#our housing system is broken

[cursedwithcaution]

i wish all [people who shit on americans for the systemic oppression we experience regarding healthcare and other human rights] a very [understanding that most americans are victims of the system and can’t even protest oppression without being met with police violence]

[shego1142]

I know yall probably know about poverty and generational poverty and what not but I just want to vent….

Because like… the things people don’t like know about generational poverty unless they’re experiencing it is just how… trapped you feel… weighed down by absolutely everything.

See I honestly think something may be up with our gas line

Which is a terrifying thought.

Now, idk if it’s a leak per se (though we’ve got the windows cracked just in case) but if we turn on our stove the gas smell is really strong, the flame flairs out of the sides of the stove, etc.

Shit that shouldn’t be happening.

Shit that is really fucking dangerous.

We know this is dangerous, we’re not stupid.

We know we should get it fixed.

But here’s the thing, okay?

The floors are just base boards, they’re falling in and there’s holes everywhere.

There’s rats that we’ve tried every trick in the book to get rid of, short of hiring an exterminator. We’ve borrowed traps, had traps “gifted” to us, tried poisons that friends and family have bought for us, etc. It cuts them down but they come back.

All of our food is in thick sealed plastic containers and yet they’ve eaten some of the containers open. They even ate our soap and makeup and cleaning supplies and that didn’t seem to stop them. (Our soap and cleaning supplies are now in plastic containers too but idk how long it will deter them, and the makeup is thrown away)

We have shoddy wiring in the house, done by my own grandpa back in the 70’s when they first bought this place.

Our roof has cracks in it that have failing patches, done by a family friend.

Our AC doesn’t exactly work very well and it’s been reaching 100°F weather (with 70% humidity no less) and to fix it we’d need $10k at least, but we’d also need new flooring, so it would likely be more than that…

Etc.

And like, it’s not that the house is dirty, but that it’s falling apart.

And here’s the deal… calling someone who knows what’s what about houses to check the stove means calling someone who is going to inspect the whole house, someone who’s going to say:

“hey uh, your gas is messed up and your electricity is messed up and so’s your plumbing… Your floors are bad… we have to condemn this house and if you can’t pay to fix it up then you’re going to lose it.”

And it’s not like we got this house and destroyed it by a lack of maintenance, this house is like, 50+ years old, and has been my home since I was born.

My grandma and I couldn’t take care of everything because my grandpa had Alzheimer’s and he was going downhill and it was me and her caring for him.

My health is really bad and I can’t work a regular day job because of it, but I haven’t been able to hire a lawyer to apply for disability, so we’re living off one income and whatever side gigs I can do from time to time.

We don’t have the money to pay the mortgage, buy groceries, pay the home insurance, the gas bill, pay medical bills, buy pet food, etc and also then pay for our house to be inspected and potentially condemned for things I didn’t even do in the first place, things that came before I inherited this house…

My whole family has been poor my whole life, from my great great grandparents to my parents, etc.

It was always “you don’t pay for a professional to fix it, you either fix it yourself or get a family member or a friend of a friend to fix it”

Which means that if we ask a building inspector to tell us what’s wrong with the house… well… it’s going to probably be everything. Because this house has never been “professionally” fixed, it’s only ever had family members and friends of family members slap duct tape over glaring issues and say they’ll only charge you a glass of sweet tea.

Which means it’ll probably cost nearly the entire value of the house to fix tbh.

I just feel like I’m on a ship that’s sinking and way more water is coming in than I could ever manage to get out. I keep trying to patch the leaks but the materials just not available, and besides, if I stop bailing out the water for even a second to go and try and patch the leak, I’ll go fully underwater.

And you know, it’s not fair. It’s not right that it’s like this. This is our home and we love it. This has been my home for years and we love this house, this land, the trees and plants that grow, everything here is loved. It’s cared for. We try to take pride in it.

But you wouldn’t know that because we’re too busy trying to bail out that sinking ship. We’re too busy from constantly working and cleaning and repairing.

It’s not okay that it’s set up that way. We need help, we need community. We should be able to call someone and be like “Hey, we love this house, we’ve never been late on a payment, we’ve worked our butts off to try and keep things going, but we need help. Can you look at everything this house needs to function and be in good condition and help us get those things?”

Like, hell a payment plan option would work, wouldn’t it? Why isn’t that the done thing?

I mean, I know why, the more houses that are taken from the poor means the more real estate that’s available for the rich, they’re already trying to make our whole neighbourhood into some corporate venture instead of a residential area. And besides, if they manage to make us homeless they’d be just as happy throwing us in jail for the “crime” of being homeless and poor and making money off free labour.

Like that’s why it’s normal practice not to help anyone keep their home when they actually have a home. The system is set up for you to fail unless your family is at least moderately wealthy.

It’s just such an unforgiving cycle. And I know I’m beating a dead horse with this vent. I know that like over half of America’s population is likely in the same shitty place we’re in.

It’s just… I’m so tired of being in cycles like these.

I’m too sick to work, too poor to afford to get on disability, and both too poor and too exhausted to go to the doctor to get proper treatment, and it’s just a loop.

I’m too exhausted to fix the house, too busy cleaning the house to rest, too exhausted to make money to have professionals help fix the house, rinse and repeat.

The house breaking down is very likely making me more sick, but I’m too sick to be able to get the house fixed.

My grandparents didn’t have money to fix the house, my parents don’t have money to fix theirs, I don’t have money to fix my house.

Every step forward is like ten steps backwards and I genuinely don’t know what the solution to all of this is.

I feel so fucking trapped. I don’t even have the energy to run a gofundme for myself to try and get the help we need, because it takes so so much to to actually get a gofundme up and off the ground, I have tried before and it’s always been a failure because I just literally never have enough energy for it.

We have so many things we’d love to do. We’d love to make this house into an eco-friendly, sustainable home, with solar panels and a huge garden. We want to make a farm stand with fresh eggs and vegetables and fruit and let it operate on an honour system, so anyone who needs food can take what they need and pay what they can, yes even if it’s $0. I want to crochet hats and mittens and set those out too, for sale or just for those who need them…

We want so badly to take care of our community… but it feels like our community isn’t there to support us, not because people don’t want to support one another but because we’re all trapped or are being prevented from supporting one another.

Because having a farm-stand means you need to buy business licenses… building a sustainable home means you need to buy a building permit.

Every step of the way feels like good intentions are wasted, road-blocked.

I can’t even begin to explain how many jobs I’ve applied to, writing, editing, working as a cook or a waiter, data entry, etc.

In school they told me I’d be able to do anything I wanted to. I was a “gifted” straight A student and as I’m sure many people on this site know, that’s not bragging. It’s the opposite. The school system, the system that is supposed to help me be successful in life, told me I would be, and now I would be lucky to make $7.25/an hour while living in a place where the minimum liveable wage is $35/an hour.

It costs $35 an hour for one person to live moderately comfortably in my town. And this isn’t an arbitrary number, it’s literally on our county’s government ran poverty assessment website.

And that’s not a thriving wage it’s a surviving wage. It’s Home, Food, Utilities, Transportation & Clothes.

It leaves no room for medical care, comfort, entertainment, etc.

So what the hell are those of us who are working for anything less than that, or those of us unable to work, supposed to do?!

And like I said, I know I’m preaching to a choir rn, I know everyone is experiencing some version of this. I just… I need to be able to express it from time to time. To talk about how unfair and ridiculous and needlessly cruel this is.

It’s so deeply flawed and evil that we’re unable to have legitimate health concerns inspected because we’re worried about the house being taken away from us.

It’s trash. It’s inhumane.

And if anyone has any like… suggestions or advice that would be great… I’m considering just having our gas service canceled by our gas company and buying a small electric grill instead… but our gas also powers our hot water heater so…

:/

[emergencyplumbingil]

Stay dry with your local plumbing pros.

Facing a flood of plumbing problems?

Are you dealing with unexpected splashes, drips, and plumbing surprises at home?

At Emergency Plumbing / Smart Housing Systems Inc, we’ve got the tools and expertise to fix everything from mischievous pipes and broken faucets to sump pump mishaps and chilly water heaters. Quick, reliable, and always professional, we ensure the water only flows where you want it to.

Stay dry with Emergency Plumbing / Smart Housing Systems Inc! We’re your licensed, insured, and local plumbing pros serving Highland Park, Lake Forest, Deerfield, Lake Zurich, Northbrook, and beyond. From persistent pipes leaking to rebellious faucets, sump pumps, or water heaters, our expert team tackles it all with efficiency and skill. Count on us for fast, friendly service that keeps your home safe and sound.

Get in touch now for swift service that brings back your comfort and peace of mind

Call us today—your neighborhood solution for all things plumbing!

Phone 224-754-1984

[creatingblackcharacters]

“It’s Giving” AAVE, and the Denied Yet Undeniable Impact of Black Culture

I grew up knowing it as Ebonics; I didn’t hear 'AAVE' until I was an adult. Apparently it’s used derogatorily- I did not know. But when Robert Williams coined the term in the 70s, its meaning was:

“…the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represents the communicative compentence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States idioms, patois, argots, ideolects, and social forces of black people…Ebonics derives its form from ebony (black) and phonics (sound, study of sound) and refers to the study of the language of black people in all its cultural uniqueness.”

Familiar Examples include but are not limited to:

The History

It was unbelievably difficult to find a solely Black perspective on the subject. I’m gonna need everyone to let Black linguists talk, it’s literally their job. Anyway, I need y’all to actually WATCH this video. Don’t skip it thinking I’ll summarize. Watch it. Actually listen. That’s part of the problem to begin with, is not listening. Even if you have to read this lesson later, so be it.

One of the points emphasized in this video was that AAVE was formed of the need to communicate, and specifically to communicate in a way that hid what we were saying and thinking from antagonistic white society.

“…“the disguise language used by enslaved Africans to conceal their conversations from their white slave masters to the lyrics of today’s rap music, [the magical power of] the word has been shaped by a time when, as observed by Harlem newspaper writer Earl Conrad, ‘it was necessary for the Negro to speak and sing and even think in a kind of code.’””

Because it was in a form that white people could not understand, as well as already existing racist biases against the humanity and intelligence of Black people, naturally it was assumed that our way of communicating was ignorant and ‘false’. Even acknowledging it as a valid language was seen as abhorrent, by nonblack and certain Black people.

“For decades, linguists and other educators, pointing to the logic and science of language, have tried to convince people that Black English exists, that isn’t just a politically correct label for a poor version of English but is a valid system of language, with its own consistent grammar. In 1996, with the unanimous support of linguists, the Oakland School Board voted to recognize AAVE, or the more politicized term “Ebonics” (a portmanteau of “Ebony” and “phonics”), as a community language for African American students, a decision which might have opened up much needed additional funding for education. Instead it resulted in intense public backlash and derision due to the still widespread, incorrect belief that Black English was an inferior, uneducated form of English associated with illiteracy, poverty, and crime. It’s hard for a language to get ahead when it keeps getting put down. Some linguists, such as John Russell Rickford, have noted how even sympathetic linguistic research, which has derived a lot of benefit and understanding from Black English grammar, can unknowingly focus on data that represents African American communities negatively, giving “the impression that black speech was the lingo of criminals, dope pushers, teenage hoodlums, and various and sundry hustlers, who spoke only in ‘muthafuckas’ and ‘pussy-copping raps.’” The term “Ebonics” even now is used mockingly by some as a byword for broken English.”"

(Some of) The Rules

AAVE is a full dialect with grammar and social rules. But the ones most people are familiar with include:

Th becoming D (“dats”)

Double Negative (“I ain’t see nobody”)

Habitual Be (“It’s cuz he be on that phone”)

Possessive s absence (“I’m going to my grandaddy house”)

Question word order (“who that is with the ice cream and cake?”)

Zero copula (“who that?”)

"Why do you talk like that" Would you rather I code switch?

“Code switching, or adjusting one’s normal behavior to fit into an environment, has long been a strategy for BlPOC individuals to navigate interracial interactions successfully. Code switching often occurs in spaces where negative stereotypes of Black individuals run counter to what are considered appropriate or professional behaviors and norms in a specific environment, and regularly happen in work settings.”

In this context, you might recognize it better as “using your white people voice”.

Some Black Americans, for varying reasons including internalized antiblackness and a desire for assimilation, hate AAVE! Some people will hate that you don’t use AAVE! Never assume we’re all on the same page about its use! My own mother used to be big on speaking ‘proper English’.

Regional Differences

The same way regional differences affect standard pronunciation, it’ll affect the AAVE used. Culture in the area as well will affect the words that come from it. So someone Black using a phrase in Philadelphia might not automatically know what someone Black from Compton is saying.

Someone did their dissertation on this topic, and while I’m going to link the summary for yall to give it a shot, Imma be honest- I do not understand this. I tried. It’s interesting how something that comes so innately, once written out like this is like WHAT. But the research has been done!

Easier examples include:

"Aaron earned an iron urn"- Baltimore

GloRilla and "Mursic"- Memphis

A lot of AAVE from New York City is popularized; so you might hear words from anywhere that originated from Harlem or Queens, or New York Ballroom culture

Tonal Languages

One major source of misunderstanding AAVE is people not understanding tonality. AAVE is often tonal, similar to many African languages, languages in general- meaning that unless you hear it or are innately familiar with how it’s spoken, you might not know HOW I’m saying something and therefore will not understand what I’m trying to convey. Given the history, this was on purpose!

Black language- Black culture in general, really- is often conveyed orally. Everything we say and do is not going to be written down for someone else to study. Doesn’t mean we weren’t saying or doing it. If you want to understand, you have to listen!

“Linguist Margaret G. Lee notes how black speech and verbal expressions have often been found crossing over into mainstream prestige speech, such as in the news, when journalists talk about politicians “dissing” each other, or the New York Times puts out punchy headlines like “Grifters Gonna Grift”. These many borrowings have occurred across major historical eras of African American linguistic creativity. Now-common terms like “you’re the man,” “brother,” “cool,” and “high five” extend from the period of slavery to civil rights, from the Jazz Age to hip-hop: the poetry of the people. This phenomenon reflects how central language and the oral tradition are to the black experience.”

Some examples:

1) "You Good" can mean, depending on how it is said and the context in which it is spoken:

Are you okay?

Do we have a problem?

You’re okay.

You don’t want these problems so chill.

Do you have enough money/resource?

It’s fine! Don’t worry about it.

2) This was an interesting experience, watching the misunderstanding of AAVE occur live. It’s the realization that people read this as “This is something Bugs Bunny would wear” versus “Bugs Bunny would wear the fuck outta that outfit”. But if you didn’t know that, if you aren’t familiar with the tonality of AAVE, of course you’d think the first one is what it meant! And it's not wrong-wrong - he would wear it, but that's not necessarily all it meant.

3) “Chill-ay” versus “Chile”. Yeah, we didn’t forget that. This is often why AAVE is used to sound “aggressive” on the internet- if you perceive (however subconsciously) how Black people speak is aggressive, then when you decide to emulate my speech in your moment of aggression, it is because you think my Blackness will make you seem more intimidating! You find Blackness… intimidating. Same reason you think it makes you funnier than if you were to deliver the same joke using your own dialect. It means the jokes not funny; my language is what’s funny.

Black American Sign Language

We even communicate differently in sign language; there’s an entire history and culture behind the Black deaf experience.

“In April 2020, Nakia Smith, aka Charmay, created a TikTok account introducing five generations of her Black Deaf family and how they communicate in Black ASL. As a social media influencer of Black ASL content, Charmay made a series of educational and informative videos on the history and practice of Black ASL. Charmay’s video went viral, landing in a New York Times article, Black, Deaf and Extremely Online, and Blavity: TikToker Has Gone Viral For Putting The Culture On To Black American Sign Language. Additionally, Netflix requested Charmay to explain the difference between Black ASL and ASL.”

Everyone doesn’t speak AAVE!

If your Black character is not Black American, and has never once been connected with Black American culture or people, they are probably NOT going to speak AAVE! They’re going to speak whatever dialect THEY have! And that doesn’t make it any less “Black” of them!

Different dialects and languages across the diaspora include but are certainly not limited to:

Black British English

Haitian Creole

Gullah

Jamaican and Caribbean Patois

Everyone Owes Rihanna an Apology

Y’all remember the song Work. I know you do. It was mainstream’s love and joy when this song dropped to be overtly racist about it, Black Americans included. Everyone claimed it was ‘gibberish’, that she was just mimicking language on a song and ‘it would be popular’.

Meanwhile, it was her singing in her native island patois! The people who spoke her language understood it! Anybody who actually tried to understand it, understood it! Another popular song, Sean Paul’s Temperature, is also in patois! And I thought we loved that song!

So next time Black people speak and you find yourself thinking- ‘wow, this makes no sense’, I want you to think to yourself: ‘does it make no sense, or do I just lack the context/knowledge/language to understand it?’

NOW THAT WE’VE HAD SOME EXPLANATION BEHIND THE LANGUAGE!

Writing AAVE

Me personally, I admit I don’t like it being used in stories where it is clear the author doesn’t understand the dialect, or where it’s clear the only person who speaks it is the “Black character who OMG DID I TELL YOU THEY WERE BLACK”. I’d rather it be the regular Queen’s English. We speak that too. I’m not going to decry your fanfiction or your regular modern-day original story as “bad” if you choose to use whatever language your region commonly uses. We know how to speak it. We will be okay. Using AAVE is not going to sell me that this character is “Black” if the rest of the character writing is still bad.

If it means that much to you, because it is important to the character, then you as the writer need to commit to learning proper AAVE! This isn’t going to be a “look up every turn of phrase on google” or “ask Ice what every single thing means”. You’re going to have to do what everyone who learns a language does- immerse yourself in it! If you can’t be bothered to learn my language, I’m going to know that when I read your work.

Obviously if there’s a context where the Black people involved do not know how to speak a language, it is perfectly fine to show that, as long as you are showing that it’s not due to some innate stupidity or other stereotype that this person cannot communicate the same way others communicate around them.

“The N Word”

I know someone’s thinking it, so let’s address it. There’s a translation for this word in damn near every language that’s ever come across Black people. So don’t go “oh we don’t have that word in my language-” I bet money you do.

Yes, it could be used in historical context- the ‘hard -er’. Yes, it could be used in social context- the ‘-a’. It follows the tonality rules I discussed earlier; that is, the way it’s used and who is using it makes ALL the difference in how it will be received.

Everyone is not on the same page about the use of this word within our community. Some Black people think it should never be used, period, even by us! Some Black people think that it should be reclaimed and use it as such! The only thing we’re on the same page about is that YOU should not be using it.

I say this to say to nonblack writers: put the pen down.

My stance is, if you can’t understand AAVE, you CERTAINLY aren’t going to be able to incorporate the social use of this word. Period. If you scared of the potential smoke incurred if you fuck it up- and if we see it, you will catch it- don’t bother. Trying to “write realistically” does not cut it. You should be doing everything in your power to understand and write a great Black character in all ways before ever thinking this is something you should do. In fact, if you're that thirsty to use this word, you have some other things you need to consider.

In the historical context, just watch yourself. If you’re gonna drop that word, you need to be damn well-researched on every other aspect of Black life and oppression in whatever era you’re writing. Just dropping this word to say “life is racist” shows a lazy lack of understanding of antiblackness. You don’t even have to drop the whole word. A “ni-” at the end of the sentence is enough for me to know exactly where we’re going! But if you not gone do the rest of the work… you know what they say about stupid games.

The Fundamental Disrespect

If you watched the prior videos (and you should have) and paid attention up to this point, you have already heard the struggles that both AAVE as a dialect and those that speak it go through.

There’s a societal connotation of stupidity, aggression, and silliness behind the way I speak. None of those things are true, and it’s hard to be told that even the way you communicate with others is bad.

But the other reason it’s so hard is because we spend our lives hearing that those are the connotations… when WE speak it. It is not the language- it’s ME that makes it so! And that gets into the other part of this lesson, something that AAVE is oft victim to.

This part is a little scarier for me to write, because people don’t like it when you talk about Black Americans as a separate entity from the US of A as it is known. I’m gonna put on my political hat for a second, but I promise this ties into my overall point so stick with me!

Stolen Cultural Hegemony

The reality is that the United States of America has forced a cultural hegemony upon the planet (amongst other forms). Yes. That is due to the capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and damn near just about every other -ism at the US government and military’s disposal. I am not saying that part somehow changes, of course not. That’s just facts. There are people far smarter than I (Edward Said, take the wheel) who could explain this far better. But I’m only here to explain this one point.

What DOESN’T get acknowledged is how much of what is deemed American pop culture across the world is both 1) stolen 2) Black culture! We do not have equivalent political power despite what our hypervisibility would suggest, but our social currency is raw diamond- so naturally, it has to be plundered! The white American dollar might mean far more than my life, but it’ll pay for my creations- even more so when I’m not involved!

The issue is that if your society says that I am less than, how can you justify how you covet everything I create? If I’m supposed to be so much less than you, why do you seek my language, my fashion, my music, my body? Why do you feel entitled to my creation, but you think you should have it… Without me?

Sit on that one for a second!

Appropriation of AAVE

Let's refer back to that chart at the beginning. How many of these have you seen or even used before? How long did it take for you to know it was AAVE? Don’t get me started on the influence of AAVE in queer spaces!

Of course I’m going to get started. Ballroom culture, created by Black and Latino people in New York City in the 80s (Paris is Burning, anyone?), has spawned so much popular “gay” lingo, and it’s not even just “gay”- it’s of color! Black English in particular is the source of many of the words that queer people use now in casual conversation, brought into the ballrooms, normalized, and then proliferated with other communities.

I can always tell when a new phrase from AAVE has hit nonblack audiences because it’ll suddenly be in every sentence I see, often butchered. Remember that historical context- of having to speak in code. Have you ever considered why AAVE is always evolving? Why we have to find new ways to communicate with each other? Have you considered that when people are constantly taking and misplacing your words, they may lose meaning or value, and so you have to come up with something else?

Appropriation of Black Music

Jazz, swing, the blues, disco, rock and roll, pop, even rap and hiphop have all been subject to appropriation- intentional or not. Far more intentional than you might want to believe. And it all comes back to money!

White audiences in the 1900s loved Black music- as long as they didn’t know Black people were singing it! Often, songs would be completely lifted and given to white bands to re-record. When Frankie Lymon first came on stage to perform, some of the audience was stunned! Even you know Itty Bitty Pretty One!

A more modern-day example: not to pick on the K-Poppies, but unfortunately it’s a low hanging branch example.

What K-Pop groups are doing now is heavily influenced what Black pop, rap, and R&B artists were doing from the late 90s to this very day. Part of the reason I enjoy K-Pop is because it reminds me of the stuff I used to listen to growing up. How many times have you heard someone think a Korean rapper in a K-Pop group is “fine”, but “don’t like” rap otherwise? Or will listen to K-Pop groups, but have very few to no one Black of the same sound on their playlists?

Examples:

Rover by Kai (2023) vs Swalla by Jason Derulo (2017)- Idk how popular Kai is outside of EXO, but I do know that some influence was had. And I like the song, btw! I prefer the music video! It’s just not the first time it’s been done!

Sweet Juice by Purple Kiss (2023) vs Say It Right by Nelly Furtado on a Timbaland beat (2006)

Taemin and Michael Jackson, period. Taemin having a song called The Rizzness. How did ‘rizz’ get to him? How did he know? More relevantly, how did the people who wrote his music know? How did something that started with Black people in Baltimore get all the way to Taemin in South Korea without influence?

I’ll use another example, so it doesn’t feel like I’m picking on K-Pop. I’m currently listening to CĂN NHÀ TRANH MÁI LÁ (Vietnamese, if you couldn’t tell) and as much of a banger as it is, with its own amazing cultural spin on the delivery… it is CLEARLY influenced by Black American rap. He nicknamed himself Vietgunna. Yall.

A non-American musical example: Afrobeats has taken the music industry by storm… How many of those people who enjoy an afrobeat from a nonblack artist will enjoy it from Wizkid or TEMS?

Those polls, where they ask how many Black artists you listen to… try paying attention to see just how much of your music takes inspiration from Black creators, but there’s a non-equivalent amount of Black artists that you support!

Political Bastardization of Powerful Black Colloquialisms

The appropriation of Black English isn’t always for entertainment. Sometimes, it’s a purposeful, malicious tactic to demean the words, and therefore the intent behind them.

“Woke”

“Michael Harriot, columnist at TheGrio and author of the upcoming book, Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America, explains that this kind of insidious takeover and flipping of Black vernacular to anti-Black pejorative has numerous parallels in America’s past and runs all the way up to present day. “When you look at the long arc of history and America’s reaction to the request for Black liberation – every time Black people try to use a phrase or coin a phrase that symbolizes our desire for liberation, it will eventually become a cuss word to white people,” Harriot says in an interview with [Legal Defense Fund]. It’s perhaps this very context — Black people’s awareness of their history and their power to resist injustice — that made woke so ripe for the pernicious mutation it has now undergone. Indeed, the forced transformation of the colloquialism echoes how countless other Black ideas and intellectual contributions have been maligned. “When people during the civil rights movement began saying ‘Black power,’ all of a sudden it became a term that people equated with communism and anti-white sentiment — and then it eventually gave birth to ‘white power,’” Harriot tells LDF. “The ‘1619 Project’ [which centers the ramifications of slavery and the contributions of Black people in American history] has become an insult. ‘Black Lives Matter’ became an ‘anti-white sentiment’ that was banned in school and spawned ‘all lives matter’ and ‘blue lives matter.’”

#SayHerName

This discourse is happening again, it happens like every six months on here, and it’s one of the things on here that fills me with a hatred that I struggle with every single time. It is hard, I literally feel that hatred in the pit of my chest right now as I type this.

Kimberle Crenshaw (Black woman and the originator of the legal term ‘intersectionality’), the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, and African American Policy Forum coined the hashtag in 2014. TWENTY FOURTEEN.

It was meant to highlight the violent deaths of Black women and girls at the hands of police, which happens at a high rate like Black men and boys, but often goes far less acknowledged. By appropriating the hashtag, you are actively choosing to speak over the very names and deaths of Black women and girls we don’t know, because we are NOT SAYING THEM, and therefore are allowing those deaths to continue as though they do not matter.

I’m going to stop before I get more upset. But know what violence you’re contributing to in your negligence.

How to Avoid Cultural Appropriation while Showing Appreciation

Everything is obviously not appropriation. It is possible for people to appreciate, replicate, and take influence without being disrespectful! It happens! And because it is possible, is why it’s so infuriating that it does not.

It’s frustrating that when something is on me, it’s ghetto, ugly, ignorant. But when it’s on the right stick thin pale girl, it’s chic, it’s fashionable, it’s new. So if it’s not the language, and it’s not the fashion or music you don’t like… It must be… Me. I am somehow not worthy of respect for the very culture I create.

Can you imagine being told that? That you are not worthy of being… you?

If you are worried about cultural appropriation, both in your writing and in your life, the easiest way to avoid that is to:

1) acknowledge and support the culture that created what you’re saying or doing and

2) actually treat them like human beings instead of zoo animals or a species to study. Show respect! It’s not hard!

This is my body, my language, my creation. It’s not just to entertain you! It’s my life! I talk like this because this is how I speak, not because I want to get Tiktok cool points. If I’m around people who treat the way I talk like childish babble, it makes me feel stupid and disrespected. We can see that, and we can read it in your writing.

And yes, you may be saying “well none of that is unique to AAVE, that’s how other languages work!” Okay then go speak those languages then lmao. But if you’re absolutely determined to understand and utilize mine, then you need to treat it with respect and not like the Gen Z slang babble (or worse- the threat) y’all treat it as. It’s a form of antiblackness that is so normalized that we don’t even think about it… but now that you’ve read this lesson, you can start! You can start taking the time to actively dedicate a thought to what you’re saying and doing and where it came from. You can take the time to notice when something isn’t right- and maybe even choose to speak up, because it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers.

[nottsangel]

blood moon — t.n. & m.r. part 1

pairing: dark!theodore nott x fem!reader x dark!mattheo riddle. (mattheo makes his appearance in pt2)

warnings: smut 18+, dubcon, breaking and entering, violence, blood, knives (cutting into skin), rough oral sex (m. receiving), mask kink, mentions of murder, swearing

word count: 4k

summary: purge night— a night you’ve feared all year despite coming from a rich and powerful family. but when six masked men show up at your door, are you really as safe as you thought?

the purge au… moodboard. nav. more.

“This is not a test, this is your Emergency Broadcast System. Announcing the commencement of the annual purge sanctioned by the Government. Weapons of class four and lower have been authorised for use during the purge; all other weapons are restricted. Commencing at the siren, any and all crime (including murder) will be legal for 12 continuous hours. Police, fire, and Emergency Medical services will be unavailable until tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m, when the purge concludes. Blessed be our new founding fathers—”

“Blah, blah, blah… we get it. Same shit every year.” Pansy sighed dramatically through the phone, her tone dripping with annoyance. You could tell she was rolling her eyes, and you didn’t need to see her to know she was slouched lazily somewhere. 

Not much later, the ominous, bone-chilling sirens blared violently through the entire city, blasting through the walls and echoing in the still-empty streets. The all so familiar sound never failed to give you goosebumps all over your stiffened body, instantly raising your heartbeat. You briefly closed your eyes, trying to steady your racing heart as you struggled to control your shaky breathing. 

“Hellooo? Are you still there or have you been murdered already?” Pansy joked with a taunting laugh. Your eyes snapped open, her static-filled voice dragging you back to reality, and her humorous tone nearly making you forget the reality of this cruel night. 

Because it wasn’t just any regular night— it was Purge Night. The one night you’d been dreading all year, every year, in which all crime becomes legal for twelve long hours. Logically, you were well aware that you had nothing to fear. Your parents were successful entrepreneurs with plenty of money to afford the most advanced security equipment, keeping you safe from any outside danger.

Yes, to protect you, and only you. Not them— they were out at a purge party, the details of which you didn’t even want to know, shamelessly networking with other high-profile elites while the poor were brutally murdered in the streets surrounding them. Everything about this night gave you a sickening feeling in your stomach. But of course, you knew it would be fine. All you had to do was survive— survive in your mansion, surrounded by unbreachable security. Nothing was going to happen. 

“Yeah, yeah, very funny.” you responded, your voice tinged with irritation as you hurried from your bedroom down the wooden stairs to the security room, figuring that if you could check the cameras around the house, it might calm you down a bit. You couldn’t shake the feeling of needing to tiptoe carefully down each step, as though someone might hear you— which was ridiculous, considering how large and heavily secured the house was. 

The eerily quiet house was broken by the first distant, chilling screams of pure terror from outside, making you grimace as you opened the creaky door to the small room, your eyes instantly squinting at the many bright screens that made your eyes burn. 

“It’s just… I hope this night will be over soon, that’s all.” you continued, one hand holding the phone close to your ear while your eyes fleetingly scanned over the security cameras, which were strategically placed to cover every corner outside the house. 

“Oh please, don’t be such a scaredy-cat! Every year it goes just fine, so this year will be no different. When has anything…” Pansy chattered in her usual attempt to comfort you, completely unaware that her words were only doing the opposite, when her voice slowly faded away into the background and your eyes narrowed at one of the top-right screens, which was focused on your front door. What the fuck?

With your heart nearly pounding out of your chest and your hand shakily gripping the phone, you inched closer to the screen, moving as slowly as possible, almost as if the slowness would somehow alter the nightmare playing out before you. A sudden coldness washed over you, your eyes rapidly blinking. No, no, no… this can’t be happening. 

On the pixelated, dark screen, you saw six masked men standing in front of your door, their heads tilted as they stared right at the cameras. You felt lightheaded, your left hand reaching up to lightly clasp your throat, the panic threatening to overwhelm you once you noticed the various weapons they were holding— baseball bats, knives, axes, and god knows what else.

“P—pansy… I, uh… there are people standing in front of my door…” you stammered shakily, still staring at the screen, your body frozen in place with your hand gripping the phone so tightly that your knuckles turned white and your breathing became ragged and uneven. 

“Oh, they’re probably just trying to scare you, babe. I mean, come on, they can’t even come in for fuck’s sake!” she let out a mocking laugh as the chaotic thoughts in your head raced a hundred miles an hour, leaving you paralysed with uncertainty. 

“Pansy, what the fu— you know what? Forget it.” you snapped, your trembling fingers tapping frantically at the screen before finally ending the call, frustrated at not being taken seriously by your best friend— though, to be fair, when had she ever? 

You hastily slipped your phone into your back pocket, already dreading the snarky text she was sure to send you for ending the call, before shifting your attention back to the screen. One of the men removed his mask, prompting you to move even closer with narrowed eyes, your forehead nearly touching the cold glass. 

“Good evening.” he called out in a stoic, chilling voice, his shiny black hair neatly styled, and his stance tall, commanding and unmistakably intimidating. 

“Sorry to bother you at this ungodly hour, but let me kindly introduce myself. My name is Tom, and these guys— they are my friends.” The scene you were intently staring at filled you with pure terror— this unknown man named Tom, surrounded by men in masks, each carrying weapons that could easily kill you, weapons that were already completely soaked in blood, the dark droplets dripping ominously onto your front porch. 

“This can go one of two ways; you simply let us in, and we will steal— sorry, I mean take whatever we desire, and then, we leave! Or…  we can do this the hard way. But I can assure you, you will not survive the latter.” His tone was almost amused as he finished speaking, and through the grainy pixels, you could see a controlled, sinister smile spreading across his pale face. 

“Do not think you are invincible. We can enter any home we want. And we will want, as wanting is our will on this fine purge night. Do not force us to hurt you.”

His menacing words sent tingles across your skin, all the muscles in your body tightening. And for a good ten minutes, they did nothing but stand there, staring straight into the camera, waiting—expecting—for you to open the door for them. 

It was a chilling sight. Almost as if you were staring at a photograph, the men stood completely still, their blood-covered hands tightly gripping their equally blood-soaked weapons, knowing your blood would be next to splatter across them, mixing with that of other poor, helpless victims. 

When they realised you weren’t going to open the door, Tom gave his men a quick signal, waving his finger in the air, which caused you to cock your head in both curiosity and unease.

“Alright then.” He said, the sinister smile on his face growing wider. But it was fine. You knew they couldn’t come inside anyway. Your house was so securely protected, there was no way they could come in and— Is that a fucking blowtorch? 

“Yes, we are prepared. And you— oh, you chose the wrong option.” Tom coldly stated as if he could read your mind, dragging the words in a chilling tone. Two of his men quickly got to work, the blowtorch slowly cutting through the thick metal doors, meanwhile, Tom continued to stare directly at the camera, his evil, dark smile never faltering, his soulless eyes not blinking once.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.” This was when real panic set in, your eyes flickering with pure terror as you slowly backed away from the screens, gripping whatever furniture was nearby to steady yourself. You hurried out of the room, realising this was the time to hide.

Quickly but silently running up the stairs again, you heard the agonising sound of the blowtorch cutting through the metal, sending shivers all over your body and urging you to move faster. 

You burst into your room, breathless, slamming the door behind you and you panickedly scanned the small space, frantically searching for the best hiding spot. There weren’t many options, but the closet seemed like your only chance, so without hesitation, you flung the door open, stepped inside, and crouched down, wrapping your trembling arms tightly around your knees. 

“It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.” You kept repeating to yourself in a quiet, trembling voice, desperately trying to gaslight yourself into believing it. But who the fuck are you kidding? They were inevitably coming in, and then… well, you didn’t even want to think about it.

You gasped loudly at the sudden sound of a loud bang, followed by distant voices and approaching footsteps downstairs. Nibbling on your bottom lip and one hand clutching your throat, you struggled to calm your ragged breathing, but hoping to make out the conversation happening downstairs— although you weren’t even sure if you wanted to hear it in the first place. 

“We are coming, aha! And we will find you, you little fucking bitch” an unfamiliar voice taunted from down the stairs followed by a menacing laugh, clearly relishing the undeniable fear they were instilling in you as the footsteps and faint chatter grew louder with every passing second.

“Mattheo, control yourself. Search for the girl downstairs, and Theo, you check upstairs. The rest of us will take whatever is valuable and leave for the next house.” You heared Tom instruct two of his men, his voice stern and cold, before adding, “Oh, and whatever you do, make it as painful as possible. I want her to suffer.” 

Goosebumps covered your entire body hearing the chilling words, and you could tell that these guys didn’t fuck around. Everything about them was incredibly organised and prepared. This wasn’t their first time purging. No, they knew exactly what they were doing.

Heavy, resolute footsteps then made their way up the stairs, each deep step resonating through the house, making the silence feel like it was closing it. Theo. There was no way out of this. The only thing you could do was pray that he wouldn’t find you. But deep down, you knew he would. 

“You can’t hide from me, piccola.” a deep, husky voice teased, his voice slightly muffled by the mask he wore. It surprised you to hear a foreign accent— Italian, you guessed. And fuck, you could punch yourself in the face right now for finding it… hot. 

The steps grew louder, tantalisingly slow, until his footsteps reached your room. Your hand flew to your mouth to keep yourself quiet, your brows furrowed as you squeezed your eyes shut, focusing on steadying your breath. Your heart beat out of your chest, and you worried it was beating loud enough for him to hear. 

Then it was quiet. No sounds. You swallowed, your mouth feeling dry with tears brimming at your waterline, and you gasped when you suddenly heard his voice so close to you. Thank fucking god you still had your mouth covered. 

“You’re here, aren’t you?” He said in a dark, knowing manner, and the only thing you could do at this very moment was repeat ‘please don’t find me’ in your head while only hoping your death would be less painful than Tom had ordered it to be. “I know you are...” 

The closet door then abruptly swung open, causing you to let out a loud, surprised gasp. The tears you had so desperately tried to suppress now uncontrollably streamed down your cheeks as your head shot up. Soft ‘no’s slipped from your lips when he grabbed you by the arm and aggressively pulled you out of the closet, the words barely audible and you panickedly shook your head, feeling lightheaded due to pure fear. 

“Shut up, cazzo.” he muttered irritably as he threw you on your bed with exasperated aggression. And you immediately complied— not only because he asked you to, but because you didn’t want Matthew to hear you, knowing that Theo had found you, worried of what he might do to you. Matthew… Was his name even Matthew? 

He stood still before you, and for the first time, you took him in, scanning him from head to toe as his imposing, tall frame loomed over you, casting a shadow over where you sat on the bed.

A white mask fully covered his face, and in his right hand, he held a bloody, sharp knife, causing you to gulp in fear. Oh, he looked fucking terrifying— but there was something else, something other than fear deep inside of you. A feeling you desperately tried to suppress. A feeling you felt ashamed to feel. A feeling you could not bring yourself to admit. 

“Huh.” he commented, his head tilting slightly to the left. “Tom didn’t tell me you were such a pretty little thing.” he reached his hand out, his thumb brushing over your cheek, causing you to instinctively pull away, stiffening under his touch. 

“Così carina.” he chuckled mockingly, and your eyes were drawn to his hand that was expertly spinning the knife. His other hand then abruptly gripped your hair, making you gasp, and he slightly tilted your head to expose your neck. 

From your peripheral vision, you could see the bloody knife drawing closer to your neck, making you instantly shut your eyes with furrowed brows, knowing this was it. 

“Can’t wait to see these white sheets turn red.” Theo taunted, but you were shaking, crying and nervously biting down on your lip so hard that blood welled up, waiting for the moment you finally felt the sharp knife against your delicate skin.

And then you did. You felt the cold blade lightly dig into the skin of your neck, the sharp, stinging sensation causing you to tightly grip the sheets, followed by fresh, crimson droplets of blood slowly trickling down your skin— but then he stopped.

“Hm. You know what, bella?” Theo paused for a moment, crouching down to get on eye level with you. The closer he got to you, the faster your heart raced, your whole body heating up with a mix of fear and something else. The deep sense of guilt you felt for feeling… this way gnawed at you from the inside. 

“I might just have other plans for you.” Your head snapped toward him, and you hissed at the fresh cut stretching open, your hand instinctively reaching to the wound, carefully dabbing your fingers on the blood still trickling out.

“You wanna live?” He questioned, and you reluctantly nodded, still unable to shake off the feeling of unease, even as a slight sense of relief—or maybe hope— began to grow inside of you. 

“Then I advise you to get on your knees before I change my mind.” You blinked rapidly, unsure if you heard him correctly. Surely not. 

“I— what?” You stammered, breathing in so fast you nearly choked on air as your heart pounded out of your chest. 

“Oh, you heard me.” He rose to his feet, and your eyes intently followed his every movement. The way the moonlight seeped through the blinds illuminated him, and for the first time, you could clearly see his ocean-blue eyes gazing down at you with intense focus— the only feature of his face that was visible through the mask. 

He reached the knife out again, causing you to flinch, but this time he pressed it under your chin to lift your head, the pointy end digging into your soft skin.

“You don’t think I noticed?” he began, and you sat frozen, knowing that a single movement would press the knife deep into your skin. 

“You don’t think I noticed the way you looked at me with those pretty eyes?” You raised an eyebrow in puzzlement, unsure of what he was hinting at, and you absolutely hated this— the vagueness of his words. You hated having to guess what he meant. It made you anxious. 

“I have purged a lot of people, bella. And there is one thing aaall of them have in common— they all have this same, fearful look in their eyes.” he continued, and it made you wonder what he saw in yours. 

“But you… cazzo. With you, I see something else sparkling in those pupils.” The way the mask muffled his voice made you unconsciously lean in closer to hear him better, and he did the same, but for an entirely different reason, until you were merely inches apart. It was a strange observation to make in such a moment like this, but oddly enough, he smelt nice, very nice. A pleasant, musky cologne with the undertone of cigarettes filled your senses. 

“With you I see… lust, yearning, desperation.” he whispered into your ear, the knife digging deeper into your skin, yet still not deep enough to draw blood. Your eyes shot wide open before locking with his, and you felt caught. He hit the hammer right on the nail. 

“Go on, tell me I’m fuckin’ wrong.” but you couldn’t. You couldn’t tell him he was wrong. Because he wasn’t. Your eyes darted nervously around the room, unable to meet those intense, piercing eyes as the ache between your legs only grew stronger. 

“Yeah… that’s what I thought. Bet your panties are soaked already, aren’t they?” you heard a muffled, condescending chuckle coming from under his mask as he slowly twisted the knife under your chin. You so desperately wanted to bite back, to defend yourself, to tell him that he was being ridiculous— but the words were stuck in your throat.

“So… back to where we were.” he growled as he unbuckled his belt and pushed his pants down, suddenly remembering Matthew wandering around downstairs and being able to walk in at any time, causing him to rush. 

“C’mon sweetheart. I need to feel those pretty lips wrapped around me if you want to live, a’ight? If Mattheo finds us, it’s over for you.” Ohhhh, Mattheo… right, right.

You hesitantly walked over to him before getting on your knees right in front of him— right in front of his already hard erection trapped in his boxers, desperately wanting to escape as the tip formed a wet patch of precum on the fabric. 

“Well… you know I could just kick you in the balls right now and run away?” There it finally was— the words that had been stuck in your throat, and the boldness inside of you that had finally come free. It was that unexpectedly tender demeanour of his emerging in brief moments, causing you to see him in a humane light, which stilled your fears. 

He scoffed before aggressively gripping your hair and pulling your head back, causing you to hiss at the fresh wound on your neck stinging at the movement. He drew closer to you before suddenly holding the knife to your throat again, the softness you’d glimpsed earlier vanishing in an instant.

“Oh yeah? You don’t think I’m gonna find you and cut you open? Go for it. Give it a try. Let’s see how that ends.” he warned in a low, menacing tone, your brows furrowing as you clenched your teeth, staring right into his narrowed eyes. 

“Acting as if you aren’t practically begging to suck me off right now, tsk. Hurry the fuck up.” he ordered in a harsh tone, abruptly letting go of your hair and retracting the knife from your throat.

Realising you had no other choice but to follow his orders, you stared up at his masked face, before your gaze fell on his boxers. You could tell he was big just from the imprint through the thin fabric— oh, there was no doubt in that. Reluctantly, you drew your head closer to his crotch, teasingly using your teeth to pull the waistband of his boxers down before slowly sliding them off. 

“See, I knew you were a fucking slut.” he growled, his amusement evident as his erection sprang free against his toned abs, precum glistening at the tip. Oh, well fuck. He was indeed huge, causing your eyes to widen momentarily as you swallowed hard. You glanced back up at him one more time, and he gave you a sharp nod, his hand on the back of your head pressing insistently, urging you closer. 

Your head slowly inched closer to his intimidatingly large cock, and you started with placing soft kitten licks on the tip, tasting the salty precum, when suddenly a mischievous smile began to curve your glossed lips. In one swift, unexpected motion, you wrapped your mouth around his throbbing length, firmly pressing your teeth into the skin while at the same time your hand darted to his balls, your sharp nails digging deep into the sensitive flesh. 

“That fuckin’ hurts, you bitch. Cazzo!” Theo cursed, aggressively pushing you back until you hit the bed, yet the same mischievous smile on your face only widened. It confused him how the terrified, weak girl he saw earlier had transformed into… this. 

“Didn’t expect you to be such a fucking pussy.” you challenged him, fire burning in your eyes. Not because you wanted to die, but because deep down you knew you weren’t going to. If he wanted to kill you, he would’ve done that already. With the precum leaking from his painfully hard erection right in front of you, you knew the only thing on his mind was finding his release. He was a man after all— simple, driven by his desires.

“You better shut that little mouth—” 

“Or what? You're gonna threaten me again with that stupid little knife—” before you could even finish your sentence, he grabbed you by the hair, yanking you roughly towards him, his cock forcing its way into your mouth. The tip hit the back of your throat instantly, triggering your gag reflex as you struggled to breathe around his thick, aching erection. He quickly set a brutal rhythm, bucking his hips aggressively into your mouth, and you felt your eyes well with tears, saliva running down your chin. 

“If you stop, I’ll make you fucking regret it.” His hand gripped your hair in a tight ponytail, pulling you to meet his thrusts as he relentlessly fucked your mouth. Gagging sounds filled the room as he forced your head down as far as possible, groaning at the sight beneath him— a sight that could so easily make him come already.

“You wanted this from the start, huh? Such a pathetic—” Theo’s sentence was then abruptly cut off when the door suddenly swung open and slammed against the wall, causing you both to freeze and stare, wide-eyed and horrified. A chill ran down your spine as you noticed another masked man standing in the doorway, holding a blood-soaked baseball bat while casually leaning against the doorframe. Oh no.  

“Well, well, well… look what we have here. You really thought I wouldn’t find out, Theodore? How cute.” 

Mattheo. 

reminder: reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated and keep me motivated. ty! ♡

a/n: thank you sm for reading ^_^!!!!!!! this was supposed to be one long fic but i decided to cut in into two (or maybe more if needed) parts! im not sure when the next part will be posted but ill try to work on it soon !!! <3

nav. mlist. more content.

taglist (join here): @xolaylaxo @one-direction-harry-potter1 @kayleiggh @abaker74 @anahcruz15 @justreadingficsdontmindme @droplikeconfetti @itzliyalupin @hvgwartss @bunnyweasley23 @watersquirtpewpewboomm @loveeharrington @saturnmoonyy @nyctophicbtch @usuck @bigtiddywench @mih-velaryon @scrletletter @le000xxgrd @dramaticals @thepotatopigeon @etolies-garden @rafesslxt @diaries-of-a-hopelessromantic @rafesgiirl @sluttychanel @youroptimisticblackhole @blackthunder137 @rafesthroatbaby @qualitykinghologram @helendeath @i-like-pandas5 @oceandriveab @llpovi @slytherinshalo @djlance-rock @k-2319 @thelostsea @vendetta-ari @moonpascal @literally-a-ferret @lazybitch06 @201010-11jk @beyond-the-ashes @zurzolosgf @someoneisreading @scorched333 @k-kizkhalifa @tateshifts

[g3sdogden]

People acting like I *must* switch to linux is why I've bounced off of linux so hard for so long, and the only reason linux has started looking even halfway reasonable is because windows has gotten so bad.

my only hope is that linux distros start getting their shit together as people DO swap to them from windows, because the big issue linux has coming is people like me who have no fucking clue what they're doing jumping ship at the last second out of desperation to get off of the property-as-a-service train as much as they can, not having anyone who understands what the fuck we're saying in IT, and the few people who CAN speak commoner instead of elitist jargon consisting 90% of three-letter acronyms being overwhelmed by the hordes of frustrated non-coder-brained people who tried switching to linux because they were sold a line of bullshit that it'd be a quick fix to stop their computer from trying to sell them shit while they search for where their variant of a chrome browser put the latest porn they downloaded

like, I have middling computer knowledge and can barely find information on errors with windows, and linux both supposedly works different fundamentally, and each distro is more niche (thus meaning the information I seek will be more buried under random bullshit). Also, 90% of the time I can't figure out heads or tails of the pages I get linked on github

Also, everyone who uses linux rn is like, the equivalent of someone who drives a muscle-car; they spend all their free time and energy tinkering with it because it's their hobby, so a lot of the fine-tuning bullshit doesn't seem like much to them, but everyone I've known to this point who has tried using linux who DOESN'T find enjoyment beating their head against random errors and not having a functioning "interact with the outside world" machine for a week, or memorizing how to use command scripts has bounced off of it roughly as hard as I have!

I talked about the problem of Windows system requirements being too damn high before, and how the windows 10 to 11 jump is especially bad. Like the end of Windows 10 is coming october 2025, and it will be a massive problem. And this article gives us some concrete numbers for how many computers that can't update from win10 to 11.

And it's 240 million. damn. “If these were all folded laptops, stacked one on top of another, they would make a pile 600 km taller than the moon.” the tech analysis company quoted in the article explains.

So many functioning computers that will be wasted. And it's all because people don't wanna switch to a Linux distro with sane system requirements and instead buy a new computer.

Like if you own one of these 240 million windows 10 computers, Just be an environmentally responsible non-wasteful person and switch that computer to Linux instead of just scrapping it because Microsoft says it's not good enough.

[tf2heritageposts]

alright so

we really fucking hate doing this, especially since we were already begging for money with another gofundme just a few months ago, but things cannot stop getting worse in our household. our mom is borderline having a psychotic episode everyday, and she thinks she has parasites that only she can see. she is trying to extort us into forcing us to stay in a house she knows damn well why we hate it here. she also threw a dog over a hotel railing during a PSTD episode she had while she ran away from the house because she said we didn't love her anymore. our grandma is an abusive maniac who screams at us until we're in tears, and holds keeping our pet rabbit over our head. she has caused us so much pain, and even has invited our dad who sent us to a mental hospital to our graduation. our grandpa is a qanon psychopath(so is our grandma) who keeps trying to convert us back into christianity.

this place has broken our mind over 400 times, and we want out so so so so so so bad

so, we are doing this one final time. we are going to try and get the money for a car to get the fuck out of here and go to the college we got accepted to. we're making a new gofundme so we can properly keep track of the money from this

our c/shapp is $theteufortdozen , our vnmo is @/theteufortdozen, and here is a link to our k-fi and gofundme

[rueclfer]

saturdays are for the blondes // fratboy smau part one

a/n: i love my blondies (bakugou's n hawk's will be out later whenever i feel like making those) *also written under the cut*

denki kaminari, katsuki bakugou, hawks

"You in there?" You call out, harshly knocking on the bedroom door over the blasting music still echoing throughout the house.

The door swings open to reveal Denki's flushed face holding a bloody wadded paper towel up to his nose.

"Hey cutie." He nasally squeaks out, stepping out of the way so you could enter. "Came to check in on your knight in shining armor, huh?"

"Hey yourself. Just wanted to admire the damage." You tease, closing the door behind you, muffling out the music.

You follow him to his bathroom where you see multiple others of used paper towels and bloody droplets in the sink, making your stomach turn.

"Looks like a warzone." You grimace. "Let me see." You motion for him to move his hand away his face, revealing a smudged line of dried blood dragged out from his nostril and redness spreading across his nose bridge and into the area right under his eye.

You reached up and grabbed his chin, moving his head side to side to see the damage done.

"How's it looking?" He mutters, looking down at you with a slight smirk on his face.

"The bleeding stopped and it doesn't look broken to me. You may or may not wake up with a black eye, but if you keep it iced you should be fine." You pat the side of his face before dropping your arm. "Your face is still cute, so at least there's that."

"You wanna kiss it better?" He takes a step closer to you, leaning in to let his arms stretch out against the bathroom sink, trapping you in on both sides.

You two were at eye level now, faces only inches away from one another. With his backwards baseball cap and his messy blonde hair peeking out from the front, cropped t-shirt, and alcohol running through your system, his offer was tempting.

"You think you'll survive if I don't?" You laugh as the heat rises up to your ears.

"No, I don't think so. You've been avoiding me all night too, so my feelings are wounded too." He fake pouts.

"So sensitive, pres." You teasingly coo, darting your eyes to avoid his lidded stare. "I guess I do kinda owe you, don't I?"

"Mmhm." He hums in agreement, moving his hand from the bathroom counter to your lower waist, playing with the hem of your shirt. "Only if you want to, of course. I can always catch another beating for you at the next party.

"I'm still gonna be on the invite list after that? You must really like me."

"V.I.P. list and everything, baby. I'll fight a million more guys and take a million more beatings for you." He chuckles.

"You really do know how to swoon me, huh?" You bring your hand up to his cheek, brushing your thumb over the tender area darkening and swelling with every minute.

"Even when you love playing hard-to-get." He mumbles, reaching his hand up to the side of your neck as you lean in to softly kiss the bruise. "I know you better than anyone."

"You piss me off more than anyone else, too." You mutter against the soft flesh of his cheek.

"That's just the fun of it." He moves his hand down to his chain hanging from your neck, letting a finger loop onto the end of it, pulling your body in closer. "Sleepover tonight?"

"Nope." You popped the 'p'. "The girls are waiting for me downstairs to walk back to our apartment."

"Boo." He whines. "When can I see you next?"

"I dunno. The next function?" You shrug, reaching around the back of your neck for the necklace clasp. "You can have this back too."

"Wait no no." He grabs your hand away. "Keep it and give it to me next time. Please."

You sigh with a hint of a smile on your lips, dropping your arms. "See you next time then, pres."

"Next time, sweetheart."

[merxcywritesthings]

𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢, 𝐼’𝑚 𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑦.

A/N: This idea has been itching in the back of my head all day that I couldn’t help but write it down. Enjoy my lovelies.

TW: Cheating, Angst to Comfort, Yelling, Grief.

Word Count: 1.3K

Reader is Female

The evening air was thick with the usual hustle and bustle of Piltover’s streets, the city’s golden glow reflecting off polished steel and glass. You paced nervously in your modest apartment, going over your latest conversation with Vi in your mind. The room felt smaller than usual, closing in with every unresolved thought.

୧‿̩͙ ˖︵ ꕀ⠀ ♱⠀ ꕀ ︵˖ ‿̩͙୨

Before the fractures started to show, there was a time when everything felt perfect. You and Vi would lie together in the dim glow of lanterns, sprawled across the couch in her Zaunite hideout or tucked away in your Piltover apartment. She’d whisper wild dreams about a future where Zaun and Piltover weren’t at each other’s throats, where no one had to fight to survive.

“You know what I think about sometimes?” Vi had asked one night, her head resting on your chest as you absentmindedly ran your fingers through her pink hair. “A wedding. Ours. Somewhere at the border where Zaun and Piltover meet. A big bridge all lit up with lights. No sides. Just us.”

You’d laughed softly, your hand pausing in her hair. “You? Thinking about a wedding? That’s rich.”

She’d grinned up at you, punching your arm lightly. “Hey, don’t ruin my moment. I’m being serious here. Just imagine it, yeah? Everyone from both cities, sitting together, watching us make something real. Something they’d have to believe in because we believed in it first.”

Her words had filled you with a warmth so deep it made your chest ache. You’d cupped her face, looking into those sharp, determined eyes. “I’d marry you anywhere, Vi. Even if it’s just us on some rooftop in Zaun. But if that’s your dream, then I’ll make it mine, too.”

The smile she gave you then was unlike any you’d ever seen—soft, vulnerable, and full of hope. For a moment, it felt like anything was possible.

୧‿̩͙ ˖︵ ꕀ⠀ ♱⠀ ꕀ ︵˖ ‿̩͙୨

But dreams are fragile things, easily broken by reality. As the weeks passed, the cracks in that perfect vision began to show. It started with small disagreements, the weight of your responsibilities in Piltover colliding with her unwavering loyalty to Zaun. You’d tell her about the progress you were making in your work, trying to bridge gaps between the two cities, but she’d scoff, calling it naive.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Vi had said, her voice low and rough during that fateful argument. “Piltover chews people up and spits them out. You think you can change that from the inside?”

Your reply had been sharp, almost desperate. “I have to try! I can’t just… sit back and do nothing. Not everyone in Piltover is corrupt. Some of us want to make it better.”

Vi’s jaw tightened, and she let out a bitter laugh. “And what? You think they’ll listen to you because you’re one of them? You’re just another cog in their machine. You don’t belong to Zaun, and you don’t belong to me if this is the path you want.”

The words had cut deep, and neither of you had backed down. The argument spiraled into accusations and misunderstandings until she stormed out, slamming the door behind her. That was two weeks ago, and you hadn’t seen her since.

୧‿̩͙ ˖︵ ꕀ⠀ ♱⠀ ꕀ ︵˖ ‿̩͙୨

The silence between you hadn’t lasted long before the news came. Vi had been arrested during a raid on one of Zaun’s safe houses, caught in the act of defending a group of children hiding from enforcers. She hadn’t gone quietly—they said she’d taken down three officers before being subdued. You heard whispers of her being transferred to Stillwater Hold, Piltover’s most notorious prison.

You wanted to help her, but what could you do? Your position in Piltover’s hierarchy was tenuous at best. Every attempt to pull strings was met with cold refusals and veiled warnings. The system you believed in had failed her, just as she’d always said it would.

The days stretched into weeks, and though you tried to visit, the guards at Stillwater Hold never let you through. Each rejection felt like another nail in the coffin of what you and Vi had shared.

୧‿̩͙ ˖︵ ꕀ⠀ ♱⠀ ꕀ ︵˖ ‿̩͙୨

The first week after her arrest, you had told yourself she’d come back. That somehow, some way, you’d find a way to fix things. But as days turned into weeks, the silence spoke louder than any words could. You threw yourself into your work, trying to drown the ache in productivity. Every morning you donned the mask of a dedicated citizen of Piltover, hoping no one noticed the cracks. At night, the silence of your apartment swallowed you whole.

Months passed, and the emptiness became a part of you, a dull ache that refused to fade. You told yourself you were moving on, but every corner of Piltover held memories of her—the way she’d smirk at the absurdity of high-society parties, or how her fingers felt laced with yours as you walked the streets together.

୧‿̩͙ ˖︵ ꕀ⠀ ♱⠀ ꕀ ︵˖ ‿̩͙୨

But tonight was different. Tonight, you couldn’t focus. The city’s energy only served as a painful reminder of the life you and Vi had once dreamed of together—a bridge between two worlds, something neither of you had fully understood but had hoped to build.

A loud cheer from the street below broke your thoughts. Curious, you moved to the window, brushing aside the curtain. A festival was in full swing, the streets alive with laughter and music. And then you saw her.

Vi.

She stood out effortlessly, her pink hair glowing under the lantern lights, her confident stance drawing eyes. But it wasn’t just her presence that made your heart stop. It was the way she leaned toward someone, her hands resting casually on Caitlyn Kiramman’s waist. The enforcer’s dark hair framed her delicate features, and her smile was bright and unguarded as she whispered something that made Vi laugh.

Your chest tightened as Vi’s laughter softened, her face inching closer to Caitlyn’s. And then they kissed. It wasn’t hesitant or fleeting. It was passionate, the kind of kiss that spoke of intimacy and trust—a connection.

Your breath hitched, and you stepped back from the window, your hands trembling. The sight was burned into your mind, a cruel reminder of everything you’d lost. The ache in your chest blossomed into a full-fledged storm, rage and sorrow intertwining until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

You thought of the nights you’d stayed awake, waiting for her to come back. Of the times she’d held you close, promising that no matter what, you were her safe haven. All of it seemed like a distant memory, overshadowed by the reality of what you’d just seen.

The urge to confront her was overwhelming, but what would you even say? That it wasn’t fair? That you still loved her? That you’d been wrong to think you could make a difference in Piltover without her by your side?

You stepped away from the window, the walls of your apartment suddenly suffocating. With trembling hands, you grabbed your coat and headed outside, blending into the festive crowds. The music was too loud, the colors too bright, but you walked aimlessly, desperate to escape the whirlpool of emotions inside you.

Eventually, you found yourself at the edge of the festival, where the noise faded into the quiet hum of the city. You leaned against a cold, steel railing, staring out over the distant horizon. Zaun’s shadowed depths loomed below, a reminder of where Vi had come from and where you could never truly follow her.

Tears slipped down your cheeks, but you let them fall. For the first time, you allowed yourself to grieve—not just for the love you’d lost, but for the dream that had shattered between you. And as the city lights flickered around you, you made a quiet promise to yourself.

You would move forward, step by step, even if it hurt. Because if there was one thing Vi had taught you, it was that survival wasn’t about never falling—it was about finding the strength to rise again.

𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑚𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑚𝑦 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛. 𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑠! ❤️

𝐷𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑦: @𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑠-𝑛-𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒

𝐺𝐼𝐹 𝑏𝑦: @𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑓𝑠

[marveltrumpshate]

To say that we’re beyond devastated and at a loss for words barely scratches the surface of what we’re feeling in the wake of the U.S. election, and it’s been a struggle to figure out what to say and how to speak with impassioned clarity when we're muddling through fury, heartbreak, and fear. So what we did was go back to our 2018 "thank you" post to all of our creators, bidders, signal boosters, and supporters to reflect on the beginnings of MTH and where we can go from here.

When Marvel Trumps Hate was created, it was made with the hope that our name would outlast Trump. We would fight to eradicate the hate that he and his ilk have sown and continue to spread and not only survive but also thrive in spite of it. That Trump would be re-elected six years later by a bigger, more emphatic margin, with the Republicans taking the House and Senate, is a damning indication of the state of the U.S. today and a result that is of extreme concern for everyone in the U.S. and around the world.

In many ways, it’s dispiriting that not only have a lot of things not changed since MTH was founded, but they’ve also become actively worse and more dysfunctional. But the difference between 2018 and 2024 is that while our anger hasn’t gone away, our rage is now accompanied with a better, more clear-eyed understanding of what’s broken and what actions need to be taken. We know what needs fixing—and what works.

What works is community. We may not be able to put our trust in certain systems and people in power, but we can lean on and take care of one another. We have to and we will. How do we know this? Because you’ve all shown that since the beginning. We were reminded of it when reading our 2018 post and thinking about the past six years of MTH. Like we said in our closing message at the end of this year’s auction, it’s easy to feel defeated, but time and time again, we’ve learned that the most important thing is to show up even if you’re unsure of what impact you can have as just one person. Every year, that’s what you all do.

Hope doesn’t come from nowhere. We have to create it ourselves. And while there are dark days ahead of us, what we have to hold onto as we march forward, what lights our way, is the knowledge that you’re doing just that. This year’s auction is proof of it.

This year, 180 "Marvel"-ous creators came forward to offer 293 auctions. They offered 360 unique platonic and romantic relationships and character-centric options (if we include "all ships/gen"-inclusive relationships, this number is even higher) across 40 universes within the Marvel multiverse.

This spirit of inclusion goes beyond trying to encompass as much of the Marvel fandom as possible and can be seen in our auction and charity results too. Every one of 293 auctions was bid on, and every one of our 30 supported charities received donations. As ever, we’re in awe of your commitment to supporting all our creators and charities.

As for the crowning achievement, the culmination of our efforts, the grand total we raised this year is…

Wow. This is the most we’ve ever raised in a single MTH auction (other than our Spiders Georg 2021 auction), and you shattered the record for the highest amount donated to a charity AGAIN, with $9,420.62 going to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) too. This is all the more impressive considering it was accomplished by the second-to-smallest number of creators and auctions we had. It goes to show that no matter how small you are, you can pack a punch if you team up.

You can see the effort of our teamwork and the breakdown of the donations here (to enlarge the image, click here and hover to see the donation amount per charity).

We’ve also listed the amount raised per charity on our 2024 auction results page.

Creators, we couldn't have started this auction without you. Your commitment to the event, whether you return every year, made a surprise welcome return after a break, or are new and took what we know can be a scary jump into the event, moves us. It’s hard putting yourself out there, and we applaud you for it.

Bidders, your willingness to duke it out helps us raise as much money as we do. We’ve seen some wild things though what always astonishes us the most is that most donations are small ones including a lot of those crazily high winning bids—so many of them were the result of people pooling their five dollars together! This has been consistently the case since MTH began and is a testament to the ripple effect you can have if you’re part of something bigger than yourself.

We also owe our success to our amazing signal boosters. There can’t be an auction without any participants so to every fandom community Tumblr and Discord mod and every individual who shared our posts and encouraged their fandom friends to sign up and/or bid, thank you so much. Together, we reached hundreds of fantastic creators and bidders from all corners of the Marvel fandom, many of whom we didn't know and some who were hearing about us for the first time (and some who made the leap after sitting on the fence for years which is awesome).

Thank you all. We’re so touched by the massive number of people who donated above and beyond their pledged amount, creators who took on multiple auctions and offered multiple winner slots, and bidders who accepted their second-place wins with such eagerness. We also had people make donations in the spirit of MTH even though they didn’t win an auction, which was beyond generous. This year, we saw a record number of people doing that (even someone who was no longer part of the Marvel fandom but wanted to support what we were doing), especially in the wake of the U.S. election, and it made us very emotional to see such compassion.

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for helping us turn our seventh Marvel Trumps Hate auction into such a fantastic experience. We cherish every single message of love and support that we received and continue to receive on our Discord server and through DMs, Tumblr messages, emails, tweets, etc., and they as well as your generosity have buoyed us since September and the past two days in particular.

If you'd like to stay updated on all of the 2024 Marvel Trumps Hate fills, follow us and/or check out the "mth 2024" tag on our Tumblr. You’ll also be able to find works posted on AO3 in our Marvel Trumps Hate 2024 collection and links to fills in our Discord server, which you can join to brainstorm prompts, chat about fills, and find out about other fandom events.

And with that, MTH 2024 has officially come to a close. Thank you once again to everyone who volunteered their services, time, money, and platforms to spread the word. We hope that these results have bolstered your belief that you can make a difference as well as your determination to stand back up after being knocked down and defiantly say, “I can do this all day.”

Because we have to. For those of us who have suffered, for those of us who are in the most danger now, for those of us who have died at the hands of the evil and cruel in power and are no longer with us. For all of us who are still here. Because we all deserve to be here, safe, cared for, and alive.

So let’s get back up. Let’s get to work.

Yours in solidarity, Your 2024 MTH mods

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Unpersoned

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Unpersoned." It's about the implications of putting critical infrastructure into the private, unaccountable hands of tech giants:

https://locusmag.com/2024/07/cory-doctorow-unpersoned/

The column opens with the story of romance writer K Renee, as reported by Madeline Ashby for Wired:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-happens-when-a-romance-author-gets-locked-out-of-google-docs/

Renee is a prolific writer who used Google Docs to compose her books, and share them among early readers for feedback and revisions. Last March, Renee's Google account was locked, and she was no longer able to access ten manuscripts for her unfinished books, totaling over 220,000 words. Google's famously opaque customer service – a mix of indifferently monitored forums, AI chatbots, and buck-passing subcontractors – would not explain to her what rule she had violated, merely that her work had been deemed "inappropriate."

Renee discovered that she wasn't being singled out. Many of her peers had also seen their accounts frozen and their documents locked, and none of them were able to get an explanation out of Google. Renee and her similarly situated victims of Google lockouts were reduced to developing folk-theories of what they had done to be expelled from Google's walled garden; Renee came to believe that she had tripped an anti-spam system by inviting her community of early readers to access the books she was working on.

There's a normal way that these stories resolve themselves: a reporter like Ashby, writing for a widely read publication like Wired, contacts the company and triggers a review by one of the vanishingly small number of people with the authority to undo the determinations of the Kafka-as-a-service systems that underpin the big platforms. The system's victim gets their data back and the company mouths a few empty phrases about how they take something-or-other "very seriously" and so forth.

But in this case, Google broke the script. When Ashby contacted Google about Renee's situation, Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson insisted that the policies for Google accounts were "clear": "we may review and take action on any content that violates our policies." If Renee believed that she'd been wrongly flagged, she could "request an appeal."

But Renee didn't even know what policy she was meant to have broken, and the "appeals" went nowhere.

This is an underappreciated aspect of "software as a service" and "the cloud." As companies from Microsoft to Adobe to Google withdraw the option to use software that runs on your own computer to create files that live on that computer, control over our own lives is quietly slipping away. Sure, it's great to have all your legal documents scanned, encrypted and hosted on GDrive, where they can't be burned up in a house-fire. But if a Google subcontractor decides you've broken some unwritten rule, you can lose access to those docs forever, without appeal or recourse.

That's what happened to "Mark," a San Francisco tech workers whose toddler developed a UTI during the early covid lockdowns. The pediatrician's office told Mark to take a picture of his son's infected penis and transmit it to the practice using a secure medical app. However, Mark's phone was also set up to synch all his pictures to Google Photos (this is a default setting), and when the picture of Mark's son's penis hit Google's cloud, it was automatically scanned and flagged as Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM, better known as "child porn"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

Without contacting Mark, Google sent a copy of all of his data – searches, emails, photos, cloud files, location history and more – to the SFPD, and then terminated his account. Mark lost his phone number (he was a Google Fi customer), his email archives, all the household and professional files he kept on GDrive, his stored passwords, his two-factor authentication via Google Authenticator, and every photo he'd ever taken of his young son.

The SFPD concluded that Mark hadn't done anything wrong, but it was too late. Google had permanently deleted all of Mark's data. The SFPD had to mail a physical letter to Mark telling him he wasn't in trouble, because he had no email and no phone.

Mark's not the only person this happened to. Writing about Mark for the New York Times, Kashmir Hill described other parents, like a Houston father identified as "Cassio," who also lost their accounts and found themselves blocked from fundamental participation in modern life:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html

Note that in none of these cases did the problem arise from the fact that Google services are advertising-supported, and because these people weren't paying for the product, they were the product. Buying a $800 Pixel phone or paying more than $100/year for a Google Drive account means that you're definitely paying for the product, and you're still the product.

What do we do about this? One answer would be to force the platforms to provide service to users who, in their judgment, might be engaged in fraud, or trafficking in CSAM, or arranging terrorist attacks. This is not my preferred solution, for reasons that I hope are obvious!

We can try to improve the decision-making processes at these giant platforms so that they catch fewer dolphins in their tuna-nets. The "first wave" of content moderation appeals focused on the establishment of oversight and review boards that wronged users could appeal their cases to. The idea was to establish these "paradigm cases" that would clarify the tricky aspects of content moderation decisions, like whether uploading a Nazi atrocity video in order to criticize it violated a rule against showing gore, Nazi paraphernalia, etc.

This hasn't worked very well. A proposal for "second wave" moderation oversight based on arms-length semi-employees at the platforms who gather and report statistics on moderation calls and complaints hasn't gelled either:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/12/move-slow-and-fix-things/#second-wave

Both the EU and California have privacy rules that allow users to demand their data back from platforms, but neither has proven very useful (yet) in situations where users have their accounts terminated because they are accused of committing gross violations of platform policy. You can see why this would be: if someone is accused of trafficking in child porn or running a pig-butchering scam, it would be perverse to shut down their account but give them all the data they need to go one committing these crimes elsewhere.

But even where you can invoke the EU's GDPR or California's CCPA to get your data, the platforms deliver that data in the most useless, complex blobs imaginable. For example, I recently used the CCPA to force Mailchimp to give me all the data they held on me. Mailchimp – a division of the monopolist and serial fraudster Intuit – is a favored platform for spammers, and I have been added to thousands of Mailchimp lists that bombard me with unsolicited press pitches and come-ons for scam products.

Mailchimp has spent a decade ignoring calls to allow users to see what mailing lists they've been added to, as a prelude to mass unsubscribing from those lists (for Mailchimp, the fact that spammers can pay it to send spam that users can't easily opt out of is a feature, not a bug). I thought that the CCPA might finally let me see the lists I'm on, but instead, Mailchimp sent me more than 5900 files, scattered through which were the internal serial numbers of the lists my name had been added to – but without the names of those lists any contact information for their owners. I can see that I'm on more than 1,000 mailing lists, but I can't do anything about it.

Mailchimp shows how a rule requiring platforms to furnish data-dumps can be easily subverted, and its conduct goes a long way to explaining why a decade of EU policy requiring these dumps has failed to make a dent in the market power of the Big Tech platforms.

The EU has a new solution to this problem. With its 2024 Digital Markets Act, the EU is requiring platforms to furnish APIs – programmatic ways for rivals to connect to their services. With the DMA, we might finally get something parallel to the cellular industry's "number portability" for other kinds of platforms.

If you've ever changed cellular platforms, you know how smooth this can be. When you get sick of your carrier, you set up an account with a new one and get a one-time code. Then you call your old carrier, endure their pathetic begging not to switch, give them that number and within a short time (sometimes only minutes), your phone is now on the new carrier's network, with your old phone-number intact.

This is a much better answer than forcing platforms to provide service to users whom they judge to be criminals or otherwise undesirable, but the platforms hate it. They say they hate it because it makes them complicit in crimes ("if we have to let an accused fraudster transfer their address book to a rival service, we abet the fraud"), but it's obvious that their objection is really about being forced to reduce the pain of switching to a rival.

There's a superficial reasonableness to the platforms' position, but only until you think about Mark, or K Renee, or the other people who've been "unpersonned" by the platforms with no explanation or appeal.

The platforms have rigged things so that you must have an account with them in order to function, but they also want to have the unilateral right to kick people off their systems. The combination of these demands represents more power than any company should have, and Big Tech has repeatedly demonstrated its unfitness to wield this kind of power.

This week, I lost an argument with my accountants about this. They provide me with my tax forms as links to a Microsoft Cloud file, and I need to have a Microsoft login in order to retrieve these files. This policy – and a prohibition on sending customer files as email attachments – came from their IT team, and it was in response to a requirement imposed by their insurer.

The problem here isn't merely that I must now enter into a contractual arrangement with Microsoft in order to do my taxes. It isn't just that Microsoft's terms of service are ghastly. It's not even that they could change those terms at any time, for example, to ingest my sensitive tax documents in order to train a large language model.

It's that Microsoft – like Google, Apple, Facebook and the other giants – routinely disconnects users for reasons it refuses to explain, and offers no meaningful appeal. Microsoft tells its business customers, "force your clients to get a Microsoft account in order to maintain communications security" but also reserves the right to unilaterally ban those clients from having a Microsoft account.

There are examples of this all over. Google recently flipped a switch so that you can't complete a Google Form without being logged into a Google account. Now, my ability to purse all kinds of matters both consequential and trivial turn on Google's good graces, which can change suddenly and arbitrarily. If I was like Mark, permanently banned from Google, I wouldn't have been able to complete Google Forms this week telling a conference organizer what sized t-shirt I wear, but also telling a friend that I could attend their wedding.

Now, perhaps some people really should be locked out of digital life. Maybe people who traffick in CSAM should be locked out of the cloud. But the entity that should make that determination is a court, not a Big Tech content moderator. It's fine for a platform to decide it doesn't want your business – but it shouldn't be up to the platform to decide that no one should be able to provide you with service.

This is especially salient in light of the chaos caused by Crowdstrike's catastrophic software update last week. Crowdstrike demonstrated what happens to users when a cloud provider accidentally terminates their account, but while we're thinking about reducing the likelihood of such accidents, we should really be thinking about what happens when you get Crowdstruck on purpose.

The wholesale chaos that Windows users and their clients, employees, users and stakeholders underwent last week could have been pieced out retail. It could have come as a court order (either by a US court or a foreign court) to disconnect a user and/or brick their computer. It could have come as an insider attack, undertaken by a vengeful employee, or one who was on the take from criminals or a foreign government. The ability to give anyone in the world a Blue Screen of Death could be a feature and not a bug.

It's not that companies are sadistic. When they mistreat us, it's nothing personal. They've just calculated that it would cost them more to run a good process than our business is worth to them. If they know we can't leave for a competitor, if they know we can't sue them, if they know that a tech rival can't give us a tool to get our data out of their silos, then the expected cost of mistreating us goes down. That makes it economically rational to seek out ever-more trivial sources of income that impose ever-more miserable conditions on us. When we can't leave without paying a very steep price, there's practically a fiduciary duty to find ways to upcharge, downgrade, scam, screw and enshittify us, right up to the point where we're so pissed that we quit.

Google could pay competent decision-makers to review every complaint about an account disconnection, but the cost of employing that large, skilled workforce vastly exceeds their expected lifetime revenue from a user like Mark. The fact that this results in the ruination of Mark's life isn't Google's problem – it's Mark's problem.

The cloud is many things, but most of all, it's a trap. When software is delivered as a service, when your data and the programs you use to read and write it live on computers that you don't control, your switching costs skyrocket. Think of Adobe, which no longer lets you buy programs at all, but instead insists that you run its software via the cloud. Adobe used the fact that you no longer own the tools you rely upon to cancel its Pantone color-matching license. One day, every Adobe customer in the world woke up to discover that the colors in their career-spanning file collections had all turned black, and would remain black until they paid an upcharge:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The cloud allows the companies whose products you rely on to alter the functioning and cost of those products unilaterally. Like mobile apps – which can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking legal liability – cloud apps are built for enshittification. They are designed to shift power away from users to software companies. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it. A cloud app is some Javascript wrapped in enough terms of service clickthroughs to make it a felony to restore old features that the company now wants to upcharge you for.

Google's defenstration of K Renee, Mark and Cassio may have been accidental, but Google's capacity to defenstrate all of us, and the enormous cost we all bear if Google does so, has been carefully engineered into the system. Same goes for Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and anyone else who traps us in their silos. The lesson of the Crowdstrike catastrophe isn't merely that our IT systems are brittle and riddled with single points of failure: it's that these failure-points can be tripped deliberately, and that doing so could be in a company's best interests, no matter how devastating it would be to you or me.

If you'd like an e ssay-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/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service

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

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

[lolita-lollipop]

YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO

YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO

YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO

YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO

YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO

YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO YANDERE CHROLLO

Romance novels

Chrollo Lucifer x reader

Where Chrollo comes home, and you aren't there.

Warnings: Violence, cursing, yandere tendencies, Stockholm syndrome

The house was too quiet. Not that it was ever truly loud, you tended to keep to yourself even when he did prompt a conversation, you had a soft voice and a quiet nature of living, something he admired about you. Even so, as much as you wished he couldn't, he would always be able to tell where you were. He was hyperaware of your existence, of course he was.

So, coming back to the fancy apartment that served as your cage, to see no lights on, hear no footsteps, to not hear the soft pitter patter of your heartbeat, or the near silent sound of your breathing in another room. The apartment was far too quiet. And something had to be very wrong here.

Chrollo had been out for a week now , leaving you with a fully stocked fridge, a TV with any movie or show you would ever need to watch, and a phone that could only ever call him, or machi in the case of emergency. You were also left with one of the best security systems in the world, a stainless steel door that would only ever unlock with his fingerprint, and windows that were securely locked. Even so... walking in to the luxury apartment, it was clear that you had not been present for at least two or three days, and even worse, it was even more evident that you had not left willingly.

As he walked through the apartment, seeing the shattered vase of flowers he had gotten you before he had left, crushed glass littering the floors from the broken mirrors across the hallways, handprints and scratch marks lining the walls, and a large puddle of blood on the floor followed by a long trail where you clearly had been dragged. He realized that this was intentional, whoever did this wanted him to see your struggles, see our fingernails torn out from trying to scratch against the walls, be able to see exactly where they hurt you. Anyone who could get into this high security building, especially without him knowing, could kidnap a weak girl like you without any struggle or mess. This was personal, this was against him.

Slowly approaching the phone, he saw the cord had been ripped out of the wall, with the microphone piece thrown across the room, it had bloody fingerprints on numbers he could easily recognize as the start of his own phone number. You had tried and failed to call for help, to call him for help. Fuck. Fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Chrollo Lucifer is not an impulsive nor an emotional man. He never has been one to get frustrated nor fearful, and he has certainly never been in a situation where panic would cloud his usually steady decision making process.

But here, now, his hands were shaking, his breathing heavy, and his heart was threatening to launch out of his chest. The thought of you, the one he was so terrifyingly in love with, the only person in the world who could make him feel something other than hate for the world, precious little you who couldn't harm a fly- the thought of you in the hands of one of his enemies (which as you could guess, he has a lot of), attacked and scared and barely able to speak up for yourself, let alone fight back. The thought alone had his eyes tearing up and his voice wavering as he called the troupe for a meeting, which was quite the rare event in itself.

They would pay. He would make sure they

Would.

---

It wasnt long before every single member of the troupe was standing in this apartment, they knew to be punctual, especially when chrollo sounded as pissed of as he did on the phone. Everybody knew you, at least knew about you. The only who had actually met you was machi, even then the word spread quick that you were to be protected with their lives if you were ever in danger, and their spot in the troupe was forfeited otherwise.

So here they were, sittting in your bloody living room, staring at the crime scene with such a sharp stare it could cut you. Nobody dared to even speak, Chrollo had never looked so angry. It wasn't often anybody had the balls to steal from them, especially something as priceless as you. All 13 of the spiders looked to chrollo for guidance, all of them knew how this would end. hundreds of people would die tonight, they all could only hope that you weren't included in that number.

A loud ping from Chrollos phone broke the heavy silence of the room. Nobody but you and the troupe had this number. And they were all standing right in front of him.

He was swift with checking his messages, coming from an unknown number.

“1,000,000,000,000 jenny. Or the girl dies.”

Sent 9:23 PM

The thought alone made his heart stop, he hadn’t even realized the phone had been crushed in his hands before the glass began to cut into his calloused skin. He wasn’t an idiot, criminals, scum like him would never let you go, even if he was to pay the price. They would see your value and hold you tight. You would be coming back into his arms tonight, but not through payment. He wanted to see blood.

“Shalnark. Track my messages, find where it came from. Everybody else, be prepared to kill. This will be an in and out, if you see someone who isn’t us, they die. Are we clear?” He wanted blood, countless bodies needed to lay at his feet just for taking you out of his sight. They were idiotic Neanderthals, messing with him, who was undoubtedly the most powerful nen user in the world. Let alone messing with the troupe, combined they could do anything. Kill anything.

They would pay. An eye for an eye. They took you, so he would take their lives. Seems fair.

He found himself sat in your usual spot on the couch while the rest of the troupe lounged around the apartment. His hand met the top of one of those silly books you enjoyed reading, the ones where the protagonist gets a super power and falls in love with the enemy. He always poked fun at you, told you how you should be reading more mature texts. He would always buy them for you though, anything to make you happy. Had you been reading when they had taken you? He couldn’t imagine.

Little defenseless you cuddled on the couch with a blanket and a book,just to be snatched and bound and terrified. You were too good, you probably didn’t put up enough of a fight, you were probably too scared to hit them where it would hurt. It’s why he kept you here, to keep you safe, what good that did for him. He sad in the couch , head in his hands. Such an abnormal thing for a man like him, it had the sorrounding troupe wondering who you really were.

You had to be something special for the one and only chrollo Lucifer to be so torn up about your well being. Chrollo has watched millions of people die, too many to even try counting, so one person should be forgettable. But you, special you, had chrollo functioning out of wack.

“753 crescenta lane, the apartment building on the left, three floors up apartment number 628” the second the words left shalnarks mouth as he typed away on his laptop, chrollo shot up from his seat, crescenta lane. A street far in the slums of the city,riddled with poverty and crime. Only a couple streets away from where he grew up, the outskirts of meteor city. Not a place for a soft thing like you to be. Not a place for any of his things to be, not anymore.

The rest followed as he quickly made his way out to the cars, heart rate slowing, excitement growing for revenge. He was prepared to do the utmost worst things he could ever do. Whoever did this deserved to suffer. To scream and cry and call for help while he tore them apart.

Oh you poor thing. You don’t understand the effect you have on him. He is never the violent one, that’s supposed to be feitan. Nor is he supposed to be the angry one, that’s uvogin. He just needed you back. Now.

———

-Y/n-

You weren’t really sure what had happened to you. One second you were on the couch, a cup of tea in your hand, and a new novel in the other. When you felt a little pinch in the back of your neck, your fingers went numb first, that’s how you knew something was very very wrong here. You could slightly remember going to the phone, and then being yanked back. Your head hit something, That must be why your neck hurts so bad. Before you knew it you couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t even breath. You remember something picking you up by the wrists and tossing you into the trunk of a car. From there on you mustve either been asleep or heavily zoned out. You couldn’t remember anything other than the roar of a loud engine.

You didn’t know much here

But you did know this was not your home

It smelled like mildew combined with unfiltered sewer water. The air was hot and dense, feeling heavy on your shoulders and in your lungs, and the feeling, oh the feeling. You had been barefoot when they had taken you, and here you were propped up in an uncomfortably rigid metal or wooden chair. As your bare feet felt the ground it was harsh concrete. It was so rough and cut up that it left a cut at the bottoms of your feet, there was something wet in the ground, if you could see you would assume it was blood.

Your neck was aching more than you could handle at the moment, your hands and arms were still numb from whatever drug that was floating through your bloodstream. You could barely muster up the strength to breath shallowly, let alone feed your lungs the air that was much needed. the lack of air combined with the lack of feeling in your body left your brain to feel fuzzy and understimulated. You hadn’t left the house in what felt like years, the familiar smell of vanilla (your favorite candles chrollo kept buying) being ever so absent freaked you out. Familiarity was comforting, and here you had absolutely none of it.

There was the quiet dripping of a faucet in the distance, maybe a leaky pipe or ceiling, the scuttle of a rat or two made you jump. You were below ground, maybe a basement, just by the way the air was denser and heavier. You used to be very observant, you haven’t had to think like this in a long time. Chrollo never gave you the chance.

That leaves the big question up in the air.

Would chrollo do something like this to you?

You have always known that he wasn’t the most stable individual, no matter how collected he might seem on the outside. There was always something complex going on, not that you ever had the brain or the care to figure it out. Thus far he hadn’t made any move to harm you, actually quite the opposite, he had always shown care, love even. You didn’t think he would do something like this.

You surely hoped he wouldn’t. You had known he was a criminal for quite some time now, and judging by his lavish lifestyle he was a bad one. You don’t get this rich by being nice. You also don’t kidnap people. If this was him, if he was the reason you were here, you were in for much worse than you could anticipate.

You should be more freaked out, it would be totally normal for you to be very very freaked out right now. Especially with how high strung you had become since moving in (being taken) with chrollo. A combination of sedatives and shock had your brain going in circles endlessly. Likely distracting from the impending doom you knew was to come.

Your head was basically off of your shoulders, floating up in space, to the point that you hadn’t even realized the heavy footsteps of a person entering the room. The crinkling of some kind of plastic, the clanking of metal.

What brought you back to earth was the feeling of a bag being pulled over your head.

A strangled gasp left your lips as the bag got tighter, a hand circling around your neck to fasten it. Confusion flowed freely through your veins as the hand released your neck and you were able to freely breathe once more. You didn’t know much, but if they were trying to suffocate you, shouldn’t you not be able to breathe? You heard the click of a camera turning on, likely for a video, before you were tipped back to be lying down on what felt like a medical metal table.

It was quiet, aside from your mumbles and moans of protest. It was quiet.

Then the water came.

It was like it was out of no where, the gag stuffed in your mouth was soaked with it in seconds, hefty splashes of water covering you and the bag over your head. You lied there in confusion for a few moments, not completely understanding what was happening. Whoever was doing this to you had yet to say anything, leaving you blindsided.

You tried to stay calm, you really did. But when the rag in your mouth soaked all the way through, and you realized you could no longer breath, panic seared off all of your calm nerves.

You’d never even thought of death, not once, not even in chrollos home. But here, but now , all you could think about was how you were going to die. How this was it, how your light was fading. How you couldn’t breathe how you couldn’t breathe. Oh god you couldn’t breathe.

You tried to thrash around, but your arms wouldn’t move, neither would your legs, all you could do was scream and thrash your head, if that. You feintly heard the sound of laughter past the bag, past the water. Were they laughing at you? Psychos. Fucking psychos. They were sitting here giggling while you slowly drowned. Fuck this. Fuck them. You hoped they would choke and die with you.

Fuck fuck fuck

Fuck fuck fuck fuck

Fuck this

Abruptly, the bag was ripped off your head, and the rag out of your mouth. The sounds of laughter continued as you sat there and cried. Heavy sobs left your mouth, if your hands were alive they would probably be shaking right now. The sound of a cameras click reverberated through the room, before the heavy footsteps getting quieter, then the slam of a door. You were left alone, cold, wet, and sniffling. What were you going to do? You were tied up, you couldn’t see, could barely think. They could do anything they wanted to you, and you would just have to let them. Oh god, this really was it wasn’t it. You were a gonor. And nobody would know where you were, not even chrollo.

Video sent 10:40 PM

Read 10:41 pm

———

-Chrollo-

They were On the way to your location when his phone buzzed again, this time with the notification of a video. He had asked pakunoda to watch it before him, in the case of the worst . He didn’t want to be the first one to know, otherwise everybody in this car might end up dead in his rage of a reaction. The woman politely grabbed his phone and viewed the video, the volume on low.

He could still hear it, hear your cries, your begging and whimpering. God he was going to obliterate everything in that building, and take you to the safest facility out there. Everyone around the small communication device looked tense as they watched it. Mainly because chrollo was tense enough for all of them.

They were used to torture and blood and all of the above, however not on people they liked, or at least on on people the boss liked. They have never been on the receiving end of the aftereffects, and they had absolutely no clue how to deal with it.

No doubt, it was something they would see as minor torture, but because it was you, it was nothing but major. Chrollo tried to be collected, tried not to show how much he truly cared. But the slow cracks of his knuckles and the tapping of his foot showed the members that he was anything but calm right now. He was out for blood, itching to get his hands back on you and hold you and love you and clean your wounds and keep you forever. He couldn’t wait to rip their organs about and then make them eat them, tear their eyeballs out and send it to their families, make them watch all of their colleagues find and slow gruesome death.

He was ready to spill blood by the time they had arrived, the malice in his energy making the air feel heavy and unbreathable, not anything special for the troupe around. But absolutely unbearable for any average passerby.

They were silent as the air itself as they entered the building through an open window, absolutely undetectable, even uvogin who was usually loud and blusterous. The tensions were high, bloodlust even higher. A majority couldn’t help but feel passionate over you, the boss was excited (a rare occurrence) so why wouldn’t the rest of them be?

It was calm in the building one second, the next, it was like a whole different dimension.

The screaming overpowered any other noise around, once the troupe had split up it had all began. The tearing of limbs, the cutting of heads, the more reckless members used their bare hands to pull people apart, the calmer ones settling for weapons. And chrollo, chrollo was different. Usually diplomatic till the inevitable death of his victims, he was now a cold killer, not even caring about conversation. The building was sweeped in minutes, dead bodies littering every nook and cranny. But still no you, they must’ve known that the troupe would come, you must be in high security.

“Where is she” the book master chrollo hissed, the collar of a man’s shirt bunched in one hand as he lifted him off the ground, mildly choking him. He looked petrified while looking into chrollos eyes, rightfully so. The man was covered head to toe in blood, sorrounded in a room of dead bodies.

“I-can’t tell you” chrollos grip began to tighten around his neck, beginning to crush his wind pipe.

“I may consider letting you free, letting you walk out if you were to answer. I’ll ask again. Where. Is. She.” He hissed once more, his grip brutally tight. The man looked fearful, his eyes flicking from one end of the room to the other , maybe to check for witnesses of his crime, maybe to check for his possible fate. Either way, he gave up to chrollos tight grip and empty promises.

“There’s a small door in the floor three rooms to the left of here, once you enter that door, you’ll have to search for a metal rimmed door with a lock. She’s in there. C-can I leave now?” The man stuttered out. Quivering in his grasp, chrollo let him go immediately after he answered, pulling his book out of his pocket. He gave a calculating glance to the short man, grimacing.

“You took too long to answer”

The man was splattered on the wall before he could even scream

———

-y/n-

It had been hours since the man was last in here, and the air had only gotton colder and wetter. Your clothing seemed to never dry and instead stay damp and frigid. They must have intentionally made it freezing in here, knowing that you would be lying down in the cold wet medical bed. You contemplated sleep, but eventually decided against it as you might wake up to some even stranger form of torture. So you sat, and you waited. You wanted to cry, but it seemed no energy was left in you to even let a tear drop roll your check. you also contemplated screaming, begging for your safety. bargaining, telling them how you were kidnapped before. But were again halted by doubt and exhaustion. it came to a point where you just lied down, still cold and ever so wet, and dry heaved. unable to cry, unable to scream, only able to sadly breathe. it felt like days, weeks even that you sat there wallowing in self pity and fear.

Then the screaming started.

At first it was just a faint buzzing in the air, something you wouldn’t been able to hear had you not been blindfolded and forced to listen as intently as possible. Then, it got louder, to the point where you could tell it was human cries, and a lot of them. Once it was loud enough to hear individual cries for help. You began to question, what is going on up there, did somebody invade, is there some kind of war… did somebody come to save you?

you tried to push out the thought, hope made you weak. made you sad once it was crushed. If chrollo had taught you anything, he had taught you that.

You tried at first to block them out, but eventually gave up as they were far too loud and far too constant to ignore. Instead, you opted to listening to what they were saying, there was the occasional “somebody please”, or a "help me". You found yourself intrigued once it got quieter and you started to hear the more specific cries of "We don't know where she is" or "we didn't know she was yours". You forced yourself to swallow that hope once more, secretly wishing for a knight in shining armor, even if it was chrollo. At least he wasn't water boarding you and laughing through the process, at least he was kind and calculated and loving. well shit, what a crazy situation to make even you believe chrollo was the good guy.

you had already been fearful when the screaming was loud, echoing through the empty room.

but when it went silent? thats when the real fear kicked in.

you werent an idiot, you knew whatever it was, even if it wasn't in your favor, was going to comb through this entire building, they must be looking for something. wether they were looking for you or not simply didn't matter, somebody was going to find you.

the fear that it could be your demise brought out that last bit of energy you needed in order to cry. And once more, you were in tears again. they only got worse as heavy footsteps found their way coming closer and closer, loud slams signifying doors being blown open. whoever this was, was not the man who was in here earlier, you could feel power radiating off them, and they were loud, and clearly big, noisier than the man from before. you were holding your breath by now, hoping to either not be heard, or pass out. either way you would not meet this man face to face.

just your luck though, presumably the metal door (you were still blindfolded and couldn't tell what it was) was ripped off its hinges, the sound screeching through the once-quiet room. it was thrown to the floor with a loud slam, and you were dumbfounded by the pure bloodlust radiating off this man, you could basically smell it in the air. you tried to peek through the blindfold to no avail. and once more found yourself in tears. you had found your arms slightly mobile by now, and were struggling with al your might, screaming, whimpering,and crying. anything to get you out. surprisingly, whoever this was had not harmed you, hadn't put you out of your misery. either they were winding up their power, or waiting till the time was right. tension settled in the room.

"uh-boss, I found her"

The voice was much closer than you had anticipated, causing you to jump a couple inches off of the seat. The blindfold was torn off your head in one fell swoop, leaving you squinting and unable to see clearly, a large man was standing in front of you, that much was obvious. He was staring, not in a creepy way you had grown used to in the presence of chrollo, but in a “what the hell do I do” kindof way. Like he had to make a decision but also didn’t want to touch you, most of all he looked at you like you would break if he so much as spoke too loud.

The silence and staring came to an abrupt end when you were able to hear quiet footsteps in the hallway, followed by chrollos familiar face. Albeit it was covered in blood, however still recognizable. It was like your world had just, stopped. Came to a screeching halt leaving you and chrollo there with locked eyes and a bit too much love for somebody who had been kidnapped multiple times over now. You had never thought that seeing him would make your heart slow, make your breathing become even, make your nerves fizzle into nothing. At first you had believed that he was the worst thing to ever happen to you. But here, but now

When he wrapped his arms around you like never before, holding you tighter and closer than usual. His smell drowned the coppery stench of blood out, leave your arms to squeeze him back for the first time ever. You don’t even remember how your restrains were taken off, but it didn’t even seem to matter as his hand cupped the back of your head and pulled you tighter. Maybe you could love chrollo, maybe you already did.

“I want to go home” you muttered, finding his hand and squeezing. You lifted your head up, finding the watching eyes of a couple others in the room. You weren’t used to people anymore, it was strange seeing so many, seeing that they saw you. You wanted away, to go home and be happy, although you were greatful to them for helping, for saving you. Strangely enough, the thought never crossed your mind to ask for help, wether it was because you figured out they were with chrollo, or that you simply didn’t care.

As he hooked his arm underneath your Knees and lifted you up, cradling you like a child. You would usually complain, but you won’t. This felt too nice. Your eyes found themselves fluttering shut as your hand interlocked with his, he squeezed. Thsi was safe, he was safe. That was the last thing you were able to think before you fell deeply and uncaringly unconscious.

How things have changed

With a quick flick of his wrist he opened the same phone that got him into this situation, and with a snide smirk tapped with his free hand. Thank god this was over. And you were his again.

Fuck you

Sent 4:37 AM

———————————————————————

There’s a lack of chrollo content, if anybody has any recs plz send them lol.

Have a great day, bye.

[mutable-manifestation]

Ghost Chirps AU Part 5

Part 1 & 2

Part 3

Part 4

***

While “Jason” (i.e. Alfred with an empty jet that Jason will meet up with later in order to “arrive” in Amity) hops a private jet, Red Hood is busy searching the Fenton home from top to bottom.

The local police move slowly, and by the time they arrive Jack and Maddie Fenton are both tied up and disarmed in their living room under heavy guard.

They hadn’t been restrained immediately, Batman talking him into giving them a chance to implicate themselves first.

Hood let him take the lead, but he didn’t even get a chance to ask a question, being cut off at the first indication he might want to talk about their “work.” Less than 60 seconds in, and the pair had outright confessed to violating the meta protection acts - and in tedious detail.

The questioning didn’t suffer any from them being tied up.

Far from the mulish silence or crocodile-tear laden denial of most criminals, they instead doubled down, insisting that nothing they had done was illegal, then jumping to the assumption that they were “possessed” - and boy had it been a nasty surprise when the whole house came alive trying to attack them with a quick verbal command.

Well, trying to attack Hood. And only him, for some reason.

One laser also freed the Fentons, who turned out to have even more weapons built into their suits. 

Somehow. 

Despite them being skintight.

That had been a pain, but Red Robin was able to hack the system using one of the couples’ own devices while Hood dodged - and kept the stray fire away from the others - leaving everyone else to recapture the pair. A blessedly simple task once they found out the lasers would splash harmlessly off of their armor (save for a gross film of green goop left wherever they grazed).

They take turns knocking each unconscious to change them in order to properly disarm them - Batman and Nightwing taking Jack first, followed by Orphan and Spoiler dealing with Maddie. 

The only non-weapon laden clothing they own turns out to be pajamas. 

This is around when the police show up, looking hesitant.

They, too, cite the “Anti-Ecto Acts.”

Oracle had debriefed them on the supposed Acts and “Ghost Investigation Ward” on their short drive over. Both were utterly bogus - the Acts had never even been proposed, let alone been approved as law, and the so-called “GIW” had no ties to the government.

The Fentons had been furious and denied the information intensely when told, but the cops mostly just looked relieved.

Apparently there’d been a lot of property damage by the GIW and Fentons both that had supposedly been dismissed under the Acts as “necessary in the pursuit of ecto-scum.”

For the Fentons, half of this damage was in the form of broken fire hydrants, cracked sidewalks, and totaled cars - they’d never been good drivers, before, the cops disclosed, but they’d become even more negligent since the ghosts began appearing, to the point they had to have a news segment warning when they would be on the road.

The lack of fatalities thus far had been nothing short of a miracle, they claimed.

“Of course there haven’t been any fatalities!” Mrs Fenton defends. “Our work is to protect people from those things, not make more! Officers, listen to reason-” Hood snorts disdainfully -”The Red Hood is clearly a ghost! All our systems targeted him the moment they came online - and they only target ecto-entities. He’s clearly taken these heroes under his sway - why else would they be working with a murderer!? You have to do something before he starts up his killing here in Amity!”

The officers look at him a bit hesitantly, but Batman is unmoved and gives the cover story Hood had outlined back in the alley.

Any concerns the locals have are quickly assuaged.

But for the whole explanation, Jason is trying not to shake even as he falls apart in place.

Their little website called them ghost-hunters, making it pretty clear what “ecto-entities” meant. 

Their system supposedly only targets ecto-entities.

The system had only targeted him.

The system only targets ghosts.

Jason had died.

A lot of his family members had died, too, granted. 

But Jason was the only one who seemed to come back wrong - anger sticking in his throat and never quite fading, an inclination towards violence even when he wasn’t angry well beyond what he’d ever felt before, and a sea of other emotions (that he would never acknowledge aloud) and triggers for those emotions that he always struggled to make heads or tails of.

He doesn’t have the meta gene. He knows that. He knew that.

He just assumed that the test missed it, because he knows he doesn’t know magic - the All Blades being the only exception - and he couldn’t think of another explanation at the time.

But he came back wrong.

And as he stands there, he wonders if he came back at all, mind on Solomon Grundy.

Wonders if he isn’t just some ghost, wandering around possessing his own corpse.

He jolts, as the thought strikes him: what about Danny?

If he’s a ghost and chirping is a ghost thing then what about his KID!?

Absently, he notes that Bruce has started interrogating the cops on what they meant by “ghost attacks.” 

He ignores the discussion, hustling for the door in the kitchen down to the lab.

He slams and locks the door behind him - in Red Robin’s face - as he descends, making a b-line for the computer he’d seen when the Fentons had dragged them all down there to start bragging about their crimes.

The only thing Oracle could get out of the whole building was things that were openly available online; direct connections were impossible.

Opening up the screen, he gets to cracking.

Going for the surface level files first, it turns out he doesn’t even need so much as a password to find what he wants.

One of the video game sub-files has an unrelated file in it: ghost notes.

There are plenty of other notes, of course, but he’d only been skimming to start, looking for anything hidden.

The Fenton parents were too open to bother, of course, with plenty of more obvious files strewn haphazardly across the home screen, but it’s always better to check. That there is a hidden file means it was likely made by either Danny or Jazz.

And it’s a treasure trove.

Sub-files for rogues, allies, conditional allies, and “halfas” were what greeted him.

The last being the only term he didn’t recognize, he clicked.

6 files: Clones, Danny, Dani, Dan, Vlad, and Red Hood.

He clicks his own file.

What greets him is a picture of himself 4 days ago, looking just to the left of the lens in an alley that he distinctly remembers searching for the kid in.

Just below is text.

~~~

??? Name: Red Hood

Species: probably a halfa

Status: Nnnneutral? I think? I know, I know, heads in bags. But Valerie tries to kill me all the time! And we’re allies sometimes! Hood- uh- looked for me? Okay I guess I can’t really judge this yet but please read the first met section before you judge please you guys?

First met: Aug 17, 2005, was in Gotham to bother Batman, stopped to think a bit on some fire escape - decide on the first prank yknow - but then my ghost sense went off. It felt like a halfa so I thought “oh cool, must be Dani” so I chirped, but then Red Hood - who was chasing some guy down an alley at the time - froze and looked around. I dropped visibility and chirped again and yeah, he definitely heard it. Humans can’t so he’s definitely a halfa - no glow so he can’t be a full ghost and it felt nothing like an overshadowing. 

Ended up following Hood around the rest of week - forgot to prank Batman, damn - and playing hide-and-seek with the chirps. It was really funny. But he very obviously doesn’t know he’s a halfa. But the guy is, like, scary levels of smart, so I’m sure he’ll figure it out on his own now that the chirp thing made it clear that something is up. Hopefully.

I figure I can go back in winter break - he should have it figured out and let his emotions process enough by then to at least hear me out when I explain the AEA and GIW and everything, then it won’t matter so much if he can, like, track me by voice or something if I talk since we’ll have MAD by then.

Despite his reputation, the people living in his haunt seem to love the guy. I can see why. On top of the whole smart he’s actually really nice to people he’s not shooting in the knees (which only even happened one time in the week I was there? It was actually pretty relaxing - most quiet week I’ve had since the portal opened THANK YOU TUCKER for hacking the portal hatch to be inoperable for a week). 

Where was I? Oh yeah, he’s actually surprisingly nice to people? So like, I think he’ll probably hear me out if I go back and be polite? I hope. Hate to leave the guy in the dark and him end up on the GIWs dissection table for “lots and lots of painful experiments.”

Not that those guys could even catch the Box Ghost. But uh, Hood doesn’t seem to have powers either? Or if he does he doesn’t know about them I don’t think - he only used the chirp the whole time I was their - not even to cheat with moving around.

Seriously. That guy's acrobatics could make Freakshow’s contortionist green - er, red??? - with envy. Actually wait, aren’t contortionists and acrobats different things?

SAM NOTE: help^?

Powers: 

?

~~~

Jason leans back, breathing deeply.

“Not a full ghost,” “not 'overshadowed'” - a term that sounds likke some kind of cousin to possesision - “definitely a halfa,” “humans can’t hear chirps.”

Halfa. 

Half. 

Ghost. 

Half Ghost.

It should sound absurd - you can’t be half alive and half dead.

But Jason has seen the Lazarus pits, has met Solomon Grundy, has met aliens and bullshit magic and can pull magical swords out of his own damn chest.

Half alive. Half dead.

Hopefully not just a fancy way to say possessing his own corpse.

He doesn’t have time to deal with every file - he’ll “confiscate” one of their USBs with a copy of everything for himself before leaving the rest to Batman & co, of course, minus the halfa files (a small part of him wants to shove his condition in Bruce’s face and demand he kill the clown again even though he knows it’s a futile hope, but the rest - the same part that snapped and denied and refused to say he was a meta less that a day ago now - cannot stomach the thought of even more rejection. Of a Bruce that believes he’s a monster. Of a Bruce that mourns him even while he’s right there. Or at least, more than he already does.) - but while the files copy he take the time to look at Danny’s.

The image has two people, Danny Fenton on one side and a version of the kid in a black hazmat suit with white hair, tanned skin, and painfully familiar green eyes. And floating.

~~~

Human Name: Danny Fenton

Ghost Name: Danny Phantom

Species: Halfa (half-human, half ghost)

~~~

It’s the section after that that makes Jason’s breath catch in his throat.

~~~

Death: The Portal Accident

So like, there was no audio (thank GOD I do not want to hear myself screaming) so. Details: When the portal didn’t work when they plugged it in mom and dad left for fudge, Jazz went to try and talk them into a more realistic career choice than ghosts. Sam and Tucker came over and Sam dared me to climb in and check it out - it was broken anyway so no harm. Except it wasn’t broken, just that my parents put the on button inside. Which I caught myself on when I tripped on a wire.

Anyway, electrocution! 

(T - Danny for the love of god be more serious, the cheerful tone is creepy)

(D - Hey! I’m the one who died! Shouldn’t I at least get to write my own epitaph)

(S - …Danny this is not an epitaph. You don’t even HAVE a grave)

(D - wow way to rub it in Sam)

(T - yeah Sam)

(S - ugh! Whatever, just stop with the chatting in official files)

(T - “official”)

(S - Tucker.)

(T - shutting up now)

Electrocution! I got zapped to death, but the ectoplasm from the portal was also opening up on top of me and a lot got bonded to me I guess (S - probably because of the electricity with how you ended up with some of Vortex' powers for a little while) at the same time said electricity was reviving me? - probably getting my heart beating again or something, I was a little busy screaming to pay attention (T - yeah okay we're going to Nasty Burger after this. And playing Doomed) - not that it would’ve mattered without the ghostification preventing me from melting me all the way to death.

Status: Me!

Powers:

Chirps! (ghost echolocation of some kind! humans can't hear em - halfas can, of course, in either form)

Form Change (really Sam? This barely counts)

Human form

Ghost form (no need to breathe)

Flight (last clock speed 210mph) (T - and climbing. Dang dude)

Invisibility (S - don’t forget shareable.) (Shareable. sigh)

Intangibility (Shareable)

Ecto Rays (eyes & hands) (T - and butt) (D - dude! I’m deleting that. Tucker why can't I delete it. TUCKER) (T - bow down in awe of my ksill) (S - ksill) (D - ksill) (T - yeah okay it’s permanent now) (D - aw man!)

Ghost Sense (S - why do we never test your range?) (D - no need? They always make themselves obvious or are being sneaky specifically to annoy me so *shrug*) (S - I still think we should test it)

Power Absorption (that time with Vortex’s weather powers)

Cryokinesis (Wayyyyy to much ice. NOT testing max output on that) (T - yeah frozen city was enough, let’s not cause an ice age. Tech needs some cool but too much is still bad and I just upgraded Patricia)

Ghostly Wail (cone of destruction, very exhausting - always at max output. Not to be used)

GHOST FORM ONLY (but really just never)

Cartoon Body (D - what???) (S - Freakshow literally turned you into a puddle and you just turned back and were fine. I don’t know what else to call that) (D - okay fair. but:)

GHOST FORM ONLY

Physical Enhancement (better strength, speed, stamina, durability, reflexes, balance, etc much better than human) (T - why does this look like dnd knockoff stats haha)

GHOST FORM ONLY (S - obviously mr last place in PE)

Resistances (pretty solid on the overshadowing, avoided being taken in by Ember until targeted, didn’t get turned to stone during the Medusa thing) (S - which was pure luck! Be careful!)

Ecto Electricity (ghost stinger, but I really don’t think this counts Sam. I mean I just. Make my ecto zappy. But it’s still just ecto) (S - so is your ICE and you don’t just call that "just cold ecto") (D - fine, but it feels overly specific) (S - maybe writing it all down will make you stop. Forgetting. POWERS!) (D - come on Sam that was a lucky hit! I was distracted! And it turned out fine!) (S - Fenton…) (D - oop okay doing fire now)

Ecto Fire (made Dash’s shoes melty that one time by make the ecto hot) (T - really needs more testing)

Tech possession (chasing Technus into computers, not very tested)

Ghost form only, i guess?

Overshadowing (control people, copy their voice, invade dreams - the control one erases the person’s memory so they don’t know they were overshadowed just lost time. I hate Walker. SO much) (T - rip Danny’s reputation, you’ll be missed)

Probably ghost form only

Duplication (T - That’s optimistic) (D - I’M WORKING ON IT OKAY!?) (S - pretty sure it just falls under cartoon body until you can actually separate) (D - :( betrayal)

Probably ghost form only

More? (D - ugh I hope not) (T - hey don’t say that, maybe you’ll get a power to make the JL give a crap about Amity) (D - honestly I’m getting pretty close to letting Boxy loose in Gotham) (S - Danny, don’t stoop to their level!) (D - it's only box ghost!) (T - I mean he has a point)

~~~

Jason changes his mind, seeing the commentary, and deletes the entire hidden file from the computer as soon as his copy is made. He can go over everything and bring any important info to Bruce separately, the bat’s can just chew on the parents’ files for now.

Once the original files are thoroughly and irretrievably removed he pockets his shiny new USB, makes a second one with all the official files, and heads back up and out - carelessly brushing past a thoroughly irate Red Robin with a pair of firemen and broken jaws of life. And not a scratch on the door; impressive - just in time to get Oracle’s text that he’s got 2 hours and 16 minutes to be at the location on his HUD so he can “arrive” to Amity.

And a fresh set of civilian clothes will be waiting in the plane, Alfred as reliable as ever.

“Files,” he says, tossing the safe USB to Batman and interrupting his interrogation of the police officer.

He catches it effortlessly of course, but the officer stops paying attention to him to jolt at Hood’s reappearance - even outside of Gotham his reputation is fierce.

“I sent a copy to myself. I’ll review them and give you an overview, but other than that consider this the end of my involvement in this little shitshow,” he says, continuing smoothly to the door. “I’m heading back to Gotham.”

Now, he has a little over two hours before Jason Todd needs to arrive in Amity Park. He only needs to lay hands on a laptop that he can isolate from Babs’ influence and he should be able to review the Halfa files in full before he "lands" - after he figures out just why the kid has a grudge against the JL.

[joeloverture]

fair's fair | pervy!dbf!joel x f!reader

masterlist | notifs blog

pairing: pervy!dbf!joel x pervy!f!reader summary: [no outbreak] joel shoves you in his sweaty pits as a 'joke'. warnings: (18+ mdni) pervy!dbf!joel, age gap (early to mid 20s/38), somewhat mutual pining & sexual tension, joel in a wifebeater and jorts, reader has hair, smacking joel's ass like god intended, degradation, sweaty!joel, musk kink, armpit kink!!!, coming untouched, joel calls reader 'kiddo', 2 spanks, m!masturbation [no use of y/n] word count: 2.1k a/n: in another life, i'd be sorry for this fic. in this life, i am not. as always, a shoutout to the effervescent @lovesickonmybed for moodboard curation + creating this au. love to @seventeenpins for taking a glimpse at this + inspiring me. ty esquire team.... hooooly shit. pls suspend your disbelief if you can't come untouched we're here for a good time not a realistic one. btw you're all pussies for chickening out of the pit fics you 'planned' to write after this esquire photo fell into our laps /j

You awake to a rattling crash on the other side of the wall that you share with your dad’s combination garage/man cave. With an exaggerated groan, you peel yourself out of your creased sheets. Maybe the raccoons that have been terrorizing your garbage cans have finally broken into the garage. You’re still in your pajamas — a low-cut tank top and some bloomers that are entirely too short on you — when you rub the sleep from your eyes and shove your feet into your slippers to investigate. 

The house is quieter than dust so early in the morning. Your dad’s out at work, and the rest of the neighborhood is just beginning to wake up. There’s the tstststststs of the Adler’s sprinkler system and the birds are chirping. In the mudroom, you snatch up a broom and wrap your fist around it. You listen through the paneling of the door for any hissing or scuttling, but hear nothing. You are not looking to get rabies today.

You poke your head out of the door, broom pointed at the ground like a staff. Immediately, you’re blinded by a slice of sunshine cutting through the very much open garage.

You’re about two seconds away from sprinting back inside to call 911 when you see the unkempt, sunkissed hair of none other than Joel Miller.

You set the broom gently back against the wall. Joel’s not a threat – at least not to anything but that traitor between your legs. He’s just your dad’s buddy; drinking buddy, fishing buddy, jack-of-all-trades buddy. He’s also no stranger to those borderline goo-goo eyes you give him. How could you not? He’s just so broad and muscled and God, you swear up and down that you stare more at his ass than anyone has ever stared at yours.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, he’ll even give you shit about it. Bending over directly in your line of sight at block parties, ‘play wrestling’ with you on the dock by the lake whenever you jokingly call him an old man, or, in one very special instant, giving your ass a smack that sent you into an hours long tizzy.

You deserve to give him shit about it, too.

After all, he’s the one ferreting around in your dad’s garage in the wee hours of the morning. You pad into the garage, footsteps muffled by your slippers as you navigate around your dad’s pickup. You catch a better look at Joel when you pass the truck bed. And, for better or for worse, he’s dressed like a slut.

His ribbed white wifebeater stretches over his wide chest, grass stains scattered along the small of his back. Sweat darkens the hems of his shirt under his armpits, glistening and beading on the back of his neck, too. In true dad fashion, he even has on jorts. He’s bent over your dad’s tool bench, thumbing around an assortment of screwdrivers. His denim-covered ass sticks out. A smile spreads across your face.

You slip around the truck and take soft step after soft step until you’re right behind him. You can’t help but notice a cocktail of his pheromones and B.O. surrounding him. He must’ve been outside for a while now with all of the stains he’s accumulated on his shirt already. You keep your breathing muted so he can’t hear you as you reach out and — smack!

Joel shrieks, shooting upright. His head slams into the shelf overhead and a few bolts go toppling onto the concrete below. He cusses like a sailor as his hand goes up to rub the back of his head, nursing where a lump will probably be in a few hours time. Joel whips around to see you, smothering your giggles behind your hand. “You little shit,” he huffs, still scratching at his head. You don’t miss how his cheeks are firetruck red. “The fuck are ya doin’?”

“Me? The fuck are you doing, Miller? Stomping around my dad’s garage at, like, the asscrack of dawn–”

“Nine in the mornin’ ain’t the asscrack of dawn, sweetcheeks,” Joel says. Then, he holds up a set of pliers. “Mower shit the bed. I’m thinkin’ Sarah stole my pliers to make necklaces, but she hasn’t fessed up yet. Your pops said I could borrow his.” He stretches, giving you a long whiff of his scent. The groan he lets out stirs something in your stomach, much to your chagrin.

“I think the mower is the least of your worries,” you say, wrinkling your nose. “You reek. Shower shit the bed, too?”

“You try doin’ yard work in 90 degree heat, kiddo. See how much you smell like that strawberry raspberry peach whatever-the-fuck soap you’re usin’.”

You roll your eyes so hard you’re surprised you don’t see the back of your skull. “Rosemary eucalyptus,” you correct under your breath.

“Hmm, what was that?” Joel asks, tossing the pliers down onto the workbench. “Gotta speak up.”

“Rosemary eucalyptus,” you say. “But I bet you wouldn’t know. What do you use? 18 in 1?”

Joel grunts. “Real funny.” He takes a step closer to you, lips taut with a smirk. “How ‘bout you find out?”

You don’t have time to question what the hell he means – he just cups the back of your head with one of his wide palms and shoves your face directly into his closest sweaty pit. “Mmmmph!” you protest, mouth sealed shut against the thatch of hair that’s spattered across his skin. You hold your breath for as long as you can, but eventually, you’re forced to suck in a breath through your squished nose. His musk, sweet and just as sharp, fills your airways. Your clit all but jerks between your legs in humiliation, drawing a whine out of your throat.

Joel chuckles, ruffling your hair. It’s enough to make your thighs clench. “You’re a little freak, huh?” He presses harder on the back of your head, so much so that you almost get a mouthful of his underarm.

“Youuu dick!” you try to say without opening your mouth too far. It comes out muffled against his sweat-pearled skin. You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to push him off of you.

Another wry chuckle comes from above. Joel bends his arm so that his elbow is wrapped around the back of your head, effectively trapping you in his funk. “Come on, huff ‘em. Practically fuckin’ asking for it earlier, all ‘a that mouthin’ off. So now you get a mouthful of my pits. Fair’s fair, kiddo.”

Embarrassment ribbons through your body, the kind that makes you leak into your panties against your will. Still looking for a way out, you squirm against his ironclad hold.

It’s only good for making him land a heavy-hitting slap across your ass. You yelp, a new wave of slick saturating the drenched gusset of your panties. You jump where you are, hips bucking into nothing – for escape or pressure, you’re not entirely sure. “Unless you wanna go over my knee instead?” Your face sears with humiliation.

Tentatively, you snuffle a bit against his pit, biting into your cheeks at his musk. It makes you cough a little bit – he’s been carrying the smell of cutting grass and his own sweat all morning.

“Yeah, thought so. But you can do better than that, sweetcheeks. I said huff, not fake an asthma attack.” You whimper, this time sucking in a longer breath. Here he is, holding you down, secure against his pit as you're left with no other option than to take what he gives you, when he gives it to you. All you can smell, feel, touch is just Joel, Joel, Joel. It makes you lightheaded.

Your clit is practically a kickdrum between your thighs, pulsing and doing more work than your head. You try to angle yourself so that you can rub your clit against Joel’s leg, but he puts a stop to that real quick. “Gettin’ all wound up just from being where ya belong, your pretty little face in my pit?” You mewl, reaching for Joel’s sides. You bunch your fists in the fabric of his wifebeater, and he allows it.

“Since you’re so eager to complain about it, how ‘bout you clean me up, huh?” He nudges his pit against your face again, and, confusedly, you furrow your brows. You can’t see much of him, but you do see the edge of his mouth tip up in satisfaction. “You got rocks for brains? Lick, kiddo.”

Hesitance drives the soft kitten lick of your tongue, swiping up and down across a very small portion of his pit. He loosens up on his grip on you, giving you the slightest bit more reign. You try to tell yourself that you’re scared of what he might do if you disappoint him, but hell if you don’t want this as much as he does, tongue, nose, face buried in his pits. Some sort of ultimate form of worship between the two of you.

You lave your tongue across his pit, eyes fluttering with each stroke. You swirl it in the crease of his arm, sucking his goddamn hairs clean with the fervor you’ve picked up. Enthused now, you bob your head up and down. Your clit responds, throbbing with a heartbeat of its own.

You’re panting, inhaling and exhaling him, lapping up his musk like a fucking dog, gone from reluctant to eager. Your clit twitches faster and faster, and you swear that arousal must be tacky on the insides of your thighs, leaking through your panties all over the front of your bloomers, but you can’t do anything about it. You can’t even grind against Joel – you can only slurp against his armpit, something like desperation having replaced all of your previous mortification from when he’d shoved you there in the first place.

You’re so preoccupied with pleasing him that you don’t even notice the thumping of your clit, picking up speed and pressure. Your body seizes in between your greedy little licks. You feel yourself weaken before you stiffen.

And maybe it’s the way Joel keeps groaning with each movement of your tongue. It could be how he exhales, ��Kiddo,” in a raspy voice, both demeaning and endearing all at once. But in the end, it’s how he says, “Mmmm, such a good goddamn tongue. Bet it’d feel so good on my cock,” that breaks the dam between your legs.

You shudder, coming completely undone with little moans and whimpers in Joel’s arms without so much as a hand on your clit, just your face smothered in his pit. Drool runs down your lips and across your chin as you jerk and weaken in his grasp. If you weren’t so underwater, so far gone, you’d be able to hear him saying, “Fuck – whoa, whoa, whoa,” trying to stop you from falling on your ass in the middle of the garage. His hands card across your sides as he props you up against the workbench. Your vision blackens at the edges from the intensity of your orgasm, and you’re still coming, at least you think you are, when you blink yourself back to awareness. You’re wide-eyed, tears brimming at your waterline, incapacitated in a way that you didn’t know you could be.

“Holy shit,” you gasp when you finally fully come to, slumped over the workbench, still half-clinging to Joel. “Fuck.”

Joel looks stunned, looking you up and down as if he can’t get enough of you. His eyes land right between your thighs, where, sure enough, you’ve ruined your bloomers. You still feel like deadweight, and you struggle to stand upright. You’re not sure you’ve ever come so hard even with someone’s hands all over your. Joel’s glistening with even more sweat, and it’s impossible to miss the glaring bulge in his shorts. He clears his throat after a minute. “Oughta go get cleaned up before your daddy gets back for his lunch break, kiddo.”

You stumble upright, drenched in sweat yourself now, Joel’s lingering scent still pervading every breath you take. “Y-yeah,” you manage, nodding. You feel out of your own body, stumbling towards the door. You’re so wet that you can feel it with every goddamn step. Fuck Joel Miller, cocky piece of sh–

You’re immediately returned to your own body by the resounding swat Joel lands on your ass. You jump, shooting a glare over your shoulder. He puts his hands up, pleading innocence.

You’re not surprised when you crawl out of your shower, smelling of rosemary eucalyptus and dripping water all over the floor, only to see Joel’s mower abandoned in the middle of his yard. Even worse, you aren’t surprised in the slightest when you squint through your bedroom window, Joel sprawled out across his bed, hips bucking in-time with his fist before catching your eye and spraying ropes of cum all over his abdomen.

You mouth at him through the window with a taunting little wink, Clean yourself up this time.

[technoarcanist]

WAR NEVER CHANGES. BUT,

WARFARE NEVER STOPS CHANGING

"I've seen countless reasons why most mech pilots don't make the cut, but one of the largest hurdles are the physical alterations. The implants and modifications done to the fleshware is so extreme that it's enough to push most would-be pilots away from day 1.

Back in the day, when mech tech was still in its wild west years, when the technology was still in its infancy, things were different. Levers, joysticks, switches, a chair, most of the first models were something between the cockpit of a construction vehicle and a fighter ship.

Pilots in those days still consisted largely of the usual suspects. Test pilots, army jocks, space force veterans looking for something new, the occasional crazy who lucked their way up the ranks. All you needed back then was to be fit enough to work complex machinery. 'Handler's wouldn't be a coined phrase for nearly a decade. I still remember being a kid and seeing repurposed older models in the mech fighting streams.

Everything changed with the Bidirectional Cerebellum Computer Interface. To say nothing of how it changed civilian life, it was a military marvel. The BiCCI saw the creation of Mechs as we understand them today. The first generation were just retrofits, older models with a pilot's chair, and even manual controls to use in an emergency, but even then we knew that was only temporary. Before long, sleek frames of sharp angles, railguns and plasma cannons were rolling off the factory floor.

Like many things, it began small, optimising first for cockpit space by removing the manual controls. Before long, my then-supervisors thought, "Why have this glass? Why not hook the pilot's eyesight right into the advanced multi-spectral camera system? Before long, cockpits were but soft harnesses made to house a living body, their very soul wired into the machinery. Obviously, for security reasons, I cannot tell you everything about how our latest cockpits work, but suffice to say we've been further blurring the line between pilot and frame ever since.

This drew a very different crowd. Out were the army jocks and powerlifters. The only ones who even dared to have the interface hardware installed into their brainstem and spinal cord were the dispossessed, the misanthropes, those who sought not to control their new body, but to be controlled by it. No AI can work a mech properly on its own, but our pilots are never really in full control either anymore. Those who do try to go against the symbiosis get a nosebleed at best, and vegetative seizures at worst.

And that was that. The only people left who pilots these things are those who had already been broken, those who sougt a permenant reprive from being anything resembling human. A lot of my department quit around this time. I've lost a few friends over it, I'm not shy to say. Did we knew we'd be bringing in the more vulnerable people? Of course we did. But, the wheels of progress must turn, as they say, and it wasn't like we were shy of volunteers.

In our latest models, we have refined an even more advanced frame. Again, security detail prevents me from divulging too much, but one breakthrough we've made is decreasing action latency by approximately 0.02s by amputating the limbs from our pilots and replacing them with neural interface pads.

Using the pads where the limbs once were, pilots are screwed directly into the cockpit, which itself can now be 30% smaller thanks to the saved space. And, of course, we provide basic humanoid cybernetics as part of their employment contract while they are with us. Not that most of them are ever voluntarily out of their cockpits long enough to make use of them. Even removing the tubes from their orifices for routine cleaning incurs a large level of resistence.

And, yes, some of them scream, some of them break, some become so catatonic that they might as well be a peripheral processor for their mech's AI. But not a single one, not even one pilot, in all the dolls i've ever trained, have ever accepted the holidays we offer, the retirement packages, the stipends.

As you say, there are those who like to call me a monster for my work. I can see why. After all, they don't see the way my pilots' crotches dribble when I tell them I'll be cutting away their limbs, or the little moans they try to hide when we first meet and I explain that they'd forever be on the same resource level as a machine hereafter.

Those who call me a monster don't realise that, even after going public with how we operate our pilots, even after ramping up mech frame production, we still have more than twice as many volunteers as frames.

Those who call me a monster cannot accept that my pilots are far happier as a piece of meat in a machine of death than as the shell of a human they once were.

Those who call me a monster never consider the world my pilots grew up in to make them suitable candidates in the first place."

-Dr Francine Heathwich EngD

Dept. Cybernetic Technologies @ Dynaframe Industries

[In response to human rights violations accusations levied by the Pilot Rehabilitation Foundation]

[angelinpiink]

ex boyfriend! eren headcannons ࿐ྂ。

❥ note: as a disclaimer, these headcanons are a bit toxic/dark, if that is something you find triggering i recommend you skip this one, you can find other works of eren that don't have this particular theme here just want to make it clear that i do not condone this sort of behavior and this doesn't represent my idea of what a healthy relationship should look like thank you and enjoy

Firstly, eren doesn't even consider you guys to be actually broken up, he’s convinced. you’re just screwing with him or playing hard to get. Even once he realizes you're not, the breakup is still completely one sided. He loves you far too much to even fathom that the relationship is over. He’s already planned your entire future together–he's been doing so since he first met you, from the house you'll live in together to the garter you'll be wearing on your wedding day.  In short, he’s delusional when it comes to you, head over heels or do he likes to call it and for this reason he still goes around telling everyone you're his. 

Everyone around him, including his friends is obviously taken aback by this and so they sort of just play along, listening to him rant   about you the moment he’s gotten enough alcohol in his system. This happens  at every get together they have had since the breakup.  “she’s just confused and going through a tough time right now. She doesn't know that she wants me,” he’ll say anytime he hears about you having moved on with anyone else.  If anyone even has the courage to challenge his statements he has the habit of angrily shutting them down. “Shut the hell up, you don't know anything about our relationship.” 

He spends the first few days blowing up your phone with texts about how much he loves you and that though your relationship has had its ups and downs – him being the one who’s mostly responsible for the downs, you guys will get through it as you always had if you just keep trying. When he received no response ,he changed his approach, no longer attempting to convince you to stay but now begging you to come back  home. “Come back to me please..” he’ll bombard your voicemail inbox with pleas and sob stories about how he hasn't slept because he misses holding you each night. 

 Weeks or even months  will pass since the break up itself, and every second of  his time he uses to  reach out to you, whether it's through phone calls or text. You better believe he's taking time to check up on you to see how you're doing–most  importantly, what you're doing and who you're with. He wants to make sure you're safe and not in the hands of any trouble or anyone he considers trouble. He has a habit of speaking with you as though you two are still together, ending many conversations with  “i love you.” and “hope to see you soon.” When he isn't reaching out to you he's thinking about you or talking to you about whatever poor soul is forced to listen. 

When he hears it from you that you’ve moved on to someone else, his heart shatters.  He had been able to deny and ignore the reality when he heard it from others but now that it was coming from you he had lost the energy to keep pretending to be okay with how things were, he feels as though you’re betraying him. In his eyes you were cheating by being with another.  Still, he doesn't make it known then and there, instead he responds with. “He can't love you the way I do.” and beyond that point he stops reaching out, and waits for you to come running back. 

 You'll learn the hard way that he was right  when you are riding back to his place drunk with tears running down your cheeks because you caught the very person you’d moved onto cheating on you with another girl. Once you two arrive, he carries you into the apartment where the two of you had  shared many memories together, because you are too drained from the events of the day to walk. He takes off your makeup using the makeup remover you’d ‘left behind’ when you moved out. Really, he stole it out of your things, along with other items because he was certain you’d come back to him under such circumstances. 

 He takes you into his arm, holding you so close and so tight to him because he’s afraid that you’ll leave him again as  you cry in his arms. “Don't know what i was thinking” his fingers stroke your hair.  “You weren't. but you should have known better.”  eren isn't too interested in giving you his sympathy because he feels he’s the one been betrayed the most here. If only you hadn't run off with someone else, none of this would be happening.

“I warned you,” he added. “I'm so sorry..” you sniffled, he swiped away your tears. his way of speaking to you had caused a wave of guilt to wash over you, you had left eren behind only to end up being made to look like a fool because you thought the grass was greener on the other side. Though he was upset with you,  Eren hated seeing  you cry.  especially over someone he didn't believe deserved your tears. “Make it up to me then.” a weight lifted off your shoulders at the offer of redemption. Little did you know, he plans to have you crying tears of another kind. 

❥ nsfw (things get sexual from here, if you are not comfortable with this kind of content pls turn back)

Before you know it, he’s ripped your dress off you, both your clothes and underwear are thrown about the hallway leading to the bedroom you used to share. He hasn't made a single change to anything since your absence and you find yourself feeling nostalgic, thinking back to a time where things werent easy but never this complicated. you're on the bed exposed and bear before him. He hovers between your legs. “Been so long since i've seen you like this, god i've missed it so much.” he’ll coo, his emerald gaze admiring your glistening folds that have spread with his fingers. the way your cunt throbbed under the lightest of touch, begging to be filled made him grow hard. “Missed you too.” you mutter, hazily bucking your hips against his touch.

“I know.  I know.” he reassures you, giving into your silent  demands, he continues toying with you, pushing his fingers past your folds,his finger strokes at your clit. “bet that boyfriend of yours didn't know how to take care of this needy little cunt, did he.” your juices now coating his fingers, he pounds you with them, earning a symphony of moans from your lips.  “not like i do..” he says, the satisfaction of you being so reactive to his touch bringing a smile to his face, your back arching as his movements become overwhelming for you. He soon pulls out his fingers and replaces them with his cock, that had been aching to be inside of you for far too long.

He pushes one of your legs outward, granting him more access to your sweet hole, He pushes deeper inside of you all self control leaving his body the moment he hears you cry out for him, tears welling in your eyes from pleasure as he fucks into you. “So pretty, gonna fill you up with my cum.” he groans,the moment he feels you clenching around his cock, your thighs trembling. He threw his head back as he rubs his thumb across your bottom lip, admiring you in such a state.

“Eren, you can't!” You shriek, his fingers gripping at your hips harshly. He continues fucking you hard and deep, his hips smashing against your own. “cant cum inside you?” he’ll question. he continues to pound you, this is his way of letting you know he has no intention of pulling out.

“but i thought you were sorry? I thought you were mine?”There is a heartbroken tone in his voice as he speaks to you, hoping for you to reassure him you meant the words you'd spoken earlier.  You were left feeling guilty for even thinking you should have denied him. after everything you’d already done to hurt him. You had said you would make it up to and part of that required doing as he wanted.  “I am!”

“shut up and take my cum then, you said you’re mine. gotta prove it. this pussy is mine too, right baby?” you nodded in agreement, tellinf him whatever he needed to hear to keep fucking you so good, muttering the best “mhm, i love you so so much!”  you could muster while being overtaken by your orgasm as eren came inside of you, the creamy liquid dripping out of you and down your thighs. “You're not going anywhere, not now, not ever, I won't let you.” 

 Eren, Who was responsible for it all, and had developed a plan for each failed talking stage you had. since leaving him and most importantly the breakup due to your boyfriend cheating– from his actions of  intimidating them into leaving you alone with threats of physical attacks or the videos he sent them of him devouring your cunt, while you cried out his name, your fingers tugging at his brunette strands of hair. A video which had been recorded so long ago when the two of you were still together, but the idiot, who you had made the mistake of calling a boyfriend,  hadn't even bothered to verify that your nails hadn't been any color you had been since you'd meeting him. perhaps, he simply didn't care enough. it was of no big importance to eren either way, in his eyes the fool wasn't deserving of you. Just as eren believed to be the case since the beginning, he was the only one who’d love you the way you deserved and for this reason he was never going anywhere.  

here’s my masterlist