#contagion fiction

[joncronshawauthor]

Dive into the Gripping Post-Apocalyptic Thriller "Black Death Survival" - Read for Free Now!

In a society ravaged by a devastating plague, Liam, Jenna, and their young son Tommy must navigate the dangers of disease, desperation, and a menacing cult known as the Doctors. As the world crumbles around them, they’ll risk everything to stay together and protect what matters most. “Black Death Survival” is a gripping, character-driven thriller that explores the lengths people will go to…

[selene-and-the-cold]

Recently my brain is stuck on a scenario where a character A is sick with a bad, messy cold, but insisting that they don't need to be in bed because it's "only a little cold" and not contagious at all...

They get challenged over this by character B, who keeps pointing out that A caught more than just sniffles and should be at home in bed instead of spreading their cold around. B also criticizes A for being so careless and sneezing their cold around.

A insists that they are fine, and so an argument ensues. At some point, A challenges B to prove that A's cold is contagious. There have been some romantic vibes between them all along, so B ends up kissing a squarely on the lips, making sure to really go for the kiss and collect A's cooties. Fast forward a few days, B shows up at the office sick as hell with A's cold, thus providingproof that A was in fact contagious.

A, who had noticed that B is not the only one sneezing their head off, admits sheepishly "I guess I shouldn't have come in with my cold after all..."

[wetsnifflesneeze]

Contagion Filth. Lil bit Dom/Subby. A + B.

Listen guys this is kind of gross haha so if you don't like intentional contagion probably don't read it. This part is about A but obviously B is going to get sick too, I just need to write another part for that!

................................................................................

"Hey" A sniffles and faces B.

"Hi honey"

"I *SNFff* I caught a cold"

"Come here darling" B gestures to their lap, inviting A to sit there.

Once A is seated comfortably B gently cups their face and looks at their sniffly nose, starting to turn a little bit pink at the edges. B gives their nose a little kiss and A sniffles again in response.

"And is this going to be your cold or our cold?" B asks.

A smiles gently and confirms "Our cold"

"So you know what you need to do?" B asks.

"Yeah, when I need to sneeze I need to sneeze on you or at you. Or if you're not close by I have to sneeze into the air or on some of your things"

"Exactly my love." B gently kisses A's lips and feels a little bit of the clear snot dripping down from their nose. A continues sniffling. It wouldn't be long before they would need to sneeze.

B loved catching A's colds and vice versa. Rather than inducing A's sneezes there was something about letting the sneezes come naturally. That way it was all of A's poor noses fault they would end up sneezing too.

A's breath started to hitch.. "I'm.. huh.. going to sne.. sne.. uhEEIISSSCHOO" B watched as A's nostrils flared and felt a light mist after the explosion from their sniffly nose.

"Bless you gorgeous. That's it, I want you to sneeze for me like that"

"*SNFFGH did you like it? Could you feel it?"

"I did baby, I felt your wet sneeze on my face. I love you." B gave A's face some light kisses"

A's head tilted back a little, nostrils twitching and flaring again as they sneezed a double "huhEIISHTCHIEW.......hehIIISSSSHHH ugh"

The second sneeze the wettest so far. Giving B's face a nice bit of spray with their germs.

"Bless you my love. This cold is giving you some nice sneezes already. Thanks for sharing them with me, you're a good baby."

B was out of the house stocking up on some tissues and other supplies for this sneezy cold they were going to share.

While B was out A took a shower and sneezed "EEIIIKSSSSHEW" in the bathroom afterwards spraying their mirror. Perhaps it would be still visible to B when they came home later. Then afterwards in their bedroom A felt another tickle, they had time to grab B's water bottle from the nightstand, unscrew it and let out a "HAHIIIISSSSSHHHHCHOO". They screwed the lid back on. That sneeze was pretty big and messy they were left with a couple strings of snot coming down from each nostril. They really needed to blow their nose now. They got some tissues and blew enough to clean themselves up and ease the congestion. They left the used tissues on B's side of the bed after rather than in the bin. As is the cycle with a head cold they could already feel their nose getting stuffy again and their sensitive nose was already starting to tickle they sneezed "EEIIIKSSSSHEW" onto B's pillow. They knew B would be happy to hear about this later.

B came home and not long after A felt a sneeze coming. They quickly got up and tried to make it as close to B as possible before sneezing. They made it to the living room where B was but not close enough to actually sneeze on them.. so they sneezed "HAHTIIIISSSSSHHHHCHOO" across the room. B watched the small cloud of spray lingering in the air in awe as it began to fade away some droplets lingering on the coffee table.

"Bless you baby, that was a big sneezie, c'mere" they bring A onto their lap again and used their t-shirt to clean some snot dripping from A's nose. "That was a nice welcome home" they add and kiss A's cheek. "Did I miss any more sneezies?"

"I sdneezed in the bathroom, ond our mirror. Thend I sdneezed ond your water bottle ahnd your pillow *SNDF SNFF*"

"Oh baby, you're doing everything you can to give me your cold"

"Sharing is caring *Snf*"

"Here let's blow your nose, you're getting all stuffy my love" B holds a tissue to A's nose and they give a soft but productive blow.

"Better?" B asks kindly

"Yeah, much. It won't last for long though... honestly my head is starting to hurt from all the congestion" A replies a little bit dejectedly.

"Oh love, you're really starting to feel under the weather now huh. Don't worry, I bought some medicine and we'll order some nice soup for dinner. I'll make you some tea right now too. You won't feel bad for long, promise" B leans in and give them a gentle kiss before going to prepare the tea.

A needs to sneeze again and doesn't want to get off the couch, they sneeze openly towards the coffee table "hehtIIISSSSHHHIEW" where the tv remote and B's phone were.

B came back with the tea and let A rest their head in their lap until their dinner arrived, B played with their hair and helped them to blow their poor runny nose every so often. The room punctuated with A's wet sniffles and a little bit of background noise from the TV which neither was really paying attention too.

Not too long after they were having their soup. It felt good on A's throat which hurt a little bit and helped with their blocked nose a little too. The warm steam was tickling their nose a bit and B noticed they had out down their spoon and had that distant look right before they closed their eyes and snapped forward with a sneeze "TIIISSSSHHHIEW" aimed towards their bowls of soup and teacups.

"Bless you, my love" B gently rubbed their back.

A was silent, because they were building up to another sneeze "EETIIIKSSSSHEW" spraying their soup once again.

"Bless you love"

"Ugh thandks *SnNgFF*"

They finished eating their soup, B turned on that they were eating soup sprayed by their sickie's germs.

"Shall we go to bed my love?" B asked

"Yeah, I'mb tired."

"I bet you are, poor baby."

They got into bed, B gave A some cold medicine and rubbed their chest and back with vaporub. Ready to sleep A layed their head down on B's chest and made a little whiny noise. B rubs their back reassuringly. "HEAATTtSSSHHOO" A sneezes onto B's chest and they feel the mist of fine droplets settle onto their bare skin some reaching as far as their neck and chin.

"Bless you honey" B kisses their lips which were nice and moist after the sneeze. A's breath gets shaky and they explode with another "hahTTIIIISSSSSSHHHU" into B's neck.

"Bless you again darling" they grab a tissue and clean up around A's drippy nose before giving it a kiss. "My poor sneezy baby."

"Ugh, just want to sleep now but my ndose won't let me" A whined and pouted.

"You'll sleep soon my love, your body must be exhausted fighting off this big bad cold. Just lay here on me, don't move. I'll take care of your nose"

A's breathing changed and B knew in an instant what was coming, they gently covered A's nose and mouth with one hand and caught the "APTTIIIIISSHEW".

"Bless you, beautiful" B grabbed a few tissues and secured them around A's nose. "Now blow for me."

A followed B's instructions and B felt the way their nose vibrated as A tried their hardest to clear their nose. This just started to make their nose tickle and they sneezed a "HAPTTtSSSSHHOO" into the tissues.

"Bless you, poor little thing all the cold germs inside your nose are getting it all irritated." B discarded the tissue into their bed and A let out an uncovered "HAHTIIIISSSSSHHHHCHOO" and another "hehIIISSSSHHH" onto B's face

"That's it baby sneeze it out, get it all out. It's meant to be shared, share it with me"

"I can breathe a bit better now." A said.

"I'm so glad baby, now get some sleep" B kissed their forehead.

"Okay, love you"

"I love you too"

[l-ultimo-squalo]

The Carrier (1988) dir. Nathan J. White

[variantoutcast]

I really liked the first 3 witcher books and I liked elements in the remaining ones but it has increasingly become a men writing women series as it progresses. Like it's no longer the trappings "she breasted boobily down the stairs" but is fully "lets put a child in a situation where she has to have sex with her captor in order to regain her freedom" (and not portray this for the horror that it is)

[phe-purple-parade]

Been waking up stressed lately, today's stress dream featured such hits as:

Contamination

Social exclusion

Supernatural beings

Preying on vulnerable people

Violent pursuit

Mental contagion

A performance to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'

Shopping

So,, a mix of anxieties..

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #111 - Twenty Pieces of Documentation Presented To the Emergency Committee On the Study and Understanding of the M3D1154 Contagion by Damien Angelica Walters

Previous | Next What if women didn’t have to be afraid of men? What if they had a way to protect themselves from those predators who hide among us and strike at the vulnerable at their weakest? This short epistolary piece, less than two thousand words in length, examines the aftermath of a world in which women have just this power. It does not play coy, doesn’t shy away from the poisonous…

[libraryofbaxobab]

November 14, 2023:

I spent the whole time reading this brick oscillating between "there is too much book left" and "there is not enough book left." What I mean by that is, it came pretty close to a full story surprisingly early on, but kept going, and going, and going, but then the ending stopped just short of satisfying with a "TO BE CONTINUED..." Brother, if you can't bring it full circle in 700 pages what are we even doing here? Not that I'm anti-series. Just that when you give a character a mission and lead a reader by the nose through a book this long, it's distasteful, in my opinion, to not complete that mission by the end. Sequels are for further adventures, for problems that arise from the solution to the previous story. I detest being shown the metaphorical promised land just to be told I can't go to it.

That being said, the book overall kicked ass. Each ship has the feel of a Fallout vault where everyone inside has the same mental illness. The horrors held within each are uniquely fucked up, which kept things gruesomely exciting. I was never bored; I blazed through this thing. There's action, there's madness, there's spaceship maneuvers, there's close escapes, there's body horror, there's daring rescues, there's [spoiler redacted], there's AI avatars with spooky red eyes. Weak points: I didn't especially like the sarcastic anti-human robot sidekick, but I tolerated him. I thought the climax was a little cartoonish, compared to the rest of the book. Actual Disney-villain shit. And the aforementioned AIs with glowing red eyes... seemed a little condescending. With the exquisite horror all around, the creepypasta scary-face gambit didn't really match. But again, these are minor slights compared to the work overall.

7/10 #WhatsKenyaReading

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The disenshittified internet starts with loyal "user agents"

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (TOMORROW, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

There's one overwhelmingly common mistake that people make about enshittification: assuming that the contagion is the result of the Great Forces of History, or that it is the inevitable end-point of any kind of for-profit online world.

In other words, they class enshittification as an ideological phenomenon, rather than as a material phenomenon. Corporate leaders have always felt the impulse to enshittify their offerings, shifting value from end users, business customers and their own workers to their shareholders. The decades of largely enshittification-free online services were not the product of corporate leaders with better ideas or purer hearts. Those years were the result of constraints on the mediocre sociopaths who would trade our wellbeing and happiness for their own, constraints that forced them to act better than they do today, even if the were not any better:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Corporate leaders' moments of good leadership didn't come from morals, they came from fear. Fear that a competitor would take away a disgruntled customer or worker. Fear that a regulator would punish the company so severely that all gains from cheating would be wiped out. Fear that a rival technology – alternative clients, tracker blockers, third-party mods and plugins – would emerge that permanently severed the company's relationship with their customers. Fears that key workers in their impossible-to-replace workforce would leave for a job somewhere else rather than participate in the enshittification of the services they worked so hard to build:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

When those constraints melted away – thanks to decades of official tolerance for monopolies, which led to regulatory capture and victory over the tech workforce – the same mediocre sociopaths found themselves able to pursue their most enshittificatory impulses without fear.

The effects of this are all around us. In This Is Your Phone On Feminism, the great Maria Farrell describes how audiences at her lectures profess both love for their smartphones and mistrust for them. Farrell says, "We love our phones, but we do not trust them. And love without trust is the definition of an abusive relationship":

https://conversationalist.org/2019/09/13/feminism-explains-our-toxic-relationships-with-our-smartphones/

I (re)discovered this Farrell quote in a paper by Robin Berjon, who recently co-authored a magnificent paper with Farrell entitled "We Need to Rewild the Internet":

https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/

The new Berjon paper is narrower in scope, but still packed with material examples of the way the internet goes wrong and how it can be put right. It's called "The Fiduciary Duties of User Agents":

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3827421

In "Fiduciary Duties," Berjon focuses on the technical term "user agent," which is how web browsers are described in formal standards documents. This notion of a "user agent" is a holdover from a more civilized age, when technologists tried to figure out how to build a new digital space where technology served users.

A web browser that's a "user agent" is a comforting thought. An agent's job is to serve you and your interests. When you tell it to fetch a web-page, your agent should figure out how to get that page, make sense of the code that's embedded in, and render the page in a way that represents its best guess of how you'd like the page seen.

For example, the user agent might judge that you'd like it to block ads. More than half of all web users have installed ad-blockers, constituting the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Your user agent might judge that the colors on the page are outside your visual range. Maybe you're colorblind, in which case, the user agent could shift the gamut of the colors away from the colors chosen by the page's creator and into a set that suits you better:

https://dankaminsky.com/dankam/

Or maybe you (like me) have a low-vision disability that makes low-contrast type difficult to impossible to read, and maybe the page's creator is a thoughtless dolt who's chosen light grey-on-white type, or maybe they've fallen prey to the absurd urban legend that not-quite-black type is somehow more legible than actual black type:

https://uxplanet.org/basicdesign-never-use-pure-black-in-typography-36138a3327a6

The user agent is loyal to you. Even when you want something the page's creator didn't consider – even when you want something the page's creator violently objects to – your user agent acts on your behalf and delivers your desires, as best as it can.

Now – as Berjon points out – you might not know exactly what you want. Like, you know that you want the privacy guarantees of TLS (the difference between "http" and "https") but not really understand the internal cryptographic mysteries involved. Your user agent might detect evidence of shenanigans indicating that your session isn't secure, and choose not to show you the web-page you requested.

This is only superficially paradoxical. Yes, you asked your browser for a web-page. Yes, the browser defied your request and declined to show you that page. But you also asked your browser to protect you from security defects, and your browser made a judgment call and decided that security trumped delivery of the page. No paradox needed.

But of course, the person who designed your user agent/browser can't anticipate all the ways this contradiction might arise. Like, maybe you're trying to access your own website, and you know that the security problem the browser has detected is the result of your own forgetful failure to renew your site's cryptographic certificate. At that point, you can tell your browser, "Thanks for having my back, pal, but actually this time it's fine. Stand down and show me that webpage."

That's your user agent serving you, too.

User agents can be well-designed or they can be poorly made. The fact that a user agent is designed to act in accord with your desires doesn't mean that it always will. A software agent, like a human agent, is not infallible.

However – and this is the key – if a user agent thwarts your desire due to a fault, that is fundamentally different from a user agent that thwarts your desires because it is designed to serve the interests of someone else, even when that is detrimental to your own interests.

A "faithless" user agent is utterly different from a "clumsy" user agent, and faithless user agents have become the norm. Indeed, as crude early internet clients progressed in sophistication, they grew increasingly treacherous. Most non-browser tools are designed for treachery.

A smart speaker or voice assistant routes all your requests through its manufacturer's servers and uses this to build a nonconsensual surveillance dossier on you. Smart speakers and voice assistants even secretly record your speech and route it to the manufacturer's subcontractors, whether or not you're explicitly interacting with them:

https://www.sciencealert.com/creepy-new-amazon-patent-would-mean-alexa-records-everything-you-say-from-now-on

By design, apps and in-app browsers seek to thwart your preferences regarding surveillance and tracking. An app will even try to figure out if you're using a VPN to obscure your location from its maker, and snitch you out with its guess about your true location.

Mobile phones assign persistent tracking IDs to their owners and transmit them without permission (to its credit, Apple recently switch to an opt-in system for transmitting these IDs) (but to its detriment, Apple offers no opt-out from its own tracking, and actively lies about the very existence of this tracking):

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

An Android device running Chrome and sitting inert, with no user interaction, transmits location data to Google every five minutes. This is the "resting heartbeat" of surveillance for an Android device. Ask that device to do any work for you and its pulse quickens, until it is emitting a nearly continuous stream of information about your activities to Google:

https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/

These faithless user agents both reflect and enable enshittification. The locked-down nature of the hardware and operating systems for Android and Ios devices means that manufacturers – and their business partners – have an arsenal of legal weapons they can use to block anyone who gives you a tool to modify the device's behavior. These weapons are generically referred to as "IP rights" which are, broadly speaking, the right to control the conduct of a company's critics, customers and competitors:

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

A canny tech company can design their products so that any modification that puts the user's interests above its shareholders is illegal, a violation of its copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrets, contracts, terms of service, nondisclosure, noncompete, most favored nation, or anticircumvention rights. Wrap your product in the right mix of IP, and its faithless betrayals acquire the force of law.

This is – in Jay Freeman's memorable phrase – "felony contempt of business model." While more than half of all web users have installed an ad-blocker, thus overriding the manufacturer's defaults to make their browser a more loyal agent, no app users have modified their apps with ad-blockers.

The first step of making such a blocker, reverse-engineering the app, creates criminal liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $500,000 fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in sufficient IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it (no wonder every company wants to coerce you into using its app, rather than its website).

If you know that increasing the invasiveness of the ads on your web-page could trigger mass installations of ad-blockers by your users, it becomes irrational and self-defeating to ramp up your ads' invasiveness. The possibility of interoperability acts as a constraint on tech bosses' impulse to enshittify their products.

The shift to platforms dominated by treacherous user agents – apps, mobile ecosystems, walled gardens – weakens or removes that constraint. As your ability to discipline your agent so that it serves you wanes, the temptation to turn your user agent against you grows, and enshittification follows.

This has been tacitly understood by technologists since the web's earliest days and has been reaffirmed even as enshittification increased. Berjon quotes extensively from "The Internet Is For End-Users," AKA Internet Architecture Board RFC 8890:

Defining the user agent role in standards also creates a virtuous cycle; it allows multiple implementations, allowing end users to switch between them with relatively low costs (…). This creates an incentive for implementers to consider the users' needs carefully, which are often reflected into the defining standards. The resulting ecosystem has many remaining problems, but a distinguished user agent role provides an opportunity to improve it.

And the W3C's Technical Architecture Group echoes these sentiments in "Web Platform Design Principles," which articulates a "Priority of Constituencies" that is supposed to be central to the W3C's mission:

User needs come before the needs of web page authors, which come before the needs of user agent implementors, which come before the needs of specification writers, which come before theoretical purity.

https://w3ctag.github.io/design-principles/

But the W3C's commitment to faithful agents is contingent on its own members' commitment to these principles. In 2017, the W3C finalized "EME," a standard for blocking mods that interact with streaming videos. Nominally aimed at preventing copyright infringement, EME also prevents users from choosing to add accessibility add-ons that beyond the ones the streaming service permits. These services may support closed captioning and additional narration of visual elements, but they block tools that adapt video for color-blind users or prevent strobe effects that trigger seizures in users with photosensitive epilepsy.

The fight over EME was the most contentious struggle in the W3C's history, in which the organization's leadership had to decide whether to honor the "priority of constituencies" and make a standard that allowed users to override manufacturers, or whether to facilitate the creation of faithless agents specifically designed to thwart users' desires on behalf of manufacturers:

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

This fight was settled in favor of a handful of extremely large and powerful companies, over the objections of a broad collection of smaller firms, nonprofits representing users, academics and other parties agitating for a web built on faithful agents. This coincided with the W3C's operating budget becoming entirely dependent on the very large sums its largest corporate members paid.

W3C membership is on a sliding scale, based on a member's size. Nominally, the W3C is a one-member, one-vote organization, but when a highly concentrated collection of very high-value members flex their muscles, W3C leadership seemingly perceived an existential risk to the organization, and opted to sacrifice the faithfulness of user agents in service to the anti-user priorities of its largest members.

For W3C's largest corporate members, the fight was absolutely worth it. The W3C's EME standard transformed the web, making it impossible to ship a fully featured web-browser without securing permission – and a paid license – from one of the cartel of companies that dominate the internet. In effect, Big Tech used the W3C to secure the right to decide who would compete with them in future, and how:

https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/

Enshittification arises when the everyday mediocre sociopaths who run tech companies are freed from the constraints that act against them. When the web – and its browsers – were a big, contented, diverse, competitive space, it was harder for tech companies to collude to capture standards bodies like the W3C to secure even more dominance. As the web turned into Tom Eastman's "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four," that kind of collusion became much easier:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In arguing for faithful agents, Berjon associates himself with the group of scholars, regulators and activists who call for user agents to serve as "information fiduciaries." Mostly, information fiduciaries come up in the context of user privacy, with the idea that entities that hold a user's data would have the obligation to put the user's interests ahead of their own. Think of a lawyer's fiduciary duty in respect of their clients, to give advice that reflects the client's best interests, even when that conflicts with the lawyer's own self-interest. For example, a lawyer who believes that settling a case is the best course of action for a client is required to tell them so, even if keeping the case going would generate more billings for the lawyer and their firm.

For a user agent to be faithful, it must be your fiduciary. It must put your interests ahead of the interests of the entity that made it or operates it. Browsers, email clients, and other internet software that served as a fiduciary would do things like automatically blocking tracking (which most email clients don't do, especially webmail clients made by companies like Google, who also sell advertising and tracking).

Berjon contemplates a legally mandated fiduciary duty, citing Lindsey Barrett's "Confiding in Con Men":

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3354129

He describes a fiduciary duty as a remedy for the enforcement failures of EU's GDPR, a solidly written, and dismally enforced, privacy law. A legally backstopped duty for agents to be fiduciaries would also help us distinguish good and bad forms of "innovation" – innovation in ways of thwarting a user's will are always bad.

Now, the tech giants insist that they are already fiduciaries, and that when they thwart a user's request, that's more like blocking access to a page where the encryption has been compromised than like HAL9000's "I can't let you do that, Dave." For example, when Louis Barclay created "Unfollow Everything," he (and his enthusiastic users) found that automating the process of unfollowing every account on Facebook made their use of the service significantly better:

https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-everything-cease-desist.html

When Facebook shut the service down with blood-curdling legal threats, they insisted that they were simply protecting users from themselves. Sure, this browser automation tool – which just automatically clicked links on Facebook's own settings pages – seemed to do what the users wanted. But what if the user interface changed? What if so many users added this feature to Facebook without Facebook's permission that they overwhelmed Facebook's (presumably tiny and fragile) servers and crashed the system?

These arguments have lately resurfaced with Ethan Zuckerman and Knight First Amendment Institute's lawsuit to clarify that "Unfollow Everything 2.0" is legal and doesn't violate any of those "felony contempt of business model" laws:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/02/kaiju-v-kaiju/

Sure, Zuckerman seems like a good guy, but what if he makes a mistake and his automation tool does something you don't want? You, the Facebook user, are also a nice guy, but let's face it, you're also a naive dolt and you can't be trusted to make decisions for yourself. Those decisions can only be made by Facebook, whom we can rely upon to exercise its authority wisely.

Other versions of this argument surfaced in the debate over the EU's decision to mandate interoperability for end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging through the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which would let you switch from, say, Whatsapp to Signal and still send messages to your Whatsapp contacts.

There are some good arguments that this could go horribly awry. If it is rushed, or internally sabotaged by the EU's state security services who loathe the privacy that comes from encrypted messaging, it could expose billions of people to serious risks.

But that's not the only argument that DMA opponents made: they also argued that even if interoperable messaging worked perfectly and had no security breaches, it would still be bad for users, because this would make it impossible for tech giants like Meta, Google and Apple to spy on message traffic (if not its content) and identify likely coordinated harassment campaigns. This is literally the identical argument the NSA made in support of its "metadata" mass-surveillance program: "Reading your messages might violate your privacy, but watching your messages doesn't."

This is obvious nonsense, so its proponents need an equally obviously intellectually dishonest way to defend it. When called on the absurdity of "protecting" users by spying on them against their will, they simply shake their heads and say, "You just can't understand the burdens of running a service with hundreds of millions or billions of users, and if I even tried to explain these issues to you, I would divulge secrets that I'm legally and ethically bound to keep. And even if I could tell you, you wouldn't understand, because anyone who doesn't work for a Big Tech company is a naive dolt who can't be trusted to understand how the world works (much like our users)."

Not coincidentally, this is also literally the same argument the NSA makes in support of mass surveillance, and there's a very useful name for it: scalesplaining.

Now, it's totally true that every one of us is capable of lapses in judgment that put us, and the people connected to us, at risk (my own parents gave their genome to the pseudoscience genetic surveillance company 23andme, which means they have my genome, too). A true information fiduciary shouldn't automatically deliver everything the user asks for. When the agent perceives that the user is about to put themselves in harm's way, it should throw up a roadblock and explain the risks to the user.

But the system should also let the user override it.

This is a contentious statement in information security circles. Users can be "socially engineered" (tricked), and even the most sophisticated users are vulnerable to this:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

The only way to be certain a user won't be tricked into taking a course of action is to forbid that course of action under any circumstances. If there is any means by which a user can flip the "are you very sure?" circuit-breaker back on, then the user can be tricked into using that means.

This is absolutely true. As you read these words, all over the world, vulnerable people are being tricked into speaking the very specific set of directives that cause a suspicious bank-teller to authorize a transfer or cash withdrawal that will result in their life's savings being stolen by a scammer:

https://www.thecut.com/article/amazon-scam-call-ftc-arrest-warrants.html

We keep making it harder for bank customers to make large transfers, but so long as it is possible to make such a transfer, the scammers have the means, motive and opportunity to discover how the process works, and they will go on to trick their victims into invoking that process.

Beyond a certain point, making it harder for bank depositors to harm themselves creates a world in which people who aren't being scammed find it nearly impossible to draw out a lot of cash for an emergency and where scam artists know exactly how to manage the trick. After all, non-scammers only rarely experience emergencies and thus have no opportunity to become practiced in navigating all the anti-fraud checks, while the fraudster gets to run through them several times per day, until they know them even better than the bank staff do.

This is broadly true of any system intended to control users at scale – beyond a certain point, additional security measures are trivially surmounted hurdles for dedicated bad actors and as nearly insurmountable hurdles for their victims:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

At this point, we've had a couple of decades' worth of experience with technological "walled gardens" in which corporate executives get to override their users' decisions about how the system should work, even when that means reaching into the users' own computer and compelling it to thwart the user's desire. The record is inarguable: while companies often use those walls to lock bad guys out of the system, they also use the walls to lock their users in, so that they'll be easy pickings for the tech company that owns the system:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

This is neatly predicted by enshittification's theory of constraints: when a company can override your choices, it will be irresistibly tempted to do so for its own benefit, and to your detriment.

What's more, the mere possibility that you can override the way the system works acts as a disciplining force on corporate executives, forcing them to reckon with your priorities even when these are counter to their shareholders' interests. If Facebook is genuinely worried that an "Unfollow Everything" script will break its servers, it can solve that by giving users an unfollow everything button of its own design. But so long as Facebook can sue anyone who makes an "Unfollow Everything" tool, they have no reason to give their users such a button, because it would give them more control over their Facebook experience, including the controls needed to use Facebook less.

It's been more than 20 years since Seth Schoen and I got a demo of Microsoft's first "trusted computing" system, with its "remote attestations," which would let remote servers demand and receive accurate information about what kind of computer you were using and what software was running on it.

This could be beneficial to the user – you could send a "remote attestation" to a third party you trusted and ask, "Hey, do you think my computer is infected with malicious software?" Since the trusted computing system produced its report on your computer using a sealed, separate processor that the user couldn't directly interact with, any malicious code you were infected with would not be able to forge this attestation.

But this remote attestation feature could also be used to allow Microsoft to block you from opening a Word document with Libreoffice, Apple Pages, or Google Docs, or it could be used to allow a website to refuse to send you pages if you were running an ad-blocker. In other words, it could transform your information fiduciary into a faithless agent.

Seth proposed an answer to this: "owner override," a hardware switch that would allow you to force your computer to lie on your behalf, when that was beneficial to you, for example, by insisting that you were using Microsoft Word to open a document when you were really using Apple Pages:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021004125515/http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/2002-07-05.html

Seth wasn't naive. He knew that such a system could be exploited by scammers and used to harm users. But Seth calculated – correctly! – that the risks of having a key to let yourself out of the walled garden were less than being stuck in a walled garden where some corporate executive got to decide whether and when you could leave.

Tech executives never stopped questing after a way to turn your user agent from a fiduciary into a traitor. Last year, Google toyed with the idea of adding remote attestation to web browsers, which would let services refuse to interact with you if they thought you were using an ad blocker:

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

The reasoning for this was incredible: by adding remote attestation to browsers, they'd be creating "feature parity" with apps – that is, they'd be making it as practical for your browser to betray you as it is for your apps to do so (note that this is the same justification that the W3C gave for creating EME, the treacherous user agent in your browser – "streaming services won't allow you to access movies with your browser unless your browser is as enshittifiable and authoritarian as an app").

Technologists who work for giant tech companies can come up with endless scalesplaining explanations for why their bosses, and not you, should decide how your computer works. They're wrong. Your computer should do what you tell it to do:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/your-computer-should-say-what-you-tell-it-say-1

These people can kid themselves that they're only taking away your power and handing it to their boss because they have your best interests at heart. As Upton Sinclair told us, it's impossible to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it.

The only way to get a tech boss to consistently treat you well is to ensure that if they stop, you can quit. Anything less is a one-way ticket to enshittification.

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/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[occamstfs]

2k Follower Writing Challenge !

Hi y’all-

I’m about to hit 2,000 followers(crazy) and wanted to do something special to celebrate !

Namely, I’m hosting the loosest possible writing challenge 🎉 Hiatused writers looking for an impetus to return, current writers who want to mix it up, new writers eager to give TF Fiction a go, anyone at all interested is encouraged to write !

I’ve opted for quite an open-ended prompt that has a lot of options while still remaining cohesive!

That is:

Viral Transformation

Contagion bringing on changes, Social media trends or videos causing physical transformation, Malevolent or mischievous computer programs inducing new identities.

Any way you can swing virulence and/or virality into a plot works! Feel free to think outside the box or work with any of the three examples I’ve outlined ;)

Logistically: I’m available to help bounce ideas off of and then happy to give an editorial read through once you’ve finished your stories !

Any entries should be posted the week of September 22nd (22-28) with the hashtag #occam2000 within the first five hashtags to keep them together. On the 29th I’ll post a poll for the fan favorite who will receive a request from myself, if they so desire !

If anyone’s interested in participating in my little challenge/contest feel free to send me a message and I’ll make a small post later announcing the entries ! Otherwise I’m eager to help as need be.

Ever Yours -Occam !

[blueiight]

Lestat, for example, literalizes the African-American belief that white European slavers were cannibals, feeding on enslaved flesh. In Rice’s novel, Lestat actually initiates Louis into vampirism through killing and draining a fugitive slave. In the TV update, Lestat is the quintessential colorblind liberal racist, goading Louis into outbursts of rage against the constant petty insults and humiliations he faces at the hands of white New Orleans, while all the way lording it over one and all, white and Black, as the ultimate puppet master.

Louis himself confesses to his interviewer, the journalist Daniel Molloy, that Lestat was at once his maker and his lover. This taps into a particular vein of Southern fiction in which incest and miscegenation taboos overlap and bleed into each other.

The gothic twist, of course, is that what makes Lestat parent to Louis is not unacknowledged paternity through the rape and forced breeding of chattel women, as in many classic 19th-century narratives of miscegenation. Instead, it is the direct bite of the male vampire, which here serves as a queer allegory for reproduction between men. Or, more nearly, as sex without reproduction, only a risk of contagion.

We can go further. If we look for a name for what the gothic can do to unlock the dark recesses of sexuality and racism in the American nightmare, we should speak of the hystericization of race. Hystericization names the process of becoming hysterical, the hysteric being the one who demands to know: Why am I who you say I am? This, after all, is the question Louis asks constantly, first of Lestat and then of the aging white male journalist Molloy.

“Why am I who you say I am?” Louis demands of the world. At first, he does rage against the system; it is his brash spirit that attracts Lestat’s interest. But over the course of the series, Louis is revealed to be the quintessential homosexual mark: a quick-witted, strong-willed young man of great promise, who finds himself “drained” by the overpowering malevolence of an older figure who ensures his endless torment, above all, by professing an immortal love for him. Using sex as a weapon, Lestat unmans Louis (in one scene, Lestat literally drags him from a confession booth, desecrating the church with the blood of the slain priest) and by the end of the season turns him into a simpering househusband and hovering father to their vampirically created daughter Claudia. Out of the closet and into the coffin.

TAP TF IN

[artist-issues]

From one Christian to another, you seem like someone who stays true to your values, convenient or not, and that’s exactly what I need.

In short, what’s your stance on writing LGBTQ characters? Does including such characters normalize sin, or is it comparable to writing about any other flawed human? I’ve heard some say I could write such characters out of a sense of realism, but fiction is made up of a writer’s intentional choices, and I don’t think one can have those choices and not say something to the audience.

I’ve looked all over the internet for a definite answer to this, and most results are either vague or very permissive without any scriptural backing. Your thoughts?

I think your head is on good and straight!

I am not an expert on this but I'll give you my unprofessional opinion.

The truth is, sin is normal. I mean, it's normal in this world. We're living in a cursed, fallen world. So if you were going to write a story about wildlife in Africa, there'd be a place in the story for a zebra. Because zebras are normal... in Africa. You wouldn't have to be making a comment about zebras to include them in a story about Africa; they just naturally are in that setting.

When you're writing a story about this world, and humans, that same sense applies. There's a possibility for any and all sin to be mentioned in the story. Because that's normal in this world.

Now, I guess that wasn't always the case. Even ten years ago having a homosexual couple in your story would've been surprising, and you could've run the risk of "normalizing it," because of the low percentage of people identifying as homosexual. But now? With the social contagion and overwhelming popularity, especially in adolescents, of the very idea of gender-fluidity and open-ended attraction? You're not so much "normalizing it" anymore.

Everybody's talking about being LGBTQ+. Everybody's making a statement. The question is no longer "are you going to say something about it?" The question is kind of "WHAT are you going to say about it?" Even by leaving the topic out, if it's a story about modern day life in the West on Planet Earth, you're saying something by leaving it out.

(Note: if your story isn't on Planet Earth in the Modern ((and RECENT)) time period, and even if it isn't in the West, then I wouldn't put homosexuality in your story. I can elaborate on why if you'd like in a different ask.)

So I'm basically saying it's comparable to writing about any other flawed human. 😅

As for Scriptural basis, there's no verse that says "don't talk about homosexuality," --and talking about it is all that "telling a story which includes the topic" is.

For storytelling principles found in the Bible: Jesus put one guy choking another guy out over a debt into one of His stories. That was to illustrate the depravity of the guy who was forgiven of much, but wouldn't forgive his fellow man of a little.

So now I have two very important questions for you!

If you are going to put a homosexual couple in your story, why are they there?

You have to answer this question for every decision you make in a story...but with this, because you are putting a sin in your story, the important thing to note is that the culture we're in doesn't actually consider it a sin. So by putting the sin in the story at all, you're right, you have to say something about it. You have to say that it's good or it's bad.

Doesn't have to be super in-your-face. I mean, Kuzco's "sin" is that he's selfish. So in the first scene he insults a bunch of women. And they all react like he's a monster; one of them's crying, the other one's lunging at him, but it's all just in the background. The point of the scene is that he's funny but he's a jerk and he's selfish; and those traits, "jerk" and "selfish" are treated like they're bad things, not good things, about Kuzco. A good rule of thumb is "call what is good 'good,' and call what is bad ''bad."

2. And this is the really important one, from one Christian to another: why are you considering adding a homosexual couple to your story?

You don't have to answer me, but ask yourself that question super honestly and examine every possible reason. Of course it doesn't really apply if you're not writing a story, you're just wondering about it on principle.

More on the point: I think sometimes, Christians cover up some sins by not talking about them, and it's not out of a desire be self-controlled and careful with their words. It's out of a warped desire to appease the culture.

C.S. Lewis says something like this in Surprised By Joy. My understanding of him was, Christians in the 40s didn't want to ever talk about homosexuality because, to them, it seemed the worst of sins...but when you examined how they came to that conclusion, you realized that the only things that made homosexuality different from other sins was that, if you were discovered to be engaging in homosexual sin, you'd lose your job and your fame. So Christians were choosing not to talk about it, even if all they were planning on saying was "homosexuality is wrong and God's definition of sexuality is right," because to address it at all was taboo to your public appearance.

That's a really bad reason for Christians not to talk about something. Christians know that all sin has been defeated and conquered by Christ. So why are we acting like mentioning it gives it power? Mention the sin (not the people sinning, but the sin) like it's a monster that WAS terrible and scary, but once Jesus gets ahold of it it's actually powerless and slain.

Christians have done the same thing with sex. It's supposed to be this awesome act of worship that God created to point to the cosmic idea of oneness with Him. It's supposed to be a wonderful thing, like singing beautiful songs or eating good food; all in the right way, in the right time. But Christians saw people using it sometimes in the wrong way, at the wrong time, so they threw the whole freakin baby out with the bath water and now the Church in the West is just starting to turn the corner and talk about sex again. But young people really needed to hear about it, the right way, from the Church, generations ago.

Anyway. Soapbox. The point is, if you know that homosexuality is a sin that is only destructive when it isn't submitted to Christ, and you're going to call it THAT, then what's to fear? Why does the corrupt culture get to hog the mic? So what if it wasn't a widely-accepted sin again until recently? Acting like it wasn't worth addressing, or like calling attention to it would've made the sin expand, didn't do anything to actually stop the culture from treating it like a good thing.

If Christians don't remind everybody of truth, the culture will twist it.

It's like being at a kid's birthday party, and you notice a tiger slinking over the backyard fence. Only instead of warning everybody you just sit there and try not to look directly at it. Try not to draw attention to the tiger. Because if you do, the kids might run over and try to pet it. So it's best to just sit there and hush everybody who points the tiger out up? No! The tiger's in the yard! It's too late to ignore it! Point it out, and point it out for what it is: not a big kitty you can pet, but a big dangerous beast that will hurt you if you don't treat it like that's what it is.

Rrrrg.

Thank you for asking me this question.

P.S. VERY IMPORTANT:

If you ARE writing a story, and you DO feel convicted about putting homosexual couples in the story—don't do it. Why? After everything J just said?

Because the one scripture that trumps everything I said is the one about your personal convictions: Romans 14:23. It's talking about meat sacrifices to idols, but the principle is, if you make a decision that is not based in faith, it's sin. So if you read everything I just said and still feel convicted about writing in a homosexual couple, it's not a good idea to force yourself to do it anyway. Because if you're forcing yourself to ignore conviction, it means you're making a decision based on...what? Peer pressure? A sound argument? Neither of which are agreed with by your redeemed-conscience? Can't be a decision based on faith, then, right?

We can talk more about that if you want!

Pray about it. Have you done that? Sometimes I get so spun into my own reasoning and puzzling something out, and then I'm like, "God is literally watching the inside of my brain spin itself out, He's standing right there with the answers and I don't even bother to ask 😅" Don't do that!

Thanks again for the hard question.

[honest-moth-of-silver-grove]

Pls do Yandere!Alucard part 3!! I love the others! 😍

Ask: Pls do Yandere! Alucard part 3!! I love the others! 😍

A/N: I’ve gotten two asks for Part 3, so here you go. Note: Here are [Part 1] & [Part 2]. And other Yandere! Alucard’s imagines can be found here.  

TW!: As always, this is a fictional work about a fictional character. Manipulation and abuse in real relationships are never okay, and it’s never your fault. If you need help, please click on any of these: [x] [x].

Oh and for some ambiance while reading, listen to this: [x]

* * *

It had been less than 24 hours since you and your father moved into Alucard’s castle. The journey itself was horrendous, with your father laying down in the back of a rented cart, coughing with every bump in the road. 

‘At least he agreed to come,’ you thought. 

Truth be told, your father was never keen on the help of strangers, and you suspected that much was still true. It must have been the delirium from his fever that encouraged him to consent to such arrangements. 

Alucard was kind enough to help you unload your belongings once you arrived at the castle. He even insisted on carrying your father to his new room. You thanked him profusely. It took all your strengths, your fathers and yours combined, to simply get him into the cart for the journey there; yet there Alucard was, carrying him as if your father weighed no more than a feather. 

Truthfully, you were rather surprised to see Alucard walking around in the daytime- a trait you thought vampires did not possess. It seemed the more time you spent with Alucard, the more you found yourself amazed at his physicality. 

Alucard had set your father up in a room exactly two floors above yours, citing contagion as a risk. Your room, you learned, was closer to Alucard’s own, just down the hall from it, should you ever need something in the later hours of the evening. 

“So, I take it you don’t sleep in a coffin then?” You asked him. 

“Not currently, no.” He answered rather plainly. “Although I have slept in one before.” 

You nodded, intrigued. “What was that like?” 

“Sleeping?” Alucard’s gaze lingered on the dark circles under your eyes. “It’s a wonderful human invention. Perhaps you should try it sometime.” 

You rolled your eyes at his dramatics. “I sleep just fine,” you argued. “Besides, now that Father is here and I’m not the only one watching over him, I think I’ll sleep better. Does this mean you’ll take the first watch?” You teased back. 

“First watch?” Alucard stopped in his tracks. “Just what sort of creatures do you believe reside in this castle?” 

“No, I… What I meant was, for my father, I’d stay up with him at night, in the event he needed anything. Now that you’re here, I just assumed we would be taking turns.” You raised your hands defensively. “Of course, I don’t expect you to. I’m fine staying up with him by myself.” 

Alucard regarded you pitifully for a moment before he continued walking. “I have some tea in the kitchen,” he said. “Allow me to show you where that is.” 

Silently, you followed the tall blonde, wondering if you had said something to offend him. Perhaps your coffin comment? 

“Cozy.” The rich voice of your acquaintance brought you back to the present. 

“I’m sorry?” You asked. 

“The coffin,” Alucard repeated, descending the stairs, “It was rather cozy.” 

* * *

The castle itself seemed rather dreary and uninviting the first few times you had broken in. You supposed it was the nature of your entrance that colored it so because now, it most certainly transformed. Gone was the cold oppressive gray interior. 

Instead, you found yourself catching a glimpse of gloriously detailed bewitching pictorial carpets and paintings decorating the walls, luxuriant red carpet providing padding under your feet, and thick insulating curtains pulled open with pendulum tiebacks between every major room. It was a bit odd, to say the least. 

In addition to that metamorphosis, the dust and stale air seemed to have vanished as well. Perhaps, Alucard tidied up before you and your father’s arrival, but that seemed quite impossible; the castle was enormous, and a fortnight was certainly not enough time for him to have made such preparations. It would have taken days if not weeks to change the castle’s appearance. Surely, you must have been mistaken. 

Following Alucard to the kitchen, your curiosity got the better of you. 

“Are things… different, in here?” You asked. 

Alucard turned his head back to you, seeing your wandering eyes and interested expression. “No,” he waved off your amazement, “The castle has stayed the same way for years, cemented long before you arrived.” 

You nodded, frowning only a little bit. “It’s just I could’ve sworn-” 

“And here we are,” Alucard’s announcement cut you off. “This is the kitchen. One of them at least. It’s the only one I’ve frequented, anyhow.” 

You walked into a rather large-sized kitchen, with a tiled floor and two sets of iron-barred windows- one right over a large metal tub sink and another perpendicular from the first and centered so the light could shine on the main oak dinner table.  Across from that second window, near the entrance door, was a large cast-iron oven, set against a brick chimney. Nestled in the furthest corner of the room was a series of Welsh dressers and cabinets, stocked with plates, utensils, and other miscellaneous dinnerware. 

“It’s lovely,” you spoke, amazed. You were drawn to one of the Welsh dressers, noticing a set of brightly colored objects there. “What are these? Dolls?” You reached out to touch them. 

Alucard scooped them up before you could, and quickly shoved them inside one of the dresser’s drawers. “Those aren’t important, don’t worry about those.” 

“Oh, okay,” you said, biting your lip. 

“What?” 

“Nothing, it’s just,” you gestured to where the dolls were hidden, “I wasn’t going to make fun of you, you know.” 

Alucard walked over to the stove. “Oh?” He placed a kettle on one of the cooktops, before turning a knob and striking a match to ignite a small flame. 

“I have, or, had dolls from my childhood too. They’re probably falling apart at the seams back home somewhere,” you mused, “Or I might have lost them. Either way, it’s nothing to feel shame about.” 

Alucard swallowed harshly. “They were… they remind me of some old friends who are no longer with us.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” You pulled out a chair from the table, opposite the side with the stove. “Did they live here as well?” 

Alucard nodded, retrieving a tea set from a different dresser. “For a short while, yes.” 

“What happened to them?” 

He shrugged, placing a fine pewter saucer and teacup before you. “The same thing that happens to all humans: they were born, they aged, they died. It's certainly not a novel concept.” 

At that moment you felt such sadness for him. You knew the castle was ancient, and you knew the stories of vampires began long before you were born, but you never bothered to ask Alucard his age, or where he fit in with the timing of all the local folklore. 

“If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you exactly?” You watched the slightest bit of a smirk grace Alucard’s face. 

“Old.” 

“‘Old’?” You echoed. 

“Older,” he said again for emphasis. 

“Older than me?” 

He nodded. 

“Older than my Father?” 

“Yes,” Alucard answered, drawing out the ‘s’ sound, in a soft hiss. 

Nervous, you picked up the empty teacup to admire it. The metallic pewter cup was rather dainty, with an impressive embossed pattern at both the top and bottom rims with an equally impressive embossed saucer to match. It was very pretty, and nothing like you had at home. 

You watched as Alucard poured the boiled water from the kettle into the large metal teapot on the table. The silence as he poured felt more and more suffocating as time went on. You suppose Alucard felt it too, seeing as how once the kettle was back on the cooktop, he was the one to initiate conversation. 

“You and your Father are close, I presume?” 

You nodded. “More so since my Mother and older Brother passed.” Seeing Alucard’s perplexed expression, you continued. “She died in childbirth, and my Brother, well, he joined her shortly after. That was a few years ago. My Father’s all I have left.” 

“Why haven’t you married?” 

“Excuse me?”

“You’re well of age.” 

“I-” you scoffed, momentarily lost for words. “Are you calling me old? I’m the youngest one here!” 

“You’re avoiding my question.” 

“I’m not obligated to answer.” 

Alucard said nothing, only picked up the pot and poured you a cup of steaming, freshly brewed tea. Again, the two of you sat in silence. 

Feeling less awkward with the silence this time round, you blew lightly over the rim of your cup before taking a tentative sip, careful not to burn your mouth. You then watched half in awe, half in horror as Alucard took a hearty sip, clearly unfazed by the scalding hot temperature. 

Seeing your appalled expression, Alucard chuckled a bit. “Another vampire trait.” 

“Is there anything that harms you?” You asked, incredulous. “You don’t burn up in sunlight, you’re not controlled by feral bloodlust around people, and just now with the tea, scalding water doesn’t phase you one bit.” 

“I do have weaknesses retained by vampires, yes. Just as I have vampiric strengths.” 

“How do you know which is which?” You asked, taking a sip of your tea, the temperature finally being low enough. 

“I’ve had years to experiment. Trial and error.” He answered.

“Yes, but if your trial went wrong, couldn’t you accidentally injure yourself?” 

“Better me than an enemy.” 

You nodded. “I suppose.” 

“What about you?” Alucard asked. “How long did you experiment before realizing you needed further help in curing your Father?” 

You thought back. “I didn’t do any experiments, I just tried everything I thought of to make him better. And I thought it worked, but then the sweats- 

“And the cough?” Alucard interrupted. 

“Yes, the cough returned. So I visited our wise woman and she sold me a tincture of wormwood and radish. It didn’t do anything. Well, it turned his skin red, but that’s about all. That’s why I came here. This place was my last hope.” 

Alucard did not comment on your desperation as he poured you more tea. 

“I’m truly grateful. Thank you,” you said, accepting the refilled cup. “Thank you for this,” you gestured to the tea, “And for this,” you said, gesturing broadly around you. 

Alucard brushed off your appreciation with a nonchalant wave of the hand. “It’s nothing.”  

You shook your head. “We had run out of options, what you’re willing to do, to try, it’s everything.” 

Alucard looked at you with his trademark melancholy expression. “As I said before, I believe I know what’s wrong with your Father, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make him well. But before we begin…” His hands reached out and clasped one of yours. 

You nearly jumped from the temperature difference. Your hands, having been warmed by the tea, felt like fire compared to his slender icy hands against your skin. 

“There are a few things you must know.” 

* * *

On the outside, Alucard played it cool, but on the inside, he was beaming. It had all been so easy! So easy to gain your trust, to gain your thanks. So much progress had been made and yet, he had learned your name just one week prior. You had relocated your belongings to a room in his castle, all transferred willingly, with no intention of removal anytime soon. Everything was working out better than he could have planned!

He was a bit hesitant to show you around the castle, having changed so many things. Then again, he assumed you’d be in too much of a state to notice. Castlevania was alive in and of itself, and he, as the inheritor of the estate, wielded a good amount of control over the living, breathing structure. The last-minute changes in decor were more of an afterthought on his part. Alucard truly didn’t mean to lie to you so blatantly, at least, not so soon after your arrival, but he had no choice. He feared that should he reveal he changed the entire castle’s decorum just to impress you, you would learn his feelings were much more intense than he was letting on. 

There was always a slim chance you’d feel flattered- a single woman such as yourself. Then again, in the past, Alucard recalled, his intentions were rarely well-received. It had been generations since he truly felt the love and affection of another, and it could be argued that those relationships formed solely out of proximity among Trevor’s, Sypha’s, and his destiny. With his Father vanquished, and the remaining group of supernatural beings continually shrinking in size, Alucard was further isolated as time went on. And it wasn’t just companionship he was missing. 

The longer Alucard existed alone in that castle, the less human he became; or rather, the less human he recalled how to be. That was also, partly, the point in changing up the castle, particularly the kitchen. He didn’t frequent it much, he had very little need to. Sure, he prepared food and ate on occasion, but as a dhampir, he needed very little to survive. Eating food was always more of a pleasure than a requirement. But then you were going to be living here, sleeping here, eating here. Things needed to be updated, for your usage. As a matter of fact, in his haste to have Castlevania conjure all the right things for you, he had forgotten to remove his newest addition of Trevor and Sypha dolls from the kitchen. It was a cruel trick on the castle’s part- knowing full well he wouldn’t approve of such items in his design, and yet, the castle left them anyway. It was embarrassing, and a further reminder of how rushed so many aspects of his plan were. Then again, you seemed to find it rather endearing. So perhaps, in the end, the visages of his long-lost friends worked in his favor. 

Besides, he was able to regain the upper hand, thanks to his question about your lack of a spouse. He hadn’t meant for it to come off as teasing, although, in a way, he later found he was glad it did. It brought an air of familiarity to your conversation, one that wasn’t present before. He… liked it. He liked it a lot. 

The two of you were still very much strangers, but things were most certainly moving in the right direction. 

Of course, the one sore spot in all of this was the state of your Father. Alucard wouldn’t call his prognosis hopeless, but it was certainly headed in that direction. It was clear from the moment the two of you had arrived, judging by your Father’s feverish and exhausted body in the back of that run-down cart, that there was little he as a physician could do to treat him. Even his Mother, the great Doctor Tepes would have been forced to face the harsh reality that there was little any doctor could do to secure this patient’s fate- either living or dead. In cases like these, fate seemed to hang on the wind, one swift blow in either direction could have your Father miraculously recovering, or being laid to rest. 

Then again, he had no intention of telling you that. You didn’t need to know. All you needed to know was that as long as your father was still breathing, Alucard was doing everything within his power to save him. The only thing he needed from you was your continued trust. As long as he had that, everything would work out perfectly. 

* * *

A/N: WHY DID THIS TAKE ME SO LONNNNGGGG?????? UUUGGGHHHH. 

Anyway, Part 3 is here! Yea! Maybe three months from now, there’ll be a Part 4, lol. The Ask Box is still currently closed to requests, but comments and critiques (and fellow fangirling) are always welcome! (No fr, tell me how you feel about Alucard cuz I love him & it has become a full-blown problem.) 

Oh, and because I’m not a doctor or an expert of any kind, I used these links for figuring out what tuberculosis looked like in the 14th century: [x], [x] & [x]. And here’s where I read up on old-timey medicine: [x].

Links about TB: 

Britannica Encyclopedia: https://www.britannica.com/science/tuberculosis/Tuberculosis-through-history

TB Online: https://www.tbonline.info/posts/2016/3/31/how-tb-infects-body-tubercle-1/

Latent tb vs tb disease (The CDC): https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/basics/tbinfectiondisease.htm 

Old Timey Medicine: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/disciplines/english/lion/medicine.shtml 

[ape-apocalypse]

Road To The Kingdom - My Planet Of The Apes Retrospective

With the hype for Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes on the rise, I decided to do a bit of a deep dive into the trilogy of reboot movies starring the incredible Andy Serkis and the various tie-in titles.

Why ramble on about a series that most people seem to overlook? Well, I think back to an interaction I had here on Tumblr in 2017, just one week before War For The Planet Of The Apes came out. While scrolling through the POTA tags, I found a post that wondered if anyone was actually excited for the new film or if the studio hadn't gotten the message and was making it for an audience that didn't exist. I responded that I was genuinely excited for the new film, that I loved the motion capture apes and the action scenes and the surprisingly engaging story, and would be seeing it opening weekend. The other person seemed surprised by my honest answer and apologized for their snarkiness (a truly shocking turn of events in the history of the Internet!).

I explained that I'd gone into these films thinking of them like Jurassic World series; I wasn't there for a great story and deep writing, I just wanted to see dinosaurs destroy things. So when I went into the POTA films, just expecting to see fun action movies with monkey chaos and apocalyptic results, I was surprised that I was swept up in the characters and their stories. I loved seeing the life of Caesar from tiny carefree baby to resilient revolutionary to fearsome leader, and the lives of all the humans and apes around him. The other poster said they hadn't actually seen the movies, just expected them to be shallow cash-grabs on reboot nostalgia, but they might have to reconsider giving them a shot after my enthusiastic response.

So if I can sway the minds of anyone who has written off these films, more movie tickets sold might mean more films and other media told in this ape apocalypse world!

And even if you already know and love the films, I also want to give some love to tie-in materials. Books, comics, YouTube shorts, video games; POTA has a surprisingly large catalog of bonus material for a series not considered mainstream like Marvel or Lord Of The Rings or Star Trek. I don't see them get many mentions in the fandom so hope a little spotlight on them can help them shine. They have delicious tidbits of world-building and character backstory, filling in gaps between the movies. I already have my fingers crossed there will be some tie-in material covering some of the huge time jump between War and Kingdom. With three hundred years passing between them, there is so much to learn about the ever growing and changing ape societies. I'm eager for any scrap of info they'll share!

But really, even if nothing I write changes anyone's mind about this franchise, it's still fun to gush about one of my favorite fictional universes.

My brief history with POTA was that I didn't know much about the original films before going into the new Andy Serkis trilogy. I'd heard enough about the original film to know the main beats of the first movie (quotes like 'damn dirty ape', the reveal of the planet being Earth with the Statue of Liberty). I saw the Tim Burton film which didn't leave any kind of impression other than the incredibly realistic costumes/make-up, so much so that I was apprehensive of the CG apes. Since getting into the new films, I've started watching the originals and may cover those just for fun.

So whether you're a long-time die hard fan or a fresh face to Caesar's legacy, I hope you'll enjoy my thoughts on the Planet of the Apes franchise!

Links to all my posts as they are released:

- Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes Film

- Prelude and Contagion Comics

- Motherboard YouTube Shorts

- Firestorm Tie-In Novel

- Fall Of Man Comics

- Dawn Tie-In Comic

- Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Film

- Revelations Tie-In Novel

- Last Frontier Video Game

- Crisis Video Game

- When Worlds Collide Comics

- War For The Planet Of The Apes Film

- War Tie-In Comic

- Caesar's Story Novel

[sneezyonmain]

god why do I have such a boner for fictional contagion lately. god that shit fucks me up. so hot.