#bioterrorist attach

[reidsapplelady]

PAST IS PAST (part I) — /S. Reid/ & /R. Chase/

SUMMARY: when your ex, Robert Chase, and House's team, is brought in to consult on a case, old feelings start to surface. Caught between Chase's flirting and Reid's quiet affection, you find yourself caught between a love triangle, and a choice that you have to make.

spencer x psych!bau!reader x chase ⸝⸝ fluff & slight angst ⸝⸝ co-workers to lovers

WARNINGS: reader has attachment and commitment issues! wow!!, house being sassy as always (i cant tell if i made him too sassy), past!ppth!reader x chase, present!psych!bau!reader x spencer, use of y/n

WC: 1.5k+

There was a different kind of tension in the air, usually there's no tension at all. It reminded you of your old memories that you have put in the back of your mind, all because he was here. Your old love.

You called House to assist you guys in a case alongside with the CDC, you didn't know he'd be bringing the entire team.

You tried to not show the fact that you were tense. You'd survive UnSubs threatening or flirting at you, but the thought of seeing him again, after all this time, left your breath a little shorter.

You made your way into the briefing room, as soon as you walked in, you locked eyes with him. Robert Chase, who was leaning against the other doorway, his arms crossed against his chest, his blonde hair a little longer than the last you've seen him.

"I called House only, why're you guys here." You inquired as you looked at House, who was sitting down on a chair like he owned the entire place.

"I leapt at the chance to work with a bunch of people who think behavioral profiling is a science. And I thought, 'Wow! a little reunion could shake things up!' and then I forcefully dragged them here." House teased as he set his cane on his lap, his legs were set on the table. you did not hesitate to give him the finger before sitting down right next to Spencer, as Chase sat right next to you. What a great way to start this briefing.

"So, my favorite emotionally stunted overachiever, how are you doing?" He asks with genuine curiosity, "You traded white coats with black vests, what a downgrade."

"I'm fine, House." You roll your eyes.

The briefing room felt too full. Hotch stood where the screen was with Garcia, Reid was playing with his whiteboard marker that he grabbed not too long ago, Morgan kept glancing at House, as if waiting for him to start chaos, and everyone else was doing their own thing.

"This is cute," House stated as he peered at the organized folders on the table. "Did the behavioral pixies color-code the victims too?"

"That's enough." Hotch said curtly, Cameron just smiled politely, while Foreman rolled his eyes and looked like he regretted the entire trip.

House ignored Hotch, "Three victims." House said as he swiped through the tablet screen like they bored him. "All died horribly with consistent symptoms. Question is: Was it mother nature or a very enthusiastic bioterrorist?"

"You called me because you guys are desperate, well good news: I love desperate." House puts emphasis on the word 'love', he certainly knew himself well.

Rossi narrowed his eyes as he stared at House. "Do you always talk like this?"

"Only when I'm awake." House replies.

Morgan raised an eyebrow at House's reply to Rossi. "You always this subtle?”

"No, but I can turn it down if your fragile ego needs coddling." House replies as his gaze falls on Morgan, who was now trying to hold back the urge to argue with House.

Hotch rubbed his temple as he spoke, "How long is this gonna take?"

House looks at him dead in the eye. "Depends. How long is your team gonna stop ignoring the tension between boy genius and girl wond—"

You cut him off, "House."

"What? I'm just saying." He says as he shrugged.

You looked at Spencer beside you, he was trying to cover his face with the file, but you could see his ears reddening. Which made your cheeks heat up too. What you didn't know was Chase was looking at you.

"Can we focus." You request, your eyes now landed on the floor as you shifted uncomfortably in your chair.

"Sure," House then turns his head to face Chase, "Remember when they used to cry during night shifts at the cafeteria? Good times."

"House," Chase snaps

Spencer's gaze looked at you before turning to House. "You were under him?" He asks you as he was staring at House

"Yeah, and these two, right here, were practically walking HR violations, they did more than teamwork alright." House overshares as he pointed at you and Chase, he then noticed Spencer's little frown that he had plastered on his face but ignored it.

Cameron made a strangled noise, Foreman sighed deeply and Spencer looked like someone had punched him in the gut.

"The past is past." You say as you set the tablet on the table.

"I was just giving context." House put the two of his hands up as you just sighed.

After that, Spencer's gaze never met you again, of course, House notices this, "I love federal drama," he said brightly, but only Cameron and Foreman heard him. "better than HBO." He snickers.

You roll your eyes before Hotch speaks up again, "Okay, JJ and Prentiss, go talk to the victims' families, get any background that may be useful, Morgan, Rossi and I will go investigate the crime scenes, while you and Reid stay here and help them." Hotch's gaze were set on you as he mentions you and Spencer.

Chase chuckled before turning to you, "Is your boss this broody?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Kind of, but he's nice, I swear." You smile at him. You then turn to your old colleagues in front of you.

"Nice to see you again, Y/N." Cameron flashes a small smile at you.

"Nice to see you guys again, too." You turn to face Spencer "Spence, you alright?" You say. You noticed that Spencer has been zoning out for a bit.

He snaps out of it before he mutters, "Hm? Oh yeah." before shifting in his seat to a more comfortable position as he avoids your gaze.

"Let's take a look at victimology first, the three victims all have brown hair. It's highly likely they're surrogates." Spencer says as he flips through his case file, you just nod at his words.

"Surrogates?" Foreman asks.

"Surrogates are victims that represents or looks similar to someone that the UnSub hates or loves and over time they'll evolve eventually to kill that person." Spencer rambled, as his hands were making gestures as he explained.

"Of course. Foreman, you're dumb." House stated as he looks at Foreman, Foreman just bit his inner cheek and ignored him.

"Aside from you know, obvious details. Is there anything else in common? Like do they have a dead beat husband? Or are they having an affair with the smoking hot next-door-neighbor?" House inquires as he taps his finger against his cane, Spencer found his use of inappropriate terms very unnecessary but he ignored it.

"Mm, we don't have that much information yet, I'm sure Prentiss and JJ would give us some sort of background before we could actually dive in." You say as you look at House.

"This is gonna be one hell of a case." Chase says as his eyes darts to his team that was in front of him before to you and Spencer. "I mean, using airborne diseases as a method to kill someone? Atleast we know it has to be someone with a science background."

"The CDC's already investigating the disease, I called you guys because you're here to lend a helping hand." You purse your lips as you cross your arms on your chest.

As you guys kept talking, at one point you guys decided to end the meeting and try to figure out what the disease may be based off of the symptoms.

You were looking out the window in the briefing room, you notice a figure slowly approaching you, which is why you turn around. And you see Chase. Right in front of you. He gives you a small smile before sitting at the couch right next to where you're standing.

"So.. It's been a while." He spoke up, which caught your attention.

"I guess so." You shrug as your gaze go back to the view of the city.

He paused before speaking up, "I got you coffee, by the way." Your gaze then landed on him, then on his hands. You didn't notice he was holding two mugs.

"Two teaspoons of sugar? Like how you liked it back then." He smiles as he offered you the coffee, you took it before taking a sip.

"You remembered." You gave him a small smile.

"Well it's hard to forget, especially when it became routine for 2 years." He replies before taking a sip of his coffee.

"Oh." You pause.

"Yeah."

"Well, that's nice. I guess." You now try to avoid eye contact with him, your gaze wandered back on the city.

"Stop." He says.

You raised an eyebrow but your eyes never met his gaze. "Stop what?"

"Stop pretending that you don't care, I can still see that you do. It's just... not in the same way." He frowned as he took another sip of his coffee. "You left without a goodbye and I didn't say enough to you, I didn't say how much I loved you."

"You didn't have to."

"Yeah, well, it felt like I needed to."

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taglist: @dearlenore @tinkerbellsgf @1nterstellarcha0s @th3g5eren0

[playstation-dreamcast]

Okay, okay please I love your hc's! Especially about our little (autistic) bioterrorist Wesker! Could you....maybe.... Do some hc's on dating him? Because all I do imagine from your flirting hcs the video on how the confession would happen (IT WAS SO FUCKIN FUNNY FOR NO REASON LMAO) that he's dating someone whose just as straight forward and blunt as he is. Though maybe some contrast on the fact Wesker's dating someone who's very honest. Maybe even TOO honest (fellow autistic LMAO) Like TMI level of honesty?

OKAY SO LIKE, This got like, the teeniest tiniest bit angsty at the end there in the last like two points, that's my bad. I had no control over it, the muses took over my body, there is comfort though!!!

Couple: Wesker x GN, incredibly straight forward Reader

TW: slight hurt/comfort themes, but it's mostly just awkward fluff lmao. Oh, and one passing mention of a praise kink

Okay, so for context we’re talking S.T.A.R.S era Wesker, okay? Okay cool

Wesker is extremely practical in a relationship, he doesn’t really have the time nor the mental capacity to play mind games- not when he’s already playing them with everyone else as his literal job. So when he asks you out, he’s very straightforward about it. Just on a random Wednesday in the S.T.A.R.S break room he hits you with the “I’ve grown quite fond of you. Would you care to join me for dinner?” 

You took, like, a troubling amount of time to answer. A solid ten seconds of just you contemplating, or possibly just enjoying the way he squirmed? He was maintaining his cool despite the sweat forming along his hairline. Finally, you respond. “I’m not sure how ethical it is, and I’m very sure it’s against protocol for you to ask your employee out on a date.” He nodded, getting ready to apologize for being so forward, but you continued. “That being said, you’re incredibly attractive. I accept.” He’s not, quite sure how to feel about that, but a win is a win. And you did in fact agree, so this is a win!

Your relationship is honestly really lowkey. To the point that your fellow S.T.A.R.S members are not, totally sure if it’s a joke or not. Chris made a jab about how Wesker gives you so much “special treatment” that you might as well be his partner, and you simply reply “Oh, that’s because I am.” and that sent the entirety of both Alpha and Bravo team into a tizzy. You and Wesker both thought it was funnier to refuse to elaborate any further

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “I’m a S.T.A.R.S member? What’s he going to do about the whole Spencer Mansion situation?” And don’t worry dear reader, I am here to assure you he is also trying to figure out what he’s going to do about you and the Spencer Mansion. He’s not quite sure what he was thinking, getting attached to a member of a team he designed to be disposable. But, he’s here now, he’s dug his grave and now he intends to lie in it. He’s confident he’ll figure out a way to protect you though. (Spoiler alert: Yeah, no.)

Besides that slight snag, your relationship is incredibly uncomplicated. Mostly because when a problem or issue comes up, you’re very quick to bring it up. “Hey, I’m not a fan of your tone right now.” “You said something earlier I didn’t appreciate, can we talk about that?” “I don’t like it when you do that, will you stop?” Easy! Simple! He honestly really appreciates your straightforward nature, and that you’ve never expected him to be a mind reader. He spends so much time trying to read into everyone, and predict their every move and angle, and act accordingly and be what they wanted him to be. It’s a relief to come home and have someone just tell him what they want.

It’s not just criticisms of course. You’re always telling him how handsome he is, how smart he is, how well he handled that situation. You tell him when you like something he does, you thank him when he picks up extra chores, you believe it’s just as important to praise someone as it is to correct them. 

Congratulations! You’ve unlocked his praise kink!

Even when you’re maybe a little bit too honest. Be it about medical/body issues, your intrusive thoughts, your past, or even something related to him- He’d rather be overly informed than under informed. He can act accordingly if he has all the information, so please, overshare with him.  

I think when the two of you are alone you kinda just spend hours taking turns info dumping to each other. You know the vibe. When you’re talking with someone who matches your freak and it’s just a cycle of “OH! That actually reminds me of/That’s just like-” insert thing that has absolutely nothing to do with the original topic. It’s a beautiful display of love, the traditional neurodivergent courting ritual

Look, I stand by the fact that Wesker is actually a really good cook. He’s not like, a Michelin star chef or anything, but he’s spent a lot of time teaching himself basic life skills after turning 18 (Umbrellas boy’s home was more concerned with book smarts rather than teaching them how to care for themselves) and was determined to figure out how to cook and feed himself well. All of this is context to explain that Wesker learns how to cook some of your favorite meals to show you how capable he is of taking care of you. Again, displaying desirable traits, he’s such a good mate, you made the right call, he is obviously the most optimal choice. 

After almost exactly a year and three weeks of dating, your lease was up for renewal. The two of you sat down and very matter-of-factly laid out the logistics of you moving in with him. How the bills would be paid (You both decided the most fair way was to pay a percentage based on income as he did make more than you as Captain) distribution of chores (He’d cook, you’d do the dishes, and you’d both work on general cleaning,) and which drawers in his dresser would be yours (The top two.) It was very much like a business deal, sealed with a handshake. A powerpoint presentation was involved

He’s not against taking you out on the town for date nights, in fact, he quite enjoys it. He’s proud to show you off, who wouldn’t want to go out with such a gorgeous partner on their arm? That being said, his favorite types of dates are the ones where you stay home. The quiet intimacy that comes from just cuddling on the couch is- quite literally- something that he’s never experienced before. He thought he was pretty touch averse, and in a way he is- PDA will never be his thing- but it turns out it’s not that he just hates touch that much. It’s that no one had ever touched him without the intent to hurt him before. And, actually, he’s kinda clingy.

This realization left him in a two day long internal spiral that you definitely picked up on and called him out for, asking him to just tell you what’s wrong. He gave you the softball, highly revised story of his childhood and his…currently evolving relationship with human touch. You were quiet for a moment, before asking if you could hug him. Of course he agreed, and when you pulled away you simply said “I’m sorry. No child deserves to be abused.”

Okay, so, that was the first time anyone ever assigned the A word to his childhood, and while a part of him knew, it’s different to hear it vocalized. He’d always appreciated your honesty, and now’s no different, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make him internally spiral for a bit longer. It was okay though. You let him cry in your arms for as long as he needed

Man, that was really heavy. Angsty even. Comfort speed round, GO!

It doesn’t matter how you guys pass out, if you went to bed well before him or if you go to sleep on opposite sides of the bed cause it’s way too hot to cuddle, you always wake up tangled in each others arms

While Wesker tends to be really good at communicating generally, he tends to fall short when it comes to his emotional needs as he tends not to put them in the “Important” category. Thus, much like a cat, whenever he wants your affection he just kinda puts himself in your space and tries to “subtly” get your attention. He does this by straight up putting his head in your lap and waitting for you to run your fingers through his hair. Works every time

On the occasion where he wakes up before you, he gently wakes you up with coffee made to your exact specifications, and sits with you in bed while you both try to fully wake up

The S.T.A.R.S Team still isn’t sure if you’re actually together or not. It’s not until Brad catches you guys going home in the same car that it’s confirmed. You don’t understand why everyone is treating this like a big deal, you literally told them you were in fact his partner

After that though, you did start to let yourself come to work in his hoodies/jackets. It's the rule of romance: Your partner’s hoodie is always far more cozy than yours is. He’s always quick to give you his jacket whenever he even suspects you’re getting cold. Both to keep you comfortable, and because he genuinely love the way his leather looks on you

[theangelicimp]

Waiting For the Right Time

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Summary: Imagine that Bucky Barnes has a huge little crush on you. Now imagine that he's not the only one who thinks that way.

Word Count: 1,082

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Black!GN!reader

Warnings: None, just Bucky getting jealous and slightly possessive, mostly fluff. Reader attracts attention from all across the gender spectrum, and is stated to have powers. No Y/N, we don’t do that here. Ambiguous ending ahead!

AO3: here

Bucky’s got a problem, and for once it has nothing to do with his past.

It’s you and the way the sunlight bounces off your brown skin to make it shine. It’s you and the way your smile makes his heart do backflips. It’s you and the way your deep brown eyes look at him with nothing but admiration and care.

Bucky loves you, and he is not ready to do anything about it.

He knows, logically, that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him if he were to confess. You damn near killed yourself trying to save him during a mission in Beirut, when a mercenary lobbed a bomb his way. You plucked it from the air and flew off with it, wrapping yourself in a blue shield just as it went off – you got a nasty scar, and it makes his chest hurt every time he thinks about it. You smile to reassure him when he stares and tell him that it gives you a cool story to tell at family reunions. Worst case scenario, you would let him down gently and ask to remain friends. Even still, the worst-case scenario was apocalyptic to Bucky.

If he were going to confess, he needed to be absolutely sure that you would love him back. That was how things were, and that’s how it was going to stay until Bucky finally found the right time to confess.

Too bad the rest of the world didn’t get the memo to play along with his pining.

You got flowers the morning of June 26; Bucky remembered the exact day because his world came to a screeching halt when he read the note attached to them.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, Know what’s on the menu? Me ‘n’ U~<3 From, Your Secret Admirer”

Bucky should’ve thrown the flowers away as soon as he saw them, should have stomped on them, thrown them in an incinerator, anything to make sure you didn’t see them. People sent you flowers all the time, and you never cared what anyone did to them – you like to joke that you had the opposite of a green thumb.

But he didn’t. He froze, and you came trudging out of your bedroom, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, wondering why Bucky spent so long outside your door without knocking.

“Aww, corny but sweet,” you cooed sleepily when you read the note. Bucky’s heart squeezed when you said that, and not in a good way. “Any chance these are from you?”

“No. No, they’re not.” Bucky grits out. If he sent you flowers with a note, he would be pouring his heart and soul into the card, not leaving a shitty pickup line.

“Wonder who it is then,” you yawned as you breezed by him.

Bucky spent the day tracking down the secret admirer. It was a random SHIELD agent, lower in the hierarchy, and too cocky for his own good. It only took a single visit from the former Winter Solider to get the agent to back off. Unfortunately, that agent wasn’t the last to pursue you.

When you went for your morning runs, a woman would join you every morning at exactly the halfway mark. She asked you if you wanted to go to the botanical gardens with her; Bucky showed up and pretended that there was a mission at the same time that would have happened. Thank god there actually was a mission to back him up.

When you thwarted a bioterrorist’s attempts to clear out the “undesirables,” you rescued a civilian from falling rubble with a well-timed shield. They offered to make lunch or dinner to repay you for saving them; Bucky waited till your back was turned to tell them that the Avengers didn’t accept food from strangers. Standard procedure and all that. There technically was no such procedure, but it was just common sense not to eat anything made by a stranger, right.

When Tony threw another one of his notorious parties, you were approached by a random well-to-do bachelor. He fancied himself an art aficionado and invited you to a personal showing of a rare Basquiat painting. When you left to get more champagne, Bucky got Sam to distract the man before you could give him an answer. Sam was sworn to secrecy, of course, Bucky would rather you didn’t see this side of him.

“How long are you gonna keep this up, man?” Sam groaned when he came back to the table.

“Keep what up?” Bucky kept his eyes trained on you, your enchanting laugh reaching his ears even through all the blaring music and cacophony of voices.

“This!” Sam gestured at you and Bucky. “It would just be easier to confess at this point. You can’t scare off everyone that goes near them forever.”

He gave Sam a deadpan glare. “I can and I will.”

“You would have to keep an eye on them all the time at that point, you’d basically be stalking them at that point.”

“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.”

“Wait-“

“There’s cafe across the street from their apartment, could probably stake out there.”

“Bucky-“

“You think I could get those little spy cameras from Tony’s lab without him noticing?”

“No! You need to say something to them before someone else asks them out and they say yes.”

“’S not the right time.”

“Man, someone else is gonna snatch them up while you’re busy waiting for the right time!” Bucky left before Sam could finish talking; another woman had sidled up your table.

As much as he hated to say it Sam was right.

Bucky hated this; the constant vigilance of chasing away would-be suitors, the way his heart squeezed every time he saw you smile at someone that wasn’t him, the fear that you would pick someone else before he could show you how much he loved you.

So on a cold November 12th, Bucky woke up earlier than everyone else in the tower to finally enact his plan. He went to the only shop open in Brooklyn for a fruit bouquet – filled with all the fruit he knew you liked and drizzled with chocolate. He dressed in the outfit Steve had helped him with – something casual, but made to impress. He put on your favorite playlist – Etta James, and Al Green, and Aretha Franklin.

With everything in place and his nerves at an all-time high, Bucky took a deep breath and knocked on your door.

Original A/N: Little something I thought up that I had to get out before I forgot or something, hope y'all enjoy! It was inspired by another post that I haven't been able to find, but it takes place in the 40s right before Bucky is shipped out to the warfront. If anyone can find it please let me know!

[jcmarchi]

AI safety is not a model property

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ai-safety-is-not-a-model-property/

AI safety is not a model property

The assumption that AI safety is a property of AI models is pervasive in the AI community. It is seen as so obvious that it is hardly ever explicitly stated. Because of this assumption:

Companies have made big investments in red teaming their models before releasing them.

Researchers are frantically trying to fix the brittleness of model alignment techniques.

Some AI safety advocates seek to restrict open models given concerns that they might pose unique risks.

Policymakers are trying to find the training compute threshold above which safety risks become serious enough to justify intervention (and lacking any meaningful basis for picking one, they seem to have converged on 1026 rather arbitrarily).

We think these efforts are inherently limited in their effectiveness. That’s because AI safety is not a model property. With a few exceptions, AI safety questions cannot be asked and answered at the levels of models alone. Safety depends to a large extent on the context and the environment in which the AI model or AI system is deployed. We have to specify a particular context before we can even meaningfully ask an AI safety question.

As a corollary, fixing AI safety at the model level alone is unlikely to be fruitful. Even if models themselves can somehow be made “safe”, they can easily be used for malicious purposes. That’s because an adversary can deploy a model without giving it access to the details of the context in which it is deployed. Therefore we cannot delegate safety questions to models — especially questions about misuse. The model will lack information that is necessary to make a correct decision.

Based on this perspective, we make four recommendations for safety and red teaming that would represent a major change to how things are done today.

Safety depends on context: three examples

Consider the concern that LLMs can help hackers generate and send phishing emails to a large number of potential victims. It’s true — in our own small-scale tests, we’ve found that LLMs can generate persuasive phishing emails tailored to a particular individual based on publicly available information about them. 

But here’s the problem: phishing emails are just regular emails! There is nothing intrinsically malicious about them. A phishing email might tell the recipient that there is an urgent deadline for a project they are working on, and that they need to click on a link or open an attachment to complete some action. What is malicious is the content of the webpage or the attachment. But the model that’s being asked to generate the phishing email is not given access to the content that is potentially malicious. So the only way to make a model refuse to generate phishing emails is to make it refuse to generate emails. That would affect many non-malicious uses, such as marketing.

We see the same pattern over and over. There has been alarm about LLMs being able to give bioterrorists information on how to create pathogens. But that information is readily available on the internet. The hard parts for would-be bioterrorists are all of the other steps involved: obtaining raw materials, culturing cells in the lab without killing them or infecting oneself, and disseminating the bioweapon to cause harm. AI could potentially aid that work, as it is a general-purpose tool and has some usefulness for almost all knowledge work. Again, this illustrates the limits of attempting to build safety into models: most of the questions the user would ask in this process relate to synthetic biology in general and not bioweapons in particular. To be sure that a model couldn’t assist bioterrorists, it would have to refuse to assist with any sort of bioengineering.

Or consider the use of LLMs to generate disinformation. Even in the unlikely event that a model could be aligned so that it refuses all requests to generate false information, research has found that true-but-misleading information is far more impactful than false information on social media; 50x more in the case of increasing vaccine hesitancy. So even a hypothetical safe model could be used to aid disinformation efforts: the adversary would use it to generate factual information (e.g. accurately summarizing news stories), with the misleading context added in separately.

In short, trying to make an AI model that can’t be misused is like trying to make a computer that can’t be used for bad things.

Scope of our claims

This essay is primarily about misuse, which seems to be the biggest driver of the AI safety worries recently. This includes both malicious misuse, such as the above examples, and nonmalicious misuse, such as students cheating on homework. Here again the model lacks the context to prevent only “bad” uses: it doesn’t know whether the task it is asked to perform is part of the user’s homework.

AI safety encompasses many other types of failures, such as bias and toxicity, accidents, reward hacking, and adversarial inputs (such as prompt injection). These are all different from misuse risks. We think our argument applies in many of these cases, though less strongly. We don’t give a full analysis here. In the case of accidents, others have made the point that we have to look at the system and context, rather than the model alone.

Another related failure mode, one that is outside our scope, is overreliance on flawed models for legal or medical advice (whether this falls under AI safety is debatable but tangential to our point). To understand these harms, studying models makes sense: for example, a recent investigation by the AI Democracy Projects found that most models have high rates of incorrect responses to questions about the election.

Even within the category of misuse, there are a few exceptions to the rule that safety is not a model property. Some types of content are intrinsically problematic regardless of what someone does with it, as in the case of AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery. Aligning AI systems to refuse such requests is important. Outputting memorized copyrighted material is another such category. 

In any case, our point is not that red teaming or aligning models is useless, just that safety has to be much broader than looking at models alone.

Recommendation 1: defenses against misuse must primarily be located outside models

We’ve written before that model alignment can easily be evaded by adversaries. Those evasive techniques, such as jailbreaks, are potentially fixable. Here, we are talking about something more fundamental: misuse that does not require breaching the alignment guarantees in any way, such as writing persuasive emails that can be used for either marketing or phishing.

If model alignment is not the answer, other defenses are sorely needed. As we’ve consistently argued, defenses should focus on attack surfaces: the downstream sites where attackers use the outputs of AI models for malicious purposes. For example, the best defenses against phishing emails, whether generated by humans or LLMs, are email scanners and URL blacklists — which we’ve had for a couple of decades and have gradually gotten pretty good, although of course we must continue to improve them.

If we instead keep barking up the tree of model alignment, the fact that the model lacks access to context, and therefore can’t make informed safety determinations, will lead to both false positives and false negatives. In other words, it will not only lead to a failure to prevent misuse, but also the opposite problem: refusing innocuous requests like an overzealous censor.

Recommendation 2: assess marginal risk

If safety is not primarily a model property and defenses must reside elsewhere, then there might not be a big difference between the safety implications of open and closed release strategies. In any case, the debate on openness in AI needs a more rigorous risk assessment framework. We were recently part of a large collaboration that presented just such a framework. It enables assessing the marginal risk of releasing a model — that is, the additional or incremental risk — compared to the risk from existing models (and non-AI technologies). It takes into account that defenses for some risks might already exist, especially defenses located outside models. Using this framework, we showed that the marginal risk of open models in cybersecurity (specifically, enabling automated vulnerability detection) is low, whereas for the generation of non-consensual intimate imagery, the marginal risk is substantial.

A notable potential safety advantage of closed models is the ability to monitor queries and retrospectively identify malicious use. This is a far easier technical problem than building safety into the model itself. Besides, the risk of account suspension or prosecution might exert a deterrent effect on threat actors. In any case, this sort of comparison between open and closed models will have to be made separately for each type of misuse based on empirical evidence. Currently, we don’t have reliable evidence of how well monitoring and detection is working because of the lack of transparency by developers. One small but notable exception is a recent blog post on Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s efforts to detect and disrupt hacking groups’ use of LLMs.

Recommendation 3: refocus red teaming toward early warning

We should not expect red teaming to tell us whether or not a model can be misused (the answer is always yes). Instead, we should use red teaming to learn about the advancing frontier of adversary capabilities enabled by state-of-the-art AI models. For example, if AI systems have gotten powerful enough to automate a complex cybersecurity attack chain — scanning social media profiles to gather information, crafting a phishing email, taking over an account, exfiltrating information, and concealing traces of the attack — we need to have early warning of those capabilities so that we can defend appropriately.

To do this, we may need to design better offensive pipelines, such as for hacking. In the case of disinformation, a key offensive capability would be building a bot that can engage in a persuasive conversation on political topics over a long period of time. Building such capabilities raises ethical challenges. The cybersecurity community has long grappled with these challenges, and the general conclusion is that we are better off in a world where everyone has access to offensive capabilities than one in which only attackers do.

The results of red teaming should inform the development of defenses — defenses that almost always will reside outside AI models (such as detecting and labeling bot accounts on social media).

Recommendation 4: red teaming should be led by third parties with aligned incentives

The above change in objectives of red teaming leads to a subtle shift in incentives. When red teaming is model focused, developers have an incentive to do a good job. If they find that models produce “dangerous” information, they can fix that behavior, which helps them avoid bad press.

But for the kind of misuse we’re talking about, the incentives are reversed. It is not in developers’ interest to build the most powerful offensive pipeline possible. If they do, they might find that (for instance) a model can be used for hacking, but they will have no way to prevent this. Thus, they will have to admit that they are knowingly releasing a model that can be used for offensive purposes. It is much better for them to not find out in the first place. 

Consider OpenAI’s recent study on biological threats from language models. OpenAI evaluated the risk of users gaining access to information using language models compared to the internet (which is much better than previous studies that don’t use the internet as a baseline at all). But creating a bioweapon requires far more than a few hours of information hunting. A motivated actor needs access to a lab, reagents, and equipment in order to even begin the process. The real question is whether AI can help adversaries acquire these resources. The study does not answer that.

The incentives of third parties are potentially better aligned for a more holistic risk assessment that is less focused on models alone. But here too, there is need for caution. Until recently, much of the evidence for biosecurity risks of language models came from groups funded by a small number of effective altruism organizations. Members of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology recently wrote a letter expressing concern about the lack of transparency in how the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the AI Safety Institute plan to allocate funding for third-party evaluations. They were especially concerned about upholding the standards of scientific research.

Final thoughts: developer responsibility

Why has the myth of safety as a model property persisted? Because it would be convenient for everyone if it were true! In a world where safety is a model property, companies could confidently determine whether a model is safe enough to release, and AI researchers could apply their arsenal of technical methods toward safety. Most importantly, accountability questions would have relatively clear answers. Companies should have liability for harms if model safety guarantees fail, but not otherwise.

By contrast, accepting that there is no technical fix to misuse risks means that the question of responsibility is extremely messy, and we don’t currently have a good understanding of how to allocate liability for misuse. Assuming that retrospective detection is easier (see recommendation 2 above), one low-hanging fruit is to require anyone who hosts a model, whether closed or open, to adhere to certain standards for monitoring and reporting misuse — see our call for generative AI companies to publish transparency reports (and, more generally, the least cost avoider principle). But that won’t be enough, and downstream defenses are needed.

Unfortunately, downstream defenses against misuse impose a great cost on the rest of society. For example, the fact that any image or video could be AI-generated means that realism is no longer a marker of authenticity. That means we all need to adapt and change how we assess the veracity of information online. And that’s just one of dozens of such adaptations needed.

Morally speaking, developers should bear some of the societal costs of harmful uses of AI, mirroring the fact that they reap profits from beneficial uses of AI. But legally speaking, we have no tool to enforce that. Remedying this situation is the great challenge of AI policy — a point we’ve made over and over. No amount of “guardrails” will close this gap.

Acknowledgment. Arvind Narayanan is grateful for being invited to a National AI Advisory Committee AI Safety panel, where he presented some of these ideas. We thank Mihir Kshirsagar for feedback on a draft.

[coquettesinclair]

hrrggh. sheva also having a hard time looking at Babysker. he still has a bioterrorist's face and genes

both her and jill try to get chris to ditch the baby in an orphanage but chris cant! he's gotten attached to the baby!

as for babysker, he breaks down because people keep hating him for stuff he never did. like wesker in my brain, i think babysker doesnt have good emotional regulation. he didnt DO ANYTHING!

hrrggh. lil baby wesker. i think chris would be his weird adopted grandpa/dad. maybe claire helps take care of babysker.

they have to teach him it's ok to be angry/sad/happy.

im gonna hirl i think chris deserves to be full of love and kindness as well as being Angry and jaded. he wants to give the Baby the happiness Big Wesker was always denied

IMAGINE Babysker being the one to help Chris heal. Ahh!! The lifetime of trauma healed by little baby wesker being cute and innocent.

Chris being his adoptive gruff guardian, learning to trust and love the baby!

And the potential for Wesker in his cloned babysker life to finally grow up to be a normal man. Siskdkfwofoekvf

Plus all the added angst if jake were to find out wesker was his father and also this baby.

And the Jill trauma, would she be able to let go of re5 if she met little baby wesker? Probably not and that would be interesting to explore for her character. And how chris being a dad to babysker would cause some friction between these two. Yummy yummy.

Baby wesker would also be a good foil to alex wesker if they ever use her in a game again. Both have become children in a way.

[nychealth]

September is National Preparedness Month!

Regardless of the type of emergency, it is important to make sure that you, your family, your workplace and your community are prepared. 

Given the recent destruction caused by Hurricane Harvey, we are once again reminded of the lifesaving importance of preparedness. NYC is currently in coastal storm season (August- October), and now is a great time to get prepared. Our thoughts are with all of those affected by the storm.

The theme for National Preparedness Month 2017 is "Disasters Don’t Plan Ahead. YOU CAN."

Learn more about available resources and guidance on how to make sure you’re prepared.

[not-a-robot-i-swear-really]

Waiting for the Right Time

Bucky Barnes x GN!Black!Reader

Summary: Imagine that Bucky Barnes has a huge little crush on you. Now imagine that he’s not the only one who thinks that way.

Word Count: About 1150 words

Chapter Warnings: None, just Bucky getting jealous and slightly possessive, mostly fluff. Reader attracts attention from all across the gender spectrum, and is stated to have powers. No Y/N, we don’t do that here. Ambiguous ending ahead!

Bucky’s got a problem, and for once it has nothing to do with his past.

It’s you and the way the sunlight bounces off your brown skin to make it shine. It’s you and the way your smile makes his heart do backflips. It’s you and the way your deep brown eyes look at him with nothing but admiration and care.

Bucky loves you, and he is not ready to do anything about it.

He knows, logically, that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him if he were to confess. You damn near killed yourself trying to save him during a mission in Beirut, when a mercenary lobbed a bomb his way. You plucked it from the air and flew off with it, wrapping yourself in a blue shield just as it went off – you got a nasty scar, and it make his chest hurt every time he thinks about it. You smile to reassure him when he stares and tell him that it gives you a cool story to tell at family reunions. Worst case scenario, you would let him down gently and ask to remain friends. Even still, the worst-case scenario was apocalyptic to Bucky.

If he were going to confess, he needed to be absolutely sure that you would love him back. That was how things were, and that’s how it was going to stay until Bucky finally found the right time to confess.

Too bad the rest of the world didn’t get the memo to play along with his pining.

You got flowers the morning of June 26; Bucky remembered the exact day because his world came to a screeching halt when he read the note attached to them.

“Roses are red, violets are blue,

Know what’s on the menu? Me ‘n’ U~<3

From, Your Secret Admirer”

Bucky should’ve thrown the flowers away as soon as he saw them, should have stomped on them, thrown them in an incinerator, anything to make sure you didn’t see them. People sent you flowers all the time, and you never cared what anyone did to them – you like to joke that you had the opposite of a green thumb.

But he didn’t. He froze, and you came trudging out of your bedroom, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, wondering why Bucky spent so long outside your door without knocking.

“Aww, corny but sweet,” you cooed sleepily when you read the note. Bucky’s heart squeezed when you said that, and not in a good way. “Any chance these are from you?”

“No. No, they’re not.” Bucky grits out. If he sent you flowers with a note, he would be pouring his heart and soul into the card, not leaving a shitty pickup line.

“Wonder who it is then,” you yawned as you breezed by him.

Bucky spent the day tracking down the secret admirer. It was a random SHIELD agent, lower in the hierarchy, and too cocky for his own good. It only took a single visit from the former Winter Solider to get the agent to back off. Unfortunately, that agent wasn’t the last to pursue you.

When you went for your morning runs, a woman would join you every morning at exactly the halfway mark. She asked you if you wanted to go to the botanical gardens with her; Bucky showed up and pretended that there was a mission at the same time that would have happened. Thank god there actually was a mission to back him up.

When you thwarted a bioterrorist’s attempts to clear out the “undesirables,” you rescued a civilian from falling rubble with a well-timed shield. They offered to make lunch or dinner to repay you for saving them; Bucky waited till your back was turned to tell them that the Avengers didn’t accept food from strangers. Standard procedure and all that. There technically was no such procedure, but it was just common sense not to eat anything made by a stranger, right.

When Tony threw another one of his notorious parties, you were approached by a random well-to-do bachelor. He fancied himself an art aficionado and invited you to a personal showing of a rare Basquiat painting. When you left to get more champagne, Bucky got Sam to distract the man before you could give him an answer. Sam was sworn to secrecy, of course, Bucky would rather you didn’t see this side of him.

“How long are you gonna keep this up, man?” Sam groaned when he came back to the table.

“Keep what up?” Bucky kept his eyes trained on you, your enchanting laugh reaching his ears even through all the blaring music and cacophony of voices.

"This!” Sam gestured at you and Bucky. “It would just be easier to confess at this point. You can’t scare off everyone that goes near them forever.”

He gave Sam a deadpan glare. “I can and I will.”

“You would have to keep an eye on them all the time, you’d basically be stalking them at that point.”

“Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.”

“Wait-“

“There’s cafe across the street from their apartment, could probably stake out there.”

“Bucky-“

“You think I could get those little spy cameras from Tony’s lab without him noticing?”

“No! You need to say something to them before someone else asks them out and they say yes.”

“’S not the right time.”

“Man, someone else is gonna snatch them up while you’re busy waiting for the right time!” Bucky left before Sam could finish talking; another woman had sidled up your table.

As much as he hated to say it Sam was right.

Bucky hated this; the constant vigilance of chasing away would-be suitors, the way his heart squeezed every time he saw you smile at someone that wasn’t him, the fear that you would pick someone else before he could show you how much he loved you.

So on a cold November 12th, Bucky woke up earlier than everyone else in the tower to finally enact his plan. He went to the only shop open in Brooklyn for a fruit bouquet – filled with all the fruit he knew you liked and drizzled with chocolate. He dressed in the outfit Steve had helped him with – something casual, but made to impress. He put on your favorite playlist – Etta James, and Al Green, and Aretha Franklin.

With everything in place and his nerves at an all-time high, Bucky took a deep breath and knocked on your door.

A/N: Little something I thought up that I had to get out before I forgot or something, hope y'all enjoy! It was inspired by another post that I haven't been able to find, but it takes place in the 40s right before Bucky is shipped out to the warfront. If anyone can find it please let me know!

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[charcuteriecrab]

in my dreams, we're far away from here (Part 2)

A Resident Evil fic request

For @wisecrackingeric-2

here's the next part of this little 3+1 :)))) there's still at least one more "chapter" I'm still writing, but I thought I would share what I have so far.

Rating: M

Contains: blood, strong language, gore, injury

Tags: Chreon, Major Character Injury, Romance, Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort

Word Count: 1706

Part 2/5 Part 1 Next ->

+1 (part 1)

Chris was missing. 

He was kidnapped a week and a half ago by what the BSAA assumed was a group of bioterrorists that Chris and his team were investigating.

And Leon wasn’t even supposed to know. The only reason he found out was because he asked Hunnigan to tap into the BSAAs network, and he only asked her to do it because he was nervous about why the elder Redfield’s mission was taking so long.

He hated when he was right.

It was only supposed to take three days. It was already the middle of the tenth day. That meant that Chris was in the hands of terrorists for that long, all alone. Leon didn’t even know if he was still alive. Images of Chris, battered and bloody, stuck in a dark cell flooded his mind. Chris laying in a pool of thick crimson blood. Chris infected, skin gaunt and decaying as he stumbled around, too far gone for anyone to save. Chris with his skull caved in and his brains spewed all over the dirty floor, on display for Leon to see.

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep a sob at bay, his lungs constricting painfully. No. Chris was alive. He had to believe. Chris was a stubborn bastard; he wouldn’t die so easily.

And Leon was going to save him.

He wasn’t going to ask the BSAA or the DSO for permission, he wasn’t going to wait for an organization to pull a team together. 

No. He was going to save him. And he was leaving now.

Hunnigan had told him the general area and got him a DSO aircraft that was leaving in thirty minutes. According to Leon’s handler, Chris was somewhere in rural Norway, and unfortunately, it was the middle of January, so that meant it was cold and snowy. The two things Leon hated the most besides BOWs and missing out on breakfast.

Leon geared up in his winter tactical equipment swiftly, attaching his knife to his side and double-checking his ammo for his guns. He never liked to carry too many weapons, it was too easy to mistake them for each other in his opinion. For this unsanctioned mission, he brought his DSO-issued Lightning Hawk and a backup 9mm handgun he modified to shoot faster. Looking at the gun, he felt a ripple of nostalgia. It reminded him of his old gun Matilda, now too unreliable for him to realistically use in the field. It sat on his and Chris’ apartment wall, a reminder of his failures in Racoon City, or as Chris always told him, a reminder of all Leon survived.

Shaking his head, he made his way over to the waiting DSO Osprey, its blades roaring in his ears. He nodded at the pilot and the soldier made his ascent as Leon strapped himself into a seat, placing the white winter coat he grabbed earlier at his side. 

“Agent Kennedy. Planning on sightseeing?” the pilot asked into his earpiece and Leon smirked grimly.

All he hoped to see was the dead bodies of those terrorists and Chris safe and sound in his arms.

“Something like that.”

The aircraft was a little more than needed for a one-man rescue mission, but he appreciated it regardless. As it was, it would take ten hours to reach Norway and Leon hated waiting. The Osprey flew smoothly and the pilot opted not to say anything more to him. Leon twirled the small box in his pocket around, fiddling with it as he tried to take his mind off his growing anxiety.

‘I’m coming for you, Chris.’

When they arrived, Leon was surprised to see a white, sprawling forest in every direction he looked. The canopy was so thick and covered in snow he couldn’t see anything below it, much less a building or secret lab. Towering pine trees made it seem as though this part of the world was untouched by human selfishness and greed, but Leon knew that to be the exact opposite. They were making bioweapons and killing innocent people, and they stole Chris from him. They would get no mercy from Leon.

The pilot landed the Osprey in an open field, as close as he was able, or willing, to get, and Leon jumped out, shivering when his feet landed in the snow. The aircraft flew away and Leon nodded in acknowledgment up to the man, conveying his gratitude. While he may not have wanted to become an agent, he did have a few allies in the agency besides Hunnigan.

Putting on his coat, he observed his surroundings. There was a slight flurry falling from the sky, reducing visibility and causing his nose to grow chilled. He sniffed in the cold air. No decay. Probably no BOWs around this area then. Almost all types of infected gave off a foul odor, mostly due to decaying flesh, though he didn’t think he would ever forget the smell of that blue C-virus gas in Tall Oaks and Lanshiang. He swallowed, almost able to taste the infection on his tongue.

Leon pulled out his Lightning Hawk, choosing to go in the direction opposite the way the Osprey left. He didn’t have any information on this lab other than “it’s in this part of Norway”. For all he knew, he could be miles away from where Chris was being held.

He walked for about an hour, his face going numb in the cold air, not finding anything until coming across some scratches on a couple of trees, long grooves dug past the bark and through the cambium. Leon traced the scratches with his gloved fingers, his even breath coming out in white puffs. It could have been carved by an elk or moose, but Leon was quick to doubt. The bark was still intact—if the animals intended on eating, the trees would have been stripped bare.

These were probably caused by a BOW.

He was overjoyed as much as his gut churned with disgust.

Bolstered by possible signs of bioterrorism, he continued on, walking faster and faster until he was lightly jogging as he saw more torn trees, the land deteriorating the longer he went. He was getting closer, there was no other explanation. 

He was reminded of the deteriorating forest surrounding that village in Spain, the ganados’ homes broken, animals dead and decaying, drinking water poisoned and vile. He didn’t feel bad for Los Illuminados, but those villagers with the Plagas in them used to be people. Every night for a week after that mission he woke screaming. He killed had all those people—even though they had no chance of going back to who they were, he still was the one to put a bullet in their heads.

Sometimes, he would still have nightmares, and oftentimes he wouldn’t tell Chris about their contents. Sometimes they were about Racoon City, other times it was Tall Oaks and the President, but most of the time it was about Spain. He didn’t think he would ever forget the feeling of Las Plagas in his chest cavity. 

Leon stopped in his tracks as he heard an inhuman screech from behind him.

He raised his gun and swung around, taking aim. He didn’t see anything, and the sound didn’t repeat. Fuck. Something must have been tracking him. A licker? He let out a shaky breath and continued on the way he was going, staying alert. He kept his gaze always moving, scanning the environment around him.

It was another ten minutes before he heard the noise again, this time closer. 

Leon sniffed in and quickly turned around in a circle. There was definitely something fucking following him. He started to jog faster, almost running but was worried he would trip over something underneath the foot-deep snow. The last thing Chris needed was for Leon to break his legs.

The inhuman growls turned louder and from multiple directions—he heard the pounding of footsteps to his right and he growled, skidding to a stop before kicking his foot out, the limb connecting with a sickening thud and sending the creature flying into a tree. 

He heard the familiar sound of bones snapping and turned to where he heard the next one. A licker crawled toward him, creeping step by step, its toothed tongue glistening with thick spit. Its bare, crimson body was a bloody target against the white snow. 

With a flick of his wrist, Leon aimed his Lightning Hawk at the licker just as it leaped at him with a snarl, and he shot the round into the monster’s brain, twisting out of the way of its long claws. Leon cried out as one of the extended nails swiped at his arm before sending another magnum bullet into its head. The licker cried out in agony, struggling on the ground before eventually falling limp.

Leon heaved for air, the crisp winter chill making it more difficult. Fuck. They must have had a good sense of smell if they were able to track him that easily. He strained his hearing for any other signs of other lickers in the area and relaxed when he heard nothing besides the roaring of blood in his head. As the adrenaline faded, he could feel a sharp pain in his arm. Fuck. He didn’t move out of the way in time. He took one last glance at his surroundings before peeling back his winter coat and taking his med kit out of his bag. He had packed multiple just in case and was now thankful he did. 

The wound wasn’t terribly deep but was long and jagged. Bits of Leon’s skin was clawed out and hanging, covered in blood that was flowing freely from the injury. Blood soaked into his shirt and coated the inside of his now-ruined jacket. Leon growled at the sight. He fucking messed up. Just another scar to remind him of his screw-ups. He quickly cleaned and bandaged it, pushing the pain away. He would need stitches because of its unevenness, but he couldn’t afford to do them now.

He abandoned the two lickers’ bodies, putting his coat back on, hissing when the fabric caught on his bicep. Chris. He needed to find Chris.

| Next-> |

[tacticalvest]

@shadessupreme​ sent: 🤯 or 💍, whichever you feel more comfortable with! 💍 - a starter where our muses are enemies forced to marry. // from this meme.

Chris had never quite imagined the reason he’d have a ring on his left hand would be for this-- for the name Wesker attached to his own, for the purposes of deception. He doesn’t much care for it; he’s never been a fan of long undercover ops to begin with, and the hatred he feels for the man that’d once been his captain burns as steadily as it has since 1998. But Wesker is the only connection they have to this steadily growing pharmaceutical company in Korea, and the notorious Chris Redfield of BSAA fame would never be allowed within a circle of bioterrorists.

Not unless he was completely, unflinchingly, on Wesker’s side, that is. And what’s more unflinching than marriage to bond them outside of work?

Tonight they have a party to attend, full of big names in the East Asian bioterrorist market and a few smaller ones looking to aim high. There’s no easier way to get bioterrorists together than the unveiling of a new weapon in the making, after all. Chris has had to tell himself in the bathroom multiple times not to fistfight everyone he sees, and as he steps out now with a scowl on his face, he looks down at his bowtie and wonders why the hell he can’t seem to get it done right.

“Are you ready to go yet?” Chris asks, lifting his head briefly to catch wherever Wesker’s made himself comfortable in the living room. He doesn’t know what the man thinks of being used by the BSAA like this, but at the same time he can’t bring himself to care. Chris can’t even say it’s the least Wesker could do-- ever since Spencer Mansion, ever since the Veronica Virus, ever since Uroboros, Albert Wesker has racked up debt after debt after debt, and there’s no way to make up for that, not in his lifetime.

At the same time, though, the faint memories of the first party Chris had to attend as a member of STARS Alpha team come to mind. He remembers the way his captain looked in a suit then as he looks at him in a suit now, and he remembers how much he’d looked up to him, admired him, and wanted his approval.

All those feelings are ash in his mouth. All of them choke his neck the same way the ring around his finger feels like a death wish.

And Chris gives up on his fucking bowtie. “We should get going before we’re late.”

[taaboh]

@moldcursed sent: 21)  one or both muses have gone through breakups and have sex with each other to feel better or for revenge.  // it’s about the vibes of ethan uhhhh needing a distraction, hello. ► from here.

These days, it seems like every time Takayuki isn’t busy, he’s with Ethan. Ethan doesn’t message him everyday, and between work with TerraSave and his own detective agency Takayuki’s schedule isn’t the best, but whenever the stars align and he knows he can be around, he’s by the man’s side without question. They drink more often than not, talk more often than not-- every time Ethan brings up Louisiana, though, Takayuki has to make a conscious effort not to flinch at the memory-- and even when he can’t see him he calls Ethan to check in on him, too.

Takayuki wonders if he has a problem. (He’s gotten too attached.)

But he knows for sure he has one when he asks Ethan if he wants to drink at his place instead tonight.

It’s innocent to begin with, in Takayuki’s defence. They come to his office-slash-apartment and there’s a small crack about how “wait, you sleep on your couch?”, and while Ethan cracks open a beer, Takayuki makes some quick otsumami in his pathetic kitchen. Homemade sashimi is good, though-- and it’s even better when the person he’s serving it to can’t call him out for being unorthodox with his cuts.

All the sashimi is gone and the bowl of edamame Takayuki’d served as well is halfway finished when Ethan brings up Mia. And that is when Takayuki asks if Ethan wants any of his whiskey.

He tells Ethan he doesn’t have to pay him back for it. There are occasions for whiskey, and the utter misery of finding out your wife lied to you and is a bioterrorist is as good as any to him, never mind the fact he can’t imagine what that would be like. An open whiskey bottle takes up space on his coffee table by the empty beer cans, and as Ethan talks and Takayuki’s murmurs of comfort turn into touch-- a brush of the hand here, a touch to the shoulder, a slip of the arm around his shoulders-- before he can process he’s taken up space between Ethan’s legs, too.

“See,” he hears himself say, even if his own voice sounds a thousand miles away, “m’couch’s comfy.”

Takayuki wants to make him stop hurting. It’s the sole driver his mind can come up with, with how much alcohol he’d downed. Ethan looks up at him with sad, tired eyes, and while it’s a far cry from the stubborn bravery he wore that one night in Louisiana, it doesn’t make him any less lovely.

He says it, he thinks. That Ethan’s lovely. But chances are the words are muffled, because with the man trapped between his body and his couch, Takayuki’s kissing him like it’ll make all his pain go away.

[pathogenliliaceae]

I saw Jake Muller listed above Chris on some poll ranking RE protagonists according to skill and this could be a fun take. Thoughts on Jake?

!! Truly!? Says who? Never have I been so insulted for Chris, and I've made quite the practise of it throughout the whole of the series. Jake is just so green. To consider that he has more skill after one game...

Thoughts on Jake Muller:

Quite frankly, I still am not the biggest fan of the idea that Wesker has a biological child through means of an implied relationship. Jake has a mother, mentions her, but we are still left to try and fathom who this woman is. Consider the following: Wesker has caches of bioweapons [specifically, Uroboros] and literal loads of research stashed away. Any of these jumbles of letters that call themselves anti-bioterror organisations would likely have tracked his movements to the best of their abilities. We are told to believe that there is no canonical record of Wesker being in a relationship with an Edonian woman who had emigrated to [presumably] Raccoon City? I also am unsure if Jake can rightfully claim the “dead beat” father excuse for his behaviour if his mother moved back to Edonia prior to giving birth, but I should digress... I won’t.

Born in 1992, Jake grows up with a single mother who falls ill in the early 2000s. In an effort to support his mother through her illness, he becomes a mercenary. Here is the bit where I find that he is “more skilled” than Chris to be erroneous, and highly insulting: According to the Resident Evil 6 Memo “Soldiers of Fortune”, Jake knew nothing of combat skills until he joined his first mercenary group at seventeen. This means that Jake’s skillset has been active for an entire THREE YEARS before the Edonian Civil War and the Lanshiang Incident. It is an utter travesty to say that Jake Muller is more skilled than Chris after only having been trained for three. years.

He became attached to his CO, who taught him how to fight-- and his new father figure promptly sold out the unit as a turncoat. I suppose that being somewhat of Jake’s father makes you liable to be a traitor. 

Furthermore: Canonically, Jake is “moody”, “distant”, “cold”, and has no loyalties to any cause. If you’ve played Six, you know this already. But, we cannot take into account a character’s popularity without examining their convictions.

From here on, what we know of Jake takes place in-game. Foolish boy, making foolish decisions. He does have a bit of a redeeming arc, but that arc takes place solely through Sherry and uses her as his motivator. I am not so enthralled that she functions as his catalyst for change. In the course of six months, during which he’s run from Ustanak, endured some experimentation, and somehow picked up an entire Cantonese vocabulary-- he goes from “pay me millions for a blood sample”, to “there are more important things at stake than you and I”.  His feud with Chris is utterly imaginary and it shows just how immature he is as a character. He blames Chris for taking his father away from him, but Jake never had his father. He never knew who his father was. In the same breath as learning Wesker’s name, he learns that he was a bioterrorist of the highest calibre. He is anger with Chris for killing an imagined version of what he wanted Wesker to be. And nearly shot him over it. Subduing the feud for the sake of mankind, quoted above, hardly saves it. This is because, I think, it feels oddly one-sided. We’ve followed Chris through all of these years and installments. We know and realise that killing Wesker was needed and quite justified. But then Jake comes along with a complex, attempting to put some sort of spin on the morality of killing Wesker. 

What if the bioterrorist you are after has a child? Would you still pursue them? Yes, you would. Because they’re an active bioterrorist! Because they have the intent of ending the world through the use of a tentacle-virus and actively wants to put eugenics into practise because “everyone else is just so much chaff”. Not to mention- Jake does not know his father! He would never know his father! Even if Wesker had known that he had a son [again, we still believe this to be a stretch], I have high doubts that he would have cared enough to know him. He’s much too busy becoming a god and killing his own father figure. This entire father-son dynamic that Jake is angry over is entirely imagined.

I cannot offer much more of an analysis on him due to the lack of back story. And likely, the lack of his resurgence into the series. Capcom has a problem- they feel Chris needs to be replaced. They were going to replace him with Piers, but thought against it. They were going to replace him with Jake, but Jake’s reception was so poor that it would hurt the future of the franchise. And honestly, thank every denomination of God that Capcom thought better of it.  Could you imagine Village with Jake in Chris’ place? Some idiotic smart mouth trying to talk down sentient mould? Ugh. Spare me the thought.

Honestly, I am quite sad because I feel that due to Jake’s poor reception, and that Sherry is now regrettably tied to him, we may never see Sherry again. If that is the case, she is wasted. I will not forgive him if he wastes my daughter’s potential. 

In short: Who performed the study, what was the sample size, what was the demographic that comprised it, and who calculated the confidence interval incorrectly? Jake more skilled than Chris... Please.

[spector]

people be like, sure the child was standing over her with a knife ready to kill her, but that still doesn't make it okay that she punched a child, that's abusive

aHFGIGH LITERALLY . arguably she was mean to evelyn even before she went fully bonkers and took over the ship, so yeah that was morally bad but we've established that mia has done evil things such as joining a bioterrorist organization. i understand what theyre getting at because during that initial sunny vid from mia to ethan from the ship, mia is visibly annoyed by evelyn's presence, so I SUPPOSE that might mean she is abusive to her (an exaggeration but sure lets play along). so sure, maybe she should have been nicer to her and pretended to be her mommy, maybe evelyn wouldnt have flipped out then. but can u truly force someone to be your parent lol ... i guess what mia needed to do is treat evelyn like a kid instead of a weapon but that was mias job... thats what she was trained for, being a bioweapons handler... and it is morally wrong but i just cant call it abuse??? it feels like a wrong word bc mia truly had no attachment to evelyn and i think there needs to be some sort of relationship before u can call it abuse

 ok i didnt reply to this ask as elegantly as i couldve but im in between ovw matches sorry but you know what i mean. mia working for connections is inherently bad and u can focus on that instead of grasping at straws and calling her a child abuser

[srnokedmirrors]

* . time stands still , the way it did before.     it’s like i’m  s  l  e  e  p  w  a  l  k  i  n  g .

                          { courtney eaton, twenty-four, agender, they/them } Have you seen JACK C. KENNEDY walking around?  Little do they know, they’re the child of LEON S. KENNEDY from RESIDENT EVIL, and they ARE AN ONLY CHILD.  I guess that explains why they’re so CRAFTY & RESOURCEFUL and ALOOF & SELF-SERVING.  They are a COLLEGE STUDENT.  — penned by eve.

FIRST THINGS FIRST.

Hey guys !! I’m EVE , twenty from the EST timezone ( pronouns are she/her ) and I have TWO kids to introduce to you guys - the first being Jackie here !! I’m a huge fan of video games hence why my first two children are from them - RE in particular is one of my favorites. It’s a popular franchise , but if you’re not too familiar with it do not fret because all you need to know about Jack , their dad , and the world they originate from will be in here. And I apologize profusely if this is too long because I . . . have a tendency to ramble so !! Let’s get on with it.

TWS : Mental illness / depression ( implied ) , mentions of bullying & death & violence

I. THE PAST - DO YOU REMEMBER ??

You are born Jacqueline Cheri Kennedy , the first & only child of your father - Leon Scott , a lone survivor of the fallen Raccoon City - with no mother in the picture. Your father always wanted children , but his line of work is cruel to those who hold their loved ones dear , and originally the prospect was brushed off. But you are an accident - left on his doorstep - and the man who originally thought he’d never have children due to a fear of losing what he’s attached to . . . . he SOBS , holding your tiny body close and vowing that now , he has a new reason to live and not just survive.

So you grow. You grow fast , and as a child , you know a few truths - you like princesses & superheroes , and you are your papa’s little princess & your papa is your superhero. And you are treated the best you can - in the early years of your youth , you have to spend multiple week trips sleeping over at your Aunt Ashley’s before your father suddenly tells you ‘Daddy isn’t going to work anymore’ and he’s with you all day , every day , save except for school. You grow up with your father as your best friend and you know he loves you more than anything.

You are ten years old when you start to understand things - not ENOUGH , and not too much , but you can understand the fact that in a way , your beloved papa is sick. But it’s not the germy kind of sick - not the kind of sick that results in tummyaches or sniffles. No , it’s the kind of sick that you can tell his heart isn’t working - it’s broken , and you can tell his smile sometimes doesn’t reach his eyes and the weird stuff he drinks is to help with it - but he doesn’t want you to know he’s sick. He SMILES at you and plays with you and hugs you tightly and kisses your forehead and reads you bedtime stories and everything seems okay - but you know your superhero can’t fly as high as he used to , and you know he’s more sad than he lets on. But he does everything so he thinks you don’t catch on , and so you are happy even if he isn’t.

You are twelve years old when the big men in black jackets & bulletproof vests come knocking on your father’s door to beg him to come back to them , and he says hell no and there’s an argument you don’t listen to since FRANKLY , you’re busy pasting up posters of rock bands in your bedroom. You know your father doesn’t talk a lot about where he used to work or what he used to do - the only inkling you get is the next day , when you’re innocently helping your father find his unopened pack of plastic razors in his bedroom , and you open a drawer with a shiny badge that says ‘Raccoon City Police Department.’

You are fourteen when you first start finding your own voice - you are hardened from bullying that comes your way and you grow BLUNT & SARCASTIC and a lot of your father’s friends tell you that you’re just like him. This becomes a bit of a joke between the two of you - but it escalates further in school. They call you Jackboot since that’s a symbol of the opposite of what you stand for - you TALK BACK , you rebel , you aren’t afraid to show your poisoned tongue and it gets you in trouble. But you remain authentic - even if people don’t like you. But you’re still vulnerable - your first boyfriend breaks your heart and as you’re crying through screams & wails on your couch , your father gently hugs you close , rubbing your back and telling you you’re going to be okay. You are hardened , but you are not unbreakable.

You are fifteen when you finally realize why your father feels the way he does and why he quit his job , and why he’s so protective of you. You are innocently putting on makeup to get ready for homecoming when you hear gunshots coming from the living room. You pull out the shotgun your father keeps under his bed and when you head downstairs , your house is being broken into by MINDLESS DRONES OF THE UNDEAD and thank god you inherited your father’s accuracy , because you save one from biting your father’s cheek and then , he grabs you , and the two of you book it out of the area.

. . . Your father . . . was the only survivor of an outbreak - a bioterrorist attack - back in Raccon City. Your father was a cop for one day , and then worked as a government agent to quell parasitical outbreaks in Spain , and then the fall of Tall Oaks , and countless other machines. You learn the words Umbrella and C-Virus and T-Virus and thank GOD you are a fast learner since this is the reality of the life you’ll have to live in time. And your father holds you close and sobs and begs you to live your life the best you can , away from the shit he went through , but one evening is far too much - and you have already seen too much.

You still know the truth , though. You are still your papa’s little princess and he is your superhero - but your superhero earned his hero status at the price of his own happiness. And maybe you’re almost doomed to do the same.  

You are sixteen when you’re ripped from everything. Sixteen when you lose sight and it’s all erased. And sixteen when your superhero fades from your existence and you remember nothing but normalcy - and maybe it’s for the better. Maybe it’s also for the worse.

II. THE PRESENT - WHO ARE YOU , YOURSELF ??

S’OKAY SO. I’m gonna try and highlight what Jack is like with and without memories - their personality honestly doesn’t change much aside from obvious Resident Evil stuff & their bond with their dad.

WITH MEMORIES : So to start , Jack is an extremely blunt individual - they have a tendency to be a little bitch-faced and kinda-sorta don’t show their emotions very well , but they’re also extremely honest and don’t lie at all. They DO have a sense of morals & take everything they learned from their dad to heart - especially given the fact that now they’re aware of everything he’s done and been through and that they’re gonna be going through the same thing. But they also carry around a Devil-may-care attitude , snarky & rebellious and honestly maybe a bit short-tempered. But they are smart. They are smart and they know it and thank god they know how to act quickly on their feet in bad situations - they’re just. Kind of a dick. 

WITHOUT MEMORIES : So Jack wasn’t as nearly as close with their fake-life parents as they were their actual father , Leon , and that impacts them in the sense that they’re slightly more of a lone wolf than they were before losing their memories. They only remember rebelling against their parents & fighting with them whereas in real time . . . Jack & Leon never really argued. Jack never really disobeyed. But NOW they just remember always doing what the opposite of what their parents said and that sorta fuels their fire. And also , Jack isn’t haunted by what they’ve seen in terms of bioterrorism and viruses and all that , so that leaves them unaffected. They overall don’t change much , they’re just . . . them.

GENERAL FACTS ABOUT THEM AHEAD THAT REALLY DON’T CHANGE , BUT

Jack . . . is kind of. A philanderer aishufhasush like I will not lie to you they are an extreme flirt and honestly get around but will never commit due to the fact they fear strong attachments and what they mean so just. Apologies for that.

And when I say Jack is self-serving , I mean so in the sense that they only do things if the consequence benefits them or something they care for or someone they care about - like Jack will help their loved ones because they love their loved ones , but otherwise , they really just . . . want to only get involved if it physically , mentally , financially , socially , what have you benefits them.

They’re a DICK but they’re not like... an awful , awful person. They’re just sorta someone who mainly thinks of themselves and looks out for number one and those who PERTAIN to number one. It’s sorta better to show their character rather than like . . . tell , because they’re not the most nicey-nice OC but they’re like they’re dad - kind of grouchy & snarky sometimes but still with good intentions and not at all a bad person. Leon’s such a good character and Jack is both EXTREMELY like him and also. Not. 

Also rly quick Jack’s pronouns are again they/them and they take both masculine and feminine titles if there isn’t a gender-neutral option available. Jack said fuck gender.

ANNEA-WAAAYYYY onto the next part -

III. THE FUTURE - WHO MAKES YOUR CIRCLE ??

Just ?? General WCs I guess ?? Idk I got no braincells when it comes to this shit but

I’m gonna get the begging for hookup & ex connections out of the way FIRST because Jack is honestly. Again. A philanderer. Definitely kinda like a fuckboy tbh ausydgygdyagysgds

ALSSOOOOOO I’d love 2 see ppl that Jack just frequently butts heads with ?? Again they are kinda fighty so I’d love to see some enemies around

They don’t have a lot of friends so a few friends would be nice - but only a FEW close friends bc again Jack doesn’t rly open up , they keep their cards to their chest while simultaneously being an open book and it’s Confusing 

may b a longshot but . . . o-other . . . Resident Evil kids ?? Please ?? Baby Redfields ?? Please ??

IDK LIKE I’LL RLY TAKE ANYTHING BUT. that’s it for now if i do ciel’s intro tonight i will be genuinely shocked bc i’m EXHAUSTED bt yeah !! here’s jack !!

[ubcsmercenary]

(Open) Starter

1./ Carlos Oliveira /00/ Sewers Outside Safe Zone/ Day 1

After having laid low for a long time after Raccoon City to avoid bad publicity or potential criminal prosecution for having been part of Umbrella's Biohazard Countermeasure Service during the incident, Carlos Oliveira heard the news of the more recent Outbreak. He didn't want to spend his whole life a hermit hiding in isolation but who could he turn to? The B.S.A.A. would probably declare him a fugitive bioterrorist. Ever since the time which they founded following the collapse of Umbrella, they've been on a huntdown after every last spec of Umbrella. Carlos knew Nicholai Ginovaef was still alive, but where did he go? Who did he sell his combat data on Umbrella's B.O.W.s to? Could he have a hand in or some type of connection to what's going on now? That's what Carlos wanted to find out. Multiple times he saw Nicholai cheat death. But despite the B.S.A.A. having presumed Nicholai dead as his whereabouts were unknown just like Carlos himself, Jill still knew Carlos survived Raccoon City.

"OK first things first" Carlos said to himself. "Infiltrate the hot zone, dig up intel related to what the hell's going on and avoid contact with the B.S.A.A." according to a layout of the city map Carlos found, there appeared to be a massive network of underground sewers and waterways that connected routes together so he could use those to avoid checkpoints at the gates to the safe zone. The intel also confirmed an armory outside the safe zone, possibly a former military supply logistics depot before the outbreak occurred that the troops were forced to abandon leaving behind whatever guns ammo and vehicles they couldn’t commandeer with them before the infected took over the sector of the city it was located in. An entry way to the sewers was connected via a drainage ditch near the armory. (Similar to the factory drainage ditch leading to the sewers below the tower in RE Revelations 2) Carlos Oliveira made his way through the tunnels until he had reached the drainage ditch. The whole armory was surrounded by zombies outside. The electric barbed wire fence had acted as a bug zapper to the charred zombies stuck to it (like the choice in RE3 to increase electricity output at the power station) however very few zombies were inside except maybe a GI or quartermaster or 2 unfortunate enough not to have made it out in time. Quite an adequate supply of ammunition and accessories the troops were unable to gather up and transport out in time still remained. So Carlos decided to make this his supply stash. In one of his various hideouts he created (similar to the save rooms in the early RE games) he loaded and chambered his M4A1 Assault rifle and Sig SP 2009 handgun the same guns from his U.B.C.S. days.

He wrote a log of each day and recorded where he went and what he found (in a similar fashion as saving on typewriters in early RE games) so for today "Sweep and scavenge the Armory" he logged. "If any infected come my way I’ll have to take them down quietly" he said to himself. "Can't give myself away or draw the whole horde in by the sound of shots fired hopefully I can find some suppressors for my guns there." He brought a couple of molotov cocktails and a survival knife along to barbecue any groups or impale the heads of any zeds that got in his way. Moving through the sewer tunnels he saw a lone zombie by itself he stabbed it through the temple of its head pushing it forward face first and then kicked its skull in. Following that he entered the waterway carrying his rifle above his head through the knee deep sewer water. There were a few zombies snarling in the distance but not in the way of where he was going. "Ok now to get in there and grab myself some new goodies." Carlos said to himself as he reached the drainage ditch behind the armory. He saw an armored blackhawk helicopter flying above but heading away from his direction. Carlos clenched his fists and cringed upon the memory of an unpleasant encounter he and Jill had at the Dead Factory back in Raccoon City which that had triggered.

Carlos made his way to a ladder along the cement wall of the drainage ditch and started climbing. Carlos looked along the exterior. The snarling chorus of zombie moans echoed loudly throughout the distance. Carlos noticed the buzzing crackling zapping sounds coming from the electric barbed wire fence and light jolting through it. "Hmm? So this place still has power? Then I guess I can rule out trying to jimmy open the electronic gate lock." he said to himself looking around over the gated off area. On the concrete floor of the area where the supply trucks used to park, near the back gate, although no vehicles were in sight, he spotted a metal grating or cover on top of what appeared to be a storm drain gutter. "Aha!" Carlos thought to himself as he looked along the wall of the drainage ditch until he saw a gutter opening with water pouring out. "And there's my ticket in." he said to himself. Carlos crawled through the gutter for a good few yards until he finally reached the area inside the armory. He pushed the drain cover off and climbed out inside.

"Ok I'm in!" He said to himself. He opened the door into the armory building. Inside he saw zombified soldiers in B.D.U.s with M4A1 rifles on their backs and wearing bulletproof armor. A crowd of about 4 or 5 in the concrete corridor. Fortunately there was nothing flammable, so he lobbed one of his molotovs on them barbecuing them to a crisp. Alot of the rooms were left open. "Looks like they were in a hurry to get out of here." Carlos said. He found a map on the wall and used it to locate the weapons and ammo storage. Inside, he was greeted by a zombified quartermaster along with 2 zombie MPs whom he'd tripped to the ground and kicked in the heads of outside. Carlos stabbed the zombie quartermaster in his head.

"Now we're talking!" He said. As he scavenged noise suppressors for his M4A1 Assault rifle and Sig SP 2009 handgun. He also found an underbarrel M203 grenade launcher that he mounted onto his M4A1. In his backpack he loaded it with a couple frags and every last magazine of 5.56mm NATO 9 x 19mm parabellum and 40mm gremade rounds he could fit. "Ok this should do me for now. Can apways come back if I need more." He said. He went back to rear gate emtrance and opped open the gutter cover and crawled back through the gutters. Coming back out into the drainage ditch he found another zombie straggler in the water. He drew his Sig SP 2009 to the zombie's head and pulled the trigger. No sound was heard except for a "pffft" as he a 9mm to the zombie's head. It fell back into the water and floated on the surface. Carlos continued back towards his hideout and pulled out his notebook log. He put a checkmark by "Sweep and scavenge the armory" and folded up the map he found of the area with it.

"I wonder if I should go into town tonight." He asked himself. Carlos mapped out different sewer and subway tunnel access points in and out of the town’s “safe zone” to bypass any checkpoints but when in the safe zone he was limited on what weapons he could carry due to the risk of breaking his cover. He knew how to conceal his handgun if necessary not to mention if for some reason he did have to fire it his noise suppressor would be able to keep the shot from being heard. The frame and body of his Sig Sp 2009 was lightweight and mainly made primarily of plastic so it was less likely to set off a metal detector. However, if going through an X-Ray scanner that’d give him away on the spot.

Carlos changed out of his tactical gear and combat fatigues hit the showers and then put on his street clothes black jeans and a System Of A Down Toxicity concert T but kept his combat boots and tactical gloves on.The rest of his gear he put in his backpack to keep out of visible sight hopefully the biker/metalhead look would deter anyone from wanting to pick a fight with him. He also put a bulletproof vest on under his shirt with a carry conceal holster for his handgun. To keep the outline of the gun from from showing through he also wore a leather vest unbuttoned or unzipped in the front over the concert T. Before he lef he cleaned ou he barrel on his M4A1 assault rifle and fitted I with a noise suppressor and configured the underbarrel M203 Grenade Launcher attachment on it and then put it up in his hideout which was a lodging area for sewer workers complete with a bunk and a shower facility. After he left the safe area, he pushed a metal shelf over over the entrance doorway to camouflage it. ”That should do for now,” Carlos said, “Now remember if anyone asks who you are you are Carl Oliver” he said to himself. Carlos continued through the sewer tunnels until he reached the passageway to the subway access route. From there he followed the tracks using his handgun’s new suppressor to silently put 9mm rounds through the heads of any zombies that stood in his way through the derelict subway tunnels and climbed up onto the boarding platform. From there it was a straight shot up to the streets. Carlos reholstered his handgun before haeding up to the ground level.

[topworldhistory]

Beehive catapults. Scorpion bombs. Bug pit prisons. For thousands of years, military strategists have used insects as weapons of war—not only to inflict debilitating pain on enemies, but also to deliver deadly pathogens and destroy agriculture, with the intent of causing widespread misery, sickness and hunger.

Delivering disease via insect vectors has been wickedly effective. During WWII, Japanese biological warfare units dropped plague-infected fleas and cholera-coated flies on Chinese cities—killing some 440,000 people. The Japanese military also developed plans to spread plague-carrying fleas over San Diego in 1945, but never followed through.

In 1989, domestic bioterrorists told authorities they were breeding and releasing medflies in California—and the eco-radicals would continue doing so until the government halted insecticide spraying. Had this devastating pest become established (the infestation was suppressed), the resulting quarantine on California fruits would have destroyed crops in one of America’s vital agricultural regions, costing tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.

But for millennia, six-legged soldiers have been most consistently deployed to torment and disperse enemies. From Old Testament accounts (“I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out...”—Joshua 24:12) to the Vietnam War and beyond, insects have been effectively weaponized. Here are some of the most fiendish examples:

READ MORE: Sting, Recover, Repeat: How One Scientist Measured Insect-Induced Pain

A scorpion blitz

At the end of the 2nd century, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus was on his way to wresting control of Mesopotamia from the local monarchs—that is, before a shower of scorpions helped waylay his plans, according to an account by ancient historian Herodian. 

As the Roman legions advanced on the desert stronghold of Hatra—desirable for its control of Silk Road caravan routes—King Barsamia and his citizens holed up behind its 40-foot high perimeter walls. The defenders crafted earthenware bombshells loaded with scorpions—which were so prevalent in the region, and so dangerous, that Persian kings regularly ordered scorpion hunts and offered bounties to assure safe passage for the caravans. The locals knew first-hand that scorpions inflicted intensely painful stings and that their venom can induce irregular breathing, slowed pulse, convulsions—and occasionally death.

As Severus’s men reached the walls of Hatra, scorpion bombs rained down, inflicting agonizing punishment on the Romans wherever they had exposed skin—legs, arms and, worst of all, their faces and eyes. With six-legged arachnids among the Hatreni defenses, Severus was held at bay for 20 days, until his troops finally broke off the battle and retreated.

Tune in to "Kings of Pain" on HISTORY starting Tuesday, November 12 at 10/9c 

Operation fling and sting

Wasp nests and beehives were used as weapons by catapulting them towards enemies.

A major breakthrough in military pain delivery came with the development of machinery capable of launching insect-heavy payloads. What the slingshot did for the humble rock, the catapult did for bees—and shifted the balance of entomological power in favor of the attacking forces.

European history is replete with accounts of beehives and wasp nests being used as warheads—including on the high seas as a highly effective way to clear the decks of an enemy ship. The technological high point in hive-heaving machinery emerged in the 14th century with the development of the entomological predecessor of the Gatling gun—a windmill-like device that propelled straw hives from the ends of the rapidly rotating arms.

But attacking forces weren’t the only ones employing stinging insects. European nobles assured that their bees were ready for producing honey or havoc, as the situation demanded. The interior walls of medieval castles were often equipped with recesses, termed bee boles, as homes for the six-legged troops.

READ MORE: When the CIA Learned Cats Make Bad Spies

Slowly eaten alive

Assassin bugs were used in a torturous 19th-century bug pit. 

Nasrullah Bahadur‑Khan, the 19-century Emir of Bukhara (present-day Uzbekistan), was known for his sadistic streak—and perhaps best remembered by history for what the locals called the Black Well. According to western historians, the hole was 21 feet deep, covered with an iron grate and accessible only by a rope. The Emir seeded the “Bug Pit” (as it’s known today) with insects to assure a constant, torturous experience for his victims.

The foulest of the ruler’s six-legged minions were the assassin bugs, although their eight-legged cousins, the sheep ticks, added to the torment. Assassin bugs are inch-long, carnivorous insects endowed with stout, curved beaks for piercing their prey—most often other insects. But they’ll feed on people rather than starve. The bite of these insects has been compared to being stabbed with a hot needle, and the digestive enzymes that they inject to liquefy the tissues of their prey cause festering sores in human flesh.

The Emir's jailer described how two British prisoners were slowly eaten alive as “masses of their flesh had been gnawed off their bones.” In their case, Nasrullah mercifully (in his words) ended their agony with beheading.

Buggy booby traps

Weapons of the Vietnam War (TV-PG; 1:38)

Using insects to inflict pain has continued into recent times. During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong dug a network of underground tunnels allowing them to decide when and where to fight—sometimes lobbing wasp and hornet nests into U.S. positions to disrupt defenses before launching an attack.

Pity the Americans commandoes who, sent into the subterranean passages to engage the enemy, stumbled into booby traps instead. Feeling his way through a dank passage, a “tunnel rat” might overlook a trip wire and have a load of scorpions rain down from a hidden cavity in the roof.

The Viet Cong also conscripted the Asian giant honeybee, described by tropical entomologists as “the most ferocious stinging insect on earth.” Soldiers gingerly relocated colonies to trails used by the Americans and then attached a small, explosive charge. When an enemy patrol passed by, a patiently waiting VC set off the blast. The infuriated insects drove the soldiers into dangerous disarray.

For their part, the U.S. military funded a research program to devise an apparatus to spray the Vietnamese enemy with the alarm pheromone of bees, thereby converting the local insects into fierce allies. This chemical signal functions like a cavalry bugle, inciting bees to attack. But the “weapon” was never deployed. It’s a reminder that, while these insects were just doing what they’ve evolved to do—inflict pain—humans can decide whether or not to create misery And since the dawn of time, we’ve been conscripting six-legged warriors to do our brutal bidding.

Jeffrey A. Lockwood is a professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming and the author of Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War and The Infested Mind: Why Humans Fear, Loathe, and Love Insects.

Watch a preview for "Kings of Pain," premiering Tuesday, November 12 at 10/9c on HISTORY.

from Stories - HISTORY https://ift.tt/2NDD6NC November 06, 2019 at 09:51AM

[dogmapod]

04 Los Illuminados

Hey folks, welcome to the show Dogma: A Podcast About Cults I’m your host Denis Ricardo.

This show is about cults. The origins, practices and abuses of cults. So, if you are uncomfortable with descriptions of sexual, physical and mental violence and abuse, this isn’t the show for you.

I’m gonna try to keep it light and fun, but this stuff can get kind of dark… so you’ve been warned.

Our story begins in ancient Europe, in a region that would later be known as Spain on a remote island.  existed a pagan group.

It is said that this pagan group was wiped out by another group that would later be known as the First Castellan. Both hold similar worship practices, so it is unknown if these similarities were just held because of they were both in the same region, or if it was a form of dominant syncretism.

The evidence of their similar beliefs are found on cave paintings on the island, which showed a worship of a species of bug endemic to the island.

In 1478 the Spanish Inquisition was founded by the Catholic monarchs of Spain Ferdinand II and Isabella of Castile. It was founded after the ousting of the Moorish Caliphate and the reunification of a Catholic Spain. Its job was to oust any Jews, Muslims and people accused of witchcraft and paganism from Spain.

Eventually the Inquisition made its way to this remote island and seemingly eliminated our group of pagans and installed a noble family, the Salazar family, to govern the island. The Salazars had the ancient caves sealed. However, a small group of them survive and practice in secret for the next several hundred years.

Some time in the late 1990s or early 2000s the 8th Castellan, the leader of this pagan group, came to power. He and his pagan group convinced the reigning Salazar to allow him to practice openly, eventually turning the nobleman to follow their practices. Salazar felt he should atone for the sins of his ancestors and open up the ancient caves.

Doing so released a parasite that had been growing in the cave for these hundreds of years and it seemed to infect the locals. These parasites were the same bug that were worshiped so many years ago by the pagan group, so the 8th Castellan got to work on perfecting a way to reproduce an even stronger variety.

It was an act only for the clergy of this pagan group and for Salazar to willingly be infected with this enhanced parasite, which attached itself to the nervous system of the host, altering their mood and cognitive function. The newly infected laypeople began life again as normal as possible, though many were recruited by Salazar and the Castellan to create a militia, amassing arms and creating a military base on the island.

Sometime before the fall of 2004 the US president’s daughter was kidnapped by a terrorist group that was working with the island militia as part of a plot to spread their parasite around the world in an act of bioterrorism.

A single agent working for a US anti-terrorist task force was dispatched to the island with the help of police from the mainland of Spain to rescue the president’s daughter.

It was surprising this agent was chosen, he seemed to have very little background in anti-terrorist activity, though he was involved with helping to stop a bioterror attack on his first day as a police officer. His name is Leon S. Kennedy.

He was hired afterward by the US government to work with another agent  Jack Krauser to address more bioterrorist activity in South America, though he seemed to have lost Krauser along the way.

Upon arrival to the main village on the island the US agent was attacked and the local police he came with were killed by the cultists.

Leon escaped an attack by a group of locals and makes his way to the main village. The villagers all look sick and sallow, moving mindlessly like ants. In the center is an effigy with two burning bodies, the two Spanish police that Kennedy arrived with.

He is contacted by his intel-support Ingrid Hunnigan who informs his about the village.

Kennedy attempts to make his way through the village, but is spotted. He fights off an onslaught of villagers, knows as Ganados, attacking him with pitchforks and other farm equipment including a chainsaw.

Kennedy was certain this would be his demise, but the bell of the church rings, and as if under a spell, the villagers disbanded and headed toward the church.

Things are not all well for Kennedy, though. He attempted to investigate further, but is captured and incapacitated by the chief of the village Biotores Mendez. While Kennedy is unconscious, he is injected with the very parasite that has infected the village, Las Plagas.

Kennedy regains consciousness and finds himself held captive with a man named Luis Sera. Sera was formerly a researcher of Los Illuminados.

They worked together to escape and part ways after Kennedy finds out Ashley Graham is being held in the church from Hunnigan.

Kennedy finds himself attempting to fight off Mendez, but is easily overpowered. When Kennedy believed everything to be over, he is rescued by a woman in a red dress rappelling from the roof of the house they are in. Kennedy recognizes this woman as Ada Wong.

Kennedy believed he was in the clear after this encounter, but it was just the beginning.

As he arrives to the church, he realizes that the doors are locked. He sees that there is a key that is made up of Los Illuminados insignia. He realizes that he needs to retrieve these pieces.

Retrieving the pieces is not easy, as he finds himself facings all different types of obstacles, including a giant salamander, a giant man and villagers whose heads explode and reveal at monstrous squid-like being with barbed tentacles.

Kennedy returns to the church and rescues Ashley Graham. He plans their escape but not before they are met with the leader of Los Illuminados Osmund Saddler.

Saddler reveals he has infected Graham with a Plaga in order to carry out his plan of world domination. This plan includes a convoluted plot for Ashely to infect her father with a Master Plaga so he can give Los Illuminados power and money to take over the world.

They escape and are faced with Mendez, now willing to show his true, centipede body. Kennedy corners him in a barn and sets it ablaze, killing Mendez. Kennedy and Graham head towards the island’s castle for refuge, but now without facing zealots with more transforming heads and a blinded man with claws for hands.

In the castle they are faced with Salazar, now fully integrated into Los Illuminados. The two are separated by Salazar’s traps, making things much easier for the player because they don’t have to worry about Ashley getting killed. I mean… Kennedy is furious and makes his way through the castle.

During all of this, Sera is searching for medication that will remove the Plagas from Kennedy and Graham. He catches up with Kennedy, pills in hand, but Saddler comes out of fucking nowhere and kills Sera with a gross barbed appendage that he then sucks back into his body and it all looks very phallic.

He makes his way through the castle, having to find more goddamn keys and is aided by Wong at some point. Kennedy is apprehensive to fully trust Wong because she was a double agent while he was attempting to escape Raccoon City. Despite this, they both def want to fuck.

He faces a shit ton of more zealots and even a goddam clockwork robot of Salazar, because that is a completely practical thing to have built just in case the castle is infiltrated by just one US agent.

Leon is then face-to-face with Salazar, who allows himself to be sucked in by this weird fleshy plant that transforms him into some gross hybrid plant thing. But it’s not big deal, because it’s an easy boss fight TBH and Kennedy moves forward to the military compound.

If you’re playing the Gamecube version, this is where you have to switch disks.

Kennedy has to make his way through a barrage of militia members who are also infected, and it ain’t easy. Seriously, how the fuck do you get past that guy with the minigun without dying once while you have to also solve a fucking light puzzle? Christ…

Kennedy moves forward through a kitchen and is attacked by a flaming Ganado hiding in an oven, which I swear to God, freaks me out every damn time even though I know it’s coming.

Leon is then faced by Jack Krauser, and clearly they know each other, but if this is the first time you’re playing you’re like “Um, who the fuck is this guy?” You don’t find out until like ten years later when Umbrella Chronicles comes out on the Wii, so real convenient Capcom.

Krauser is working with Wesker and whatever is left of Umbrella to get Las Plagas to work in tandem with T-Virus or something. It’s really not clear. Oh, and Ada’s also working to get this sample, so duh you couldn’t trust her. But you can definitely bone.

Krauser is defeated and Leon unceremoniously finds Ashley and the convenient radiotherapeutic device that removes Las Plaga. Why was this thing ever built? What purpose does it serve for Los Illuminados, I thought they wanted to infect everyone? It seems really counter intuitive, but whatever, you both are cured. Leon grabs a Plaga sample, probably to be destroyed or studied or something. That really isn’t ever made clear.

Leon finally confronts Saddler who transforms into this gross spider thing with with an eye for a head. And excuse me Saddler and everyone who wants to take over the world in Resident Evil, how are you going to do it when you transform into this mindless monster? I get that you have telepathy with the Plagas and other virus zombies, but it just doesn’t seem practical. And the US government has showed they are more than willing to nuke an entire town just to get rid of nasty monsters like you. But hey, boss fight, right?

Ada shows up out of nowhere again and throws Leon a rocket launcher, the deus ex machina of all Ressy games. Leon shoot Saddler and Ada steals the sample because surprise, she’s working for Wesker (or is she? IDK play the side game with Ada and you’ll find out she’s a triple agent!). It’s all very erotic between the two, even though she’s always just going to be a bad guy. She throws him a bone, by which I mean a jet ski key with a teddy bear keychain.

The island is set to blow up, so Leon and Ashley make their way down an annoying timed route to the jet ski. I alway hate these timed escapes, they just feel like a cheap way to build tension.

They get on said jet ski that escape. The game’s about to end but not before the 15-year-old child Ashely hits on Leon, saying they should try and fuck when they get back to the White House. Leon says no, which is honestly very surprising for a Japanese game, and they ride off back to mainland Spain, which is hopefully not too far away because jet skis can’t really go very far.

Now here comes the fun part, where I beg you for money. I come to you hat in hand, asking you to go to patreon.com/dogmapod and throw a few bucks my way to help support the podcast. I can’t offer much for tier rewards, but no matter what level you donate at, I will get the episodes out to you early and you can have access to the joke episodes like this one where I explore pop culture cults as well as unrelated, cult-esque articles and podcasts that don’t quite fit with the format. At higher donations I will take suggestions for cults and do an episode on those. Thank you so much if you decide to be ever so gracious. OK, now back to the show.

So ends Los Illuminados. But not Las Plagas because it’s mutated and used in Africa to infect the indigenous population and it is all vaguely racist because you’re a white guy killing all these black people. But that has nothing to do with a cult, so I’m not gonna talk about it.

Thanks again so much for listening. That was our episode about Los Illuminados. Hope you didn’t mind this joke episode, but I’m going to try and lighten the mood every once in a while with a fictional cult because real cults get depressing.

Next time, we’re going to look into a real cult that has actually committed an act of terrorism and used popular media to get young followers.

Until then, take care and goodbye.

Citations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_4?wprov=sfti1

https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Resident_Evil_4

https://www.ign.com/faqs/2005/biohazard-4-bonus-disc-game-script-ps2-674283

Song Credits:

“Frozen Jungle” “Qulques Rue Sombre” “Where You Hear the Prayer (McGuffin Theme)” “Battle Theme” and “My hobby, destroy the universe, why? (Evil character’s theme)” by Monplaisir under the name Komiku (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/)

All other music was composed by Senbongi Misao & Uchiyama Shusaku