#that was THE MOST hyped about thing AND FOR GOOD REASON!!!!
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The Greek gods and how willing they are to fuck Odysseus (at least according to me)
Not doing all of them, thereâs so many
Zeus: He most def would, but not because Ody is special. Like, itâs Zeus, the man would fuck anything as long as itâs breathing. I do think heâd enjoy the pleasure of messing with his older brother though, so heâs extra into it for that
Poseidon: Oh yes. Heâd deny it if asked, but he wants to fuck him so badly
Hades: I think heâd fuck him mainly to see what all the hype is about. And to mess with Poseidon of course
Hera: Nah, sheâs surprisingly loyal. Which like bitch why
Hestia: Asexual queen
Demeter: She has no idea who Odysseus is tbh. Donât think sheâd be too into it anyways
Apollo: Yeah! Thatâs not a good thing for Ody tho, as it never ends well for Apolloâs mortal lovers. Mans might be in danger
Artemis: Asexual lesbian queen
Athena: See with her, I donât know. Their bond is strictly platonic, but I donât think theyâd be against the idea of fucking each other. I do think sheâd make him fight for it
Ares: Now for most of the duration of the musical, no I do not think heâd be interested. But after he repeatedly stabs Poseidon with a trident? Oh boy
Aphrodite: Yeah, heâs just her type! Tough warrior thatâs secretly a sub :)
Hermes: Mans been willing to fuck him for a long ass time, like Iâm impressed by his level of self restraint actually
Dionysus: Is in the same seat as Demeter in that he has little idea of who this dude actually is. Donât think heâd turn him down though
Hephaestus: I donât think so, but I have no concrete reason for that answer. Vibe check
Aeolus: No thanks :)
#Tell me Iâm wrong if you want to :)#epic#epic the musical#epic spoilers#Manwhore AU#Feels fitting to be here#odysseus#epic odysseus#epic zeus#epic poseidon#Epic Hades#Epic Hera#Epic Hestia#Epic Demeter#Epic Apollo#Epic Artemis#Epic Athena#Epic Ares#epic aphrodite#Epic Hermes#Epic Dionysus#epic hephaestus#epic aeolus#These tags just sounds like Iâm very hype about all the gods
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HAPPENINGâŚâŚMAYBE!! (Addressing the anime rumors + Keroroâs birthday plan revealed)
*holding my hand out toward you with sparkles framing me* Letâs take copium together!
Not the post I was planning to make next, but hereâs a sudden update for a couple of reasons. Some very exciting rumors which you may very well have seen have been floating around for the last day or so, and while I was initially hype as fuck to corroborate it as fact, thereâs a little asterisk to the whole thing that I wanna tack on before we shit our pants too much. In addition, the official accounts have revealed what theyâre planning for Keroroâs birthday this year, and while itâs not that closely related, I might as well cover that too.
So, a summary of what alleged info just came out:
A typically reputable anime news/leak account, SugoiLITE, shared yesterday that the Keroro anime series is planned to be broadcasted in Spring 2025, and a new movie is planned for 2026. However, the only publicly verifiable info hinting toward this is a recently released interview in an anime magazine with animation director Fumitoshi Oizaki (from the original series, and was also credited on Aprilâs PV), where he describes the series and movie projects but does not specify the series name. This info is per another credible reporter, blogger ryokutya.
Now, here is my translation of Oizakiâs quote as presented in the post: âDetails havenât been made public yet, but Iâm working on a series to be broadcasted next spring. Concurrently, a movie scheduled to be released in 2026 has also started production.â
Sadly, the blog post does not specify which anime magazine this was in, so I donât have the full context for the interview or the question asked. I checked a few table of contents from recently released anime magazines and didnât see Oizakiâs name in any of them. My hunch is telling me that itâs Newtype, which doesnât have a digital version, so thereâs no feasible way for me to have it that quickly. So yeah, weâre kinda stuck with that quote floating in the void for now.
I canât go too deep into it so youâll have to trust me on this one, but Iâve got a little knowledge myself about roughly how and from where anime leaks usually get sourced. It is very possible SugoiLITE does indeed know this information in advance, but itâs also equally possible he only saw this same quote and extrapolated the most likely scenario from it. If it is the latter, Iâd say he made a pretty safe bet anyway.
In the quote, what I chose to translate as âconcurrentlyâ can also mean âin parallelâ, so the interpretation Iâm getting is that the spring 2025 series and 2026 movie are connected and being developed in tandem. Ryokutya also guesses that the work in question is Keroro since it does have a project announced. Iâve speculated that the new series will air in either spring or summer next year for a while now (BNP has a mysterious gap in their schedule, with two series airing in January and the Gintama spinoff announced in late 2023 being pushed to October). A movie in 2026 also make a lot of sense, since itâs the 20th anniversary of the first movie. Oizaki does work on other franchises with recent relevancy, such as Kaleido Star which had its 20th anniversary in 2023, and some works in the Shigeru Mizuki-verse like Akuma-kun and last yearâs Gegege no Kitaro prequel. But given the specific language in the quote and just Occamâs razoring it down to the fact that we know Keroro is getting things already, I think this double feature is pretty likely whatâs going on. Maybe itâs the hopium talking, but itâs certainly not a reach (trust me Iâve made reaches before I was here for the nothingburger that was the animeâs 15th anniversary).
Okay, tl;dr: Given the one available source we have and the credibility of both reporters involved, I think thereâs a pretty good chance the anime will really be next spring and there will be a movie in 2026 as people have been corroborating. But the probability that this is an educated guess and the probability that itâs confirmed are pretty much equal at the moment. So get excited! But not too excited. Just like a bit above average excited. You may draw the party popper pull string back about three quarters.
When I first started drafting this post, I was looking forward to saying that weâll likely find out next month what the truth is, knowing that today the official accounts were going to reveal what this yearâs Keroro birthday celebration is. ButâŚthey explicitly stated there will not be any new anime info at the event they have planned. Booooooo. Well, hereâs what we are getting:
Itâs actually not a physical event like they held last year. This time, theyâre commemorating Keroroâs birthday with the first episode of a new live radio show called âKero! to Radioâ, featuring Keroroâs voice actress Kumiko Watanabe and Tamamaâs voice actress Etsuko Kozakura. It will be broadcasted irregularly on the official Keroro YouTube channel, and next monthâs premiere will be here. There will be various different segments of the show which feature messages and questions sent in by listeners. Submissions are sent in via the programâs Onsen page, which also has details about each segment. You do need an account to send messages, but I donât think a Japanese address is required unless you want to enter the optional raffle. Iâll play around with it later and potentially do a separate post going more into the showâs structure if thatâs something people are interested in (obviously you need to know Japanese to really get anything out of this, so Iâd like to gauge if itâs worth it first).
While itâs disappointing that there seemingly wonât be any news about the new anime revealed on the legendary birthday, itâs pretty neat to have another VA radio show. It seems like this is sort of following in the footsteps of Keroro and Giroroâs Earth Invasion Radio from back when the original show was still airing, although Keroro Channel also had been doing its own livestreams featuring the BNP/Kadokawa staff running the channel giving updates about the seriesâs various collabs and stuff (the majority of these episodes were done before the new anime announcement). Itâs unclear if this is going to replace those or not; this is quite different structurally. It would be really cool if they rotate the voice actors out each episode and change the segments up a little since the broadcasts are irregular anyway. I guess weâll have to wait and see!
*Exhale* All right, thatâs enough yapping for today. I know the wait for more concrete details on the anime has been excruciating, especially now that we have a very tantalizing possibility dangling right before our noses. But if spring really is the airdate, it canât be too much longer now. We already waited over a decadeâwhatâs a few more months, right? Heh heh... (Iâm dying Squirtle.)
#keroro gunso#sgt frog#keroro#tamama#anikero reiwa#boy itâs been a while since I got to use that tag#hopefully the next time wonât be too far away :â)
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like, archives used to be THE BIGGEST overwatch event for me because it was the most we got in terms of in-game lore and i just genuinely enjoyed playing them (retribution, my beloved), but invasion? don't know her. i refuse to pay for it and not only do i not regret not getting to play it - i haven't even bothered to check the gameplay on youtube. this is how uninterested i am in the game these days. so yeah, the fumbled overwatch big time.
THIS IS WHAT IM SAYING THIS IS THE REALEST THING EVER
genuinely always felt like such a treat going to play the archive missions uuuggghhh i miss her so bad........ there will never be such a fumble for a videogame than ow this i'm absolutely certain
#overwatch#overwatch 2#ask#this is so true tho! i havent looked up gameplay either and i dont really know what happens in that#because I Too refuse to buy it. i generally just have a No Buy rule when it comes to blizzard#not like i ever bought anything besides the game when it first came out but its just exemplified nowadays#dropping the ball on PVE is something ill truly never get over like... come on man....#that was THE MOST hyped about thing AND FOR GOOD REASON!!!!#i'm not saying the PVE was going to expand on some interactions like cassidy to 76 about hanamura#but it COULDVE... and now we will DEFINITELY never know what the hell that meant#outside of PVE though like that's what i mean- there's SO many interesting little lore bits with overwatch#but blizzard's just so careless with it that it's all gone to waste with no where to go#not that it's rock solid lest we all forget. Kiriko.#should i make a post on kiriko because she's such a funny unfortunate character and it's really sad but anyways#i don't want to prattle too long POINT IS. you get me#i miss the archives.........
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If you have been paying any attention, Iâm a big lifelong BeyoncĂŠ fan. September 4th is her birthday so Iâm using writing as another excuse to listen to her music on repeat. Give me a character and a song from this list. I want to see what I can come up with. (I recommend every song on this list btw. But that might be obvious lol)
CUFF IT
Crazy In Love
BODYGUARD
Love On Top
Baby Boy
MY ROSE
DAUGHTER
ALLIIGATOR TEARS
Pray You Catch Me
Sandcastles
Jealous
I Miss You
Start Over
Sweet Dreams
Flaws and All
Freakum Dress
Resentment
Listen
Poison
TYRANT
#is this the silliest thing ive done about requests#yes#am i still gonna do it#also yes#expect most of these to be on the shorter side#I feel like i should start writing the fic for cuff it cause i may have hyped that one up prompt wise#its mostly there as a joke prompt but i genuinely love that song#its just the contents are uh let's just say i will not write smut#i'll imply it but i wont write it#If you made it this far#you can request songs by her that arent on the list#This is more for those who don't know her discography to be surprised by what they asked for#Also i guess my top 3 albums by her real quick cause that's not a controversial take at all lol#Renaissance Lemonade 4#My reasons are I love a good disco vibe#Heartbreak and healing is great#This is the album that came out in middle school for me#it brought me joy watching the music videos after school
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uhh hi morro enjoyers i finally finishing crystalized and started dragons rising specifically euphrasias episode and morrotober is soon so iâm coming back. do you remember me
no color idk just in case the colors clash horrendously
#iâm getting DRAGGED right back#i know anon remembers me whoever you are. shoutout to you#most if not all my morro mutuals moved on to something else like i did but the general people in the morro tag seem to be the same#if not some new people#new program goes crazy my artstyle looks completely different#this is IMPROVEMENT#i hope#i didnât spend too much time on this#right looks younger left looks older for some reason#maybe itâs the face shape#yâall sat through my first ever digital art era you guys get a medal tbh#i might participate in morrotober i joined tumblr literally end of september last year#bmc people iâm so serious block the morro tag right now#yes i used to exclusively post about this guy. what about it#this is gonna be the only thing i tweet about for the next week#iâve wanted this for years fuck#what the fuck#ignore the colors iâm in the dark and i have eye protection mode on so i cba#i want to hype myself up for morrotober gimme things to draw#off topic but i recently got into epic the musical itâs SO GOOD#iâm so excited for the coming sagas#especially calypso and scylla#and the LAST ONE god the reunion song made me cry lowkey#ninjago#lego ninjago#morro wu#ninjago morro#morro ninjago#god i used to have these tags in my quick access#jellos scribbles
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#here's some of the classics on that list i have beef with btw:#i have tried to read A Confederacy of Dunces several times and it's funny but it's also so cringe and Ignatius is so obnoxious#that i find it too difficult to finish like i just feel depressed and bad for everybody around him too much#i tried reading Infinite Jest like a decade ago and i got like 200 pages in and i remember thinking it felt like#such a slog the entire time because he's just so gd wordy and also i stopped liking DFW after i heard the abuse allegations against him#frankenstein i didnt read that long ago but i just remember finding it so boring for some reason?? i feel i might need to read it again#dracula ngl i feel like im cheating a bit saying ive completely read it because i loved the beginning and then HATED so much of the rest#the characters were just so boring and melodramatic hahaha i just liked the part where jonathan was doing a travel diary#and trapped in the castle tbh and after that i skimmed quite a bit#i almost flipped my shit when i saw ender's game on there because I ALWAYS mix it up with ready player one by ernest cline#which i bought the audiobook of a while back and hated every minute of it i dont think its good at all#but it wasnt that so phew my faith in this list is somewhat restored#i read most of the first game of thrones book and was disappointed tbh maybe because id seen the show already#so i was like 'this feels almost exactly the same except worse?' because i'd been expecting it to give me more depth and insight#into the characters but instead it felt exactly the same and i still didnt love any of the characters enough to feel attached to them#also i am fully aware me not personally liking or vibing with a book doesnt mean it doesnt deserve to be considered great btw#but i think if youre gonna be like me and force yourself to go through a bunch of lists like this very seriously then you also need to just#let yourself be like 'yeah not for me' without feeling too bad about it sometimes too#often times i dont particularly love the classics or 'important books' but at the same time#i still feel like im getting more out of reading them than just grabbing the newest hyped up books that also dont do anything for me#maybe not in a 'wow i loved reading this' way but in like a#'i now have first-hand knowledge of this thing that is so influential / so frequently referenced'#or 'this challenged me and i feel like i did a mental/emotional workout or gave me some new food for thought'#or 'made me more aware of what gaps in my knowledge and reading skills and what my tastes are too'#sort of way...#it really just depends on what you're reading for and why and what you're hoping to get out of it a lot of the time maybe#it's like the homework i give myself to go through these lists that i also intersperse with the stuff i read more just for fun#p
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It kinda feels like when the Owl Crew were all saying their goodbyes to working on the show again.
Nearly everyone in the tags is getting ready for The End.
Like. Damn. It really is the end as far as we know for the entire franchise of The Owl House.
Man.
#its also giving SPoP and SU flashbacks#except its happening in the evening and not during the afternoon like SU or at an all-at-once-release deal like SPoP#getting p emotional#I do remember early in the days. like when Ms Dana Terrace was still in the dt team and doodled Luz#alongside Rebecca Sugar Ian JQ and I think alex hirsch#and ofc the first real poster#and watching it on youtube when it first aired. and even watching it on TV.#I remember a lot of it with twitter too. that viney cult thing. the hype for Understanding Willow. the pic of lil Luz smiling going around.#I remember tons of fics. The Lumity azura actor au thats been LOONG abandoned lmao. the one where Luz was the author of tgwa. tons more.#Of course the excessive hype for Grom.#The hype for the S1B trailer was huge too but Grom. You cannot replicate that. And yknow what? Id go as far to say#not even Hollow Mind had that much hype behind it.#Plus the huge amounts of news coverage and hype after Grom aired.#Like the show was fairly popularish. Nothing too big and was about even with amphibby. But after Grom. BOOM. Huge amounts.#I could really go on. I just cant really believe that its kinda unfairly going away. Possibly never to return. One of The most talked about#animated shows in the past couple years (similar to the likes of Steven Universe! Which was HUGE.) even worldwide.#Nothing lasts forever. It just is unfair the time spent was taken away tho. Happened to others too. Happens so much to animation#and we just Have to accept it because higher-ups are either to proud to their stupid ideals or simply for no real good reason.#This show has had a good impact on animation. I'm always gunna be glad for that. And I'm glad that so many have been touched and loved.#Here's hoping to the future. Maybe more Owl House. Maybe more creativity by the crew. Maybe for better. To The Owl House!#The Owl House#TOH#Owl House
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If youâre a blank blog youâre getting blocked
If you donât have an age indicator youâre getting blocked
If you say âpart two?â Youâre getting BLOCKT
#đ§đ˝ââď¸ â luxe chit chat#Iâve blocked so many people this morning itâs maddening like where is ur tumblr etiquette#if u donât reblog tumblr authors I donât want u following me tbh#like I work hard on my fics and so does everyone else so like?? reblog? it isnât hard#and if commenting part two with nothing else is just plain rude#can u not give some reasons why u want a part two?#or be a bit more polite about asking?#legit me and every other writer would be more motivated to write another part if u said what u liked about the first#I know this isnât a new concept and people talk about it a lot but itâs so TRUE!#like.. câmon you canât figure out most of us have praise kinks??#TELL US WHAT U LIKE GIVE US FEEDBACK GO CRAZY WE LOVE THAT#sigh. things will never change here itâs BRUTAL out here#I used to feel bad abt blocking people on me old blog#I still do a lil bit but Iâm just over it#do better!! support tumblr authors!! hype them up!!#it rly makes peopleâs days when u do like itâs such a simple thing and it changes our whole mood#any good morning Iâm awake again fr#I had the most revolting nightmare but we ball asfhdksjfks
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Clingy
Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader (BAU!reader)
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WC: 3.7k
Summary: You tended to be very expressive with your friends when showing your affection. Whether it showed in pet names or physical touch. Only thing is, Spencer thinks heâs falling in love with you, and all of your sweet affectionate actions are starting to take a toll on his unrequited heart. At least, he thinks itâs unrequited.Â
Tags: thereâs a tiny bit of miscommunication but not too much that it will make your head explode like it does mine. Make out but nothing grown/spicy. Friends to lovers. A bit of hurt/comfort
A/N: Not beta read donât kill me! yoooo spence is so in denial about her feelings in this but lol so real king. This is mostly from his POV but I had to cheat a few times. Hope i can live up to the hype that complimentary colors was. I low key don't like this one as much but had to execute it cause the idea was cute.
You were starting to drive him insane. Criminally insane. You could invade his thoughts at any waking moment of his day and take over his mind. Every affectionate pet name, every soft fleeting touch, hell every time you look at him, he would replay the moment in his mind like a broken record. If he was in a crowded room, his eyes would always fall on you.Â
After being with the BAU for a while you became good friends with your coworkers. And with that, came your habit of calling your friends sweet nicknames. Anything from sweetie, to honey, to babes, and the one that broke his heart the most, my love.Â
At first he didnât understand why you were using terms of endearment that were typically used in a romantic relationship, but in a platonic way. At some point he caught on that you were similar to Garcia when it came to expressing your love for friends. Similar to her and the way she has her own sweet silly way of expressing how she cares.
Nevertheless, some small part of his heart still broke when you called him those names. He adored your sweet caring nature and the fact that you cared enough about him to call him terms of endearment. But every time a nickname fell from your lips, he was reminded you only meant it platonically.Â
It was his own personal torture to constantly be reminded he would never be your sweetie, your honey ⌠your love. But the nicknames werenât enough to drive him insane. While it drove him to the brink of insanity, he was able to keep his head somewhat still on his shoulders.Â
Not long after the heart warming but crushing nicknames, you showed your true love language. Physical touch. It showed in many forms. It could show when poking JJ in the shoulder and giving Emily a high five. Or nudging Morgan in his side with your elbow. You even managed to get a fist pump from Hotch and Rossi. And of course the welcome and goodbye hugs from Penelope.Â
You were a bit hesitant at first to express this love language of yours with Spencer due to his aversion to touch and germs. However, you observed that he would gratefully receive occasional touches. Whether it be a hug, high-five, or even the rare ruffle of his hair -which of course would be from Morgan. So you approached him and asked if he was comfortable with physical contact.Â
When it came to you, he was more than comfortable. You could take him in your arms and he would simply melt into a puddle on the floor. Except he didnât say that and his reply was closer to a mix of stuttering and rambling about how you could never make him uncomfortable and how he just doesnât like germs.Â
Now heâs not saying he regrets his choices. He wouldnât ever take it back. He enjoys every single lingering touch between the two of you. Actually âenjoysâ would be a severe understatement. Every single time you ruffle his hair, lean your head on his shoulder, or even just carefully touch his arm, it was as if a thousand volts of electricity were flowing through him. Like he could light up the city even. You were the best part of his days and the reason breath filled his lungs. You brought a light into his life that made him feel safe and warm.Â
He desperately wanted your affection, your attention, your touch, to mean something more than he knew it to be. But sooner or later, touch after touch, he started to go insane. Somewhere along the way he had daydreamed so deep he had lost his mind.Â
You had officially driven Spencer Reid insane.Â
He was promptly whisked away from his thoughts when he felt the tap of a folder on his shoulder and a light thump on his desk.Â
âHotch wants to know your thoughts on the consultation from Colorado,â you started.Â
He blinked back into focus glancing at the papers on his desk.Â
âHey, you alright?â You asked with concern. âYou look like your head is in the clouds.â
âIâm fine, just lost in thought,â he answered with a small smile reassuring you.
âDonât get too lost. Canât have your genius brain short circuiting on us.â You chuckled as you took a small step closer to him and playfully ruffled his hair.Â
âIâll try not to,â he grinned and pushed his hair back after you messed with it.Â
âWell Iâll be back soon, my love. Gotta go bother Penelope,â you joked before making your way out of the bullpen.Â
His gaze was lingering on you as you left. His thoughts started to drift to you again as his cheeks turned pink.
âIâll be back soon, my love,â Morgan mimicked in a higher pitched voice with a grin as he approached Spencer's desk. In response Spencer turned his chair away from Morgan to hide his now red face.Â
âWhen are you two going to start dating? You guys already act like a couple.âÂ
âWe do not act like a couple,â Spencer argued. âShe just sometimes calls me pet names, that's normal for her.âÂ
âYou donât see it do you?â Morgan furrowed his eyebrows and was seconds away from chuckling. âSheâs been giving you quite a bit of attention lately. Practically clinging onto you.âÂ
âI mean I- I donât think so. She does that with everyone, it's not just me. She just happens to be very affectionate with friends.â He answers as his voice almost cracked.Â
Morgan shook his head, âOh no itâs more than that. Have you ever noticed that she calls you âmy loveâ but she calls us âloveâ? Or when weâre on a long flight back home and you two are all cuddly on the jet. How she always seeks out your company and finds an excuse to talk to you or about you.âÂ
Spencer couldnât speak. He had so many words on the tip of his tongue but his voice wouldnât make a sound. He sat frozen and mouth slightly agape as his brain started to go into overdrive.Â
Morgan's face softened at Spencer's reaction. âItâs different with you kid. Friends donât act like that.âÂ
âYou and Garcia do.â Spencer countered, this time definitely with a voice crack. Morgan lightly chucked. He was well aware that his and Penelopeâs friendship was a bit different than other male/female friendships.Â
âOkay you got me there, but you and Y/N arenât me and Garcia. We may flirt with each other a lot but thatâs our thing. You two have this care for each other like nothing I've ever seen.âÂ
Spencer was left stunned once again and Morgan could practically see the gears in his head turning.
âYou may not notice it now, or hell you may not let yourself notice it now, but itâs true.âÂ
Those words rang in the back of Spencer's mind for days. Of course on a regular basis you would occupy his mind at any given moment. But now it wasnât just thoughts about you. His mind was over analyzing almost every interaction between you and him, trying to find what Morgan had talked about. Some form of evidence that proved what you felt for him was beyond what he had initially thought.Â
He was recounting all the recent times you had approached him out of the members of your team. He recalled all the times you were either hanging out or on the jet and you found yourself tracing patterns on his arm. He was rethinking when you started to use nicknames around him and how it could be different with him than with others. It turned out Morgan might be right, as Spencer realized the numerous times you referred to Garcia or Emily as âloveâ, but in the rare instance you said âmy loveâ it was only ever directed to him.Â
The idea of you liking him back had become an all consuming thought, but he was too terrified to ask you. What if Morgan was wrong? Profilers have been wrong before. He became petrified by the idea of asking you about it and possibly finding out his feelings were unrequited. But most of all, he was scared of losing you. Scared that if he brought it up he would make things awkward and ruin your friendship. He couldnât lose you, not over something as trivial as his feelings.Â
Unfortunately the mental toll this was taking on his mind started to show. Not so obvious that the everyday person would notice, but you werenât an everyday person. You grew to know him like the back of your hand. So of course you started to notice the little changes in his behavior. His ever so slight flinch when you would initially touch him. His eyes which used to linger on you and catch your eyes from across the room, now focused almost anywhere you werenât. The way his body froze when you placed a hand on his shoulder. The way his eyes partially widened when you called him anything other than his name.Â
He tried to hide his worries from you, but you could tell something was bothering him.Â
Something about you.
His overall behavior didnât reflect that he was avoiding you or distancing himself from you. He still talked to you and acted around you like normal. Instead it felt like he was holding himself back from receiving or truly appreciating your affection the way he used to.Â
~
Days had passed and the team was sent on a case. While this case was an emotional rollercoaster for everyone, it had affected you the most. The victims had reminded you of yourself and the unsub and all of his delusional reasoning for his actions had hit very close to home.Â
The team caught the unsub and closed the case quite late in the evening. Everyone was exhausted after the grueling past few days and decided to spend the night at the hotel to rest and leave in the morning. You however, still felt an ache in your stomach from all the anxiety felt throughout the day. You couldnât seem to relax and let that weight off your shoulders. So you went to the one person who could help. Â
Spencer was getting ready to go to sleep, peacefully reading a book in bed when he got a knock on his door. He placed his book down and when he opened the door he was greeted by you in pajama pants and a zip up hoodie, clearly also winding down for the night.Â
âHey,â you greeted.Â
âHi, whatâs up? Is everything okay?â he asked, a bit concerned as to why you showed up at his hotel so late at night. He opened the door wider signaling you were welcome inside. You entered the room and stuffed your hands in your pockets as he closed the door.Â
âIâm okay I just âŚâ you cleared your throat. âI know this case has been a tough one but todayâs been really hard for me. Iâm still wired and awake, I canât seem to relax enough to go to sleep,â You abruptly stopped your rambling to catch your breath.Â
âThis might sound dumb but, Iâm in desperate need of a hug right now,â you finally admitted quietly.
He hated seeing you so timid and closed off. How you made yourself smaller than you were, all because you were asking for your basic needs to be met.Â
âYou donât have to explain yourself.âÂ
âHuh?âÂ
âYou donât have to explain why you need a hug. You can just ask,â he said reassuringly.Â
âOh.âÂ
âPhysical contact has been shown to increase levels of dopamine, serotonin, and even oxytocin; therefore, decreasing levels of stress and anxiety. Some people might even argue that physical touch is a fundamental element of being human and experiencing life.â His other way of trying to validate your feelings was of course rambling a string of facts and information from his fingertips.Â
You couldnât help but smile. God he loved it when you smiled.Â
âSo is that a yes?â you asked since you never exactly got an answer from your question in the first place. Even though you knew what his answer was.Â
The corners of his lips turned into a grin. âCome here,â he says with outstretched arms.Â
You practically ran into him at his offer. He wrapped his arms around you as you placed yours around his neck. He wished this moment could last forever. All while at the same time Morgan's previous statements were circling around in his head.Â
He tried his best to push them away. He tried to tell himself this was not you acting on any potential feelings for him. This was simply you reaching out to a friend in need.Â
He took note of the way you held onto him so tightly, almost as if he could leave at any second. It made his heart ache.Â
âYou feel tired,â he almost whispered.Â
âI am,â you mumbled back, face buried in his neck.Â
âDo you wanna lie down?âÂ
You lightly patted him on the back, âDonât worry Iâll leave you be and go to sleep soon. I just need a minuteÂ
âI meant ⌠I meant do you want to lie down here?â He stammered. âSo youâre not alone. You seem like you need a friend right now.âÂ
His own heart almost cracks when he says friend. But thatâs what you need right now, a friend.Â
âIâd like that,â you said with a small smile.Â
You separate from him and he leads you to the bed holding your hand. He sits down against the headboard and waits for you to join him.Â
You awkwardly sit down on the bed, eyes darting in all directions of where heâs sitting. âI- what should I âŚâÂ
âYou could sit down the way you do on the jet,â he kindly offers.Â
You relax at his words and move to sit at his side. He wraps his arm around you as you rest your head against his shoulder. You both sat there in a moment of silence, enjoying eachothers company. He was getting lost in the sweet smell of your perfume; the small bit of it that still lingers from the long day youâve had.Â
He started to recall all the times you two would be close like this. It didnât happen very often. Sometimes on a long jet ride home from a long or stressful case. Or sometimes when the team went out for drinks and you would be tired from dancing. In the rare occasions you two were like this, you would tend to draw patterns on his arm or leg.Â
So he decided to finally return the favor. With the arm he had wrapped around you, he started to dance his fingertips over your upper arm.Â
He felt you practically melt into him at the action. If you could get any closer to him, you did.Â
He continued tracing your arm with an overwhelming amount of care. It made you consider his previous actions compared to how welcome you were now in his arms.Â
âSpencer, Iâm gonna ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me,â you spoke with a hidden hesitation in your voice.Â
âOf course Iâll be honest to you. I always will be,â he furrowed his brows at the thought of you being scared of him lying to you.Â
You let out a small, almost shaky breath. âAm I clingy?â you murmured.Â
This made his hand on your arm stop. He shifted his sitting position so he could face you better but also didnât want to let you out of his hold.Â
âNo, never,â he told you with assurance. âWhy would you think youâre clingy?âÂ
He saw you hesitate once more before you gave him your reply. âI was just overthinking things. Worried I was taking the physical contact thing too far or that Iâm a bit too affectionate at times.â
âWhy would you be worried? Youâd never take things too far. Youâve always been respectful of other peopleâs boundaries.âÂ
You sighed with a shaky breath. He could practically see through you and see you considering your response.Â
âBecause I thought I was making you uncomfortable.â you looked down to avoid his gaze.Â
He was quiet for a second, absolutely baffled as to how you would think you could ever make him uncomfortable. âWhy?â His question was a barely audible whisper. Â
âYou seemed different. All of a sudden you would freeze when I touched you. You became jumpy and skittish when I talked to you. I thought I was too much for you but you didnât want to tell me about it.âÂ
You shifted away to face him and his hand fell from your arm. You fidgeted with the sleeves of your hoodie as your face went blank.Â
âYou could never be too much for me,â he spoke with a soft voice. He tried to reach his hand out to hold yours but your hand disappeared in your sleeve at his touch.Â
âThen why were you different all of a sudden?â You narrowed your eyes at him.Â
His cheeks started to turn pink, âI- I wasnât.âÂ
âYes you were.âÂ
âY/N please,â he begged.Â
âSpencer,â you whispered as your eyes bore into his. âYou said youâd be honest with me.âÂ
He licked his lips and his face turned red. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He couldnât find an escape route. He had no choice but to tell you. And once the flood gate opened, he would never be able to close it.Â
âI was freaking out,â he blurted.Â
âI was freaking out because Morgan implanted this idea in my head that you might possibly have feelings for me based on the way you act around me. Iâve been obsessed with that thought since he mentioned it. So I freaked out almost every time you touched me, talked to me, even looked at me,â he rambled on anxiously as he tried to explain himself. No holding back now.Â
âI tried not to let it change my behavior but I guess it did and I am so sorry for that. I never wanted to give you the impression that I was uncomfortable. To be honest I donât think you could ever make me uncomfortableâÂ
You were silent for a moment. He couldnât read your reaction. Your eyebrows slightly raised with your lips parted. He could only see surprise, which was typical, he just didnât know if this kind of surprise was good.Â
âWhy were you so obsessed with the idea of me having feelings for you?âÂ
He couldâve sworn his heart was going to beat out of his chest at any moment.Â
âBecause I think Iâm falling in love with you.â
 Here we go. Flood gates.Â
âThe idea you might like me back became an all consuming thought because I never before thought it was possible and I never wanted to get my hopes up. Actually, I pretty much think about you all the time so it wasnât that far from normal. âÂ
âYouâre falling in love with me?â you asked barely above a whisper.Â
âYes,â he spoke softly with full confidence.Â
The only change to your appearance was your eyes widened a bit more. It made Spencer's heart sink to his stomach.Â
âListen, I understand if this makes things weird between us and I am so sorry. I just couldnât ..â
He couldn't finish his thought, you were too busy locking your lips with his. It was a sweet but cautious kiss, almost as if you were testing the waters in uncharted territory. You felt him freeze against you so you leaned away, breaking from the kiss.Â
Not even seconds later Spencer placed a hand on your face and was diving back into the kiss with fervor. You instantly reacted as your arms found their way around his neck and your hand was digging in his hair. The kiss was intoxicating. Both of you trying to get a taste of the other after what felt like eons of pinning.Â
He wrapped his arms around your waist while his one hand snuck up to the small of your back where your hoodie had exposed your skin. It sent a shiver up your spine while you let out a shaky breath against his lips. You tried shifting in your seat to somehow get closer to him. With his hands against your waist he helped guide you to sit in his lap straddling him.Â
When you finally break from the kiss your faces are red and Spencer rests his forehead against yours. You focus on the sound of his breath and the feeling of your heart practically beating in your ears.Â
Your hand moves to play with the hairs at the nape of his neck. âI guess I didnât do a very good job at showing I had feelings for you.âÂ
The corners of his mouth lift up into a giddy smile. âNo, you did. Iâm just oblivious.â
âSounded like you were in denial,â you lightly teased.Â
âThat too,â he chuckles.Â
After a moment of enjoying each other's presence, you pull away from him just far enough to look him in the eyes.Â
âI know I call everyone pet names, but every time I used them with you, I wanted it to mean something more. Part of me would always hope you would one day call me those names back,âÂ
Spencer swore his heart could give out at any second. He never expected to hear this from you and it made him lightheaded.
âThis may sound childish but.. I never craved attention so badly, until you gave me yours,â you added.Â
He licked his lips and smiled. With his hands still on your waist he traced mindless patterns at your sides. âYou have my complete and undivided attention, my love.â
His words made you giddy. You bit your lip to keep yourself from giggling. Although, he would never be opposed to hearing your beautiful laugh.Â
There were no words to describe the way that you felt. So without thinking, you leaned forward once more to capture his lips with yours.Â
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tag Requests: @nomajdetective
#criminal minds#spencer reid#spencer reid fanfiction#spencer reid headcanon#spencer reid x reader#criminal minds fanfic#spencer reid one shot#spencer reid imagine#spencer reid x you#criminal minds x reader#criminal minds fanfiction#spencer reid fluff
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AU where instead of Shen Yuan being obsessed with Luo Binghe, he's instead obsessed with the scum villain himself. I mean we all know Bingge is Very Not Good Person⢠but you know who else a Very Not Good Person� Say it with me: Shen Jiu
Like just imagine a timeline where Shen Yuan is writing paragraph after paragraph about how Shen Qingqiu might actually be a good person but Airplane is wasting his potential. The other commenters are saying he's delusional because he abused the protagonist and as all these TERRIBLE allegations towards him. So he's a clear cut villain.
But Shen Yuan is defending his fav with the vigor of a devout worshipper. He's constantly siting parts that are obvious plot holes and how they could give much needed context to Shen Qingqiu's character.
Other people are demanding for worst things to happen to Shen Qingqiu to spite him. Airplane caves. Shen Yuan actively commissions art and fics where Shen Qingqiu is happy. People tell him "Shen Qingqiu won't fuck you bro"
Shen Yuan isn't interested in that. He's a freaky little man with freaky little likes. He'd gladly take Shen Qingqiu's cold glares and even volunteer to have tea poured on him.
When he finishes PIDW, he's been outraged that Shen Qingqiu was killed off a while back. He's even more outraged that Shen Qingqiu wasn't given any mention at the end.
Now, imagine with me that he gets transmigrated into some NPC, literally Unimportant Character No°5. Probably as the head disciple for drama reasons. And as soon as Shen Jiu is brought in, scruffy and hissing as he is. He immediately hugging his thighs and saying he'll be peak lord for sure.
Please follow me into this suspicious alleyway as I continue to explain my vision fueled by sleep deprivation.
So now imagine your Shen Jiu. You're a former street rat and demonic cultivator, you aren't expecting to be liked or respected. You're expecting it, you've come to terms with it a long time ago. What you weren't expecting was for this random ass guy you have to call da-shixiong is immediately insane about you.
He met you first day, literally saw you bite a guy, and immediately started spouting out how you'll be the next peak lord and the absolute envy of Cang Qiong Mountain. You conclude he's missing a few screws because he said it in the most disgustingly sincere way.
You try to continue on with your life, trying to beat him and he looks almost... Excited about you beating him. So he's an M, you think to yourself. But then you see someone trying to beat him or you on something, and this guy immediately gets aggressive. Okay so he's just weird with you.
You continue to deal with him. He's weird but also weirdly respectful. He leaves if you tell him to leave. He defends you like it's his very birth right. He's always there to tend to you as if you were a god. He doesn't touch you and only sits around like a dog waiting for a command.
You eventually get strong enough to beat him, and this absolute buffoon is over the moon about it, already spouting about your supposed success again.
When you actually become peak lord, it isn't surprising. Your hype man has been saying it since day one, he was expecting it for some reason. He continues to spout out nonsense about how he just knew you were going to do it.
So what now? You obviously desire him carnally. What is the next step?
Okay so I know this wouldn't fix them. Almost without question this would make they both worse. But, hear me out, it would be funny. (Especially since just know Shen Yuan's entire inner monologue would be him saying he's just being a good friend as if he isn't being the gayest man in the sect and Shang Qinghua is there. That's an accomplishment to outgay the author)
#ignore me im insane#i can only articulate my ideas through silly haha jokes#but like y'all get it right?#svsss#jiuyuan#scumcum#shen qingqiu#shen jiu#shen yuan#shitpost#idk i'm just rambling#personally I always saw SY on the asexuality spectrum but still that man is PRETTY gay about men#especially pretty men#good for him
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Googleâs enshittification memos
[Note, 9 October 2023: Google disputes the veracity of this claim, but has declined to provide the exhibits and testimony to support its claims. Read more about this here.]
When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.
Think about Unity President Marc Whitten's nonpology for his company's disastrous rug-pull, in which they declared that everyone who had paid good money to use their tool to make a game would have to keep paying, every time someone downloaded that game:
The most fundamental thing that weâre trying to do is weâre building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success.
https://www.wired.com/story/unity-walks-back-policies-lost-trust/
"Shared success" is code for, "If you use our tool to make money, we should make money too." This is bullshit. It's like saying, "We just want to find a way to share the success of the painters who use our brushes, so every time you sell a painting, we want to tax that sale." Or "Every time you sell a house, the company that made the hammer gets to wet its beak."
And note that they're not talking about shared risk here â no one at Unity is saying, "If you try to make a game with our tools and you lose a million bucks, we're on the hook for ten percent of your losses." This isn't partnership, it's extortion.
How did a company like Unity â which became a market leader by making a tool that understood the needs of game developers and filled them â turn into a protection racket? One bad decision at a time. One rationalization and then another. Slowly, and then all at once.
When I think about this enshittification curve, I often think of Google, a company that had its users' backs for years, which created a genuinely innovative search engine that worked so well it seemed like *magic, a company whose employees often had their pick of jobs, but chose the "don't be evil" gig because that mattered to them.
People make fun of that "don't be evil" motto, but if your key employees took the gig because they didn't want to be evil, and then you ask them to be evil, they might just quit. Hell, they might make a stink on the way out the door, too:
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/
Google is a company whose founders started out by publishing a scientific paper describing their search methodology, in which they said, "Oh, and by the way, ads will inevitably turn your search engine into a pile of shit, so we're gonna stay the fuck away from them":
http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
Those same founders retained a controlling interest in the company after it went IPO, explaining to investors that they were going to run the business without having their elbows jostled by shortsighted Wall Street assholes, so they could keep it from turning into a pile of shit:
https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/
And yet, it's turned into a pile of shit. Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves. The company's big plan to fix it? Replace links to webpages with florid paragraphs of chatbot nonsense filled with a supremely confident lies:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/
How did the company get this bad? In part, this is the "curse of bigness." The company can't grow by attracting new users. When you have 90%+ of the market, there are no new customers to sign up. Hypothetically, they could grow by going into new lines of business, but Google is incapable of making a successful product in-house and also kills most of the products it buys from other, more innovative companies:
https://killedbygoogle.com/
Theoretically, the company could pursue new lines of business in-house, and indeed, the current leaders of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are all execs who figured out how to get the whole company to do something new, and were elevated to the CEO's office, making each one a billionaire and sealing their place in history.
It is for this very reason that any exec at a large firm who tries to make a business-wide improvement gets immediately and repeatedly knifed by all their colleagues, who correctly reason that if someone else becomes CEO, then they won't become CEO. Machiavelli was an optimist:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.
Now, in theory, we might never know exactly what led to the enshittification of Google. In theory, all of compromises, debates and plots could be lost to history. But tech is not an oral culture, it's a written one, and techies write everything down and nothing is ever truly deleted.
Time and again, Big Tech tells on itself. Think of FTX's main conspirators all hanging out in a group chat called "Wirefraud." Amazon naming its program targeting weak, small publishers the "Gazelle Project" ("approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelleâ). Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. Think of Zuck emailing his CFO in the middle of the night to defend his outsized offer to buy Instagram on the basis that users like Insta better and Facebook couldn't compete with them on quality.
It's like every Big Tech schemer has a folder on their desktop called "Mens Rea" filled with files like "Copy_of_Premeditated_Murder.docx":
https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself-f7f0eb6d215a?sk=351f8a54ab8e02d7340620e5eec5024d
Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the DoJ Antitrust Division are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.
Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.
Last week, there was a huge kerfuffile over the DoJ's practice of posting its exhibits from the trial to a website each night. This is a totally normal thing to do â a practice that dates back to the Microsoft antitrust trial. But Google pitched a tantrum over this and said that the docs the DoJ were posting would be turned into "clickbait." Which is another way of saying, "the public would find these documents very interesting, and they would be damning to us and our case":
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic
After initially deferring to Google, Judge Amit Mehta finally gave the Justice Department the greenlight to post the document. It's up. It's wild:
https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416692.pdf
The document is described as "notes for a course on communication" that Google VP for Finance Michael Roszak prepared. Roszak says he can't remember whether he ever gave the presentation, but insists that the remit for the course required him to tell students "things I didn't believe," and that's why the document is "full of hyperbole and exaggeration."
OK.
But here's what the document says: "search advertising is one of the world's greatest business models ever createdâŚillicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) could rival these economicsâŚ[W]e can mostly ignore the demand sideâŚ(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats and sales."
It goes on to say that this might be changing, and proposes a way to balance the interests of the search and ads teams, which are at odds, with search worrying that ads are pushing them to produce "unnatural search experiences to chase revenue."
"Unnatural search experiences to chase revenue" is a thinly veiled euphemism for the prophetic warnings in that 1998 Pagerank paper: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Or, more plainly, "ads will turn our search engine into a pile of shit."
And, as Roszak writes, Google is "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economicsâŚsupply and demand." That is, the company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system that even if it makes its search terrible to goose revenues, users won't leave. As Lily Tomlin put it on SNL: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."
In the enshittification cycle, companies first lure in users with surpluses â like providing the best search results rather than the most profitable ones â with an eye to locking them in. In Google's case, that lock-in has multiple facets, but the big one is spending billions of dollars â enough to buy a whole Twitter, every single year â to be the default search everywhere.
Google doesn't buy its way to dominance because it has the very best search results and it wants to shield you from inferior competitors. The economically rational case for buying default position is that preventing competition is more profitable than succeeding by outperforming competitors. The best reason to buy the default everywhere is that it lets you lower quality without losing business. You can "ignore the demand side, and only focus on advertisers."
For a lot of people, the analysis stops here. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Google locks in users and sells them to advertisers, who are their co-conspirators in a scheme to screw the rest of us.
But that's not right. For one thing, paying for a product doesn't mean you won't be the product. Apple charges a thousand bucks for an iPhone and then nonconsensually spies on every iOS user in order to target ads to them (and lies about it):
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
John Deere charges six figures for its tractors, then runs a grift that blocks farmers from fixing their own machines, and then uses their control over repair to silence farmers who complain about it:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it
Fair treatment from a corporation isn't a loyalty program that you earn by through sufficient spending. Companies that can sell you out, will sell you out, and then cry victim, insisting that they were only doing their fiduciary duty for their sacred shareholders. Companies are disciplined by fear of competition, regulation or â in the case of tech platforms â customers seizing the means of computation and installing ad-blockers, alternative clients, multiprotocol readers, etc:
https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse-3cc01e7e4604?sk=85b3f5f7d051804521c3411711f0b554
Which is where the next stage of enshittification comes in: when the platform withdraws the surplus it had allocated to lure in â and then lock in â business customers (like advertisers) and reallocate it to the platform's shareholders.
For Google, there are several rackets that let it screw over advertisers as well as searchers (the advertisers are paying for the product, and they're also the product). Some of those rackets are well-known, like Jedi Blue, the market-rigging conspiracy that Google and Facebook colluded on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
But thanks to the antitrust trial, we're learning about more of these. Megan Gray â ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo â was in the courtroom last week when evidence was presented on Google execs' panic over a decline in "ad generating searches" and the sleazy gimmick they came up with to address it: manipulating the "semantic matching" on user queries:
https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/
When you send a query to Google, it expands that query with terms that are similar â for example, if you search on "Weds" it might also search for "Wednesday." In the slides shown in the Google trial, we learned about another kind of semantic matching that Google performed, this one intended to turn your search results into "a twisted shopping mall you canât escape."
Here's how that worked: when you ran a query like "children's clothing," Google secretly appended the brand name of a kids' clothing manufacturer to the query. This, in turn, triggered a ton of ads â because rival brands will have bought ads against their competitors' name (like Pepsi buying ads that are shown over queries for Coke).
Here we see surpluses being taken away from both end-users and business customers â that is, searchers and advertisers. For searchers, it doesn't matter how much you refine your query, you're still going to get crummy search results because there's an unkillable, hidden search term stuck to your query, like a piece of shit that Google keeps sticking to the sole of your shoe.
But for advertisers, this is also a scam. They're paying to be matched to users who search on a brand name, and you didn't search on that brand name. It's especially bad for the company whose name has been appended to your search, because Google has a protection racket where the company that matches your search has to pay extra in order to show up overtop of rivals who are worse matches. Both the matching company and those rivals have given Google a credit-card that Google gets to bill every time a user searches on the company's name, and Google is just running fraudulent charges through those cards.
And, of course, Google put this in writing. I mean, of course they did. As we learned from the documentary The Incredibles, supervillains can't stop themselves from monologuing, and in big, sprawling monopolists, these monologues have to transmitted electronically â and often indelibly â to far-flung co-cabalists.
As Gray points out, this is an incredibly blunt enshittification technique: "it hadnât even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't know how long Google did this for or how frequently this bait-and-switch was deployed.
But if this is a blunt way of Google smashing its fist down on the scales that balance search quality against ad revenues, there's plenty of subtler ways the company could sneak a thumb on there. A Google exec at the trial rhapsodized about his company's "contract with the user" to deliver an "honest results policy," but given how bad Google search is these days, we're left to either believe he's lying or that Google sucks at search.
The paper trail offers a tantalizing look at how a company went from doing something that was so good it felt like a magic trick to being "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economicsâŚsupply and demand," able to "ignore the demand sideâŚ(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers."
What's more, this is a system where everyone loses (except for Google): this isn't a grift run by Google and advertisers on users â it's a grift Google runs on everyone.
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/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
#pluralistic#enshittification#semantic matching#google#antitrust#trustbusting#transparency#fatfingers#serp#the algorithm#telling on yourself
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Smartphone cameras are NOT getting worse. (See below for phone photography tips)
I've now seen 3 pro photographers reviewing the iPhone 16 and complaining the cameras are "worse" and blaming Apple for not including revolutionary new camera technology.
And I suppose this is partly Apple's fault. Their marketing and hype machine always goes overboard. But also, that's just how marketing works. Samsung has a "200 megapixel" sensor and Sony has a "Zeiss" lens. And I think it is unrealistic to expect smartphone companies to say "This product has entered the iterative phase and each new model will only be marginally improved over the last one."
Smartphones (from any brand) have become an appliance. You don't buy a new model of microwave every year. And you don't expect every new model of microwave to have new revolutionary technology. And that is pretty much the expectation you should have with most computer hardware from here on out.
And in some ways, that is a good thing. That means the design of the phone has pretty much been perfected and it will last you a long time if you take care of it. You will not be left behind and your phone will be able to handle any new software for most of its lifespan.
So, is Apple getting lazy or is there a reason their hardware is stagnating?
It seems that neither money nor marketing can change the laws of physics.
They cannot make transistors much smaller. Phones and computers are about as fast as current hardware designs can make them (unless there is a shocking scientific breakthrough). From here on out, heavy compute tasks that are beyond your phone or computer will be done in the cloud on giant computer clusters. Thankfully computers and phones seem to be plenty fast for the majority of tasks we ask of them.
I remember Katrina telling me her new computer didn't seem any faster. And I explained the computing tasks she does regularly were not really affected by the increased power and speed of her new computer. If something took 0.1 seconds before and now it takes 0.05 seconds, that is twice as fast. An increase in speed that looks fantastic in advertisements. But it is hard for our brains to perceive. She just didn't do anything on her computer that took it long enough for her to notice. But having a faster and more powerful computer/phone will increase its lifespan and resale value, so it is still prudent to get the best things you can afford at time of purchase.
And I'm afraid smartphone cameras are hitting their own hardware limitations. They can't make the sensors much larger to get better depth of field and low light performance. And cramming in more megapixels doesn't actually add much more detail, if any.
It's physics.
Again.
You cannot get any more performance out of a small plastic lens. Why do you think pro photographers haul around 10 pound lenses still?
There is a formula for detail that never seems to be explained in any camera marketing.
Here is the simplified version...
Detail = Sensor x Lens
Let's say 1 is perfection. You have a sensor that performs at 0.5 and a lens that performs at 0.2.
The total detail will be 0.1.
But in the new model you increase the performance of the sensor to 0.8. WOW! That's so close to 1!
The total detail will be... 0.16.
Now let's imagine we've discovered a magic, physics-defying tiny plastic lens that performs at 0.8 as well.
The total detail jumps to 0.64!
But we all get sucked into a wormhole because we violated the laws of the universe.
Even if you were to design a near perfect (perfect is impossible) sensor that scores 0.99.
Without that magic plastic lens... 0.198
This is why I put Samsung's "200 megapixel" sensors in quotes. Because when paired with the same tiny plastic lens, there isn't much improvement. And that's why a 12 megapixel DSLR from 10 years ago with a giant honking lens can still capture more detail.
Most of the quality from smartphone cameras comes from the computational software processing. Phones actually take many photos at once and combine them to get you a decent image.
While that is still improving a little bit each generation, those improvements are stagnating as well. Until image processing can do a better job of inventing more detail realistically, smartphones are going to have to obey the laws of physics.
So... why are photographers saying the iPhone cameras are worse?
First, the ultra wide angle lens looks softer in low light.
And if you zoom between 1x and 5x, the images look less detailed.
But neither of those things make the cameras *worse*. In fact, the cameras are better for the most part. It's just that Apple decided to compromise on one aspect to improve another. Probably due to market research telling them most people prioritize certain things over others when taking photos.
They increased the resolution of the ultra wide angle sensor to match the detail of the main sensor, but that seems to have lowered the low light performance of the ultra wide. So in good light, you will see an improvement in sharpness. But they could not increase the sensor size to compensate and smaller pixels can have trouble with dim conditions. They probably discovered that people mostly use that lens in good light and they would appreciate the bump in detail more.
But pro photographers often photograph in more challenging lighting conditions because you can capture a more artistic shot. I don't think I could have gotten this shot on a smartphone.
But photo normies are just taking pics of their kids doing weird kid shit.
They aren't really trying to push the limits of their ultra wide angle lenses.
And they increased the zoom of the telephoto lens to 5x from 3x because most people never used the 3x. So images at 5x look great now, but unfortunately if you use anything between 1x and 5x, your image will be *digitally* zoomed. Which is never as good as optical zoom. They basically crop the photo, zoom in, and add sharpening.
So they prioritized people having longer reach and more zoom at the expense of that middle zoom range. Every camera system makes tradeoffs and compromises.
And I hate that I always feel like I am defending Apple, because they do have misleading and dishonest marketing regarding a lot of aspects of their tech. But hating on Apple gets more clicks so content creators also make misleading and dishonest claims.
And so we are just surrounded in a circle of hyperbole from all sides.
Now, if you know these limitations, you can change your approach to photographing stuff to keep them from being an issue. You can reap the benefits without dealing with the new compromises.
Here are some tips to help owners of the new iPhone, but also everyone else too.
Smartphone Photography Tips
Whenever possible, try to use the main 1x camera at only 1x zoom. This has the largest sensor with the most detail and works best in the lowest light. Only use the ultra wide or telephoto if you cannot get the photo otherwise. If you aren't sure you have enough light for ultra wide, take the photo, and then as a safety, take two photos with the main camera side by side and stitch them later with a pano app.
"Zoom with your feet" and don't use "in-between" zooms. Let's say your lenses do 0.5x, 1x, and 5x zoom. Even though you have the option to use other zooms, like 2x or 3x, that is going to compromise your picture quality. It is essentially going to crop your photo and enlarge it, which causes a loss of detail. If fact, if you use 4.5x instead of 5x, your picture will probably look like trash. You are always going to get better results if you can move closer or step back so that you are using the native focal length of your chosen lens. For example, let's say you are taking a photo and you judge the best framing to be at 4x. But you still have 10 feet of space behind you. If you back up and then zoom in to 5x, the phone will switch to that lens and you will get a much clearer picture.
Rule of thumb...
1 to 3x... try to move closer.
4 to 5x... try to move back.
If you hit a wall and end up at 4.5x, you might see if you have a panorama mode and try that instead. Switch to your 5x and do the pano. Or you can take two photos and then stitch them together with software later on. (Stitching panos with an app later will give better quality than pano mode, especially in low light.)
Low light needs stability. Get some sort of stabilizing device for low light photos. Either a phone case that lets you stand up the phone on its own or a mini tripod.
This thing folds to the size of a credit card.
Your phone will detect when it is stable and not being handheld. It will then automatically extend its shutter speed allowing it to drink in more light and give you a better picture.
Tripods are photography magic and will improve your low light photos quite a bit. Motion blur of moving subjects can still be an issue, but photos of a cityscape or landscape will look great.
For selfies, shoot a little bit wide and then crop in. This goes a little contrary to my earlier advice saying cropping lowers detail, but this is specifically for shooting a face. The 0.5x and 1x lenses on smartphone cameras are fairly wide angle. This can cause unflattering proportions with human faces. Wide angle lenses exaggerate distance. Near things look very near and far things look very far. To a wide angle lens, the tip of your nose looks like it is super close but your ears seem like they are a mile away. And that's why you may look a bit "alien" in your selfies.
People's natural instinct is to "fill the frame" with a face. The outer edges of a wide angle lens are more distorted than the very center. So try to keep faces away from the edges of the frame.
And one other trick you can do for selfies and pictures of faces is step back a few feet. Sometimes this is hard, especially with selfies, as your arm is only so long... but if you can take your face photos from just a little bit farther back, you will almost entirely eliminate unflattering distortion. In some cases, just stretching out your arm as far as it will go is enough.
Then you just crop the image with the framing you originally wanted, and your facial proportions will look great.
An example...
Here the distortion is bad because I am not in the center and the lens is too close to my face. The lens thinks my nose is really close and my ears are in Canada.
But when the lens is farther back the edge distortion is less prevalent and my nose and ears (relative to the lens) seem roughly the same distance away. So my proportions look great, but I don't quite have the framing I want.
But with a little cropping...
For social media there is still plenty of resolution to crop in. Cropping isn't bad, it's just always better to use it as a last resort or in a special circumstance like this. I get roughly the same framing as in my wide angle shot, but I don't look like I'm behind a door's peephole trying to sell you the Good News.
I wish they made a "mini" selfie stick that only extended a foot or so. With the main camera that is usually all people need to undo any wide angle issues. I have one of those mini tripods and that works well, but there is no activation button so I have to do a timer. Mirrors work great to help you get some selfie distance.
In any case, all cameras have limitations and compromises. Clickbait titles saying something is WORSE THAN THE OLD ONE are frustrating and wrong.
And people upgrading phones every year are silly. All current name brand smartphones have promised at least 5 years of software updates. I think Google and Samsung are offering 7 years on some models. And Apple has always just let you use your phone until it literally will not work with new software. Which has worked out to 8 years in some cases (with a battery swap).
Phones are now appliances. For now, hardware will improve 10 to 15% from generation to generation until physics breaks. So if you want a 50% improvement, wait 5 years and you'll think your new phone is awesome. If you upgrade every year, it is going to be difficult to see the change.
I hope to be starting a little course on smartphone photography in the near future. All modern phones are capable of taking amazing pictures. And as long as you understand their limitations you can mitigate or avoid them. And that is what I plan to teach.
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Marvel and the Street Kids
Billy likes helping people. Especially people who have, and are still going through something heâs also experienced. Hunger, brokeness, homelessness, if youâve had to go through any of those things, Billyâs probably going to favor you more than most of the other people heâs saved. I mean, after all, he knows what all of that feels like. Itâs why he helps out around soup kitchens a lot. Itâs why he donates a hefty bit of his paycheck to homeless shelters and charities. Itâs why he works to keep drugs off the streets, and crime at a low. He doesnât want anyone, man, woman, or child to experience what he has. So, hereâs a couple instances where heâs helping some homeless kids we know. (Btw this is the same AU as the Billy and the Robins post. In that post, basically Billy knew Dick and Jason when the two were both Robins) Roy: *in Speedy costume* âHey Robin, who do you go to whenever you need advice?â
Robin!Jason: *in Robin costume* âBatman, why?â
Roy: âRight, cool. Cool, but what if you canât ask him a certain question?â
Robin!Jason: âOh, then I go to Marvel!â
Roy: âMarvel? Like Captain Marvel?â
Robin!Jason: âYeah!â
Roy: âHuh. Uh⌠okay then.â
Robin!Jason: âWhy do you ask?â
Roy: âNo reason.â
Then, a little bit after Oliver kicked Roy out, Marvel was in Star City because Green Arrow needed him for whatever. As of now, Roy was walking down the street, upset because obviously. Itâs been an about three days since he was kicked out by someone he considered his dad. All because he had a wee little problem with painkillers, and wee little problem with heroin. Youâre supposed to help people whoâre addicted. Especially if theyâre family. You donât just kick them out⌠right?
Roy: *walking down the sidewalk*
Marvel: *flying when he sees him*
Roy: *not paying attention*
Marvel: *flies down in front of him*
Roy: *bumps into Marvel* âHey, watch where youâre gooooâŚwhaâŚ?â *slowly looks up until heâs craning his neck to look up at him*
Marvel: âArenât you GAâs boy?â *looks confused* âWhatâre you doing out this late?â
Roy: âWhat?â
Marvel: âYeah! Youâre uhâŚâ *snaps fingers a couple times, thinking* âSpeedy. Right?â
Roy: âDo I know youâŚ?â *looks Marvel up in down*
Marvel: âOh, my bad.â *holds hand out for handshake* âIâm Captain Marvel. I donât think weâve properly met.â
Roy: *doesnât shake hand* âWell you already know me. Iâm Speedy.â *shrugs*
They both talk. Marvel gets Roy to open up a bit after he gets the kid a hotdog. While theyâre both sitting on a bench eating their respective hotdogs, (I saw the Marvel in civvies post and heâs wearing that exact fit. He magicked up the red sweater, the yellow hat, and the jeans so they could eat in peace) the archer remembers his conversation with Jason. So, he decides he might as well bite the bullet since his friend hyped up the guy so much.
Roy: âHey⌠I gotta ask something.â
Marvel: âHm?â *mid chew*
Roy: âYou wouldnât happen to know any good struggle meals, would you?â
Marvel: *finishes hotdog* âYeah? I do. You wanna learn some?â
Roy: *hasnât told Marvel about him being homeless now* âYeah.â *takes bite of his hotdog*
Marvel: âOkie doki then.â
Roy: âYou arenât gonna ask why?â
Marvel: âItâs not really my place. Unless you want me to ask?â
Roy: âNah, not really.â *finishes his hotdog*
Marvel: âThen I wonât.â *stands up* âAlright! To the nearest Chuck E. Cheese!â *points in a random direction*
Roy: *also stands up, raising a brow at him. Moves Marvelâs arm in the correct direction* âWhy are we going to a Chuck E. Cheese?â
Marvel: âYouâll see. Cmon!â *starts jogging in the direction Roy corrected him to*
Roy: âDude, wait up!â
When theyâre now outside the Chuck E. CheeseâŚ
Marvel: âAlright. So, hereâs what youâre gonâ Are you good?â
Roy: *out of breath because they just ran about three blocks* âYeah⌠Yeah. Iâm good. Just uhâ gimme a sec.â
Marvel: *gives him until he feels better*
Roy: *looking better now* âSo, what were you saying?â
Marvel: âRight, so what youâre gonna be doing is, see those tables?â *gestures to the booths through the Chuck E. Cheeseâs windows. Some booths have leftover pizza and chicken wings in them*
Roy: *nods head*
Marvel: âOkay, great. So youâre gonna go steal all of that.â
Roy: *blinks at him before the most befuddled, bamboozled, puzzled expression crosses his face* âWhat?â
Marvel: âYouâre going. To steal. All of that.â *gestures to the tables again*
Roy: *looks between Marvel and the tables* âDude, I am not stealing scraps from the fucking Chuck E. Cheese tables.â
Marvel: âHow else do you expect to get food then?â
Roy: âI donât know! I expected you to teach me some cheap recipes or something stupid like that!â
Marvel: âOooooooh, so you don't want struggle meals then.â
Roy: âNo, I do. A struggle meal is something like a ketchup sandwich. This is way worse than a goddamn struggle meal.â
Marvel: âYou and I clearly have different definitions of a struggle meal, but okay. Also, chill with the cursing, man. I can teach you something cheap if thatâs what you actually want.â
Roy: âOkay then, thank you, because the day I need to steal scraps from a Chuck E. Cheese, is the day I lose my dignity.â
Marvel: âYeah, yeah, come on. Letâs just go to a grocery store.â
Then, there was Cassandra Cain. She was homeless for about nine years before she went to Gotham when she was seventeen. During her homelessness, she never really stayed in one place. One of the places she ended up in was Fawcett when she was about sixteen. There, she met Captain Marvel. She man saved her from a mugging she was about to take care of herself.
Marvel: *staring at her because Solomonâs whispering about how sheâs worthy*
Cassandra: *staring right back, picking up confusion in the manâs body language*
Marvel: âWhatâs your name, miss?â
Cassandra: *stares blankly at him* (Guys, this is before she learned most stuff. So she has no idea what heâs saying and has to go off of body language alone.)
Marvel: *stares back* âCan⌠You not speak?â
Cassandra: *continues to stare blankly*
Marvel: *sighs* âIâll take that as a no.â *reaches into pocket dimension*
Cassandra: *startled when she sees half the manâs arm disappear*
Marvel: *pulls out some money and puts it in one of her hands* âPlease take this. I can tell you donât have a home. Starving isnât fun.â
Cassandra: *sees understanding in Marvelâs body language and looks at the money in her hand then back at Marvel*
Marvel: *hovering off the ground* âStay safe, miss.â *gives her a little wave before flying off*
Cassandra: *watches him go*
They meet more times after that, and soon, Cassandra ends up being one of the many homeless kids he checks up on. Cassandra comes to enjoy the manâs presence, and Marvel comes to enjoy hers as well. She eventually gets a really good read on the man after a while and he gets a good read on her. She even mimicked the manâs bodily expressions sometimes with a nod here, or a shrug there. Marvel even got to learn her name after she gestured to one of the other kids who had a cast on their leg. He guessed a couple times before he got her actual name. They ended up having to charade it, Beetlejuice style.
Marvel: âCassie?â
Cassandra: *makes a so-so motion with her hand* (something she picked up from the man) *makes a motion that was supposed to convey it was longer*
Marvel: âLongerâŚ?â *pauses to think for a solid 20 seconds* âCassandra?â
Cassandra: *gives him a thumbs up* (another gesture learned from him)
Marvel: âWait thatâs actually your name?â *body language shows heâs happy he got it right*
Cassandra: *blankly stares* (Again guys, she has no clue what heâs saying)
Marvel: âOh, this is awesome!â *body language shows he gets happier. He starts yapping about stuff*
Cassandra: *listens even though itâs all gibberish to her*
Cass liked that she could depend on someone. The man was⌠sunny. Thatâs the best way to put it. She liked listening to him talk. He never expected an answer or response. She liked that. She also liked that when she did try to respond, he was patient and did his best to try and understand her. Their friendship (sort of father daughter thing) continued until she was almost seventeen, and soon, things came to an end.
Marvel: âYouâre leaving?â *body language shows concern*
Cassandra: *saw him look to the backpack stuffed with things for the trip to the next town. she nods her head*
Marvel: *body language shows disappointment for a moment before acceptance* âI see.â *gives her a warm smile* âIt was nice knowing you, Cassandra.â *gives her same little wave he gave her when they first met* âI hope we get to meet again.â
Cassandra: *waves back unlike the first time they met and leaves*
They actually met again, unbeknownst to Marvel, when he was in Gotham to help Bruce with something. They got paired up together to go and do something for the mission.
Marvel: âYou know, you remind me of this girl I knew from a while ago.â
Cassandra: *silence and a stare because she knows heâs talking about herself*
Marvel: âYeah, she wouldâve done that same blank stare too.â
Cassandra: *wondering how he knows sheâs pulling the same face as herself*
Some goons decided to interrupt them before she could figure that out.
#billy batson#captain marvel dc#dc captain marvel#shazam#fawcett#fawcett city#fawcett comics#roy harper#speedy dc#cassandra cain#black bat#cassandra wayne#batgirl#orphan#batgirl 2000
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The Cameragirl || snc
You've been Sam and Colby's cameragirl for some time now. Usually, nothing too crazy happened to you in most investigations, but this time...
warnings: paranormal activity, reader getting attacked, near death experience, strangling(?), cursing, angst?
a/n: took a bit of inspo after watching the boys' video of the asylum, but nothing exactly like it. just the fact that the place is an asylum
[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]
word count: 3.6k
[u n e d i t e d]
⎠â Ë。𦹠â・°âŠ
As they were making their iconic intro and explaining what this new place was about, you made sure to have a sturdy pulse whilst filming them.
"Today, it's just me, Sam and our lovely cameragirl, Y/n." Colby said, letting you shift the camera towards your face and smile at it.
"Hello there." You said, making sure your face was extremely close to the camera, merely because it has become your way of introducing yourself.
"And since it's only us today like the good old days, we decided to make something fun. ALL of us." Sam explained to the camera and smirked, looking directly at you.
You batted your eyes, looking at them while they kept on smiling menancingly at you. "This wasn't a part of the contract." You said, gaining a laugh from both of them.
You zoomed onto his face and began talking with this soft, almost narrative voice. A voice you very well knew they enjoyed. "What is this oh so fun idea you seem to be hyping about, mr. Golbach?"
"Why thank you for asking." Sam nodded slightly, moving his attention towards the camera. "The three of us are gonna do a little challenge tonight." He clapped his hands together as you began unzooming the camera, putting Colby back on frame.
"That's right, we're going to walk alone, lights out throughout some of the most haunted corridors from this place." Colby continued. "The owners of this place told us it gets freaky when people are alone, so we thought this might get us some good activity."
"We have some cameras with nightvision but we're not gonna see shit." Sam added, "After a while, we all should find our way back to the main lobby."
"So stay until the end to see how that's gonna turn out." Colby says, getting close to the camera before covering it with his hand, making you stop the recording for the cut.
"That was pretty good." You said, looking at the video slightly.
"You're still good with the challenge, right?" Sam asked, looking at you. You scoffed.
"Please. I wouldn't have come if I wasn't sure about it. Remember you told me about it before the video?"
"I know, I know. Just making sure, you know how I am." He laughs. "Wouldn't want you to do something you're not comfortable with."
"You're saying that like we haven't known eachother for how long?"
He chuckles. "You're right. I'm sorry."
"Alright, so since we're all settled, should we start right away?" Colby chimed in, looking at both of you.
"Not yet. This place has some good cinematic potential, lemme cook first." You said, looking around with your flashlight.
"Aight, we'll let you do your thing, I'll go ahead and look for the equipment." Colby said.
"Oh, shoot. I forgot to ask the owners about something." Sam said, taking out his phone.
"Go out with Colby, I'll be here waiting." You said, fixing back your camera to start recording.
"Alone?" They both asked, looking at eachother and then at you.
"I do my best work alone, gentlemen. You know that." You begin walking towards the shadiest corridor you've seen in your life, without even looking back.
"Oh wow. Fearless. She's trying to do the challenge before us." Colby laughed.
"Alright, I'll be super quick. If anything happens, just yell. As loud as you can." Sam said, smiling.
"Copy that." You laughed.
In the blink of an eye, you were left alone. You were used to these type of things, so it didn't bother you much. You've somehow become numb to all of this paranormal adventuring.
And that was one of the main reasons why you liked to take control of the camera, since you were able to keep your cool in stressful situations, making it easier for the viewers later on.
Plus, you didn't know how to act on camera and they were the professionals... allegedly.
Whenever something odd happened, you made sure to try and record as much as you could, in the best angles possible. You liked to joke around and call yourself a professional in your craft, although sometimes it wasn't even a joke.
You were passionate about it. The videos and the ghosts, it was only natural to try and do more, risk yourself to do something more interesting and outgoing.
That's a piece of yourself they loved about you. You were simply a perfect match in their combo.
As you began to do your cinematic, you began to have shivers. A sudden draft of air passing through you, as if a window suddenly opened.
Looking around, there was no possible way of that happening. You were in the middle of the corridor, absolutely no chance of an air draft simply passing through so randomly.
You thought it might've been a bit odd, but nothing you haven't felt before anyways. While you kept on making some videos, an eerie feeling of someone watching crossed over your spine.
The sensation of a presence slowly getting closer to you behind your back.
Almost feeling the heat of another person behind you, towering over you.
Hurriedly looking back, you were met with Sam's hand almost touching your shoulder. He stopped midway, knowing he got caught trying to scare you. "You bitch." You spit out, making him laugh.
"Damn it!" He said mid laugher. "I was so quiet this time, how do you always seem to know?"
"I can feel you lurking closer, you stalker." You looked away from his gaze, trying to ignore the thoughts of his pretty face. You began walking back to where he came from, meeting Colby in the process.
"I'm not a stalker, if anything, I'm protecting."
"Quietly from the shadows, sounds like a stalker to me, but you do you." You smiled softly, looking at the confused Colby.
"I left for a second, what did I miss?"
"Stalker behavior, nothing else." You said, putting your camera up again and ready to record.
Colby shook his head from side to side, already being on your side of the story without even asking further questions. "I can't believe you brother."
"Wha- it wasn't-..." Sam sighed, defeated. He knew you were joking, so he wasn't going to win anyways.
You laughed and pointed the camera at them. "Ready when you are." They nodded and you began to record.
"So as you can see, in our hands we have some devices that we'll scatter throughout this first room. If you've been here before, you'll probably be familiar, but if you haven't, these are basically some motion censor devices that will let us know if something walks infront of it." Colby explained, turning one of the devices on and showing to the camera how it worked.
As they organized everything, the REM-POD immediately began beeping. "Oh, shit. That's the rem pod." Sam said, stopping on its tracks. "That was the temperature dropping."
You made sure the camera caught that as you got closer to it. "Oh fuck. I was feeling a bit cold since we got here." Colby added. "Alright. I think we're ready."
"Okay. If there's any spirit around that would like to communicate with us, we would like for you to use any of these devices we've put up for you." Sam started, as you made sure to get far enough from everything for the shot.
"You can touch these lights on the floor, or maybe this device I have on my hand." Colby continued, pointing towards the EMF reader. "We mean no harm, we'd just like to talk to someone."
A couple of seconds passed, looking around, waiting for something to happen.
"Maybe they don't want..." Sam began, before getting interrupted by the REM-POD beeping, making you hurriedly move your camera angle. "Oop. Nevermind. Thank you very much. Can you do that again if you're here with us? To let us know it wasn't something else?"
Silence filled the room for a while, before the device started to beep once again.
Excited, they began asking questions to this entity, expecting for it to be somewhat intelligent enough to give answers back.
Luckily, it was. It seemed to be someone that died inside the asylum, a woman. Curious about the story of this woman, they kept on asking questions. Some of them being answered, others being completely ignored.
Asides from the constant beep from their device, you heard a knock coming from one of the corridors. Quickly looking around, they stopped talking. "What?" Colby asked.
"Heard something." You whispered. The room went silent, followed by what sounded like footsteps getting closer. You turn the camera back at them and their faces were shocked.
"Holy fuck." Sam whispered.
"That was like... thumps. We're the only ones here, right?" Colby asked him.
"Yeah, we're supposed to be." Sam says, walking towards the place they heard the sound, quietly. You followed close behind. "Hello?"
Nothing. They kept on looking around, searching and at the same time waiting for something else to happen. "There's no one here." Colby says. "But that was clear as day."
"Super clear, the camera must've have heard that, for sure." Sam said, looking at you as you nodded. "That was crazy."
"Yeah, let's try something else but closer to this area, maybe it's more active." Colby said, and all of you nodded.
A couple of minutes later, and you were all set up. This time around, they turned on a spirit box to try and communicate better.
The idea was to first use it as normal, then for Colby to do the Estes Method.
And so, the spirits began to talk.
"What's this." It spat out. Colby and Sam looked at eachother, smiling.
"Hello, this is a spirit box, you can use it to communicate with us. Would you mind telling us who you are?" Sam said, looking around.
"Hello?"
"Hi, hello." Colby responded. "Who are we talking to."
"I'm scared."
"Scared? Scared of what?" Colby asked, furrowing his eyebrows whilst looking at the camera.
"Behind you."
They quickly looked behind them. "Oh, fuck. I hate that." Colby said, as you smiled at their gestures.
It quickly faded away when you felt the familiar presence of someone behind you.
Heart racing, you looked around for a second, but there was nothing there. It didn't mean the feeling went away, though.
"Monster. Care..." It seemed the audio cut before finishing the whole word.
"Monster... care?" Sam asked, confused.
"Or maybe it meant careful? Like, careful of the monster?" Colby questioned.
"It would make sense. What monster are you talking about? Is it harming you? Are you scared of this monster... or... person?"
It took a while before responding. Last thing it said, before a screech filled the radio was... "Run."
Quickly, they turned it off. They looked at eachother. "That was terrifying." Colby said. Sam nodded and sighed.
"Let's try and look around for some other place. This doesn't feel safe." Sam said and everyone agreed.
For the past hour of recording, moving around and joking here and there, you felt a bit uncomfortable. Usually, you weren't the type to get scared over the paranormal, but this place felt more eerie than usual.
You heartbeat has been increasing slowly, as well as a slight pain in your chest that quickly faded. You felt watched.
There was a point where you even felt slightly touched, quickly warning the boys about it.
Due to this, they almost discarted the idea completely, thinking you might be getting targeted, scared that it might do something to you. It took you a couple of minutes of convincing them to keep on recording before the conversation was dismissed.
You tried to brush it all off, as 'something you've felt before', but deep down you were really anxious about it. Perhaps it made you feel better to think about it being just the nerves.
But you weren't the type of person to feel these nerves for no reason.
"Hey, you good?" Colby touched your shoulder and whispered to you, noticing you seemed a bit weird. "You seem out of it today."
"Yeah, I'm good. I was just zoning out."
"Yeah, I noticed." He chuckled, looking into your eyes. "You sure you're okay though?" He raised an eyebrow, seemingly concerned. "You don't look well."
"What? Do I look like a ghost to you?" You asked, smiling, which quickly made him show that gorgeous smile you loved.
"More like you've seen one." You shook your head.
"I'm fine. I've just seen some shadows running in the corners of my eye, but nothing too big to point out."
He batted his eyes. "You've what?"
"Calm down, you know I see those things all the time. It's nothing new." Half of it was true. The other half, well... there was a chance you might've seen a whole figure standing close to a doorframe, but you felt your imagination was tricking you too much tonight, so you didn't say anything.
You weren't a psychic or a medium or something close to it anyways. If anything, you'd probably consider it more like a hallucination due to the constant lack of sleep you've been having lately.
"I know, I know, but still. You could tell us about it, you know? Maybe we all see the same thing you do and since you don't point it out, we don't notice."
You rolled your eyes playfully. You were about to say something, but a breeze passed through your ear, a soft whisper saying "Come play."
You jumped, covering your ear and walking closer to Colby. "Shit." You whispered.
Confused, he held your shoulders. "What? What? You heard something?" His worry was enough for Sam to stop setting the cameras up and walk closer.
"What happened?" He asked. You looked around where you were standing.
"Did you guys not hear that?" You asked, the shook their heads. "I heard something like... right next to me." When you said that, Sam began recording once again.
"Alright, so... apparently Y/n just heard something right next to her." He began explaining to the camera, pointing it at you.
"It was like a whisper, it.. uh... it just said 'come play', like, the creepiest shit you can say. I even felt the air on my ear, that shit made me jump." You tried laughing about it to not let the mood down, but it wasn't working much.
"Although I really want to, maybe we shouldn't do the challenge." Colby said, looking at Sam straight in the eyes, genuinely worried.
"Guys. Come on. Don't back down when we're this close." You said. "We're basically done for tonight, this is the last thing we're doing and we're out, right?"
"...yeah." Sam whispered. "Let's..." He sighed. "Let's do it. Just like she said, we walk through the corridor and come back straight away."
Althought skeptical, Colby nodded. "Fine. Let's hurry up then. The quicker we begin, the quicker we're leaving this place."
And so, everyone held their cameras and said their goodbyes. The three of you went through your respective corridors and began walking, alone, with no light.
"Alright guys. I'm not good at, like, talking to the camera but I'll try." You sighed, pointing the camera at your face while slowly walking the dark corridor.
"Honestly? I'm usually not as creeped out when we come to places like this, but this one is like... up there. It's giving me the chills, making me paranoid, I feel like I'm... seeing thing. Or maybe I'm just sleep deprived. That's... that's also an option now that I think about it."
Looking around with the camera, although it's absolutely useless, you started feeling out of breath. Almost as if the air didn't reach your lungs anymore. "It feels... hard to breathe." You took a deep inhale and shakily exhaled.
You gulped, your throat suddenly feeling dry as the lack of oxygen was evident.
"I'm just gonna walk... faster. I wanna get this over with..." And so, you did. But the further away you got, the worse it all felt. You felt your vision starting to get blurry although you could barely see anything.
You paused as your vision began to get used to the darkness.
At the end of the corridor, what you could shape out like a human figure was standing there. Seemingly the same one you barely saw before.
This time, it didn't seem to go away.
You were also alone.
Unable to breathe.
You don't know when it started, but you were unable to breathe properly. You choked, trying to regain yourself from the feeling.
Your neck feeling tight, your stomach hurting at the sudden feeling.
Putting your hands on your neck, you coulnd't feel anything that would make you feel this way. You started to get worried.
You felt as if you were being choked. You tried to scream, but all that you could spat out from your lips was a soft, quiet, 'help'.
Trying to turn around and walk back, you saw the figure again and got scared, falling towards the floor. You coughed for air, sucking back as much as you could but being unable to.
Leaving the camera behind, you tried to crawl back to where you came from, but the lack of circulation on your body failed you as you coulnd't handle it anymore.
Your body falling on the floor, the camera seemingly recording your movements come to a halt.
Your eyes closing, leaving you unconscious.
It didn't take long before Sam and Colby got back to the lobby. Waiting for you, something seemed off.
They knew the corridor wasn't as long as theirs. You should've been the first one out by that logic. They've been waiting long enough and they were starting to get worried.
Even though the concept of the challenge was to be alone in the darkness, the idea of you being in trouble was too much to bare.
Heck, even if you were pranking them, the anxiety of you not coming back on time was driving them insane, they were ready for a scare if it had to come to that.
But the scare they were expecting wasn't the one they got.
Minutes of walking and calling out your name came to a stop when they saw you on the floor.
Hurriedly, they ran towards you and fell to the floor, yelling out your name. "This isn't funny, Y/n!" Sam yelled, moving your body, only to notice how cold you felt. His heart sank.
"Y/n, come on!" Colby said, putting himself on the other side, looking at Sam. The color from his face was gone when he felt her body. Colby, worried, touched your body and understood why he looked that way. "Oh, fuck. Fuck!"
Throwing the camera to the side, Colby quickly checked your pulse. "Sam. Call 911. This is serious." You still had a pulse, but you weren't breathing. First thing that came to his mind was CPR.
While Sam began to call, Colby was trying as hard as he could to help out. He began doing mouth to mouth, trying to bring some oxygen back to your lungs.
Tears streaming down both of their faces. Colby started making compressions to your chest, while Sam was talking to the 911 dispatcher and using the flashlight to illuminate Colby.
Luckily, they weren't too late. You began to cough and moved to the side to spit out some saliva. You breathed heavily and both of the guys sighed in relief.
As you tried to catch your breath, they softly held you up in place while your color came back to you. You blinked a couple of times, adjusting your view to your surroundings.
When you looked at them, they hugged you tight. "Fuck..." Sam whispered. "Let's get the fuck out of here right now." He held you softly and helped you out, as Colby grabbed all of the cameras.
It was hard for you to walk. It felt as if a ton of weight was keeping you from even standing up. It felt as if your limbs went numb, the lack of oxygen probably acting up.
Sam noticed, and didn't hesitate on holding you up and putting you on his back so that you could rest. They began walking as fast as they could, reassuring you that you will be fine.
You were focused on getting your breath back while listening to them scream at the spirits.
"You are not allowed to follow us home." Listening to Colby talk like this, while taking all of the equipment made you feel light. You started moving your arms and made sure to hold onto Sam, closing your eyes.
"You'll be okay. We're leaving." Sam reassured you, waiting for Colby to grab everything and get out of there in a rush.
After the police arrived and handed you an oxygen mask, you started feeling much better. You had some marks on your neck, like some hands were just squishing the air out of you.
Your body... at first, you could even see your veins pop out of your legs because of your lack of color. The poor circulation that ran through your body for a couple of minutes really drove your body to its limit somehow.
It took you a while to be able to stand on your two feet again, but before the police left you could walk on your own just fine. Sam and Colby however still managed to help you out.
"Let's head back home." Sam whispered to you. You nodded slightly and tried to walk on your own, only to be held up by Colby.
"Don't force yourself right now. You need some rest." He said, taking you back to the car. Your face having a rush of blood because of the gesture.
"I... I can walk."
"Let us do this. Please. It's too much already that you fainted right when we weren't with you." Sam said, looking at you, your heart racing at the look of his blue eyes upon you. You gulped.
"...f..fine." You said, resting your head on Colby's chest, making him smile.
⎠â Ë。𦹠â・°âŠ
part two is up!! the link is in the beginning! <3
thanks for reading all the way! likes, comments and requests are much appreciated.
-nikkĂľ
#colby brock#sam golbach#colby x reader#colby brock imagine#colby brock one shot#colby brock fanfic#colby brock x reader#colby brock x you#imagine#fanfic#fic#one shot#sam and colby#sam and colby one shot#sam and colby fanfic#sam golbach x reader#sam golbach x you#sam golbach one shot#sam golbach fanfic#sam golbach imagine#angst#sam and colby fluff#sam and colby imagine#paranormal activity
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Thoughts on Venus placements
!! everything is based purely on my experiences with signs, written with no other purpose than to share my observations and be unserious.
Aries Venus. View public humiliation as a flirting tactic. Will borderline call you stupid and ugly and genuinely expect people to get the hint that theyâre actually very interested. Will prob ask themselves out on ur behalf. If u don't show interest immediately as they enter a room theyâre done. Life is a cycle of falling in and falling out. Romance is 90 percent fucking.
Taurus venus. Like anyone whoâs pretty but LOVE prob one person in a lifetime. Will have an aneurism if you try to rush them or speed up the prelude. Unbearable in their pickiness (esp with food and smells). Have deluded themselves into thinking there are people dying waiting for them to grace this earth with their love and attention. Limit freedom but act bothered when being imposed with the same limitations.Â
Gemini venus. Whatâs there to say that hasn't been already cried out loud by the casualties of their love. Wandering eye. Don't promise much and deliver even less. Fun tease flirts, will take you on Before Sunrise style date and rot ur brain with all the talk. Like to leave people wondering. Everyone wants to try this one out at least once. Wordâs been going around that a non-cheating-gemini Venus has been spotted in the wild but weâre yet to confirm the evidence.Â
Cancer venus. Want to be treated like a baby but always end up babying other people. Want to please their loved ones at all times and if not met with instant appreciation become very irritated and sad. Never voice their needs properly. Expect the most distant emotionally constipated people they usually choose as their partners to be mind-readers. Cook-clean-snog love.Â
Leo venus. Promise u the moon and the stars but will be too lazy to actually get them. Love themselves first and won't let you forget that. If not received naturally - will drag those compliments out of you manually. At their best great at hyping people up. Love anyone who praises them. Also kinda get attached quite fast. Get jealous and offended easily (I feel like I say this about every Leo placement but what can u do).
Virgo venus. No one can please them and with time fewer people try. Get the ick over people simply breathing. Want the most sterile of love there is. If youâre not the best at your craft or do not aspire to be WHY the fuck not??? Legit think organizing ur desk is a good substitution for letting know they have warm feelings towards you.
Libra venus. Their partner is the star of the night month year life. Choose partners that can be bragged about and envied for. Very loving never shut up about their relationship no matter the setting always find a reason to bring them up. In a relationship make concessions until they blow up.
Scorpio venus. Insanity falsely taken for being in love. Blood contract on the first date. The ones that giggle at cannibalism=love metaphors. Might just lock you up but in a romantic wayyy... Romance is NOT a joke and ANY attempt making FUN of it WILL NOT slide. Looking around might count as cheating. Also if I may I suggest never leaving them on read..) Forever and always til death do us part.Â
Sagittarius venus. Often forget that they are in a relationship. Love the fun aspect of dating, but hate everything else. Need someone who constantly shakes things up and makes life interesting for them. In an ideal world, they travel around the globe and have a lot of se make meaningful connections for life. Very playful tho!
Capricorn venus. In relationships become very domestic but it takes a lot for them to actually end up in such. Love language is to cover basic necessities and feel worn out after that. Typically require to be TAUGHT on love and I know there are some people who find this an exciting quest god bless you on that journey. Prob the most rigid Venus in terms of compatibility with others imo.Â
Aquarius venus. So fucking random in terms of people they crush on like I can never guess whoâs gonna tingle their interest braincell this time. Normally they go for the intellectuals but once they think theyâve got too predictable with it next choice is gonna be wild. Friends with people who have a crush on them and are oblivious to it. Freeze when you get mushy or clingy with them.Â
Pisces venus. Takes a village to pull them out of that one abusive dynamic theyâve been perpetually stuck in. Unironically think of themselves as smol beans. Dedicate their whole unprompted to the person theyâve had a crush on for like two days. Very very veryyyy lovey-dovey-sweet-corny, have no problem confessing their love. Likely to draw ur portrait if they like you.Â
#astro notes#astro observations#natal chart#aries venus#taurus venus#cancer venus#gemini venus#leo venus#virgo venus#libra venus#scorpio venus#sagittarius venus#capricorn venus#aquarius venus#pisces venus
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jake as your boyfriend headcanons
pairing - bf!jake x gn!reader genre - est. relationship, fluff wc - 646 warnings - skinship, pet names, mention of jealousy, kissing
๨ৠreblogs and feedback are greatly appreciated !! <3 â§Ë° ... (library)
⚠࣪ Ë jungwon | heeseung | jay | jake | sunghoon | sunoo | ni-ki
jake always carries a picture of you in his wallet. he likes the idea of being able to bring you everywhere he goes. it works to his benefit if he's away on tour. whenever he's buying something, the first thing he'll see is your face. a smile grows on his face every time which earns him a stare from the cashier.
jake's locksceen is a picture of either you or the two of you. if he's lucky enough - meaning that if you let him, he'll have a matching lockscreen with you. just to show off that fact that he's taken, he'll purposely turn on his phone just for it to display his lockscreen.
speaking of photos, jake has so so many pictures of you. candid, silly, cute, you name it. he'll most likely have them. he also keeps an album dedicated to you and only you. yeah, he's down bad.
he's very big on having matching jewelry with you specifically rings and bracelets. it makes him feel giddy inside.
he LOVES to spoil you. as much as you tell him to not, he WILL insist so there's really no point in arguing. he's always thinking about you so of course he'll buy you things when he's in another area.
if he's feeling extra romantic, he will by you prada and tiffany & co products (buddy has to stay loyal to his brands)
jake is absolutely head over heels in love with you. you're his pride and joy. his everything and it shows.
he knows every single thing about you and he low-key flexes that to everyone he talks to
adding to that, he mentions you very often and will gush over you.
jake sends you good morning and good night messages. if he forgets, he'll feel so bad about it and you always reassure him that it's okay.
he makes you a playlist of the songs that remind him of your relationship.
jake gets so giggly around you. something about you brings out the inner school boy in him. AND he gets super smiley and giggly whenever you kiss. he's in love.
he's your golden retriever (and babygirl).
jake will stare at you every chance he gets. he could actually stare at you all day if given the chance. because of this, he is able to notice even the slightest change in your appearance.
jake HAS to touch you at least once a day. he's very attached to you. your space = his space.
jake's low-key a jealous man. he doesn't like it when other people show any sign of romantic interest in you. because what do you mean you want my partner? but at the same time he loves it when you get the attention you deserve. he will show you off but remind everyone that you're his.
of course he has nicknames for you. very heavy "my love", "baby", and "princess". and he will get butthurt if you refer to him as his actual name. you have nicknames for a reason so call him by it :)
jake is a big cuddler. he loves having you in his arms and he loves being the little spoon from time to time.
he's a sucker for neck kisses although he is quite ticklish. he also loves to give you neck kisses.
with jake being absolutely whipped for you. your mood heavily influences his mood. when you smile he smiles, when you laugh he laughs, when you're sad he's sad.
princess treatment all the way. his job is to make you happy so he will do anything and literally anything to achieve that.
jake is your designated hype boy. no explanation needed.
jake never raises his voice at you. he's always speaking to you in a soft tone. he's a whole different person when he's with you honestly.
jake dates to marry so a proposal will be coming eventually.
Šberryyuni 2024. all work is written by me. do not copy, translate or repost
#đđđŤđŤđ˛đ˛đŽđ§đ˘ đ°đŤđ˘đđđŹ - á°#đđđŤđŤđ˛đ˛đŽđ§đ˘ + đđ§đĄđ - á°#âË°đ â ikeu#enhypen#enhypen imagines#enhypen headcanons#enhypen fluff#jake sim imagines#enhypen scenarios#jake sim fluff#enhypen x reader#enhypen one shots#enhypen drabbles#enhypen aus#enhypen fanfics#enhypen soft hours#jake sim#jake sim scenarios#jake sim x reader#jake sim aus#jake sim heacanons#jake sim soft hours#jake sim drabbles#jake sim one shots#jake sim fanfics
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