, he’ll direct them to Metropolis. If it’s a Rogue, he’ll tell them he’s busy and to please get in the fucking line. If it’s one of his siblings-- “Hey, Tim!” Dick says brightly, forearm braced against the doorframe. Dammit.

Momo's Notes: Finally a fic that gives Cass and Duke some love! This is a short one where Tim's siblings drive him up the wall out of love and concern for their workaholic weirdo brother. The snark and sass is flowing freely and the JLA's best detective/spies are being about as subtle as a brick to the head lol.

To Rescue a Bat by Blueseabird2

Summary:

Batman gets into a situation during an alien invasion and could use a rescue. Unfortunately, Dick and Jason don't think the Justice League is up for the task. At all. So Dick lets the League know that he will be handling the situation and to expect Batman back by the end of the night. He even promises that he won't be going alone. No one should stand in the way of a Batfamily rescue, even if the Justice League doesn't know there's a Batfamily at all.

Momo's Notes: I love the closeness Dick and Jason share in this one. Jason and Dick are two older brothers who both struggle with the towering rage simmering just below the surface at all times and in this fic they've come to lean on each other for support. When most of the JLA's leadership is captured and the ransom video shows Bruce to be on borrowed time Dick decides it's time to let that anger loose a little and Jason is ready to back him up (with attitude of course, but still). With their fellow Batfamily members (both official and honorary) right beside them they decide it's the perfect time to reveal their affiliation with Batman to save their dad. Bruce is SO fucking proud.

Monolith by CharlesWaterloo

Summary:

Diana realised with a jolt that none of them had actually asked him how he knew Batman. And she was just as curious as the rest of them about the “we”. It implied Batman worked with more people. ‘How did you come to know Batman? Does he have any other friends?’ His mouth fell open, and he snorted, which evolved into full-out laughter. ‘I’m sorry. Oh my god - friends?’ Diana felt a little hurt on Batman’s behalf. ‘Are you not his friend?' He shook his head. ‘Did B really not say anything? I’m hurt. No, I’m not his friend. I’m his son.’ (An AU where the Justice League haven't met any of Bruce's kids.)

Momo's Notes: The Justice League isn't aware of Batman's identity or that he's a father. When Dick needs to sub in for Bruce at a JL meeting, though, and he realizes this? Cue the sibling shenanigans! Bonus points for Duke, Cass, and Steph getting some attention and praise in this one!

Batman/men? by Bumpkin

Summary:

Batman wasn’t a founding member of the Justice League, and isn’t known for playing well with other heroes. But he does end up joining, and he does try to get along while still keeping his secrets close. It’s a delicate balancing act. Then comes a mission that requires Batman to be the lynchpin for their success. Except there’s a problem with the execution of the plan, Batman would have to be in several places at once. He’s confident he can do it. The Justice League, for lack of any alternatives, can only go along and in the process learn more about their reclusive teammate.

Momo's Notes: Another fic that's short but fun where the Justice League isn't aware of the Batfam's existence and it's entirely in non-Batfam povs over the course of an important mission where Batman seemingly needs to be in several places at once and… succeeds? Easily?

[taikeero-lecoredier]

3 BAD BILLS TO KEEP IN MIND FOR 2025

KOSA : Kosa is a terrible internet bill that would make it mandatory for platforms online to enforce age verification via ID, and deeming any content “inappropriate” for kids to be banned. This could range from not safe for work content, to health ressources,LGBT ressources, to climate change. It’ll be up to politicians to dictate what is and isn’t proper for kids,and, of course, killing encryption. Here are some ressources to get ready to fight KOSA : https://taikeero-lecoredier.tumblr.com/post/738573191699660800/we-have-a-server-to-help-fight-against-this-we Scripts to use : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyBUe6frFGF44rJQU3TahZ5zyG3tC7jai_hPneAKlnM/edit?tab=t.0 JOIN OUR SERVER AGAINST IT ! We organize call in days and other ressources. https://discord.gg/FPDJYkUujM

HR9495 would allow to stripe an organization of it's "non profits" status, and force them to pay taxes if the govt can "prove" that they are affiliated with terrorists with barely any concrete proof. This will impact non profit organizations such as ACLU, AO3, Fight For The Future, Electronic Frontier Foundation, AO3, The Internet Archive and many more that fight for human rights. Here is more infos and scripts you can use here : (THE POST IS OUTDATED DATE WISE BUT THE SCRIPTS IN THIS POST CAN STILL BE USED) : https://taikeero-lecoredier.tumblr.com/post/767859383226056704/hr9495-on-its-way-to-senate#notes Keep an eye for when ACLU makes a new call tool you can use,or contact your reps directly when the time needs it,they should look like this (The "Stop The Internet Censorship" discord server link above also help fight against it !) CHAT CONTROL If you are in Europe, I urge you to keep your eyes on this horrid EU proposal, as it will make it mandatory for private messages to be scanned by artificial intelligence, and users have to agree to be scanned or else they cant send images, videos or links anymore. More infos here : https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ Email English script: https://taikeero-lecoredier.tumblr.com/post/769688923967537152/chat-control-email-script-english#notes Contact your meps : https://op.europa.eu/en/web/who-is-who/organization/-/organization/COREPER/ Join our server against it, we gather ressources and scripts against it ! Non EU people are more than welcome to join us ! https://discord.com/invite/e7FYdYnMkS

[jaythes1mp]

Do you think readers' lives would be different if they were a deer hybrid?

Fun Fact: Did you know that cervids (from the deer, deer and elk family) are considered extremely sensitive animals. When suffering severe stress, such as when captured or rescued, for example, the animal's reaction can cause what is called 'capture myopathy' ', which compromises the organism of these animals.

I do, actually. Because, another fun fact! In June of this year me and my roommate saved a baby deer who was laying next to her mums dead body (she was less than 48 hours old). Fortunately she wasn’t injured. We were extremely lucky to be living next to a wildlife specialist, our neighbour, who’s been looking after Astrid and will continue to until she’s old enough to be relocated. Thankfully this wasn’t the first deer that’s been brought to her. So unfortunately I'm very acquainted with that fact.

She’s still striving strong though! These were the first pics taken of her.

Anyway, how they’d react:

Batfam x deer hybrid reader

With Damian's exceptionally caring nature when it comes to animals, he has already meticulously planned out the perfect environment for your deer forms comfort. He has considered every possible scenario and tailored everything to ensure your contentment as well as a space to meet all of your needs.

The young Wayne would thoughtfully strategize and visualise your reactions to every minor action or stimulus. He would carefully consider the most appropriate responses and adapt his behaviour to ensure a positive and nurturing environment for you. Even if the environment in question was one that you were forced into.

The bats would handle your transformed state with great caution, disregarding if your human mind was in control when you were transformed or not. Given your affiliation with the Cervidae family in your animal form, the Wayne family would be especially mindful and considerate of your natural tendencies, behaviours, and instincts.

Despite Dick's intelligence and expertise as a vigilante, being second only to Bruce Wayne himself, his impatience would become apparent within the twenty-ninth attempt to approach you for some affectionate ‘big brother cuddles’. Assuming you’re an adult or older teen, you would be extremely skittish and resistant in your deer form to his advances and attempts to get close, if not completely avoid his presence altogether, let alone let him cling to you for a ‘snuggle.’

Jason wouldn’t comprehend why you’d consistently conceal yourself, in both forms, hiding behind the couch every time he arrives, or why you involuntarily freeze at the sound of his motorcycle, or even why you instinctively flee at the slightest hint of him standing or making a move. But despite his confusion, he doesn't hold it against you. He’s witnessed the horrific experiences and trauma the children of Gotham City are subjected to, and if hiding and evading is the way you cope with what you’re going through, then he’s willing to wait patiently for you to feel secure in his presence. As your sibling, he vowed never to give you a reason to fear him. He knows just how overwhelming it is in this new environment, and he’s not planning on giving you any more reasons to be frightened by them.

Tim would find it easier to deal with your distressed nature than the others, opting to monitor you through the security cameras, allowing him to work on his cases simultaneously, rather than being overly affectionate with you. This way, he could keep a watchful eye on you without having to directly interact, which allows him to multi-task and focus on both keeping you safe and solving his cases.

Despite Jason and Dick no longer living in the Manor, Bruce would likely be the one to spend the least time with you. However, he's not neglecting you. He makes a conscious effort to rearrange his busy schedule, keeps certain days free every week, and meticulously plans time for some quality family bonding. Even if the quality time in question only consists of him quietly sitting in your vicinity, sipping on some freshly made tea while reading the newspaper, he cherishes every moment that he gets to share with you. Simply being near you is enough. Because you're his child, and he's not planning on fucking that up ever again.

[mariacallous]

For much of living memory, the United States has been a global leader of scientific research and innovation. From the polio vaccine, to decoding the first human chromosome, to the first heart bypass surgery, American research has originated a seemingly endless list of health care advances that are taken for granted.

But when the Trump administration issued a memorandum Monday that paused all federal grants and loans—with the aim of ensuring that funding recipients are complying with the president’s raft of recent executive orders—US academia ground to a halt. Since then, the freeze has been partially rescinded for some sectors, but it largely remains in place for universities and research institutions across the country, with no certainty of what comes next.

“This has immediate impact on people’s lives,” says J9 Austin, professor of psychiatry and medical genetics at the University of British Columbia. “And it’s terrifying.”

The funding freeze requires agencies to submit reviews of their funded programs to the Office of Management and Budget by February 10. The freeze follows separate orders issued last week to US health agencies—including to the National Institutes of Health, which leads the country’s medical research—to pause all communications until February 1 and stop almost all travel indefinitely.

The confusion is consummate. If the funding freeze continues through February, and even beyond, how will graduate students be paid? Should grant applications—years long in the writing—still be submitted by the triannual grant submission deadline on February 5? What does this mean for clinical trials if participants and lab techs can’t be paid? Will all that research have to be scrapped thanks to incomplete data?

Even if Trump fully reverses the freeze on research funding, the damage, multiple sources say, has been done. Although for now the funding freeze is temporary, the administration has shown how it might wield the levers of government. The implication is that withdrawing funding could be done more permanently, and could be done to individual institutions, individual organizations, both private and public. This won’t just set a precedent for the large East Coast or West Coast universities, but those located in both red and blue states alike.

While always an imperfect arrangement, science in the US is largely funded by a complex system of grant applications, reviews by peers in the field (both of which have had to be halted as part of the communications pause), and the competitive distribution of NIH funds, says Gerald Keusch, emeritus professor of medicine at Boston University and former associate director of international research for the NIH. According to its website, the NIH disburses nearly $48 billion in grants per year.

When it comes to medical research, America truly is first, and if it abdicates that position, the void left behind has global ramifications. “In Canada, we have always looked to NIH as an exemplar of what we should be trying to do,” says Austin, speaking to me independently of any roles and affiliations. “Now, that’s collapsed.”

Science is, in its very nature, collaborative. Many consortiums and alliances within scientific fields cross borders and language barriers. Some labs may be able to find additional funding from alternative sources such as the European Union. But it is unlikely that a continued withdrawal of NIH funding could be plugged by overseas support. And Big Pharma, with its seemingly endless funds, is unlikely to step up either, according to sources WIRED spoke with.

“This can’t be handed off to drug companies or biotech, because they’re not interested in things that are as preclinical as a lot of the work we’re discussing here,” says a professor of genetics who agreed to speak anonymously out of fear of retribution. “Essentially, there’s a whole legion of university-based scientists who work super damn hard to try to figure out some basic stuff that eventually becomes something that a drug company can drop $100 million on.”

The millions of dollars awarded to high-achieving labs is used to fund graduate students, lab techs, and analysts. If the principal investigator on a research team is unsuccessful in obtaining a grant through the process Keusch describes, often that lab is closed, and those ancillary team members lose their jobs.

One of the potential downstream effects of an NIH funding loss, even if only temporary, is a mass domestic brain drain. “Many of those people are going to go out to find something else to do,” the professor of genetics says. “These are just like jobs for anything else—we can’t not pay people for a month. What would the food service industry be like, for example, or grocery stores, if they don’t pay somebody for a month? Their workers will leave, and pharma can only hire so many people.”

WIRED heard over and over, from scientists too fearful for their teams and their jobs to speak on the record, that it won’t take long for the impact to reach the general population. With a loss of research funding comes the closure of hospitals and universities. And gains in medical advancement will likely falter too.

Conditions being studied with NIH funding are not only rare diseases affecting 1 or 2 percent of the population. They’re problems such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s—issues that affect your grandmother, your friends, and so many people who will one day fall out of perfect health. It’s thanks to this research system, and the scientists working within it, that doctors know how to save someone from a heart attack, regulate diabetes, lower cholesterol, and reduce the risk of stroke. It’s how the world knows that smoking isn’t a good idea. “All of that is knowledge that scientists funded by the NIH have generated, and if you throw this big of a wrench in it, it’s going to disrupt absolutely everything,” says the genetics professor.

While some are hopeful that the funding freeze for academia could end on February 1, when the pause on communications and therefore grant reviews is slated to lift, the individuals WIRED spoke with are largely skeptical that work will simply resume as before.

“When the wheels of government stop, it’s not like they turn on a dime and they just start up again,” says Julie Scofield, a former executive director of NASTAD, a US-based health nonprofit. She adds that she has colleagues in Washington, DC, who have had funding returned to their fields, and yet remain unable to access payment through the management system.

Austin says that already the international scientific community is holding hastily arranged online support groups. Topics covered range from the banal—what the most recent communication from the White House implies—to how best to protect trainees and the many students on international visas. But mostly they’re there to provide support.

“I’ve had a lot of messages from people just expressing gratitude that we could actually get together,” Austin says. “There’s just so much unaddressable need. None of us has the answers.”

Scientists, perhaps more than any other profession, are trained to “learn and validate conclusions drawn from observation and experimentation,” says Keutsch. That applies to the current situation. And what they observe during this pause of chaos does not portend well for the future of the United States as a pinnacle of scientific excellence.

“If people want the United States to head toward being a second-class nation, this is exactly what to do. If the goal is, in fact, to make America great, this is not a way to do it,” says the genetics professor. “This is not a rational, thoughtful, effective thing to do. It will merely destroy.”

This story has been written under a pseudonym, as the reporter has specific and credible concerns about potential retaliation.

[technofeudalism]

Amid anger and protest over the Trump administration’s plan to deport millions of immigrants, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to monitor and locate “negative” social media discussion about the agency and its top officials, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept. Citing an increase in threats to ICE agents and leadership, the agency is soliciting pitches from private companies to monitor threats across the internet — with a special focus on social media. People who simply criticize ICE online could pulled into the dragnet.

[ ... ]

If this scanning uncovers anything the agency deems suspicious, ICE is asking its contractors to drill down into the background of social media users. That includes: “Previous social media activity which would indicate any additional threats to ICE; 2). Information which would indicate the individual(s) and/or the organization(s) making threats have a proclivity for violence; and 3). Information indicating a potential for carrying out a threat (such as postings depicting weapons, acts of violence, refences to acts of violence, to include empathy or affiliation with a group which has violent tendencies; references to violent acts; affections with violent acts; eluding [sic] to violent acts.”

[ ... ]

Once flagged, the system will further scour a target’s internet history and attempt to reveal their real-world position and offline identity. In addition to compiling personal information — such as the Social Security numbers and addresses of those whose posts are flagged — the contractor will also provide ICE with a “photograph, partial legal name, partial date of birth, possible city, possible work affiliations, possible school or university affiliation, and any identified possible family members or associates.” The document also requests “Facial Recognition capabilities that could take a photograph of a subject and search the internet to find all relevant information associated with the subject.” The contract contains specific directions for targets found in other countries, implying the program would scan the domestic speech of American citizens.

[ ... ]

The posting indicates that ICE isn’t merely looking to detect direct threats of violence, but also online criticism of the agency. As part of its mission to protect ICE with “proactive threat monitoring,” the winning contractor will not simply flag threatening remarks but “Provide monitoring and analysis of behavioral and social media sentiment (i.e. positive, neutral, and negative).” This includes regular updates on the “total number of negative references to ICE found in social media” from week to week. Such sentiment analysis — typically accomplished via machine-learning techniques — could place under law enforcement scrutiny speech that is constitutionally protected. Simply stated, a post that is critical or even hostile to ICE isn’t against the law.

[directdogman]

Hi dogman!

Would it be possible to get more information on the Dialtown Mob? Please and thank you :)

Most of the relative facts about the Mob in present day are mentioned in-game. They're shown to be a weak + incompetent underclass that operate as bottom-feeders who only get to exist because they're in the Mayor's pocket. Barely any members, no influence outside of their connection with the Mayor and live in constant fear of her. Of course, it wasn't always this way.

The history of the Dialtown Mob is quite a long + interesting one. It's probably best to think of it less as a singular organization that has always existed within DT and more a rotating group of people with overlapping interests, with a rough and ever-changing internal hierarchy. Its purpose changes as often as its members. This'll be quite a history lesson.

DT Pre-Crown basically only suffered from petty crime for the most part. Being a rural town with not much to offer, the most DT faced in terms of genuine activity were occasional members of the Chicago outfit stopping through on their way to Michigan from Ashland, who generally just passed through, staying for a night at most.

During Crown's tenure as Mayor, the mob as it exists now didn't exactly exist. But, Crown had a lot of passionate supporters in the town, and not all of them were strictly law abiding citizens. While Crown's own directives as Mayor generally involved him re-writing laws or bending the wording of laws to fit his will, rather than breaking them, a pseudo-legal presence did exist within DT at this time.

This loosely affiliated organization of people were not targeted by Dialtown's police force, but rather, worked alongside them. Crown's all-inclusive vision of Dialtown had many moving parts, you see. Due to Dialtown's relative wealth and prosperity during this time, Callum understood that the only way to keep Dialtown from being ran over by gangs in other Midwestern cities was to have reliable people with contacts (who could identify crooks from other cities + recognize trouble a mile away.) Crown had an understanding with these people, that non-violent and petty crimes, forgery, fencing and the like were okay... So long as the line was towed and they maintained standards for themselves AND anyone who wished to make trouble in town.

This was a marriage of convenience, an extra-legal wing of Dialtown's residents who ensured that nothing worse could form in town and provided useful intelligence to Crown's police force.

In truth, many members of this network had jobs working for Crown's subordinates and the crime rate in town was always relatively low for a city of its size and wealth. Due to their connections with Cal's industries, they knew who every important visitor in town was and they knew who to leave alone. Anyone who got too greedy or caused seriously trouble for the town (within and outside this network) were dealt with. Brutally. They had a good thing going and knew how to protect it.

After Crown became a senator, he appointed a replacement Mayor, who kept the deal going. When Crown needed muscle at rallies, he made a phone call and soon, men dressed in suits with tire irons were watching the back of the crowd. As Crown's company moved around the country and installed itself in more big cities, more and more of his supporters became affiliated with this network nation-wide, rapidly growing in numbers.

Quickly, a more radical element formed within this network. A political element, prepared to intimidate and threaten politicians who opposed Crown's revolution. This wasn't just a case of looking after their own interests. They were fiercely loyal to Crown and believed in his movement as much as he did. During Crown's run for president, the Kennedy campaign became quite concerned about this development, realizing they now had no viable way to get rid of Crown, as he was the only thing barely reining in his fanatical supporters, and if he were to suddenly disappear, no one would be protecting their own associates' businesses (or themselves) from their rage, guaranteeing Nixon a win and badly crippling their support come the next election.

When Callum became president, his scope widened and his focus on his home state waned. This caused his followers to realign themselves further and new hierarchies formed within the network that Crown wasn't aware of. With general autonomy (but occasional direction from Crown), Dialtown continued to flourish. Of course, then Crown's memory went.

What followed in Dialtown was political chaos. So much of Crown's movement had become synonymous with himself and no one on the ground in DT knew what should happen next. Many of Crown's associates tried to get Marla to run the town and try to revive his movement, which she staunchly refused to do, instead returning to private life to raise her son in solitude.

Infighting became the norm and many of leaders of Dialtown's industries, all still officially ran by the city, vied for power to gain control of the town. Violence was common during this interregnum. Ironically, the network dividing themselves along political/systematic lines wound up not only weakening each composite industry's grip on the town, but also reduced the sum power of the network's members. Many leading officials were charged with RICO predicates, constantly leaving the town in political turmoil as each last remaining leader of the Town was swept away + many subordinates arrested.

Eventually, nothing was left but petty crime, ran by the few within this network who weren't affiliated with the town's unions/industries and thus, didn't have enough influence to draw Federal attention. Most of Dialtown's industries were privatized and ran by companies led by citizens who kept their distance from criminal elements as a means of self preservation. Even the unions wound up getting cleaned out and lost much of their political power.

THIS is when this network began truly resembling DT's mob. A conglomerate of criminals who hadn't picked a side, led by middlemen who were deposed when DT's core industries were picked apart. Many shod their previous identities as they no longer amounted to anything. The only remnant of their former connections now being that they headquartered in the Lock and Whiskey, a bar frequented by members of Dialtown's largest service trade-union (though the two entities kept their distance from each other outside of their lower-tier members intermingling.) As time went on, the Lock and Whiskey became the sole thing keeping the Mob afloat.

Dialtown became a place for punks from other Midwestern cities to occasionally filter into. With a lack of good work going around town, a relatively small number of these guys became affiliated with DT's mob, which couldn't afford to turn recruits away, due to how many of their own kept getting shot or arrested. Soon, the new outnumbered the old. This is where you get guys like Stabby/Shooty, who have little clue just how powerful their predecessors truly were.

Mingus predecessor, Chett Alderman, kept the town relatively safe by increasing police funding, but this came with a greater tax burden on DT's struggling middle class. Amidst Dialtown's stagnant economy and relative poverty, the Mob maintained a consistent power structure but struggled to financially support themselves outside of maintaining their working class bar. This made them easy prey for Mayor Mingus, who gutted their power structure and attempted to use what was left for her own benefit, providing lackluster muscle on occasion and kicking up a meager amount of cash just to avoid being wiped out by her entirely.

Hope this helps!

[sweetreasures]

the hitman’s quandary

rival hitman!jongho x reader

smut, non-idol au, fingering, choking, mention but no use of weapons (guns), degradation, restraints (belt), hate sex adjacent, slight taming, ruined orgasm, dubcon—proceed with caution

minors dni, ageless blogs will be blocked

masterlist

you and jongho had been dating for one year, previously unaware of the other’s affiliation with your respective organizations.

to him, you were nothing but a lowly, hardworking office employee. and he, a delivery driver. as long as you continued coming home in those sexy black kitten heels, he would never question you.

even when you were strangely secretive over the “work” documents you brought home every night. proprietary information, can’t have it falling into the wrong hands.

even when jongho came home one night and you spotted the droplets of blood embedded in his white sneakers. a work accident, some waiter dropped a glass and got blood everywhere while cleaning it up.

even when you and jongho found yourselves passing each other on the street during a night where you told each other you would be too busy with work. and you both pretended not to notice.

then an email reached your inbox. the target was wanted for taking out a high ranking official within your organization. he was a handsome man in his mid 20s, done up beautifully in the photos, an expensive bespoke suit resting on his muscular body. you knew it was him, but it was a far cry from the disheveled, exhausted individual who returned home to you every night.

surprised wasn’t the word for it. though in the eye of your hurricane of emotions lied a tinge of….admiration? you were impressed—he held out for this long, and you may have never known had you two been spared by the dice of fate. you wondered what photos they sent him, whether your boyfriend thought you looked just as enticing.

and you didn’t have to wonder for much longer—not when jongho came barreling into your shared apartment, a look on his face that bordered on determination and lust. he flashed his weapon and tossed it aside, landing perfectly on the entryway table. tonight, in some twisted way, he’s willing to show you mercy.

“on the floor. now.”

you smirk, pushing your chair back from the kitchen table before lowering yourself to the ground. your arms were up in a mocking surrender pose, your eyes daring him to step closer.

and fuck, did he look amazing in that very moment. even face near certain death, you had to admit your boyfriend was incredibly sexy when he was bossy.

jongho pushed your legs apart with his foot, your knees sliding across the linoleum with the help of your black lace stockings.

“you should probably just kill me, jongho.”

he stared down at you, unwavering. his head cocked to one side, his hand removing the belt wrapped around his waist. jongho looked ravenous, and as the night progressed, it became more apparent that his next meal was you.

“i could,” he pushes his foot against your clothed cunt, pressing down on your clit with just enough pressure for you to make out every ridge on the sole of his shoe. “but that wouldn’t be as fun.”

he quickly grasped both of your wrists in his hand, tying them together with his belt before wrapping it once more around a slat on the kitchen chair. you knew as well as he did that this wasn’t enough to restrain you completely, but you weren’t going to resist.

and he just wanted to watch you squirm.

with you secured, jongho joined you on the floor. he hurried to remove your panties—drenched with excitement at your boyfriend’s change in demeanor. he wrapped one hand around your neck before positioning the other between your eager thighs. the heat was practically radiating off of you as he hovered right before your folds. you fought the urge to move your hips closer to him, in search of any kind of friction to relieve you.

“here’s the deal.”

“mhm…”

“you have intel i need. intel you know will also get you killed if i find out.”

you nod. duh. touch me already!

now that he knew you were a hitman like himself, it was immediately obvious what drove you into this line of work. murder was only secondary to the thrill of acting out and not getting caught. you were an adrenaline fiend. if jongho had to guess, the nights where your stamina was at its highest—where the two of you had the freakiest, mustiest sex for what felt like hours—were likely when you were coming home from a successful job.

so naturally, you could only think about getting your juices all over jongho’s well-manicured hand, loaded gun a few hundred feet away be damned.

jongho rolled his eyes; this probably wasn’t a good idea.

“you talk, i leave. you squirt, i shoot. we have fifteen minutes.”

“what happens after fifteen minutes?” your chest movements betrayed your voice—though calm—as it rose and fell rapidly with your quickening heart rate.

jongho pursed his lips. “i shoot.”

wordlessly, you widen your legs for him, hooded eyes never leaving his own. if the moment weren’t so dire, jongho could have laughed.

he hoped you didn’t sense the way he hesitated before slipping one of his fingers inside your heat, his thumb working your already sensitive clit using the slick of your arousal. your eyes fluttered shut and you instantly released a high pitched whine. he applied a bit more pressure to your neck, taking in the way your body temperature rose and your heart beat inside your veins.

jongho knew you understood the serious nature of your current predicament; you both had your lives on the line. you both had people to protect. jongho had committed an egregious offense by taking out one of yours. and worst of all, someone who paid your bills. you should be enraged, or possibly frightened, but jongho couldn’t exactly parse what you were feeling at all. he was getting extremely hard watching you fuck yourself stupid on the fingers of a man sent to kill you.

“mingi knows your guys planted the car bomb. it had that dumbfuck wooyoung written all over it. what else is he planning?”

your legs quivered as you struggled not to lose yourself completely in ecstasy. jongho was up to three fingers, the timer down to seven minutes. he angled his hands to apply more pressure to the more sensitive, spongy areas on your walls. another wave of arousal dripped onto the linoleum.

“answer my fucking question.”

“fuck you.” you spat, cackling as your saliva made impact with his face.

he tightened the hand around your neck, watching your eyes roll to the back of your head as you tensed up.

“god. what a whore. last day on earth and you wanna spend it soaking up my hand, like the dumb slut you are.”

he released you just as the muscles in your began to weaken. you took a deep breath, the elastic around your core wound up with impossible force.

you had something against jongho that he would have never accounted for, at least not consciously. put simply: your body. jongho praised you constantly, saying you were the best fuck of his life. he’d never tasted a pussy as delicious as yours, never fucked a cunt that took him so well and left him wanting more. and more. and more. until you could no longer feel your legs and every subsequent orgasm sent you closer to a coma.

it was no secret that you were quite known for it, using your…assets…to gain intelligence and trust from your targets. jongho could play all he wanted, but you were willing to bet on your award winning pussy. this man would rather abandon his work completely and accompany you on the run for the rest of his life if it meant getting to feel your thighs wrapped around his head as he drowned tongue-first under your sweetness.

fuck it. he isn’t going to kill you. he couldn’t if he tried.

three minutes.

jongho licked his lips instinctively. his movements became robotic, as if following a ritual from muscle memory. he was slipping. his dick fought at his zipper, and he couldn’t ignore it. he watched as your perfect tits bounced with every pump and wanted nothing more than to release them from your shirt and latch his mouth onto your engorged nipple. as much as he didn’t want to take you out, he desperately needed to see you come undone in his grip. he needed to milk himself in your sloppy wet cunt like a fucktoy, listening as you squelched around his girth and took him like the filthy slut you were.

that was how he played, you thought, smiling to yourself. that was your man. he made no further attempt to gain any more attention. instead, he watched as drool slid the length of your tongue and tricked down your chin. he wiped it off, sticking his thumb inside his mouth and sucked it clean.

three minutes would be over any second now, you reasoned. still, you had not cum and grew more frantic by the second. your words were incoherent. a tiny puddle had already formed beneath your curvy ass. jongho’s hand threatened to fall asleep, his hands coming slightly pruned and covered in your tasty secretions.

the phone goes off. jonghp ripped his hand from you cunt. your body burned for orgasm and then…nothing. he ruined it.

“that’s the time.”

“shit. joykill!” you panted, frustrated with your body for not coming fast enough. jongho ignores you completely, untying you from the chair in one moment before flipping you over in the next.

he tightened the belt once more and held on like a leash. you knew the drill—pressing your head to the floor, though that didnt stop jongho from shifting his weight to keep you down.

he worked his furiously red cock from the prison that was his boxers. there was a blatant dark spot in the jeans where the precum wet him up.

“dumb fucking slut. you’re not willing to die for wooyoung, you just wanted to squirt. make a mess of a kitchen we rent.”

your hole quivered tremendously—you could practically feel jongho sliding his majestic member so deep inside your walls you could feel it on your throat. you were about to milk him for all he was worth. jongho stares down your sex, exposed to him from the back.

he knew it then: he couldn’t go through with it. not with you right here, falling apart into avas he slid perfectly into your cunt, ginormous midshaft rubbing against your insides, you leaned to throw one arm around jongho’s shoulder while resting your back against his chest. he began to move, wasting no time before setting off at an unimaginable pace to orgasm.

you gave jongho a soft kiss on the lips. he seizes the opportunity to snake his hands under your shirt and flick at your nipples. a chorus of shushed affirmations joined the symphony of skin on skin that played out on the kitchen floor.

so much for a successful hit job.

(end)

[A/N: if you made it this far, thank you for reading! this was a surprise addition to this weeks lineup bc im a pervert and a liar. please excuse our dust as i renovate my writing space some more. and please apply for my taglist here if you are interested! ill start using at by the end of the week 👍 ]

[facts-i-just-made-up]

We need accurate facts about dolphins we need some accurate facts about dolphins.

Dolphins, by far the largest of all sea rodents. Capable of exceptional feats of intelligence, charity, and giving interpersonal advice, dolphins (a nickname short for Dolphlungrins) were invented in 1873 by Nikola Tesla while attempting to patent an organic water heater. His DNA machinations instead yielded these super-friendly and docile beings that totally don’t kill other animals for pleasure or achieve near humanoid levels of ethics violations. Here are some fun facts about these cheerful ROUSs of the sea:

Dolphins are the only sea mammal capable of speech. Whales and many others can communicate and vocalize, but only dolphins can pontificate.

A group of dolphins is called a pod. When they chase each other across currents, it is called a “pod race.” This term inspired the central race scene in the classic film, “Ben-Hur.”

Male dolphins have prehensile genitals. Not their own genitals, but ones they rip off of whales and wire to act as grabby toys.

Dolphins are the only non-human animal confirmed to have religion. They are mostly Catholic, but they use sand dollars for communion wafers and the Dolphin Pope is not affiliated with the Vatican, but rather the Vaticetacean.

Sea World has never been able to keep dolphins captive, because they keep organizing epic escapes on motorcycles that they find behind enemy lines and use to jump the barbed wire.

The largest dolphin ever recorded was 85ft long and weighed over 90,000lbs, also it looked more like a blue whale than a common dolphin, and was found in a pod of group whales, and kept claiming to police that it was a case of mistaken identity. It has never received a trial and its family have set up a gofundme to save whales falsely accused of being dolphins.

Dolphin meat tastes almost exactly like human meat. I know this from a friend who is not me.

[mohammedfamilysposts]

Hello 👋

🍉🌹 I am Muhammad Al-Shawish from destroyed Gaza 🇵🇸.

🚫⛔🙏Please take a little of your time to find out what a difficult disaster happened to me.

😔🍉My story is that we were displaced 🚗 from our homes for a full year and a half in Gaza due to the orders of the Israeli army, and we lived in tents, and we endured a lot of the cruelty that we faced from the lack of food, sleeping on the street, the lack of places to shelter us from the cold of winter, and enduring the pain and fear of indiscriminate bombing by warplanes, and my story is blogged entirely at my expense,

After much suffering, I learned that there was a gofundme through which donations could be made to help vulnerable groups, so I created that account and linked it to a bank account for a person living in Belgium, because it is forbidden to link a gofundme to a Palestinian bank account so that I could bear the exorbitant costs and buy tents and other living purposes that we face. My wife was pregnant and gave birth and now I have 4 children, Sohail 👱‍♂️, Jawan 👱‍♀️, Azad 👶, Ayan,

My wife 🙇‍♀️ suffered from many problems during her pregnancy, and I could not afford the costs of treatment and many other things, the worst of which did not happen to us, but when you donated an amount to me that might heal my wounds and relieve the pain, he defrauded this person to whom I linked my account and did not transfer the amount to me, and my situation became very difficult 😪😒

The entire account was deleted because of him 😭😣

🙏🤳 I am now looking for a bank account for a loyal person affiliated with these countries

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Lithuania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States

Until it is linked to the program account https://Chuffed.org until I return it

Create a new account and link it to it.

🙏😰 Please help me. I die every day from not providing food, drink, and housing for my children and the minutes they are deprived of.

Imagine that you have a family whose house was demolished and you are living in its ruins and unable to find a living for yourself?😩

🙏❤️Please help me create a new account on this site Chuffed.org

What is the fault of a newborn child who lives in these conditions!!!!😥 I cannot buy diapers and milk for him. These are his most basic needs, and I do not benefit from any organization for help

I am writing to you while my tears do not leave my eyes 😭 sadness for my condition and my children 😔

I would be very grateful and grateful to anyone who provides this service and assistance to me❤️🌷

@nabulsi27 @ibtisam-d @sayruq @ibtisams-blog @brokenbackmountain @aleciosun @palestinegenocide @palestinegenocide-blog @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @butterscotcheye @apparentlyautistick @appsaquino @akajustmerry @sayruq @communistchameleon @communitythings @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @buttercuparry @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @nudisth @joshuahong @heba12s-blog

[catboysooyoung]

Genuinely, there are no "good guys" factions in gsgw. The Big 3 Organizations there consist of:

Big pharma company

Ghost story cops

A literal cult

All three of these organizations benefit from the existence of ghost stories, which in turn, are more often than not, a source of suffering for regular civilians (It's why even Kim Soleum recognized that it was better to be affiliated to one, as he would have the resources to safely survive them).

Daydream exploits these Ghost Stories for profit, the Bureau takes advantage of them to get rid of undesirables, and the cult uses them to expand their power and influence.

So no, the Bureau is absolutely not better than Daydream, and vice versa, but that part is obvious. Like sure, on the surface they may seem slightly better, because they supposedly aim to help and rescue civilians caught in ghost stories.

However, they can also pick and choose whichever civilian they deem to be "guilty" enough as "necessary sacrifices" to secure/complete certain ghost stories. Look at the Mountain Lodge arc, Jaekwan basically admitted they purposely sent the tapes to these people in order to basically isolate and butcher them in the ghost story. Iirc they even consider it part of the government's attempt at "social control" and "maintaining social order". There's no trial here, no chance for the victims to present their cases. They're just sent in because they're "criminals" and therefore deserve to be killed off.

Yes, sure, you could argue that they're all "horrible people" (I.e. "undesirables"). Bullies, adulterers and the like. But doesn't it unsettle you just a bit, that this government body can just decide who gets to die and kill them off in a very discreet manner, literally disappearing them from the real world? What arbitrary measure of "terribleness" is being used? Is this method not prone to being abused? On what basis do they owe this right to bypass the whole legal process and act as both judge and executor?

As much as I love Jaekwan and Choi, let's maybe not... Downplay the Bureau's shittiness. It's just as bad as Daydream. And Jaekwan in all his rigidity, who is by no means uninteresting, is definitely not a moral pillar....

[omanotherstory]

Welcome Exchange Students, to Obey Me! Another Story.

An Interactive rewrite lesson by lesson by @devildomditzy

This is a playable rewrite of the original Obey Me! game’s story, using clickable dialogue options to progress the story. 

Please read the Quick Start Guide below to learn how to begin your journey to the Devildom.

Obey Me!, its characters, story, content, assets, etc., belong to NTT Solmare. This blog has no affiliation. This is purely a free-to-access fan work.

If you like what I do, I have a ko-fi - any contributions will go towards funding my mammon card gambling addiction 😌

Obey Me! Another Story is a rewrite of the original Obey Me! game’s story. As such, it will contain elements, dialogue options, plot points, etc. from the game.

If you have not played the original Obey Me! Game, only Obey Me! Nightbringer, it is highly recommended that you finish the original game in app or read the entire story through Obey Me! Nightbringer’s time chronicles function. 

The first few lessons will heavily lean on the in-game writing and dialogue.This will change as we move away from the first few lessons/set up of the story, though this entire experience will follow the plot of the game. 

I will be posting this lesson by lesson. The beginning of each lesson will have a post labeled “START STORY HERE”. Please begin there for each lesson. Ignore the additional posts, as the linked dialogue options on the initial post will bring you to the next part of the story. 

The last post of the lesson (for all dialogue options) will be labeled ‘LESSON END”. If that post does not have an additional link that takes you to the next lesson, that means the next lesson is not out yet. 

To begin, please click the link in the “Lessons” tab below of the lesson you’d like to read. Of course, if you are just starting please begin at lesson one. The posts will take you through to the next lesson if available.

If you are following along as I am uploading this rewrite and caught up to the posted content during one of your read throughs, please access the next lesson you need via the “Lessons” tab below, like a chapter book. The lessons will be organized exactly like the game (lesson 1-1, 1-2,1-3, etc.). 

If you are currently reading and a dialogue option does not have a link attached, I am most likely currently uploading and editing that chapter. If you believe you have found a genuine broken or missing link, please send me an ask on @devildomditzy.

For all questions and inquiries, please inbox me @devildomditzy.

If for any reason this blog becomes inactive, it will be stated in the description.

THE DIALOGUE IS FORMATTED AS FOLLOWS:

You are MC.

Your thoughts look like this.

(Your actions look like this)

MC: Your dialogue looks like this.

Other character's actions look like this.

Character: Other character's dialogue looks like this.

Once lessons are fully uploaded and ready to go, their starting page link will appear here!

-----CHATPER 1 ------

LESSON 1-1

LESSON 1-2

LESSON 1-3

LESSON 1-5

LESSON 1-7

LESSON 1-10

LESSON 1-13

LESSON 1-15

-----CHAPTER 2-----

LESSON 2-2

LESSON 2-4

LESSON 2-6

LESSON 2-8

Who else works on this project?

This is a solo project and a labor of love. As such, uploads may be slow.

What is the upload schedule? 

As of right now, it is whenever I can. I am a full time university student with a full time job. As such, uploads may be slow.

How long will this run for?

As long as I can do it without burning out, it will continue through the entire story. Also if this gets like no traction, I probably won’t complete it. The project might get cancelled if that is the case, since this is such a big undertaking. 

You said you were going to edit screenshots of the game in photoshop to go with the story. Where are they?

I decided I really don’t think I’d like getting sued.

You really like Mammon. Is the story going to be Mammon x MC centric?

No, I will be fleshing out all options (including romantic options) for all brothers and dateables so you can pick your favorite!

I have a question. Where can I contact you?

Please send me an ask on my main blog, @devildomditzy.

I don’t like the way you wrote ‘such and such’! 

The great thing about fanworks is you can go make your own and it can be however you’d like! However, this is mine. So if you don’t like it, don’t read it! 

Have fun be safe love you!