#computer hackers for hire

[nottslove]

ON CAMERA

Pairing: hacker!theo x spy!reader 1.1k words Summary: theo nott, professional, wanted hacker, has been keeping a close eye on you, the spy hired to track him down. little do you know, the more you search, the harder the search grows— mainly because theo knows you're looking for him. after following a lead blindly, you somehow land in danger and theo, who has been watching you, calls the cops to pull you out of your risky situation. as a thank you, he expects a little show...

Warnings: 18+, smut under the cut, voyeurism, somewhat stalking, exploitation, semi-public, dirty talk, cursing, not for minors.

WATCHING you had become an obsession. That was almost all he did, day and night.

Every room, every corner of your house was monitored. At first, he tried to convince himself he was doing it because it was his job. But when he began to skip sleeping to watch you sleep, he realized it ran much deeper than just that.

You, of course, were clueless about the whole ordeal. You performed your routine as you normally did, without ever suspecting that you were being hacked, watched.

You woke up early, trained in your private training room, practiced firing shots, worked out in your personal indoor gym, went for a swim, then ate and used your computer to follow up on your latest mission.

You were supposed to find one of the most wanted hackers in the country, whose identity was a complete secret, and you were positive you had a name, and perhaps a location.

Theo was watching, a smirk plastered across his lips as you searched for him. But he was too good.

His identity had remained a secret for a long time, and would continue to remain so until he decided otherwise.

"Oh, pretty girl, you'll never find me," he crooned, a soft chuckle spilling past his lips as every link you clicked took you to a dead end.

Frustrated beyond measure, you finally decided to search a dating website for something, anything.

And then, you found someone whose profile matched the one you were looking for.

"Bingo—" you whispered victoriously, staring at the profile of a young man in his early twenties.

"Hate to break it to you, Princess, but that's not me," Theo murmured to himself, lighting a cigarette as he watched you through one of the little screens around him, zooming in on your low-cut top. "Cute top though... Nice rack you got over there..."

Your laptop screen was duplicated across his as you created your own profile for an online dating site, after you came across your suspect on the website.

He was there, reading all those messages you sent, all the flirting between you and your suspect, his blood boiling with every picture you kept attaching to keep this man interested.

And then, you agreed to meet this suspect of yours. You hadn't bothered with a wire, you were confident you could handle him on your own— with two knives strapped to one thigh and a gun strapped to the other underneath your satin minidress.

Little did you know, Theo had already bugged your phone, already gotten your every movement displayed all over his screen.

He tracked you entering the restaurant, he tracked you waiting there for hours... then, he noticed you taking the shortcut back home, walking through the park... but when he noticed you moving towards an abandoned alley on the map across his display, he instantly called the cops and gave them your exact location.

Turns out, you were wrong. Your suspect was just another suspect, and the real guy you were hunting was still out there.

This guy just turned out to be some nasty creep who faked his profile to prey on young women.

You didn't know how the cops knew your exact location, or how they found out, but whatever it was, you were grateful because the cops had arrived before the creep could hurt a single hair on your head.

And when you reached home, you entered the shower first thing, trying to relax a little, before you fell asleep, unaware that Theo had zoomed into your bedroom, so that it now covered his entire screen.

"I deserve a thank you for that, don't I, pretty?" he remarked, even though he was well aware you couldn't hear him at all, zooming in on your figure, who had just come out of the shower and was now wrapped in a tiny towel that barely covered you. "After all, I did save that pretty little ass of yours back there... Gonna give me a little show?"

As if you had heard his words, you picked out a pair of satin shorts and a matching camisole, placing it on the bed as you pranced around your room in your tiny towel.

You were unaware of his watchful gaze, observing you, unaware he was so fucking hard underneath his joggers, his ringed fingers resting on his waistband as he watched you with bated breath, his eyes dark, jealous of every tiny, water droplet that clung to your sacred skin.

After you dried your hair, you took off your towel and let it slide to the floor while you got changed.

Unfortunately for Theo, your back was towards the camera. A groan slipped past his lips when he realized he wouldn't be able to see those pretty tits of yours.

Fortunately for him, he would have a nice picture of your ass.

And when he zoomed in to your plump rear, he nearly came in his pants.

He could feel his precum stain his new boxers, a loud groan leaving his lips as he slid his joggers down, taking out his cock and fisting it, spreading the precum down the length.

He gives it a few pumps, just imagining what it would be like to bend you over the bed and fuck you from behind, pull your hair back into a ponytail and manhandle you the way he wants, because he knows you can take it.

He closes his eyes, groans spilling past his lips as he begins jerking his cock in his hand, his eyes opening when he hears a small grunt of frustration from his screen— your pajama top fell when you were about to put it on.

As you bend over, you give Theo the most beautiful view of your ass, his eyes glued to the screen as he jerks off.

"Fuck—" he hisses, pumping his hand up and down his shaft, quickening his pace as he approaches his climax. "Such a cute fuckin' ass..."

Right before you slide your shorts on, he takes a screenshot, then closes his eyes, grunts of pleasure leaving him.

His cock throbs and pulses in his hand, his rings adding a delicious friction as he slides his hand faster, not even bothering to conceal his moans.

He gasps your name as he finally climaxes, his eyes rolling to the back of his head, his lower abs clenching with the surge of pleasure that flooded through him, the thick, sticky liquid now sliding down his screen, across the screenshot of your pretty, little ass.

Not even bothering to clean his mess up, his eyes flicker over to his other screen, where you're scrolling through your phone, tucked under the sheets of your bed, completely oblivious to it all.

His head slams against his table.

"Fuck— I'm screwed..."

not proofread, wrote this in such a hurry. lmk if i missed anything.

tags: @the-sylver-dragon, @clairesblouse

profile; nav;

©nottslove 2025. do not copy, steal or claim any works/graphics as your own.

[foone]

Have you heard about the Polish Train company, Newag, and the bullshit it turns out they got up to?

So, the regional rail operator Koleje Dolnośląskie bought some Newag Impuls back in 2016 . In late 2021, some of them need to have major maintenance done, as they've been in service a while. So the company SPS (Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych) gets the contract to fix them. They basically take the train apart, replace a bunch of it, following all the rules in the documentation Newag gave them, and... it won't move. The train says everything is fine, the brakes are off, there's plenty of power, but you push the throttle up and it won't move.

SPS spends a while trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong, with no luck. So they hire some hackers from the Polish security group Dragon Sector. Dragon Sector figures out how to get into the code of the computer system that runs the train, and OH MY GOD.

So it turns out there's a secret train-lock system. If it's on, the train won't move. This will be triggered in some situations you might think are normal: the clocks are wrong, the serial numbers of the various parts have changed, and a firmware mismatch between the main computer and the power system. Now, the fact that it makes sense to not run the train in these situations until someone can check it? that doesn't extend to the fact the train uses a SECRET lock system, rather than just popping up an error message telling you what's wrong. There's also the problem that while these are all potential error problems, they can't be cleared by anyone with the technical manuals, which are supposed to cover everything about how to run these trains. Only Newag themselves can reset this system.

Which, you know, keeps SPS from properly fixing them. Only Newag can fix them now, but not because SPS lacks any technical ability, but because Newag sabotaged their own trains. But don't worry: it gets worse.

So now that Dragon Sector knows what's happening, they get to look at other trains. It turns out the trains aren't all running the same software, and there are other tricks in there.

One of them is a "how long has the train been stopped?" check. If the train hasn't hit 60 km/h in 10 days, the train locks itself and won't move until Newag can clear it. So, like, if a train is ever out of service, like it's going to a repair place... it'll break itself. Unless the repair place is owned by Newag.

But two of the trains go further: See, these trains have GPS built in, right? You may be able to guess where this is going...

THEY JUST MAKE THE TRAIN CHECK IF IT IS PARKED AT THEIR COMPETITORS' REPAIR YARD AND BREAK ITSELF IF IT WAS.

The sheer audacity of this move. This is frighteningly bullshit anti-competition self-sabotage.

This has, obviously, made some parts of the Polish government to start investigating this. Newag may be (and hopefully will be) in a lot of trouble.

For more info, there's a great video of a presentation by the three people from Dragon Sector who did the hacking, which was presented at the 37th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.

Ars Technica also has an article on it, but it predates the presentation so it doesn't have some of the later details.

Anyway, the good news is that in the end the hackers at Dragon Sector were able to unlock most of the trains: A few had additional trickery that they didn't want to hack around, because it might break the train's certification. For the others, they discovered undocumented "cheat codes" in the software that they could use to bypass the secret lockouts... presumably the same ones that Newag would have used when they "repaired" trains.

[scam-alerts]

🐝Scams to Bee Aware of on Tumblr: 🐝

(posted: 2/6/25 - Updated 2/12/25)

The art commission scam.

Are you an artist? Were you DM'd, sent an ask by a blog with no posts or little to no content, or had a comment on a post asking about a commission and to DM them? Did they ask you to draw their son, daughter, or pet? Did hey offer you $200-$500? If so, you should learn about this scam and how to avoid it.

The sugar baby/daddy scam. / Free money scam.

Did you make a post asking for donations? Did someone DM you wanting you to be their sugar baby or promising you money in exchange for something? Did they tell you that you need to send them money to verify you want to 'do this' or pay for 'shipping' or 'transaction' fees? You're about to get scammed!

The muse scam.

If you post photographs frequently, you may find your posts receiving comments from 'artists' saying how 'inspired' they are and how eager they are to make art or a mural for your work. This is a fake cheque scam and you should avoid it at all costs!

The (read more) / Click here! scam.

If you see a post ending in a link that says (read more...) or Click here! This is an attempt to get you to click a link that will lead to a malicious website in an attempt to steal your information, or possibly even install malicious files onto your phone or computer.

is Now Hiring! Scams. ✨New(ish)✨

See a post like this on your dash or in a tag you frequent? Was the user once a normal user and now they're spamming ads like this in unrelated tags? This likely means that user got their account hijacked by clicking the link via a different post. Avoid clicking links like these at all costs!

HRT Medicine / Therapy services ✨New(ish)✨

This scam is targeting transgender people, and is likely stealing peoples personal information and likely their credit card information. If you see or find a blog like the above commenting on your posts, in #transgender or other such related tags, block and report them immediately. (Selling stuff like this is illegal btw.)

Recruitment for the Illuminati.

This scam tries to recruit people into the Illuminati by offering people mass amounts of wealth, homes, and even cars. This is all an attempt to steal your money, or worse, your identity...

Recovery Scammers.

If you make a post talking about how you've lost money, be it bitcoin, crypto, or were scammed in any sort of way, you may find yourself receiving an ask from a recovery scammer. These are people claiming they can offer 'recovery services' while claiming to be 'ethical hackers' that have 'back end knowledge' to online services. Claiming they can retrieve your money, account, photos, and other such lost items. All you have to do is give them your account information and some money! :) (Do not do this, obviously.)

These scammers also target people who post in #scam and/or other related tags like #scams or #scam alert, posting things like this in the comments on peoples posts:

Dropshipping Websites. (Curtsy of @ai-art-thieves)

See a post of an object or a piece of clothing by a popular tumblr user that has 10k+ notes, does it say 'I got this here!' or '>>GET YOURS HERE<<' at the bottom with a link to a store? That user is a part of a dropshipping advertising scheme and are being paid to advertise these scummy websites. These websites are usually malicious in the manner that they sell cheaply products. In the worst case you'll get a bootleg or flawed product, or even a different product completely, or in even worse cases, you'll never get it at all.

(Or they will steal your information in the case of those shopify websites that popup online with deals you 'just can't refuse!!!' So buyer beware.)

Campaign boost/mutual aid support scams. (By @kyra45)

If you or anyone you know has posted looking for donations, and you receive an ask, DM, or even a comment about someone offering to 'assist you in boosting your account/campaign,' all you have to do is pay them <amount>, then this is a fake check scam you should definitely read up on and learn about to avoid.

Pet donation Scams. (by @kyra45)

See a post about someone needing help with a vet bill? Do they stress the pet is in peril and will die soon? Is their PayPal from the Philippines yet the vet bill is from the United states? Those are just two things to look out for with this scam.

Donation / Mutual Aid scams. (by @kyra45)

One of the most common and well known scams on tumblr to this day. These scams mainly revolve around brand new accounts made within a day or week reblogging very few posts and then suddenly asking for money via donations through PayPal. These blogs will send out the same copy/paste ask en masse to dozens if not hundreds of people, change their name frequently over the course of days if not weeks, and will even lie about being Palestinian, stealing stories from legitimate gofundmes, and even having conditions such as diabetes while not even knowing how it works.

Here is a current list of documented PayPal scammers: Part 3

-----

Some helpful blogs to follow:

@kyra45 @ai-art-thieves @u-reblogged-a-scam

Tags to follow/check if you need to check on scams:

#scam #scams #scam alert #scammer #scammers

I also have a very extensive list of scammer call out posts on my main blog, @slenbee under my #scam tag which can be found here if anyone's interested in scrolling through it. Just note that I kindly ask that minors do not follow that blog as it is my personal blog and is not a blog dedicated to scam busting/documenting.

You're 100% ok with looking through the scam tag and reblogging things from it, as well as checking out the links on my pinned post. :)

------

I think that's it for Tumblr scams, If I think I need to add more later I'll update the post and make an update note about it.

Take care everyone and don't get scammed!

-----

Check out the Index of important posts I've made!

Here's a post on some tips and tricks on spotting scam blogs.

How to guide: Reverse Image Search. (now with web extensions!)

Scammers pretending to be Palestinian v6 by @kyra45

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's a weird consequence of our societal shift from capitalism (where riches come from profits) to feudalism (where riches come from rents): increasingly, your rights to your actual property (the physical stuff you own) are trumped by corporations' metaphorical "intellectual property" claims.

That's a lot to unpack! Let's start with a quick primer on profits and rents. Capitalists invest money in buying equipment, then they pay workers wages to use that equipment to produce goods and services. Profit is the sum a capitalist takes home from this arrangement: money made from paying workers to do productive things.

Now, rents: "rent" is the money a rentier makes by owning a "factor of production": something the capitalist needs in order to make profits. Capitalists risk their capital to get profits, but rents are heavily insulated from risk.

For example: a coffee shop owner buys espresso machines, hires baristas, and rents a storefront. If they do well, the landlord can raise their rent, denying them profits and increasing rents. But! If a great new cafe opens across the street and the coffee shop owner goes broke, the landlord is in great shape, because they now have a vacant storefront they can rent, and they can charge extra for a prime location across the street from the hottest new coffee shop in town.

The "moral philosophers" that today's self-described capitalists claim to worship – Adam Smith, David Ricardo – hated rents. For them, profits were the moral way to get rich, because when capitalists chase profits, they necessarily chase the production of things that people want.

When rentiers chase rents, they do so at the expense of profits. Every dollar a capitalist pays in rent – licenses for IP, rent for a building, etc – is a dollar that can't be extracted in profit, and then reinvested in the production of more goods and services that society desires.

The "free markets" of Adam Smith weren't free from regulation, they were free from rents.

The moral philosophers' hatred of rents was really a hatred of feudalism. The industrial revolution wasn't merely (or even primarily) the triumph of new machines: rather, it was the triumph of profits over rent. For the industrial revolution to succeed, the feudal arrangement had to end. Capitalism is incompatible with hereditary lords receiving guaranteed rents from hereditary serfs who are legally obliged to work for them. Capitalism triumphed over feudalism when the serfs were turned off of the land (becoming the "free labor" who went to work in the textile mills) and the land itself was given over to sheep grazing (providing the wool for those same mills).

But that doesn't mean that the industrial revolution invented profits. Profits were to be found in feudal societies, wherever a wealthy person increased their wealth by investing in machines and hiring workers to use them. The thing that made feudalism feudal was how conflicts between rents and profits cashed out. For so long as the legal system elevated the claims of rentiers over the claims of capitalists, the society was feudal. Once the legal system gave priority to profit over rent, it became capitalist.

Capitalists hate capitalism. The engine of capitalism is insecurity. The successful capitalist is like the fastest gun in the old west: there's always a young gun out there looking to "disrupt" their fortune with a new invention, product, or organizational strategy that "creatively destroys" the successful businesses of the day and replaces them with new ones:

https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/

That's a hard way to live, with your every success serving as a blinking KICK ME sign visible to every ambitious person in the world. Precarity makes people miserable and nuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

So capitalists universally aspire to become rentiers and investors seek out companies that have a plan to extract rent. This is why Warren Buffett is so priapatic for companies with "moats and walls" – legal privileges and market structures that protect the business from competition and disruption:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-explains-moat-principle-164442359.html

Feudal rents were mostly derived from land, but even in the feudal era, the king was known to reward loyal lickspittles with rents over ideas. The "patents royal" were the legally protected right to decide who could make or do certain things: for example, you might have a patent royal over the production of silver ribbon, and anyone who wanted to make a silver ribbon would have to pay for your permission. If you chose to grant that permission exclusively to one manufacturer, then no one else could make it, and you could charge a license fee to the manufacturer that accounted for nearly all their profit.

Today, rentiers are also interested in land. Bill Gates is the country's number one landowner, and in many towns, private equity landlords are snappinig up every single family home that hits the market and converting it to a badly maintained slum:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

But the 21st Century's defining source of rent is "IP" – a controversial term that I use here to mean, "Any law or policy that allows a company to exert legal control over its competitors, critics and customers":

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

IP is in irreconcilable conflict with real property rights. Think of HP selling you a printer and wanting to decide which ink you use, or John Deere selling you a tractor and wanting to tell you who can fix it. Or, for that matter, Apple selling you a phone and dictating which software you are allowed to install on it.

Think of Unity, a company that makes tools for video-game makers, demanding a royalty from every game that is eventually sold, calling this "shared success":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Every time one of these conflicts ends with IP's triumph over real property rights, that is a notch in favor of calling the world we live in now "technofeudalist" rather than "technocapitalist":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Once you start to think of "IP" as "laws that let me control how other people use their real property," a lot of the seemingly incoherent fights over IP snap into place. This also goes a long way to explaining how otherwise sensible people can agree on expansions of IP to achieve some short-term goal, irrespective of the spillover harms from such a move. Hard cases make bad law, and hard IP cases make terrible law.

Five years ago, some anti-fascist counterdemonstrators hit on the clever idea of blaring top 40 music during neo-Nazi marches, on the theory that this would prevent Nazis from uploading videos of their marches to Youtube and other platforms, whose filters would block any footage that included copyrighted music:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

Thankfully, this didn't work, but not for lack of trying. And it might still work, if calls for beefing up video copyright filters are heeded. Cops all over the place are already blaring Taylor Swift songs and Disney tunes to prevent their interactions with the public from being uploaded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

The same thinking that causes progressives to recklessly argue in favor of upload filters also causes them to demand that web scraping be treated as a copyright crime. They think they're creating a world where AI companies can't rip off their creation to train a model; they're actually creating a world where the Internet Archive can't capture JD Vance's embarrassing old podcast appearances or newspaper editorial boards' advocacy for positions they now recant:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

It's not that Nazi marches are good, or that scraping can't be bad – it's just that advocating for the use of IP to address either is a cure that's not just worse than the disease – it's also not a cure.

A problem can be real, and still not be solvable with IP. I have enormous sympathy for gamers who rail against cheaters who use aftermarket hacks to improve their aim, see through buildings, or command other unfair advantages.

If you want to tell a stranger how they must configure their PC or console, IP ("any law that lets you control your competitors, critics or customers") is an obvious answer. But – as with other attempts to solve real problems with IP – this is a cure that is both worse than the disease, and also not a cure after all.

Back in 2002, Blizzard sued some hobbyists over a program called "bnetd." Bnetd was a program that provided a game-server you could connect to with the Blizzard games that you'd bought. It was created as an alternative to Battlenet, Blizzard's notoriously unreliable game-server software that left gamers frustrated and furious due to frequent outages:

https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

To the public, Blizzard made several arguments against bnetd. They claimed that it encouraged piracy, because – unlike the official Battlenet servers – it didn't check whether the copies of Blizzard software that connected to it had a valid license key. Gamers didn't really care about that, but they did respond to another argument: that bnetd lacked the anti-cheat checking of Battlenet.

But that wasn't what Blizzard took to the court: in court, they argued that the hobbyists who made bnetd violated copyright law. Specifically, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans "circumvention of access controls to copyrighted works." Basically, Blizzard argued that bnetd's authors violated the law because they used debuggers to examine the software they'd paid for, while it ran on their own computers, to figure out how to make a game server of their own.

Blizzard didn't sue bnetd's authors for pirating Blizzard software (they didn't – they'd paid for their copies). They didn't sue them for abetting other gamers' piracy. They certainly didn't sue them for making a cheat-friendly game-server.

Blizzard sued them for analyzing software they'd paid for, while it was running on their own computers.

Imagine if Walmart – one of the biggest book-retailers in America – had a policy that said that you could only shelve the books you bought at Walmart on shelves that you also bought at Walmart. Now imagine that Walmart successfully argued that measuring the books you bought from them and using those measurements to create your own compatible book-case violated their IP rights!

This is an outrageous triumph of IP rights over real property rights, and yet gamers vocally backed Blizzard in the early noughts, because gamers hate cheaters and because IP law is (correctly) understood as "the law that lets a company tell you how you can use your own real, physical property." Hard cases make bad law, hard IP cases make batshit law.

It's more than 20 years since bnetd, and cheating continues to serve as a Trojan horse to smuggle in batshit new IP laws. In Germany, Sony is suing the cheat-device maker Datel:

https://torrentfreak.com/sonys-ancient-lawsuit-vs-cheat-device-heads-in-right-direction-sonys-defeat-240705/

Sony argues that the Datel device – which rewrites the contents of a player's device's RAM, at the direction of that player – infringes copyright. Sony claims that the values that its programs write to your device's RAM chips are copyrighted works that it has created, and that altering that copyrighted work makes an unauthorized derivative work, which infringes its copyright.

Yes, this is batshit, and thankfully, Sony has been thwarted in court to date, but it is steaming ahead to the EU's highest court. If it succeeds, then it will open up every tool that modifies your computer at your direction to this kind of claim.

How bad can it be? Well, get this: the German publishing giant Axel Springer (owned by a monomaniacal Trumpist and Israel hardliner who has ordered journalists in his US news outlets to go easy on both) is suing Eyeo, makers of Adblock Plus, on the grounds that changing HTML to block an ad creates a "derivative work" of Axel Springer's web-pages:

https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-infringes-copyright-ancient-sony-cheat-lawsuit-may-prove-pivotal-240729/

Axel Springer's filings cite the Sony/Datel case, using it to argue that their IP rights trump your property rights, and that you can only configure your web-browser, running on your computer, which you own, in ways that it approves of.

Axel Springer's war on browsers is a particularly pernicious maneuver, because browsers are the best example we have of internet software that serves as a "user agent." "User agent" is an old-timey engineering synonym for "browser" that reflects the browser's role: to go out onto the web on your behalf and bring back things for you, which it displays in the way you prefer:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Want to block flickering GIFs to forestall photosensitive epileptic servers? Ask your user agent to find and delete them. Want to shift colors into a gamut that accounts for your color-blindness? Ask your user-agent:

https://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/15/dankam/

Want to goose the font size and contrast so you can read the sadistic grey-on-white type that young designers use in the mistaken belief that black-on-white type is "hard on the eyes"? That's what Reader Mode is for:

https://frankgroeneveld.nl/2021/08/24/most-underused-browser-feature/

The foundation of any good digital relationship is a device that works for you, not for the people who own the servers you connect to. Even if they don't plan on screwing you over by directing your user agent to attack you on their behalf right now, the very existence of a facility in your technology that causes it to betray you, by design, is a moral hazard that inevitably results in your victimization:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

"IP" ("a law that lets me control how you use your own property") is a tempting solution to every problem, but ultimately, IP ends up magnifying the power of the already powerful, in contests where your only hope of victory is having a user agent whose only loyalty is to you.

The monotonic, dangerous expansion of IP reflects the growing victory of rents over profits – income from owning things, rather than income from doing things. Everyday people may argue for IP in the belief that it will solve their immediate problems – with AI, or Nazis, or in-game cheats – but ultimately, the expansion of a law that limits how you can use your property (including your capital) to uses that don't threaten neofeudalists will doom you to technoserfdom.

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

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/#hard-cases-make-bad-copyright-law

[petrawood]

I saw someone post a tweet about how a lot of people in the Inquisition must have suspected that something was off about Solas, and out of all of them Bull knew that there was something fishy going on for SURE but the scope of the whole thing was just too big for him to have guessed exactly what was going on.

So, that made me think how the whole reveal must have been like if it actually happened in our world and oh my god it's SO ridiculous.

Btw, this is obviously OOC, but it's just. Solas makes SUCH a character oh my god.

---

Imagine you are an Interpol agent that joins the CIA for this one very important and very specific mission. Everyone knows that you work for another organization and you are a trained and highly competent agent, but the situation is so dire that the CIA is basically hiring everyone who could help.

So, there is this one very weird guy.

He wears an old hoodie and yoga pants. When asked where he came from, he tells you that he is into outdoor living, so just "outside, you know, somewhere". He has no qualifications apart from being a skilled hacker and really really really good at navigating the Deep Web. In fact, he's an expert at it, to the point of being the Deep Web specialist of the team. He walks around BAREFOOT.

He is a WEIRDO.

You assume he is just some guy probably over his head, pretty helpful but that's kinda it. You are going to keep an eye on him anyway, as you keep an eye on most people.

And suddenly, things start no adding up.

You ask him how he learned to hack into the deep web and he answers that he just likes sleeping under bridges and there is very good internet connection there, so he ended up learning. He doesn't elaborate.

For a guy that spends all his time sleeping on the floor and hunched over a computer, you notice that he is actually BUILT. You cannot tell over the oversized hoodie, but that guy has muscle. Once it comes up, he looks you in the eyes and tells you that that's just normal when you live in the outside like him.

You need somebody to pilot an helicopter. He knows how to pilot an helicopter. "Oh, I just watched a video tutorial. You know, in the Deep Web".

You need to steal some nuclear codes. "Oh I know how to cancel those nuclear codes. I found a lot of documents explaining how to do it. You know, in the Deep Web".

You need to plan a coup. "Oh yeah I know all about backstabbing politics. I found a list of all the relevant politicians and the country's corrupt history. You know, in the deep web"

You are in the middle of said backstabbing and he's slightly tipsy looking fondly at the whole thing like "oh how I missed the vibe of a nepotist state. No one throws a party like corrupted politicians- Not that I've been in one before, of course. I've only seen videos. You know, in the deep web"

He drives the other two expert hackers out of their minds. "I don't know how you managed to get this position, you don't even have a Doctorate" "Doctorates are overrated, I think you all would do better if you came to vibe under a bridge like me"

He actually is OBSESSED with overthrowing institutions.

The hackers tear him a new one because they find his Hacker Drip lacking (fair). And he smells like Cheetos.

"I made a lot of friends on the Deep Web forums"

At this point you are convinced that this guy HAS to have something else going on. There is simply NO way someone would know so many things from his deep web premium access under a bridge.

Your best bet has to be that he's another secret agent, a very highly trained one at that, right? Or maybe a highcore antifa member? He either has inside information of the CIA or he's looking for it. But he has been ridiculous helpful so far, so you just can't tell what he's hiding and why.

And then one day guy, this FUCKING guy.

He shows up and tells your Boss that he's actually the ancient god Loki from the Nordic pantheon. That he created death, but is sorry so he's actually going to join the Earth with Heaven and Hell. A lot of people would die because of the Demons and you know, Earth as it is not existing anymore, but that's a sacrifice he's willing to make.

Now tell me, how the FUCK were you supposed to guess THAT.

[wishful-thinking-is-dumb]

Platonic Yandere John Wick

John Wick x Continental Employee Reader

It was a quiet Saturday morning at the Continental, it wasn’t very busy this time of year. Besides all of the shady hitman and crime lords that stayed here periodically. Well, it was only hitmen and crime lords that stayed here due to the hotel being a neutral zone. There were dire consequences to anyone who broke the code.

You somehow found yourself employed here after you got mixed up in a bad situation. You were good with computer, and the man at the front desk thought it would be a lovely idea for you to put your skills to use.

Your job on paper is the IT department, you are the whole department. You help Winston, the older man at the front desk, with any computer issues that he might stumble upon. You help with the Wifi, cable and anything to do with electronics.

But The Continental also offers a new service to its VIP members, a resident hacker. Guests can hire you do do some freelance work for them. You’ve done a couple of jobs, hacking into emails and encrypted hardware for hitmen.

It was stressful work, and the people who hired you have made sure that you won’t be a loose end. You haven’t spoken much since you found yourself in the Underworld, but at least you have free food and a room.

You are in the lounge, trying to figure out what’s wrong with one of the lamps, it wouldn’t turn on. You are pulled from your thoughts when Winston approaches you, you stand up from where you are sitting on the carpet.

He looks over all of the wires that you have pulled from the lamp, he frowns a little. But at least you promised him that you would clean up after you were done messing around with the lamp to see if it could be saved.

“No luck?” He asks, a polite smile on his face. You shake your head slightly, glancing down at the lamp laid on the floor. He sighs a little, seemingly disappointed that the lamp was unsalvageable.

“A shame, it was an antique.” He states as he watches me start to clean up, getting all the screws and wires out of the way. You don’t reply to his comment, and he doesn’t expect you to respond either. You don’t talk much.

“Don’t worry about cleaning up, I’ll get William to do that.” He says, that smile still on his face, it never quite reaches his eyes. William is one of the bartenders in the lounge, he usually is in charge of generic upkeep in the lounge when there aren’t any guests around.

You huff as you stop cleaning up your mess, standing up and facing Winston again.

“Do you need something?” You ask him quietly, wanting to get to the point. You aren’t one for small talk. Winston sighs in mild amusement, he finds your blunt demeanor endearing.

“I do need your assistance. One of the guests requires your services.” He says in his customer service voice. You nod a little as William approaches and starts to tidy up your mess, putting the broken lamp into a garbage bag.

“I’ll go get my computer..” You mumble, walking out of the lounge and into the front lobby.

“Where are they?” You ask Winston quietly, there are a couple of people hanging around in the lobby.

“Mr. Wick is in conference room 2 on the second floor.” Winston replies, handing you your computer from where he keeps it behind the front desk. You take the computer from him and nod.

You enter the elevator in silence, you press the button for the second floor and you wait. The air in the elevator is thick, you are anxious. You hope that you don’t get a target on your back by helping this man. There is always a risk.

You exit the elevator and step out into the hallway. To turn to the right, past a couple talking to each other and into Conference Room Two.

You close the door behind you, and at the end of the long table, is a man in a black suit. It’s John Wick, what could he possibly want from you.

He nods in greeting, seemingly thrown off by how young you are. You couldn’t be more than 19, how did you get mixed up in this line of work?

You give an awkward smile, and you sit to his left at the table. You open up your computer and you turn it on. You are unnerved by the way he is looking at you.

“What do you need done?” You ask him quietly, booting up some of your hacking softwares. You glance over at him before you look back at the computer screen.

“I need you to trace this frequency.” He says, sliding you a USB drive. This will be a little difficult, tracing a frequency from an audio clip? You could be here for a while. You take the drive and you connect it to the computer, you pull the audio clip and drop it into one of your softwares.

He watches as you type away on the computer and as you compare frequencies from all over the globe.

It takes you about half an hour to tell him the rough location of the frequencies origin.

“Munich, Germany.” You mumble, turning the computer screen to him. He hums, and he hands you a large golden coin. The currency of the underworld.

“Don’t you think you’re a little young to be in this line of work?” He asks quietly, his accent Russian-American. He tilts his head a little towards you, waiting for your answer.

You shrug, looking away from him and turning the computer screen back towards you. He frowns a little at your non answer.

“I’ll talk to Winston about letting you go, you’re to young for this.” He says firmly, standing up from his chair. You close the computer and turn it off.

“I’ll be back in a couple of days, I’ll discuss this with Winston before I leave.” He pats you on the shoulder as he passes you, he leaves the conference room and closes the door behind him.

[devotedfem]

Isn't a threat a promise? - Part II

Synopsis: Where you're an assassin hired to finish the mysterious and poweful gang of seven eccentric men, but you're oblivious of how unpunishable and untouchable they were. You were bred to kill, but they were bred to rule over the mafia. They will break little by little your mind, reminding you that not even a hired assassin can beat them.

BTS OT7 x f. Reader

3.8K words.

Genre: Mafia and hitman au | Enemies to lovers | yander-ish.

Tags for this chapter: Organized crime, mafia BTS, hired assassin reader, hidden identity, fake identity and name, Bangtan breaking reader's mind slowly, panic attacks, anxiety, threats of abuse, non consensual touch, they watched and stalk reader like hawks, obsessive and yandere tendencies, power dynamic, more lies, reader's not just an assassin but an actress too. Be careful while reading, it's pretty triggering at the end.

Series masterlist.

Navigation Masterlist.

Chapters: I, II, III, IV.

SECOND BULLET II:

. . . . . . .

You stand in front of your wall, watching all the pinned photos of Bangtan with a red string connecting all of them. The string was bonding their faces with natal cities, possible families or relatives, and also, schools, universities and friends they might have in their past.

You were collecting information since yesterday. You started your investigation as soon as you got home after meeting them. You didn’t sleep at all, but lucky for you, you had some friends that were hackers and computer programmers that helped you to get more information about Bangtan’s past.

It wasn’t easy to try to discover their past, in fact, there is a big void of information about them. Just two of them had social media years ago, now inactive; belonging to Jimin and Jungkook, the others don’t have many information about them on the internet.

They were like ghosts, not that it surprises you though. It was pretty common to not find many information about the people working in this business. But even though, they usually have some kind of digital footprint, unless they faked their dead to exist as someone else, as some ghost with no past.

“What are you guys hiding that forced you to getting erased from earth,” you muttered to yourself, with your fingers on your chin and eyes narrowed at the wall.

This was becoming even more interesting than before. Not many targets of yours acted like shadows hiding their identity, that was your job. You were breed for this type of life, for lying and killing. You have no digital footprint and no real identity attached to you. You were a ghost, but so were they.

Filth lures filth. But the similarities and the challenges only made you even more excited.

The real mystery was; why were they erased from life? Why did they bother if they were just a small criminal organization, one that doesn’t have a lot of enemies.

Hiding and faking deaths were for spies only -for hitmen-, not gang members.

You bit your bottom lip watching every bit of information you have collected. Nothing about that information was certain or proved to be true, they were just assumptions.

Your phone ringing pulled you out of your thoughts, you frowned when you saw Jungkook’s name on your screen, but you answered the call anyway.

“Yes?” You didn’t even say hello, it was rude to call at three in the morning. But you were also curious of why was he calling you.

“Uhm hi, I’m-I’m sorry for calling you this late, I just… uhm, I need your help, it’s really important.” He stuttered, sounding hesitant of your reaction.

You hummed at his words, glancing at his pictured pinned to your wall.

“Sure thing, where’s the body?” You teased, hearing Jungkook’s chuckle at the other side of the phone.

“Don’t worry, I don’t need your help for that stuff,” he teased back.

You blinked, taken aback by him again.

“So…?”

There was a couple of seconds of silence between you two, until he took courage to speak up again.

“My hyungs never take me seriously, they-they believe I can’t control my emotions, that I can’t contribute with something… good. I feel like a puppy to them sometimes, although I have so much to thank Namjoon for… I still feel left out.”

You listened carefully to his blurted words, recording the call and taking mental notes of some interesting points, like him being grateful to Namjoon to the point that he thinks he owns him obedience.

And also, the supposed lack of control of his emotions.

Everything he said can be weaponized against him.

“I think I already know where’s this going. You want me to include you in my plans, am I right?”

“Please,” he whispered, with desperation written on his voice.

You grinned widely.

“All right, let’s do that.”

There was silence again, one that made you feel uncomfortable.

“You aren’t hiding something from us, right? Like your identity? I mean… everybody hides something, but faking an identity it’s just plaint betrayal.”

His tone dropped an octave. His words felt like a dangerous threat hiding underneath fake naivety. You felt shivers on your body.

“I’m real.” It’s all you said, regretting not elaborating more.

He let out a dark chuckle.

“Good, because I like you, and I don’t like liars. There’s a reason why my hyungs don’t let me… deal with people, because when I’m hurt, I can get a little bit… crazy.” He whispered lowly, but you heard his every word loud and clear.

You felt like throwing up, and you don’t know why.

“Bye Jungkook,” you were too uncomfortable and too tired to do this at three in the morning.

“Bye my little Ann, remember our little secret… deal. And don’t worry about my hyungs discovering us, I’m good at protecting what is mine.” He said it like a warn before hanging up the call.

Your heart was pounding and your hands trembled. You inhaled and exhaled sharply, trying to calm yourself down, but it was useless; you were having a panic attack.

You sat on a chair, covering tightly your ears and shutting your eyes close.

I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe I’m safe.

You mumble those words to yourself like a prayer in a loop, believing that if you say it more times and more loudly, the bad thoughts will stop tormenting you.

You had some heavy childhood traumas, but you tried to cope with them with your work and success. But things like people finding out your plans and making you feel dumb, served as trigger for your deepest insecurities.

Your Bruderherz was right, they were a difficult task. And for the first time in your life, you were doubting your skills.

Fuck Bangtan, you won’t let them outsmart you that easy.

But maybe they will; whispered that ugly and cruel voice at the back of your head.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

You weren’t feeling okay. You felt dizzy and exhausted, Jungkook’s words haunted you even in your dreams, making you unable to sleep a blink last night.

Your mind wasn’t present at all, and someone in the room noticed it.

“What are you thinking about?” Asked Yoongi scrutinizing you with narrowed eyes, his stare was fixated on you since the moment you put a foot in their mansion.

You blinked, pulled from your thoughts by his question.

“Nothing important,” you said back with a shrug.

Yoongi stands inches in front of you, looking straight into your eyes. There was a little frown in his brows, and his cat eyes glinted with inquisitiveness. He can see right throughout you, and you didn’t like that at all.

 “What?” You snapped at him, but he didn’t even flinch, unbothered by your menacing stare.

“Tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it, I want your full attention on this plan, on us.”

You widened your eyes, taken aback by his words. But his concern was unnecessary, because the source of your worry was one of his friends.

“It’s okay, don’t bother. I’ll pay more attention.” You cleared your throat, dropping your gaze on the digital map of the tactile screen from the table.

You felt fingers gripping and turning your chin towards Yoongi again. His eyes were intense, studying carefully your expression.

“Who’s bothering you? Tell me now,” he commanded with a deep frown. Impatience flashing his dark eyes.

You didn’t say anything at first, you won’t tell him that Jungkook’s been plotting behind their back, at least not now. You’re saving that piece of information for later, so you can have something to use against Jungkook and to tear their gang apart.

And also, you would never tell him about your stupid panic attacks, so you have to make up a good lie.

“It’s my dad, he’s been… insufferable lately. But I guess he’s just worry about me being far away from him.”

Yoongi didn’t say anything back, nodding slowly at your words with his arms crossed over his chest. You weren’t sure if he believed you or not.

“If I were your dad, I’d lock you up, considering how reckless you are.” He teased with a mocking smirk curling on his lips.

“I like that idea very much,” said Jimin coming from nowhere, grinning mischievous at the both of you.

You rolled playfully your eyes at him, although the uneasy feeling churning in your stomach didn’t disappear.

People sometimes tend to say truths throughout “harmless” jokes. And coming from them, you’d take seriously everything they say.

You became aware of them throwing glances at you and taking notice of your grumpy demeanor. That’s why you changed your sulking behavior, giving them your full attention and participating more in the plan.

You almost forgot the most important rule; you can’t show them insecurity, you can’t show them weakness, or they’ll eat you alive.

You shield all of your emotions and thoughts. Standing tall, making a room for you in this kind of meeting, and holding everyone’s gaze, even though you were anxious in the inside.

Your plan of getting rid of them was becoming more difficult as the days goes by, and that’s starting to worry you. You knew they wouldn’t be an easy target, and that this plan will take some time, but they’re suspecting you, watching your every move more carefully, warily.

“You’ve been acting strange all day,” Namjoon’s deep voice coming from behind you made you startle. You turned around to face him with your heart pounding in your ears.

You look up at him, holding his gaze. He was staring down at you with curiosity.

“Yeah, I noticed you all staring at me like hawks. I just had a bad day with my dad, that’s all,” you said crossing your arms over your chest, and then uncrossing them, remembering that that’s a way of showing defensiveness through your body language.

Namjoon took noticed of the movement, looking lost in thought.

“For some reason, I don’t believe you.”

He didn’t state it as an accusation but as a fact, like he genuinely believes that you’re being dishonest with him.

You were truly impressed by the sharp mind of these guys, but you won’t let them win, not now and not ever.

“I’m just… so tired of this lifestyle so to speak, and yes, I know you warned me before, but I want my dad to let me live my life for once, just for once, here, in this city.” You said biting your bottom lip in worry, averting your gaze to the side.

You mixed your real feelings with lies, because that would make your vulnerable act more credible.

Were you really tired of this lifestyle? Of fucking course, but you were more tired of not finishing their lives quickly. You want your trip to Europe so bad, to take a break from a life you didn’t ask for.

You watched him frowning at your words, with concern flashing his eyes. You noticed that he was the type of person that worries a bit too much about other people, that’s why he’s the one in charge, because he knows all too well the weight of taking responsibility for others.

“I see.” That’s all he said, with his dark gaze piercing you, trying to see right throughout you.

You noticed his gaze shifting to behind your back, and a devilish smirk curling on his lips.

“Hello there, grumpy girl,” whispered hotly someone into your ear, making you gasp and startle. You turned your head back to meet with Hoseok, he gripped your shoulders while looking into your eyes with mischievousness.

“Why don’t we bring this spoiled and absent-minded girl to Seokjin?” Said Namjoon staring piercingly at you, making you frown.

“What-“

“Shall we?” Asked Hoseok with amusement.

And before you could say anything, Namjoon gripped tightly your hand, almost dragging you towards Bangtan’s office where Seokjin was sitting in front of the desk, with all of the other members sitting comfortably on the couch. They looked at you immediately after you put a foot in their office.

“Here she is,” hummed Yoongi.

“Ann, please take a seat,” Seokjin gestured to the chair in front of the desk. You did as he said as smoothly as possible, not wanting to show them the turmoil of thoughts racing your mind.

“What’s up guys? I feel like I’m being scolded by the school’s principal,” you chuckled with a forced smile, trying to ease the tension of your shoulders and of the room.

You heard Jimin giggle at your back, but Seokjin’s poker face and tight lips made you feel even more worry.

“I- well, we noticed that you weren’t mentally present at all in the meeting.”

You couldn’t help to huff and roll your eyes at him, they were acting really dense with the topic, you have never met someone in your life that cared that much about your attention and inner conflicts.

“I already told you all why, it was just a personal issue with my dad.”

Irritation flashed Seokjin’s narrowed eyes. You supposed he didn’t like your attitude at all. But well, not only were you feeling drained by them, but your character is supposed to be a spoiled girl who doesn’t know boundaries, even with dangerous people like him. Maybe that’s why he said nothing to your rude tone.

“Yes, you say it a hundredth times. But I don’t want to talk about your dad, I can’t care less for him. I want you to fix whatever that problem is, because we need everyone in this room to be present physically and mentally at all times.”

There was a sour expression flashing Seokjin’s face, but besides that, he looked very professional, cold and composed.

They weren’t playing around with their business; you should’ve known better.

“And also… we can help you with your little problem, in fact, we’re looking forward to it.” This time, a wolfish grin curled on his lips, and his eyes glinted with intensity, fixated piercingly on you.

Your heart stopped at his words. You frowned glancing around the room to look at the members, they were staring at you like wolves circling their prey, and you didn’t like that at all. You felt trapped. But you felt even more confused as to why were they so eager to help you.

“But… why?” You muttered, looking back at Seokjin.

Seokjin’s grin widened at your question, leaning his upper body closer to you across the desk.

“Because as long as you work for us, we own you. And we took really good care of our proprieties, even if they’re temporary. We’re a very territorial group, and we like to protect each other, otherwise we wouldn’t be here alive.”

You widened your eyes and parted your mouth with genuine shock, you felt as if he had poured a bucket of cold water on you.

His tone felt possessive, they really think you belong to them. They see you as their property, according to Seokjin’s literal words. You couldn’t believe what he just said, you wanted to hysterically laugh on his face, in fact, you bit your bottom lip to stop yourself from cracking up with laughter. They were so, so funny.

“Oh, that’s really interesting. So that means you all belong to me too, temporary, of course.” You teased, feeling the confidence return to your body.

“Yes, of fucking course sweetheart,” purred Jimin from the couch, devouring you with his half-lidded gaze.

Your smile fell a little, they were so strange.

“We all belong to each other in this room, that’s why you should be careful to not betray us. You need to trust us and earn our trust; we are a really loyal group.” Remarked calmly Namjoon, as if he was talking about the weather and not about owning you like a pet.

“Well, they said that betrayal comes from the people we trust the most, and I am a simple stranger for you guys. I won’t be a disloyal rat, I get it okay? Because I’ll be in danger. Let’s move on from that topic, shall we?”

Your patience was running thin, you felt the primal need to flee from this den of wolves.

“Don’t get too cocky, you belong to us but that doesn’t mean you have power over us,” Growled Taehyung from behind you.

“Taehyung,” warned Yoongi with a frown.

The boy got up of the couch, walking away with clenched fists. You didn’t know what set him off this time. He always looks angry.

“Don’t take it personal, he’s just afraid of liking you too much,” said nonchalant Yoongi, making you feel surprised.

“You’re dismissed, Ann.”

You take happily your leave, taking notice of Jungkook smirking and winking at you before you leave the office. His gesture made you feel shivers.

You learn two important things today; 1) they took notice of everything; nothing escapes their sight. And 2) They were really, but really loyal to each other, so much that it scares you a little.

But all of that can be used on your favor, as they say; divide and rule. If you can turn them against each other, then you will have power over them.

You felt a rush of greed run your veins, the five million of dollar worth nothing in comparison to owning and stealing their legacy. You can rule Bangtan and get rid of them, killing two birds with one stone.

You just hope that they never found out who you really are, because if so, you chose to die before letting them get their crazy hands on you.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

You were yanked towards a dark room in your way to the mansion’s doors. A hand on your mouth muzzles your screams, your eyes tear up with fear when you were dragged into the room, watching another male closing and locking the door behind you, trapping the three of you inside.

“Shhh, it’s okay we just want to have a chat with you, we won’t hurt you.” You recognized Jungkook’s voice, he mouthed those words with your back glued to his front body.

“We’ll be nice only if you cooperate,” hissed Taehyung walking towards you.

You blink quickly your eyes trying to accommodate them to the darkness of the room. You spot Taehyung’s silhouette inches from your body, he looked even more threatening this closely.

You nodded slowly after seconds of uncomfortable silence. Jungkook let go of your mouth, but his arm gripped your waist instead, pushing you harder into his chest.

You gulped your fear and discomfort away. You can’t show them weakness, or they’ll eat you alive.

“What do you want from me? Wouldn’t it be easier if you asked me like normal people? This is unnecessary, even if you want me to bury a body, I would help you guys, no need for the theatrics.” You scolded with a sigh, trying to arrange your shirt down but Jungkook’s arm didn’t let you.

“You always have an answer for everything, don’t you?” Taehyung huffed with annoyance, leaning his body even closer to you, making you stiffen. “We drag you here to have a private conversation, without our hyungs.”

That spike your interest very quickly, you quirk a brow, wanting to know their intentions.

“I’m all ears,” you said, resting your back deeply into Jungkook’s front, you heard him inhale sharp.

Taehyung explained to you how he needs to participate more in your plan, and he heard from Jungkook how you will help the younger. Long story short; the both of them basically want you to include them more, like little boys wanting to have more credit to impress their hyungs. It was almost adorable.

And you will help them, but that help will come with a price.

Divide and rule.

“Glad to make business with you,” teased Taehyung after the three of you came with an agreement.

You tried to pull away from Jungkook’s grip but that boy didn’t let you go, and before you could say anything to him, Taehyung’s body brushing yours made your heart stop.

His nose was near yours, with his hot breath brushing your lips. You were trapped between the both of them, and suddenly you felt claustrophobic, like a weak prey cornered into its predator’s trap.

“Now, what do you want?” Your voice quivered, betraying you.

Although you couldn’t see their smiles, you could felt them anyway.

“We’ll give you a little show of what will happen if you try to turn us against our hyungs.” Threatened Taehyung lowly.

And then Taehyung’s body crashed against yours, making Jungkook ram into the wall behind them, dragging you with him. The both of them were glued to your back and front, making you feel asphyxiated. They were stronger, making it impossible for you to free yourself from their python grip.

You felt Jungkook’s lips kissing your neck, with his tongue lapping slowly the skin like a thirsty dog. The grip of his arm around your waist tightens painfully.

Taehyung spread your ankles apart with his foot, positioning his groin uncomfortably closer to yours, you felt his lips brushing your cheeks, melting you with desire and fear. You didn’t want this, but your body reactions were out of your control, and you hated not being in control.

“You’ll rape me? You think that will scare me?” You defy them breathless.

The both of them chuckled at your words.

“Oh, you have no idea what we’ll do, our hyungs will participate too, and believe me; they’re crazier,” mouthed Taehyung near your lips, his words made you feel shivers.

“If you get into their hands, you won’t see the light of the day ever again. You’ll be our little puppy, trained to obey us,” coed Jungkook behind you, sounding eager for that to happen.

You felt dread at their words, your worst fear was being deprived of your freedom and autonomy.

“Okay okay! I get it, let me go please,” you plead, and they stopped immediately, letting you go.

You felt your knees wobbling when Jungkook stopped holding you, like a baby dear learning to walk.

That day you got to your home with a blank gaze, ignoring your hackers’ work partners.

And when you sleep, you dream of ropes and devilish smirks, tying a leash around your neck.

You were fucked up.

Taglist:

@demonshauntingthedoves @pynkgothicka @itlover8000 @monochromaticfawn @devilzliaison @11thenightwemet11 @deluluisdasolulu @shailari @queenc22x

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Hackin'

King: i can't believe elon's grok is pretending i'm friends with him King: i need to stop that AI before everyone believes it! King: i've got to hire a hacker King: franz, you've got to help me Franz Kafka: what? me? Barker: steve, no

Kafka: i'm not a hacker King: oh i thought franz was a hacker Barker: what gave you THAT impression? King: you know, with the cat ear headphones and the striped thigh socks Barker: no steve that's something ENTIRELY different Kafka: n-no it isn't, on second thought yes I'm totally a hacker

Kafka: it means i'm a hacker, nothing else Barker: sure franz Kafka: it does! it totally means i'm a hacker! Barker: franz, go play with your blahaj plush, the adults are talking here

Barker: you know who you need? you need william gibson Barker: the best hacker money can buy King: william gibson? how do i contact him? Barker: you don't Barker: he'll contact you

King: can you really hack grok, william? William Gibson: [wearing black duster and fingerless black gloves] my hacker name is shadow gigabyte King: oh sorry Gibson: can i hack grok? listen kid i was cyberbyting the megabyte mainframe when you were just rebooting your motherboard mouse data bandwidth modem email King: wow!

Gibson: my CPU is a neural net processer, a learning computer King: wow he really sounds like he knows what he's talking about! King: that definitely sounds like hacker talk to me Gibson: CD Rom Gibson: internet Joe Hill: dad can i talk to you for a second King: not now joe daddy's hiring a hacker

Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] i'll re-index the mega bit blaster cyber codex Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] now we'll cybersecurity the lock box data center King: hey what happens if you push that button? Gibson: what the-- no!! [klaxons sound] King: what's that mean? Gibson: shit Gibson: we've got company

Gibson: sentient cyber virus electronic guard cyberbots Gibson: real high tech Gibson: state of the art in bio-tech wetware neural-data scrapers Gibson: [putting on sunglasses with red laser scope] and they ain't friendly

King: what are we going to do?! Gibson: kid, you keep your hands to yourself unless you wanna become roadkill on the information super highway!!! Gibson: hold on to your CPU (central processing unit)!!!

Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] gotta reconfigure the darkweb logistics for ethernet wavetech Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] upload the memory downloader for dumpware backup Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] uncodify the cyberpatch modifer aaaaand Gibson: i'm in

King: wow, you hacked twitter?? how did you do it? Gibson: the greatest hackers never reveal their secrets [earlier] Gibson: [wearing fake mustache] hey elon its me catturd Gibson: could you give me your password? Elon Musk: sure it's "picklerick420"!

[commodorez]

Strange question, but I'm curious. Do you have a least favourite computer?

Ohhhh, good one. I'm going to make some enemies for these, I'm sure.

Least favorite vintage computer:

Apple I

Not for any technical reasons, or anything about its history. I happen to like and respect Steve Wozniak, and everything he did in the service of computing in the 1970s. His ROM monitor known as WOZMON is only 256 bytes so it can fit into a first generation 1702A EPROM, which is damned impressive. I use the newer EWOZMON regular basis on other 6502 machines.

The Apple I exemplifies a computer that no longer exists as a computer. Rather, it's become the legendary trading card for the ultrawealthy techbro types who seek to commodify the history of the home computer revolution that they didn't bother to study. It's been reduced to no more than a static display piece, and a cornerstone of revisionist history, ignoring the larger picture.

An Apple I is considered too monetarily valuable to risk applying power to or fixing, "gotta leave it original!" with failed, leaky capacitors, doing nothing. Well if you can't use it, it ceases to be a computer because it isn't computing anything. They had almost a dozen of them at VCF West XIV, most of which were under plexiglass with a hired guard to keep an eye on them because the high price they fetch. Only one was powered up at a time under the watchful gaze of experts, handling things with museum gloves. Unlike other exhibits, these were not available to be touched or interacted with (which defeats the whole reason people enjoy vintage computer festivals).

Assuming you look beyond the hype, and get your hands on a working Apple I? It turns out to be quite underpowered and limited -- which makes sense, Woz was optimizing the shit outta his part count and budget! I wish I had his skills. It was a major technical achievement to get it to do that much with so little. It's a TV Typewriter (RIP Don Lancaster) bolted to a minimal 6502. If i had one at my disposal in the 1970s, I'd probably do like the contemporary hackers did and modify it as my budget and skills allowed. But it's 2024 and an Apple I -- you aren't allowed to do that. No, if I had an Apple I, I could sell it and buy a house with that money.

If it weren't for all that, I think I'd probably just be indifferent to it, or maybe even like it for what it is.

Least favorite general computer:

eMachines eTower 600is

What a piece of shit. I had one when it was new, running Windows ME and it was hot garbage. I could not stand this underpowered excuse for a computer after a few months when the new computer sheen wore off. Floppy drive died too soon. Didn't come with the advertised 64MB of RAM (who puts 33MB of RAM in a computer?). Hard drive was only 10GB, kept filling it up. It was filled with bloatware, the keyboard was cheap garbage. I don't begrudge my parents for buying it, they didn't know any better and I was too young to have any say in the matter. That said, it endured the shortest tenure of any computer in my house to date.

Never obsolete my ass.

[dreamescapeswriting]

Dancing In The Shadows ~ LF [MATURE WARNING]

CONTINUATION OF THIS PIECE

WORD COUNT: 5.4K

GENRE: mafia AU, hacker reader, felix technically kidnapping her, insta love (sorry but its fun to write hehe) enemies to lovers? Cute, fluffy, SMUT MINORS DNI, protected sex, public sex (kinda) links into the other stories too ehe

PAIRING: Felix X Fem!Reader

⤜Copyright: © DreamEscapesWriting - February 2024

⤜MASTERLIST

Felix sat behind his imposing mahogany desk, his eyes fixed on you as you stood before him, pulling on the sleeves of your hoodie nervously as you waited for him to say something. You were the reason for his recent financial troubles...well, not really, Felix had more money than he knew what to do with but you'd been the one with the balls big enough to steal from him. The one who had infiltrated his bank accounts with such skill and finesse that even Felix had to admire your audacity. Felix wasn't stupid though, he'd done his research before he'd "hired" you, taking you from your boss with the impression he'd bring you back but it simply wasn't true.

Once he had you he simply wasn't going to just throw you back, you were a once in a lifetime catch and he wasn't dumb enough to drop that. In the hacking world, you were simply known as Firecracker. No one knew who you were by physical appearance but the jobs you would do told people what they needed to know. 

You stole from the rich to give to the poor, a real modern-day Robin Hood. If Felix wasn't so rich he would have been pissed off at you for trying it on him.

"You've got guts, I'll give you that," He finally spoke, his gravelly voice breaking the silence and making butterflies flutter inside of you, you hated them for it. Ever since he'd taken you from work you couldn't stop the tingles in your back or the butterflies whenever he'd touch you or speak to you. 

"Hacking into my accounts takes some serious skills. I should be mad, but I'm impressed." All things he'd already told you in the office but was going back over on his own, leaning forward he studied you closely. He wanted to know more about the elusive Firecracker that no law enforcement or underworld man had been able to catch. 

"So, what? You're going to kill me now?" You'd seen the man standing outside of his office with guns, he might have promised you a job when you were at work but who was to say it wasn't just some ploy to get you to go with him.

"I gave you my word. I take that seriously," Felix said as he leaned back in his chair, a sly grin playing on his lips as he watched you. While you were faking confidence he could see the nerves seeping out of you and it impressed him more than he would have liked to admit.

"I want you to work for me," He declared, you arched an eyebrow at him. 

"You've proven yourself to be quite the asset, and I could use someone with your talents, you already stated my computer security sucks...So fix it." He turned his desktop computer around and you blinked at the screen before turning back to face the man who was watching you closely.

"And if I refuse?" It wasn't like you had much of a choice but you wanted to know the repurcations.

"Then I'll have to resort to less pleasant methods of persuasion. But trust me, you'll find it much more lucrative to be on my payroll." Kissing your teeth a little you looked back at the computer. Despite your better judgment, you found yourself intrigued by the offer. You'd never worked for anyone but yourself in the security way before, but the idea of being affiliated with one of the most powerful crime families in the city was undeniably tempting.

"I have conditions." You weren't dumb, you were going to do this with rules in place. You'd seen enough movies and read enough articles about the underworld that you had to be prepared.

"I would be surprised if you didn't." A slight smirk played on his lips as he watched you scramble to think of something but he couldn't help but think about how beautiful you were, how cute he found it whenever you'd play with the sleeves of your shirt.

"I want full access to your network. I need to know everything about your system if I'm meant to be fixing it." He nodded at you, it was his full intention to give you anything you asked for. Hell, he'd give you a house and a more stable job if that was something you wanted from him.

"Okay. What else?" He got out a notepad, ready to write down a list of everything you wanted but you just stared at him,

"Lastly. Once I've fixed it, I'm out. No strings attached." The pen in his hand stilled as he stared down at the notepad, it had never occurred to him that you would want to leave but he nodded,

"Fine. But I have a feeling you'll want to stick around." He tried to make it seem as though he was joking but you shook your head.

"Nothing will make me stay, Mr Lee." You sounded so sure of yourself and maybe you were but now that Felix had you there was no way he was going to let you go so easily.

"Hmm. We'll see." He mumbled, getting up and readying his office for you to use.

With determination and skill, you set to work. You fortified Felix's digital defences, erecting layers of encryption and implementing state-of-the-art security protocols. It was insane how poor his security was for someone who was supposed to be the best of the best. You thought you would have been working alone but Felix watched you work the whole time. You spent every night in your own room in his huge house, the two of you would eat meals together giving you time to get to know each other which was something you were feeling unsure about.

The more time you spent with him the more you wanted to leave, growing attached to someone was never an option for you and getting attached to a criminal? Never. 

But Felix found himself falling for you and hard, every day you'd work he would watch you with a mixture of fascination and admiration, impressed by your intellect and resourcefulness.

But as the days turned into weeks and your job neared completion, Felix found himself growing reluctant to let you go. He had his men ruin some of your work so that you'd stay around longer but it was getting harder and harder to do that with how good your work was. He had grown accustomed to your presence, your sharp wit and unwavering confidence a welcome distraction from the monotony of his daily life.

You pushed your chair away from his desk, smirking to yourself. You were unbelievably proud of how well you'd done your job, despite the obstacles that had been thrown in the way. 

"I've fixed your security systems, Lix," You announced, Felix's smile dropped from his lips as he stared back at you. He knew this time would be coming but he thought he would have more time than this. 

"It's time for me to move on." You stretched in the chair, your heart breaking at the thought of leaving him but you weren't going to listen to it. Felix's heart sank at the thought of losing you.

"I- I still need your help," He stuttered a little, he hated that he was stuttering but you were the one person who turned him into a nervous wreck with just one look.

"I fixed everything Lix, everything is unbreakable." You weren't going to allow yourself to stay any longer, you'd already felt yourself falling and you wanted to stop it in your tracks.

"Firecracker...Come on, you're the best of the best. I need you around," He sounded desperate but he honestly didn't care, he didn't want you to leave. Not when he was so close to you now. As soon as you were gone he'd be alone and the thought of that terrified him.

"You'll find someone who's just as good." You shrugged, you knew people who could replace you and if he really wanted you could get him their names.

"I can't let you go." He said simply as the door to his office opened,

"You promised." Your voice was strained as you realised what he was going to do.

"I'm sorry."

"You said you kept your word!" You screamed as two of his men stood at the door, holding their guns another led you to the room you'd been staying in.

"I hate you!" You screamed at the door, Felix' stared down at the floor. He knew he could get you to like him, he just needed a little more time with you.

You were trapped, despite your skills, you'd been no match for Felix and his powerful organization. Reluctantly, you resigned yourself to your fate, knowing that you were at Felix's mercy.

It had been a few weeks since Felix had taken you in, every day you were forced to spend meal times with him. You hated him but at the same time, your heart was still falling for him, despite him taking you hostage. 

"Yn, you have to speak to me eventually," Felix stated as he watched you walk away from him. You'd spent most of the meals in silence, with Felix taking the conversations and talking about his day mostly. 

"Why? You want me to be some trophy in your grasp, trophies don't speak." You mumbled. It was the first time he'd heard you speak in weeks and even though it was a mumble it was music to Felix's ears. In the dimly lit confines of the home, tension hung heavy in the air as you turned on your heels to face him.

On one hand, you hated him for taking you but on another, he had taken you away from everything you hated about the real world. You were given the freedom to explore - with an armed guard by your side. You had no bills to pay, no responsibilities, it was nice...It would have been nicer if it hadn't been against your will.

"Yn, you have to understand," He pleaded, his voice tinged with desperation as he tried to justify his actions as if that was even possible. 

"I didn't take you hostage because I wanted to. I did it because... because I couldn't bear the thought of losing you." You scoffed a little, your eyes flashing with anger as you met his gaze, your fists clenched at your sides. He was unbelievable.

"That doesn't excuse what you did," You retorted, your voice sharp with reproach. 

"You can't just kidnap someone and expect them to forgive you because you're afraid of being alone." You grumbled at him, folding your arms across your chest, you weren't just going to forgive him for kidnapping you just because he gave you some piss-poor excuse.

Felix winced at your words, the weight of his guilt pressing down on him like a suffocating blanket. He knew that he had crossed a line, and had violated the trust of the one person he cared about more than anything else in the world. Even though he'd barely known you, part of him knew the two of you were meant to be together and he wanted it to work more than anything.

But if he'd let you leave when you were supposed to, he never would have seen you again and this had been the only logical part his brain could come up with. 

"I know I messed up,"  He admitted, his voice thick with remorse, it was now or never to make it up to you. 

"And I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you, I swear. But please, just give me a chance to prove that my feelings for you are real, that I'm not just some monster trying to control your life." Your anger softened slightly at his words, your heart aching with the weight of his confession. 

"I love you...I have a shitty way of showing it but I do." You blinked at him. Love? He barely knew you. 

"Your idea of loving me is to kidnap me and force me to stay against my will?" A pang of guilt shot through his chest as he stared at you.

"I'm sorry, Yn, I know I messed up and I'll do whatever it takes to make it right, but please...Just...Just give me a chance to prove to you my feelings are genuine." You wanted to believe him more than anything in the world but it was hard when everyone in your life had used love as a weapon.

"I want to believe you, Felix," You whispered, your voice tinged with uncertainty.

"But you have to understand that trust isn't something you can just demand from someone. It has to be earned, and right now, I'm not sure if I can ever trust you." Felix's heart sank at your words, the realization of his mistakes hitting him like a freight train. 

"I'll do whatever it takes," he promised, his voice trembling a little, he was willing to do anything to get you to agree to be his. 

"I'll make things right, I swear. Just please... please don't give up on me." You stared at him, biting the inside of your cheek as you thought about it.

"I'll have conditions." If you were going to give this a real chance then you were going to do it with your own conditions and speculations.

"Anything." He breathed out, relief sounding in his voice as you finally agreed to him.

"I want to go out more. Alone." You stated plainly, that all you wanted was time alone. Time to go out without someone watching your every move.

"Anything but that." He bit off a little, his tone unsure of what to make of that. What if you ran? What if you found a way out and never came back?

"You said you want me to trust you but you won't trust me," You snapped at him angrily, the anger bubbling over and finally spilling.

"Yn-"

"That's the only thing I want. Time alone." He sighed a little and rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking back to you before nodding.

"Fine. You'll come back?" You knew running would be useless but part of you didn't even want to run.

"I promise." You whispered as he watched you, his eyes narrowing a little as if he were trying to figure out if you were lying or not.

"There's a ball coming up. A charity one, you can go shopping for a gown and accessories." He told you,

"I don't have money," With that, he handed you a black car with a smile on his lips.

"Buy yourself something nice," You stared down at the black card. Oh, you were planning on buying something nice, but it wasn't just going to be one thing.

You found yourself decked out in silk and diamonds, courtesy of Felix's card that you'd kept on you ever since you'd gotten back from your little trip. Felix carefully walked you through the grand hall and smiled as he looked around, the event was in full swing as people began to mingle with one another. But you were the only person Felix wanted to spend all night talking to. Felix escorted you through the grand ballroom, all of these things had become to the same for him over the years but he would always make sure he came to them to donate a wealthy sum before leaving.

Only tonight, he wanted to stay. He wanted to take you out on the dance floor and show you off in the stunning dress you'd worn and let everyone know that you were his.

"This place is so beautiful." You gasped out, you couldn't believe your eyes. The opulent chandeliers cast a soft glow all over the room, soft music played through the hall and people chatted among themselves. 

"You look beautiful," He whispered in your ear, smiling to himself as he looked at you. Ever since you'd walked down to him that night he hadn't been able to keep his eyes off you, not that he ever did before. Your attention slowly turned to Felix who was dressed in a tailored suit, looking as handsome as ever.

"You look handsome," You whispered, part of you wanted to hate him for keeping you hostage but after almost maxing out his card - or so you'd hoped - you were starting to feel a lot better about everything.

Felix began to navigate through the crowds of people and the more you walked the more out of place you began to feel. All of the people in attendance were wealthy and powerful people, you were a hacker who had a chance incounter with a man worth more than you could possibly think about. The further you walked the more aware you were of the curious glances and whispered rumours that were being passed around. Felix didn't even seem fazed by them as he reached for a tray of champagne and handed one of them to you.

"To a wonderful night," He cheered to you, both of you drinking from your glasses until his phone started to ring inside of his pocket, smiling weakly he pulled it out.

"Hello...Yes, this is he," He mumbled into the phone before turning to look at you, and you smirked already knowing what the phone call was about.

"200K...Hmm," He hummed as he stared at you, he had to admit he was a little impressed with how much you'd managed to spend on the card he gave to you.

"No, not to worry. That wasn't fraud, just my future wife throwing a tantrum. Alright, thank you."

"Future wife?" You giggled a little as he licked his lips slowly and shook his head at you,

"200K? What did you even buy?"

"A whole computer system, a whole new wardrobe and some diamonds." You showed him the earrings you were wearing and he couldn't help but laugh to himself.

"You didn't give me a spending limit," You shrugged it off, you expected him to get mad but Felix was quite impressed. He never thought you'd be able to spend that much in one day.

"For you? There's never a limit baby," He smirked before kissing your lips softly. For a fleeting moment, you forgot about the dangers that lurked outside the ballroom walls, or that you'd been taken hostage by Felix. You just allowed yourself to feel happy, wrapping your arms around the back of his neck and kissing him back deeper this time. 

Tonight, you weren't just some hacker girl that Felix had brought along to the ball to play Cinderella for the night and you weren't his captive. You were simply a woman lost in the enchantment of the moment, captivated by the enigmatic man at your side.

As you slowly pulled away from one another there was something different in Felix's eyes, 

"What's wrong?" You were almost scared your kiss had been bad but he shook his head at you, hesitating for a moment as he thought about what he could say to you. He wanted to let you go, to let you leave the home if that was what you truly wanted but part of him was scared you'd never come back. Taking in a deep breath he reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he cupped your cheek,

"Yn, there's something I need to tell you." Your heart skipped a beat as you stared at him, waiting for him to say something but your heart raced faster with anticipation. 

"What is it?" Your voice barely came out above a whisper as you stared at him. With a sigh, Felix searched your eyes, his gaze intense and unwavering. 

"I know that our relationship began under... unconventional circumstances," he admitted, making you smirk a little.

"But as I've come to know you, I've realized that you are so much more than just a skilled hacker. You're intelligent, brave, and fiercely independent—a woman unlike any other I've ever met." He had no idea where he was going with this, it wasn't something he'd rehearsed. But your heart was fluttering at his words, your chest swelling with warmth you'd never felt before.

"And...I find myself, drawn to you in ways I can't quite explain." Your hand slowly moved to cup his cheek and you felt how hot he was getting,

"You've become an integral part of my life. And I don't want to imagine a world without you in it."

"Felix..."

"I know I technically held you captive so...I understand if you don't want to stay with me but I needed to let you know my feelings are true." He looked at you, swallowing a lump the size of a boulder in his throat,

"But I'm going to let you go. You can leave the house, you can move out."

"Lix," You whispered, your voice trembling with emotion as you stared at him. His confession washed over you as you watched him closely, you felt the same way for him and hearing him say he was willing to let you go made you only want to stay.

"I feel the same way, I-I never wanted to...I always thought love was   just a weapon but you..." You didn't even know where to start with him.

"You care for me more than I ever thought possible." You whispered to him before Felix' blushed,

"Dance with me?" You added before he nodded, taking your hand in his.

As you swayed in each other's arms, the world around you faded into insignificance, leaving only the gentle embrace of the music and the warmth of your shared connection. Your head was rested against Felix's chest, your heart racing with a mixture of nerves and excitement. Despite the lavish surroundings and the curious glances of the other guests, you felt safe and protected in his arms, as if nothing else mattered but the two of you at that moment.

Felix held you close, his touch gentle yet possessive as you moved together in perfect harmony around the floor. With each step, he felt the weight of his past sins and regrets fall away, replaced by a sense of peace and contentment that he had never known before.

"Lix," You breathed out as you stared up at him, your eyes sparking a little as he stared down at you. In a moment of unspoken understanding, your dance slowed, your movements becoming more intimate as you gazed into each other's eyes. The soft melody continued to play, wrapping around you like a cocoon as you drew closer, your breaths mingling in the air.

With a gentle touch, he cupped your cheek, his thumb brushing against your skin as he leaned in, his lips hovering just inches from yours. your heart raced in anticipation, your eyes fluttering closed as you surrendered to the inevitable. You'd kissed before but now there felt a sudden pressure for this one.

Your lips met in a tender, electrifying kiss—a silent declaration of the feelings that had been simmering beneath the surface for so long. Time seemed to stand still as you lost yourselves in each other, the world around them fading completely as you shared a moment of pure, uncontrolled passion.

"Follow me," You breathed out, grabbing his hand in yours as you made your way through the crowds, ignoring the people who were staring and mumbling. Right now you needed Felix and you didn't have time for pleasantries as you made your way through the hall.

"Here?" He chuckles as he lifts you up onto the countertop of the bathroom you'd just dragged him inside of, your heart racing as you watch him closely.

"What if someone comes in?" He arches a brow at you before you drag him closer to you by his tie. He knew no one would come in, his men had followed him to the door and were no doubt waiting outside refusing anyone entry if they tried.

"Then they'll see we're busy and leave." You grumbled before kissing him, this time the kiss was deeper and more intense as you pushed off the blazer he was wearing onto the floor and worked on the buttons of his shirt.

"Someone's very needy." He chuckles to himself as you glare at him, you weren't in the mood for any games, you needed him and you weren't afraid to show it.

"Shut up and do something about it then,"

"Gladly." He groans, his hands rolling up your dress until he exposes your bare core and he smirks to himself,

"No panties?" He arched his brow at you and you giggled spreading your legs for him to get a better view. His eyes run down your body, his tongue darting out to wet his lip.

"You're so fucking beautiful," He groans, his hands drifting to your thighs, his knuckles catching on the edge of your pussy making you whimper.

"You take my breath away," He tells you breathlessly,

"Prove it." You demand, spreading your legs, his eyes drop to your pussy and he groans instantly falling to his knees. You were the only woman he would ever drop to his knees for like this. Having the great Lee Felix on his knees for you sent a power trip through you like no other. You grab his head as he trails his tongue along your slit making you whimper a little at him,

"Please." You plead with him, your hips bucking a little toward him as he chuckles softly sending vibrations all over your body. His tongue touches your clit, circling it, then tracing it down your centre and dipping inside of you, lapping you up hungrily. Your hands tighten in his hair, pushing his face closer to you as you grind against his tongue. Your eyes fluttered shut as your head rolled back against the mirror behind you.

"D-Dear God, Lix, please." You moan out as he removes his tongue, licking his head to look at you as he licks his lips.

"You taste like paradise," He groans before dropping his head and eating you out like a man starved, His eyes meet yours as he keeps his face buried between your thighs, your hips trying to get more friction as you cry his name out loudly.

"Felix!" You scream, his teeth gently biting on your clit as he sends you over the edge. Ecstasy washed through you as your hips shuddered beneath him, a giant smirk toyed on his lips as he got up from the floor.

"That was fucking hot," He moans out before kissing you deeply, your legs wrapped around his waist as you yanked him closer to you. The kiss was desperate, raw, filled with a need so strong you began to grind against his pants.

"You'll make a mess, firecracker," He chuckles softly before you pull away, unbuckling his belt and kicking his pants down leaving him bare in front of you. Felix was quick to reach for his wallet, grabbing a condom from the inside and rolling it onto himself as you wiggle your eyebrows at him.

"This is going to be quick," He winks at you, he could hear a commotion happening outside but you smirked at him. The two of you were at a ball filled to the brim with rich people and you wanted them to hear you getting fucked by him. 

"Lix, don't make me beg," You whine before he slams into you, holding you tightly as you groan, throwing your head back against the mirror so hard you were afraid it was going to break. You scream his name out as he pulls back and thrusts into you again, your legs wrapped around his waist as you bring him closer to him.

"Felix!" You cry out as the door handle jiggles, making you giggle as Felix chuckles to himself.

"Felix! Is that you?!" A man yelled from outside the door, you whimpered a little but Felix only continued to plow in and out of you.

"I'm busy fucking my girl, we'll be out soon!" He calls out before slamming into you again, your head rolling back as your hips bucked toward him. You dig your heels into his ass urging him on and his hand presses onto the mirror behind you, the other on your hips as he fucks you. His thrusts wild and hard as he groans your name out.

"L-Lix." You moan out as he continues to drive into you, your hands digging into his shoulders as you yank him closer to you, your release drawing closer as you cry out his name.

"I've got you, you can come, firecracker," He moans out, reaching his hand down and rubbing your clit roughly. Your release rushes over you unexpectedly as you cry out his name loudly, whimpering and bucking uncontrollably. Felix chuckles to himself, completely in love with the way you come undone around him but he doesn't stop.

He continues to fuck into you, one leg over his shoulder as he hits you at a different angle,

"G-God, YES!" You cry out as he smirks to himself, his fingers rubbing your clit as you whimper his name out, your third orgasm of the night already fast approaching as you whimper his name again and again.

"Come for me, firecracker. One last time," He grunts, thrusting harder as you cry out his name, your stomach clenching as you cum around him once again, clenching so tightly you send him over the edge and he spills into the condom.

The two of you stay like that for a few seconds until Felix carefully lowers your leg down and leans his forehead against yours, panting heavily as you let out a tiny giggle.

"Think people will stare when we go out there?" You leaned back against the mirror and watched as Felix smirked and nodded.

"Who cares?" He chuckled before slowly dressing himself. A loud banging sounded on the door as you rolled your eyes, someone was clearly desperate for the toilet or for Felix's attention and you hated them for it.

"I've got info for you!" Someone yelled from outside the door as Felix stuffs himself back into his trousers, did himself up and checked that you were dressed before opening the door he wasn't going to risk anyone but him seeing you.

"Minho," Felix greets with a smirk on his lips, the man glances in your direction before looking over his shoulder.

"Kitten, take Felix's date to the girls for a chat. The men need to talk business." You glanced at Felix to make sure it was okay first and he nodded, kissing your cheek quickly before you ran off with the woman Minho had spoken to.

The girls you'd been standing with were all so friendly and each of them had been telling you about their dates, you since learnt that all of them were with a criminal madman which had made you feel a lot better about yourself and Felix.

"I hate you," You grumbled, jokingly as Felix stood behind you, his lips brushing against the skin on your neck making your body shiver. The bathroom sex wasn't enough, you wanted to go back home and fuck until you saw the morning sun,

"I hate you more, my little firecracker" Felix smirked down at you before you swatted his hands away from you, but he successfully managed to get his hands around your waist and he smirked.

"Excuse us, ladies but we have some making up to go and do." Felix chuckled before dragging you away without a second to even say goodbye to them all.

"Hey I was having fun, who knows when I'll see them again?" You pouted a little, but Felix spun you around and pulled you into a tight embrace.

"You'll see them at our wedding no doubt." He shrugs as if it was the most casual thing in the world for him to say and you roll your eyes at him,

"You're that sure I'll marry you?" You quipped, he was. In fact, he was willing to put money on it.

"I'm sure I can convince you after a few more orgasms," He winks before you shove against his chest and make your way out to a car.

@chiisaiblog @sw33tnight @kaitieskidmore97 @laylasbunbunny @stayconnecteed @saymyspringrain @toplinehyunjin @katnisspeetaprim @acciocriativity @just-aelia @choisoorin @straykids5star @midnightfrog625 @beccaskz @scarletemeterio @halesandy @junhannies @gothic4under4lord @lixie-phoria @soulphoenix1618 @aerastus @jin-from-the-block @lensfilm @elizaschuyler18 @piratequeen-impact @kpopsstuffs @chaeyoungs @delulu18 @xyahrinx @katsukis1wife @anthropologymajorkpopmultistan @blairscott @4-chan-inpadella @niktwazny303 @moonlight-the-writer @armystay89 @hadassahchan @yxngbxkkie @myyouthdonut @extrhotjne @ca11me3mily @elissasimp

[seikkoi]

ᴄᴏᴍᴍɪᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ | natasha romanoff x hacker!reader

18+ minors DNI

warnings: mentions of alcohol, arguing, harsh language, explicit s*xual content

genre: angst, a lil fluff, a lil sm*t

word count: 2,060

a/n: reader is gender-neutral

You've spent far too long trying to be more than just a warm bed for the infamous Black Widow.

Oh, Natasha’s a poison alright.

An intoxicating, slow moving poison that captures everything it encounters. Her recent favor of the season’s no exception- hooked on something that kills you. 

It’s not like Nat physically hurt, not at all. The problem was quite the opposite. Nat provided you near limitless pleasure at one cost-it’d never be love. That hurt worse than any physical pain the poor woman could imagine. The nights in the Black Widow’s bed would continue to stagger so long as that was understood.

You would never be Nat’s- no matter how much you wanted to be.

Despite her making this quite clear when you first expressed your interest, you couldn’t help longing for it. You’d had been her mission half a year ago, and quite the challenging one indeed. A propensity for computers coupled with a shitty moral compass led you to a lifetime of digital crime. The ante only seemed to raise every year, the stakes rising alongside the payment. You were good enough to get a job going after SHIELD, but not good enough to actually succeed. The client was pissed, and money was lost, but you shook it off.

When you awoke to the barrel of a gun and cold, beautiful eyes, you realized you didn’t cover your tracks well enough, either. 

Thankfully, Fury was more interested in hiring you than killing you. 

You hadn't been more than twenty four hours away from her since that day. At first, not intentionally. The next night, Nat took you out for drinks- mostly to make you feel less like a target. 

It’d turned out that you two had great chemistry- talking the night away until it bleeded into the morning. She spoke about the Red Room, and how the Avengers gave her a second chance. It helped you feel better about your own morally gray life. 

Many, many drinks and swapped secrets later, and your hands are full of red hair, mouth absorbed in the same woman who might’ve killed you a day ago. While your eyes are fluttering, Natasha’s hands disappear behind your pants, telling you how happy she is that you decided to join them. 

Maybe it’s because she doesn’t leave in the morning, or because she invited you over again that night, but you thought it meant something. To make matters worse, Natasha seldom held anything back from you- the good, the bad, or the ugly. You were the same, sharing parts of your life that made you see your relationship as more than just a consistent hookup or even friends. 

About a month and a half in, Natasha frustrately picked the lock to your apartment after waiting twenty minutes for you to answer. She walked into your bedroom to find you typing away at lit-up monitors, absorbed in your work, headphones muffling any phone calls or impatient knocks. 

You flinched at the sudden removal of your headphones, gazing up to an angry scowl. To her dismay, this wasn’t the first time you’d gotten lost in your work and forgot she was coming by. The assassin was adamant that if you just gave her a key, this wouldn’t happen. You playfully joked that giving her a key would denote commitment. The red-haired woman laughed at the suggestion to the tune of your heart cracking.

In all the nights and weekends following, Natasha would continue to do things that left you feeling insane. Her actions said one thing, yet she always made it clear that this was never, and would never be a relationship. After a while, it started to feel like she just didn’t want to be committed to you, specifically. You worried if there was something wrong about the idea of being in a public, loving relationship with you- as opposed to just someone she fucked. 

Tonight, like most nights, she’d let herself in after a particularly tiring day. Frustration and resentment boiled at the sound of her footsteps. She laid on your bed, illuminated only by lines of code, waiting for you to finish whatever new encryption Fury requested. Tonight, like most nights, you stared at the screen as swallowed down your hopeless pining with a fifth of whiskey. 

Despite any ignored feelings, you relished in Nat’s company, speeding up your work to get into her arms sooner. You loved that she was comfortable with you, hearing her get up and head for the shower. Yet, the bitter, angry part of you hated that she would never love you in spite of any trust or comfort. 

You listen to Nat return and open one of your dresser drawers full of her clothing to change (strictly for convenience, of course). Eyes still trained on your work, you return the kiss she graces on your cheek as she pours herself a glass as well. 

When you turn your chair to Nat, she’s looking at you with one of those smiles that makes your stomach turn into butterflies. You take a second to admire her relaxed appearance, hair down and messy, in baggy, out-of-date clothing. It’s easy for her to make you forget you were ever upset.

You must have been staring too long, because Nat crosses the distance between you two. Before you can ask her how her day was, she straddles you in the chair, pulling you in for a deep, long kiss. Your hands find their way to her waist, pulling in her closer and sucking at her bottom lip. 

Natasha’s hands cup your face gently, sighing into you. It’s not long before your kisses grow more hungry and passionate, hands traveling and caressing every inch you can. When she breaks the kiss, you’re completely intoxicated once again- dazed and longing for me. 

“Hello to you, too,” she says, with cloudy eyes and a small grin.

“You started it.”, you reply distractedly, dancing your fingers along the waistband of her shorts. 

Natasha gets distracted herself, by the program still running on your computer screens. 

“You know,” she starts, running her hands through your hair. “I never understand what it is you do.”

You can’t hold back a laugh as you push your hand past the elastic, fingers pushing against the soft fabric of her underwear. Natasha lets out a quiet moan while her head droops back to your neck. 

“I’m serious,” Natasha lamints. Her breath hitches when you pull her underwear away with your free hand, sliding your index finger into her entrance. “I want t-I wanna understand all of this.”

You are much too concentrated on eliciting more raspy breaths from the enamoring woman on top of you. You pump your finger into her with tender, slow strokes, feeling her wetness pool at your hand. Natasha softly whines your name into your neck, causing you to groan as you add another digit. 

“Didn’t think you cared all that much,” It’s an honest admission, one that give without much thought. You speed up your fingers, curving against her walls right where you knew she needed it. Your own breathing becomes erratic, caught up in the way Natasha clings to you. 

Russian curses come out short and heavy the moment your thumb brushes her clit. You grip her hip to keep her place, and more pleas of your name follow suit. It was the moments like these, when you knew that you were all she wanted, that made everything else worth it. 

“I do care.”, she manages between moans. 

The cracks in your heart start to come undone once more, taking you out of your lustful daze. For what was the 100th time in months, you had to tell yourself she didn’t mean a damn thing by that- she cared about you as much as the next person did, nothing more. 

You ignore her and pick up your pace even further. The all-too familiar shudder of her body, accompanied by the velvety, strained moans from her mouth, told you that she was close. You quickly become reabsorbed in giving her as much ecstasy as you could. Natasha’s hands in your hair pull tighter as she gets lost in her own pleasure, forcing your gaze slightly up.

Her eyes are squeezed shut, mouth in an open gasp, burrowed against you like a lifeline. A moan of your own escapes at the sight. You think you could die just like this, with this perfect image of the most perfect woman. 

Right as you’re certain she’s about to reach her peak, you draw circles on her throbbing clit, watching her body twitch. 

“I love you,” Natasha’s words pass through your quiet and broken ears as she climaxes. 

It sets you into shock, making you think you imagined it. In the few seconds that follow, neither of you speak, as Natasha regains her breathing and you stare at the ceiling, pissed off again and confused. 

You feel Natasha shift, eyes making their way to your confused face. 

“I-”, she starts to stutter, to which you roll your eyes and push her gently off your lap.

As you start to head for your bedroom door, her hands wrap around your forearm, yanking you back. 

“What the fuck, Nat?” You rip your arm away from her, even more shocked by her aggression towards you.

The assassin simply stands, still stuttering over what to say. That only becomes the final straw for you. 

“Get the hell out, now.” You swing the bedroom door open as you speak. All you wanted for months was to hear those words. Now, all you could taste was poison. She’d broken your heart time and time again. You’d spent so long learning to handle loving someone who’d never love you back. To suddenly act like she ever gave a damn after all that was insulting. Even if she meant it, how long did she really mean it for?

“You don’t mean that.” She has the audacity to sound hurt. 

“Yeah, I do, leave. I’m not gonna let you keep doing this to me.”

“Doing what to you? I’m telling you that I care-”

“Oh suddenly now you care! After how many months of me begging for you to feel the same, now that I’m finally getting over it, you care?”, you shout as you cross the room towards her. 

“I always fucking cared!”, she yells back, and you notice the tears brimming in her eyes, fists balled at her side. In all this time, you’d only seen Nat cry twice. Once, when talking about Yelena. The other when Clint lost his family. To be crying now because of you, felt like hell.

You immediately soften when you notice, tears of your own forming. You’re left in speechless shock yet again at her words.

“Then why say the opposite for so long?”, you ask, voice hoarse.

“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Everything good in my life goes away. I didn’t want to ruin this.”, she goes quiet herself, staring at the floor. 

“You didn’t think telling me over and over again that we aren’t anything would make me go away?” 

“You’re still here, aren't you?” Natasha gives you a shy smile when she speaks. It’s true- you were too addicted to Nat to let her go. Even just a minute ago when you told her to leave, you knew you’d be following after her. 

“Honestly, I don’t know why. You made it clear how you feel.” She could joke about it all she wanted, you were still hurt and replaying months of rejection in your head. 

“I’m trying to tell you I didn’t mean it, please.” The remaining space between you is closed while she takes your hands in hers. Her gaze locks onto yours, staring into teary, green eyes. 

“I love you, that is the truth. I promise.” It’s never a challenge for Nat to break your resolve. Especially when you've been dreaming to hear the spy say that. 

“How do I know you mean it? That you're not ‘gonna change your mind?” 

You feel her thumbs graze over hand, a mischievous glint forming in her eyes. When your confusion grows, Natasha drops to her knees before you. As she lowers herself to the floor, she places kisses along your hands before moving to tug at your jeans. Whatever mixed feelings you still had, flew out of the door. 

“Let me show you how much I love you.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tech’s benevolent-dictator-for-life to authoritarian pipeline

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/10/bdfl/#high-on-your-own-supply

Silicon Valley's "authoritarian turn" is hard to miss: tech bosses have come out for autocrats like Trump, Orban, Milei, Bolsonaro, et al, and want to turn San Francisco into a militia-patrolled apartheid state operated for the benefit of tech bros:

https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat

Smart people have written well about what this means, and have gotten me thinking, too:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/why-did-silicon-valley-turn-right

Regular readers will know that I make a kind of hobby of collecting definitions of right-wing thought:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism

One of these – a hoary old cliche – is that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged." I don't give this one much credence, but it takes on an interesting sheen when combined with this anonymous gem: "Conservatives say they long for the simpler times of their childhood, but what they miss is that the reason they lived simpler lives back then wasn't that the times were simpler; rather, it's because they were children."

If you're a tech founder who once lived in a world where your workers were also your pals and didn't shout at you about labor relations, perhaps that's not because workers got "woke," but rather, because when you were all scrapping at a startup, you were all on an equal footing and there weren't any labor relations to speak of. And if you're a once-right-on tech founder who used to abstractly favor "social justice" but now find yourself beset by people demanding that you confront your privilege, perhaps what's changed isn't those people, but rather the amount of privilege you have.

In other words, "a reactionary tech boss is a liberal tech boss who hired a bunch of pals only to have them turn around and start a union." And also: "Tech founders say things were simpler when they were running startups, but what they miss is that the reason no one asked their startup to seriously engage with the social harms it caused is the because the startup was largely irrelevant to society, while the large company it turned into is destroying millions of peoples' lives today."

The oft-repeated reactionary excuse that "I didn't leave the progressive movement, they left me," can be both technically true and also profoundly wrong: if progressives in your circle never bothered you about your commercial affairs, perhaps that's because those affairs didn't matter when you were grinding out code in your hacker house, but they matter a lot now that you have millions of users and thousands of employees.

I've been in tech circles since before the dawn of the dotcoms; I was part of a movement of people who would come over to your house with a stack of floppies and install TCP/IP and PPP networking software on your computer and show you how to connect to a BBS or ISP, because we wanted everyone to have as much fun as we were having.

Some of us channeled that excitement into starting companies that let people get online, create digital presences of their own, and connect with other people. Some of us were more .ORG than .COM and gave our lives over to activism and nonprofits, missing out on the stock options and big paydays. But even though we ended up in different places, we mostly started in the same place, as spittle-flecked, excited kids talking a mile a minute about how cool this internet thing would be and helping you, a normie, jump into it.

Many of my peers from the .ORG and .COM worlds went on to set up institutions – both companies and nonprofits – that have since grown to be critical pieces of internet infrastructure: classified ad platforms, online encyclopedias, CMSes and personal publishing services, critical free/open source projects, standards bodies, server-to-server utilities, and more.

These all started out as benevolent autocracies: personal projects started by people who pitched in to help their virtual neighbors with the new, digital problems we were all facing. These good people, with good impulses, did good: their projects filled an important need, and grew, and grew, and became structurally important to the digital world. What started off as "Our pal's project that we all pitch in on," became, "Our pal's important mission that we help with, but that also has paid staff and important stakeholders, which they oversee as 'benevolent dictator for life.'"

Which was fine. The people who kicked off these projects had nurtured them all the way from a napkin doodle to infrastructure. They understood them better than anyone else, had sacrificed much for them, and it made sense for them to be installed as stewards.

But what they did next, how they used their powers as "BFDLs," made a huge difference. Because we are all imperfect, we are all capable of rationalizing our way into bad choices, we are all riven with insecurities that can push us to do things we later regret. When our actions are checked – by our peers' social approval or approbation; by the need to keep our volunteers happy; by the possibility of a mass exodus of our users or a fork of our code – these imperfections are balanced by consequences.

Dictators aren't necessarily any more prone to these lapses in judgment than anyone else. Benevolent dictators actually exist, people who only retain power because they genuinely want to use that power for good. Those people aren't more likely to fly off the handle or talk themselves into bad places than you or me – but to be a dictator (benevolent or otherwise) is to exist without the consequences that prevent you from giving in to those impulses. Worse: if you are the dictator – again, benevolent or otherwise – of a big, structurally important company or nonprofit that millions of people rely on, the consequences of these lapses are extremely consequential.

This is how BDFL arrangements turn sour: by removing themselves from formal constraint, the people whose screwups matter the most end up with the fewest guardrails to prevent themselves from screwing up.

No wonder people who set out to do good, to help others find safe and satisfying digital homes online, find themselves feeling furious and beset. Given those feelings, can we really be surprised when "benevolent" dictators discover that they have sympathy for real-world autocrats whose core ethos is, "I know what needs to be done and I could do it, if only the rest of you would stop nagging me about petty bullshit that you just made up 10 minutes ago but now insist is the most important thing in the world?"

That all said, it's interesting to look at the process by which some BDFLs transitioned to community-run projects with checks and balances. I often think about how Wikipedia's BDFL, the self-avowed libertarian Jimmy Wales, decided (correctly, and to his everlasting credit), that the project he raised from a weird idea into a world-historic phenomenon should not be ruled over by one guy, not even him.

(Jimmy is one of those libertarians who believes that we don't need governments to make us be kind and take care of one another because he is kind and takes care of other people – see also John Gilmore and Penn Jillette:)

https://www.cracked.com/article_40871_penn-jillette-wants-to-talk-it-all-out.html

Jimmy's handover to the Wikimedia Foundation gives me hope for our other BDFLs. He's proof that you can find yourself in the hotseat without being so overwhelmed with personal grievance that you find yourself in sympathy with actual fascists, but rather, have the maturity and self-awareness to know that the reason people are demanding so much of you is that you have – deliberately and with great effort – created a situation in which you owe the world a superhuman degree of care and attention, and the only way to resolve that situation equitably and secure your own posterity is to share that power around, not demand that you be allowed to wield it without reproach.

[arotheosis]

It’s all Whirred Up (NSBU Swap AU concept)

Essentially I started thinking about what it might be like if the action heroes were the ones in the real world, and the video world characters were the action heroes. I tried my best to switch things up so it feels different enough, although I’m still a little unsure about some character roles.

Will I ever actually sit down and write this properly? Who knows

In an old strip mall in Lake Elsinore sits one of the last remaining video rental stores in the country: Slater’s Video Superstore.

With the rise of streaming and digital media, however, the store is on its last legs. Its last week in fact, and its employees prepare to close down and find a new road to take in life.

Steven “King” Skin is a Princeton student with a bright future in politics. He’s nearing the end of his gap year, and wondering whether he really wants to go back to school after all. He works on the finances of the video store.

As he almost mindlessly balances the the store’s financial spreadsheets, he watches on one of the video store screens: Liv Skyler, master thief. Her name is whispered amongst criminal circles like a legend, because she can steal without even leaving a single trace behind.

Victor Ethanol is a young man with a dream of pursuing Formula 1 racing, but working several odd jobs to provide for his family. He does occasional maintanance/ plumbing work for the businesses in the strip mall, including the video store, which he visits frequently.

Trying to get him to take a break from working so hard, his brother Shaun asks if he wants to watch a movie. The movie’s protagonist? One Wendell Morris, former biker gang member who has become an informant for several underground organizations. He’s the black sheep of the Morris family, and their falling out is shrouded in mystery.

G13 is a young hacker who got caught attempting to access classified files, and was sentenced to community service. He’s supposed to be cleaning trash around the strip mall, but he mostly stays inside the video store using the crusty old public computer they have, since he’s no longer allowed to use any at home.

While attempting to bypass the many blocks on that ancient desktop computer, he sees a trailer for an old movie. It depicts Usha Rao, more commonly known by both her allies and enemies as Grandmother. She’s the head of a widespread criminal organization, and despite her sweet seeming appearance is someone to be feared. She’s been alive longer than anyone knows, she’s seen everything and knows everything, so if you mess with her family you cannot escape her wrath.

Working over by the more adult section of the store, is Jack Manhattan. After suffering through a grueling divorce with his wife and losing custody of his two children, his life is essentially at a standstill. He is very vocal about how much he prefers not being tied down, and talks about having many partners, but it’s clear that in reality he is not dealing with the separation well and is very lonely.

Unable to even look at the more unsavory content in front of him without thinking about the love he lost, he switches the channel only to see a movie starring crime investigator Paula Donvalson. While many overlook her based on her wild and sporadic personality, the crazy deductions she makes are more often than not entirely on the money, and the FBI begrudgingly hires her for many of their cases.

Jennifer Drips is a woman who does not stay in one place for far too long. Drifting quickly from town to town, she never sets up roots, but leaves a trail of lovers behind her. She is currently staying in a crappy apartment near Lake Elsinore, and working at the video store for some extra cash before she moves on.

On a screen behind her as she’s packing up the store’s inventory, plays a movie led by Russel Feelds, a mechanic developing gadgets for every organization under the sun. A self described lone wolf, he has no loyalty to any side, as long as you can pay his prices.

Greg Stocks is a wealthy man who owns nearly every storefront in the strip mall, except for the video store. He heads in every day attempting to make an offer that Slater will accept, but even as the store is close to shutting down, the video store owner remains stubborn.

Walking by the front of the store he sees, on one of the display TVs, a film about a man known only as Dang. Dang is the world’s deadliest assassin, and his methods are all just as strange as the man himself. After every kill he leaves behind his calling card, the word “rashab”. No one has deciphered its meaning yet.

[mathysphere]

Hey, so, this post here-- by @hadeelfamily, a woman trying to evacuate her family from Palestine-- is real. She is who she says she is. I'm certain of it.

I've donated myself, and will donate more; for the rest of the year-- or until their need is met-- one half of everything I get selling cross-stitch patterns will go to Hadeel Mikki and her family.

If you would like to see my research and reasons to be certain, it's after the cut.

The fundraiser is for a woman named Hadeel Mikki and her family-- her husband, two daughters, her mother, and her two brothers-- and includes two photos of her:

A search for her name brings up a long internet trail: as a programmer and former computer science major, Hadeel Mikki's been active online, and when she's posting about work stuff-- mostly web and app development-- Hadeel uses her real name and photo.

I found six different accounts, all using the same name, and all featuring photos of the same woman-- not all identical photos, but separate photos of the same person-- and all with activity dating back at least a year or more.

I've looked over the activity for each, and I do not believe there's any chance that they aren't legitimate.

Two of them are static freelancer websites, and another is an abandoned Pinterest account: the info there matches the others, but there's nothing current. On the other three (LinkedIn, Threads, and TikTok) the most recent posts are all variations on the same theme: "Please help my family. My young daughters are suffering. Please donate to help get us out of Gaza."

They're certifiably real accounts, and they link to the same GoFundMe. Is it possible that either her LinkedIn or Threads or TikTok account could have been hacked and hijacked into posting a scam fundraiser? I guess. But not all three, and not with the ability to post new photos and videos of her kids-- how would a hacker even get footage of a hackee's daughters in war-torn Gaza? You can't just hire some child actors. They need to match the kids from the family portrait.

This is not a scammer using someone else's name and photos, and this isn't an opportunistic hacker who managed to break in and hijack an account: this is a real woman trying to save her family.

I've looked through everything, and am myself convinced. I'll include summaries and screenshots of each account, along with the links if you'd like to check them out yourself.

On LinkedIn: profile from 2015, photo updated a year ago, liked and commented on various tech posts. Shared her GoFundMe four months ago.

On Threads: icon is her and her husband, shares programming content, "#ProgrammersCoffee" etc, and four months ago she shares a link to her GoFundMe. She has the same laptop as me.

On TikTok: early videos are about programming and app development, and the current ones are asking for help for her daughters, including photos and videos of the girls both before the war and now.

On Pinterest: nothing really there. Looks like she tried it out a long time ago and then dropped it. Still links to her long-defunct Google Plus account, even.

Five years ago she did have a board called 'Boyfriend gifts'. Must've gone well for her; they're married now.

[tf2occontest]

Hacker VS Ágatha, the Nurse

(Full matchup list here)

Alright team, here's a recap: This is a contest to determine who amongst you will take the top of the leaderboards and be hired at TFI! Simply put, whoever gets the most votes gets to move on, and whoever doesn't... Well. They'll be put down swiftly and cleanly. :}

So, mann your stations, because here are your next contestants! Vote for your favorite mercenary who you want to win the TF2 OC Contest! - P

OC INFO UNDER THE CUT!

We highly encourage you to take a peek to make your decision!

Hacker

@heavymedicshackerwife

Image credit: @/heavymedicshackerwife

Lisbeth Lovelace- "The Hacker"- was a genius codebreaker who worked on the Colossus computers and helped with breaking enigma in the 1940s. She was cryrogenically frozen in 1947 after accidentally committing regicide, and the Hacker was defrosted in 1969 to help MANN corp fight Grey Mann's robots. She's a whizz at computers, has an Oxford degree in maths, and ALWAYS stops at 4pm exactly for tea. Although she's about 22 years behind on everything, she's got a sharp wit, and can usually be seen being pocketed by Heavy or Medic whilst flying her drone at either the enemy team or Spy. She's the world's first cyber-criminal and proud of it!

Ágatha, the Nurse

@arts-of-gjb

Image credit: @/arts-of-gjb

Ágatha is a young brazilian girl from Salvador, Bahia (Brazil). She is very friendly and energetic, but also have a deep taste for medical experiments and doesn't mind seing blood for the most of the time, traces that were noticed and encouraged by her uncle, Medic. He started to bring her once she made 10 so he could teach her all he know. Inside the battlefields, Ágatha asumes The Nurse title, The nurse class in unable to capture control points, move payloads, grab inteligences or even cause directly cause damadge to others players, because her only objectives as part of the team are:

To assist, by curing her team. different of Medic, the nurse does not have a medigun to that, so she fulfills this task by being able to grab the medikits (or other healing iten disponible on the ground) and then give them to your teamates

To anoy, by shooting small injections on the rivals. as said before, they wont make any damadge, however, they will "stop" the player for a few secconds (the same way that when you're hit by a christmas glove from heavy, but it should make a pain animation than a laught one, and would work if hit in any body part).

Once her hp reaches 0, the nurse would enter in a "sleeping mode", where you get unable to do anything. If no one does anything with you when youre like this for a couple of seconds, then you wake up with half of your total hp, but if someone from the opposite team pick you up and leave you to a specifc location, then you are teleported to your respaw base, where you get unable to go out for a minute (be grounded time >:I )

A vote for Ágatha is a vote for Red team, Medic, Brasil and nepotism!!!!!!!

[mariacallous]

Although Elon Musk has said that he is largely exiting his role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), at least three of his early operatives and key lieutenants throughout his government takeover have recently become full-time government employees.

Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, and Ethan Shaotran’s employment designations at the General Services Administration (GSA) have been officially converted to full-time from the restricted special government employee classification that limited their time in government to a period of 130 days, according to documentation viewed by WIRED.

Coristine, who has gone by “Big Balls” online and previously worked for a telecommunications firm known for hiring former blackhat hackers, was converted to full time on May 31, along with Farritor. Shaotran became full time on April 10.

WIRED first reported in early February that Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran were brought on by Musk’s DOGE. They then gained unprecedented access to government systems. Before joining DOGE, they had connections to Musk-owned companies: Farritor interned at SpaceX, Coristine worked at Neuralink for three months, and Shaotran participated in an xAI hackathon last October.

Since January, all three have obtained access to dozens of federal agencies in addition to GSA, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and many others. They have also been tied to major changes to the federal government apparatus: Farritor was closely linked to the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, and Coristine has reportedly been one of the leaders of the initiative related to President Donald Trump’s “gold card” visas that are sold for $5 million.

It’s not immediately clear if the new designations affect their abilities to maintain access to other agencies outside of GSA.Got a Tip?Do you know anything about these dinners and meetings? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at makenakelly.32.

Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran, according to documentation viewed by WIRED, each maintain their “senior adviser” titles. Coristine and Farritor are drawing some of the largest salaries possible for government employees through the “General Schedule” employee rankings. They have a salary grade of GS-15, one of the highest grades, and Shaotran is one step below at GS-14. When they were special government employees, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran did not appear to be drawing salaries at all through GSA, WIRED reported in March.

Kyle Schutt, another early DOGE operative, has also appeared to change employment classification at least twice but currently seems to be listed as a special government employee in documentation seen by WIRED.

The White House and GSA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Despite Musk’s apparent departure from the Trump administration last week, DOGE has shown no signs of pausing its work in government agencies. Last week, WIRED reported that there has been a renewed urgency for DOGE-style work at agencies including the Office of Personnel Management, US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, and the Department of the Interior. Federal workers told WIRED they were asked to quickly review and potentially slash contracts, especially those pertaining to IT and human resources.

Farritor and Coristine, along with other members of Musk’s early DOGE team like Sam Corcos and Gavin Kliger, have met with a number of departments in recent days, while new DOGE affiliates have been detailed to different agencies.

DOGE, WIRED reported, also appears to be actively recruiting.