#spy line tracker

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/#robo-boss

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en

The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app. That IBM slide is right: turning an app into your boss allows your actual boss to create an "accountability sink" in which there is no obvious way to blame a human or even a company for your maltreatment:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

App-based management-by-bossware treats the bug identified by the unknown author of that IBM slide into a feature. When an app is your boss, it can force you to scab:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

Or it can steal your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But tech giveth and tech taketh away. Digital technology is infinitely flexible: the program that spies on you can be defeated by another program that defeats spying. Every time your algorithmic boss hacks you, you can hack your boss back:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Technologists and labor organizers need one another. Even the most precarious and abused workers can team up with hackers to disenshittify their robo-bosses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For every abuse technology brings to the workplace, there is a liberating use of technology that workers unleash by seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

One tech-savvy group on the cutting edge of dismantling the Torment Nexus is Algorithms Exposed, a tiny, scrappy group of EU hacker/academics who recruit volunteers to reverse engineer and modify the algorithms that rule our lives as workers and as customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Algorithms Exposed have an admirable supply of seemingly boundless energy. Every time I check in with them, I learn that they've spun out yet another special-purpose subgroup. Today, I learned about Reversing Works, a hacking team that reverse engineers gig work apps, revealing corporate wrongdoing that leads to multimillion euro fines for especially sleazy companies.

One such company is Foodinho, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish food delivery company Glovo. Foodinho/Glovo has been in the crosshairs of Italian labor enforcers since before the pandemic, racking up millions in fines – first for failing to file the proper privacy paperwork disclosing the nature of the data processing in the app that Foodinho riders use to book jobs. Then, after the Italian data commission investigated Foodinho, the company attracted new, much larger fines for its out-of-control surveillance conduct.

As all of this was underway, Reversing Works was conducting its own research into Glovo/Foodinho's app, running it on a simulated Android handset inside a PC so they could peer into app's data collection and processing. They discovered a nightmarish world of pervasive, illegal worker surveillance, and published their findings a year ago in November, 2023:

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Exercising%20workers%20rights%20in%20algorithmic%20management%20systems_Lessons%20learned%20from%20the%20Glovo-Foodinho%20digital%20labour%20platform%20case_2023.pdf

That report reveals all kinds of extremely illegal behavior. Glovo/Foodinho makes its riders' data accessible across national borders, so Glovo managers outside of Italy can access fine-grained surveillance information and sensitive personal information – a major data protection no-no.

Worse, Glovo's app embeds trackers from a huge number of other tech platforms (for chat, analytics, and more), making it impossible for the company to account for all the ways that its riders' data is collected – again, a requirement under Italian and EU data protection law.

All this data collection continues even when riders have clocked out for the day – its as though your boss followed you home after quitting time and spied on you.

The research also revealed evidence of a secretive worker scoring system that ranked workers based on undisclosed criteria and reserved the best jobs for workers with high scores. This kind of thing is pervasive in algorithmic management, from gig work to Youtube and Tiktok, where performers' videos are routinely suppressed because they crossed some undisclosed line. When an app is your boss, your every paycheck is docked because you violated a policy you're not allowed to know about, because if you knew why your boss was giving you shitty jobs, or refusing to show the video you spent thousands of dollars making to the subscribers who asked to see it, then maybe you could figure out how to keep your boss from detecting your rulebreaking next time.

All this data-collection and processing is bad enough, but what makes it all a thousand times worse is Glovo's data retention policy – they're storing this data on their workers for four years after the worker leaves their employ. That means that mountains of sensitive, potentially ruinous data on gig workers is just lying around, waiting to be stolen by the next hacker that breaks into the company's servers.

Reversing Works's report made quite a splash. A year after its publication, the Italian data protection agency fined Glovo another 5 million euros and ordered them to cut this shit out:

https://reversing.works/posts/2024/11/press-release-reversing.works-investigation-exposes-glovos-data-privacy-violations-marking-a-milestone-for-worker-rights-and-technology-accountability/

As the report points out, Italy is extremely well set up to defend workers' rights from this kind of bossware abuse. Not only do Italian enforcers have all the privacy tools created by the GDPR, the EU's flagship privacy regulation – they also have the benefit of Italy's 1970 Workers' Statute. The Workers Statute is a visionary piece of legislation that protects workers from automated management practices. Combined with later privacy regulation, it gave Italy's data regulators sweeping powers to defend Italian workers, like Glovo's riders.

Italy is also a leader in recognizing gig workers as de facto employees, despite the tissue-thin pretense that adding an app to your employment means that you aren't entitled to any labor protections. In the case of Glovo, the fine-grained surveillance and reputation scoring were deemed proof that Glovo was employer to its riders.

Reversing Works' report is a fascinating read, especially the sections detailing how the researchers recruited a Glovo rider who allowed them to log in to Glovo's platform on their account.

As Reversing Works points out, this bottom-up approach – where apps are subjected to technical analysis – has real potential for labor organizations seeking to protect workers. Their report established multiple grounds on which a union could seek to hold an abusive employer to account.

But this bottom-up approach also holds out the potential for developing direct-action tools that let workers flex their power, by modifying apps, or coordinating their actions to wring concessions out of their bosses.

After all, the whole reason for the gig economy is to slash wage-bills, by transforming workers into contractors, and by eliminating managers in favor of algorithms. This leaves companies extremely vulnerable, because when workers come together to exercise power, their employer can't rely on middle managers to pressure workers, deal with irate customers, or step in to fill the gap themselves:

https://projects.itforchange.net/state-of-big-tech/changing-dynamics-of-labor-and-capital/

Only by seizing the means of computation, workers and organized labor can turn the tables on bossware – both by directly altering the conditions of their employment, and by producing the evidence and tools that regulators can use to force employers to make those alterations permanent.

Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png

CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[yumeka-sxf]

2-year anniversary post

My blog is now 2-years old~!

After my last anniversary post, I had quite a list of projects planned; in addition to making posts for all the upcoming SxF content, like the movie, season 2, and the video game, I had other personal projects in mind as well. I wanted to start on my Japanese Linguistic Observations in Spy x Family series, which I was able to write five posts for as of now! (I've currently exhausted all the topics I wanted to discuss for that, but I may come up with more ideas later on). There was also the Spy x Family Character Tracker, which took me a while to get motivated to do, but once I did, I'm proud of how it turned out 😃 I also made a lot of scan posts this year too, like the workbooks and my series of miscellaneous collab scans.

But compared to my last anniversary, which was at a time when there was a lot of new SxF content on the horizon, we've been in a bit of a dry spell the past several months. Hype for the aforementioned movie, game, and anime season have died down, and merch and collabs have slowed as well, since there hasn't been new anime content to promote. But I consider it the calm before the storm, lol.

This is also why my posts have gotten a little less frequent lately - there hasn't been as much new SxF content in general besides the manga chapters, and as mentioned previously, I was able to check off the projects I had wanted to do. So as of now, I don't have much new content planned in the coming year besides continuing my Chronological Analysis on Twilight and Yor series when season 3 airs (still no release date yet, but I'm betting on spring of 2025). I'll also make posts for each anime episode like I did with season 2. And of course, I'll continue my manga chapter reviews, and make merch and scan posts when I can.

I've always tried to maintain a "quality over quantity," "only write when I have something to say," mentality for the blog. I don't want to force myself to write when I'm not motivated (this is also why I don't take part in community writing projects and the like). I also have other hobbies besides SxF, so I like to focus my limited free time on those when there isn't much going on in the SxF fandom. Occasionally I think to myself, "Hm, I haven't posted on Tumblr in a while," but if there isn't anything I feel like writing about at the time, it's better if I hold off rather than force myself to churn out something uninspiring.

But as I said, I feel like we're in a calm before the storm. Season 3 will already be exciting enough, but there's a good chance more content will follow. The next Jump Festa is scheduled for late December, and as usual, SxF will have a dedicated panel with the four Forger voice actors in attendance!

The movie and season 2 were announced at this event in 2022, so there's a good chance we'll get more juicy announcements this year! Even if not another movie, I'd be happy with more artbooks, collabs, and other things down the line! There's also a good chance an idea for another SxF project will inspire me and I'll start working on that. Who knows. But I do know SxF is still a popular series with many more years of content to produce! And I look forward to seeing, and blogging about, it all 😁

[phoebepheebsphibs]

Double-Mutated Mikey

Chapter 40: Biofilm

Continued from the short story written by @boots-with-the-fur-club

Prev || Next

Donatello races down the hallway, checking his trackers every few minutes to make sure everything is going smoothly with the others. After this is over, he's thinking of adding hidden cameras to their masks as well, so he can also see where they are, not just know their longitude and latitude. What good is knowing where a person is if you can't know what's going on?

Donnie started getting into the trackers phase when they'd first come up against the Foot Clan, and Raph had accidentally eaten a tracker meant for a salami paper stack. That had been the inspiration to start tagging his family. He'd installed the subdermal trackers sometime after then, working on different updates and methods of inserting them under the skin or under their shells when they weren't looking or conscious or aware or -- well, you get the idea.

But as time went on, he'd started thinking maybe adding a visual or audio aspect to the tracers was a good idea. It was starting to annoy him that his brothers and father would go places alone for long periods of time and he wouldn't know why or what was happening. Donnie would never consider himself 'clingy'. Or at least, he'd never admit that he was. Donnie was just... concerned for their well-being. And it always seemed like their well-being was coming into question whenever he was not with them. He should have added the video/audio feed to the trackers a long time ago.

He'd have known what was taking Leo so long to get them back after they'd been portaled to Tahiti.

He'd have known what Leo and Papa were doing with Big Mama while they dealt with the Shredder.

He'd have known where the Shredder and the Foot Lieutenant and Foot Brute and Cassandra took Splinter and Barry when they attacked their old lair.

He'd have known what the Krang were doing with Raphael when he was captured.

He'd have known what happened to Leo in the Prison Dimension.

He'd have known about Mikey's captivity and recapture.

He'd have known how to be the genius they all needed him to be.

He'd have known how to be a better brother...

Donnie swallows the thoughts and keeps on moving. He turns a corner and sees a strange laboratory, filled with machines and mechanisms and lasers and weird gadgets that Donnie would be more than happy to take home with him... But it also has what looks like a few medical devices stored in there as well. A CT scanner, an X-ray machine, other devices that Donatello recognizes from science-fiction films and spy movies that definitely won't be found in any normal hospital.

This looks like the kind of place that a man specialized in engineering and robotics would be hiding in...

Donnie sneaks over to the room, not caring about dodging cameras. The building's been evacuated, and even if it hadn't been, everybody already knows that they're here.

The door was left open by a careless employee trying to leave in a hurry. Perfect! Donnie's ninpo can create all kinds of stuff, but making small items to hack into things like security systems takes a lot of brainpower. And -- you didn't hear it from him -- it's difficult. His ninpo works like his mind, building the items piece by piece, engineering the weapons or defense mechs however he sees it in his head. And while he is a genius, even geniuses have trouble keeping track of hundreds of thousands of lines of programming. Even a small item like the USB flash drive he gave April earlier would take a lot of internal interfacing and coding... it's exhausting. But not impossible.

But fortunately, it isn't necessary.

Donatello sneaks in cautiously. It's strange how the room is a Frankenstein mashup between a doctor's office and a robotics lab. Secretly, Donnie is taking mental notes on how to incorporate some of these ideas and designs into his own lab.

There are desks covered with tools and blueprints. Cabinets with vials and liters of mysterious multi-coloured liquids. Tables with a few unpacked boxes stuffed with strange items and labels scribbled messily onto the cardboard. On one said table is a crate. Poking out of said crate, Donatello can see a wooden staff with purple wraps, two familiar blue hilts for what he can assume are twin katanas, and the edges of a battleshell.

"Our stuff!" he whispers to himself. They definitely need to get those back...

Donnie rushes to the box and starts rummaging through it. Yep, it's all here... Dee's gear, Leo's swords, Raph's sai. He reaches in and retrieves the weapons, looking them over for anything like tags or trackers that the TCRI or EPF would have placed on them. They look fine...

"My goggles!" Dee cheers, grabbing them quickly and placing them over his eyes to inspect the software. "Oh, thank God they didn't mess with my babies..."

"Don't thank Him just yet!" a voice cries out from behind him.

Donnie yipes before ducking, narrowly avoiding a swing from a madman behind him. He doesn't look like a guard, but instead wears a standard white lab coat. His hair is wild and unkempt, dark eyebags sag on his face, his chin is stubbled with untended scruff. By the looks of it, his only diet is caffeine and the suffering of others. He must be a scientist, then. His voice sounds familiar; Donnie's sure he's seen or heard him before...

"You were on the video files from the previous building!" he realizes, quickly grabbing his bō from the box and readying himself. "You made Mikey fight monsters in the Interaction room..."

"I see someone's been doing some research!" the man chuckles, his eyes wide and firey. "I'm flattered you recognized me. The name's Dr. Rod Timothy, not that you'll have much of a mind to recall that after I finish with you!!"

Donnie dodges as Dr. Timothy grabs a futuristic weapon from the table and fires it at him. Burning red blasts of light fly through the air. Dee ducks quickly, jumping to the side as he tries to come up with a weapon of his own. His mind always goes straight to the extreme -- 'go big or go home,' 'more bang for your buck', etc. Typically, the villains he fights are durable and super-strong mutants, they require bigger weapons like missiles and giant drills or hammers, etc. Humans are small, easy to break, but fierce and determined. They're harder to gauge, and Donnie has to search his mind for a weapon he can use against him without actually causing too much damage. Not just to the human, but also to the building itself. So missiles are off the menu.

Donnie's palm fills with parts and pieces that instantly grow together and attach in method and order, creating a mini grenade. He taps a button and sends the round object flying towards the scientist. It lands just a few feet in front of him and -- BOOM -- the flash grenade goes off, blinding the man as Dee uses his goggles to guide him through the room and find a place to hide.

"AGH!" Timothy screams, covering his watering eyes as he staggers around. "Y-you... you see, this is exactly why I was hoping you'd come here..."

Donnie peeks out from behind a giant scanner, watching as the mad scientist stumbles around chuckling.

"You creatures always have such a strange tolerance... it's superhuman...!"

The man looks up and looks around, pupils dilating like crazy as he frantically flails his arms and hands, feeling for something.

"And soon, I will be too..."

He really is insane, Donnie thinks to himself.

"If you're so keen on mutants, why'd you experiment on my brother?!" Donnie snarls.

Dr. Timothy reels around and stares blindly in Dee's direction, trying to listen as Donnie ninjas away to a new location to watch Timothy... and lure him into a trap.

"Oh, yes," Timothy laughs, the tears from his watering eyes streaming down his face. "You're brother was loads of fun. I enjoyed our little exercises and examinations thoroughly... Such a fun little plaything, a wonderful puzzle to take apart and put back together."

"Anyone ever tell you to get psychiatric help?" Donnie growls.

"More often than you'd think," Timothy cackles. "But they don't see the necessity of my methods! The vision! They're all sniveling, spineless, mindless plebeians who cannot understand the future..."

"What future is that?" Donnie asks, purposefully directing the man towards the far back of the room.

"Oh, one that you'd approve of!" Timothy laughs, blinking quickly, eyes darting back and forth. "A future free of humans. A future of mutants."

"What are you talking about?" Donnie asks, genuinely confused. "Chaplin wants to eradicate the mutants, why --"

"Oh, he's nothing more than a COWARD!!" Timothy bellows, fist pounding on the side of the table and sending small items flying. "He's a pathetic hatemonger who can't see that the only way for humanity to advance is to literally advance as a species and evolve! He thinks that what we need is to take out the competition!"

Dr. Timothy smiles so wide, his face contorts as though it's made of flabby plastic.

"I say we need to switch flags."

Donnie purposely knocks over small rolling cart of supplies, causing Dr. Timothy to stagger towards the sound.

"Chaplin is a visionary, though. And a golden goose. I never would have been able to pursue my research without his funding..."

"Well, the golden goose won't be laying anymore eggs for you psychopaths," Donnie huffs. "Chaplin's dead."

Timothy grunts at the news. Donnie can't tell if he's laughing, or making strange sad noises. The deranged fiend turns to stare blankly at the table, almost wistfully, reminiscing his fellow evil scientist.

"Well... he was a very significant man. Powerful, resourceful, determined... but I can't say that I'm not a little glad that he's gone."

"Oh?" Donnie chuckles. "No love lost between coworkers?"

"I had respect for the man, it's true," Timothy grumbles, reaching across the table strewn with supplies as he feels his way around. His fingers curl over a few of the objects laid before him as he moves forwards. "But his values and ideals were misguided and foolish. Only the strong come out on top."

"I'd like to think the smart ones have a pretty good chance, too..." Donnie remarks, stepping into a side room and waiting for Dr. Timothy to tag along.

"Oh, I agree!" he laughs, following Donnie's voice into the dark room. "Which is why I hate to see you die."

Timothy grips one of the items pulled from the table and clicks a button. A long laser-weapon activates, and he laughs as he runs in after the softshell.

"Nice sword-axe-laser-combo," Donnie smirks. "Where'd you get it? Hollywood Studios in Florida?"

"Do you like it?" Dr. Timothy grins sarcastically. "It's just one of the few things I thought to bring with me for this climactic stand-off..."

He presses a button and the door behind him slams shut with a mechanical hiss. Dr. Rod Timothy brandishes the weapon casually at the mutant teen who cooly holds his bō staff out at the man as well, ready for a duel.

"Does this room look familiar?" Timothy cackles. "If you really did the research, then it should. It's the same as the one your sweet little science experiment of a sibling was made to fight in! Only right we made another one for the experiments to follow... And I can't wait to see what happens to you in it."

Donatello smiles.

"You want me to fight you? The same way you made my baby brother fight your mutant monsters?"

"Oh, you can fight one of my monsters too if you want!" Timothy shrieks with laughter, holding up a small remote control. "With a push of a button, they can come pouring in. But for now, I want to see what you can do. See what parts of you to keep and what to... scrap."

Donnie sneers.

"So this is an assessment, then."

"I suppose so," Dr. Timothy shrugs. "But we'll see who wins."

Timothy charges, laser weapon at the ready. Donatello grips his bō staff and swings it, blocking Timothy's attack. A purple shield forms and pushes him back. Timothy grunts with effort as his feet skid across the tiles. He laughs hysterically, eyes growing ever wider.

He charges again, swinging the battleaxe around before striking again. Donnie's battleshell opens up and reveals a small jetpack, which takes him up into the air. He launches over Timothy and lands behind him, clicking a hidden button on the shoulder pad and activating a wire that wraps around the mad scientist. Dee launches again and prepares to strap the man from the ceiling and literally leave him hanging.

Dr. Timothy squirms about and manages to pull an arm out, fumbling with the laser device and cutting the line. As Timothy freefalls, Donnie's jetpack crashes him into the ceiling as it attempts and fails to compensate for the sudden loss of weight. Timothy pulls another device he'd taken from the table and points it at Donnie. A small gun, almost like a pistol, which fires out a sudden blue blast at Dee's jetpack. The rotors freeze, ice covers the exhaust ports, and the whole jetpack itself malfunctions and sends Dee crashing to the ground.

"Your brother showed a severe aversion to cold, so in order to keep him in line we created a series of ice-generating weapons like this handy little prototype," Timothy boasts, twirling the pistol around like it's a toy.

Donnie growls in fury. Timothy fires a few more shots, blasting the turtle in the arm and leg as he tries to get back up from the fall. Donnie yells in pain as his limbs suffer from ice burn and start to turn red and swollen from the cold blasts. Shards of frost and ice crystals form on the skin. Donnie gasps from the pain and starts rubbing his limbs, careful not to let the injuries turn into frostbite. Timothy fires another shot, but this time Donnie is careful to dodge it, jumping out of the way despite the pain. Timothy fires again. Dee swings his bō at the man, creating shield that blocks the blast. He swings again, dissolving the shield and reforming it to create a replica pistol that fires directly at the weapon, clogging the barrel of Timothy's gun with ice.

"That was good!" Timothy laughs, dropping the gun before his fingers freeze to the metal. "Nice deflection! And it's clear that I could not defeat you physically. Your mutant genetics must have enhanced your bone structure and muscle mass, yes?"

"That's one theory," Donnie snarks at him. "Or you could just be a weak old guy with a pathetic toy gun."

Dr. Timothy laughs again.

"I'm technically not old, I'm 36."

"That's old, dude."

"Kids these days..." Dr. Timothy sighs. "If brawn cannot win, then perhaps brains shall..."

Dr. Timothy starts clicking buttons on the remote, setting off a few movement-tracking firearms. Donnie recognizes the sleek black metal machine guns from some of Mikey's recorded sessions in the Interaction Room. Dee creates another shield and avoids the torrent of bullets and darts that fly as Dr. Timothy advances again.

"Let's see how you fare against two threats at once!"

Donnie ducks back, hand and staff flying forward as he thinks up a quick weapon to make for his defense. A purple ninpo hologram forms over the wood, creating an imitation of his old tech-bo. A giant mechanical fist ignites at one end, and Dr. Timothy and Donatello exchange blow for blow, guarding and attacking as the two simultaneously dodge bullets from above.

"Where do you come up with these weapon ideas? Jupiter Jim's 19th Return to the Moon?"

"Two distractions at once, and he still finds the mental capacity for a rib!" Timothy laughs. "I should spar with my creations more often..."

"I am not your creation!" Donnie yells. "AND NEITHER IS MY BROTHER!!!"

Donnie suddenly snaps, kicking Dr. Timothy in the chest and sending him back into the wall. Timothy's weapon knocked from his hand, Donnie grabs it and flings the laser cutter towards the turrets, tearing them in half and destroying them completely.

"Very well done!" Timothy chuckles nervously, as he half-struggles to get up. "Well done indeed! You are quite the adversary. But, I would wonder how well you'd fare after I become one of YOU!"

Donnie watches in confusion as the scientist pulls a syringe from his pocket. It's glowing green.

"This is a mutation formula that I've reverse-engineered from some samples I found over the years. Your brother is one of them, true... but the majority of the formula comes from a few mosquitos we found buzzing around..."

"Draxum's ooze," Donnie gapes, his voice a horrified hush. "You're going to mutate yourself?!"

"It's about time I evolved into the higher species!" Timothy cackles madly, his mind fully gone. "And now with Chaplin out of the way, there's no stopping me!!"

"Wait!" Donnie tries to warn. "You don't know what that will do to you!!"

"I know exactly what will happen!" Timothy screams back. "I will finally be the apex predator!! Now watch as I become a random creature of mass destruction!!"

Timothy stabs the syringe into his arm, the re-created ooze seeping into his veins.

"Random?" Donnie questions. "No, you'll just turn into the last biological organism you came into contact with."

"Wait, what?" Timothy questions, sobering for one second. "What do you mean, the last thing biological organism?"

"The ooze combines your DNA with that of whatever you touched last. Didn't you know that?"

"No! How would I know that?!" Timothy screeches, gripping his sides in pain as the ooze starts to recreate him.

"Looks like somebody didn't do their homework after all..."

"What am I going to become?!" Timothy shrieks, his whole frame shaking.

"Well, what did you touch last?"

"YOU!"

"No, you never actually touched me," Donnie clarifies. "You're wearing gloves, and your weapons hit mine, but we never came into actual contact -- details matter in science, you know..."

"W-WHAT'S HAPPENING TO M-M-MEEEEEE?!?!" Timothy screams, his voice fluctuating and gargling as he begins to sweat profusely.

It's not sweat.

His skin is melting.

Donnie watches with a sickened expression as Dr. Timothy's body begins to turn into a sludge, the skin tone changing into a slimy fungus-green, every part of him slowly dissolving and gooping together in a way that turns Donnie's stomach. He looks away, and forces himself to keep away even as the man screams and pleads for mercy and help. His voice is literally drowned out as his vocal chords liquify along with the rest of him.

It goes quiet. Donnie shakily turns to see what has become of the poor deranged man. Nothing remains but a puddle of gelatinous ooze wobbling on the floor several feet ahead of him.

"L-looks like your reverse-engineered formula wasn't complete," Donnie gulps. "Or maybe the ooze really did transform you into the last thing you touched... which would have been the ooze itself. Whatever the solution, I'm not going to stick around for --"

A gurgling scream tears the room apart, as the gelatinous blob starts moving, shifting, and reforming into a sloppy mess of a man.

"Lₒₒₖ wₕₐₜ yₒᵤ'ᵥₑ dₒₙₑ ₜₒ ₘe!" Timothy shrieks, his voice a wobbly, watery mess as he slowly pulls himself together. "I wₐₛ mₑₐₙt ₜₒ ᵇe ₐ fᵢₑᵣcₑ ₘᵤₜaₙt! Nₒₜ ₐ ᵇₗᵤbᵇeᵣᵢₙg … ₜhᵢₙg!!"

The newly transformed Timothy charges at Donnie, his arm elongating and stretching like those slappy hand things Mikey was obsessed with at the age of six. Donnie dodges it at the last second, the hand slinging across the room and sticking to a panel on the wall. It rips the panel straight off, revealing a section of machinery hidden behind it.

"Whoah!" Donnie yells, dodging once again as the arm comes slinging back.

"I dᵢdₙ'ₜ wₐₙₜ ₜhiₛ!" Timothy screeches as he continues his tantrum. "I wₐₛ sᵤpₚₒₛₑd ₜₒ bₑ ₜₕₑ ₐₚeₓ ₚᵣₑdₐₜₒᵣ, ₙoₜ ₛₒₘe ₚₐₜₕₑₜᵢc ₛₗᵤdgₑ fᵣₒₘ ₜₕₑ ᵇoᵗₜₒₘ ₒf ᵗₕₑ fₒₒd cₕaᵢₙ! ᴺᵒᵗ a gˡoʳⁱᶠᵢₑᵈ aₘebₐ! ₙₒₜ ₐ Lᵢvᵢₙg Wₐₗₖᵢₙg MUD PUDDLE!!"

Timothy's body morphs again, his form splattering in twenty different directions and splashing onto several frames and tiles from the walls, ceiling, and floor. He pulls them apart, releasing a robotic arm that reaches down and attempts to attack the two of them. Donnie slides to the side and avoids the robo-arm. Dr. Timothy's tentacle releases from a section of the wall and accidentally tangles around the mechanism, getting stuck inside the gears and causing it to malfunction. The arm swings back and forth, trying to catch Donnie or Dr. Timothy before becoming hopelessly trapped in the glue-like goo that the scientist has become.

"Wₕₐₜ ₕₐᵥₑ yₒᵤ ᵈᵒₙₑ! ᵂₕₐₜ ₕᵃᵛe yoᵤ dₒₙe! Wₕₐₜ ₕₐᵥₑ yᵒu ᵈoₙₑ!" Timothy wails as he flails about the room.

His arms knock loose the devices hanging from the ceiling. They come crashing down, splatting Timothy flat and trapping him momentarily.

"Sorry doc, but this was all you," Donnie states, dodging one of the slimy appendages before tuck and rolling towards the door. "And no offense, but I've had enough slimy tentacle-induced sensory issues for one year, so I'll just see myself out..."

"Yᵒᵤ ₕₐᵥₑ ₜo ₕeˡᵖ ₘₑ!" Timothy screams, reaching out for the ninja in desperation.

"There's nothing I can do for you now, Tim," Donnie scoffs as he picks up the remote from the floor, avoiding Timothy's sludge and slime. "You wanted to be a mutant, so now you're a mutant. Congrats, welcome to the family."

Donnie stares down at the remote and all the little buttons it comes equipped with. He presses one, and the door opens.

"But don't worry. After everything you did to my brother, I won't just leave you here alone to rot..."

Donnie turns to face the mutant man, and gives him a cold smile before pressing every button on the remote.

"You said something about 'monsters flooding in at the push of a button,' right?" Donnie asks, his smile becoming almost like a snarl. "How about I leave you with some company?"

Every trapdoor in the room opens up, and hundreds of glowing red eyes appear from the darkness. The sounds of snarling and growling and howling and yowling starts to fill the enclosure.

"ᴺᵒ… ʸᵒᵘ caₙ'ₜ ₗₑₐᵥₑ ₘe ₗiₖₑ ₜₕiˢ!" Dr. Timothy begs.

"You said you wanted to be a mutant," Donnie sighs, clicking the button to close the door. "You can chill with your own kind now. See how long you last."

"Nᴺᴼ0oₒo0Oᴼ--!!!"

The doors close just as the monsters creep in and pounce for the slime man.

Donnie blinks for a moment before exhaling loudly.

"...Karma... is absolutely insane."

Prev || Next

[loudblonde]

"A Pretty Bird in a Gilded Cage" John Price x Male Reader

summary: (Y/N) Price, aka Birdie, an ex-MI6 intelligence officer turned spy on British soil gets kidnapped by Makarov's men, all his life falls apart as Makarov has him tortured simply to get revenge on his husband.

warnings: torture, violence, allusion to rape(throw away line it doesn't actually happen,) angst with a happy ending

word count: 2,2K

December 10th, the room was freezing cold and damp, water dripped down the walls as mildew and mould alike grew in the corners, being in this abandoned hellhole was sure to make anyone sick. (Y/N) tested the bonds on the wooden plank he was tied to, they were not giving away enough leeway for them to have underestimated him though he didn’t have a guard on him so they obviously only knew the official story. Retired and injured intelligence officer.

Many people meeting (Y/N) for the first time formed 3 opinions, that he was handsome, that he was capable and that he had Captain John Price fully wrapped around his finger. It was no secret that the not-very-hidden, retired intelligence officer for MI6, was the proud and semi-supportive husband of Captain John Price.

Many people around base knew him as “The Only Man Capable of Making the Captain Relax” or rather, househusband, though what many people, including John Price himself, didn’t know, is that (Y/N) is not retired, he is still very much so active, just not in MI6, instead he works close to the ground as a priced horse, waiting to get kidnapped which had happened two times while Price was away, after all, he had many enemies.

Footsteps could be heard coming down the stairway, and the light bulb hanging a meter from his face turned on, blinding him. By the sound of it, 4 people entered the room, 3 heavy sets with boots on, probably soldiers the size of Simon, if not a little smaller, and one person wearing business shoes. (Y/N) turned his head and looked at them through squinted eyes. “Whatever you want, I won’t give it to you,” He said.

(Y/N) sighed in his restraints, clearly, he was going to be here for a while. There was no window that hadn’t been painted over, letting no light in, it was hard to tell what was day and night but he hadn’t been here for long, he had counted 9 hours so far.

Laswell had either yet to notice the tracker being activated or she was in the middle of an operation that required her focus. (Y/N) didn’t doubt that last one, he knew John was on a mission away, he probably wouldn’t be home for another month or so, maybe more.

“Oh, we aren’t the ones with questions, Birdie.” The man’s heavy Russian accent spilt through, causing (Y/N) to roll his eyes. “But we are here to pretty you up for the pictures we are about to take, your husband will want to know what you look like.” (Y/N) felt a fist hit his stomach, and all the air was knocked out of his lungs, he gasped for breath at the same time a wet cloth was thrown over his face followed by water. “We were told to be… creative with the prettying.”

December 11th, everything was sore, bruised and bloodied. His whole body hurt and he was pretty certain he didn’t have any internal bleeding. He was left alone, his stomach growled for food but he held on.

December 15th, he finally got food, but they were on a jet someplace, they didn’t speak to him the entire time. Everything still hurt but he managed to keep calm. Laswell crackled to life in his ear. “Are you alive?”

(Y/N) grunted out once, meaning yes.

“Good, when you land, gather information, we are already decrypting everything the linefeed is sending over.” She said, her voice was a comforting niceness in the last few horrific days of torture. The com crackled again, signalling she had left.

December 18th, a cold and barren winter morning in the middle of the Siberian taiga forest, in one shitty run-down cold shack, (Y/N) was sitting tied to a chair just waiting for his captors to return, he needed to get information out of them, it would ultimately help his husbands team, these were their enemies.

An icy wind was tearing through the shack, threatening frost burnt appendages and pneumonia. The silence of the forest was torn apart by the sound of a helicopter above them. It landed, whipping wind against the shack, like the big bad wolf blowing down the house of the pigs, (Y/N) wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay without risking his husband finding out.

Makarov was a true scumbag. (Y/N) knew in his heart that he wouldn’t hesitate to dispose of (Y/N) as soon as he was bored off him or he had had his fun. (Y/N) didn’t like either of those options. (Y/N) spit down at Makarov’s shoes though it seemed to only further the man's twisted amusement.

The door opened with a creak, it shuttered against the wall, the wood groaned and the metal creaked further. (Y/N) shivered at the frost-ridden air that entered, each set of feet crunching the snow that had blown into the shack through the cracks of the wood. His hood was ripped off, alongside some hair and (Y/N) stood face to face with Vladimir Makarov.

(Y/N) raised an eyebrow, unimpressed with the dramatic entrance of the man. “Doing your dirty work all by yourself?” He knew that he should be scared but he didn’t want a man such as Makarov to see his fear.

“For one such as you, yes.” Makarov grabbed (Y/N)’s face and tilted it painfully up, the bones in his neck groaned and the muscles were pulled dangerously taunt, one quick knife and (Y/N) would be dead. “A pretty songbird in a gilded cage. You have such potential and yet… you fail to use it in any way. You were a world-class intelligence officer and now you are but an ant beneath my boot. Your husband has already noticed that you are here when he and his team rush here…” Makarov smirked.

“You plan on killing them in a trap? Use me as bait, that is cruel even for you.” (Y/N) growled out, he let fake hot anger rise up just enough to heat his skin. “You bastard!” (Y/N) hadn’t been sent undercover as many times as he had, without picking up a thing or two. Tears of disbelief and anger welled in his eyes and froze against his skin as they spilt. Shards of ice fell into his lap.

(Y/N) frowned, he needed to get out, these people were dangerous enough as is, they shouldn’t have a hostage for any more than needed. (Y/N) already had gained as much information from simply being close to them, all agents like him had a device embedded under the skin for long-distance download, it wasn’t the safest of experimental devices but (Y/N) was more than ready to do what he needed to do in order to keep the world safe, much like his husband he was no stranger to war crimes.

Makarov chuckled darkly and shook his head. “No, I plan on breaking your mind after they are dead, there is nothing better than having a pretty bird by my side. It would be the biggest disappointment to the Price legacy.”

He let go of his face, leaving behind red marks that would undoubtedly create bruises, it would be hard but not impossible to hide from Price. Makarov took one last look at him and walked outside the shack, a sickening smirk on his face the entire time. He slammed the door with enough brute force to make it hard to open it, the door locked in place.

A small voice in his ear crackled to light. “Need rescue?” It was Laswell’s voice. (Y/N) whispered a no close to his chest and leaned back in his restraints, the sound of a helicopter flying away signalled that Makarov went away again. (Y/N) counted every second until an hour went by, being sure to prepare himself enough. “Don’t attract attention when you leave, we don’t want them chasing you. We are trying to find an extraction point.”

(Y/N) undid the handcuffs with ease, getting out wasn’t as hard as one would think and untied himself. He glanced around outside the windows before snaking his way under the wood in the back. He escaped into the forest safely and didn’t stop running for an hour.

His lungs were on fire, and everything was bruised, beaten and hurt, he was expecting to at least come out of this with hypothermia and that was if he was lucky.

“Laswell, do I have an extraction point?”

“Yes.” A voice cackled in his ear, a much deeper voice that didn’t belong to a woman he considered his sister. It was Price. (Y/N) sighed with a groan. “Two more miles and we are ready to pick you up.” Price sounded pissed though also worried.

“Hello dear.” (Y/N) said, his voice wavering a bit. “I didn’t realise you were in the country.”

“I didn’t realise you have a habit of getting kidnapped in the middle of me being away on a mission.” Price said, considerably less angry.

(Y/N) held his ribs as he chuckled, it sent jabs of pain coursing through him, though he had had worse. “I try not to make it a habit but it’s hard when your husband has enemies. May as well take advantage of the fact I am capable of getting myself unkidnapped.” (Y/N) said as he made his way through the snow-filled area.

“Do you need a medic?” Price asked.

“Not immediately, I may have broken my ribs but other than that I hadn’t been tortured badly enough for me to be in any danger.” (Y/N) replied, his voice somewhat strained. “I can run without killing myself.”

“Yes, I saw that. When were you going to tell me that you hadn’t retired?” Price sounded hurt, clearly at the lack of trust.

(Y/N) sighed, his feet dragging in the snow. “Honey, you and I both know my security clearance will always be higher than yours, I was told to never tell anyone, not even you, ordered. Laswell is barely allowed to know and that is on the basis of her knowing you intimately.”

“Does this happen often?” He asked.

(Y/N) shook his head before realising his husband couldn’t see it. “No, not often. I think this is my third time. Though the hazard pay bump is to die for.” (Y/N) chuckled at his own joke, his husband didn’t.

“How much further?” Price asked, ignoring the dark joke, he was more worried about his husband surviving than laughing at a joke.

“A mile. I will contact you when I get near.” (Y/N) said and they both went silent.

A very brief reunion happened before John almost had an aneurysm. “We need a medic as soon as we land!” He said into a long-distance communicator. “Not hurt my ass!” He hauled (Y/N) into the yet and it took off. (Y/N) sighed in relief as he sank into comfortable seats.

“How long?” John asked as he brought over something to clean the cuts and blood away from him.

“Hm? What date is it?” (Y/N) asked, he was tired, starving and thirsty.

John sighed and started cleaning the wounds. “18th, but I meant, how long have you been doing this?”

“Ahhh, hmm, maybe 8 years now, since I recovered from my injury, mostly I just fuck around in Britain, spying on people there, making certain we aren’t going to succumb to infighting, fucking Tories are making my life a living hell though, all of them are so blatantly willing to become traitors if it meant keeping their wealth.” (Y/N) said. “But I was taken for 8 days this time. I don’t remember how much I have eaten.”

“We will get you checked over and then get you back on food… how have you been able to hide all of this from me?” John asked.

“Honestly, most of the time I am only there for 3 days, minimal torture and bruising, but without the support and with Laswell not present, I couldn’t risk escaping early on, they had no reason to kill me, Makarov wanted you dead and me as a glorified whore.”

John growled out in barely contained anger, his body tensed up at the thought of it. “I will kill him myself.”

(Y/N) placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you worry your head about it, I am back, safe and your mission is already to kill him.”

“My mission doesn’t matter when he attacks my husband-“ John started, “-who is a very accomplished field agent who despite his career-ending injury still managed to end up being a total badass and escape one of the most dangerous groups of international terrorists right now.” (Y/N) ended, making John smile softly.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, old man.”

It took a total of 5 days before (Y/N) was allowed to leave the medical ward and another 3 for his husband to stop fussing but (Y/N) fully knew that only happened because he had been called out on a mission and when John returned near dead, (Y/N) was now the one fussing over him and making sure he was healed up nicely after the whole Makarov situation.

While John stayed employed for several years after this, the two eventually both retired, including (Y/N) properly this time, to a small homestead in the Scottish countryside, close to where McTavish and Riley retired too but far enough away to have peace and quiet.

And in the end, their last remaining family members buried them side by side where they would forever rest.

The End. 

[sahisan]

just my silly random thoughts on how chuuya would be if he was a father and why he wouldn't want to be one as a chuuya kinnie and a person with generalized anxiety disorder. maybe ooc. tw for overprotection, excessive control, obsessive thoughts, anxiety.

please remember that i am not talking for the character, in this case chuuya, i'm just stating my thoughts on why it could be like this. i do not pretend for my thoughts to be taken as canon.

what i would like to start with is, of course, chuuya's line of work. he's a mafioso, an executive on top of that, and because of that, i think he would worry a bit too much about the people close to him, let alone his family and a kid. he'd lost more people that he'd ever want to that he loved, and thus, i think he would absolutely hate the idea of his own child being hurt, or worse—dying—the same way it happened to the people close to him in his past.

that's where i'd propose chuuya would absolutely be an overprotective typa dad: regular calls regarding his child's location if they go out, more simple calls to confirm they're alright, occasional texts about something random to see if they'll answer quick enough (will call if they don't (again, to know if everything's good)), maybe some location tracker(s) device in their phone/on their clothes etc. he would want to know and control. not because he's a stalker, but because he's worried.

the reason for the latter comes in next—worry, anxiety and obsessive thoughts. maybe i'm projecting, maybe, but i think chuuya wouldn't be able to calm his thoughts and shut them up like. ever. especially thoughts regarding his child. again, with his line of work, everything could happen: he'd always think of enemies or rivalry organizations spying on his kid/them both when they go out, sniping at his kid when he leaves for work (it would absolutely get worse tenfold with long overseas missions), and, yes, while he'd be prepared for all kinds of things (his car's windows would be tinted to the maximum, he'd have cameras all over the apartment complex where he lives and in the apartment itself, security guards at the door (maybe a sniper or two at the top of the building) and he'd personally invest in improving the complex security), chuuya would still think and the thoughts wouldn't be able to leave his head, because— he knows he'll never be able to control everything, and that's exactly what he hates the most. what if something will happen that he didn't predict? couldn't have predicted? could've predicted but forgot? the what if's would plague him day and night.

that also means no information about his work for his kid. none. chuuya would hide all the available documents around the apartment, take some more important ones with him, close the door to his home office with a key each time he'd leave for work, exit the room and close the door when receiving work calls, and would do everything in his power for them (the kid) to not know about literally anything regarding what he does. maybe he'd tell them when they're older, but not before 18-20 that's for sure. yes, it would be hard to keep all that away from them especially once they'd get older, but he would really only want the best for them and their safety.

all of the above may sound like i really am just projecting, but after reading some of chuuya's backstory and stuff, that's just how i personally see it so yup.

another point. absolutely only private schools/other private institutions for his kid. maybe even homeschooling, depending on whether they would be willing, but i think the homeschooling variant would fall off immediately because he would want the kid to actuay have friends and socialize and live a normal life (and then there's a little something in chuuya's mind, like his thoughts, telling him that, with a father like him, they wouldn't ever be able to live like a normal person). so that leaves only a private school. even like that, he would still spend hours with a laptop in his lap and a phone between his shoulder and his ear, picking out the best private school in all of the yokohama and personally calling them to assess everything to the smallest details. i think he'd even make a personal visit to the few he'd liked best and choose only after that. after choosing the one, there's a possibility chuuya would add/alter some rules after talking with the headmaster and the teachers to ensure that his kid's safety would be absolutely like, top-tier. no loopholes or concessions.

back to the "why he wouldn't want to be a father" point, i think chuuya would greatly understand that what he'd be like wouldn't be okay in the slightest, even more so, his work takes up almost all of his free time, and because of that he'd understand that he can't spend, like, almost any time with his kid, while a parent is supposed to be present in the child's life every moment. that's it.

[20dimensionsoftangerine]

The Bad Kids in my... Good Parents are Bad and Bad Parents are Good au

(I should really think of a shorter title)

Adaine "Addy" Abernant - Sweet child whose parents love her a whole lot. Being both rich and loved has made her a little naive about the world and she's very self conscious about being seen as dumb or a drag on her friends. Worse problem in her life is she's being stalked by this werewolf guy but she hasn't really told anyone about that because she wants to prove she can take care of herself.

Gorgug Thistlesprings - Was adopted by the Thistlesprings family but was seen as a pet project by all the gnomes who try to shape him into what they want and do not take kindly when he steps out of line and acts more orcish. Has been taught his rage is evil and monsterous and to always suppress it because of he doesn't no one will ever want to be around him. When he got arrested his parents took that as a sign he was a lost cause and moved back to Arborly without telling him. Currently lives with the Abernants.

Kristen Applebees - Rescued Tracker from a werewolf cult and brought her home. Parents were a little skeeved out about it and when Kristen moved on from the Helioic church to be in lesbians but of course werent going to kick out a child in need! After time getting to know Tracker and doing some reading and soul searching they have grown to accept Kristen for who she is and encourages her on her faith journey.

Fig (just Fig) - When her horns grew in Gilear instantly disowned her, packed his bags, and moved to Fallinel. Sandra Lynn insisted that everything would be fine and things could go back to normal if Fig would just do her little disguise trick and pretend to be a wood elf all the time. Disgusted, Fig ran away from home and started couch surfing with her friends until the Abernants offered her a semi permanent place to stay. Learned that her birth dad low-key wants to kill her so she can join him permanently in hell and is... Dealing with that news.

Fabian Aramais Seacaster - When Bill Seacaster said he was going to retire pirating to raise Fabian in Solace his entire crew said "yeah same". Seacaster Manor is chalk full of pirates from all walks of life dedicated to giving this boy the best childhood possible. This taught Fabian to always be a team player and think of how to best work and direct a group. He knows that friends are family. (A few of them are there undercover to try and sabotage Bill's legacy).

Riz Gukgak - Has been trained to be a spy since he was a boy. Pok wants his son to follow just in his footsteps and that means always on the hunt for the next mystery, never getting close to anyone, finding and keeping secrets. Sklonda also teaches him how to be a cop, shoot first ask questions later, be tough and never take disrespect from anyone. Very guarded and independent but his godmother tries to interject now and again with some actual good parenting advice.

[yanpotatowriter]

Then can you do Yandere Headcanons for Kidou,Gouenji,Afuro who fallen in love of a rival darling from a other soccer team

Kidou:

It depends on if we are talking about Taikoku Kidou or if we are talking about Raimon Kidou, because Taikoku Kidou will do everything in his power to make sure that he will beat his obsession in soccer and that their soccer cub gets forcefully disbanded after they lost to his team so that he could start to mess with their minds and get them to try and go to Taikoku so that they could join the soccer club there.

He will insult his obsession and really gets into their mind, saying that while they are weak now they could become more powerful and a force of nature if they just go ahead and join Teikoku and its soccer team, of course he does not mention that he wants them to join the team just so that he could keep an extra eye on them and figure out his feelings and his need for his obsessions approval and admiration.

Now Raimon Kidou will go about it in a more strategic yet friendlier way, by befriending their friends and trying to compliment their skills after a match.  Stating ways they could improve if they were to join Raimon but also if they don’t want to that he would not force them.  He does give them his contact info so that he could keep tabs on them and later down the line install trackers and spy apps through the messages on his obsessions phone so that he will be able to know more about his obsession without having to be glued at their side 24/7

Gouenji:

He does not know what to do with the information that he has fallen for a rival but soon comes to term with it, trying to seek them out to get contact information, stating that he wants to do a 1 v 1 because he is interested in their skills (and them as well, but he won’t outright state it.) 

He does often do things with his obsession stating them to be for another purpose while he is actually just using it to be around them and learn more about them without having to stalk them and hide in the shadows.

He will also try to get them to leave their club and join his instead, but he is someone who will accept a no and move on, or at least that is what he makes it seem like, as he will sometimes just mention something that happened at the club that is positive or light-hearted and never mentions it if something negative has happened as he wants his obsession to only have a positive view of Raimon.

Aphrodi:

Zeus Aphrodi will do everything in his power to get his obsession to quit playing soccer in their own team and to join the team of gods, stating how pitiful they are currently due to them being a mere mortal but how joining a team of gods will make them more powerful and is only beneficial towards them.

He cannot accept that he has a weakness that is not directly tied to his team so they better listen to him and join his soccer team already, it is really not that hard of a decision.

Raimon Aphrodi will be more gentle with his approach to convince/manipulate his obsession into becoming an ally instead of a rival, he does so by hanging out with them, buying them small gifts that he thought they might like etc.   Anything he can do in order to convince his obsession to join Raimon or at least support the team in any way they can, he will do it.

[southernbluebellereader]

Okay this idea has been bugging me for a while. And I was scrolling through tags, searching who seems fitting for an idea like this. Taskforce 141 x reader that has a succubus tattoo and their reaction to it. I'm quite bad at being detailed about my idea, but just basically their reaction to it when they happen to see the tattoo in any situation you really want. Pants happen to be low and reader lifts their arms, which lifts the shirt etc. Or in a sexy situation or working out.

Idk how to make requests but would love to see you write this idea out. Not a must, ya can choose and change things. Male, female, gender neutral, you can choose

Kvinnlig Demon (SWE: Female Demon)

A/N: O-K, best friend. I see you, and I'm liking this. Kind of reminds me of the tattoo request I did a while back, click here if you wanna read it. I'm gonna make the reader as gender neutral as I can, but it may lean towards femme. This is so good, I love this idea so much. I couldn't find a tattoo that was specifically a succubus but I found these really cool womb tattoos that I liked, but I was thinking that our reader had a little bigger one that extended out to their hips as well. idk. I hope you like this Pinterest Link - Image Link This may also be a little longer than my other requests, but I really liked writing this.

Warnings: Sexual themes & innuendos; past mention of sex in many forms, including but not limited to mention of sexual assault; maybe some cursing; big burly military men being all hot and bothered

Task Force 141 (Price, Simon, Johnny, Kyle) x Reader with a womb tattoo - featuring Kate Laswell

Master List (Tag List at the bottom)

(This has mention of themes regarding sex and sexual assault, if this is uncomfortable or you are under 18, please stop at this point and do not read)

You were not one to parade your tattoos everywhere, but like a lot of people in the military, you had them, and just like everyone, you had a past. And similarly to this you worked with, you had a past. Albeit, your past was perhaps a little more... sexually violent... than others.

You were young, you were free, but you were seventeen and he was twenty-seven. He was so sweet to you, he took care of you, he let you sleep over on that bare mattress with his three other roommates - who sometimes liked to watch and participate.

But you were never the same after that night when the four of them pounced on you. And for the next two and a half years until your nineteenth birthday, you'd nearly destroyed yourself countless times in an effort to redeem and reclaim yourself. You found two ways: (1) Tattoo therapy, and (2), meeting Kate Laswell.

Your first tattoo had been on your lower stomach and around your hips. It was special to you. You'd thought it'd help you redirect your hyper-sexuality that had developed over time. Kate Laswell helped you get justice for what had happened to you, under one condition: you let her take you under her wing to help you and mentor you. Helping you re-direct your anger, frustration, and hyper-sexuality into something more efficient - in healthy ways. You were truly appreciative of Kate Laswell for helping you cope with what happened to you.

You'd eventually proved yourself useful to the CIA and the military in aiding as a spy and tracker to help bring down human trafficking rings. Eventually you found yourself working alongside Captain John Price and his team. You served well as a spy, because who knew better than you how easily lust and sex can influence a person to reveal information. At first they didn't know what to make of you, but Kate was smart, and so was you.

Over time, you'd had added on to your tattoo, adding various shades of pinks and reds, encasing your body in soft and gentle line-work that begun from your lower stomach and pubic mound. And it would prove useful for a particular mission that needed you to play a part.

All six of you being stuck in a small two-bedroom apartment, it was hard to get personal space. Laswell and Price prepared for briefing in the kitchen. Kyle and Ghost prepared weapons and wires and bugs in one of the bedrooms. Johnny went with you to pick up the the clothes for you to wear. Everything fit in two medium sized paper bags.

"That's it?" Johnny scratched the back of his head as you paid for the clothes and the cashier simply pulled out the two bags from under the counter and handed it to you.

"That's it, Mac," You chuckled at him and the two of you headed back to the apartment. Johnny couldn't help but try and sneak a peak inside the bags, the only thing he could see was something pink.

Once the two of you got back into the apartment, you went into the other bedroom to get ready. Kate filled you in as you got dressed, as Price filled in Johnny. Kate sat on the bed, reading out loud from a tablet as you had stripped nude, taking out the light pink lingerie and hot pink dress. You'd put on the lingerie and tried to figure out how to put on the dress when someone knocked on the bedroom door.

"It's Price."

"Come in," You'd called out. Kate kept her eyes focused on the tablet as Price opened the door. He started talking, but the abruptly stopped when he saw you in the lingerie. You'd stood upright, facing him as you continued to try and untangle the scrappy pink dress in your hands, "You good, Cap?"

Captain Price's face had turned a dark red and he immediately looked down and closed the door enough to where he could still speak to the both of you. He cleared his throat before speaking in a low voice, "Erm, L/N. Laswell. We're almost ready out here. Let me know when you're ready."

"Hey, are you ok, Cap?" You'd somehow appeared by the door, your body taking up the gap that Price had left in an attempt to close the door. His hat hung low over his brow as he tried to keep his eyes from wandering down to your bosom, down to your waist, and a little further down to your dark pink tattoos. He would've missed them if they didn't contrast in color with the light pink lingerie you had on.

He lingered longer than he should've, relishing in your appearance. You knew this. You enjoyed his attention. But you also had a lot of respect for the man, as soldier, as a captain - he knew how to look but not touch.

"I'm alright, L/N. Ye almost ready?" A small smirk started to grow on the Captain's face. You recognized a smirk like that a mile away and opened up the door ever so slightly to give him a better view.

"Yeah, almost ready Cap. Just a few more minutes, do I need anything under the dress?"

"Kyle and Simon will have that for you, Y/N. You need anything from us?" He couldn't deny that you had an effect on you, and the tattoos that were oh so close to your core weren't helping his case either. Maybe it was for the better that he could only look, but not touch.

"Nope, I'll be right out." You winked at him and went back to the bed and picked up the dress. Price lingered a few seconds longer, committing your tattoos and the smell of cherries from your perfume to memory, then went back to the other bedroom to let Simon and Kyle know that you were almost ready for wires.

Kate followed behind and went to Johnny as he kept watch by the window, holding a day old newspaper in his hand that he was pretending to read it. He saw you walk out of the bedroom and stood in the hallway in the pink lingerie he saw in the bag, then swallowed hard. He didn't know if he should keep looking out the window, actually read the news paper, or look at you.

Johnny knew you had tattoos, but this was the first time he'd seen the full extent of them. You caught him staring and smirked at him, "You like what you see, Mac?"

"Ye look fine, bonnie lass," Johnny cleared his throat and shook the news paper in his hand, trying to calm his heart beat.

"Just fine?" You teased.

Johnny's eyes were barely above the newspaper, nearly boring eyes into your head, then slowly moved down your body. He could swear you shifted your body so that he could get a better view of you. Like Price, he committed the tattoos on your lower stomach to memory, enjoying how they danced on your body as you moved and how they interacted with the lingerie you had on. He wondered if they hurt. He wondered what they'd feel like under his fingers.

You had to admit, you liked his accent, you thought it was hot. The first time you met him, you told him his accent was hot and you could see his mind unravel in his eyes. It was also from that point on that he'd let you call him 'Mac' - and he'd only let you call him that. To you, he was 'Mac', to everyone else, he was 'Soap' - and he wouldn't have it any other way.

Before Johnny could answer, the closed bedroom door opened, revealing Kyle in the doorway. You turned around, and you were honestly almost caught by surprise by how close he was to you, "Kyle! You ready for me?"

Kyle was most certainly caught off guard. Sure, he'd seen plenty of women in lingerie, visited a few strip clubs on certain nights, and flipped through a few old Play Boy magazines, but he'd never expected you.

In light pink lingerie.

Covered in dark pink tattoos that begun from your lower stomach and womb, and turned a lighter pink as it spread to your hips and abdomen.

Kyle was the only one who hadn't seen any of your tattoos. And now he saw them all at once. You could see his Adam's apple bob in his throat, his eyes moving quickly between your body and your eyes, his face growing warm.

He made his voice low and moved to the side, "Y-Yeah..."

"Oh good," You tapped the man's shoulder as you walked inside. The way you smelled like cherries was the only other thing on his mind as he watched you walk inside the bedroom. He made eye contact with Johnny, whose eyes were just as wide as his - both of them could feel the restraints in their pants. Kyle could barely process the sight of you as he turned back around, seeing you stand in front of Simon as he began attaching wires and small trackers to your lingerie that would be eventually hidden by your dress, which had been placed on the bed.

You liked Kyle. He was sweet. He tended to have a little attitude but you thought it was cute. You told him he was cute when he was angry once, and he was at such a loss for words. He couldn't look at you for the rest of the day. You had to stand so very close to him that your chest almost touched him and ask him if he was ok. He knew you were doing it on purpose, but he wouldn't dare let his thoughts of you go beyond thoughts.

Kyle noticed something. Simon's hands. They were shaking. Putting wires on somebody shouldn't take so long, but Kyle knew why. They all knew: Y/N was having her fun with them.

Simon couldn't focus. He was sitting on the bed when you came in, and you immediately stood in front of him, "You ready for me, Simon?"

Cherries. Was all he could think of. That's what you smelled like. You heard Simon swallow hard, and you were pretty sure Kyle heard it too. Simon had his mask on, but you could tell from the way that his eyes quickly darted between you and the wires. And his hands trembling ever so slightly as he brought up the wired to your hip.

"Lift the band for me," He asked in a low voice.

"Like this?" You lifted the band of your panties ever so slightly so he could attach a small tracker the size of a dime on the inside. His hands touched your soft skin and it took everything in his power to not engulf you with his whole body.

You were working together. You had a mission. This was a mission.

But you were so close to him. Out of all four members of Task Force 141, Simon was the only one who'd been this close to you and seen your tattoos up close. He doesn't know what came over him, but he was sure that if he licked the dark pink tattoo on your lower stomach, it'd taste like candied cherries. He was sure of it.

He cursed under his breath when he dropped the little chip in his lap and tried to re-attached him.

"Is the material too soft, Simon? I have another set I can put on."

Simon could barely look up at you, then shook his head, "No, it's fine. These are just so small." Both Kyle and Johnny heard it too. Both of them collectively curse in their minds.

Maybe they'd see her in the other set? What did it look like? Was it pink also?

Once finished, you stepped away from Simon and examined yourself in the mirror. Simon had hidden the wires and trackers well and could breathe again.

Price appeared in the doorway again, asking if you were ready, keeping his hat low as he watched you slip into the dress.

"Just about, just need an extra hand-" You held the dress up and walked up to Price, turned around and moved your hair to the side, waiting for him to help you zip up your dress.

Simon, Kyle, and Johnny looked at you and Price with wide eyes. They'd never seen their Captain so... tense. Price was almost afraid to touch you. His hands felt clammy. He swallowed hard and wiped his hands on his pants before carefully zipping up your dress. His hands were so warm against your skin. He cursed internally when he saw that your tattoos extended from your lower abdomen, around your hips, and crept up your lower back.

The things you've done to these men. The thoughts that have crossed their minds. You looked up at Price ask asked if he was done.

God, he'd never imagined he'd see you from this angle. You looked almost angelic, but he knew-

Captain Price knew, there was something a little more in your eyes that made him question how angelic you really were. And Lord help him with how badly he wanted to find out how much you would actually wreck him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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The Aid // Intentions

Summary: Approximately two weeks into his imprisonment in the basement, The Aid has a flashback of the day that changed his life forever. (Backstory. Milder chapter.)

General content warnings here, rest in tags

Masterlist | Backstory | A03

The only upside to being bone-exhausted from starvation and getting his ass ground into a pulp is that The Aid spends most of the time passed out. Better to not be burdened with the plight of conscious thought, he reasons.

Besides, nothing beats a depression nap. Given the circumstances, it’s decent sleep, or at least as decent as he could ever hope for. Just ignore the pounding migraine, partially severed ankle, grumbling belly, and broken body pulsing with compounding jolts of pain and disassociate—easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

When awake (a travesty), his brain feels like microwaved instant mashed potatoes. That’s the best comparison he’s thought of in this muddled state; he’s contemplated it for hours. All starch, no real substance. And what do you know, both pasty white and activated by water. 

He’s etched marks on the concrete basement wall above his head with a small chip of cement, faint, illegible lines he can’t see in the dark, to count the number of days he’s been down here. Fingers run the length of the make-shift day tracker. Whatever number it is, he knows it’s not accurate. He’s sure he lost a day or two from being strung up in some hellish stress position only the Devil himself would think of from the ceiling—or tied to the old wooden blood-stained chair that’s given him a dozen splinters—but at least it’s an estimate. 

He thinks he counts 15. Counts again. Comes up with 17. Again. 14. 

So this is what losing your mind feels like.

Mix-matched numbers are the least of his worries, but at least that’s tangible. Something he knows is actually there, a tether to the physical world.

The glowing white eyes spying on him in the dark are more frequent now. The creature he tells himself isn’t real lingers in the rings of pitch-black shadows. It waits. Feeds on him when he’s sleeping. That’s an opportune moment for both of them, the only time they equally enjoy. He wishes he was unconscious right now, but a rapid heart rate and feverish sweating make that impossible. 

His body reflexively stiffens against the throbbing pulse radiating from the near-perfect hole in his mid-thigh. Leg muscles convulse, unleashing a searing, hot wave of pain that spiders out from the gash like molten lava, bathing his entire leg in a fiery agony.

He groans, letting the tears fall freely. Teeth clamp shut. He rolls around on the rotten-smelling mattress stained in every shade of bodily fluid, trying to partially distract himself and partially take a walk-it-out-approach—move against the pain. 

That makes it worse. 

Hands clench into fists. 

He screams. 

Static. 

He imagines the floating particles as something wonderful, something childish and playful like magical fairy dust. His eyes follow the proverbial yellow brick road and roll over to the old wooden workbench, hoping to find the entrance to the Emerald City. A streak of soft sunlight from the single basement window illuminates part of the wood. Blinking, he tries to focus blurry vision from poor eyesight—eyes adjust as much as they can without his glasses Wyatt tells him was a privilege—not a right—to have. One he no longer deserves. 

Something shines against the direct light like a bright star on a calm, cloudless night. He misses the sky. The Sun. moon. Stars. 

Could it be—did he really make it? 

He squints. Focus. 

It’s the metal of the drill bit the sadistic man used on him yesterday, reflecting a sparkle of light—chunks of his leg still lodged in the threading.

He gasps and jerks away. Stares at the desolate wall—at nothing, because nothing is better than a bad-something. Chest heaving, he coughs like he’s going to vomit, but there’s nothing but bile that comes up. He erupts in a fit of wailing until he makes himself sick, and his eyelids swell shut.   

Drifting. Barely lucid. 

Regret creeps into the cracks of subconscious. 

Was it worth it? 

He’s thought long and hard about that, too. A meager week-and-a-half of “freedom” only to be snatched up by border patrol and hauled back to his torturer. 

No, not that—all of this. Selling himself, giving up what little was left of his human rights, getting hauled off to the other side of the country to live amongst wealthy slavers and transform into some fucking wind-up cymbal-banging monkey toy. 

At first, it was a resounding “yes” without a shadow of a doubt. 

Now? He’s not so sure. 

Long are the days of luxurious pool parties with tasty appetizers, fruity drinks, weekend coastal getaways, and living la vida loca while pretending that people aren’t dying in droves from starvation, war, and disease—out of sight, out of mind, right? 

He reminisces the time when his biggest adversary wasn’t a raging psychopath with a hard-on for blood, but were the sly, risqué glances and wondering manicured hands of his late Madame’s granddaughter he had playfully fended off under the distracted noses of every Sullivan family member who were none the wiser of their scandalous—albeit one-sided—encounters.

Should he have never gotten that one-way bus ticket that sealed his fate? Never disappeared late into the night while making peace with knowing he’d never see his surviving friends or family again? Turned away from those double-wide doors of the shiny all-glass Chattel Services Inc. building? Paid better notice to the old picket signs stuffed in the outside trash bins, bold letters warning that this was just corporate slavery hoarding much-needed resources from withering green zones? Masses succumbed to starvation as the government struggled to provide uncontaminated food and water. Yet, the slave trade persisted against all odds, unfazed by the global suffering. In the post-Nemaxys world, dying citizens held no value—but enslaved ones remained a lucrative commodity for the wealthy and powerful elite.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda—a damn awful game to play. 

But it's not like he’s doing anything else. 

****

The man behind the desk keeps smiling at him, which makes it incredibly difficult to fill out the 20-something-page intake form on the clipboard he’s holding. He knows the guy is trying to be friendly, make him feel at ease, and not think too hard about how he’s singing his life away to the highest bidder. 

As he writes, his other hand keeps picking at a hangnail that’s starting to bleed a little bit, but he’s so fucking on edge and caught up in making sure his handwriting is legible enough that he doesn’t notice the dabble of blood smeared across his nail bed.

“Here,” a voice says. He looks up at the blonde man, who doesn’t look much older than him, holding a tissue out for him to grab. 

The dumb expression on his face is evident enough for the man to clarify. “For your finger.” 

He looks down. Notices the small bubble of red peaking over the partially bloody thumb. 

He sounds surprised. “Oh, thanks.” 

He dabs away the blood. His stomach grumbles; he hasn’t eaten anything since dinner last night, which feels like a lifetime ago. Nerves flutter. Fingers pick away at the now crumbled tissue clenched in his hand. 

“We’ll get you some breakfast soon,” The man chirps. He looks up. The guy is still just watching him. Eyes dart around the page, he nibbles the inside of his lip.

“Low blood sugar, huh?”

“Um, I guess.” He doesn’t look up from the page, hoping he doesn’t appear rude. 

“You’re shaking.” The man says this as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world and not as if there would be any other possible explanation. 

Fuck, is this how it’s going to be here? Every single move monitored and scrutinized? He doesn’t think he can do this. He gulps and sets the clipboard at the edge of the desk. He needs a moment. He can’t believe he’s doing this—really doing this. 

What the fuck is he doing? 

The little voice in his head is screaming at him to get up and run the fuck out of here. Go back home. You don’t have to do this. There’s another way. You’ll think of something. This is insanity. 

He grabs the small paper cup of water—the kind that’s too small even to be called a cup; disposable shot glass is more like it—and gulps the rest of it down. Meanwhile, the man studies him like a hawk. The guy’s eyes slide to the intake form. Before he registers what’s happening, the man grabs it and starts looking it over.

“I’m—I’m not done,” he stammers. God, he feels like an idiot. He hopes the man doesn’t ask him to clarify an indecipherable word from a shaky hand. Maybe he can blame it on the pen; it was one of those shitty off-brand Bic ballpoint pens you used to buy in packs at Dollar Tree.

The man’s eyes scan the lines of text when he stops and shoots him a grin. “This is great. You’re great. You’ll sell like a hot cake.”

The blood drains from his face, and his heart drops to his stomach, which feels like it just shriveled up in half a second and died inside him. It’s hard to come to terms with being sold—knowing that’s in his future, and apparently near future. Hypothetically, of course, he wants to be sold quickly, but hell, he’s only been here for not even 30 minutes and is still in denial of the last 12 hours that led him to this moment. 

“And happy birthday! We’ll have to celebrate and get you some cake,” The man exclaims with a bright smile.  

“Thanks,” he says quickly. 

He doesn’t feel like celebrating. He’s too damn guilty to pretend to act happy about the big 18–legal adulthood, AKA the day the plan he’s been concocting for the last year-and-a-half came to fruition. How he just left everyone behind and vanished the day after his birthday, leaving nothing in his tracks but a sappy letter for his mom. 

Has she read it yet? Is she and his little brother crying right now? Are they looking for him? Has she called his friends yet? 

“Sexual orientation?” the man asks, breaking his run-on train of thought. The man quirks an inquisitive brow and slightly tilts his head as he looks at him with ocean-blue eyes that somehow seem familiar despite them being little more than strangers. His mind swirls as it does when he receives a message, a premonition. He shuts it off.

Focus. Sell yourself. 

Where was he? Oh yeah—fuck, he left that part blank and told himself he’d come back to it once he thought of something to put. 

He freezes. Fear-pricked skin tightens around brittle bones. Low beats pulse behind his eyes. His face is hot, palms sweat. 

“Um. I-I…I don’t know?” His mouth feels dry. He’s suddenly so thirsty he’s sure he could drink a whole pool. 

“Any experience, then? Hand stuff even?” 

He thought he couldn’t be any more embarrassed, a grave miscalculation. Cheeks burning, his eyes dart to the file cabinet in the corner of the room with the dumb wish that he could telepathically absorb some of the cabinet’s gray to neutralize his rubescent skin tone. Maybe he could one day; he recently developed psychometry, bringing his ability total to four—a rare number to reach, even for a Mystic. What if he continued this roll and turned part chameleon in the face of danger, too? 

He tries to gulp down the dry, invisible mass in his throat that won’t go away. Coughs a little bit, adding to the blatant awkwardness of the situation. 

Smooth, always the charmer. 

He doesn’t need to tap into his senses to know for damn sure the guy expects a candid answer; the uncomfortable silence is enough of an indication of that. 

“No. Look, I’m not here for that type of posting,” he sheepishly admits, fearing the revelation will bring down his assessment price. 

“No shame. Just standard questions are all.” The man continues to smile without missing a beat—is this guy even real? It should put him at ease, but it does anything but. He knows through and through that the man has no malicious intentions, but that doesn’t detract from the icy fear that continues to sprawl his veins. 

The man’s still reading the form, so he shuffles over to the water cooler in the guy’s private office and starts chugging cup after cup of water, hoping the movement will bring a sliver of relief. Thank the universe that the water is chilled, and after five shot glass-sized “cups,” he thinks he may have brought his body temperature back down to a reasonable degree. 

The next question comes from nowhere. “Do you wear contacts?”

“Um, no. They make my eyes itchy,” he explains.

“Open to Lasik?” The man shoots back. 

Is having shitty eyesight and wearing glasses really a deal-breaker? 

“Um, I’ve never thought about it before? Maybe? I guess.”

The man nods subtly, blue eyes roaming up and down his body with intent and professional curiosity. The man’s face freezes in a distant, hard-to-place emotion—lost in the tail end of a half-considered afterthought, one too outlandish to share. He feels vulnerable, exposed—as if the man sees him on a molecular level. It's too close for comfort; he wonders if the man possesses X-ray vision, a piercing gaze like that is reserved for Mystics alone.

Maybe he does, perhaps he is—is he a Mystic, too? 

No, he could read this guy like a children’s picture book. Most other Mystics had the mental discipline to evade his mind-probing. 

The guy’s just doing his job, and low and behold, he’s not just a personality hire.

“You’re lucky you’re cute. You got that innocent boy next door look going on that clients love,” the man vaguely gestures to him, a cupped hand props up his chin as he assumes a thinker’s pose and drums against his cheek. 

He turns away to hide his cherry-hued blushing, which he’s sure the man is well aware of. He’s never been one to take a compliment well. And it's not like any guy wants to be called “cute and innocent.” There’s something secretly dirty about that image, like he’s a thing to be corrupted and turned to the dark side. A test. Something to break. Nor does he like the implication of the sentence, how it’s worded as if to say his perceived looks, taken at face value, outweigh what the man is about to say.

“Normally, people want a blank canvas, a clean slate, something they can mold into their own making. But you come with history, a distinct character. I can spin that. The right person will adore you.” The man’s speaking about him like he’s a fucking spec on an appliance.   

He knows what the man is referring to, even if he thinks himself too polite to say something directly about it out in the open. This round-about way feels worse, though, like it’s the only thing people see when they look at him. It took him his whole life to look past the scars on his face and learn to love his crooked smile. He’s never been torn apart like this, dissected piece by piece, and talked about in terms of marketability. He doesn’t like it—actually, he hates it, but if this is what it takes to get the big bucks, he’ll have to learn to deal. 

Keep your eye on the prize. It’s your job to save them. They need the money more than you need your pride. 

He sits back down and notices the plaque on the guy’s desk: Bryce Wright, Mystic Handler. Yeah, he looks like a Bryce. I bet he was the all-star it-boy quarterback with the matching blonde bombshell cheerleader girlfriend. 

He’s doing what he always does when he’s uncomfortable—nitpicking everything to death. It gives him some ounce of control he’s always desperately clawing at, even if it’s a figment of his imagination. An illusion of lost agency. It's a bad habit, a hard one to break. A mental loop. He stops, knowing that spiraling is the last thing he should do right now.   

He’s sure the receptionist told him the man’s name, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to let it soak into his brain then—he was too busy fighting off his umpteenth panic attack of the day. 

By the time the man, Bryce, called him in here, he focused every iota of attention on filling out the damn novel-length form to his detriment, clipping the corner of the door frame and then running into the chair on the way in here. After that embarrassment wore off and he finally mustered the courage for a glance, he was automatically distracted by Bryce’s persistent plastic smile.

Filling out the rest of the form took way longer than he thought it would. Medical history, diet, skill sets, education, accolades, exercise levels, hobbies, family members—the whole sha-bang. Even questions regarding his mother’s pregnancy with him, which he didn’t know the answers to. 

These people don’t play. This was some serious shit. He’s in deep. 

He slides the clipboard back to Bryce, who gives him a predictable cheesy grin and scans over the rest of the pages.

“We don’t get many like you coming through these doors; you’re a rare breed. Far from the typical one-trick pony claiming to see auras,” Bryce says quietly, eyes still scanning every filled-in answer. It sounded like an outside thought, but he could sense Bryce was covertly prodding for a reply, a subtle test to feel him out and see how well he could read a person. 

It appears that “telepathic empath” scribbled alongside the “Ability” line caught Bryce’s attention. Good.

“Thanks?”

Bryce shoots him a thoughtful smirk, something that’s supposed to read as reassuring. “Yeah, that’s a compliment. Not too good at receiving those, are you?”

“Guess not,” he chuckles, fiddling with his hands in his lap, feeling no better from the clarification.  

Bryce taps on the corner of his desk and surveys him like he still can't decide. Expression reads, what am I going to do with you? He can feel the man’s tangled thoughts, the confusion woven into them, how he’s at the center of it. If he weren’t preoccupied with swallowing the burn in his throat and resisting the urge to drum on the chair’s armrest anxiously, he’d be able to get a better read. 

His bottom lip gets sucked in between his teeth before he notices what he’s doing and forces his mouth to twist to the side in a look he hopes passes as a friendly—but shy—half-grin. Sell innocent boy next door.

“I know, I’m a bit of an enigma,” he jokes, finally meeting Bryce eye-to-eye. At that, Bryce smiles—genuinely this time. 

He’s slowly winning the guy over; he can feel it in the way only he can. 

“That you are my friend,” Bryce chuckles, retrieving two pens from the pen cup on his desk and holding each between a thumb and index finger. 

Bryce flashes him a toothy grin and angles his head, “High intuition, huh? Tell me which one is my favorite.”  

He holds the man’s stare, glances at the pens, then blows an all-knowing short breath through his nose. “Neither. The one on your desk is.” He tilts his head, nodding at the customized cherry wood fountain pen with Bryce’s name engraved on the broad side of the cap. 

“This is a Graduation present from dear old Grandpa Joel, who isn’t with us anymore. My condolences,” he confirms matter-of-factly without delay. He doesn’t know how quickly he picked up on this; object readings usually require more mental effort. 

Bryce and Grandpa Joel must’ve been really close; that pen has a lot of energy.

Bryce falters a minute, lets the pens drop, then roll off his desk. His blue eyes turn into saucers, his brows crease, and his face freezes in disbelief. 

After a few beats, Bryce’s wide-eyed look of shock morphs into a nervous chuckle. “Well, shit…shit!” Bryce shakes his head, eyes lighting up with hopeful promise as he blows his lips out as if to let off steam.

At least he’s easy to impress. 

“And are you firm with your preferred designation as a Domestic Aide?” Bryce asks, an edge of doubt weighing on his tone. 

“Yeah, I’m best at one-on-one stuff. Unless you think my talents would better serve elsewhere?” He offers, trying to be cooperative while also standing his ground. He’s read enough horror stories of Handlers talking incoming trainees into positions they didn’t want to know he had to be careful during the intake negotiation. He doesn’t think Bryce is the type to persuade him into doing something he doesn’t want, but one could never be too cautious with these things; this was his entire life on the line. The last thing he wants is to gamble his fate away to someone who wouldn’t appreciate his abilities and would force him to play a role as something he wasn’t.  

The man sighs, rubs his chin, and then perks up at the last second. “Forgive me for being rather forward about this, sensitive topic and all, but would you be willing to take a vow of celibacy? Some clients are looking for a, how should I say it…sexless help—someone non-threatening. Especially a male. Especially a Mystic. There’s a demand for them. You know, the type someone would trust their children and wives around and not have to worry about. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you fit the bill perfectly—I mean, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want, but it may help seal the deal for some. An assurance of sorts. Just something to think about.” Bryce sucks his teeth as he repositions, now slouching in the big office chair and fiddling with his expensive-looking Grandpa Joel pen. It’s hard to tell who’s more nervous.  

He never imagined having zero sex appeal would ever come in handy, let alone help snag a future posting. This tidbit wasn’t on any of the forums he spent the last year combing through. He supposes it’s an industry secret, and the PR team has been hard at work scrubbing the internet for anything deemed an insider trade secret.

“You mean like a nun?” He jokes.

Bryce snorts, relief softening his features. “Yeah, sure. What do you say? You up for playing Mother Teresa?” The man pauses, leans in as if disclosing a secret, and says in a hushed tone, “Doesn’t have to be forever.” 

That characteristic cheesy smile morphs into a sly smirk, eyebrows slightly hike up, a look that screams Machiavellian-level traitor. Weird, but well-meaning. Figures it’s part of some eldritch-esque man-to-man joke that didn’t land since his telepathic connectors are all screwy from the wake of anxiousness.

The last sentence rattles around in his head. There’s a brief pause where he weighs his options and pretends to consider saying no, like he ever imagined an alternative reality that didn’t end in him dying as a happily un-kissed virgin.  

His lips twist to the side in a half-smirk. “Put me in, coach.”

Bryce pumps a triumphant fist and lets out a loud “Woot woot!”—a battle cry he intuitively recognizes from Bryce's glory days on the football field. For a fleeting instant, he sees a flashback: a sweaty, younger Bryce basks in the crowd's adoration, teammates swarming around him in excitement. Through Bryce’s eyes, he sees the giant, illuminated scoreboard with a Viking mascot looming in the background.

He just won them the game. 

They’re going to the Championships. 

Only they didn’t; the next day the outbreak claimed the lives of half his teammates. 

He pulls away, and settles back in his body, Bryce none the wiser of the glimpse of his past he stole.   

“Alright, that’s what I like to hear!” The man stands up from behind the desk and stretches out, his back popping as he throws his upper body into warm-up twists. “Now, let’s get this notarized and get you your new ID number. We’re honored to have you with us, Mr. Rossmoore.”

Bryce sticks a hand out. Across the desk, he quickly pockets the deteriorating sweat-drenched tissue he had to pry from his palm and meets the man with a tight shake—that, right there. The moment over six years ago he wishes he could go back in time and prevent from ever happening. 

The moment that, despite it feeling so completely wrong—ringing every warning bell and staking every red flag—seemed like it was the only way to make things right. A moment that he laments and curses every day of his miserable existence. A moment that inevitably led him here—a regal investment worth an A-list actor’s net worth turned abused, chained-up slave thrown down in the dungeon of a multi-million dollar mansion owned by one of the most affluent families in Apocamerica. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

He was never intended to be a two-in-one punching bag fleshlight for a boozy, cracked-out asshole with a trust fund. 

But as the saying goes—the road to hell is paved with only the best intentions. 

***

A big thank you to 32 for beta-reading draft 1 of this months ago and giving me feedback! You the real MVP!

(Previous) Taglist (if you would like to be added or removed, please let me know!): @sacredwrath @pirefyrelight @little-rat-dragon @potterhead5ever @whumpyourdamnpears

@3-2-whump @whumped-by-glitter

[peachymilkandcream]

Her Biggest Fan|Levi x Evelyn AU

Request: Hello, could you do a chapter of Evelyn being an idol and having Levi as her obsessive fan?

(A/N: AO3 request, very interesting and I'm so excited for this one, enjoy!)

WARNINGS: noncon/dubcon, graphic descriptions of violence, domestic violence, manipulation, mind breaking, yandere behaviour/themes, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, wishing rape upon someone, misogyny, mentions of child abuse, blackmail, revenge porn, murder, second chance, stalking, etc.

================================================

Levi waited his turn in line patiently, this wasn't the first time that he had seen her in person, but each time was just as exciting as the last. Evelyn had been a previously struggling icon when Levi had come across her music. He was always finding new content to help him go through the day, and her more hardcore style was something he looked for.

At first, she had very minimal followers. And that's how Levi liked it. He enjoyed being one of the only people to get a kick out of her music. It was something intimate that only they shared, he felt like he was the only one that cared for her and was interested in helping her music.

When she started gaining popularity the more he didn't like it. Levi was one of her only dedicated fans, and now she had many men and women fawning over her, her pick of men right there for the taking.

It drove him crazy.

He scoured her social media for any hint of a significant other. All shadows and any special items in a room that would mean that there was another man in her life. Thankfully nothing of the sort had been seen so far, but that didn't mean it would be that way forever. One of his reasons for purchasing yet another VIP pass to her most recent show.

Now that it was his turn he approached the love of his life once more. As usual Evelyn smiled and gave him a hug. each time a thing that he utterly reveled in. The feel of her against him, her scent, her skin. It was addictive. What he wouldn't give to make sure that he was the only one that go to do this with her for the rest of her life.

"Do you remember me?" Was his first question.

"Of course, Levi. You've come to all of my concerts, always a VIP pass, and buying merch. I appreciate all of your support."

"Mm. I always want to help smaller creators, but now that you've grown I suppose you don't need it anymore."

"Aw, of course not. I love all my fans."

The word love, despite being used generally set his heart ablaze. Such a sweet word being used to describe him was such a euphoric feeling that he couldn't get over. He had to do something about this, he couldn't live with this feeling forever, he had to do something about it before she went crazy.

As Levi was gestured to go so that the next paying attendee could have their time with her. He complied, not wanting to start a scene, but as he started to walk away he noticed her bag sitting near the door. Without effort he dropped a small tracking device in it, knowing that after tonight this would be the last show she preformed for anyone but him.

================================================

That night, Levi checked the tracker app on his phone. Following it after the show had ended.

It led him to a hotel where she was staying. Thankfully her being in a strange city would make it harder for her to find her surroundings, so when he finished his plan she would be utterly helpless.

Without much hassle Levi found her room number and obtained a master key. He'd been practicing this now for weeks. Going to each of her shows and spying on her while she slept. Now that she was in his home town, he could finally complete his mission.

Levi opened the door and let himself in. She was asleep, in her bed. He snuck over to her, picking up a heavy lamp and holding it high above her head so that as she woke up to the sound of him, like she did now, the lamp landing on her forehead knocked her out.

As Evelyn went limp Levi smirked in satisfaction, now he could finally get everything he wanted.

With skill, he took everything out of her suit case and stuffed her in. He'd have to hurry or she'd suffocate, but he had no plan on letting her die like this.

She was his.

================================================

When Evelyn woke up she was bound to a bed in a small apartment. Posters and merch of herself covering every surface. No matter how she struggled, she couldn't be free.

"No need to struggle, I won't hurt you."

[dandorime]

Another section from this fic.

"Haaaaaang on."

"Agent, you're going to fall!"

"Am not, just haaaaaang on..."

Agent Phoenix was practically dangling upside-down from his swing like an awkward trapeze artist, straining to reach his arm under the center drawer of the massive wooden desk that dominated the room. How annoying, he thought to himself, that he couldn't TK a target he couldn't see.

He patted around desperately to find the small metal screw that would release a spring. He knew it was there.

It was there last time.

"What are you even trying to do?" Reginald Crane hissed, nervously gripping the edge of the open skylight with both hands as he peered down from above.

The half moon overhead didn't provide enough light for either spy to see one another clearly, but the swinging and creaking of the metal cables holding Phoenix's seat didn't give his handler any sense of confidence in his agent's actions.

Phoenix, likewise, couldn't see the look on his handler's face, but he could tell from the anxiety in his voice that Crane wasn't going to be patient with his acrobatics for much longer.

"I'm trying to find the... there might be a switch or something," Phoenix hissed back.

*click*

Crane didn't know about the metal screw under the desk, of course.

Every drawer on the desk gently popped open at once, mercifully without any explosions. The ornamented cabinet containing his target, a mask that could mimic the faces and voices of four powerful world leaders, opened its door wide with a flourish as if to welcome him. 

"I'll be damned," the agent heard Crane whisper from above, "how did you know?"

Phoenix grinned in the dark. It had taken him more than a few deaths to play his way through the Fabricator's desk of traps. He'd spent hours here, dangling from an uncomfortably small swing on cables in the dark with only a flashlight and his handler's advice to pick apart dozens of defensive mechanisms.

Well, hours from his point of view, anyway. To Crane and the rest of the world, it had still only been two minutes.

He was finally in. Security was still five minutes away, none of the room's defenses had been sprung, and the mimic mask seemed to smile at him.

Surely the Fabricator wasn't patient enough to disarm everything one-by-one every time she sat at her own desk, was she? Even Dr. Zor had shortcuts through their security, if you had the right code or a key card, or an awkwardly-placed ornamental orb. Heck, the Fabricator was probably responsible for building those, too...

That line of thought sent Phoenix's hunting for a workaround to the convoluted series of dials and secret compartments, and after much more trial and error, this was the payoff. 

"Install this tracking device somewhere discreet," Crane whispered, lowering a tiny suitcase on a line containing an even tinier chip, "and then close everything up tight."

Phoenix plucked the chip off the line, just like he'd done the last dozen times. The second of these, he'd dropped the tracker, lost it in the thick carpeting on the floor, and ended up patting around for it on his hands and knees like a half-blind man hunting an errant contact lens.

The sting of shame was still fresh in his mind.

Then again, this was the hardest mission he'd had in a long time, Phoenix reasoned to himself as he popped the mask open, careful not to jostle it loose from its stand. He supposed Crane must've known it would be tricky if he brought along extra tech like a winching swing and a tracking device. It was probably why he'd come along as the support agent himself, instead of sending Phoenix in alone with an earpiece. But if anything, that decision had made it worse.

Dying in front of a helpless friend was a thousand times worse than dying alone.

As he clipped wires and soldered the tracker into place for the fourth (or was it fifth?) time, Phoenix let his mind replay the worst of it.

Dying alone meant Phoenix could tear off his microphone and swear his frustrations to his last poisoned breath, or shorten the wait with a bullet to the skull. He could trigger a bomb and experience some catharsis in his final seconds, watching Zor's plans and property go up in smoke.

But no, each time he died in the Fabricator's studio, he had to bite his tongue and bleed out quietly, all the while knowing his handler was perched on the roof with no cover, watching him die. 

---

Crane, ever vigilant, had picked up on the guard's approach along the overhead walkway as his agent was still stupidly bumbling around looking for the tracking device on the floor.

Phoenix had long since surrendered his own situational awareness to focus on finding the tracking device. He wasn't even listening for forgets when he finally heard the urgent, whispered shout of warning:

"AGENT, HIDE!"

Paralyzed with surprise, Phoenix did not hide. He inexplicably froze as the beam of a flashlight from the walkway around the upper floor of the room raked across his back.

Zero cover, out in the open, caught red-handed.

God, I'm a fool.

Damnit.

He heard both shots and felt the bullets bite through him, slamming him into the floor like they had nailed him there. Effectively, they had. A lung shot, let alone two, was more than enough to sap away 99% of whatever stamina he may otherwise have had to fight back or make a break for it.

He was dying.

Then there was a third shot.

A quiet, pained cry sounded above. Broken glass rained down over everything, and Phoenix felt a heavy thud, somewhere close, on the floor next to him.

Oh god.

He blindly reached for the body that he knew lay somewhere to his right, grasping desperately with weakening fingers, but never managed to make contact.

Rapidly bleeding out, the agent found he didn't have the strength to even lift his head and look. In truth, he didn't want to.

Reggie.

The security guard was talking fast and loud on his radio: "Two intruders! I shot 'em... I think they're both dead..."

Both dead.

Those words gave him a pang of guilt like nothing he'd ever felt on a mission before. Worse than an arrow, worse than a bullet.

Fuck, I'm sorry...

A last bloody cough escaped from his chest, and everything faded away.

In the brief dark interlude that always came after death, Phoenix caught himself actually looking around for Crane through his closed eyes. He knew it was stupid; writhing around alone in the absolute blackness, but the urge to apologize to his friend was overwhelming. What would he say, if he actually found Crane there? Christ, what could he say? 

I'm so sorry, I got you killed. I got us both killed. I usually only get me killed...

Consumed with guilt and anger, he hardly noticed the physical pain ebbing away. A familiar lightness, a floating sense of stasis soon took hold.

The lights flicked on.

Agent Phoenix was back in the Room. 

Goddamnit.

[shakertwelve]

2, 6, 8, 33 and 34 for Vixen with the ask game thing 🫶

i'm so glad we're talking about vixen now. why were we spending any time on vinny at all

2. what sort of music would they like? have you thought about what genres or bands do they lean towards? do they have a favorite song?

i'm woefully uninformed about music outside of my own very narrow interest range so i asked my associate @nonplatonicsubtext and got back "she was designed in a lab to be the target audience for Joanna Newsom's music". i don't even know who that is but i trust tally

6. how do they wear their hair? do they care a lot how their hair looks?

it's about chin length and i think she has bangs probably.. she dyed it brown for a while and it hasn't totally faded out of the ends. and yeah it's important to her because she had short hair for most of her life and she likes that she can do more with it now

8. do they have a nickname? who gave it to them? if it's not derived from their real name, what's the story behind it?

people call her vix or vixie sometimes :)

33. if applicable, how would your other characters describe them? i mean specifically the people around them.

assuming "people around them" applies to the other vics. victor would think she rules and is an infinitely better "girl version of him" than vicky (because they agree on almost everything), vicky would meet her and become aware of the gender discomfort she's repressing and get weird at her for it instead of thinking about why she feels that way, and vinny would find her secondhand embarrassing and also get weird at her for it instead of thinking about why he feels that way

34. how would your character describe themselves? it doesn't have to line up with how they really are.

well she's a vic so before everything goes wrong she mostly defines herself by her family and team and as a cape, and after gold morning she's still trying to figure out who she is outside of that. oh and the thing she's overconfident about are her skills as a tracker/spy, like how vicky is overconfident about her cape science knowledge

bonus vicrews (vic picrews) from here and here for reading to the end

[spaceytingz]

youre a femme fatal secret agent stealing the most prized gem in the world from its restong spot... set the scene and the soundtrack!

Elusive Finnish billionaire Eerik Holmen might be the most secretive person on the planet. Operating exclusively from a chain of remote islands, owned by shell companies, you'd need to call in thirty favors just to find someone who knows someone who knows rumors about the possible location of one of them. And don't even think about trying to get an invitation to his revered annual masquerade ball - an event with tighter security than a presidental inauguration. 

Good thing I don't need one.

Thirty favors are not an easy thing to accumulate so I'm careful. The guests are just beginning to arrive, so the security does not pay that much attention to the skies, and before anyone knows it, camouflage glider retracted into my catsuit, I'm making my way through halls of invisible lasers, conveniently glitching cameras and an actual pit trap. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. Great cardio. And while you're at it, you'd be wise to install remotely activated bombs in the walls. It might help later.

One thing spy movies don't get right? You know that part where the protagonist lifts the diamond and quickly manages to put something of a similar weight in its place as to avoid activating the alarm? Yeah, that doesn't happen. The truth is, there's no way to avoid the alarm. You just gotta avoid the walls of the trap room it's inevitably placed in that shoot out to crush you in under 0.3 seconds. Good thing I don't go out without my trusty titanium grappling hook. And now, of course, the alarm is blaring and the whole shithole is going into lockdown. So, I run. I don't go far, there's armed security everywhere. Of course, the guns mean nothing if you get the jump on them. You don't need to deal with them all, obviously, but you do need to get to a safe room where you apply your cosmetic modifications, transform your catsuit into a short black dress, and slip inside the panicking crowd. These rich people value their lives a lot for some reason.

The diamond is not on my person, obviously. Hidden in plain sight, the many trackers on it can discern its general location but they have no clue on which floor it is and no one expects it to be in the majestic indoor fountain boasting a statue of Poseidon in the middle. My earring begins beeping, indicating my ride is here. Final part of the plan. Not even after three beeps, a series of explosions shakes up the building and smoke and ashes fill the room. Panic, screams, hell, even a gunshot rings out but that's of no importance. The fountain water has already disabled half of the trackers on the diamond but no signal can get to the contents of the handbag in my hand, lined on the inside with pure silver. The screams of the guests and the further explosions make it very easy for me to slip out of a newly made hole in the wall. Jungle ain't fun to run through but the second I'm in the ocean, I've made it. Now to find the camouflaged submarine that has been waiting here for four months.

[aitchnkay]

Jiang Gunian Made A Change Part 7

“You weren’t joking about that talisman,” Jin ZiXuan grumbled. He and his disciples were the last group to reach what was hopefully going to be their safe haven for the next few months. “Luo QingYang activated her talisman while we were discussing logistics. I looked away because my horse nudged me, and she was gone.”

Wei WuXian grinned, unrepentant. “I did say it was imperceptible to every spiritual tracker I know of. You thought I would leave the ability for someone to just... follow you by watching you? How stupid do you think I am? You did still see her, you know. Your brain just... sort of... was told to ignore what it was seeing or something. There’s no way I wanted anyone from your families or a Wen spy to be able to track us.” Jiang YanLi sadly noted that her brother did not consider himself a part of the ‘your’ in ‘your families’. For a long moment, anger at her mother and father burned deep in her chest. It would have been so easy to make Wei WuXian a legal part of her family without disinheriting her other brother.

“You mean we could have used our swords and flown here?” Lan XiChen didn’t shout, but he spoke in a tone that dictated one should perceive it as such.

“I never said you had to walk, Lan Gongzi,” Wei WuXian looked insulted.

“Enough,” Jiang YanLi tried to soothe her brother’s and the Lan’s hurts. “We’re all here now. Jin Gongzi, you and your cohort will be over there.” She pointed to a series of houses with the Jin flag already waving from the roofs. “Please take care of the spaces as we’re renting them from the locals.”

“Renting?” Jin ZiXuan had a look of distaste on his face.

“You may try to purchase them if you would prefer.” Jiang YanLi retorted. “Please excuse me,” she said in a gentler tone. “I have to see about dinner.”

She didn’t. Not yet. They would be having fish again, as they would probably be having fish as their main source of meat for a long time. And fish didn’t take long to marinate or to cook. Instead of walking to the kitchen, she detoured to the beach and let the sand and wind and waves wash over her and release her tension. Well, the sound of the waves; she stayed well behind the tide line.

A few days later, a Lotus Pier disciple flew in to the camp. “Jiang Guniang, Jiang Gongzi... the letter arrived.” He handed over a piece of paper. “I was able to make a copy before I activated the talisman.”

Jiang YanLi read it, almost dispassionately, then handed it to her younger brother. “I assume the other sects are receiving the same message,” she sighed.

Lan XiChen read the letter next, then Jin ZiXuan. “I honestly thought....” the latter sputtered. “I honestly thought this whole....” he waved a hand at the small coastal town now bursting with cultivators, and let his voice trail off. “I didn’t think the threat was real.”

“It’s very real,” Jiang YanLi kept her gaze steady. “Lan Gongzi? I assume you also left someone to report back to you?”

“Of course I did,” the sect heir replied. “Assurance that your warning was real, and that Cloud Recesses is as protected as we could make it. The library contents and major artifacts were moved to a new, heavily protected, location along with everyone who isn’t a fighter. Cloud Recesses may burn as you said it would. Our people will survive.”

It would be another week before a Lan Cultivator stumbled into the village. “Lan ZongZhu... Cloud Recesses has been destroyed. Fifteen senior disciples were captured and take for indoctrination. Forty-three disciples were killed, including your father. Lan Qiren remains safe with the rest of the sect. Fifty-one disciples were allowed to live and rebuild after swearing allegiance to QishanWen.”

“Forty-three,” the newest sect leader sighed. “More than I hoped for, but less than I feared. Who led the attack?”

“Wen Xu.”

Lan XiChen looked at Jiang YanLi, who raised her chin and looked right back. “The fifteen who were taken?” he asked his disciple.

“They did not take their own swords with them to the indoctrination center, as you requested. We exchanged their swords with ones from the dead.”

“Excellent.” He bowed slightly. “Please excuse me. I wish to mourn my... our dead.”

Nie HuaiSang cocked his head as the Lan sect leader disappeared into one of the houses. “It appears we are at war.”

“It appears so, Nie Gongzi,” Jiang YanLi agreed.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Podcasting "Twiddler"

This week on my podcast, I read “Twiddler,” a recent Medium column in which I delve more deeply into enshittification, and how it is a pathology of digital platforms, distinct from the rent-seeking of the analog world that preceded it:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

Enshittification, you’ll recall, is the lifecycle of the online platform: first, the platform allocates surpluses to end-users; then, once users are locked in, those surpluses are taken away and given to business-customers. Once the advertisers, publishers, sellers, creators and performers are locked in, the surplus is clawed away from them and taken by the platforms.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Facebook is the poster-child for enshittification. When FB welcomed the general public in 2006, it sold itself as the privacy-respecting alternative to Myspace, promising users it would never harvest their data. The FB feed consisted of the posts that the people you’d followed — the people you cared about — published.

FB experienced explosive growth, thanks to two factors: “network effects” (every new user was a draw for other users who wanted to converse with them), and “switching costs” (it was practically impossible to convince all the people you wanted to hear from to leave FB, much less agree on what platform to go to next). In other words, every new user who joined FB both attracted more users, and made it harder for those users to leave.

FB attained end-user lockin and was now able to transfer users’ surpluses to business customers. First, it started aggressively spying on users and offered precision targeting at rock-bottom prices to advertisers. Second, it offered media companies “algorithmic” boosting into the feeds of users who hadn’t asked to see their posts.

Media companies that posted brief excerpts to FB, along with links to their sites on the real internet were rewarded with floods of traffic, as their posts were jammed into the eyeballs of millions of FB users who never asked to see them. Media companies and advertisers went all-in for FB, integrating FB surveillance beacons in their presence on the real internet, hiring social media specialists who’d do Platform Kremlinology in order to advise them on the best way to please The Algorithm.

Once those business customers — creators, media companies, advertisers — were locked into FB, the company harvested their surplus, too. On the ad side, FB raised rates and decreased expensive anti-fraud measures, meaning that advertisers had to pay more, even as an increasing proportion of their ads were either never served, or never seen.

With media companies and creators, FB not only stopped jamming their content in front of people who never asked to see it, they actively suppressed the spread of business users’ posts even to their own subscribers. FB required media companies to transition from excerpts to fulltext feeds, and downranked or simply blocked posts that linked back to a business user’s own site, be it a newspaper’s web presence or a creator’s crowdfunding service. Business users who wanted to reach the people who had explicitly directed FB to incorporate their media in users’ feeds had to pay to “boost” their materials.

This is the (nearly) complete enshittification cycle: having harvested the surplus from users and business customers, FB is now (badly) attempting to surf the line where nearly all the value in the service lands in its shareholders’ pockets, with just enough surplus left behind to keep end-users and business-users locked in (see also: Twitter).

There have been lots of other abusive “platform” businesses in the past — famously, 19th century railroads and their robber-baron owners were so obnoxiously abusive that they spawned the trustbusting movement, the Sherman Act, and modern competition law. Did the rail barons do enshittification, too?

Well, yes — and no. I have no doubt that robber barons would have engaged in zuckerbergian shenanigans if they could have — but here we run up against the stubborn inertness of atoms and the slippery liveliness of bits. Changing a railroad schedule to make direct connections with cities where you want to destroy a rival ferry business (or hell, laying track to those cities) is a slow proposition. Changing the content recommendation system at Facebook is something you do with a few mouse-clicks.

Which brings me to the thesis of “Twiddler”: enshittification doesn’t arise from the special genius or the unique wickedness of tech barons — rather, it’s the product of the ability to twiddle. Our discourse has focused (rightly) on the extent to which platforms are “instrumented” — that is, the degree to which they spy on and analyze their users’ conduct.

But the discussion of what the platforms do with that data — the ways they “react” to it — has echoed the platforms’ own boasts of transcendental “behavior modification” prowess (c.f. “Surveillance Capitalism”) while giving short shrift to the extremely mundane, straightforward ways that the ability to change the business-logic of a platform lets it allocate and withdraw surpluses from different kinds of users to get them on the hook, reel them in, and then skin and devour them.

The Twiddler thesis, in other words, is a counter to the narrative of Maria Farrell’s Prodigal Tech Bros, who claim that they were once evil sorcerers, but, having seen the error of their ways, vow to be good sorcerers from now on, forswearing “hacking our dopamine loops” like vampires swearing off blood:

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

People who repeat the claims of Prodigal Tech Bros are engaging in criti-hype, Lee Vinsel’s term for criticism that repeats tech’s own mystical narratives of their own superhuman prowess, rather than grappling with the mundanity of doing old conjurer’s tricks very quickly, with computers:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

That’s what twiddling is — doing the same things that grocery store monopolists and rail monopolists and music label monopolists have always done, but very quickly, with computers. Whether it’s Amazon rooking sellers and authors, or Apple and Google’s App Stores rooking app creators, or Tiktok and Youtube rooking performers, or Uber rooking drivers, the underlying pattern of surplus-harvesting is the same, and so is the method. They do the same thing as their predecessors, but very quickly, with computers.

A grocer who wants to price-gouge on eggs needs to dispatch an army of low-waged employees with pricing guns. AmazonFresh does the same thing in an eyeblink, by typing a new number into a field on a web-form and clicking submit. As is so often the case when a magic trick is laid bare, the actual mechanic is very, very boring: the way to make a nickel appear to vanish is to spend hundreds of hours practicing before a mirror while you shift so it is clenched between your fingers, and protrudes from behind your hand (sorry, spoiler alert).

The trick can be baffling and marvellous when you see it, but once you know how it’s done, it’s pretty obvious — the difference is that most sleight-of-hand artists don’t think they’re sorcerers, while plenty of tech bros believe their own press.

There’s a profound irony in twiddling’s role in enshittification: early internet scholarship rightly hailed the power of twiddling for internet users. Theorists like Aram Sinnreich described this as configurability — the ability of end-users (aided by tinkerers, small businesses, and co-ops) to modify the services they used to suit their own needs:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vk8c2

Arguably the most successful configurability story is ad-blocking, which Doc Searls calls “the biggest boycott in human history.” Billions of end-users of the web have twiddled their browsers so that they aren’t tracked by ad-tech and don’t see ads:

https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Configurability was at the heart of early hopes for mass disintermediation, because audiences and performers (or sellers and producers) could go direct to one another, assembling a customized, un-capturable conduit composed of an a-la-carte selection of payment processors, webstores, mail and web hosts, etc. Whenever one of these utilities tried to capture that relationship and harvest an unfair share of the surplus, both ends of the transaction could foil them by blocking, reverse-engineering, modding, or mashing them up, wriggling off the hook before it could set its barbs.

But — as we can all see — a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. The platforms seized the internet, turning it into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four”:

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Three factors let them do this:

1. They were able to buy or merge with every major competitor, and where that failed them, they were able to use predatory pricing to drive competitors out of the market:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

2. They were able to twiddle their services, setting them a-bristle with surveillance beacons and digital actuators that could rearrange the virtual furniture every time some knob-jockey touched their dial:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

3. They were able to hoard the twiddling, using laws like the DMCA, CFAA, noncompetes, trade secrecy, and other “IP” laws to control the conduct of their competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That last point is very important: it’s not just that big corporations twiddle us to death — it’s that they have made it illegal for us to twiddle back. Adblocking is possible on the open web, but to ad-block your Iphone, you must first jailbreak it, which is a crime. Yes, Apple will block Facebook from spying on you — but even if you opt out of tracking, Apple still spies on you in exactly the same way Facebook did, to power their own ad-targeting business:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

This is what Jay Freeman calls “felony contempt of business-model” — the literal criminalization of configuration. When Netflix wants to decide who is and isn’t a member of your family, they just twiddle their back-end to block the child that moves back and forth between your home and your ex’s, thanks to your joint custody arrangement:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

But woe betide the parent who twiddles back to restore their child’s service, by jailbreaking an app or the W3C’s official, in-browser DRM, EME — trafficking in a tool to bypass EME and reconfigure your browser to suit your needs, rather than Netflix’s, is a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine, under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

This is the supreme irony of twiddling: Big Tech companies love to twiddle you, but if you touch your own knob, they call it a crime. Just as Big Tech firms turned “free software” into “open source” and then took all the software freedom for themselves, configurability is now the exclusive purview of corporations — those transhuman, immortal colony paperclip maximizers that treat humans as inconvenient gut-flora:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vBknF2yUZZ8

If we are to take the net back, we’ll need to seize the means of computation. There are three steps to that process:

1. Traditional antitrust: Merger scrutiny, breakups, and bans on predatory pricing and other anticompetitive practices:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/01/federal-trade-commission-justice-department-seek-strengthen-enforcement-against-illegal-mergers

2. Anti-twiddling laws for businesses: A federal privacy law with a private right of action, labor protections, and other rules that take knobs away from tech platforms:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

3. Pro-twiddling laws for users: Interoperability (both mandatory and adversarial — AKA “Competitive Compatibility” or “comcom”):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/05/time-for-some-game-theory/#massholes

Monopolists and their handmaidens — witting and unwitting — want you to believe that their dominance is inevitable (shades of Thatcher’s “there is no alternative”), because the great forces of history, the technical characteristics of digital technology, and the sorcerous mind-control of dopamine-hackers.

But the reality is much more mundane. Digital freedom was never a mirage. Indeed, it is a prize of enormous value — that’s why the platforms are so intent on hoarding it all for themselves.

Here’s this week’s podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/02/27/twiddler/

And here’s a direct link to download the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive ; they’ll host your media for free, forever):

TK

Here’s the direct feed to subscribe to my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

And here’s the original “Twiddler” article on Medium:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

Image: Stephen Drake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Analog_Test_Array_modular_synth_by_sduck409.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

This Thu (Mar 2) I’ll be in Brussels for Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy, along with a who’s-who of European and US trustbusters. It’s livestreamed, and both in-person and virtual attendance are free. On Fri (Mar 3), I’ll be in Graz for the Elevate Festival.

[Image ID: A mandala made from a knob and button-covered control panel.]

[kari-go]

Hi! Idk if the kwamies are just for fun or what, but I got the curage (and maybe it's fun) to list what my ideas (for my head"cannon" Miraculouses 😁)

Zebra - equalization, can turn things into their opposite

Llama - commitment, can shoot energy-spit and link the user to the target

Snail - syncronization, the user can sync with targets and control their moves, eithet making them mimic his movements or moving them like a hivemind, working to achive a goal. It also works backword, so othets can control the user's movements (this way it can learn techniques the other can do)

Hedgehog - so far, having pocket dimension to hide or trap othets, maybe change it later...

Pidgeon - generalization. The owner can make itself "unrecogniseable", meaning despite being a person in pidgeon costume, you can't recognise it, simply blends in (you only can spot them if you looking for something very-very specific about them)

Antelope - intention. If the user touches you with it's two horned stick you start to do whatever idea you currently head, even if it's crazy or unlikely to have any succes, the target starts it enthusiasticly

Rhino - potential. The user can "suck" the potential energy from things, making them living "object-magnet" atracting everything, even if it means an unpleasant crush... The user also can charge object with it, making them fly

Firefly - transition. Can become living energy, moving thing and even empovering machines. Literal force

Kangaroo - swich. Can swiching placement of object with limited range

Has no red panda (yet!)😅

Capybara - relaxation. The user simply can others feel good, whatever happening to them

Rattlesnake - avareness. Having bracelet with a campus like rattle-pointer which shows where a previously marked object is

Giraffe - exhaltion (stolen, since they modified the tiger to elation😁) choosing any ability, the user becomes the bes-best in it (like being humanly in the Guinise record book for it, and turn it up by Miraculous -holder standards)

Hippo - overprotection/motherly care (something along those line) can create a bubble where the target just sleeps and floats. This bubble saves the target very well, but not all-proof

Sloth - procrestination. Every time the target would like to do something, manipulates fate to do something (like, insted of taking Miraculous away, goes on for personal revenge (also gains litteral weight to arms and legs)

No racoon or beaver yet

Donkey - humblenes. With a whip, can make the target obey instractions of thr user and behave foolish

Coala - influence. Gives power to do whatever you wish, but limited very much how much support and love does the holder has from the sorrunding peaple...

I hope you like them or find some of them funny, there are many more, some of these even have "pairs" (won't grant wish, but opposite concepts, like LB and CN's), but I like these, hope you to, but I gladly reading your feedback on these as well 😁.

Have a nice day!🙂

They are just for fun but I don't think I would mind adding them if I got an idea for the miraculous and a weapon.

I already have a power for the zebra, anyone who sees them would get vertigo.

Ooh, so like a tracker I like that. They would spit on them and the spit would always be visible to the user. It could wear off over time, I really like this power.

That's really interesting, kinda reminds me of Martyr (black cat) and Mimic (wolf).

That sounds pretty similar to the ferret.

Oh, that's cool. Another I thought of was that they can spy with their feathers xd. But I think I like this one better.

So kinda giving them enough confidence to do that? That's cool, my thoughts were super speed but I like this one.

The salamander already has that power (Tag).

Oh, that's interesting. Kinda seems like an extension of the white lion.

That seems very similar to the panda.

I also haven't thought of one for the red panda 😔.

I see where you're coming from and it fits the capybara, but I already have that power (dove).

That seems similar to the llama.

That seems like the rooster but harder to explain to me. I know that I would have issues with that.

I like that! It's like a combination of betta fish and sheep. I like it.

Hmmm, interesting.

My original thought for the racoon was that they can steal powers, like the butterfly now. But that was when the layers didn't exist. For the beaver, I like the power that @randypelow suggested, the holder pulls objects to make a dome (like a knock-off Shellter).

The donkey was one of the oldest kwamis I had, he was made with Inn and I¨m pretty sure he was the only one who had a power from the set xd. The concept was Adaptation (or versatility at first) and the holder could change the suits to fit the situation, basically like the power-ups. But then I gave that power to the octopus and then I removed it xd. What you suggested seems kinda tricky to me I would have to think about it more.

So like the canon eagle or just a big amount of confidence?

I like a lot of these! You always have so many interesting ideas!