#this is what i get for speed downloading so much shit and not texting it all first

[hdmiports]

also something i downloaded is making it impossible for me to edit my sims noses in cas and i cant for the life of me figure out what it is 😭 i cant even click on them

[sic-fayl]

Disclaimer:

THIS IS PART 1 OF A FREESTYLED TRANSLATION BASED ON AN MTL OF THE NOVEL - I DO NOT KNOW KOREAN (tho I did read the available translations of both the manhwa and novel) AND I'M NOT TRYING TO BE ACCURATE TO THE EXACT ORIGINAL SENTENCES/MEANINGS, BUT MORE JUST THE OVERALL ATMOSPHERE OF EVERYTHING (so maybe it's more accurate to call this a very much inofficial localisation??)

MOST IMPORTANTLY, I'M DOING THIS BECAUSE IT'S FUN - now, onto the text:

#01. Ji9Star

'Please someone come save us - if we have to keep going like this, we’ll die.'

Even the fan whined as it kept on spinning, blowing ever more hot air his way. A closed office like this, without air conditioning in the middle of summer... This had to be employee abuse. Yeo-woon sighed and opened the messenger program at the bottom right of his screen.

‘Fake friends (Ad) On a hot day like today, this can cool my heart….’

Everything really had perfectly aligned to make people feel as miserable as possible. Why was it that the only ones who reliably contacted him first were sponsored ads? Maybe it was time to get some better friends… But instead, he opened their group chat and sent a message to express his boredom.

- Did you guys get lunch?

Seon-yong: no. I want pizza

Jeong Se-hyung: Fuck everything. I swallowed so much hate today, I won’t need anything for the rest of the week.

Jeong Se-hyung: Manager, how can you expect all this shit to get done in just one day?? Could YOU actually do that???

Jeong Se-hyung: Guess when you next drag us out drinking, I’ll just pretend like I don’t know my actions have consequences either and punch you in the face to make you pay for it all.

Seon-yong: lol

Seon-yong: you’re still better than lee yeo-woon. I saw that guy put away money in a savings account

Seon-yong: for a hitman

Jeong Se-hyung: ? Lmao got barely enough cash for an emergency fund, but still pretends he can pay for luxuries like that.

- And now I’m going to make another one just for you ^^

Jeong Se-hyung: Waa

Seon-yong: do it

And so he realized once more that it was work time. Those who would drop off the face of the earth after six in the evening read and answered messages faster than anyone else at this hour.

Jeong Se-hyung: So where should I download my resignation letter from?

Seon-yong: wait but you just bought a car haha

Seon-yong: you got a lot of money lying around?

Jeong Se-hyung: Oh, thank you. Your compassionate words have calmed my rage…

‘I’m bored.’

There was another chat that caught Yeo-woon’s eye while he was aimlessly spinning the mouse wheel with his finger. The saved name for that person was ‘Business Partner’.

‘I’m bored. Maybe I can message him first, for a change? It’s been a while since I did that.’

Yeo-woon double-clicked the chat to open it and put his hands to the keyboard.

- Are you still sleeping?

He pressed Enter to send the question, but then the ‘1’ next to the message refused disappear, indicating it wasn’t being read. This ‘Business Partner’, whenever he was up, was someone who gave answers faster than a speeding bullet. Yeo-woon, who had been waiting for a reply for a while now, guessed that he must still be asleep.

- They didn’t fix the aircon today either.

- Remember today’s the deadline?

- I won the bet hah.

He was laughing in the text, but in reality he couldn’t even smile thanks to the overwhelming heat.

‘Boss, is it really such a waste to you, to fix the air conditioning? Then surely living is a waste to you as well…’

Yeo-woon picked up his charging cell phone and opened its banking app. After depositing another 30,000 won into the ‘hitman savings account’, he stared for a while at what he managed to save up so far. Then he put his phone down again.

“I’m having trouble saving any money…”

He took a deep breath and glanced at the clock on the computer screen. It was just past one o’clock. What a time for that person to still be asleep… It was such an enviable life. Yeo-woon leaned back in his chair and drooped like a sloth.

“…hot.”

‘I’m hot, sleepy, hungry and tired. If this isn’t a beggar’s life, what is? I really want to go home. I want to quit my job.’

He wanted to go home and play games to his heart’s content and whenever he’d get sleepy, get to lie down and sleep right away.

“Assistant Lee.”

“Ah!”

At the sound of a voice behind him, Yeo-woon hurried to mash the Esc key, until the chat window disappeared. When he stiffly turned his head, he saw Assistant Manager Kim, a grin on his face and wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand.

“Sir?”

“What’s up? Were you doing something?”

“Oh, no. I just didn’t expect…”

“What, were you surprised?”

“…Ah, right. Just surprised.”

Yeo-woon smiled calmly and swiveled his chair around. Surely, the contents of that one group chat remained unseen... If his plan to kill the boss was discovered, Yeo-woon’s hard-earned image of a healthy, polite, and upright elite would go up in flames.

“Here’s Assistant Lee’s coffee.”

‘…Oh, maybe he really didn’t see it?’

“Haha, thank you…”

Yeo-woon smiled awkwardly and accepted the coffee he was offered with both hands. When Assistant Manager Kim handed it over, he could tell there was ice rattling inside the disposable cup. Some water droplets that had formed on the surface of the cup ran downwards, making his palms wet in the process.

“You skipped lunch, didn’t you? Are you okay?”

“I feel a little bloated today. When that happens, I just throw up whatever I try to eat.”

“Oh my, what can be done about such a sickly disposition in a guy?”

“Haha, I’ve just always been a bit weaker in the summer.”

‘So fix the aircon, for fuck’s…’ Yeo-woon internally grumbled.

“When I’m not feeling well, for me, hm… Is it okay for you to drink coffee on an empty stomach?”

“Yes, it’s okay.”

“But you usually don’t eat breakfast either. It’s never good to put caffeine into an empty stomach.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

“Well, I can’t let my subordinates come to harm.”

‘Pretty sure I’d sooner pass out from heat stroke than get sick from some coffee…’

“Don’t worry, I got a death insurance.”

“Oh, does it work well?”

“Well, I haven’t died yet…”

“That’s true. Then tell me your verdict later.”

Assistant Manager Kim was laughing as he flapped his shirt, while Yeo-woon just wondered what was so funny to him. Judging by the bright red face, he seemed just as affected by the relentless heat. Why did their air conditioning have to break during such a hot summer? It felt like they were being steamed alive in a boiling pot…

“So what do you do after work these days?”

“Me? I exercise.”

“Exercise…? Oh, are you still going swimming?”

“Yes.”

“Ah…. Every day?”

“Yes.”

At Yeo-woon’s answer, he narrowed his eyes and muttered, “Now, that’s not right, is it?”

‘…Are you supernatural, to always know these things?’

Well, he really did exercise, but he couldn’t do it every day. The life of an office worker was just like that.

“The swimming pool is closed on Mondays….”

“….”

“And I was too exhausted the day before yesterday so I couldn’t go.”

“….”

“And I sometimes take weekends off.”

“…Hmm.”

“Uh, and something also came up yesterday…”

In the end, the truth was that he hadn’t gone more than once or maybe twice this week.

“Assistant Lee.”

“….”

“I know everything.”

Hearing those words, he felt a bit wronged. Originally, it wasn’t this bad. He used to exercise pretty diligently, but this week had been a total disaster…

“But I’m really going today. I even brought my swimsuit.”

“No… I’m not talking about that.”

“Ah?”

He grinned in a sinister way at Yeo-woon, as he said things that made no sense. That face, that seemed to know everything, only made him feel even more uncomfortable.

“Assistant Lee! Didn’t you get a lover?”

“…Ah?”

Yeo-woon’s eyes went blank. He had no idea how to react to Assistant Manager Kim’s words. What kind of lover would have suddenly appeared to him…? He didn’t even have the spare time for something like that.

“I can see it so clearly. Nowadays, whenever Assistant Lee is done with work, he quickly packs his bags and leaves right away.”

“…”

“I know what I’ve seen. So you really have a lover, huh?”

“No, it’s not…”

Yeo-woon closed his eyes with a troubled look on his face. He really didn’t have a lover, but he was a bit reluctant to tell the truth as well.

His image at the company was that of a flawless and healthy young man. So to admit that he played video games to a degree that could be called an addiction was a bit… Already, even if he only said that he played games in his free time as a hobby, he was often looked at like he was pathetic.

Yeo-woon’s hobby was playing online MMORPG games. The game he played, ‘Illusion’, had been in the Summer Festival event for two weeks now, and you had to log in for at least three hours a day to receive the rewards.

In addition, in order to do guild quests for limited items, he had to rush out as soon as his work shift ended for the day. Right now, it was also vacation season for all students, so if you didn’t do this, you were likely to fall far behind in the event’s rankings. And even though he wasn’t that interested in the rankings, there was one item he really wanted to have among the ones from this event, so he had no choice.

“...like that?”

“You mean there isn’t one? You don’t have a lover?”

“Yes, there is none.”

“No way…”

“Really…”

“Oh, wait, I know! So it’s just casual?”

He snapped his fingers and had a faint smile on his face. Yeo-woon tried hard to suppress the frown that wanted to overtake his own face. It’s relationships and more relationships with this guy. Why was he so interested in other people’s dating situation?

“If you want to marry your secret lover, you need to save up a lot of money. Right?”

“Haha…”

‘I shouldn’t become a boss like that in the future. I need to resign before something like that can happen.’

Even though Yeo-woon was inwardly scolding him, he showed off his inherent social skills by smiling shyly and shaking his head.

Ding!

“….”

“….”

The assistant manager’s interrogation was interrupted by a sound that came from the monitor. Both of their eyes got stuck on what had popped up on it.

Business Partner: Hey ><

“What business?”

Assistant Manager Kim asked in a puzzled voice. Yeo-woon’s blood froze at the unexpected situation. He usually had the sound turned off, but it seemed like it was turned on now because he played around with some settings earlier and forgot to turn them back.

Business Partner: Awake now

He couldn’t make any excuses and realized the situation right away, freezing, as Assistant Manager Kim smiled slyly and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Is that your girlfriend?”

“…no.”

“The emoticon is so cute. Is she young?”

“That’s not…”

“Is she a college student?”

“No, that…”

Ding!

Business Partner: Hehe I woke up a little late today because classes got canceled

“She’s totally a college student.”

Stop, stop…

Ding!

Business Partner: The aircon’s still not fixed? I feel sorry for you, honey

Please, stop…

Business Partner: The aircon works perfect at my place tho. Do you want to come over?

“That’s your girlfriend.”

“It’s not…”

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

“But why is the name saved as Business Partner?”

“…”

“Look, I don’t mind this! Are you trying to sneakily talk at work?”

“That…”

“Wow, Assistant Lee has become brave, huh? It’s a common problem with kids these days. They all use tricks like these. Interesting though, right? Wouldn’t you agree, Assistant Lee?”

“…”

“Huh? I’m not scolding you for this. Why is your face so pale?”

‘Fuck. Rumors will spread.’

Cold sweat was running down his back. Yeo-woon shook his head vigorously and made one last ditch effort to get the truth out.

“Sir, please! This really isn’t my girlfriend. It’s just a friend!”

“Funny. Does your friend always call you ‘honey’?”

“It’s a friend who calls me that as a joke… Yes.”

‘I’m ruined.’

He wasn’t listening anymore.

‘I wouldn’t even believe that myself.’

There are usually no friends like that. Not without some feelings between them anyway. His lips became dry. Assistant Manager Kim hummed a song that started with “Hello” and took out a toothbrush from a drawer. Yeo-woon kept muttering that it wasn’t true a few more times, talking to the back of his head, but he went ignored.

‘Wouldn’t it be unfair, to blame this all on my nonexistent girlfriend…’

So the arrow of resentment was aimed at someone else instead. Yeo-woon opened the chat window with his ‘Business Partner’ and started typing angrily.

- Now you’re awake, why don’t you also go eat something?

The 1 next to the speech bubble quickly disappeared. So he was watching the chat in real time.

Business Partner: I ordered rice

- Hope you choke

Business Partner: Lmaooooo Is it so hot there it’s like a sauna?

- Hope you choke

Business Partner: Poor you lol

Business Partner: Then come visit my place

Business Partner: My room right now is like Antarctica. It’s so cold

“Why is he asking me to come over to his house every chance he gets these days…?”

It’s too persistent to just dismiss it as a joke anymore. No matter what he’d say, all he got in response was offers to meet up. But he was reluctant because he’d never before met with anyone he got to know in a game, and he felt no real motivation to change that in the future. It would be better for both parties to keep an online relationship exactly where they’d first met: online.

‘I watched I Want to Know last week, and worst case, you might lose your organs and even your vision…’

He’d initially been on the fence about it. But after watching that broadcast, he’d decided against it. Offline group meet-ups shouldn’t be attended, unless you wanted to die.

- Quit joking

Business Partner: Joking? I’m serious lol

Business Partner: You said you’re curious about my place

- Not your place, your cat

- Can’t you at least show me a picture?

- (emoticon)

Yeo-woon sent a peach emoticon with sparkling eyes and confetti falling down. The earnest look on its face made him feel weak, so hopefully his ‘Business Partner’ would feel the same and send a picture of the cat.

Business Partner: Why do you want a picture of my baby? You can take a look in person

- You… ㅡ.ㅡ

‘One more failure to add to the collection.’

It had already been 6 months of him begging for a picture of this cat, ever since he heard a soft meowing in the back of a voice call. He kept hearing it, but still didn’t know its name, or even fur color, or why he wouldn’t just tell him these things.

As he thought about this, he relaxed in the chair. When it suddenly got spun around, he saw Assistant Manager Kim, who had been talking to him earlier and now muttered incorrect lyrics with a toothbrush in his mouth and a rotten expression on his face.

“I’m jealous. Work is over. They all just go home?”

“….”

“And then off to get some action.”

“No!”

“It’s a shame. I have to stay late again today, King of late work right here, Assistant Lee.”

“It’s not like that…”

“Huh? Are you staying late as well for today?”

“…No, I’m going, but… Just listen to what I have to say. Please.”

“Hah. I’m off to brush my teeth, then. Love is such a pure affair!”

He smiled softly, picked up his toothbrushing cup, and walked off. After all, Yeo-woon was known for being the most agreeable person in the office.

Thoughts of pure destruction filled his head.

- Stop texting;

Business Partner: lol? You texted first…

- Then don’t call me honey.

Business Partner: We both know it’s not like that lol. Unless…?

- No butㅠㅠ; Other people mistake you for my lover… I almost got scolded just now.

Business Partner: What lmao then change the screen name

- Already changed.

Business Partner: What is it?

- Business Partner

Business Partner: Huh?

- What?

Business Partner: ?? lmao

Business Partner: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

“…?”

What was so funny about it? Wasn’t it fine? Yeo-woon frowned as he looked at the chat window filled with long strings of hahaha that just kept on coming.

- Why are you laughing?

Business Partner: Ah, he doesn’t even let me laugh

- Is this funny to you?^^

Business Partner: Yes pfffff, thinking about you getting caught like that makes my stomach hurt

- Take medicine^^

Business Partner: It’s not that kind

- I know^^;

Business Partner: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA business partnerㅠ

“….”

‘What’s wrong with Business Partner? Then what should I change it to? I can’t save it as my mother….’

Yeo-woon stared at the monitor with a sullen expression and let out a small sigh.

‘I guess I’ll have to change the name again. But what would be better?’

Business Partner: But we’re lovers

- Uh…

- F off

Business Partner: ㅠㅠ I’m wounded… Honey, is our relationship just a joke to you? Let’s break up

- Go choke some more

Business Partner: ᄃᄃ Am I embarrassing you?

- Yes

Business Partner: ㅠㅠ Am I annoying you?

- Oh yes

Business Partner: lol

Business Partner: But you still like me

“….”

Business Partner: Ah you got caught so now you’re quiet >���<

“On what basis are you saying this?”

Shocked. That’s how he felt every time, because he was dealing with a guy who loved himself way too much. Or maybe a guy hoping to drive him crazy, with how much he enjoyed making fun of him.

“It’s really not that at all though?”

Yeo-woon repeatedly scrolled up and back down again as he tapped his foot. Every day their conversations went like this. Why was he always like this? Was this normal? Were other gaming couples like this too?

‘I don’t know why we’re talking like this when we’re not really dating. But saying these things would just make it worse…’

- You’re so fucking annoying lol. You’re the most fucking annoying man in the world.

Business Partner: Translation – I really fucking like you, but I got caught and that’s annoying.

- lol

Business Partner: Ugh… Now I have to laugh because I got caught again.

- ㅠㅠ

Business Partner: Ugh… Now I have to cry because I got caught again.

It was a situation much like getting stuck between a rock and a hard place. Normally, he would just go silent at this point, but today he felt incredibly bored, so he’d keep it going for just a bit longer. As he was killing time with this meaningless banter, the office door suddenly opened and he heard a pleasant voice:

“Hello. I’m here to repair the air conditioning.”

“Oh! Hello!”

Behind the man, he could nearly see pure white archangel wings unfolding with a soft flutter.

‘Guess the boss didn’t want to die by my hands today yet! Congratulations on extending your lifespan!’

Yeo-woon was so excited that he kicked away from his desk to get up faster.

- I have to go. Someone came to fix the air conditioning!

He quickly left his computer, and less than a minute later, a small message notification window appeared at the bottom of the desktop, accompanied by the sound of another ding.

Business Partner: Hyung, you remember the bet you made with me, right?

(Next Part)

[maryellencarter]

am building WOBSITE

the visible parts are almost all placeholder text right now, so I'm not linking it, but I'm having a ton of fun.

i looked at wordpress, but it wants everything to be boxes you drag and drop, which does not sound conducive to fiddling with it on my phone between customers. also you have to pay for an "ad-free experience" and i wasn't clear if i was being advertised *to* or having ads put *on* my site, but neither of those sounded fun. also as far as i can tell it's still fundamentally a blog (probably?) and if i wanted a blog i understood the construction of i'd just make another dreamwidth

then i went and looked at neocities, which is a name i have heard Around. apparently they were created originally for people to import their geocities sites onto, when geocities was in the process of going kablooie, and their goal is to provide a way for people to build that kind of real simple website with html and css mostly.

and it turns out they are EXACTLY what i was looking for!

(1) not a blog. they give you an index.html homepage and you can do whatever from there. completely flexible.

(2) they promise never to put ads on your site.

(3) very not gatekeepery. when you create a new html page for your website, they helpfully format it for you with all the machine-readable header shit so that it will display like a website rather than raw code, and connect it to a basic css stylesheet so you can use things like headers, and even include some basic code like "This is a paragraph! Here's how you make a link! Here's how you add emphasis and strong tags! Here's how you insert a picture! (placeholder picture of their logo)" They seem quite enthusiastic about wanting everybody to have fun making little wobsites. They have a bunch of tutorials too, which I haven't really dug into because most of what I actually need to brush up on is specific googleable questions like "how do I put an internal anchor link to a footnote again"

(4) In-browser HTML editor. This is the one that really sold me on it. I was using Gdocs for the convenience factor of being able to make quick gameplay notes at work. Now I can make notes the same way, but organized and cross-referenced and *flappy hands*

(5) You get a gigabyte of storage for free, and a certain amount of bandwidth. If you subscribe at $5 a month as a "supporter" (their only paid tier), you get 50 GB of storage, custom domain name options instead of being only at [name].neocities.org, the ability to create multiple websites with one login, and some other stuff too.

(6) I have currently used about 75 KB of my gigabyte. That's so little that it's still showing as 0.0% usage. It's also, slightly horrifyingly, roughly 15,000 "words" at the typing-speed standard count of 5 characters per word. I know I booted up my laptop after work and did a bunch of template building, so I can make all my listings and stuff consistent, but... that's almost three hours of straight typing at the speeds I use at work. I didn't think I'd been doing *that* much hunt-and-peck coding on my phone. Weekends are so busy too.

(7) Oh, they have a handy button for "Download your entire website" on your dev page too. And another one for "Mount your website as a drive on your computer", which I have no idea what I'd do that for, but that's the kind of open source mindset I like to see. The kind where they provide (usable, helpfully documented) tools to create shit, and then make it easy to take your shit wherever you want.

(8) I strongly doubt I'm going to use up this gigabyte anytime soon, especially if I stick to just HTML and don't start hosting pictures of all the item drops like a wiki, but I might subscribe anyway if I haven't burned out on this project in like a week, because it really is providing me *exactly* what I was picturing for the platform to build this wobsite on, and I had no idea that existed, so I would like it to continue to exist.

(9) I like their terms and conditions too. Anti-censorship, a statement that by using the service you agree that you might run across any type of the crap people put on the interwebs (including sexually explicit material, specifically called out) and the site isn't responsible for censoring any of it that isn't illegal. Standard provisions for determining what content is legal according to the laws of the state of Oregon specifically [which is considered a very permissive place for the US and is probably pretty unlikely to outlaw queer content in the near future], strict provisions against knowingly collecting any personal information from anyone under 18, and a *lot* of strict provisions against using the service to spam, hack, DDOS, or otherwise commit cybercrimes. I approve of these priorities.

(Also, my HTML is still at least as fluent as my Latin, which pleases me.)

[saxxxology]

Empty | oneshot

Bobby calls Dean to help you on your case. Unfortunately, Sam shows up instead.

PAIRING: Soulless!Sam Winchester x Reader

WORD COUNT: 2,246

WARNINGS: fear/intimidation, smut, spanking, rough sex, squirting, blowjob, cum swallowing… Sam’s a just dirty asshole

⭒ become a patron for just $3 ⭒

⭒ Read on Ao3 ⭒

I do not consent to minors (17-) reading my work. This story is 18+ only. Do not save, download, or repost my work on any other sites.

It’s been a long day. Your case, much to your annoyance, isn’t something you can handle alone, and you hate the idea of having to ask for help. Fortunately, your dad’s always there to help you out.

He answers on the fourth ring.

“Hey, kiddo.”

You smile at the familiar gruff tone. “Hi, dad.”

“How’s that case of yours goin’?”

“Yeah… about that…” you sigh heavily and plop down on your bed, “I need some help. Turns out it’s a werewolf pack, and I can’t take it down on my own.”

“Nothin’ wrong with help,” Bobby replies, “I’ll call in Dean, last I heard he was in Lincoln, Nebraska, but he can speed on over.”

A shiver goes down your spine at the mention of the Winchesters. Dean’s a good friend and even better hunter, but Sam’s changed a bit too much since the first time you’d met him. You’d been sixteen when the boys had first come around, and Sam had quickly become a good friend.

Since he’s come back from Hell, however, you’ve had more than one run-in with him, twice before Dean figured out he was alive, and once after, during a hunt you’d teamed up with them on. He scares the shit out of you, but there’s a thrill in the fear, some dreadful spark of arousal that flickers in your belly when you catch him staring at your ass or tits for too long. 

“Not Sam, right?” you question. 

“Not if I can help it.” Bobby replies. “I’ll give Dean your number, he can coordinate with you. What motel are you at?”

“The Sunset Inn, just off the highway.” You run a hand through greasy hair. “Thanks for this, dad.”

“No problem, kiddo. Stay safe.”

You hang up and toss your phone onto the nightstand. You’re two days overdue for a shower, and you gratefully step under the warm spray, massaging shampoo into your hair and scrubbing your skin with your favorite body wash. 

When you step out, the light on your phone is blinking, signaling that you’ve got a text message. You open the text string to see a message from a phone number you don’t recognize. 

     > I’ll be at your motel tomorrow, late morning.

Tomorrow afternoon? Sounds a bit fast. You shake it off; maybe Dean’s closer than you thought.

     < See you then. Thanks for the help!

***

You wake up late the next day. You’ve missed breakfast, and you quickly dress before skipping down the street to the closest McDonalds to treat yourself with a fast-food breakfast. You miss your dad’s blueberry pancakes and fluffy eggs, but you get what you get when you’re on the road. 

You are goin’ straight home right after this hunt.

When you get back to the motel you don’t see the Impala. It’s almost noon, so you make a wild guess and assume that Dean’s still on his way. When you unlock the door to your room, however, your help is already inside.

Sam Winchester’s sitting on your unmade bed, long legs stretched out in front of him. He’s watching something on the TV, and he looks up when you go still in the door, eyes wide with shock. It’s been a few months since you’ve last seen each other, and that had ended badly.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you ask before he can open his mouth to speak. “I thought Dean was coming.”

“Dean’s busy.” Sam stands up, staring at you across the room. “I came instead.”

“What’s he busy with?”

“Not important.” Sam strides over to the table, where you’ve laid out the details of your case. “You gonna let me help you with this or not?”

You’re silent for several seconds. When you do speak, it’s not to answer Sam’s question. “I asked for Dean.”

“Well, you got me instead.” Sam smirks at you. “Come on, it’s just a couple days.”

“Does my dad know?”

“No,” Sam answers curtly, “why? What’re you gonna do? Tattle?”

You fold your arms. “I don’t like working with you.”

“Too bad.” Sam pulls a chair out and sits down, motioning to your case files. “Tell me what you got.”

***

Two incredibly tense days later, your case is done. You’re on edge for more than one reason; Sam is the first man you’ve been in close proximity with in a long time, and you can’t deny that your fear of him is turning into something else as well. 

If you jump into bed with him, however, the outcome definitely won’t be good. 

You’re packing when he comes back from a meeting with the local sheriff's department. He’s wearing his full suit and tie, and he stops by the table to sling his jacket over the back of the chair.

“You takin’ off?” he asks.

“That’s what it looks like,” you reply, deliberately avoiding looking at him. 

He chuckles, but it’s forced. He’s not happy about you leaving. “Thought you’d stick around a couple more days.”

“Nope,” you reply, “I’m going home for a bit.”

“Ah.” Sam loosens his tie and casts his gaze towards your half-packed bag. “You gonna tell your dad that I showed up?”

“I just wanna go home,” you retort sharply. ���Can you just go? We’re done here, there’s no reason for you to—”

“Are we?” Sam paces closer, tossing his tie behind him onto the table. “Are we really done here?”

You swallow thickly. “Sam, I—”

“What?” He presses into your space and pulls the half-folded shirt from your hands. “I’ve seen the way you look at me. I freak you out, huh?”

“Yes.” Your answer is a soft whisper. 

“But I bet you’re thinkin’ about what I can do to your tight little body.” Sam brushes your hair out of your face with his index finger. “Been wanting to get my cock in your pussy for a while now… gonna give me a chance?”

You shudder with mixed fear and arousal. “I don’t know if—”

“If I’ll listen to you?” Sam cups the side of your head, his thumb under your chin at the top of your throat. “I won’t hurt you unless you ask me to. And,” he steps around to stand behind you, lowering his head so he can whisper into your ear, “I’m guessin’ you wouldn’t mind if I bruised you up a bit.”

You can’t stop the whimper that escapes your lips when his hand wraps around the column of your throat. “Sam…”

“Don’t worry,” he moves his lips over the shell of your ear, “I’ll leave ‘em where your daddy won’t see.”

That does it.

You turn around and let him bring you into a kiss that’s so fierce and rough it hurts. He grasps the hem of your tank top and tugs it up over your head as you rip the buttons of his dress shirt open. The rest of your clothing follows in a flurry of cotton and denim. When you’re naked, Sam turns you around while gripping the back of your neck, and shoves you onto the bed. You fall onto the mattress on your hands and knees, and he stands behind you, running his hands over the cheeks of your ass.

“Sweet little ass,” he comments, “should have it out more often.”

SMACK!

You’re about to reply when he spanks you, hard enough to make you cry out. The sting quickly develops into a burning ache that has your pussy clenching around nothing. “Fuck,” you finally gasp out.

“Yeah.” Sam palms the aching flesh. “Gonna mark you up real good.”

SMACK!

His next slap is harder, and you arch right into the sensation, knees sliding apart on the mattress. Sam chuckles with approval and raises his hand to deliver another blow.

SMACK!

SMACK!

SMACK!

You cry out on each slap, legs shuddering as slick drips from your pussy. Sam lets out a dark growl when a clear string of it slowly descends to land on the covers below. “Christ, you’re a horny little bitch.”

Normally, you’d object to being called anything of the sort. Coming from Sam’s mouth, however, it’s positively sinful and only makes you want to be stuffed full of his cock even more. 

“Do I need anything?”

The question catches you a little off guard, but you shake your head. “Pill.”

“Good.” Sam moves up behind you and leans over to kiss your shoulder. His cock pokes the back of your thigh, and you rear back to try and get him inside you. “You want it bad, baby?”

You nod, whimpering. “Yeah.”

Sam scrapes his teeth over your skin, reaching down to sweep his cock through your folds. “Hold on tight.”

You barely have time to grab the covers before he’s pushing inside, groaning loudly as your wet heat swallows him. He bottoms out with three inches of his cock left to go, and you shiver as he gives a slow, testing thrust. He’s too big for you and he’s gonna fuck you anyway.

“Goddamn,” he growls, “sure you’re not a virgin?”

You shake your head. “You’re j-just… fuck, you’re so big.”

He chuckles darkly and wraps one arm around your shoulders, effectively caging you in underneath him. “Want me to fuck your little pussy ‘til you can’t walk?”

You shudder, arching your back and pressing your ass up towards his hips. “Yes.”

Sam shoves forward, not holding back as he starts to fuck you hard and fast. You cry out, and he buries his lips against your jaw, biting down to earn another squeal when you go quiet.

“Yeah.” Sam holds you tighter, using his entire body to pin you down. “You fucking like gettin’ used.”

You try to nod and fail miserably. Sam takes your answer for a solid yes and continues fucking you. His other arm slides down your body until he gets his hand between your legs. You stiffen and wiggle in his grip when he starts rubbing your clit, but he doesn’t release you. You’re trapped in a hot, sweaty cage of pleasure and you’re not escaping until Sam’s done.

“Sam,” you choke on his name as his thrusts grow harder, more punishing. The thick weight of his cock slides in and out of you, and you’re unable to focus on anything other than what’s happening between your legs. “Oh, f-fuck, yes-s…”

In answer, Sam bites down on your shoulder hard enough to make you whimper, arms giving out so that you slump down with your face turned to the side. He hasn’t stopped his incessant attention on your clit, and you spasm as a wave of heat washes over you. 

“Fuck!” You fight the urge to burst into tears of pleasure. “Sam, please, I’m gonna—”

“Cum?” Sam quickens his pace, roughly snapping his hips against your ass as you squeeze tight. “Do it. Cum on my cock.”

Your eyes roll back into your skull when you cum. Sam holds himself deep, only moving with quick little thrusts that nudge your sweet spot until you’re squirting on him. You scream into the covers, entire body quaking, and Sam bites down on the back of your neck to keep you still. It’s almost primal, the way he does it.

When you’re done and struggling for relief, Sam leans back, giving you space to breathe and recover. His cock’s still nestled inside you, and the insides of both of your thighs are wet with your orgasm. He lands an approving slap on your ass.

“Might have to keep you around,” he mutters, filling one hand with a globe of flesh as he rocks his hips. “Where do you want it?”

You swallow, raising your head from the bed. “Huhh?”

“Where do you want my cum?” Sam rolls his hips again, holding his cock painfully deep. 

You wiggle your hips. You’re too sensitive to have him inside you any longer. “In my mouth,” you finally gasp out, “cum in my mouth.”

Sam pulls out with a grunt and turns you around, fisting a hand in your hair and practically dragging you off the bed. You fall to your knees with a soft grunt, and then Sam’s pressing his cock at your lips. You open up, sucking him into your mouth and hollowing your cheeks. You can taste yourself on him, and you press your thighs together. 

“Fuck yes,” Sam breathes, gripping the base of his shaft as you suck on him. “I’m real close, baby, take it easy.”

You only speed up, desperately bobbing your head to take him deeper. Sam grunts when you stroke him, matching your pace as he starts to throb. His thighs shake, and he gasps a quick warning before spurting hot and thick into your mouth. You swallow it down, eyes locked on his face. 

“Shit…” Sam pulls himself from your mouth, shooting a white stripe of his seed onto your lips before jacking the rest off onto your throat and tits. When he’s done, you lean in to press a sticky kiss to the tip. “Goddamn,” he huffs, “wait right there.”

He goes to his bag and tugs his phone from the front pocket. Opening the camera, he paces back to stand in front of you. “Look at me,” he directs, and once your eyes are locked on the lens and he’s satisfied with the angle, he takes the picture. “Perfect.” He leans down to help you stand before pulling you into a kiss where he can taste himself on your lips. “Gonna save that one forever.”

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[lacebird]

💜  HOW TO MAKE A GIF WITH PHOTOPEA 💜

Hey everyone! I recently got asked to do a tutorial on how I make my gifs. I know that many people (such as myself) don’t have access to Photoshop for various reasons but they’d like to get into gif making. When I started making gifs, I only had a free trial of Photoshop, but when that ran out, I had to find another way to make gifs. Enter Photopea! A free, web-based software that you can use anywhere and that works just like Photoshop! 

In this tutorial, I’ll teach you how to make a basic gif like the one I did above. I use a macbook air, but it should be doable on a regular pc too!

If you found this helpful, feel free to share it with your friends! The tutorial can be found under the cut below 💜

THINGS YOU’LL NEED

A browser (I switch between Safari and Chrome, more about this later)

A screencapping software (like MPlayer OSX Extended) or, alternatively, a presentation program like Keynote or Powerpoint.

A program to screenrecord or a program that let’s you download from YouTube 

Lots of patience bc gifs are annoying little shits <3

1. GETTING A VIDEO BY SCREENRECORDING

First things first, you need to have the clip you want make a gif out of. There are plenty of ways that you can get them. I’ve seen some gifmakers say that they torrent entire movies and gif from that. The way I do is I screenrecord the part I want to gif directly from where I’m watching the movie or show (like Disney+ or Netflix [or something like 123movies if you’re a pirate 🏴‍☠️)]). That way, I don’t have to download the entire movie and I have just the part that I want.  

To screenrecord, I use my macbook’s built-in program called Screenshot. 

Open the program by pressing ctrl + command + 5 on your keyboard and you get these funny little buttons.

Click on the button that says record entire screen. The program is now recording your screen. Play the scene and make sure you expand the video into full screen so you get a full resolution. When you’re done, click the stop button that is at the top right of your screen (next to the wifi and battery symbols.)

If you don’t have Mac, I suggest you look into how to screenrecord on your computer, as I don’t know how other operating systems work. Sorry!

1B. GETTING A VIDEO FROM YOUTUBE WITH CLIPGRAB

Another way you can get videos is from Youtube. I use a program called ClipGrab for this. Download and open the program. You’ll get this window

Simply paste the link and chose the highest quality, then click ‘grab this clip!’. Done!

2. SCREENCAPPING

After we’ve obtained the clip we wanted, we can do this two ways. The first way is to use the program MPlayer OSX Extended. Here’s a tutorial on how to set it up, make sure you do this if it’s your first time using the program. Make sure that you have a special screenshot folder!

Open MPlayer, then go to file > open and find the video of the scene you screenrecorded or downloaded. MPlayer will now play the video. Use the left and right keys (< and >) to go go backwards or forwards 1 minute, but try not to move around too much because the software crashes if you do. If that happens, just click the reopen button when the popup comes on, and reload the video again.

When you’ve gotten to the point you want in the video, press the command + shift + s buttons at the same time and the program will now take a screencap of every single frame until you stop. 

If everything goes smoothly, you should find all your frames in your screenshot folder that you’ve made before when setting up the program! 

2B. USING A PRESENTATION SOFTWARE TO MAKE A GIF

If you want to skip the screencapping part and you want to have a fully completed gif, you can do the second option. That’s what I used to do before I got MPlayer. In my experience, it’s a really fast way to make a gif, but the quality isn’t really good. 

Here’s a tutorial on how to turn a slide into a gif in Keynote.

Here’s a similar tutorial on how to make a gif on PowerPoint.

Basically, you make sure that the size of your presentation is the same as your video, and that you make sure to export one slide into a gif. Also make sure that you export in the highest quality!

3. LOADING THE FRAMES IN PHOTOPEA

Finally, we can start giffing! As I said at the start, Photopea can be used anywhere, but I switch between Safari and Chrome. The reason why is that if I upload the frames in Chrome, the frames will be out of order. In Safari, that doesn’t happen, but the downside is that once I start editing, Safari will reload the page because it takes up too much memory. 

So, first I go to photopea.com on Safari. I click New Project and put in the same dimensions as the screencaps (in my case, they are 1440x900 px). You’ll get an empty project. 

Then click file > open & place and select your screenshots. Wait until Photopea has loaded all the frames, then, at the speed of light, quickly click file > save as psd before Safari reloads! You’ll find it in your folder where all your downloads are.

Next, I open Chrome (I use the incognito window because I have adblock on my usual Chrome, the program won’t work as usual if you have it enabled) and I click Open From Computer, locate your saved .psd file that you saved from Safari. 

Now, you’ll see all the frames as individual layers. Select everything by clicking on the first layer, then golding the shift button and clicking on the last layer. Press command + G to group the frames into a folder. Here’s how everything should look after you’ve grouped the layers.

^^ See how Agnes approves! Agnes things you’re going a great job!

Now, it’s time to crop the gif and get rid of the black borders. Making sure that the folder is selected, click on the crop tool (or press C) and click on Fixed Size

W is Width and H is Height, write in your sizing here. Tumblr’s max width is 540, so I put the width as such. For the height, I use 405. Then you just drag the corners until you’ve selected the part that you want, like this

Press enter and the image will be sized down 540x405 px. 

Now, our gif looks like this after cropping!

Open the folder so you can see all the layers. Select all your layers and right click on them, then click rasterize. 

Then, go to layer > animation > make frames. You’ll now see that each layer begins with _a_ - this is crucial because this is how Photopea knows that the layers are part of a gif. If your layers don’t begin with _a_, then it will not play as a gif

If you instead already have a gif done, all you have to do instead is simply click open from computer when you first open Photopea and load your already finished gif and it’ll have the _a_ at the start of every layer. You won’t have to go through the steps of loading your frames into a new project to make your gif as it’s already done and in a folder :) Just start cropping once you load it

You can preview your work by going to file > export as > gif. Make sure to change the speed in the preview window until your gif plays the way you want it! I put my speed at 500%

4. SHARPENING

Hooray, we now have our gif! But to make it look a little nicer, it’s good to sharpen it. I always use Smart Sharpen when I sharpen my gifs, and many other gifmakers use that too. It’s really good :D

To sharpen your gif, again, make sure that all your layers are selected. Go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. I use two different settings for my gifs, it really depends on the gif.

Setting 1 (which is the default setting)

Setting 2 

 Again, it depends on the gif, play around until it looks good to you!

Here’s our gif after sharpening it 

I ended up deleting the last few layers as the gif got bigger than 10mb (that’s Tumblr’s file limit, it your file is bigger than 10mb, it won’t upload). I also added a gradient map and it made the file size smaller, more about that in the next segment!

5. COLORING

Here’s the fun part! Now we get to play around with the gif, making it brighter and look Extra Nice™!  Since this is a black and white scene, I make sure that the blacks and the whites really pop. 

Notice how in the original scene it’s not actually b&w, it has a slight sepia tint to it. I want to remove this, so I add a gradient map by clicking on the white square with a black circle (I want to point out that we’ll be clicking on this button a lot in this step)

and I change the blending mode to Saturation

Then I add a curves layer using these settings

Then a second curves layer

Brightness/contrast 

Then my favourite! Selective color! First layer, I deepen up the blacks

Then another selective color layer, this time the whites

Lastly the neutrals

Here we have the final results!

Wasn’t this a gas! I hope this helped you out, let me know if you want to know anything else about gifmaking, I’m happy to help! Also, sorry if I wasn’t very clear, I’m bad at explaining 🙈

MORE RESOURCES:

Here are some other tutorials that are really helpful in making gifs. These users use Photoshop, but you can still use their tips most of the time in Photopea too, you just need to play around and see what works for you!

Gifmaking for beginners by @chloezhao (this one saved my life)

Pale coloring tutorial by @itsphotoshop

Two-Toned Gif Background by @clubgif​

Text with white outline tutorial by @anya-chalotra​

[innuendostudios]

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

[pascalpanic]

Begin Again (Marcus Pike x f!Reader)

Inspo: Begin Again by Adam Melchor

Summary: Dating apps never pair you with the right people. Until you come across the profile of a handsome, pancake loving FBI agent named Marcus.

W/C: 4.8k

Warnings: lots of talk of food, language, late night deep conversations, some sadness at the end but nothing intense? reader has a pet cat, is that worth a warning? idk

A/N: HI GUYS this is my first full length Marcus Pike fic! I really hope you like it!! thank you so much to @theteddylupinexperience and @sanchosammy for being my best editors and proofreaders and idea givers!!!

note: PLS listen to the song before/after/while reading! it’s one of my favs and it really goes along with the story

Over the course of your adult years, you’ve become convinced that dating apps are complete and utter bullshit. The algorithms never work right, never pair you or any of your friends with anyone worth seeing in person. Maybe that’s just the problem; maybe it’s not the apps but the people. Whatever the answer is, whatever reason you’ve never found success in the endless swiping, you’re through with it.

That was before last week. The rainy Tuesday night left you in your apartment, alone, to succumb to the cold spring dreariness. Over a cup of hot tea, you’d downloaded the app again. Might as well try, right? You have nothing to lose. If worst comes to worst, catfishing an annoying guy is always a blast. The good news is that this app requires you as the woman to make the first move. That’s kind of a downside- you never know how to start conversations- but at least you can’t get unsolicited dick pics right off the bats. Life is full of tradeoffs, you suppose.

You begin again. The app becomes your favorite pastime. Bored at work or home? Dating app it is. Left. Left. Left. Boring man after boring man. One labeled himself super-straight: absolutely fucking not. One holding a fish: nope. A man who describes himself as a gym rat: not your type. It’s a boring way to spend your lunch break, you’re aware, but the entertainment value is fun if nothing else. There are a lot of strange men out there.

After a few days, your luck seems to turn around as the photo of a man with brown hair and warm brown eyes pops up on your screen. He has a scruffy beard and wavy hair, and the way his smile tugs at the corner of his lips makes your heart flutter. He’s really cute, you have to admit. You read the bio next.

Marcus, 35

❗️ Washington, D.C.

Got forced into making this, but optimistic. Lover of art, dogs, and time to relax. Always down for breakfast for dinner and cuddling. Looking for someone with a sense of independence, love of travel, and a sleep schedule equally fucked up as mine. Must love pancakes.

Must love pancakes. That’s absolutely adorable. You immediately think of your cat, named Pancake, and you laugh and swipe right, hoping the man already thought the same of you. Your eyes widen with excitement and you almost laugh out loud from your giddy state when you see the little logo indicating it’s a match.

The first message you send him has to be perfect. You ponder your options for a minute, frowning and furrowing your brow as you think. You don’t want to come on too strong; you’re not trying to sound like you want a hookup. A simple one-word greeting wouldn’t be enough.

You could comment on something from his bio, you realize as you read it again and again. Maybe ask him about his dog? No, that’s too awkward. You want it to be about him, something that can draw him in. Talk about traveling? No, you don’t want to sound like you’re bragging about the places you’ve gone in your life.

Pancakes. Pancakes are good. You love pancakes. You think for a second more, debating what to say, before inspiration strikes and you send off the message before you can stop yourself.

-

Marcus Pike has essentially felt the same as you. He’s a somewhat charming man. He’s had his fair share of relationships, but they never quite work out. His ex-wife, now long gone and blocked from his phone, was an absolute failure of a relationship. He’d gotten close to what felt like true love with Teresa, another FBI agent, but she flaked at the last second.

Maybe the constant here was that he met them in person. When Marcus falls, he falls hard and fast, down an endless spiral of emotions with no escape. Maybe if he met someone online, it would be different. His best friends had all encouraged it, and on a night out not long after Teresa left him, Pike set up his own profile. He liked that the app didn’t require him to make the first move. It’s refreshing.

Marcus had seen your profile hours ago, on a mindless phone break from his work. He’d swiped right too, stunned by your smile and the lovelines you radiated even through the phone. He crossed his fingers for a good part of the day, hoping you’d swipe right on him too.

His day is busy, leaving him no time to fiddle with his phone and distract himself. He eats in the cafeteria, checking up on his phone. After lunch, he’s walking back to his office when his heart flutters as he sees the dating app indicates he’s had a match. He looks at it and swallows hard before stopping, moving to the side of the hallway to allow others to pass. He’s breathing hard, and his heart speeds up when he sees that you are the one that matched with him.

He knows how this app works. He has to wait now, to let you make the first move. He can’t even write a message until you send one. So he pockets his phone again and continues on his walk.

He’s determined on his walk, rushing back to his desk so he can sit and be thoroughly enthralled in waiting for or receiving your response. His phone buzzes several times with notifications, one of which he prays is you. When he finally sits, he opens the app ceremoniously and has to hold back a genuine laugh when he sees your first message.

Blueberry or chocolate chip?

Marcus shoots back a text nearly immediately. Sorry, what?

Your bio. “Must love pancakes”. Blueberry or chocolate chip?

Marcus is absolutely beaming as he leans back in his chair, crossing his legs. Blueberry. Always. I hope that’s the right answer :)

Unfortunately, it’s not, but you’re cute so I’ll let it slide

You called him cute. It makes Marcus’s heart flutter. Come on. There’s nothing like the warm blueberry popping in your mouth.

There is. It’s when the chocolate chips are all melty and creamy.

God, Marcus is already painfully into you. You know what… at least you love pancakes. I’ll let it slide. You got a favorite place?

Anywhere I can get ‘em. You seem like quite the connoisseur, do you have one place in mind?

Jane slams down a stack of files on Marcus’s desk. “Paperwork overflow, Pike. Can you get these done tonight?”

Marcus is the fastest in the office with paperwork, which often leads to him being the one that flies through the files in the place of the people who actually filed it. He nods. What else is there to do? “Sure.”

Jane claps him on the shoulder and wanders off. Marcus watches him in slight annoyance. The best place in D.C. is definitely Sandy’s. Hey I gotta go, text ya later?

I’d love that :)

-

It didn’t take long for your texting to move from the dating app to actual texting. It happened within the same day, in fact.

Marcus messaged you some hours after the initial conversation. Your phone buzzed while you were doing yoga in your apartment, your cat curled into a ball beneath your stomach as you held a downward dog. You nearly collapsed on top of Pancake as you fumbled to sit cross-legged on the end of your yoga mat.

The message from Marcus is bright on the top of your screen. Hi. Sorry that took so long. Work stuff.

Smiling, you take a swig from your water bottle and lean back against your couch. Not a problem. Understandable. What do you do for a living? It’s a loaded question in D.C.; they could range anywhere from politicians to their rich sons to artists and athletes.

I work for the FBI, actually.

Your eyes light up in excitement. That’s the coolest shit I’ve heard. What do you do? Are you an agent?

The man’s responses don’t take long at all. He must be waiting in the chat to respond. The idea makes your heart flutter. Yep, I’m an agent. I work in international art crimes.

You certainly didn’t expect that for an answer. Wow, okay, that’s even cooler than I thought. I was about to call you Agent Pancake but I think my girl would be disheartened...

Snapping a photo of the way Pancake is nuzzling into your side, meowing for snuggles, you have to laugh as you send the photo his way. Funny you love pancakes so much. This little muppet is named Pancake.

Marcus responds with a barrage of heart-eyes emojis, which makes you laugh aloud and scoop Pancake into your lap, stroking her strawberry-blonde fluff. She’s an absolute angel. Like her mother, I’m presuming.

Your cheeks flood with warmth and you can feel the tips of your ears turning hot too. You’ve never even met me, Agent…? You trail off the text, asking for his last name.

Pike.

Agent Marcus Pike. What a nice sounding name. It sounds official and strong and you really like it. Cute last name. Might steal it from ya someday ;)

You don’t normally flirt this shamelessly, but he’s so goddamn cute and funny. You cross your fingers behind your back that this isn’t just a facade, that this is Marcus himself texting like he would to anyone else. You got a phone number?

As you laugh, Pancake paws at your chest to grab your attention, nails nearly digging into the stretchy fabric of your yoga tank top. “Watch it,” you scold her softly and remove her paw from your chest, picking her up and giving her a kiss on the head. Sure do. You want it?

Yes please.

You send your number his way and moments later, your phone pings with a text from an unlabeled number.

Maybe: Pike: hey, it’s Pike :)

You: hey… dammit, I really want to call you Agent Pancakes, but I think my fluffy little heathen would be offended. I don’t know what to save you in my phone as...

Agent Pancakes: Save me as whatever, I suppose. Not my problem, right?

-

The texts became more frequent. Over the course of three weeks, you’d stay up late talking like teenagers, knowing you need to go to bed but unable to bring yourself to do it.

You learned that his middle name was Mauricio, that his mother wanted him to have at least something a little more Latino in his name. You told him the story of how you’d adopted Pancake as a kitten from a shelter and she woke you up one morning with her claws entwined in a snarl of your hair. He told you about his ex-wife and ex-fiancée, Teresa, and you responded that he deserved something better than that. You can already tell that he’s a good man.

At the end of three weeks, you shot Marcus a text. Things seemed to be going pretty well.

You: Hey, you want to do a video call sometime soon?

Agent Pancakes: I’d love that! I’m free tonight if you are.

You: Always free. Shouldn’t you know that?? Doesn’t the FBI spy on us through our phones and whatever?

Agent Pancakes: well, I do work in art crimes. Even if we did, it would be a totally different thing

You: Good.

An hour later, you fidget with your hands as you sit on your couch, the laptop propped up across from you and ringing for a video chat. Marcus’s profile picture bobs on the screen as you wait for him to pick up.

Marcus’s face and apartment fills your screen, and you automatically grin. “Hi,” you giggle and wave, absolutely enraptured by how cute his real smile is, not the forced one in the photos.

“Hey. Nice to kind of-finally meet you,” he tells you and waves back. The wall of his apartment is nothing exciting, but his facial expressions already have you falling. Those big brown eyes compliment natural but ridiculously pink lips, and his brown hair is neatly done. It looks like he’s wearing a tie and a dress shirt; probably his work gear, you suppose.

“You too!” You tell him, unable to stop smiling. “You shaved.”

-

Marcus’s heart jumps out of his chest when he sees you ringing him. He barely has time to flop on the couch and turn it on, propping up the camera across from him.

God, you’re so gorgeous. Your giggle is infectious, making Marcus laugh softly at god knows what. Your grin is equally as contagious, making him smile back. He rubs his jaw in response. “Yeah, yeah. I tend to keep it clean there. Stubble takes too much maintenance, and I have this little patch where it never quite grows,” he tells you as he juts his chin to the camera, touching the spot where his beard can’t grow.

“I like it either way,” you assure him, shrugging a little. “How was your day, Agent Pancakes?” Your voice is the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard, even with the granulated audio over this shitty app. Agent Pancakes makes his heart flutter. “No, not you!” You groan as Pancake climbs onto your lap. “Hi. Your twin wants to say hi.”

Marcus’s smile widens. “Oh my god, hello cutie pie,” he chuckles, launching into baby talk. “What a pretty girl. You make a good Pancake.”

You smile and rub her fur, grinning. “She’s my baby,” you chuckle and set her aside. “Yeah. I’m busy. Leave me alone.” Pancake meows in protest. “Shut up, I’m on a date,” you whine.

Marcus’s ears perk up. “This is a date?”

Your eyes widen as you turn back to him. “I… yeah?” You ask, wincing a little.

He grins back at you. “I like it. And I’m really in love with the idea of seeing your face when you talk.”

“I like your voice,” you flirt back, but you mean it. “It’s so pretty. Do you sing?” You ask mindlessly, studying the way his brow furrows and his eyes convey exactly what he’s thinking.

He chuckles softly. “I used to. I haven’t in a long long time.”

“You’ll have to sing for me sometime.”

When he shakes his head, his neatly gelled hair tries to break free. A strand does, falling in his face. “You don’t wanna hear it, I promise.” He removes his tie, and you can’t help but watch the movement. It’s incredibly sexy.

A mischievous smile makes you bite the inside of your cheek. “No, I really do, I really think I do.”

Marcus rolls his eyes. “Only if you try the pancakes at Sandy’s sometime. I promise you, they’re the best pancakes in the District. I’ve never had the chocolate chip pancakes, but if they’re anywhere near as good as the blueberry, they’re fantastic. And they’re open 24 hours. I go there a lot for late night case work.”

You smile at that, getting cozy on your couch and hugging your blanket. “That does sound nice. I love a good all day breakfast,” you say with raised eyebrows, the teasing in your voice. “Okay, human Pancakes. How was your day?” You ask him again, intent on hearing his answer. Not only is his job fascinating, but he’s adorable when he explains things.

Marcus frowns, and that makes you instinctively frown too. “Well, it’s been good. We’re tracking a huge smuggling ring right now, but since we’ve pinpointed a stock house for them, I might have to travel for a while.”

You frown. You’d been hoping you could have a real date soon, at least. “How long is a while?” You ask him curiously, sipping from your water bottle that sits next to you.

“Couple weeks. No less than a month, probably. I’d… well, I might have to go undercover, which means we couldn’t talk for a while.” His eyes are apologetic, showing that he hates this news as much as you do. “And… I’d leave maybe tomorrow or the day after.”

Your heart sinks. “So soon,” you say with a sad smile, a desperate and lonely chuckle. “Well, if you want to come home to me, I’ll be here.”

Marcus’s smile perks up just slightly. “You would be the best thing in the world to come home to. And I’ll have the scruff back by then.”

“Yes!” You exclaim and laugh, pumping a fist in the air. “I think you’re really cute anyway, but I really love the scruff,” you shrug shyly.

“Maybe I’ll grow it out just for you.”

-

The adrenaline from his first technical-date with you prevents Marcus from sleeping. The call lasted hours, the two of you covering almost everything important in your lives. You talked about your favorite television programs and politics, your parents and your favorite pizza toppings. Talking with him was like nothing you’d ever experience, a connection you’d never thought a dating app could offer.

After several hours, during a lull in the conversation, Marcus suggested the two of you log off. It was around 11 P.M. now, and, even though Marcus has a sleep schedule like a raccoon, he figured you should sleep. He blew you a kiss through the camera, which you pretended to hold to your chest and grin at him.

But now it’s an hour later, just past midnight, and Marcus is antsy. He doesn’t sleep much anyway, but your face is running through his mind like it owns the place, and at this point, maybe you do. Marcus sits up in bed and sighs. He knows the proper remedy for this: Sandy’s. Throwing on a rare pair of jeans and a leather jacket over the white v-neck he wears, he slips on his shoes and makes his way to the tiny, 24-hour diner.

-

The adrenaline is coursing through your veins too. You text any of your friends that will listen, rambling about how beautiful Marcus’s face is and how wonderful it was to finally hear his voice. You pace your apartment, petting Pancake as you pass her perch on the arm of your couch. You try to do a little yoga to calm down but you can’t stop smiling. Marcus occupies too much room in your brain to try to think about anything else.

When it’s just after midnight, hunger strikes. You realize you never ate dinner, too preoccupied with talking to the handsome man to even consider microwaving something from your fridge. Talking with Marcus has instilled you with a love for pancakes, and you think to yourself that maybe Sandy’s would be worth a shot. It’s open late.

So you toss on a jacket and pick up your purse, slinging it over your shoulder and leaving your apartment. You toss the book you’ve been reading into your bag, planning to read it while you sit and eat. Pancake gives a sleepy meow of protest but you just smile and lock the door behind you.

The diner is just as small as Marcus described it to you: just a short line of booths along the windows and a smattering of tables in the middle. There’s a colorful, warm-toned tile floor that juxtaposes the warm green of the walls and the smell of fresh coffee and pancakes wafting through the air. Quiet classic swing music filling the atmosphere. You can see why he likes it: it automatically makes you smile.

You sit in one of the booths, facing away from the door, and the kind waitress takes your order: chocolate chip pancakes and an English breakfast tea. The air conditioning is blasting, making you chilly. You tighten your jacket around yourself and sip the tea when it arrives, adding cream and sugar.

Cracking open the book, you cross your legs and lose yourself in the book. The restaurant has a calming aura, and you can feel the tea warming you from the inside. It’s fitting that Marcus loves this place, you think to yourself.

When the pancakes come not long after, you take a bite and almost groan in happiness. It’s absolutely delicious: Marcus was most definitely right. Disappointingly, you have to go to the bathroom about three bites in.

Even the bathrooms are cute, you discover. When you return, someone else sits a booth away,  another lone diner at this godforsaken hour of night, facing the door. You can see the back of what appears to be a man’s head, neatly trimmed brown hair and a brown leather jacket over their neck and shoulders. Sitting back down, your back to the other customer’s, you return to your book and continue to eat your chocolate chip pancakes.

The customer and waitress are talking, but you don’t pay much attention, too enraptured by your book. It’s quiet again after the man puts in his order, and you enjoy the soft jazz music that makes you tap your foot in time against the tile.

There’s a buzzing and the melodic sound of a phone’s ringtone; one of the defaults that a phone provides. Your heart skips a beat as you hear the man pick up. “Agent Pike.”

That can’t be your Agent Pike, can it? You turn and listen and realize it’s definitely him, from his voice and the way he holds himself and the stack of- of course, blueberry pancakes and a hot coffee set in front of him.

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Let me write that down.” Marcus types something into his phone. “See you then. At the office? Good. Alright, see you.” He hangs up.

Standing, you tuck your book back in your purse and put the bag over your shoulder. With one hand, you grab your plate of pancakes, and the other grabs your tea. You set them down across from him and slide into the booth, grinning. “Huh. Agent Pancakes, here, in the middle of the night. How unusual.”

Marcus’s tired face lights up in excitement. “What?” He laughs, his eyes scanning your face. “Why are you here?”

You shrug and take a bite of his pancakes, sighing. “Had to see if they were worth the hype. I couldn’t sleep, you got me so excited.” The blueberry pancakes are absolutely fantastic, just as good if not better than the chocolate chip ones on your plate. “Damn, you were right.”

“Hey,” he laughs and pulls his plate closer to his chest. “Don’t touch my pancakes.”

You make pleading pouty eyes, frowning a little. “Can’t we share?” You tease. It already feels like you’ve known him for years, even though this is your first time seeing him in person.

Marcus sighs. “I suppose,” he says and rolls his eyes in sarcasm, pushing his plate back out so you can access it.

-

Marcus is beyond stunned, absolutely enraptured in how beautiful you are in person. If he thought he fell on that video call earlier, he’s now reached the very bottom of that cliff, the impact of your everything stealing the air from his lungs. God, he wants nothing more than to kiss you right now, on those lips coated in blueberry juice and maple syrup.

The two of you spend quite some time so there, just talking and continuing the conversation where it left off before. The waitress refills Marcus’s coffee twice and your tea once. “So who called you when you were sitting alone?” You ask him as you bring the white porcelain mug to your lips, sipping at the creamy tea.

He sighs. “Guy I work with, his name’s Patrick. He’s a douchebag, I can’t lie,” he says with a chuckle, and his heart flutters at the way you give a soft laugh back. “Just telling me the details. I leave in about 6 hours. I’ll be in Singapore for a couple of weeks.”

“Singapore?” You exclaim, eyes wide as your fork clanks against your plate. “You better be able to contact me.”

He shakes his head. “I told you, I’m going undercover. I can’t.” He sighs, and he dares to reach out and touch you, to reassure you that he’s there and himself that you’re real, that you’re right there. “Will you wait for me?”

Your heart melts, from an already slush-covered river to a rushing rapids. “Of course, Marcus.” It makes his heart skip a beat. You’ve called him lots of nicknames, but never his real name. Something is painfully intimate about it. “I like you a lot; why wouldn’t I?” You ask, shrugging as if it’s the simplest thing. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder.”

When you finish your meals, Marcus picks up both tabs, despite your protesting. “Can I walk you to your place?” He asks as you both stand and adjust your jackets.

You nod and take his hand. The lights of the city are seemingly extra dim tonight, leaving the street lights to illuminate your beautiful face as the two of you stroll along. You have all the time in the world, don’t you? It’s 1:30 in the morning. You’re both already evading sleep desperately. A little more time together can’t hurt.

His hand never leaves yours, his fingers lacing through your knuckles. You chat quietly, as if you could wake the sleeping city from the peaceful blue drone of a weeknight morning into its daily splendor of horns and hordes of speedy pedestrians.

Marcus bumps your shoulder with his, making you stumble a little to the side and laugh as you look up at his gorgeous face. His face reflects the love you’re both feeling, almost giving the city around you a pink glaze of warmth from the rose-colored glasses you must have placed over his eyes.

The walk draws to an end, as you stand at the entrance to your apartment building. Marcus’s body looks so soft and inviting, and you dare to wrap your arms around his neck and hug him to your chest. “I don’t want you to go, Agent Pancakes,” you murmur into the soft skin of his neck, which is starting to get a shadow of stubble.

Marcus kisses the top of your head. He doesn’t move either, prolonging this time you have together before he can’t see you. “I don’t want to go. I’ve never wanted to stay here more than I do now, but I have to.” His arms wrap around your waist, strong and safe.

Lifting your head, you look up at him, your noses practically touching from the proximity you share. The world feels like a bubble around you two, like some impenetrable one-way material that makes it so if Marcus leaves now, he can never come back. “Well, it’s gonna be a long time, a month or two,” you say with a sad smile. “We’ll have to begin again.”

Marcus shakes his head, his brown eyes almost welling with tears. “There’s no one else I’d want to begin again with.” With that, he looks in your eyes, the question hanging there. Wait for me?

Always, you respond silently by pressing your lips to his, kissing him slowly in the orange glow of your apartment building’s entrance. He kisses back, his lips tasting of coffee and maple and blueberry, yours tasting like chocolate and tea.

You squeeze your arms tighter around him, getting on your tiptoes to be as physically close as you can to him. He has one hand on either side of your rib cage, holding you there as he kisses back with all of the passion and love he has.

It can’t last too long or he’ll never leave. He won’t be able to. He breaks away after a few moments, his lips close to yours. He presses your foreheads together, arms encircling you again. “I have to go. I have to be at the office in an hour.”

You lift your head and your brow furrows in confusion. “Then why did you take so long to walk and eat with me?” You laugh quietly.

Marcus shrugs. “Didn’t want to leave you yet,” he admits, his eyes trained on yours. He gives you one last painfully gentle kiss. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you more,” you say with a sad smile. “You’ve been my distraction lately. Whenever I’m bored, I text you.”

He sighs, the confession increasing his frown. “I’ll be in an entirely new place, without you.”

“But I’ll be here, in my same old life without you in it.”

The words punch a hole through Marcus’s heart. It’s true; he’ll have new distractions, new things to do. You’ll be here with a Marcus Pike-shaped hole in your heart. He kisses your forehead, the wheels turning in his head. “If you get a call in the next few weeks from an unknown number, be sure to answer it, okay?”

You nod and smile softly. “You need to go. Go.”

He nods and his hand squeezes yours. “I can’t wait to begin again with you.” With that, Marcus Pike, Agent Pancakes, whatever you want to call him, the man you’re highly suspecting might be your soulmate, walks off into the slightly chilly D.C. night.

-

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[purplerain85]

Neron ‘Creeper” Vargas x Reader

Words: not sure I wrote it through my phone But this ended up being a lot longer then I thought it would be. 

Warnings: Swearing, Smut, Oral female receiving, mention of male receiving, usage of toys, fingering, slight bondage.

A/N: its been a long ass time since I wrote something let along smut, but I got inspiration about Creeper while I was watching Mayan’s the last two days. So to say that I am nervous is beyond an understatement. I love comments, criticism good and bad and what I can do better. So I hope you enjoy.

@yourwonkywriter @hazlenutlatte​ @lovebishoplosamiguelgalindo @challengeahellcat​ @chibsytelford​ @angelreyesgirl​ @nessamc​ @twistnet​ @tellingyouastory​ @poor-unfortunate-soul-85​ @drabbles-mc​ @putas-in-suffering​ @sheeshgivemeabreak​ @withmyteeth​ @raewritesfiction​ @yosoynicolexo​ @chibbybish​ @imagineredwood​ @blowmymbackout​ @telford-writes​ @my-rosegold-soul​

Dom should have been his nickname short for Dominate! Because that is what Neron 'Creeper' was in every sense of the meaning and word!  As much as he tried to hide it but you knew as soon as you met him just the way he talked, the way he carried himself and you were bound to not only be his girlfriend but his sub who would like to push every single god damn button he had.... which is why you were in you current situation. 

You had met Creeper 6 months ago at at one of the Mayan's club house parties you came with a couple of girlfriends you stood out from the crowd in more ways then one. While your friends wore dark blues and black you wore a neon green mini dress with a black leather jacket. Your laugh was loud which made him smirk every time he heard your laugh. You noticed him staring at you an hour after you got there and as much as you wanted to go talk to him you were pretty shy and wanted him to approach you, but he never he just watched you. 

Then two weeks later he finally introduced himself and when he said his name was Neron but everyone calls him Creeper, "well that makes sense now" you thought to yourself. Then a couple weeks later one of your friends bet Angel that she could bet him at pool, which he lost and was a spoiled sport about. Creeper said he could beat anyone which made you Ha! out loud and he asked you to play which you accepted but made the bet not about money "if I win you have to take me out on a date!" You wagered, he nodded and said "sounds good, but if I win you have to suck my dick!" You acted shocked but very turned on while your friends "ooohhh!" You acted like you had no idea what you were doing, he got a couple balls and he got cocky saying things like "I cannot wait to feel your beautiful mouth around my dick" or "I cannot wait to fuck your mouth" then you turned and looked at him and gave him  a sinful smile and sunk every single one of your balls and Creeper stood there shocked and your friend laughed and said "I have known Y/N for almost 20 years she has never lost a game of pool!” You laugh as you put the cue stick down and said "I will see you at 7 tomorrow"

That was 3 months ago you started dating Creeper shortly after that night. It didn’t take long for you to notice he was holding back a little in the bedroom you could tell he wanted to do more then tap your ass (it literally felt a little harder then a tap) and grip your hair. You wanted him to choke you, pull your hair, slap and grip your ass, mark you. Little did you know in the beginning that all you needed to do was push some buttons and not listen when he told you to stop something. It happened when you at a club house party and EZ was behind the bar and you were being friendly with him Creeper saw it as you were flirting, and when he came up behind you and had his hand on your ass and whispered for you to stop flirting, you rolled your eyes and scoffed at him saying you weren’t flirting and went back to your conversation with EZ. Creeper gave him a look that you didn’t see and EZ excused himself. Creeper gripped your ass hard which cause you to jump a little and slap your hands on the bar and grip your nails in the wood, he told you again to stop with a smirk on his face and walked away.

You stood there shocked for a minute before you recovered and finally knew what you needed to do to get him to finally bring his dominate side out. You had to push his buttons and best believe you would. You put your plan into motion the next day it started with small touches while you talked to other guys, being very friendly with them, three days later Creeper was tense and moody. On the fourth day you text Creeper that you were going shopping

Me: Hey babe hope things are good, about to go shopping at [sex shop store name] to get a new toy

Creeper: WHY????? 

Me: Why not? Need something when you are not at home or on the road.

Creeper: That should be a given no toys allowed!

Me: Oh such a shame that I don’t wanna listen

Creeper: You come home with a toy and you will regret it!!

Me: I am calling bullshit, You won’t do shit!

Creeper: Woman try me and see

Me: Aren’t they Beautiful the purple one has thirty different speeds and the little one seemed fun it can be controlled by your phone :) 

Creeper: Woman you just wait tell I get home.

Me: Pfft, OH OK (insert smart ass tone) off to my next stop. [Lingerie store] which I won’t show you later

What you bought*** 

Creeper was on edge because he kept messaging asking what you bought and you ignored him which pissed him off even more. You finished shopping 2 hours before Creeper got home, you used his hide-a-key to let yourself in and got the toys out of their boxes washed and now they are charging, you hoped into the shower and got ready, you decided to go for your favourite black dress. Little did you know you probably should have gone with your least favourite dress.

You were in his bedroom when you heard the front door open and slam you gasped when you heard the door, Creeper shouted out “Woman where are you!” instantly you were very shy and very intimidated you have never heard his voice like that, but this is what you wanted, needed. Creeper walked into the room, he had rope in his hand and you didn’t even have a chance to get yourself into a “sexy postion” you were stood there with the egg in your hand and looked like a deer in headlights. But to Creeper you looked just as beautiful, he walked over to you tossed the rope on the bed and took the egg from your hand and looked over it, he had did his research during the day and downloaded the app for the egg he just needed to scan the code and get it hooked up. 

He looked at you and told you to “strip out of your dress” you looked at home for a second before he raised his voice and said “Now!” you finally found your voice you smirk and said “Make me” Creeper rolled his eyes at you and grabbed your throat, you moaned out so loud “if you wanted me to dominate you, all you had to do was ask, not be a pain in my ass” Creeper said. He kissed you roughly while his hand was still on your throat his other hand when up your side to the top of your dress right breast then while still kissing you his other hand left your neck and met with his other hand ripped your dress right down the middle, you pulled back and said “that was my favourite black dress!” Creeper isn’t even looking you in the face he is too occupied with your lingerie set, “this is going to be my absolute favourite set, and I wanna promise I won’t rip it off of you but I cannot” he says. He picked you up and tossed you on the bed and got on top of you and said “you going to be able to keep your hands to yourself or am I gonna have to tie your hands.... never mind you like touching so tying your hands it is.” he ties your hands to his headboard.

You moaned “please Neron, please for the love of god please mark me, choke me, spank me, own me.... Please sir.” You opened your legs wider and you could feel his hard on through his jeans. Creeper felt like he was going to explode from you calling him Sir, and said “keep calling me that”. He started kissing down your jaw down to your neck and sucked some bruises on your neck, he moved down to your breast and left some bite marks and reached over to the nightstand table and grabbed a bottle of lube and continued kissing down your stomach and hips and leaving more bruises and bite marks.

He bit your mound and grabbed the egg from his pocket then pulled your thong to the side and licked from your opening up to your clit you moaned and begged for more but he pulled away and grabbed the lube and added some to the egg and to you and started to push the egg in you tensed a little bit “relax baby” Creeper moaned to you, he got the egg in and pulled away from you and grabbed his phone and chair and took a seat and the edge of the bed then turned the egg on the lowest setting and instantly your legs closed and you moaned “sir!!!” his voice boomed “open your legs!” after a couple of breaths you managed to open them again, but they closed again the moment he upped the vibrations a couple notches. He huffed and got up and walked to the closet “where are you going? Sir please don’t leave” you whined. 

Creeper walked back in with a bar with cuffs on the end and walked back over to you he says “sorry” and rips your thong off and kisses your knees and your first orgasm hits you, then pushes your legs apart and attaches the bar to your ankles and opens the bar a bit so you cannot close your legs. Then returns to the chair and continues to up then lower the vibe until you cum two more times. Then he gets up removes his clothes grabs the 30 speed vibrator that you bought today and removes the spreader bar set the vibe to medium and brings two fingers to your clit and you jump and moan.

Creeper moved his fingers down to your opening and brought his face down to your core and inserted his fingers the same time he attached his mouth to your clit and swirled, flicked, pressed his tongue to you clit and moaned at the taste of your juices he slowly moved his fingers in and out of you. You moaned that you were about to cum he says “cum on my face, wet my beard” you cum hard and lose your breath for a couple seconds. Creeper moves up your body to your covered breast he pulls down the cups to revel your nipples and while he starts sucking on your nipples his fingers were still moving in and out of you. He kisses you once he pulls his fingers from you and puts them in your mouth and you suck them clean and moan around them, then he moves to his knees and slams into you and gives you half a second to adjust to him before he starts thrusting, you can feel yourself getting close and tell him you need to cum, he says “no not yet, hold it for me” you try and manage to breath a little then shriek when you feel the purple vibrator attach to your clit and start to pull on the ropes and beg “Neron Please please untie my wrist please Oh Dear God PLese!!!!!!” Creeper leans over and unties your hands and one instantly goes to his wrist with the vibrator on your clit to ground yourself and the other hand went to the one on your stomach and you laced your fingers with his and you are chanting his name and begging to cum. 

He tosses the purple vibe pulls out just long enough to pull the vibe out and tosses that as well then pushes back into and drops down to your face and grips your neck and your hair and kisses the air out of your lugs then bites your lower lips and says “I need you to cum, baby cum for me, cum now” he is thrusting his hips so hard then you cum hard so hard that you grip Creeper so hard that he cannot pullout, he loves cumming inside you so he isn’t concerned he cums, and again tries to pullout and again he cannot he looks at you and you look so fucked out he kisses your lips and cheeks, forehead. “Can you lay down on me please, you won’t crush me and clearly she is not ready to let you go just yet” you say. He lays down and snuggles close with you and says “I love you”  you smile and rub his head and say “I love you too”

The End

[epicstuckyficrecs]

Weekly Recap | July 27-August 2nd 2020

Another big one this week! I discovered a new writer, can you guess who it is? 😆 

Complete

[Bucky is typing] by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 4K | Mature): Steve just wants to wind down, post mission, with the silly cupcake game Clint downloaded onto his stark phone. He doesn't know who 'Bucky' is, or why he's texting Steve so aggressively. He doesn't mean to answer the phone and argue with the charming voice on the other end. He certainly never meant for the arguing to be interpreted as flirting... But maybe he should just go with it? Maybe Bucky is exactly the leap Steve needs to take, to find his way in the world again.

d-sides and rarities, Chapter 11. balcony + fairy lights  by Deisderium/ @deisderium​ (Shrunkyclunks | Teen): Pepper's PA keeps helping Steve with gala events and public appearances. Steve's trying to keep it professional. Good luck with that.

Helping You Out by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (PWP | 3,7K | Explicit): Steve is not having a great time here... attempting to find his own prostate. So of course, Sam's gorgeous best friend Bucky chooses this exact moment to walk into Steve and Sam's dorm room unnanounced.

Saké It To Me by Kalee60/ @kalee60​ (Shrunkyclunks | 8K | Teen): Being roped into speed dating was not how Bucky imagined spending his Friday night, especially when he realises some of these people might just be a little bit over his pay grade. But then Steve sits down, gorgeous, friendly and full of genuine warmth. Within mere minutes he manages to completely charm the pants off Bucky (or so his future self hopes). So why then, after such a strong connection, didn't Steve call him?

Tap That by Kalee60/ @kalee60​ (Meet-cute | 2K | General): When Steve is distracted while waiting at a busy crosswalk on the way to an important meeting, he inadvertently meets the man of his dreams - but only after making the most mortifying social gaffe of his life.Red faced and apologetic he tries to forget the incident.But sometimes when things go wrong - they suddenly turn out spectacularly right.

Pressure Points by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 3K | Explicit): Bucky Barnes hates to fly. And this flight is starting out worse than normal. Except for the hot, built, blond sat beside him... Who has shoulders for days, a voice like molasses, and some very interesting ideas about how to ease Bucky's anxiety... (Part 1 of 💙 Pressure)

Under Pressure by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 6K | Explicit): Bucky is still high off the sexy encounter he experienced with the super hot guy from his flight yesterday.Only today is not turning out quite so great. He could really use some more of that stress relief that Steve doled out so graciously on the plane.And he left Bucky his number right? Which means Bucky could just call him... See if he's busy...He's doing it - he's calling him. It's ringing. (Part 2 of 💙 Pressure)

High Pressure System by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 8K | Explicit): So Steve ran out on him.Ran out saying 'I'll call, you' which everyone knows means Bucky just got ghosted. Except it turns out his booty call might be more than Bucky bargained for. How deep is he willing to dig to chase the answers to his questions? And why is he finding it so impossible to say no to this guy? Steve Rogers, who ARE you... (Part 3 of 💙 Pressure)

Pressure Rising by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 7K | Explicit): Waking up in a farmhouse, on an apple orchard, in the arms of a man who could bench press a minivan, with eyelashes like a disney princess and shoulders like a greek god is Bucky's fantasy turned reality.Except this is sort of a kidnapping.And his life might be falling apart in the real world.And Bucky might not give a shit, because Steve Rogers is like a drug, and Bucky just can't get enough.Also, it turns out, maybe Bucky is a drug for Steve too... (Part 4 of 💙 Pressure)

Pressing You Down by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 8K | Explicit): Steve Rogers is a master tactician, a supersoldier, a born leader. So why is it, as the team are closing in on an epic mission, two years in the making, that Bucky Barnes (and his thighs, lets face it, men have bled for less) and the possibility of he and Steve having a future together, might be enough to compromise everything his team have worked so long for.Actually, maybe it doesn't have to...Maybe everything is about to work out exactly the way Steve wants it to.Well... A man can dream. (Part 5 of 💙 Pressure)

💙 and the next by mcwho (Time traveling | 12K | Explicit): They have him in the common room of all places, and they won’t let Steve see him. or: a time-travel glitch lands 1936's bucky right in 2025 steve's lap

Reading in progress

Adorably awkward by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 32K | Explicit): The one where Bucky uses Steve's car window as a mirror and Steve can appreciate the view...

WIP

💙 Heirloom by 2bestfriends/ @addyetc​ (Royalty AU, Arranged Marriage | 4/5 | 17K | Explicit): King Steven Grant Rogers of Aphekion is only 20 years old. He relies on the wisdom of his advisors, the strength and honesty of his people, and the love and kindness his mother left to him. He wants nothing more than to honor them all by bringing peace to his kingdom. So much has been sacrificed already. If he must sacrifice his hope for love, then so be it.

💙 Revenance by JJK/ @trenchcoatsandtimetravel​, SinpaiCasanova (The Old Guard AU/The Song of Achilles AU | 2/? | 5K | Mature): And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Or, the one where Steve and Bucky are immortal and used to be known as Achilles and Patroclus.

💙 With Only You by brucespringsteen (Time Travel | 6/9 | 35K | Explicit): Steve, semi-retired and still a bastard who doesn’t follow rules, touches a cube that sends him to 1938, eighty-six years in the past. He takes it well. Bucky, twenty-one and baby-faced, takes it even better.

💙 Sergeant Barnes and Colonel Rogers: Lessons in Lust, Longing and Inappropriate Erections. by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 1/4 | 5K | Explicit): Bucky Barnes is a decorated (though young) Sergeant in the United States Army, a Ranger with the 75th regiment, a sniper of unparalleled skill; he still expects his first day as an Avenger to be challenging. He is not at all prepared for the greatest challenge to be one hot as fuck, steely eyed, Colonel Rogers. More specifically, he is not expecting the greatest challenge to be keeping his dick under control whenever Colonel Rogers, with his broad shoulders and his authoritative command and his fucking thick, gorgeous beard, enters into Bucky's immediate vicinity.

💙 Tender is the Ghost by Hark_bananas/ @harkbananas​ (Post-WS | 6/12 | 70K | Explicit): This thought is uncontrollably followed by another one: I’m not alone anymore. He looks over his shoulder, through the kitchen door, to where Bucky is sitting at his usual place at the head of the dining table, and he feels an unconstrainable smile breaking out across his face, the barest hint of threatening tears along its bright edge. Bucky is still looking past Steve’s left ear, but slowly, gingerly, one side of his mouth quirks up. Steve feels giddy, he wants to shout, or faint, or something to relieve the carbonated pressure that is bubbling up inside of him. Instead, he laughs, short and cheerful, and opens the oven door. (Part 2 of Tender is the Ghost)

💙 A Call to Motion by JJK/ @trenchcoatsandtimetravel​ (Uni AU | 2/? | 16K | Explicit): He was a jock, he did ballet, what more can I say? (aka: Steve’s football coach sends him to learn ballet to improve his game, Bucky is the dance TA tasked with teaching him).

💙  Bespoke by the1918/ @the1918​ (Shrunkyclunks, ABO AU | 7/10 | 72K | Explicit): “I love you, too. So fucking much,” Steve answered. His voice sounded cracked and exhausted, an exposed nerve ending in the shape of a man. “Some days I still don’t believe you’re real. Feels— feels like somehow, I’ve always loved you. Even when I didn’t know you.” Bucky smiled softly at that and felt his heart threaten to explode. Still straddling his lap, he reached a hand up to cup Steve’s cheek. “You’ve always known me,” he stated, simply. “I was made for you, remember?” (Part 2 of 💙Compatible)

💙 Songbird by chicklette/ @chicklette​ (Singer Bucky, Fake relationship | 13/15 | 61K | Explicit): At 43, James Barnes is a washed up old man. He’s got a dozen Grammys in the hall closet, an agent that can’t get him a deal, a decade-old case of writer’s block, a moody teen-aged daughter, and the gorgeous actress Natasha Romanova for an ex-wife. Enter Steven Grant Rogers, struggling twenty-something, orphan, and someone who has no idea who Barnes is. The two men meet by accident, doing nothing more than passing the time in a quiet bar. But when a pap gets a shot of the two men embracing, Bucky takes it as a chance to finally come out as bisexual, and his agent makes him a proposition: Ten new songs and one very sweet boyfriend will get him a new record deal that will maybe, just maybe put him back on top. Now all he has to do is write the songs, convince the kid, and not fall in love. Should be easy, right?

[phantomato]

Uber

Nottmort (Tom Riddle/Nott Sr.), Modern Muggle AU, ~2k words

Thanks to @yletylyf for kicking around this idea! Tom drives an Uber in the Bay Area. Thoros & co need a ride.

—

Abraxas and Orion are bickering over luggage in the background when your Uber pulls up. Black, of course, so it’s a Mercedes that will smell a little too much like leather cleaner when you get in, but none of you have ever ridden in an UberX or, god forbid, an Uber Pool, and you’re not about to start.

Your colleagues—never forget, you are not friends, no matter how much time you spend with them—slide into the back seat before you can even begin to help load bags into the trunk. You’re left alone with the driver, and though he offers to help, you haven’t let yourself sink that low as to make this man pile all of your shit in his car while you sit around and watch. And anyway, it feels like the polite thing to do. More than Abraxas or Orion, you’ve been raised to be polite.

So you fold yourself into the front passenger seat, too kind to push the seat all the way back and give yourself the leg room you need even if Orion, behind you, is just 5’8 to your 6’3, and smile at the driver as he confirms your destination.

He’s pretty. You’ve been in a lot of Ubers and you’ve never seen a driver this pretty. Is that classist?, you wonder to yourself, remembering something you read in Vox the other day. Probably. Nevertheless, you’re taken by the curve of his mouth, the sweep of his dark hair, and you throw a smirk over your shoulder at Abraxas who you know must have also noticed.

“Traffic to SFO will be busy,” he says regretfully, and you roll your eyes. Orion refuses to take the early morning flights, unwilling to wake at 3 AM, and you’re always stuck with these long, miserable Uber rides down from the city to the airport. “And Terminal 2—right in the middle of it. There’s construction around those doors, if you haven’t been there—”

“We know,” Orion butts in rudely, shutting up your driver for the few minutes it takes to get out of your neighborhood.

You use those few minutes to swipe through your phone. Email—nothing important. Messages—you clear the notifications. Your Instagram is alight with people reposting the same infographic about voting rights and you make a mental note to kick some money to that non-profit that’s been all over Twitter lately. You close out apps and end up back at Uber, watching your car’s laggy progress through the San Francisco streets. Your driver’s name is Tom, the app informs you. It’s a nice name.

You clear the side streets and Tom offers amenities. “If you want any water, there are bottles in the cooler between the seats,” he calls back to Abraxas and Orion, “and mints in the cup holder. You can adjust the air conditioning if you like, and there’s a charging cable attached to the back of my seat if you need it. Would you like to choose any music?”

“No,” Abraxas says, and whether he means the music or the entire spiel doesn’t really matter, given his withering tone. You look back at him, trying to convey ‘Be nice’ with just your eyebrows, but Abraxas is fussing with his hair and ignoring you.

Tom’s one of the chipper ones, it turns out, because he takes the rejection in stride and shifts to the dreaded personal conversation. “What do you all do for a living?”

“Ah, we invest in companies, mostly start-ups,” you say, trying to avoid—

“Venture capitalists!” Tom guesses, and he’s right but you hate the term and its connotations. So what if you are all white men whose family money has bankrolled tech speculation? It’s what anyone with half a brain would do. You donate, you read the liberal news—at least, you think that’s true for all of you, though Orion was friends with that Republican mayoral candidate and Abraxas’ father sponsors that conservative think-tank and…

Ah, fuck. “Yeah, pretty much,” you agree, hating yourself.

Behind you, Orion digs his AirPods out of his pocket. You hear the snap of the magnetic lid as he closes himself off to the world. Abraxas is slouching, the hem of his third-favorite cashmere cardigan catching on the seat behind him, and you realize that you’re alone in this conversation.

Well, fuck it. If those two pricks are going to make you call the Uber, deal with the reimbursement paperwork, and sit in the front seat, you’re going to talk to the driver and make this car conversation as painful as possible for them.

As if reading your thoughts, Tom does the one thing that guarantees a terrible ride: he pitches his app idea.

“You know, I’m also a software developer,” he says, which is at least more promising than when someone isn’t, “and if I had the kind of funding that companies like yours provide, I would absolutely make this app.” He proceeds to describe something completely inane, the type of exclusive, niche social networking app that hasn’t had legs since before the Trump presidency and you would be content to let him drone on, to let Abraxas keep melting into his own seat and to let Orion channel his anger through a knee driven into the back of yours, but—

But for all that Tom’s idea is stupid, he has the energy of the best pitches you see. His energy is infectious. His eyes light up, he gestures with one hand, and when he stops to take a drink (one of those water bottles with a built-in straw, which you associate with joggers and your lamest employees but which does very different things to you when it’s Tom’s mouth wrapped around the top) you’re transfixed by the wet sheen over his chapped lips.

And so, yes, maybe it’s mostly lust, and maybe this is a sign that you need to download Grindr again, even if only to jerk off to the dick pics you’ll get, but you start to actually talk to him.

“There’s no future in niche social networks,” you say, halting Tom in his tracks. “There will always be new ones, don’t misunderstand me, but the broader landscape is saturated by the top names, and they’ll buy out their competitors if they need to. Perhaps you can topple Tumblr, but that’s not a path to profit. If you want to impact the social market, you need to pinpoint the novel interaction model that you want to offer and make yourself buyable.”

“Buyable,” Tom repeats, like he’s never been interrupted before. He probably hasn’t. The first rule of Ubering around the Bay Area or the Valley is to never engage the app pitches, and Orion has started kicking your seat for your transgression.

“Yes,” you enunciate. “You want to be bought out and brought in at a high level. The giant that eats you may or may not use your idea, but you’ll make a comfortable sum as a consolation prize.” You’ve helped companies through this before. You’re flying out to New York this week in part because one of your investments is considering purchase offers and you want to strategize in-person. The founder is dallying, sending emails about independence and integrity, and Orion will bully him into selling while you and Abraxas negotiate the best terms for the contract.

You can feel Tom’s eyes on you. Abraxas might be calling “Thoros…” from the back seat, and Orion might be attempting to annihilate you with his gaze alone, but you’re smiling at that handsome face behind the wheel and hoping for an accident on the 101.

Unfortunately, you make it through San Bruno without running into more than the usual level of traffic, and Tom’s pulling up to your terminal much sooner than you would like. Abraxas and Orion jump out of the car with uncharacteristic speed when it stops, Orion even moving to stand by the trunk in readiness to take his bags. You delay.

“Do you have a business card?” you ask, when it’s clear Tom’s waiting on you.

He fumbles to pull a wallet from his jeans. You can’t quite get a view of his ass as he does, but that doesn’t stop you from looking.

His card is bent at the corner, printed cheaply, and probably from his last job. You’re pretty sure that company doesn’t exist anymore. Tom taps the phone number. “I can be reached here,” he says smoothly, but his professionalism cracks when he adds, “by call or by… text.”

You know what sort of texts you’d like to receive from him.

Pulling out your own card case, you hand him your card. “Text me,” you say, your voice just this side of appropriate, “any time.”

Tom visibly swallows and jumps out of the car. You take your time getting up, and if your cashmere sweater—Margaret Howell, not that Elder Statesman piece of shit Abraxas is wearing—ends up in the footwell of Tom’s passenger seat, well, you’ll be back in SF next week, won’t you?

“Thanks for the ride, Tom,” you tell him as you take the handle of your luggage, letting your fingers brush his. “I enjoyed our conversation.”

“Yeah,” he nods, and you don’t care that Abraxas is snorting behind you, he’s been judging you this whole trip and he lost out on a hot guy’s number as a result. “It was…”

“Thoros,” you interrupt him before he can ramble and psych himself out. “My name is Thoros, and I really would like to hear from you.”

Tom looks at you then, and you see him pull together the same sureness that drew you into his initial pitch. “I’ll text you about the app.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” you say, meaning it.

—

Bonus:

“You know,” Abraxas drawls as you sit in the United club lounge, gesturing lazily with his overpriced airport Fiji water, “if you tip him too much it’s like you’re paying him for sex.”

Orion looks up from his phone then, removing one earbud for the first time since he put them in. “I’ve paid more for sex with less attractive men.”

“Welcome back,” you say, “I didn’t realize you had paid any attention.”

“Someone would need to not have eyes in order to miss how hot that Uber driver was,” he bites back, returning to his phone.

“Well, I’m tipping him extra anyway,” you announce, confirming Tom’s five-star rating. Should you write a review? Is that too much?

Abraxas, with a grumble, declares, “I’m telling Alecto not to approve this expense.”

—

Bonus bonus:

Your phone buzzes at the end of dinner, the celebratory affair to close the sale which someone had insisted must be at Lilia, even though Abraxas doesn’t eat carbs and you would have preferred to grab a slice at Scarr’s rather than haul out to Williamsburg, anyway.

It’s Tom. Of course it’s Tom—you’ve been texting all week, and between a few late-night flirtations and one very bald statement of interest, you’ve got a date set for when you’re back home. You’re going to Mensho Tokyo, since he lives in the Tenderloin and you live… vaguely around the Tenderloin, at least, you tell people you live there when you want to seem cooler, and Tom is the type of guy that makes you excited to stand in line for hours to get seats. You’re already thinking about whether you might put your arm around him while you’re waiting, and you unlock your phone to see what he’s saying now.

It’s a picture message.

A picture of Tom, wearing your Howell sweater and no pants and oh god oh fuck—

“Was that Uber driver’s dick?” Abraxas whispers, next to you, and you curse your luck. “Remind me to call the next Uber, Jesus Christ.”

[dancing-the-hellfire-rumba]

Seen ✓ - 1

REWRITE OF “Can You See The Stars”

Pairing: Sam x Fem!Reader Warnings: fear of being kidnapped Word Count: 2.4k Series Summary: On her way home, Y/n finds an abandoned, cracked phone on the sidewalk. Anxious about the well-being of its owner, she picks it up and texts the first contact she finds; Sam.  A/N:This is my second attempt at the story everyone loved, with an actual pllot in mind this time. So, attempt number two, better writing, better story. Have at it kids.

I have tagged the old taglist for this first part. Let me know if you wanna be removed/ added

Beta: The lovely @percywinchester27​ . Thank you so so much hon :) Masterlist

Chapter One: you sure know how to fuck me up on a friday night

Y/n   |  Sam

The road to independence is uphill, and Y/n knows this better than anyone. She’s done it all. She’s gone through jobs at a similar speed with which she goes through books, worked two or more of them, while also studying for college… She knows how it works, and it’s really fucking difficult to balance emotional baggage the size of a city, an underage sister and college, while also trying to keep, not only yourself, but another person, alive, under a safe roof with food in your stomachs.

Currently, she’s only working one job, at a dive bar owned by a friend of a friend as a waitress.

It’s a difficult job, and Y/n has struggled with it, but the hardest part is not the endless knowledge one needs to mix drinks –on the nights Joel takes time off and she has to take his spot behind the bar- or the carrying up to twenty pounds of glasses and drinks and delivering them at the right table without soaking herself or anyone else with copious amounts of alcohol. Any minimum wage worker will tell you the same thing- clients of any kind fucking suck. Especially if you’re a young woman at a dive bar after midnight.

Another thing she’s struggled with is not having too much money, which is why she’s needed multiple jobs in the past, so she has to use public transport- buses specifically, to go to and from work. And that is exactly where she finds herself, a couple hours after midnight, at her bus stop, five minutes from the bar, when she finds a phone which, unbeknownst to her, will flip her world upside down.

It sits on the pavement of the bus stop, limp and sad. The screen is cracked a significant amount, and for a second she figures someone got rid of it and was too much of an asshole to throw it in the trash. But the second that thought crosses her mind, the screen lights up with a concerning text.

dude where the fuck are you?!

The contact reads “Sam”, and Y/n stands over the phone staring at it. She’s concerned. What if the phone’s owner is in trouble? The device may have fallen from their pocket on the pavement and cracked because they were running from someone and never made it home, and now whoever is texting them is worried for their well-being. Anxiety grips her heart.

It’s instinct that brings her to kneel down and pick it up. She can’t possibly know when the owner lost it, or how long the phone has been sitting there, but there’s an overwhelming urge to contact this Sam person and let them know what’s going on. Of course, the voice in Y/n’s head tells her that this all could just be a product of her anxiety, but it beats leaving it there and having it be stolen by a passerby.

Whatever, right? Best case scenario, she contacts the owner, who is perfectly safe and sound, and they take their phone back. She’s not really planning to pocket it. It’s fairly damaged anyways. Her own three year old, beat-up, 100$ phone is in better condition.

The bus arrives, and Y/n picks up the phone and boards it.

As she sits in her usual seat in the back, alone in the bus apart from an elderly man asleep with his head on a window and a cap on his head near the front, she starts speculating, eyes glued to the black device in her hands. Who’s the owner? Who is Sam to them? Perhaps a partner? A friend? How did the owner lose their phone? Why would this Sam sound so concerned, and most importantly, is the owner okay?

The heavy weight of dread weighs her chest at the thought of the phone’s owner being in trouble and without a phone. She must contact Sam immediately.

Hey, is this Sam?

As she awaits for a response, her curiosity is killing her. The intrigued part of her, reasons that she should snoop, it’s alright, she’s only looking for more information about the owner. Like whether or not they’re a woman or a man- which, sadly, matters when you’re walking alone in dark streets like the ones around this area- and perhaps their age –because, again, it matters if they are a teenager or a forty-year old adult.

The lack of passcode indicates someone older, with nothing to hide, or perhaps someone less technologically savvy, again, someone who may not be very young. The lockscreen is the most popular Led Zeppelin icon, and she instantly respects their music taste, and the home screen is some generic western movie from the 90s with Clint Eastwood. The chances of this belonging to someone younger further decline.

There’s a grand total of four downloaded apps in the phone. There’s an email app, a scrabble app, a microphone recorder and a dating app, no other sign of social media. Someone over 18 years old, definitely.

Soon, she’s tapping on the dating app, and opening their profile page. Holy shit, she thinks.

A guy, the tall, dark and handsome kind. Spiky hair and a smolder-like smile, sharp edges everywhere on his face apart from his gentle, olive-shaped and colored eyes. His lips are full, his nose straight, and his eyelashes long, dark and thick. He’s a real-life dreamboat, the kind you see in movies and Cosmopolitan articles about sex. He’s sitting on a black muscle car, a Chevrolet, with his thick thighs barely contained in blue jeans.

Dean Winchester, the app writes. 28. Male. Likes: old cars, beer, hard rock, westerns, she figured that much, bacon burgers. Dislikes: pop music, modern horror movies, uncomfortable beds. Not looking for anything serious, just a night of fun ;), and wow, okay, he sounds a bit like a dick. The very Red-blooded American Male kind, that enjoys BBQs and winking at women from across the bar. She’s had enough of those during her line of work; she can recognize them from a mile away.

Whatever the case, her moral compass couldn’t allow her to pass up on the opportunity to possibly help someone in trouble. She ignores her urge to roll her eyes, and scrolls a little, finding other pictures of the same guy, when suddenly two separate notifications appear, the phone itself vibrating. One is from the app, which has now received a picture from this girl, Jamie, one which she certainly doesn’t plan on opening, seeing as it’s followed by a winky face. The second one is from Sam.

jesus dean how drunk are you

yes it’s sam. your brother? remember?

No, this isn’t Dean, uh.

My name is Y/n. Your brother lost his phone at a bus stop, near a bar.

i should’ve figured. dean rarely ever uses punctuation.

nice to meet you i guess

Nice to meet you, too.

So basically, uhm, I thought you might help me return his phone to him? I got worried, because this was dumped on the sidewalk, I thought he may be in trouble or something.

knowing him he probably dropped it while being too shitfaced to function.

gotta admit i’m impressed though. most people would’ve pocketed it by now.

I mean, it’s not much use to me with such a cracked screen haha.

yeah i guess.

i don’t know about getting it back to him though. i’m in kansas right now so i’m not close by. i don’t think i can help you.

he doesn’t use social media either.

Crap.

What the hell am I supposed to do with this phone then?

keep it probably.

You sure there’s no other way I can reach him?

i mean i can give you his email but i’m not sure he’ll respond.

I’ll take it. Thank you :)

no problem :)

As she looks up the bus stops, and she quickly realizes this is her stop. Throwing profanities loudly enough to wake the older man at the front of the bus, she scrambles for her things, haphazardly thrown in the seat next to her, and gets off the bus. She pats herself down, making sure she hasn’t forgotten anything as the doors of the bus shut, and starts down the road to her apartment complex.

She could probably navigate this road blind. There are many ways to reach the apartment she’s renting from the bus stop, but her favorite goes through the park. It’s a large area, full of big trees with thick foliage and leaves that brown in the fall. The paths are paved and winded, and the park benches are stained with dark wood stain and curve comfortably. She enjoys coming here in evenings she has off, watching the sun descend behind the top of the trees with a good book.

The air smells like oncoming rain now, and with headphones deep in her ears, she walks taking deep breaths and enjoying the clear atmosphere that seems so unlike the roads that surround the park. As soon as she spots the first raindrop falling from the sky, she pulls her hood over her head and smiles.

It’s minutes later, when single drops have picked up to a drizzle, that she gets a sinking feeling, her hair standing up on edge at the back of her neck, shoulders knotting closer to her ears. Someone is close to her.

With the wire pinched between her thumb and index, she pulls one earbud off and pays attention to the surrounding sounds. Sure enough there’s a second pair of footsteps behind her.

Fuck, if she gets kidnapped or attacked right now, she’s fucked. There are no witnesses, and at this time of night screaming for help would be futile. She checks her bag, but her paper spray is nowhere to be found.

Yeah. Definitely fucked.

Her hands go deep in her pockets, going for her phone, but as she hears the footsteps behind her picking up speed along with hers, she panics and grabs Dean’s instead. She doesn’t look for her own, there’s no time for that, so she does the first thing she thinks of.

She texts Sam.

I think I’m being followed.

what?

Yeah

wait what’s going on? are you okay? who’s following you?

I’m walking home from work. I can’t see who it is, but they’re definitely on my tail.

how are you even typing right now??

is there any buildings around?  somewhere public to get in?

It’s 3 am. Everything is shut and I’m in the middle of a fucking park, Sam.

Fuck, I’m fucked.

what are you doing at 3 am in the middle of a fucking park then?!

A hand falls on her shoulder and she goes to scream, before she’s quickly spun around. Her free hand is curled in a fist, ready to fall on the attacker’s nose, when they speak.

“Y/n! I thought it was you!”

“Connor?!” She squints and pushes her hair away from her forehead, heart just about ready to fail out of the fright she’s gotten. “Fuck’s sake, dude, what the fuck are you doing sneaking up on me in the middle of the night like this?!” Rain still falls on her, grounding her to the present, the fact she won’t have to fight for her life and corporeal integrity sinking in slowly.

Her neighbor smiles a crooked smile, watching her place a hand over her heart and taking a deep breath. His fluffy blonde hair is damp under the light rain, light green eyes glowing under the street lights. She’s so angry at him right now, she legitimately thought she was gonna die for a second there.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” he says, dropping his hand from her shoulder. “I didn’t think to call out to you.” A shrug.

“It’s okay,” it’s really not, but there’s no point in staying angry at him. Besides, she figures she’ll be a little safer with him walking next to her all the way back to their apartment complex.

On the way back, they catch up. Connor is back in town after a long week and a half at his sister’s wedding. He’s in a brand new relationship with the guy he’s been pining over for like 9 months now, and he got a job at the bookstore, close to their building, he’s starting next week. He was out for a drink, he offers as an explanation, and was returning home, when he bumped into her. The park is also his favorite route to take.

The key dangles from her hands and finds a home in the lock and twists, while Y/n waves at her neighbor.

“Have a good night, Connor.”

“You too, Y/n.” It’s delivered with a wink and a bright smile.

The motions of dropping her bag by the kitchen counter, dumping the keys in the small bowl and hanging her coat on the hanger are delivered on autopilot in quick succession. Shoes toed off, hair pulled out of her lazy bun, she falls unceremoniously on her thrifted couch, feet suspended on the hand rest. Emmy must be asleep, the only lights on in the house are the fairy lights over the couch, setting a soft glow over the furniture. Y/n sighs. What a day.

Seconds before she falls asleep on the couch, a phone vibrates and it’s definitely not her own. Her eyes snap wide open, and she curses, fumbling with Dean’s device.

The messages are seven, and they all share the same panicked tone. Upon reading them, Y/n facepalms and curses, guilt weighing her down. Poor guy.

y/n?

what’s going on?

are you okay?

y/n

what the hell is going on.

you’re not replying.

please text me if you’re safe.

My God, Sam, I’m so sorry.

It was a neighbor/friend, he sneaked up on me.

you sure know how to fuck me up on a friday night.

I’m genuinely so sorry, Sam, I had no idea it was him.

it’s okay

you were scared.

i am starting to question your choice in friends though.

Y/n grins for the first time that day. It’s wide and full. Sam sounds like a guy she’d hang out with.

Hahahah yeah.

I promise, Connor’s odd, but he means well.

well i have to go

but i’m glad you’re safe

Again, I’m really sorry to make you go through that.

it’s fine really.

Thank you.

Goodnight :)

Night :)

 ---

Part 2

A/N 2: Tell me how you’re liking the rewrite! 

Old Can You See The Stars taglist: @shutupiminlooove​ @sammysgirl1997​ @kymberlytorres​ @bambi95-blog​ @demonic-meatball​ @thekarliwinchester​ @littlekay15​ @li-m-ii​  @thinspo-isuppose​ @carryonmywaywarddemigodwitch @ellen-reincarnated1967 @moonlitskinwalker​ @marichromatic​ @illuminatus42​ @lazy-author​ @mirandaaustin93​ @hauntedsiriel​ @pilaxia​ @devilgirlsarah​ @nobodys-baby-now​ @captiveties​ @calamitychaos @midiocris @wordswillscream​

Sam taglist @kymberlytorres @theboykingsam @depressed-moose-78 @andi-mendes-barnes​ @captainmarvelcorps​ @nerd-in-a-galaxy-far-away​ @nellachain​

[marvel-download-tutorial]

How to Download Marvel comics for free!

I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while especially since we’re all stick inside but last week Marvel made the shitty decision to transition various print titles to digital only, meaning they’re directly taking revenue away from local shops rather than delay the titles, so since Marvel thinks digital comics is such a cool idea I’m gonna show you how to download as many as you’d like! (oh also this is for windows only, idk how to do it if you own a mac but also you’re rich anyways so who cares buy the comics richie)

I don’t want to take money away from the people that need it, not the actual companies of Marvel and DC fuck them they’re dying and they deserve it, but for my own rationalizing I want to take a minute to plug the Hero Initiative, basically what it is an organization that provides for comic creators that are having hard times, comics are a rough industry and you don’t get into it to get rich, I won’t go into it too much you can read for yourself but it’s been endorsed by Stan Lee, Justin Ponsor, Mike Grell, Skottie Young, Rags Morales, a lot of big names, so I’d ask if you do follow this guide and download some comics for free please consider donating to the Hero Initiative (they also sell autographed prints and you can commission some really famous artists)

anyways onto the good stuff! I’m going to be doing a fairly brief but easy to follow guide, there will be links at the bottom of the post so look for those, I’ll probably be making a few other posts with some more info so also check back for those if my blog is still here

What do I need?

You’re going to need 4 basic things if you want to do this as easily and safely as you can 

1) a good anti-virus

2) anonymous web browser (Tor)

4) a safe and reliable source for the comics

4) a torrent program to download the comics

Also optional: VPN

Anti-Virus 

it’s good to remember when torrenting that no one is your friend, everyone is out to trick you and no one cares, honestly you should also have a good anti-virus though, I’m not really gonna tell you which one you should have but Norton 360 is pretty good but say that in a room of CS majors is the quickest way to start a fist fight, honestly just google it, you’re gonna have to do some research, but really you’re good as long as you don’t go with Avast or Kaspersky, I’m going to go over typical tricks and traps later to ensure safety, this is just basic overall security thing

Anonymous Web Browser (Tor)

next we’re gonna download Tor (you can do this before getting a VPN, like I said either one is going to put you on a list but using one to cover you getting the other at least mitigates it lol) Tor is a great open source project that allows for basically complete anonymous web browsing, it’s a project dedicated to privacy and disruption of corporations ability to control every aspect of our lives, also a friend of mine bought K off silk road with it once in highschool, really not too much you need to know about it before using it, just download it, let it configure and you’re good, also use Duck Duck go that it comes with, don’t switch it to chrome or anything, Duck Duck go is anonymous search service which better lends to Tor’s protection

Where to get the torrents

Now this is really important because you can have everything else set up but without a safe reliable source none of this is gonna do any good, but this is the dangerous part, torrent sites are notorious traps (I bricked more than on family PC on limewire) and this is why I said earlier to remember these people are not your friends and are out to hurt you, don’t click banner ads, don’t believe pop ups, make sure your virus protection is on and it’s a very good idea to have an adblocker on, also look out for another post I’ll be making on what download buttons to trust for different popular torrent sites

when talking comics (and remember specifically only Marvel comics) there’s no other name out there than Nemesis43, he is a god and he’s going to be your new best friend, there are groups and sites out there that do comic scans that you have to pay to join or like apply to join, that shit’s dumb as hell and I’ve never used them once and I’ve got more comic than I can read in my lifetime, you don’t need em and you especially don’t need to give them money, donate to the Hero Initiative instead

Nemesis has moved around a bit in the past (if you remember the WWT debacle) right now the main site for him is ettv (there will be a link at the end of the post) sites a bit barren but he’s there, he also has a reddit he gives updates on very rarely, generally if he moves he adds where his new home is in a text doc in his recent uploads, I fully trust him and his uploads, he’s been doing this for years and I’d never have a second thought downloading from him, also because he uploads so much he’s often very highly rated and verified on whatever site he’s on

The second place I’d recommend is getcomic (again there will be a link at the end), now this is very important, never donate to them, they kinda suck, basically they’re plugged into a bunch of different scanner groups and just steal those scans and put them up and then ask for donations, basically they’re just an aggregate (Nem kinda is too but he doesn’t ask for donations and stuff), they usually use browser downloads which are a complete pain so I’d really recommend Nemesis over them but they do have TheComicGuy on torrent galaxy for larger files but that updates a lot less frequently then the main site, again I trust these guys (as long as you’re on the actual site) but don’t trust any banner ads or pop ups, also for downloading they give multiple options, a lot are very sketchy, just use the main server

also there’s other sites like readcomics or newcomics, never used em, don’t like em, use at your own behest 

On sites like ettv you’re gonna want to use the magnet, someone years ago told me it was safer and I just believed them and have always used em, not sure if it’s true but it’s worked so whatever, really you shouldn’t be too worried about this stuff and if you follow this guide you’re going to be way over prepared to download comics, really no one cares about comic torrenting, movies, video games, tv shows that’s the stuff people really get caught on, this is just nerd shit

I’m going to be making another post showing how to use these sites, and other sites comic can be found on so look back at my blog for that

Torrent program

This is pretty basic, just get utorrent, it’s what I’ve always used, it works, whatever, definitely look this up with a VPN on or on Tor, it’s simple to use, I’ll be doing a short tutorial on how to make it even safer

Lastly this one is optional but a pretty good idea, for more than just this

VPN aka Virtual Privacy Network

honestly you can get the anonymous web browser (Tor) or the VPN first, their both going to help cover you downloading the other and honestly both are going to put you on a list for googling them (which is why I suggest looking for someone who just already has the .exes ((I always keep them on a thumbdrive for when I have to reset one of my computers)), I might try to make a google drive with em but also I might not bc that sounds like work and I’m already typing all this up), anyways I’m not really gonna explain what a VPN is, there’s a lot of resources that can explain it better than I can but basically it masks what you do on the internet, there’s a lot of choices when picking a VPN but the big thing I looked for when choosing mine was 1) non-US based so it’s harder for US investigation agencies to request stuff for them or get anything from them 2) one that doesn’t keep logs, honestly they all do even if they say they don’t, but you wanna look for one that hasn’t turned over many logs to US agencies and 3) unlimited peer 2 peer connections which is complicated but basically means you can torrent stuff anonymously and with decent speed. Like Anti-Virus there are a ton of different VPN’s out there, you really have to do research because there are actual accounts of FBI agencies crating VPN’s telling people they’re anonymous when really they had direct access to all the info, I haven’t done any research but NordVPN seems kinda like one of these, really the more they advertise the more suspicious I am, Just google “best vpn 2020″ and look at like 5 lists and read the the stuff, personally I use IPvanish which unfortunately is US based and while it gave over logs in 2016 even thought they said they didn’t keep any but now they’re owned by a new company that super double promises they don’t (again who cares they all do) but they’ve allow P2P and use 256-bit AES encryption

I wanna take a second to mention that this isn’t going to be free, this is the only place you’re going to be spending money (besides donating to Heroe Initative of course), a good VPN is about $100 a year which all in all isn’t terrible, technically you can just get by on the anonymous browser but this gives you an extra layer of security to pretty much ensure you won’t get caught and plus in the ever worsening internet hell world a VPN is becoming more and more important, I’m sure you can find articles about it but yea you don’t technically need a VPN but it’s useful for more than just this

How to work it all

Ok so this is gonna be a little stream of consciousness, as this all kinda has been, so sorry but I’m gonna try and explain it as best I can and also feel free to ask any questions on this blog, I’ll check back eventually I’m sure

So first thing first, make sure you’re virus protection is on and you’re connected on your VPN if you’re using it (you can google “what is my IP” to double check it’s working) then load up Tor, let it load and connect up and whatever, then go to https://www.ettvdl.com/user/Nemesis43 (I’m just gonna show this with Nemesis43, maybe I’ll make another one for getcomics but that’s pretty straight forward, also nem is better)

now remember we’re only here for Marvel comics, so scroll past all those thousands of other comics this would work exactly the same for, I’m gonna go for Ant-Man #4 which was released on the 13 as a digital only comic despite the first three issues being physical copies and now sit on my shelf forever unfinished making me look like a complete penis

it may take a while but it’s going to look like this, click on the blue words, it’s gonna take you to a page that looks like this

now from here we’re going to get the magnet link, right click and select copy link address, I like doing this because it limits my interactions with the page, note the advertisement at the top telling me I need a VPN despite thinking I’m in Guadalajara (which for legal reasons I am)

just copy that and then go to utorrent and click the add link

it’ll open a little box, it should add the link automatically, if it doesn’t just hit ctrl+V

hit ok and it’ll load it up, it might need to download some metadata but after that it should be good, oh also it might bring up a window basically asking where you want to save it and what to name it, you can set all that up in preferences, I did so I just turned that window off and can’t be assed to turn it back on, just hit ok if you don’t wanna bother with that stuff, it’ll go into your downloads by default

and that’s it really, it’s that easy, I might make another thing talking about how to make utorrent more anonymous or whatever so look for that, but stock it’s fine, also when it’s finished downloading it’s gonna start seeding (like uploading to someone else) I’ve always been a scumbag and I never seed but Nemesis seeds stuff so much you really don’t need to anyways, just select it and hit the stop button (the black square on the tool bar)

here are all the links I could think of

Hero Initiative

download Tor

here’s a guide for VPNs

download utorrent

song I found recently that I like

getcomics

Nemesis

so yea that’s pretty much the basics, be smart, be safe, any viruses you get are on you but I hope you found this helpful and feel free to ask any questions

oh and also this is all parody and I’ve never actually torrented anything, I don’t even own a computer

[punchy-mchurtyfist]

Cutting all pretenses; it is laughable how stupidly easy it is to pirate shit, and right now food and bills are more important than entertainment but you never have to go without.

You want ROMs? (Any game that came on a cartridge)

The Eye has your back from arcade to SNES

You want ISOs (disc games) from sega to PS3 and beyond

PC game cracks and Steamless versions of games are a lil bit harder to find but generally IGGgames will have a fuctioning crack of whatever you want. (Please be aware ppl in the scene don’t trust IGGgames because they steal cracks from other repackers but I’ve not gotten any kind of virus from them myself so far so just wanted you to know)

Now what to actually play these games on?

This is easy too! Programs like Retroarch and Bizhawk already compile the best, most accurate and up to date emulators for you. Retroarch is much more user friendly and easiest to setup, but Bizhawk is made with speedrunning in mind.

Certain disc based consoles will require a BIOS file to actually play the games, (PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, MSX, maybe more) while it would be straight up illegal to share these with you, there’s nothing stopping me from saying search engines are your friends.

But what about movies and anime?

There’s literally dozens of great streaming sites out there that have any movie you can think of, just go to duckduckgo and type in “watch (name of movie) online free” and as long as you’re using an adblocker like Ublock Origin you’ll be safe.

You can use these two Chromium (chromium, chrome, opera) addons to download any movie you can stream on these sites.

This one is for most movies

This one is for downloading all other streams the other one couldn’t

There’s equally as many reputable sites for all things anime, and with a much larger selection than anything you have to pay for

AnimeKisa runs great on potato quality internet speeds

This site has not only a huge selection of anime but also western cartoons!

But what if you’re a book kind of person? This process is a LITTLE more involved but not by much, don’t be intimidated.

Get yourself an IRC client

My personal favorite is Hexchat cause its free

Before you do anything be sure to change all four default nicknames at the top of the program to anything you want

Scroll down the server list and find IRChighway click EDIT and untick the box that says use SSL and click CLOSE now click CONNECT 

click JOIN THIS CHANNEL and type in #ebooks then OK

Your done with the technical stuff! All that’s left from here is requesting the book you want

First, you search by typing @search (name of book or author) then hit enter to search, it might take a little bit for the request to process but when it does you’ll get a prompt to download a zip file, this contains all the known titles of books that fit your search

Simply accept it, download it, and go to the file, unzip it and you’ll get a text file

You’re nearly done! To download a book from this list simply copy and paste the line into hexchat, (starting with the ! point to after the file size) 

Wait for it to process your request and download the book the same way you did the zip file, and you’re done! Simply go to SERVER -> DISCONNECT and click the x to quit out of Hexchat.

But how do I read the book I just downloaded? 

Here’s a free and simple book reader for Windows

UPDATE:

Y’all want manga? 

Try these  1 2

I kinda forgot to add this before but here’s a program that can be used to download entire anime series off of certain streaming sites. Unfortunately it doesn’t work on every site, but it DOES work on thewatchcartoononline

Here it is, WFdownloader

So how do you use this thing? Its actually super simple.

Say you wanna download, I dunno, Symphogear let’s say, what would you do? Navigate to the website of your choice, I usually download from thewatchcartoononline cause its generally nice quality and subs so go the site, look up the show you wanna download.

And when you’re on the episode list screen, copy the URL here and go into WFdownloader. 

Click on ADD, here the URL you copied should already be in the LINK ADDRESS field, but there’s several options here you might wanna check out, like the ability to choose where to save the anime, and Config.

On certain sites, choosing CONFIG will give you a few options to choose specific video qualities to download and exactly which episodes you want. Now the site I used as an example does’t offer these options so you can just ignore them, just letting you know the options are there.

So from here click CONFIRM and it will automatically search for episodes to download, it shoudn’t take too long.

From here just click CONFIRM and now you’ll notice to the left there’s what the program calls “batches” this is the list of episodes you just had it search for.

Just click START at the top, and watch your anime download in record time! Enjoy!

[tyranttortoise]

Dude, what happened to you and your scooter?? Was it a car crash? How are you now? And you said you are not doing well mentally right now, is that a depression? Just.... talk to us. It's not all about UT after all, we're worried about YOU too, you know? If you feel like sharing with us, please do. If you don't feel like opening up - then sure, that's your decision, it's public internet after all. Just know that in whatever case people care for you (even anonymous lurkers like me). XXX

This ask really warmed my heart.   (.... And I put a heart here, and it ate everything else I wrote in this paragraph, so lemme try again. )  It really means a lot to me that you’d reach out like this, anon. xx  Seriously, thank you for asking about me.  I’m happy to share the grisly details of that scooter wreck with you guys!

You guys ready for story time?

This ended up being stupid long, so I’m sticking it all under a cut.

Also, trigger warnings for blood and a picture of a cut at the end.

Okay, so the scooter was one of those Lyft scooters you guys may’ve seen around.  It’s basically a taller razor scooter with a motor on it – the kind you stand on, not sit.  It’s got a QR code that you scan with the app that activates the scooter, you pay by the minute, and you leave it anywhere on a sidewalk as long as you take a picture to deactivate it.  

I’d never seen one before.  This was in Atlanta, which is a rather big city, and I saw people riding these scooters everywhere.  I even passed a couple that looked almost as old as my parents riding them together with shopping bags on the handles, so I thought, This is perfectly safe. 

I was out killing time before a concert (Taking Back Sunday/Red City Radio) by hunting pokemon in pokemon go with Ant, and we saw the parked scooters on the way back to our hotel.  We only had a few blocks to go, so we started checking them out, downloaded the app, and gave them a  try.  

We started off riding them uphill, which is where I went wrong.  I didn’t think they had any power; everyone I’d seen had been barely going, after all.  So, I turned the accelerator all the way and even had to kick off with my foot like a regular scooter to get it to make it to the top of the hill.  

The moment the sidewalk leveled out, however, the scooters shot off.  Holy shit, they started to fly!  Ant was way ahead of me, and I started calling out about how it was going way too fast, and I squeezed the brake in a panic.  The scooter instantly started to wobble, and I put my foot off to catch my balance, but… the scooter was still going, so as soon as my foot touched the sidewalk, I was propelled off my feet and forward toward the sidewalk in prime face-plant position.  

I was still holding onto the scooter with both hands, and it happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to let go; I didn’t break my fall, but I did turn my body slightly.  (Later, I’d text my boss that I “hit the streets of Atlanta last night… with my face!”  He wasn’t amused.)  I hit the ground and the scooter kept flying down the sidewalk sideways.  Apparently, my side hit first and my ribs took the entire impact from how fast I was going.  My knees hit, too, because all of the skin was pretty much gone from them (and I still have huge bruises on both of them right now), my elbow was bloody, and I guess the bottom of my palm got scraped across the sidewalk because it was cut open.  

I remember pushing myself up and thinking that my head was throbbing.  The first thing I noticed was that my glasses were broken; I could see them lying in front of me, smashed to bits and missing their lenses.  “My glasses are broken, damn,” I remember announcing.  “And I think I hit my head.”  

My forehead was warm, and my vision was clouding in my left eye.  “Oh.  I’m bleeding.  I cut my forehead open,” I narrated while Ant grabbed my shoulders tried to inspect the damage.  However, he was too busy panicking to really look, and started crying and apologizing over and over, while I was the calm one.

My glasses had cut my forehead and eyebrow when they broke.  

Blood was pouring from my head.  I kept having to blink the blood out of my eye and hold my head forward to clear my vision.  I put my hands over it, but it kept filling up my palms and spilling down my forearms.  “Fuck, this is a lot of blood, but it is a head wound.  It’s gonna bleed.  Let’s move.”  

So, we move toward the buildings, off to the side of the sidewalk, leaving our scooters there.  Ant is still freaking out, but he has the peace of mind to deactivate the scooters (though forgets to take a picture of them, so we both end up with $40 bills later that Lyft thankfully refunded really quickly.  By the time I realized he didn’t finish deactivating them, I went to the take a picture of the scooter screen and just took a selfie of me all bloody in the ER.  We got the money back within half an hour.).  

“I need to go to the hospital because this is going to need stitches.”  I can’t even see the cut, but if it’s bleeding this much, I know it’s gotta be something I need sewn up.  “Do we call an ambulance?”

“Maybe you won’t need stitches.  Head wounds bleed, so it might not be that bad.  It’s just… too bloody for me to see the cut.  Let’s walk back to our hotel, and you can clean up there?”

I snort, gesturing to my arms.  At this point, both of my arms are purple with blood.  I literally look like I stepped out of a horror movie and got stabbed or something.  It looks like I just dipped both arms into a barrel of blood to the elbow and then yanked them out.  I’m wearing all black, so you can’t tell that it’s on my clothes as much, but the gray logo on the front of my shirt is dark red.  “I’m not walking down the streets like this, much less our hotel.  I’d scare people.”

“If we need to go to the hospital, I’ll just drive you there.”

I only said ambulance initially because I wasn’t sure how to walk to a hospital covered in blood, and there’s also no way I’m going to walk through our hotel like this and wait in the underground garage for the valet to get his car.

“No way.  We could Uber, but I can’t go in there like this.  I need to get cleaned up.”

There’s an Aloft hotel directly across the street, and we both glance over there.  “You could use the bathroom in that hotel,” he suggests, and I scoff.  

“There’s a lot of people around there… They’d start screaming or call 911 if I walked in.  Why don’t you just go grab me some wet and dry paper towels?”

“You’re gonna stay out here by yourself?”

“I’ll hide.  Just hurry.”

So, yeah, I’m still actively bleeding all over the place when he runs across the street, but I hide behind a pillar, crouch down so maybe people won’t notice me, and pull out a compact mirror/brush combination (the one that Viv gave me in Alaska, actually!)  This is the first time I get a look at myself, and shit, my face is covered in blood, and it’s pretty much turned my blonde hair pink.  I decide to try to brush the blood out, which just spreads it around and ends up yanking giant pink tangles out.  I try to get a look at the cut, but I can’t see it well past the blood, and every time I let go of it, it just pours out in a rush.  So, I start holding my sleeve against it, but that doesn’t help.

Ant comes running back with his pockets stuffed with paper towels just as a random woman peers around my pillar.  

“Are you okay?!” she shouts, horrified.  

Shit.  

I haven’t cleaned myself off, and I let go of my forehead to turn and wave a dismissive hand with the biggest, most manic grin I’ve probably ever had plastered on my face.  “I’m fine!  I just had a little fall, that’s all!”

She recoils a little, looking even more concerned.  “Do you need me to call 911?”

“Oh, no, no, no need for that!  I’m going to clean off and then Uber to the hospital, but thank you!”

She looks dubious.  “Okay.  I just didn’t want to walk away when I saw you.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I’m all right!”

So when she leaves, I proceed to start scrubbing the blood off my arms first, and then the side of my face.  There’s no helping my hair; my bangs are sticking straight up, matted into a ball.  Ant helps, and then I ball the rest of the dry paper towels up and hold it to my head.  I’ve still got some blood here and there on me, but it’s enough that walking down the streets of Atlanta won’t be too bad.  

We walk to the end of the block and get an Uber.  It shows up fairly quickly, and I slip into the backseat without trying to draw attention to myself.  But after about a block, the driver asks if we’re visiting someone at the hospital; obviously, he hasn’t looked at me yet.  

“Nah, we had an accident,” Ant nervously answers, and I meet the driver’s gaze through the rear-view mirror. 

“Are you… Are you bleeding?!”

“Yeah, but don’t worry.  I cleaned up; it won’t be on your backseat.”

At least he has leather seats, but honestly, I don’t think there’s any blood on the back of my pants, and I’m sitting forward so I’m not touching anything else.  I’m trying to be considerate but damn, I need this Uber.  

The driver is worried about just that, and he keeps glancing back at me.  He’s driving faster now, eager to get me out of his car.  He runs a red light, and I grip the side handle, muttering curses under my breath.

The hospital wasn’t far, but he still stops a full block from it and tells us to get out, and “Good luck!” before he speeds off.  It takes a bit of walking to figure out which part of the massive hospital leads into the ER, and it’s with all of this walking that I realize I’m hurting, and it’s not just my head.  My ribs feel like fire.  Gingerly I press on them and wince.  Shit.  They’re either bruised or broken. 

I’ll worry about that later; right now, I want my head sewn up so I can leave.  

As soon as we entered the ER, there was a security guard sitting by the metal detector.  I handed him my purse, but when he noticed there was blood all over it, he just asked me to open it so he can shine his flashlight inside.  “What happened, sweetheart?  Did you have a fall?” he asked, the picture of concern.

“I fell off one of those scooters,” I replied, and his face automatically changed.

“When will you learn?” he said sternly.  “I hope this taught you something.”

… The… fuck?

“I’ve never seen one of those before,” I countered. “I didn’t know.”

He scoffs and waves me through, shaking his head and muttering about the damn scooters.  I’m pissed off now, and Ant has to lead me to the counter.  Since I don’t have my glasses, everything just looks like blobs until I get close, and the signs might as well not even have writing on them.  It’s disorienting, and I hate it.

At the front desk, as soon as I say I fell off a scooter, the women react the same way.  “You should’ve known better,” one of them chides, and I keep repeating that I had no idea it went that fast.  I feel like a child.  

“You could’ve been hurt,” the other one insists, and I dumbly stare.  Why do they think I’m here?

Ant fills out the basic patient information sheet for me and hands it back, while I go into the bathroom to clean up.  The door doesn’t lock, so I have to get him to stand outside of it.  I try to wash the blood out of my hair, but I’m only mildly successful.  I do get to wash the rest of the blood from my arms and face, though, so that’s something.  I roll my pants up to assess my knees, and they’re skint up and bloody, but I know from the way I can move them that there’s nothing wrong with them.  The cut on my palm burns like hell, but it’s okay, and my elbow is just skint up, too. 

After half an hour, a nurse comes and wordlessly tapes some gauze to my forehead without really looking at the cut.  Then, I’m called back to the triage area where they take my vitals and ask what happened and what’s hurt.  I’m sat’ing 100, so I know that my ribs didn’t puncture a lung or anything, so I decide they’re fine.  

About an hour after that, I get called back, and it’s then that I realize I haven’t signed a consent for treatment.  I ask the nurse about it, he tells me that I don’t need one signed beforehand for where I’m going.  

We end up in the trauma section, and I’m surprised.  “I’m a trauma?”  He nods.  “What, a level three?”  Another absent nod as he tries to figure out where to put me.  A level three means there’s nothing possibly life-threatening about my injuries, but that I’ve sustained an injury that needs to be seen before a standard patient, basically.  

It’s then that I realize just how busy this ER is.  There were over 60 normal rooms we passed, and this trauma bay alone has 20 rooms, with four rooms for dire cases.  To put it in perspective, I work in an enormous hospital, and our trauma bay only has four rooms.  

All 20 rooms must be full because there’s a man with an obviously broken leg on a stretcher just out in the hallway.  I get lead around the corner, and then the nurse pulls a chair out and has me sit in the hall.  

Over the course of the next two hours, several different people come to see me, and I can’t tell which of them is my nurse or doctor.  Mostly, they just peel the gauze away from my face to look at the cut, and when I first asked if it was going to need stitches, I just got laughter as a response.  

A nurse was making rounds with a student and stopped in front of me at one point.  “This one didn’t have the sense to not get on a scooter,” she told the student, and I shouted back that they don’t have them where I’m from.

“You could’ve been hurt,” the student said, and I’m begin to wonder what their definition of hurt is if I’m sitting in a trauma bay.  

“Mmhmm.  Bet you won’t do that again,” the nurse chuckles, and then leads her away.  

“What the fuck is wrong with this place?” Ant asks, standing beside me; they didn’t offer him a chair, so he’s been awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot this entire time.  

A doctor comes to examine me in the hall, pressing on my neck and squeezing my arms.  I have to roll my skinny jeans up to show him my knees, but he claims if I’ve been walking, they must be fine.  He asks if I have any other injuries, and I think about the fact that my ribs hurt whenever I breathe – but I’m tired of this place, pissed off, and I wanna go home.  So, I tell him no.  Someone comes up and offers me a tetanus shot, but I turn that down, too.  

Another hour later, a resident comes to tell me that he’s going to sew up my eyebrow if he can get a room.  I don’t need a head CT, but he’s worried I may have ripped the membrane covering my skull, so he said he’s going to feel it before he sews it up, but “Don’t worry, we’ll numb you up so you won’t feel a thing.”

When he finally gets a room, he’s antsy, trying to move quick.  We’re in one of the large, critical care bays, one of the rooms where they bring the most serious cases.  He’s wearing a walkie-talkie that’s giving trauma reports, which is weird to me because I wear a pager for mine at work.  

“I’ve gotta irrigate that wound, but I don’t know how to do it without pouring water all over you.”

“Honestly, if you could get some more of it in my hair, you’d be doing me a favor.”

“I don’t think that’s coming out that easily.”

He put chucks around my neck and has me lean back while he pours sterile water directly into the cut.  This was honestly the worst part; I have a pretty solid tolerance for pain, but I found myself squeezing Ant’s arm and trying not to cry.  

The resident’s walkie-talkie goes off, reporting a two-car collision, and both of the drivers are coming as level one traumas – which means they’re life-threatening.  I’m definitely getting kicked out of this room, and he knows it, too.  

“Shit.  Okay.  Okay, it’s still got a bit before it’ll be here.  I can probably still sew you up, so let’s try.  But first, we have to check that membrane I mentioned, and ah… I need an attending to double-check me.”    

He steps out to grab another doctor, and this one takes one look at me and grins.  “You’re going to have one hell of a black eye, girlie.”

“Black eye?”  I’m starting to panic.  “I can’t have a black eye at work.  Are you sure?”

He scoffs.  “Absolutely.  It’s going to look gnarly.  But hey, let’s see if you have a tear.”   He holds up the blunt end of a Q-tip, and I recoil a little.  I know he’s about to jam that directly into my cut.

“Wasn’t I told I’d be numbed up first?”

“No time with 2 level one’s coming.  You knew the risk when you got on the scooter.”

“Why does everyone keep sayin–ahhhh!”

He sticks the blunt end directly into the cut, and then drags it across my freaking skull, up under the skin.  It doesn’t hurt as much as the irrigation did, but I still suck in a hiss of air and wince.  

“All right, so it didn’t snag, and that means you’re probably good.”  He starts explaining it to the resident, while I just mouth fucking hell to Ant.  

To make a long story short because this is starting to get out of hand, I get sewn up partway, the trauma comes, so we have to go back into the hall, and the resident breaks sterile procedure without changing gloves, so I ask for that tetanus shot after all.  He finishes up my stitches in the hall, although keeps saying that he wants to see the trauma, while I keep insisting he needs to finish what he started.  The attending is supposed to review his work, but an hour and a half pass without a sign of the doctor, so the resident comes back to tell me it’s probably fine and slaps some gauze over the stitches.  I’m also told it’ll scar, but not to worry because “eyebrow scars are badass.”

“There’s always an eyebrow scar in any character creation mode, so now you can pick that,” Ant helpfully supplies.  

Fast forward a bit.  I didn’t get any pain killers, but I had some left from where I got a wisdom tooth out the month before.  To put it in perspective, when I got that tooth out, I only took a half of one (it wasn’t anything hard because it was one tooth, so don’t worry; it was basically powerful tylenol that makes you drowsy).  But the day after the wreck, I took three.  My ribs were killing me, breathing hurt, my head was pounding, and bending my legs was agony.  Everything hurt, so I called into work for the first time in eight years and just laid on the couch.  

I could only get one day off, so I went in after, and desperately tried to cover up my black eye with makeup.  I’ll have to post some pictures below or something because I think I actually did a good job.  A few days later, I decided to x-ray my ribs because they were getting worse.  I thought that at the most, I’d squint at them and wonder if they might be broken, but when the image popped up, my coworkers and I gasped.  It was obvious breaks, and both of my floated ribs had the ends broken off completely, just hanging out below them.  

You can’t do much for broken ribs.  You can get them wrapped if they’re bad enough, and in some extreme cases, some hardware can get put on them, but that’s pretty rare.  It’s just something that heals on its own if you take it easy.  I knew that, but I still went to my primary doctor a couple of weeks later because they were only getting worse, and I wanted to see if I could get some time approved off work.  Plus, I was kinda scared the broken pieces wouldn’t reattach.

Long story short, I got patronized a bit.  She repeated the xrays of my ribs after I showed her they were broken, and also ordered an xray of my orbit (which the xray tech didn’t know how to do because that’s not something you typically get at a doctor’s office, so she had me xray myself).  When I asked the doctor why she wanted to xray my face – “There’s nothing you can do about a fracture there, right?  It just heals on it’s own?” – she replied with, “Yeah, but so do rib fractures, and yet you’re still here, aren’t you?”

Even the xray tech told me, “You know you can’t do anything for broken ribs.” when I was looking over my images.  “You just have to take it easy.”

“I can’t,” I blurted, exasperated.  My work is mostly physical; I lift patients and push machines around all day, and it hurt like hell.  

The doctor asked me if I looked at the xrays, and if I thought I saw a fracture.  “You tell me?” I asked, and she shrugged.

“Oh, I can’t read xrays.  You see more of them than me, so I figured you’d be able to tell.  But I mean, it looks like your sixth rib is really broken bad.”

“Sixth?”  The middle one?  It’d been hurting like hell, and I had a suspicion that it was broken.  “You could see it, too?”

“Oh yeah, that piece was way off.”

“Piece?  You mean the very bottom one?”  She nods.  “The… 12th rib?”

“Yeah, 6th, 12th, however many ribs you got in there.”

She was supposed to get the xrays read by a radiologist, but she never got back to me, so I just got one at work to check it out.  Which is probably what I should’ve done in the first place.  She couldn’t get me time off work, and she suggested I take ibuprofen for the pain, even though the last time I saw her, she told me not to take that anymore because I have a stomach ulcer.  When I reminded her of that, she shrugged and said, “What would you rather have?  Nausea or pain?”

…. I don’t think I’ll be seeing her again.

ANYWAY, I ended up tanking all of my vacation days to scrounge almost two weeks off work after a particularly busy day there made it get so bad that I physically couldn’t get out of bed, and that got me healed up for the most part.  And by then, some friends flew in to stay with me for a while, so they just let me be lazy and heal, and it really helped.  I had a black eye for a month straight, but it finally went away, and now the only lasting damage I have is a scar above my eyebrow, and still a good deal of pain in it.  Like just brushing my fingertips over it still hurts, so I think it’s still a bit broken; it’s bigger than my other eyebrow, and it’s kinda got a knot if you feel over it.  But all the other bones are healed now, so that’s pretty good.  

I guess the people in the ER were right, though.  I did learn my lesson, and I’m staying the hell away from scooters now.  

For those of you outside of the US wondering about our healthcare system, this entire ordeal cost me about $600.  

$200 for the new glasses because insurance wouldn’t cover a new pair until Feb, and I needed them right then.  

$300 for the ER visit

& another $100 for the doctors group that saw me in the ER.  I have the best insurance I can possibly get in my state, too, so this was just as cheap as it gets.  It sucked, but lesson learned!  

Here’s some pictures just to add to the story: 

This was me right after I got the cut irrigated.  You can still see some of the pink in my hair.

   Here’s the next day, before the black eye had really set in.  The cut’s been sewn up:

 Here’s literally the day after that – and pretty much every day for two weeks, before it started to fade.  

And here’s how I covered it up with makeup to go to work.  I got good at it!

The glasses helped to hide the swelling, really.          

Annnnd that’s the scooter tale. 8D

[artificialqueens]

Lemon's Misadventures in Dating, Chapter 5 (Lemon x the world) - Mermelada

A/n: Hej hej hej! I’m very late in posting this to AQ after Ao3, so please forgive me! I hope you all like *~* filler chapters *~* because there’s a couple of them coming up! I’ve already written the next couple of chapters, but PLEEEAAASSSEE let me know if you have any requests or suggestions! Namely, should I attempt to write smut or not lol! Thank you again for all your lovely words about the fic, I love you all massively <3 <3

Having not slept in her own bed for the last two nights, Lemon decided to take a well-earned evening for herself, partly because she was running out of excuses for her parents as to why she’d been out so much lately, and partly to give the various bruises and bite-marks on her body time to heal. With Gus the dog snuggled into her side, she waited for The Sims to load on her laptop as Chromatica blared from her phone. She pressed on its screen to check the time, and saw she had received a new text message.

Dr Rita <3 [16:45] “I hope you survived your walk of shame, mon petit citron! Thank you again for a great night and day :-) x”

Rita was amazing. She was the epitome of a dark horse: she was so kind and patient with Lemon during her panic crisis, as she had so adorably put it, and made her feel all the safety and love she needed all morning. Yet not long afterwards, after some lazy chatter which had made Lemon inexplicably horny, she was once again fucking her to within an inch of her life. Speaking two languages was far from the only thing she could do with her mouth. They had even gone for lunch together after round 2 – and round 2.5 in the shower – before reluctantly parting as Rita prepared for her nightshift at the hospital. It was over lunch where they both agreed that pursuing anything serious wouldn’t be worth it, but they would definitely like to work on a friendship. Lemon had, however, still managed to charm her way into borrowing a hoodie from the older woman, both of them secretly pleased that it gave them a reason to hang out again. She quickly sent off a reply, thanking her once again for her help that morning and wishing her luck for the long night ahead in kidneyland with her love interest from the ward. 

Looking back to her laptop, the loading bar appeared to have frozen. Rolling her eyes, she held down the device’s power button to restart it. The snoring lump beside her clearly wasn’t going to entertain her as she waited, so she bit the bullet and opened up her new favourite app.

She grinned upon seeing that her most recent message was from Kyne.

[16:20] Remember I told you about my roommate who works in a porn studio lol? She came home just now with a box of those custard tarts you were telling me about, they are so good!!! 🤤 You really do have the best taste 😘

That’s a lot to unpack, she laughed to herself, she’s persistent, fair play to her! Plus it turns out she actually WAS listening! I just hope they were clean… I’ll reply later. Now what about Kiara, eh Gus-bus? She was nice, let’s see what she’s said! 

[09:12] How was the party? 🙂 I hope it was tudo bem!!

Lemon and Kiara had continued chatting yesterday until Lemon had to leave for her date, a ‘family party’ being the first reasonable sounding thing that came to mind when having to end their conversation. She hated lying, she really did, but how acceptable was it really to tell one Tinder-match that you were going on a date with another Tinder-match?

[17:03] It went well, merci! But I was too hungover to function all day lol 🤯

[17:03] How has your day been? 😊

Right, who’s next? Two new matches and a message from Boa! Let’s see what she has to say about me spamming her before she blocks me. Clicking on the girl’s message from last night, however, Lemon was pleasantly surprised that her texting blunder wasn’t the end of her chances.

[20:55] Lololololololololol no YOU’RE fun!!!!

[20:55] Clock the good grammar

[20:55] So what’s a girl like you doing on an app like this?

[20:56] 🍆🍆🍆

Now that was a question Lemon still occasionally asked herself, and she didn’t even know if she had an answer. So the best she could do was be honest.

[17:07] Well I’m recently single so I’m just seeing what happens, really, a few dates here and there to get me back on my feet again! To quote the great Kelly Rowland, I am down for whatever 😉

[17:07] How about you?

She had, once again, been well and truly sucked into the Tinder vortex. Closing her laptop and placing it on her bedside table, she nuzzled her face into Gus’s head, the dog making no effort at all to reciprocate the sudden attention. Squishing a kiss to his head, she turned back to the app, and her new matches: Scarlett and Ilona. They had both matched at around the same time, making their chat windows sit neatly at the bottom of Lemon’s screen. Sending them both standard “Hey gorge! What’s up? 😊” messages, she went back to swiping through profiles, although within less than a minute, a reply from Scarlett flashed at the top of her screen. 

[17:13] Hey gorge! I’m doing much better now that I’m speaking to you 😉

[17:14] What’s up with you?

A bit of enthusiasm goes a long way, she smiled, maybe Scarlett is the one? Or maybe she’s too into me and I should be worried? Surely not!

[17:15] I’m glad I can help! I’m pretty good thanks, having a lazy night in tonight! Are you doing anything fun?

Lemon debated giving the girl more details of her night in, but she was worried about what she might think… She’s covered in tattoos and eats fire, for god’s sake, there is no way she likes Lady Gaga or The Sims. She probably listens to death metal and drives a motorbike and has a pet snake, I could never compete! 

Fortunately, Scarlett was charming and very easy to talk to, and the two exchanged details - both mundane and exciting - through quickly typed messages. She learned that the other blonde was a lawyer, but had gone to circus school at weekends throughout university - which explained a lot - and was currently in an open relationship with her girlfriend. Lemon had never been ‘the other woman’ before, but as long as she wasn’t hurting anyone, surely it’s not that bad! Eventually, though, one message made Lemon’s anxiety start to creep in again.

[17:57] So I know this probably seems WAY too fast, so don’t worry if you don’t want to

Time seemed to stand still between this message and the next one. What does she want to do that’s fast? Sex? That’s not that big a deal, it must be more than that. Unless she’s into super kinky shit, which wouldn’t surprise me, does she want to piss on me? Does she want her girlfriend to piss on me? Does she want me to be her fake girlfriend at her sister’s wedding where we have to share a bed before eventually realising we loved each other all along? Finally, right on cue, the follow-up arrived.

[17:59] It’s my birthday on Saturday and I’m having a party at my house before heading out on the town, it’ll hopefully just be a few friends, and it would be cool if you could make it 🥳

[18:00] You can bring a friend if you want! But again no pressure!!

Wow, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. She started blankly at her phone, letting her heart rate settle back down to its normal speed. A party, cool. I can do that!

[18:02] You had me worried for a second there! But that sounds fun, I’ll be there! 😀

Exiting the app, she hastily composed a message to Jan. Jan loved parties, she had such a natural charisma which she exuded effortlessly whenever she entered a room. She was able to chat to anyone about anything, and Lemon was always responsible for getting her out of tricky situations on nights out where her natural friendliness had been mistaken for something else. She would be the perfect person to deflect any potential awkwardness that may occur at a Tinder-date-she’d-never-met-before’s birthday party. As she awaited Jan’s reply (Please please please say yes, Jan, you’re my only hope!), she checked on the app again, swiping through countless samey-looking profiles. Until she reached one that she’d definitely seen before.

Priyanka, 29

Within 10 miles

I already swiped for this girl, look! There’s her in her lengha, there she’s at pride… Oh she has new pictures now, how weird! Priyanka did indeed have an additional two photos on her profile which Lemon hadn’t seen before: a professional-looking black and white image of her face and torso, showing her dark waves flowing down her shoulders, and her eyes directly piercing Lemon’s soul; and finally, a picture of the dark-skinned girl wearing a blonde wig, cowboy hat, and appearing to be screaming into a microphone… I do like a Hannah Montana fantasy, get it girl!

Just like before, Lemon swiped Priyanka’s profile to the right, but unlike last time, the notification she’d been hoping for appeared straight away.

Congratulations! You have matched with Priyanka!

Buoyed by the excitement of matching with somebody so quickly - and someone so gorgeous - Lemon jumped straight off the bed and started dancing, ‘Rain on Me’ blaring beside her for the third time that evening. Even Gus seemed to pick up on the change of energy, running up and down the bed, wagging his tail merrily. As the pair danced, the familiar ‘ding’ of a new notification sounded through the room. And again.

Briefly pausing to pick up her phone, she saw the two messages she had received. Firstly, from Kiara.

[18:12] Unnggghhh work today was the worst, but I found a really cute Portuguese café on my walk home! I have eaten so many natas lol. We could go sometime if you want to? 🙂

Before replying (yes, obviously… I didn’t download Duolingo yesterday for nothing!), she went to check on the second message, which was from her recent match, Ilona.

[18:12] See you on Saturday bitch! xox

Well that seems ominous.

[anaheraimaaka]

Jet Away

17 left school booked a 1-way flight to Gold Coast, Australia.

Fake ID, grow up, glow up, party, drugs, sex. 18 in love, the game, the game, play, have fun, be free, wild out, friendship, heartbreak, pain, inescapable hurt, get me out.

Shifting and shaping, exploring the surrounding, interacting, observing and indulging in new culture, people, drama, mind broadening and life altering substances, lifestyle.

The chaos drew me in and away I went, curious and hungry, I had a lust for life and all the drama it brought with it.

You

No good from the start but when a lesson is ignored it only becomes reoccurring and ongoing.

My flat, back yard, party.

Tattoos, all over, it’s you, eyes, eyes, smile, first moment, your laugh, just dropped, coming up, I feel you, steps closer, heart faster.

The introduction.

Quick hi, phone out ignore you.

The pull strong from the start. Lure, chase, dance floor, hello, next moment, you know, the bathroom we go.

It was thrill from the start, perhaps the perfect balance of excitement, growth and heartbreak in one. A love that held my hand through the reflection of damaged love from way back.

This relationship was the beginning of understanding the true impacts of my childhood trauma.

Trying to figure out the correlation between childhood and relationships in adulthood?

Third ingredient: BELIEF SYSTEMS

Your perception of the most impactful, reinforced and reoccurring events that have taken place throughout your childhood are the template you download for your future interactions.

The way you were treated and spoken to as a child are the creation, the moulding of your belief systems in how you are taught you deserve to be treated, spoken to and interacted with.

The way your whānau dealt with and handled conflict and confrontation The way your whānau celebrated their wins, their high moments

Once having these standards, morals and values modelled to you throughout childhood by your guardians, community, peers, toward one another and toward you, we then go out in to the big world and create interactions that affirm our belief systems we have downloaded through observation of interaction and surrounding.

I learned everyone you interact with, you do because you believe they are worthy of your time. Whether that is consciously or not, willingly or begrudgingly, you make the choice to interact with these people. Once your belief systems is upgraded through consciously redesigning and setting intention and laws of interaction to protect your energy and space, you will notice people shift in to and out of your life to appropriately reflect your belief system.

Your way of being starts to shift, you begin reinforcing laws of interaction and standard of yourself, toward yourself. You are moving from a space where you respect others and require others to respect you. Building the ability to trust yourself to reinforce your new belief systems of how you deserve to be treated and interacted with. Once you can trust yourself to reinforce your laws, you release the need to move from a space of survival, habit and fear - to trust, instinctual and knowledge of self - I am the creator of my reality knowledge.

In this sense, you attract those who reflect you. (Me:) Who naturally abide and carry themselves with pride through their flow of morals and value, the slick, intelligent, well gathered, leader type. Bumping paths, tangled in telepathy I hear you thinking of me, I feel your intentions, I see what I do to you.

Gaylord

The confusion caused by the friction of craving someone who is loud and clear no good for me, took over me, altered me, it overwhelmed me.

My first heartbreak, my first love

You stimulated growth, a shift in perception, deeper understanding of life, stronger sense of self, resilience and a big fuck off blue print to what I don’t want my future relationships to look like

We grew, we crashed, we burned. You were the first man to have me close, and I was the first lady to get that close

Head on the highway, dropping molly swimming with dolphins, motorbikes, speed, adventure, drama, thrill, sex, love, lust, sex, sex, tears, laughs, drugs, party, growing, crash, fall, get up, understand me, help me, save me, love me.

We both entered the relationship unknowingly broken and bruised from life before the night you walked in and we changed everything – butterfly effect

The more I needed you by my side, the more my curiosity grew as to what it was you had, that I couldn’t provide myself, why did I compromise my self- worth, break my own vows to keep you around?

My subconscious mind weighed up the impact of pain, having you near or far? The lesser pain was enduring your causal pain toward me, the after effects of that, whilst having you close – a love suicide if you will.

I shifted in to a new space of self-awareness shining focus on my self- sabotaging choices and how I was putting myself in harms way to keep you near. As I type this section, I hear my past disappointment and judgment echoing to the forefront of my mind over the desperation and weakness I held for you.. I felt weak and desperate for your love, forever in efforts to escape the emptiness that became apparent when your distraction separated from my space for the brief moments of time. We turned to the game of distraction, the game of promiscuity, and what a fun game that was – we played that quite well didn’t we, together and solo.. very raunchy baby.

DISCLAIMER: I do not encourage, nor do I condone the following behaviour.

I was out for the evening with the ladies; Edward and I had recently separated. I was drunk and had been calling him; he wouldn’t answer and kept hanging his line up. I decided to take off home, I was far too intoxicated and the alcohol enhanced my desire to be with Edward again (perhaps the following decision will indicate the level of intoxication or crazy, you decide), I get a taxi to Edward’s apartment and pay the driver $20 to lift me up on to the apartments first story roof, telling him “I’ve lost my keys and need help getting through the side sliding door” – I’m convinced at this point Edward was with someone else, so I’m mentally and drunkenly preparing myself to confront a lady to leave the house so I can get some sleep. I do remember saying aloud “you know what, I won’t be a dick – she can get on the couch..” laughing out loud at my generosity and consideration.

I flip and fall over the rail, get to the side sliding door, fling that shit open – the rooms empty. I vomit in the toilet, have a shower, get in to bed and crash out.

Couple hours later..

I rise, it’s daylight, my eyes open, groggy as shit, head is pounding, I realize where the fuck I am, get out of bed, still drunk, in full fucking panic mode, calling a taxi, making the bed, cleaning his space before he rocks on home and asks wtf I’m doing and how.. so I rax an outfit and his slippers and away I go.

An example of ‘where there is a will, there is a way’.

A few weeks later we were texting I told him the above, he didn’t believe me – I asked, “where are your slippers?”

The pain, the emptiness you feel when someone’s position within your life is no longer, is not the absence of themselves from your life, but the reflection of space within that is requiring your awareness, your time, your focus, attention, empathy, it’s a space that requires your nurturing care.

Can one really take away from you? Or is that an illusion? Maybe the idea that anything is missing from you at any point in time is an illusion.

I believed you were my one, my other half, always asking myself how much bullshit must a couple go through before they both submitted to the comfort and safety of together forever – an idea inconceivable to the broken and uncommitted – us.

Still 4 years in to our love tornado of bullshit, you asked and I screamed “yes”

Both knowing deep within - it’s never going to work we packed our lives up in Gold Coast and flew to Melbourne.

Trapped in my mind were the events of you fucking around leaving me the unwanted gift of Chlamydia

Trapped in your mind was Anahera on her knees loving on batman in her workplace changerooms

We’d damaged the sacred waters between you and I long before you asked “Baby will you marry me”.

3 weeks in to Melbourne, life brought us to a crossroad and we decided lets escape this horror of confusion – you cheated.. again – I thought fuck this.. again. Packed my shit and embarked seriously (this time) on a journey of letting you go and finding myself entirely. Honestly, a path I had been preparing myself for since months in to us dating – never gathering the courage to leave on my own terms I awaited your last fuck up knowing that would excuse me from this relationshit

And that was that

I drove away from 4 years of bullshit and innocent love of two brokens trying to fix and distract the pain that became more apparent when we were separate – when we were alone. I had to figure this shit out – life without the love of my life.. so far

I start this book off with my first heartbreak because life up until that point was about not feeling the hurt I had endured prior to life with Edward

Never did I want to look at or think about the emotional and mental effects of the sexual abuse, physical violence, drug and alcohol abuse that unveiled itself throughout childhood

My heartbreak was the first force of feeling, an inescapable hurting I needed to cure in order to stop. Edward broke my heart at the start of our relationship – the following 4 years consisted of me running back and forth between myself and Edward. Could I do this? Could I not?

I did it, and in feeling this heartbreak was a gateway opened for me to feel the rest of mamae I had buried within, never having had the safe space within to unpack my hurt. I had a new found knowledge of self that allowed me the emotional intelligence to navigate myself through life and the shit it had put in my path to cultivate the strong, brave, courageous and intelligent lady I am today.