#he called it an 'enrichment activity'

[marshmallowloves]

Oh look - all your F/Os got together to make a super special marshmallow birthday cake just for you! 🎂💕💕

Happy birthday! Hope you have a wonderful day! 🎉✨

Ohh!! 💜 Thank you so much, I--

wait

did you say. all my f/os

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE, CORTEX

[spacedace]

Got inspired by the below tiktok and the idea of the Rogues killing the Joker in revenge for Jason instead of Bruce and had to write about it.

Here, have probably way too many words (with more to come most likely, this really won't leave me alone) of the Rogue's feelings about Jason's death at the Joker's hands and everything that followed.

(also I know the timeline is a bit screwy, shhh just go with it, we're going on vibes with this one lol)

-

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham.

The city was hard and cruel and she didn’t care about the ages of those that were ground up and spit out in her oily black heart.

A kid could slit your throat as easy as a man grown in a place like their fine city, maybe easier even for those who still fell for the ideal of children being incapable of anything but innocence and sweetness. Children learned from the world around them though, they learned from the savagery that filled their world, the hard scrabble desperate attempts to survive. They learned what dark corners to avoid, which ones were safer to skitter down.

It didn’t mean there weren’t still some rules of decency to be honored though.

Most folks, even those in the circle of the Rogues, largely left kids out of the equation. Crossfire happened of course, hitting busy city centers always meant some kind of collateral. But there wasn’t much that they got out of purposefully hurting kids outside a black mark on their name in most levels of the grungy underbelly of the city and one hell of a big target on their back. Both from the Bat and those criminals in the dark with them that took offense to those kinds of things. They were crooks, but with few exceptions they weren’t complete monsters.

Robin had always held an interesting place in their grungy little ecosystem. Anything to do with the Bat was generally ruled as gloves-off, do what you do without hesitation. And Robin - both of ‘em - had no problem hitting hard and being ruthless. The first one in particular had a feral sort of rage to him that was a terrifying thing to be on the business end of.

But they were still kids.

Defending yourself from any kid swinging on you was fair game, a person had the right to defend themselves. Grabbing up Robin to hold hostage or bait Gotham’s local cryptid, that was all fine and dandy. You could even get away with roughing the kid up a little here and there, so long as you made sure not to go too far and always kept hits to where the kid’s armor was the thickest. No hard and fast written rules, mind, but general rules of thumbs. Lines indistinct due to the shaky ground a child dancing through the night as a vigilante left all of them on, but ones clear enough that you knew when you were at risk of going too far.

Besides, the Robins were good kids. Fucking feral little shits, of course, able to leave you bleeding just as easy from a kick as they were a sharp word. But good kids. Even most the Rogues in the Gallery liked em. It was hard not to be at least a little fond of a gutsy little punk like that.

Though they were all maybe a tad less nervous around Robin II than they were the original.

Robin I had a lot of anger burning in him, a lot of anger in him, but he was still a cheerful boy with a bright attitude that was refreshing in a world so bleak and dark as the one they all lived in. It was up in the air which was scarier about the kid: The smiled he gave when he was about to give a hands on demonstration about how much force a tiny ten year old could put into a kick when they had half a dozen spins shoved into a flip to wind up to 80 miles an hour, or the flash of his teeth when he was demonstrating the knife sharp brilliance of his belief that Batman was only as frightening as Robin was hopeful.

They weren’t sure if he realized that sometimes they felt a helluva lot more hope at the sight of the Bat when the little bird was putting the hurt on them, or if he’d simply folded that fact neatly into his core philosophy without issue.

Robin II on the other hand had this kind of quiet shyness to him - even as he was shouting the most inventive swears ever heard by human ear at someone while he kicked them in the balls hard enough to make ‘em see not just the face of their own god but a few dozen besides. He was just as unhinged as the Robin before him - seemed to be a requirement for the job really - but there was a distinct different in how the two birds flitted about the darkened skyline of the city. Where the first Robin’s smile was as much danger as it was dazzle, a fanged declaration of victory against the dark, Robin II’s was a sunny, stubborn declaration of perseverance. Kid was sassy and smart, and never - ever - flinched away from extending a hand to those he thought in need of it.

Even if the folks he offered that hand to were in the middle of an attack on some fancy Gala or Wayne Enterprises or whatever target of the week it was. Even knowing the offered hand was likely to be slapped away and followed by a right hook. Kid still always tried.

They all knew why.

The Bat was big on offering chances, on rehabilitation rather than damnation. Some of Robin II being the way he was came from the broody cryptid he followed around. But Batman couldn’t claim to be the sole reason for Robin II being the way he was, couldn’t even pretend to be the cause of most of it. Nah, they knew why the little bird was the way he was.

That unmistakable thick accent. That frame that was always a little too thin even as he got older and stronger. That unshakable, headstrong spirit.

Robin II was an Alley Kid.

A true child of Gotham.

Her polluted waters in his veins. Her smoggy air in his lungs. Her shadows clinging to his edges less like a beast looking to swallow a small bird up and more like a protective mother hiding her hatchling. He understood the world most of them came from. The one they all lived in. Knew it in a way anyone who hadn’t been swallowed up by the dark never really could.

Everyone had their favorite, but even those that claimed the first Robin as theirs couldn’t deny that Robin II was someone to be respected. Nor could they deny a fondness for the chain smoking, classic lit referencing, perpetually baby-faced little shit. They’d all had knock out drag out fights with the kid and knew how fucking unhinged the puny motherfucker could be in a fight, but he always tempered it with offers of resources, of a listening ear, of understanding.

He visited them after they’d been arrested sometimes. In Arkham, or Blackgate or wherever else they’d been locked up in after being stopped by the Dynamic Duo. The little bird would make the rounds whenever he had a broken wing or was stuck waiting as the Bat interrogated someone else or for any other reason he wasn’t out flitting about the city skyline at night. He’d bring cookies or snacks and even cigarettes from his own secret stash on the rare occasion, mask unable to hide the furtive glances around to check for the living shadow that was the disapproving Bat.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. And Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of them from time to time. He was a good kid.

But childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham.

Bad things happened to good kids all the time.

And some of the monsters that lurked in the city’s darkest shadows took the black mark of a kid killer as a point of pride.

Robin II disappeared one day. Just after that piece of shit Garzonas took the fast way down from the top of a tall building. There were a lot of Rogues with doctoral degrees to their names but even those Goons that dropped out of school before they learned to spell their own names could do that math.

The big bad Bat had benched the boy after the fierce little bird had done what any decent member of the criminal underbelly would have. There were those that thought maybe it’d been an accident, that the kid was pulled off duty because of being too upset at unintentionally crossing the heavy line the Bat drew in the sand. Those voices were drowned out pretty quick though.

Sure, Robin II was all about second chances, of doing better, of redemption. But Garzonas had chances to spare and only ever spat in the face of those offering them. Doubled down on being a monster in a way very, very few of the Rogues Gallery would. The kid was a sweetheart, but he wasn’t no push over and there were some things so heinous that there was only one way of handling them. Crime Alley had its own kind of justice system, and when faced with a monster that was beyond even Batman’s jurisdiction, Robin II did what he always did: fell back on his roots.

Or so the rumors said, at least.

That was the thing about Gotham’s seedy underbelly. It was a grimy, wretched nest of vipers and cut-throats, but it was also worse than any beauty parlor when it came to gossip. No one actually knew anything other than that piece of shit motherfucker took a dive while Robin was chasing him and that he’d not been seen on the streets since. But most had a fondness for the kid, and a distaste for the kind of cruelty Garzonas reveled in and there was no proof that Robin hadn’t gone and done the world a favor by drop kicking that barbaric sack of shit off a roof. So as far as most in the Gallery were concerned, the little bird had stepped up and been a hero.

Time passed. Not a lot. But enough. The Bat disappeared too, popping up on an entire other continent in a way that was awfully tempting. Even with other Masks playing baby sitter while the local cryptid was away. Rogues were scrambling to set plans in motion, Goons getting hired en masse, weapons and weird chemicals getting delivered to shady places across Gotham by the truck-full. The criminal underbelly was abuzz with the same excited energy of children the day before a big birthday party.

And then the news came in.

There were people in the dark who made their living finding things out. Knowing things that no one else did or could. Some even specialized, keeping tabs on Batman and Robin better than anyone else in the business were able. And when the information they found wasn’t anything handy to have tucked into a back pocket or a secret they were paid extremely well to keep? They held on to with the same tenacity a sieve clung to water.

Robin II had run off across the globe and ended up in Ethiopia. Something to do with a doctor doing aid work, the same something that had the Bat end up there was the assumption. Kid ran off to handle things himself or was sent on a separate path on purpose for some plan or other the Bat had cooked up on his hunt.

Whatever the reason, the kid crossed paths with the Clown.

Alone.

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham. The city was hard and cruel and she didn’t care about the ages of those that were ground up and spit out in her oily black heart. But Robin II was hers, the child of her heart, an exception to the rule. And besides, most folks - even those in the Rogues Gallery - largely left the purposeful harm of kids out of the equation.

The Joker wasn’t most folks.

And the little bird was a long way away from the protective shadows of his mother city.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. And Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of them from time to time. He was a good kid.

When the news broke, it broke most of them right along with it.

Plans stalled. Schemes ended. Gotham, for an unnervingly quiet stretch of time that neither its civilians or the world at large understood, went still. Crime continued, of course, but the big names weren’t seen. It was only right, by the standards of those that lived their lives in the dark, that they hold off and give the man that fought them all so relentlessly over the past years the time he needed to focus on hunting down the monster that killed his son. He didn’t need the distraction, and they all owed it to Robin II not to interfere while the Bat at last put a final end to the Clown.

And the hellish cryptid would need his full focus on this one. The Joker wasn’t one to take lightly at the best of times, but he’d set himself up neatly in the middle of a nasty bear trap. Ugly and complicated in the way everything with the Clown was. Interference from the CIA, from the UN, from Superman.

Shit went down. People heard about the Bat and the Clown throwing down in a helicopter plummeting from the sky in one hell of a water landing. Big Blue fished Batman out of the drink before he could drown but there’d been no sign of the Joker.

But the Bat would find him.

They all knew the relentless bastard would find him. It was just a matter of time. With the hellish drive of a demon straight from Gotham’s darkest shadows, the Bat would track the grinning, child killing ghoul down and make right the terrible wrong the evil motherfucker had done. Batman would hunt him to the ends of the earth and enact the justice he held up so fiercely. Robin II would have the vengeance the kid so rightly deserved.

It was just a matter of time. So they waited. And waited.

Days.

Weeks.

Months.

The Clown still lived.

The world, impossibly, began to move on. The Bat returned to his lurking in the night, picking off gangs and petty crooks and no-name gangsters as if nothing had happened at all. More vicious, more savage, but failing to turn that rise in brutality into the killing blow against the one figure that so rightly deserved it.

No one knew what was happening. There were rumors and theories, as there always were in the underground. Some thought that it wasn’t the Bat at all back in Gotham but someone else pretending for awhile, looking after his neglected city while he continued his pursuit of the Joker. Other held that it was the Bat but the whole thing was a ploy to draw the Clown out into the open. A pretense at not caring meant to get under the Clown’s skin, make the asshole mad enough to get stupid and sloppy and reveal himself.

That the man simply had given up was beyond comprehension. Beyond what any upstanding Rogue could accept. So it simply couldn’t be true. There was a trick being played. Some brilliant game of 4D chess that none of them had been able to parse out. It’d be revealed in time, and they see the brilliant trap that had been set. The Clown would be lured out, the Bat would put him down for good, and then they’d all at last raise a glass to the little bird that had been shot down far too soon and smoke shitty cigarettes and quote literary masters and mourn the loss one of Gotham’s own true children.

They just had to play along. Stumbling forward back into their usual habits, pretending that it was a choice and not the world just forcibly dragging them along. It’d make sense, eventually. The Bat had a plan. Robin II wasn’t forgotten, his killer not left free to roam and ravage unpunished for what he’d done.

And then one day there was a new bird flitting across the rooftops.

Chasing the Bat’s looming frame like a reverse shadow. Bright flashes of color in contrast to the bleak darkness of Gotham’s grimy nights. Small and thin and young.

Not the first Robin. With his showman bright grin and bloody rage and unwavering belief in the terrifying power of hope. Not the brilliant, vicious little boy that they’d seen grow over the years into the fierce and fearless Nightwing.

Not Robin II either.

Not Gotham’s soft hearted little bruiser with his unshakable belief that people could be better if given the chance, shinning so bright in the dark as he held out a hand that even the Rogues had no choice but to believe right along with him sometimes. Not the tough little songbird they’d never get to see grow up. Unavenged and unhonored. Put in a box and buried in the ground with a name none of them would ever know carved into a stone they’d never be able to visit.

No.

It was a new Robin.

A new child with the R emblazoned upon his chest.

Sharp and quick and young in the way the birds always were when they started flying at the Bat’s side. Every inch of the boy’s tiny frame a tragedy and an insult. One very, very few of Gotham’s vicious underbelly were willing to tolerate.

Childhood was not held universally sacred in the dark streets of Gotham, but there was a damn big difference between holding something sacred and not giving a damn about it at all. There were rules unspoken but understood, a way things were done. Nothing so solid or concrete as a code of conduct, more a collection of time honored traditions. Blood for blood was among the oldest and truest, and the more precious the person taken the more vital and vicious payment was to be made in kind.

The Clown had killed Robin II.

Beaten the kid half to death and then finished the job with a bomb.

Everyone knew he’d done it laughing all the way.

The Bat should have done the same in kind. Done worse. It was justice, it was what was right. You kill a kid you’re marked forever. You kill one so well liked and kill ‘em like that and you’re destined for a cruel and cold death. The Bat had first dibs. It was his kid. It was his right to put an end to that awful laughter and let his son have peace at last.

But he never did.

Nightwing had. For a bit. For a moment.

Robin I, who half the time had scared them all more than the Bat ever could. Dazzling and dizzying and dangerous. Gave back the pain and hurt the Clown had forced upon him with clenched fists and bone shattering hits. They were glad for him, that he was able to beat the monster who had taken his little brother from him to death, that he was able to have such justice.

And then the Bat stepped in.

Revived the fucking Clown.

A slap in the face. The snapping crack of a spine beneath one straw too many. The final, unforgivable insult the man had dared visit upon not just the child taken from him but the entirety of Gotham.

The Rogues and their Goons always had a soft spot for the Robins. Respected their ferocity, admired their moxie, marveled at their ability to keep shining in the dark like they did. Robin II made it especially easy to let fondness bleed out of the city’s dirty criminal underbelly from time to time.

He was a good kid.

He deserved better.

Better than the silence and peace he should be granted in death to be marred by the mad cackles of his killer still running around alive and unpunished. Better than his father giving up, returning to the same old routine as if nothing had happened at all. Better than the Bat snatching up a new bird less than a year later.

Gotham and her Rogues had given the Bat time enough to do what needed to be done.

It was their turn.

[yesthefandomfreakblr]

Ripred is not above being a sugar baby but he'd be a really shitty one.

[gladiatorcunt]

- # LEMON SUGAR !

flew like a moth to you (sunlight)

cw: weird pet play, reader has a vagina, large age gap (reader early 20’s & logan is…. not), HEAVY PISS KINK, dirty yucky icky gross vibes, xmen 2 coded logan, dad (father figure) bf talk and behaviors (old man, kiddo, dad, essentially lifestyle dom-ing you) anal plug mention, praise kink but one usage of ‘bitch’ and ‘toilet’, reference to a canon scene with jean but in this au she was just clowning on him as a friend, scogan crumbs, mentally ill & unhinged!reader, self objectification/dehumanization (?), reader: “i wish a/b/o was real :(”, pt.2 to . bc the dynamic might be confusing, implied unaware mutant!reader

do not copy, translate, or feed this work to ai

1k event. / please consider commissioning me

Logan doesn’t slap his tip against your cheek more than a quick initial love tap (if a tight awkward handshake from a man decades older than you was a sexual act) but he loves to force your head against his crotch and really massage it into your skin. His other hand holds his dick like he’s aiming to piss, a slight scowl twisting his lips because he’s trying to concentrate. His cigar hangs out of his mouth and his bulky hips swivel as he grinds his precum into your face, cheeks, around your eyes, lips, check check check.

He doesn’t even necessarily want you to suck him off that bad and he’s not even trying to cum. orgasming is a slower pursuit for him these days anyway. He just wants to dirty his puppy up a little, enrichment and whatever the fuck. Maybe you can make a game of trying to catch the salty droplets on your tongue, see if you can spot them when they’re about to gush out and trickle down.

An activity can both be a perverted parlor trick and a form of indulgent self care that trivial things like ice rollers or under eye patches couldn’t replace.

“There we go, atta puppy.” Logan chuckles and ruffles your hair when you manage to lick away a bead of precum before it can drip down out of your reach.

“Daddy, don’t tease. ‘m trying to focus, that’s rude.” You give him a good shake, smiling wildly.

You’re already drunk and loopy just huffing the pure musk emanating from his uncut cock. You hum as the salty tang of his juices taint your tastebuds, luxuriating in the aftertaste like you were chowing down on a dainty macarron. He doesn’t really believe in eating or drinking anything special to make his crotch and the things it produces taste better. You couldn’t be more happy about that, the whiskey sour twang riding on the flavor notes were much more preferable than some biblical concoction of milk and honey. If only it was more acidic, that way it could burn a hole through your tongue and your cervix. Marking you so thoroughly from the deepest parts of your soul, you’d always be empty and every pang of pain would call for the man that caused it to soothe your burns with his saliva.

Intimacy with Logan feels like you’re reconnecting in whatever version of the garden of Eden can exist on Earth. Why can’t it be here? With you on your knees so close to barking into the skin of your old man’s cock, a fancy cushion settled under you with little golden tassels hanging off the corners. You are always so willing to be the best you can be for him, but he’ll never allow your service to come at the price of individual pain. Your eyes flutter and you take one of your many breaks to plunge your nostrils into his thick bush.

Wooden and spicy, your favorite perfume that is undeniably raunchy yet sensuous and romantic. Natural. You never thought you could be so in love with how a man’s pubes smell, but you can’t say that you thought that any part of this would have become your life’s purpose in more ways than not. Logan chuckles and pats your cheek, enamored with how clearly you seem to be enjoying suffocating yourself in his groin. He sharply inhales through his nose when you move up to trail your tongue along his happy trail, lapping at the thinner hairs because you adore each one just as much as every part of him.

“Bet you wish you could live off my dick, don’t ya, bunny?”

Of course you nod and moan as you let yourself be pulled back to where you’re supposed to be, the mothership calls you home and you answer happily with your phantom tail wagging all the way.

You pant, digging your nose bridge into the crease where his hip bleeds into his inner thigh, “Mmfh- hah… tastes good, Daddy. I could die here…”

You wanted to cut your voice break of ‘Daddy’ short, but you haven’t arrived at that particular station in your subconscious to shed your skin entirely. You’re having trouble forming a coherent line of thought and finishing your sentences now, but you feel sheepish about how easily he can box you into going nonverbal, so you clamor to stay afloat.

You forget that Logan knows your game by now, every step and caveat and every miniscule and complicated rule. It’s cute how you’re still ashamed of letting your dear old dad see you in all of your bunny-puppy-deer-kitty pet glory, when he clocked that shit the minute your shaky eyes fixated on his truck’s glove box rather than make a second of eye contact with him. You’re fucked up, there’s something fractured deeper in you that you keep under a diary shaped lock and key, but all these jagged edges have bows teetering on their precipices.

You’ve let him put them there, with a fond eyeroll and heaps of head pats. Thank your lucky stars that there’s something fucked up with his psyche too, buried under all his other baggage, because that first ride home with you didn’t end in tears and your nipples caught in his canines. You got to be a bunny settling down in their deserved cozy den instead of a rabbit relying on their prey instincts to throw the predator chasing them off their twitching fuzzy cotton tail.

You don’t get to hide and shrink in yourself. Not when the curled up needy angel hidden under the layers of you makes his jaw ache so ferociously that it’s borderline bestial.

Baby, you’ve gotta know that if he could, he’d pick you up with his teeth by your scruff so your feet would never have to touch the ground and grow ripe with callouses.

He takes a puff from his cigar and shakes the excess ash over your shoulder, out of your view because he also knows that you’d try to swallow the unhealthy specks down too. It’s a constant thing on his mind, the never ending job of pulling your leash enough to wean you off of engulfing whatever weird shit into your mouth you can see out of the corner of your eye. And if it comes from him or was in contact with him? Hell, the stuff might as well be damn catnip to you.

He thinks he feels the same way about you, that’s what he gets for being stupid enough to have an inch of his heart unguarded. You found a way and wormed your way through his arteries, and now he’d rather go sober cold turkey than let you squirm away. Which is what you try to do by pulling back and settling soft hands on his hairy and beefy thighs.

He’s got you hook, line, and sinker when he clasps a burly hand around the base of his thick cock in the poor imitation of a knot. He even squeezes in short pulses, bringing to mind what it would look like swelling up and pumping you full of potent cum. Breeding you with all the love of a man who wants more of you in the world because that might make him believe in it again. He wags his length in his hand to you, wordlessly offering you your favorite snack because you’ve been so very good for your old man.

“Come on, hun, want your treat? I know my puppy wants this big dick in their cute fuckin’ mouth.” He grumbles, stubbing his cigar out on his arms without even flinching or gritting his teeth and tossing it on the floor.

The burn’s already healed by the time you’ve gotten yourself and obediently let your tongue hang out of your mouth. He grunts, pleased, and dabs his sticky tip on the center of your tongue. It gives you the taste you crave while simultaneously depriving you of having your mouth filled like you desperately need to be able to get through the day.

You whine, Logan’s lips split on a wry smile but he doesn’t laugh this time. Nah, he’s too busy feeding his throbbing cock into your mouth, cutting off your whining and reducing a thunderous sound to a muffled crack of lightning.

“Theeeeeeeeere we go, kiddo, relax.” He says a few inches in, because your gag reflex is already tickling the back of your throat.

You breathe through your nose and distract yourself by playing with the hairs on his legs, drawing little hearts and stars as you take more of his length. Tears well up in your pitiful eyes but you brave through it. They eventually bubble over as your lips are forced to stretch, but Logan’s rough thumb dutifully wipes them away just like how you’d attentively cleaned his tip.

His head falls back with a slight crack and his sweaty pecs heave, “Drank a whole lot for you today, ‘m all nice and backed up just waitin’ for a pretty lil’ thing to relieve myself with.”

Suddenly you’re a bunny hopping off on a mission, no god could pull you off of Logan’s musky cock as you swallow around him. You don’t really feel like bobbing your head and humming today, you’re tuckered out from how late he kept you up late last night. He’s not going to just fuck your mouth without being asked, as much as he cares about you, you’re impossibly cute when you’re forced to do the tiniest bit of work.

If your mouth wasn’t so stuffed full of dick you’d pout, and the raised eyebrow Logan gives you means he knows that. You’re a good pet though, so you work yourself off of his length, take a deep breath, and immediately slide back down to the hilt. His full balls press against your chin and you rub the heavy sacks with both hands.

“Oh, fuck.” Logan groans, his fingernails dig into your scalp like he’s the one that needs to stay grounded. “Your gonna make your old man jizz his pants too quick if you keep fuckin’ playin’ with my balls like that.”

You don’t mind that at all, but there's still something else you’re after. You didn’t think much of how many bottles of water and glasses of alcohol he had thrown back today, maybe it was some sort of mutant thing that you just didn’t understand. Super dehydration or whatever, but the fact that he had been preparing a little surprise for his piss thirsty puppy made you want to give him your bloody heart right out of your chest.

His moans and growled promises of rewards and declarations of the rawest form of love a person could feel fade into the background. You hollow your cheeks and go for gold, wet ‘schlop!’-ing sounds bounce off the walls as you fuck your throat with his girthy cock. Not the longest in the world, another one of your blessings (you’ve heard mutterings about mission showers and some guy that shoots lasers out of his eyes taking that prize), but the way it fills up the space in your mouth to the point it could burst gives your clit tachycardia.

“Yeah, fuck, are you ready to drink up, bitch? ‘m gonna use you like a toilet, gonna cum too- god fuckin’ damn-”

You give his balls a solid squeeze as the golden shower pours down your throat and past the seam of your lips to the floor. You don’t stop your ministrations, you actually speed up your pace and bring your wrists into it. Your hands bumping against his imitation knot-hand as you move them in circles, jacking him off while your plush lips glide up and down his cock.

You’re rubbing your pussy against the cushion, it has corduroy buttons that send a tingle down your spine when they catch your clit. The emerald green fabric drags and moves as you hump it while you put your all into making your dad-boyfriend-everything cum. You’re outright bouncing his heavy balls in your hands now, they’re so full you know that one load isn’t going to be nearly enough. So you tell yourself to lock in and hum, sending vibrations down his dick.

Determined puppies get extra treats, and you’ve never gone without them. So you push yourself to make eye contact, flicking your eyes up to stare at Logan as you ruin your own throat via his dick like it was nothing more than your toy. You think it’s the sheer and essentially licentious mannerisms and the glaringly obvious truth that there are men who are not immune to watching a pretty pet posturize themselves on an altar of their own making just to paw at their owner’s legs.

“My baby bunny, too damn sweet to me, yessssss-” His mouth wrenches up almost in pain as he clings to the back of your head and pounds your throat on his own for the next minute.

“Drink it all up, let me feel you swallow it down f’r me.”

You purposefully yank yourself off of his mid stream and duck down to bob his balls on your tongue, lathering them in that pungent scent. You rotate your wrist around his tip, coaxing him to empty everything he has in him and give it all to you. Your hand becomes just as scent marked as his balls and the divots in your collarbone where drops of his piss and cum are forming tiny pools.

He groans at the sight, “Doing so fuckin’ well, collectin’ Daddy’s juices and hoardin’ ‘em all for yourself.”

Your mouth envelops his twitch dick once more, most of what Logan keeps cooped up for you belongs in your growling tummy.

“You better not hiss at me when I have to wash your mouth out later, baby.”

Thus, your perfect record remains intact, you beam around his still hard dick as you float in a starless sea of white and yellow. A coat rack for cock fulfilling its duties.

His piss isn’t too orange-y, you’re glad you don’t have to nag him about cutting back on the booze this time.

Sadly there’s no blood sticking to your scalp from his nails, but you embrace the sting their indents leave behind. They’re almost as breathtaking as the plug buried in your ass, Dad always likes to keep your holes stretched out and ready.

—————————————————————————

“Girls flirt with the dangerous guy, Logan. They don’t bring him home. They marry the good guy.”

With you, he was that good guy. Whatever it meant to be one after all these years and invisible scars. It’s indescribable, how much meaning you can find in having to gain the strength to take care of someone else completely. Be their Atlas and shoulder the world so they can waltz around you, their wings spread wide. He’s glad, deep down, that your wings don’t extend past the small house he’s stuffed you in.

Logan Howlett deserves a nice thing or two every once in a while, and he already got a bottle of scotch from Scott. Fucker thinks he’s so clever. You’d do just fine being the second nice thing. A shame that the nicest thing you probably have is that slick stained cushion, he’s not anybody to write home about. But you seem to have stitched your sides together when he wasn’t looking, sewn your identity into his until you had emotionally fused into one being.

It happened way too fast and when he thought he wasn’t meant for loving a little pup like you, but he’s tired of being some old grump about it. You’d probably snap and try to beat him to a pulp with the bats he keeps in the closet (for you to use in emergencies since you don’t leave), and he’d have to hunt you down through the

Anything else other than you meant about as much to him as a pile of cigarette butts.

And some time later when the dam bursts for the first time and you’re trying not to fall off that cliff, sisyphus-esque struggling through recurring hoarse sobs because Logan is uncomfortably stroking your back gently as if you were a person and not a corpse, you’ll start to feel the molten hot gold seeping in and filling the cracks.

Maybe one day you can tell him about the v-shaped scars on your back, the ones that look like they were created when something was ripped away from you. They’re slanted craters, almost, hard material resembling bone jutting out from your back. Hooks lacking their ornaments.

Hell snatch up your old fashioned grocery list (written with an almost completely dried out ink pen from the bank on a flimsy college ruled sheet of paper) and make a quick run while you heal more than just your body, submerged in another acid trip of a dream.

You wanted to make a lemon cake before the summer ended, it’s always been your favorite.

[stickthisbig]

If I could teach you anything that I have learned from my time working it would be this: there isn't really such a thing as being bad with people, because there isn't such a thing as being good with people

I hired a dude to do nothing but talk to people. He is my relationship builder and my keeper up with of all of the vast entertangled relationships that we have to deal with. He has never met a stranger and he is incredibly good at making people feel at ease. He's also a terrible public speaker and a person who hates having to convey detailed information. He gets really confused by too much data and just kind of shuts down

I am excellent at speaking from authority. I am an engaging public speaker and I am skilled at distilling and conveying information to people. I am absolute horseshit at having one-on-one conversations, I can't remember names to save my life, and I can only do small talk when I think of it as a problem to solve. Above all things I hate talking on the phone, because it activates every problem all at once

My other team member is excellent taking phone calls because she never loses her cool. She always manages to get people the information that they need and is not afraid to tell people no. She also would rather never come out of her office again if it meant she could just sit in there with her Lord of the Rings music and be left alone

For most of my life I thought that social interactions were monolithic and that I was just never going to understand any of them. I was convinced that everybody else that I handbook that I had never read, and I was being shut out of some discussion that existed in the world. Here's the fucking thing: that's not real and the sooner you realize that that's a delusion the better your life will be. We are all good at different things and we find them more or less draining than other people do. Social skills are skills, not ingrained character traits.

(And guess what, being able to infodump about your hyperfixation in a clear and interesting manner is a kind of being good with people, people fucking love enrichment for the enclosure)

[campredwood-if]

genres: Cosmic horror, thriller, semi-romance

CALLING ALL LEADERS!

We are very excited to invite you to CAMP RED WOOD! A summer home-away-from home where you'll find plenty of opportunity to learn outdoor skills and form friendships with an amazing cast of people!

Please find attached the application form to join our Camp Counselor team!

Camp Red Wood is a Lovecraftian horror based Interactive Fiction, based upon the Delta Green TTRPG system. You will take the role of a Camp Counselor for the next two weeks, helping not only to entertain a flock of bored children, but also keeping them all sane and alive for the summer! All while keeping your own sanity too, and maybe- just maybe- you'll figure out what is really happening at Red Wood Point Park.

FEATURES

Create your own Camp Counselor; customisation varies from appearance, gender, pronouns and personality; to skills, camp background and counselor role!

Interact with a cast of character, form friendships over your short summer, and maybe even fall in love!

Face the horrors!

YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE

Discover the mysteries of the bay and participate in camp activities!

Die.

ROMANTIC OPTIONS

Drew Winters

HEAD CAMP COUNSELOR

19 . Sagittarius . 5'3

Drew is a young, compassionate and determined lady. With rusty brunette hair, plaited down the side and often draped over her shoulder, she give of the air of someone meant to take the lead. She works well with the campers, creating a fun and enthusiastic atmosphere that we value for a Head Counselor.

Though we've observed that she often has issue with a few of her fellow leaders to the point of conflict, this has yet to be proven detrimental to her ability as Head Counselor.

Tobias "Tobey" Oak

ARTS AND CRAFT-TICIAN

18 . Cancer . 5'9

Tobey is a young, enthusiastic and amenable man. With dirty blonde hair, dyed green with chlorine from his time often in the water. Frizzy and untamed. He is returning for his second year as a leader. Though this time, taking the role of our Craft-tician rather than the Water Sports counselor position he had last year. Tobey is known to be liked by the campers, creating a personal and warm environment that we expect from a Leader.

Though, the boy is known to be quite distracted, and we suspect he is often under influence of cannabis, which we do not endorse, nor encourage.

Joem Masri

HIKING AND SURVIVAL SPECIALIST

17 . Virgo . 5'6

Joem is a new addition to our cast. A carefree, though quiet young man. With dark, silky hair he often has half tied back in a small pony-tail or bun. He has applied for the Hiking and Survival Specialist counselor position, with experience with rock-climbing, abseiling and quite the enthusiasm for our native flora.

For now, we'll just have to wait and see how he is with the campers.

Unfortunately this is, however, his first experience in a leadership position, and it is unclear how he will handle the role with the younger campers.

AND SIX MORE TO COME!

Join us for these two weeks, or one night, and experience enriching opportunities you wouldn't find anywhere else!

* The email is real, send through your application!

[atanx]

James Somerton's "A Measured Response": A Measured Response

so I watched a reupload of the video because idk i like to torture myself. and i took a bunch of notes:

“I tried to be a voice for every member of the queer community, but that was a failed endeavour before it even started.”

what a strange way to say ‘I tried making it seem like I’m the only queer creator and stole from and actively harmed people in the queer community. knowingly. purposefully. and when I was called out in the past I tried to hide it.'

“I'm a cis, white, gay man. No matter how much I try to be a good spokesperson, I can never really, truly, understand the life experiences of other, far more put upon,  members of the queer community.”

so of course I stole and hid work from the people I can't understand, gutting it of their personal experiences and refused to redirect my audience to those people so that they can enrich themselves and hear about issues pertaining them from someone who actually does understand.

“...one of the reasons I used their own words. But I should have made it clear that that was what I was doing.”

BITCH YOU STOLE. YOU GUTTED THEIR STORIES OF MEANINGFUL PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. YOU WEREN'T USING THEIR WORDS TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THINGS YOU CAN'T ENTIRELY UNDERSTAND YOU WERE MILKING THEM FOR CONTENT AND DEPRIVING PEOPLE OF ACTUAL, SOULFUL, MEANINGFUL ARTICLES AND BOOKS AND DOCUMENTARIES AND VIDEOS THEY COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING INSTEAD.

“Being a cis white man I thought I might win over some people who otherwise wouldn't listen.”

Yeah sure. Because racist transphobes are going to be watching your badly plagiarised gay film analysis.

“I would also like to apologise to Jessie Gender, who is one of the kindest people I ever met. Through my hot-headedness, I drew her into this anger spiral.”

‘through my hotheadedness.’. shirking responsibility onto an ‘ingrained personality trait of yours’ I see.

if you are so honestly sorry for being an asshole to Jessie why don't you fucking apologise to her directly? privately? not as a way to boost your own fucking image??

he's trying to earn good will by complimenting Jessie Gender “oh he knows to compliment an awesome person we have that in common I guess he can't be so bad after all” fuck you I recognise your strategies and it's gross to drag Jessie into this like that, she spoke out against you and you are trying to imply some sort of friendship or something between you. okay I cannot UNDERSTATE the way he tries to make it seem like they are close in some way and sort of drag her onto his side that's so fucking despicable. as far as I know Jessie Gender does not have a relationship with him of any kind?

once again bringing up death threats I see. obviously death threats are shite and anyone who threatens the dude in seriousness or harasses him will not see the light of heaven as Hbomberguy said but IN AN APOLOGY YOU DO NOT MAKE IT ABOUT YOU THAT'S MANIPULATION

also blaming the police for not clarifying a situation in a timely manner - the police are a flaming pile of garbage and I hope the institution explodes but NOT SAYING ANYTHING WAS YOUR CHOICE. THE POLICE DIDN'T MAKE YOU DO SHIT THERE

the problem isn't that you tried to “create a channel where all queer people could be safe”, the problem is that 1) you are a misogynist 2) you yourself engaged in transphobic behaviour and 3) you also actively supressed queer people's voices. The problem isn't that you supposedly wanted a space for all queer people, the problem is that you tried to MONOPOLISE queer literature analysis. fuck, queer doesn't look like a word anymore I've written it too many times now

(paraphrased) “I should have been helping with making queer people's voices discoverable” this makes it seem like he just didn't do anything and not like the reality that he was actively trying to rewrite history and bury LQBTQIA+ voices under his steaming pile of garbage

also BLAMING YOUTUBE AND THE ALGORITHM FOR ‘PUSHING HIM’ because he's cis and white, like maybe they did, I certainly wouldn't be surprised, but that is not why other creators suffered, a large part of that can be attributed to James Somerton stealing their work without any acknowledgement whatsoever apart maybe if they are lucky, a “based on” in the credits or their name flashing on screen for half a second.

“I should have done more to share the voices of other queer people” THAT IMPLIES YOU DID SOMETHING. YOU WERE ACTIVELY WORKING AGAINST THAT YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT-

“it was just my dweam to be a youtubew and when my videos gained twaction i felt pwessuwed to make mowe vewy quickly and that's why they wewe so shit uwu” fuck off you weren't pressured into shit you just wanted to make money and that's why you were a content mill

“early on I thought that crediting authors in the opening credits alone was enough” what about the times YOU DIDN'T EVEN DO THAT??? YOU'RE MAKING THIS SEEM LIKE THE DRAMA IS ABOUT YOU CREDITING PEOPLE WRONG WHEN ITS ABOUT YOUR SYSTEMATIC THEFT AND OPPRESSION OF THOSE YOU CLAIM TO MAKE VIDEOS FOR AND ABOUT AND THOSE YOU CLAIM TO MAKE A SAFE SPACE FOR. WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WATCHES YOUR VIDEOS?? WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID YOU CAN'T JUST PLAY IT DOWN

not him using Hbomberguy's example of the DEEP CUTS: SOCIETY AND QUEER HORROR video and claiming he credited all people in the opening scene when Hbomberguy highlighted he DIDNT EVEN CREDIT MOST OF THEM FUCK OFF ARE YOU DELUSIONAL HOW DO YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS

I think I'm going insane this all seems so blatantly fake. he brings up the evil queens video and how he asked Sean Griffin, retroactively, permission to include his work in the video. and he shows a ‘screenshot’ of an email Griffin allegedly wrote to thank him for putting him in the title-card and that he thinks it is ‘a very thoughtful video’. only the text of the email header, such as Griffin's name, the RE:, and the To: is a lot smaller than the ‘text’ in the email, which leads me to believe that the below text is edited in some way. And with how hard James is trying to rewrite history, it wouldn't surprise me if he literally rewrote the email or cut things out to present himself in a more positive light. obviously I can't prove that the email is fake but I'll just say that I think the likelihood is very high that it is.

the way he says this also implies that he asked for permission after he made the video but hadn't published it yet. which is also blatantly false.

again trying to waltz off responsibility on nick, saying he was much more interested in production and implying that nick did all the writing .

“nick and I had both grown up poor so when I lost my job in 2021 (approx.) we of course were desperate and turned to producing videos even quicker and plagiarising the fuck out of all of them! but we can't help it we were both poor as kids!” fuck off, you weren't poor when plagiarising every-fucking-thing, this was in “the second year of COVID”. obviously if they really did grow up poor that sucks, and that's why we should eat the rich and redistribute their money. not plagiarise people who partly are poor or not financially cushy and manipulate thousands of people into believing you are the only queer creator.

also milking his mom's cancer. if you were really that worried about your financial situation, one would think that you would get an actual job for security and not put everything into your youtube career that is unstable, especially considering you've already done a lot of plagiarism and have no intention of stopping. “oh I plagiarised because my mom had cancer QAQ” that is so digusting to use a person's medical condition like that.

“i have memory issues because of a head injury i suffered as a child and that's why I plagiarise badly. see, I copy pasted the text with the intention to rephrase it later but forgot.” that would still be fucking plagiarism if he'd done that, also, if he's so aware of his memory issues and how they lead to him plagiarising, why didn't he try to work around that? leave himself notes? or tell nick to remind him to integrate actual proper credit and citations before uploading a video? mark the plagiarised stuff in the document with like highlighter or so when you're pasting it in?? oh but he didn't do all of that because he has ADHD. now, ADHD can be debilitating, but he says it's recently diagnosed so it must not have caused a lot of problems for him so far, so it's probably not severe and even if it is, it doesn't excuse him not crediting people properly. stop fucking hiding behind things ‘you can’t change' because if you truly can't you probably shouldn't be doing this in the first place.

“my mom really wanted me to make a movie with her life insurance but that wasn't paid out so I decided to crowdfund it. i planned to underpay the actors so hard it was under union wages. we got more money than we were expecting and upgraded to wanting to film a feature (final girl) but i didn't want to start working on it until the campaign was over for some reason that totally isn't me just wanting to exploit people for money!”

I'm not gonna go into the Telos stuff but he tries to explain it by claiming it was very unorganised and that's why they constantly ran into issues and that's why nothing ever got done and they were JUST about to start doing stuff when the Hbomberguy video released. You know what, I can believe it, although I am very doubtful considering all James ever does is lie. Idk. 

once again trying to excuse his plagiarism with needing to pay two rents and thus needing to make more videos for more sponsors and not having the time to not plagiarise like please. i don't believe that they were in that dire need of money and if they were - just get a fucking stable job and put youtube on the backburner. 

also once again trying to make it all about him by once again talking about his suicide attempt and death threats. like. no one should suffer through that kind of mental anguish but honestly I cannot bring myself to feel sympathy for this man. and i see this as an attempt to gather pity points.

“nick worked very hard on these videos other three years and it's unfair to [them] (james says that they're non-binary but doesn't indicate their pronouns anywhere? and in the beginning he uses they/them but later only he/him so idk what their pronouns are but it seems like they/them is at least part of their pronouns so i'm just going to use that) that they all got taken down” well y'all shouldn't have fucking plagiarised then. let this be a lesson maybe and don't fucking show your face on youtube again!

he is fucking relaunching his channel. like james. this isn't something you come back from. no one will ever be able to trust you ever again and you don't deserve an audience. he claims all the revenue will go to Hbomberguy's fund but we have no way to verify this. we have no way to know just how much he makes and how much of that is actually going to the fund. i don't trust him with any money. which is why i watched a reupload rather than the original. he's also releasing a new video he claims is entirely by him. like?????? don't???????

he also might not relaunch his existing patreon but he's still making a new one.

he claims he will “work his ass off” to make non-plagiarised videos. like that isn't “working your ass off” that's the bare fucking minimum. I really want to trust him. and I want to believe he'll actually try to do better. and maybe he will. and i believe in second chances, even for someone as despicable as him. but throughout this video he has continuously tried to play down what he did. tried to make excuses for everything. and that's why i am not going to give him a second chance. if he can't even admit what he did i don't trust him to not do it again. and i also just plainly don't want to endorse a person making such arguments.

also, he plugs his fucking new patreon right after this.

“this video is not about me promoting myself. it's about me apologising.” the only fucking person you actually ‘apologised’ to is Jessie Gender. 

James Somerton: makes a billion fucking excuses. Also James Somerton: “These are not excuses. There is no excuse for what I did.”

this entire video was just a publicity stunt. he tries to humanise himself and repair his image. this is just a tool to be able to continue on and continue making money.

he also still claims the disney video was based on the Celluloid Closet and he credited the author and ignores that this wasn't the only author he fucking plagiarised in that video. he is trying to reduce his plagiarsm to incorrect crediting and mistakes and that is disgusting.

the least he could have done was mention by name out loud every author he plagiarised and what work he plagiarised. not just say “uuuh i'm sorry to everyone I plagiarised QAQ”

[pokemonshelterstories]

I understand that gyarados are extremely high-needs pokemon that require a ton of resources, training, and enrichment, but they still seem like such cool pokemkn to me that I always find myself kinda wishing I could care for one even though I'm not cut out for it lmao

Anyway, I was going to ask if you had any fun facts about the evolution line to share? Learning weird facts is my way of coping with how many pokemon I'll never have the chance to meet lol

I understand you probably don't have a lot of interaction with them though, given you mostly work in a shelter

i have had the pleasure of meeting with the cascarrafa aquarium's gyarados keeper a couple of times and getting to meet the gyarados he trains! part of my preparation for my dragon handler's license was learning about non-dragon types that often get grouped in with the dragons. they really are incredible pokemon.

gyarados are what you get when one of the world's hardiest pokemon evolves into a tremendous pokemon capable of surviving treacherous environments. unfortunately, due to the way this changes electrical patterns in their brain, evolution also causes them to become extremely aggressive. because they're able to handle environments unfit for many other pokemon, they aren't particularly cautious about maintaining the integrity of their territory, which contributes to their ability to completely devastate the area around them during an aggressive fit (often called a "rampage"). these rampages are difficult to control, and a lot of gyarados training is focused on giving them the proper outlets for their energy without encouraging them to get worked up or to feed into that aggressive tendency. the keeper i met with has specially reinforced pokeballs as well as potent tranquilizer on hand in the event of an emergency. in the wild, these rampages have been known to occur in clusters of activity lasting as long as a month, but thankfully good management and training goes a long way to preventing them.

i'm particularly fascinated by their powerful jaws, which are often seen gaping open as they swim or fly. gyarados have both lungs and gills, and they can push several hundred thousand gallons of water an hour through their mouth and over their gills while swimming. their bite force has been recorded at an incredible 22,000 psi!

[inubaki]

The Bite (part 2)

The next few years were terrible for Adam. Lilith, his new companion, was specifically created for him. Despite feeling abandoned by Lucifer after he had achieved his goals, Adam made efforts to build a relationship with Lilith. While Adam felt uncertain about his emotions towards Lilith, he was determined to give their relationship a chance. 

Adam desperately attempted to win Lilith's favor, offering gifts, foraging for food, and enthusiastically presenting her with the most enjoyable activities in the area. However, despite his efforts, Lilith remained indifferent to his offerings, leaving Adam at a loss for what to do next.

Adam found that Lilith had suddenly become distant and uninterested in spending time with him. She would vanish for extended periods and only return when dinner was ready. It seemed like she preferred to keep her distance from Adam. When Adam asked her what he could do to improve their relationship, she bluntly told him, "Adam, you have a strange odor. It's not a natural smell...it's more like a fake scent. Besides, I can't even mate with you. What's the point with those ruined glands?" And with that, the conversation ended.

Adam could never alter those fundamental facts. Lucifer used to comment on Adam's pleasant scent, comparing it to the air before a storm enriched Eden’s soil. But his angel wasn't here now and he smelled bad to Lilith. She presented as an Alpha, or so he was told. The angels told him before they created Lilith that they didn't trust humans to decide their secondary gender since Adam caused so much trouble the first time. 

And his glands...he still couldn't remember how they got ruined other than it was painful to think about.

Adam wondered if Lucifer was still considered his angel. It had been ages since they had seen each other and Adam couldn't fathom what he had done to make Lucifer leave. Perhaps he had become too clingy? Lilith, ever the outspoken Alpha, had often criticized Adam for being excessively dependent on her time.

"I don't belong to you, Adam," she declared when Adam pleaded with her to stay for a single evening. "And I have no obligations to you." With a menacing growl that sent shivers down Adam's spine, she stormed away. It was a growl that Adam had never heard from Lucifer or anyone before. He couldn't help but wonder what he was doing wrong.

Adam wept for what felt like an eternity after she never returned. Although Adam's understanding of time was limited, he had spent three long, solitary months in the Garden. It was evident that something was amiss, but he was unsure of what had gone wrong and how he could rectify it.

As he lied under a tree, he suddenly felt sleepy. Very sleepy. He heard voices from all around him but he could only pick up a few words.

"Lilith ran—"

"Lucifer took—"

"Adam—do?"

He fell into a deep sleep. Adam awoke to the sound of laughter and whimpered. His side burned and he tried to scratch at it. "Oh? Are you finally waking up?" A woman's voice asked. It sounded unfamiliar so Adam opened his eyes.

The woman standing in front of him was stunning, with her cascading long, chestnut brown hair, captivating grass-green eyes, and a warm, comforting smile that made Adam feel a sense of ease. As he struggled to sit up, sharp pain shot through him, causing him to cry out. The woman gazed at him with concern and spoke in a gentle, soothing tone, "The angels told me that you were going to be sick for a while. But don't worry! I'll be here! I was told that I am your new companion!"

Adam blinked. A new companion? So...Lilith was gone. She had truly left. Trying not to cry, Adam asked, "What is your name?"

"The angels said you would name me!" She looked happy. At least that was something. He looked around for inspiration and saw that the evening had set. It was beautiful and soft, just like she was. "Eve. I shall call you Eve."

Eve smiled.

It took Adam some time before he was truly better again. Eve was with him every step of the way. Fetching him water and food and even sleeping next to him so they wouldn't be alone. It wasn't long before Eve excitedly told him that she had presented as an Omega. She turned to him with a confused smile and said, "Why do you smell so weird?"

Adam looked at his wife, he was told to call her this, with fear. She could smell how awful he was as well? No, he could fix this. "Can you tell me what's wrong with it?"

Eve nodded and sniffed his glands, or lack thereof, and frowned. "You just smell...wrong. I...don't know how else to explain it. And your glands...they look nothing like mine." She showed off her Omega gland and Adam had to stop himself from crying.

Her's looked beautiful, ready to be marked and claimed. Unlike his. His was forever ruined, and for the life of him, he couldn't remember! What was wrong with him?!

Eve must have noticed his distress because she smiled and hugged him. "It's okay Adam! We'll figure it out! I'm sure there's some way to fix it!"

Adam had never felt this kind of gratitude. Despite him being broken, his wife was staying with him. He smiled and cried out many times about how thankful he was for her and that he didn't deserve Eve. His wife simply held him as he cried.

He should have known things wouldn't last. 

One day, he came across Eve looking hot and flushed. He originally thought she may have eaten something she wasn't supposed to but on further inspection, he found that she was...ready to mate. Adam could help her. He knew how!

As soon as he came near, Eve growled at him, making Adam step back in shock. "You're not an Alpha!" She screamed as she threw rocks at him. Adam dodged them, begging Eve to explain whatever was going on. She was breathing heavily, her chest heaving as she glared at him.

"I don't want you! I want an Alpha! Not something fake!" Adam whimpered. He had never heard her yell and be so enraged before. "You said...it didn't matter that I wasn't an Alpha..." He said, bringing up their previous conversations.

Eve just scoffed and threw more rocks, demanding Adam be useful and bring her an Alpha because she wasn't mating with him. Adam felt his heart break as he stumbled away. Once again, he was broken and no one could stand that. 

First Lucifer. Then Lilith. And now, finally, Eve. Maybe it wasn't them...maybe it was him. Maybe Adam was the problem. Maybe he was always the problem.

The next two days passed and it only solidified his conclusion when Adam found Eve, Lilith,...and Lucifer all underneath a big tree. They each held the Forbidden Fruit, all eating and laughing as they rolled around together.

Whatever little hope he had of fixing things with Eve was now dashed. She clearly went off for good with better people, Alphas, and she didn't want him. He silently cried as he slipped away, unwilling to interrupt their happy moment. 

He finally collapsed to the ground near a familiar-looking stream. He looked at his reflection and grimaced at what he saw. Adam couldn't bear to look at it further and smashed a palm through it. No wonder everyone left. He hated what he saw too.

Suddenly, Adam felt himself gasp as he was no longer by the lake but surrounded by angels. He looked around confused as he looked around, wanting an explanation.

Sera looked down at him searchingly before nodding. "He is clean. He has not eaten the fruit." All the angels seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief. 

"W-what's going on?" Adam asked as he finally spotted Lilith, Eve, and Lucifer. All of them were bound in chains, struggling to get out. When Eve caught his eye, she smiled and yelled, "Adam!" He flinched away from her, remembering her earlier outburst. 

"Lucifer, you have defiled Adam, Eve, and Lilith. Not only that, you infected Adam's two wives with sin. How do you plead?" Sera's booming and judgemental voice said. Lucifer glared up at her.

"I plead nothing. I set those two free from you. Adam was given a choice but when he didn't make the right one, you punished him. You further punished everyone else by not giving them a choice! You've forced everyone into this mold and—" He was cut off when a gag appeared, silencing his voice. 

"I've heard enough," Sera exclaimed, her eyes fixed on Lilith and Lucifer. "Given that you were the ones who brought the abyss into existence, that's where you'll be confined. A desolate realm where creatures like you will fade into obscurity." Adam struggled to keep up with the conversation, his mind still in turmoil from his emotions, but he seized onto the final words: an abyss meant for those who are forgotten.

Isn't that what Adam was? Forgotten and unwanted? Broken? The abyss...sounded perfect. Adam watched as Sera opened a dark chasm, hot hair blowing from within. Lucifer and Lilith were being dragged towards the hole, his former wife's cries ringing in the air.

"You can't do this! We've done nothing wrong!" She screamed. Adam blinked as he realized he was losing his chance. With a burst of speed he didn't know he had, he launched himself forward.

"Adam?!" Eve yelled. Adam turned as he looked at them all. "Adam!" Sera commanded. "Get back here! You'll fall!" Adam looked down at the dark red pit and risked a glance at Lilith and Lucifer. Both were looking at him in surprise.

"A land for the forgotten, hu?" Adam said. "Sounds perfect for me." He smiled as he jumped in. 

"NO!"

A hand, Adam didn't know whose, tried to grab him as he fell, but they didn't reach him in time. As he fell faster and faster away from the bright light of the angels, he saw the hole close up. 

A land for the forgotten. I hope it stays that way forever.

——

Written commission by @libby-for-life!

I wanted to draw a picture for it, but it’ll have to wait till after my illness dies down. But i hope you enjoy the chapter regardless. And if you have a story idea but have no written skills like me, please check out their shop.

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[illubean]

ooo idea for the unaligned experiment!reader (same guys as last time)

so reader gets bored during a job and wanders off once they know their favorite free meal human isn't going to die or something.

they go outside and find a stray cat, and when their favorite human comes to find them reader unprompted says "you're like this cat to me. you'll die before me and you'd be easy to kill, but I don't speed up that process because i like the fuzzy feelings you both give me. plus you're both kinda cute. :3"

like that's kinda just reader's usual rambling but it does cement that:

reader's actively thought about how easy it'd be to kill him

they don't do that because they (on some level) like being around him at this point

they're consciously aware they'll outlive him

they think he's cute

Also possible angst/comfort at the thought they've gotten bored and left him. also the reminder that reader's fully willing to wander off without him if they're not provided enrichment, but then they find out they consciously decided to stay where they could be found because they (on some level) grew to like him.

Unaligned!OP!Reader pt. 2

Characters: Illumi Zoldyck, Chrollo Lucilfer, Feitan Portor Type: Headcanons, Gn!reader

Couldn't really think of a hurt/comfort aspect because of these characters' personalities...

Warnings: mentions of death, a little angsty? idk

Illumi Zoldyck

Illumi of course already knows that you could easily take him out

it's why he kept you around in the first place

he originally only kept you around as some sort of Zoldyck super weapon

but YOU are beginning to develop FEELINGS? for HIM???

he probs just uses that to his advantage tbh

Illumi is worried when you wander off though, because what if someone else finds you and you take a liking to them? what if you leave him?

he doesn't care all that much about it from an emotional standpoint but he can't afford to lose such a valuable weapon

so he would accept your affections if it meant keeping you under wraps

you're willing to do whatever he tells you if it means keeping him around

since you don't really want him to die soon you're quick to attack anything or anyone he asks you to

even if you don't completely understand your emotions and even if it's one sided, you decide to stick around

you couldn't have your favorite human be lonely, could you?

Chrollo Lucilfer

he lets out an amused chuckle at your revelation

he too often thinks about his own mortality and that of others

so he's not as put off by your comment as he should be

"Maybe you're a lot more human than you think you are."

and his statement offers you some peace of mind

even though your immortal and were quite literally created to be a ruthless killing machine it felt good to know that you could actually experience human emotions

after this you are a lot more willing to express your affinity for him, weather physically or verbally

and you don't wander off as often as you used to

you still don't really grasp the concept of love but Chrollo understands what you mean

since you know you'll outlive him you become very protective over him

you decided it's better to keep him around as long as possible

so...I guess Chrollo did kind of get what he wanted

you were like his personal guard...dog? demon? idk you were his guard something

I'm not sure he would develop any sort of romantic feelings for you (at least not very quickly) but he does care for you to an extent

he doesn't have to worry much about losing you since yk you CANT DIE

but he does like seeing you happy :))

Feitan Portor

he's not sure how he feels about being compared to a cat

normally he would be offended but his brain skips over all the morbid parts and is like wait did they just call me CUTE!?

HIM? CUTE? HE IS A KILLER

he's mildy flustered by this but he plays it off as annoyance

but also he's offended that you think he's so weak

he knows he technically can't beat you because you're immortal but like...give him some credit

it wouldn't bee THAT easy to kill him

he could give you a run for your money

he probably just scoffs and tells you to shut up before walking away

even when you do wander you still end up finding and following him in the end

Feitan would never admit it but he enjoys having you around <3

[the-adventures-of-dave]

I feel like I should clarify bc this is tumblr- I do entertain Kepler more than with just fetch and backyard time. Sometimes that’s all I can manage in a day, but we’ll do other activities too (puzzle feeders, interactive toys, hikes, “scavenger hunts”, etc). He still gets into things on occasion, and if I don’t play with him enough he’ll start bothering Dave, but because of his high energy he is thankfully incredibly easy to entertain. Everything is a toy to him, it’s great.

Bengals are high energy and require a differnt approach than domestic shorthairs, but it rubs me the wrong way to see people suggest that you shouldn’t get a bengal (or siamese, or osh) because of their high energy. The energy level was a selling point to me because I wanted a hiking buddy, and I don’t really think it’s very productive to tell people they shouldn’t get a pet because of the attention they might require. People get border collies and huskies for the same reason, so what’s wrong with a bengal or siamese? It’s definitely important to let people know that bengals are high energy and require more attention than some pets, but they aren’t going to burn down your house if you don’t give them hours of wand-toy play sessions each day. Enrichment for them doesn’t need to be something that is draining to you, and you don’t need to be on call for entertaining your cat 24/7, either.

I have depression. I also work full time. Sometimes it’s all I can do to drag myself to work, then climb back into bed as soon as I’m done. And you know what? Kepler is fine.

[rageprufrock]

Sneak Peak: MLC Fanfic

I have so many chores to do so instead I am on tumblr posting this little snippet instead because adulthood is a SCAM.

Anyway, please have some in-progress modern AU where Jiao Liqiao hits Di Feisheng with a car.

The whole thing starts when Jiao Liqiao hits Di Feisheng with an orange Hummer outside of the Alliance Security headquarters while he's on the phone with Li Lianhua.

***

Six hours later, Li Lianhua is sitting around in Di Feisheng's hospital room dressed like someone's dad's dirty uncle best friend: beat up pajama pants, a shirt he'd grabbed at random hearing the shriek of tires through the phone line, and a pair of Fang Duobing's fucking sky blue Adidas slides he'd stolen as he'd bolted out the door.

"It's not that I want to criticize you, lao-Di," Li Lianhua says, critically, "but I told you to run that woman out of town as soon as humanly possible at least five times."

Di Feisheng, who's been provided pain medication and is angry about it, busies himself with glaring at the ceiling. 

"Now look at you," Li Lianhua goes on, like a bastard, "you've got a hairline fracture in your foot, you've got a broken leg, three cracked ribs, a low grade concussion, and also you're the top four trending tags on Weibo." 

That these are factual statements does not make Li Lianhua's continued, unwanted presence in Di Feisheng's hospital room any less insufferable. 

"Alliance Security CEO accident," Li Lianhua reads off his phone. "Alliance CEO car crash. Alliance CEO crazy girlfriend. Alliance CEO handsome." 

Di Feisheng's head lolls around so he can center a wild-eyed glare at Li Lianhua.

"Why are you here?" he asks through gritted teeth.

Li Lianhua squints at him. "Can you be considered human?" he demands. "There I was, enjoying my Saturday morning like a normal person—"

"You were calling me to complain that our CDN felt 'kind of slow,' like an asshole," Di Feisheng corrects.

"—and then I hear you yelling and the sounds of vehicular violence," Li Lianhua goes on. "Any person with a heart would be concerned."

"Fang Duobing made you come," Di Feisheng says.

"Fang Duobing made me come," Li Lianhua agrees.

"Well I'm not dead, so you can leave now," Di Feisheng mutters.

"'As someone who has also wanted to hit their boss with a car, but never truly had the courage, I respectfully acknowledge Jiao Liqiao as my master and will endeavor to serve her as a faithful student in all things,'" Li Lianhua reads, going back to scrolling through Weibo. "'I never want to know the truth or any details about why she did it. Just that she hit this beautiful mean-faced millionaire with a car is enough. I would die for her.'"  

Di Feisheng goes back to staring at the ceiling and begins to systematically reflect on the wrongs that have led to specific terrible moment. This begins with lingering resentment over college scheduling that had put him in a 9:30 programming basics class with Li Xiangyi and concludes with admitting that perhaps Fang Duobing had been right when he'd said, two years ago, "A'Fei, you can't just tell a woman it's fine if she's in love with you and that you guys can keep working together but that it's none of your business." But at that point, Fang Duobing was still the infant Li Xiangyi was fucking as some kind of weird post mental breakdown enrichment activity, and seemed like a poor source of professional counseling. In the years since, Di Feisheng can admit that while Fang Duobing continues to be an infant Li Xiangyi is fucking as a weird post mental breakdown enrichment activity, he has a sharp and nuanced emotional intelligence—as long as it has nothing to do with his profoundly repulsive attachment to Li Xiangyi. 

"Miss Jiao is going to get some truly staggering letters in jail," Li Lianhua observes with audible admiration in his voice. For not the first and likely not the last time, Di Feisheng swears never to answer another phone call or text message from this bastard again.  

"If you like her so much, you should hire her once she's served her time," he mutters through gritted teeth. The sharp edge of pain is starting to break through the drugs, but he feels clearer, sharper, less like he's trying to hear shouting through the rush of a flowing river. "Is there a reason you're still hanging around here?" 

Li Lianhua slants him a look, beaming with charity. "Now don't get shy, A'Fei—"

"Stop calling me A'Fei," Di Feisheng snaps.

"—I came in a DiDi, so Xiaobao is coming to pick me up," Li Lianhua finishes. "You'll be back to your peace and blessed quiet soon." 

Which is of course the precise moment that little treasure of Li Lianhua's pokes his abominably sunny little face into the doorway of the sickroom and declares, all smiles:

"Okay! I just finished with the nursing jiejies! They’re wrapping up your discharge paperwork and we should be able to take you home with us this afternoon.” 

“What,” Di Feisheng and Li Lianhua say.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 9/3/2024

having a lot of fun with toddler enrichment activities in this household, until we bit through the bag and the foil and the water and hated that experience

listening

fun citypop version of Good Luck Babe! by Amandumb and Sakura Wine, “ganbatte” scans to “good luck babe” SCARY well. this is both off a tiktok my best friend sent me and the spotify recommended weekly

-

reading

quite frankly this makes me nervous and i am backing up my blogs as we speak. i sort of believe them when they say that we won't see a difference on the front end, but this is a HUGE migration. SOMETHING is going to go not perfectly.

William Greenleaf's TIME JUMPER (1980, 224p) and Joe Millard (my beloathed)'s Blood For A Dirty Dollar (1980 European reprint of a 1973 American book, 156p). thank you philip. time jumper is from a thrift store somewhere (possibly from the free book shelf at the umass engineering library) and the cowboy book is from ebay. they lied about the condition and the heavy smoke smell so i ended up getting it for free :) in no world is that a Very Good condition book!!!

time jumper! i do not think the back cover blurb (below) is very accurate.

COMBINED DESTINIES! One Earth of the far future, city dwellers live in a technologically advanced environment, while bands of nomads barbarically hunt and farm the plains. Hidden within the city is Erin, a crazed scientist, who is constructing a timejumper. On the plains is a nomad boy who quests after the city's secrets. Unknown to both, an evil force works to keep them apart, for it knows that if they ever meet, a new Earth destiny would be inevitable!

i looooove a bubble city. i love long lingering shots of technology and city-scapes and city politics. i would not call the nomads barbarians, bc they are a trading society who set up crop irrigation in their seasonal fields and have a giant traveling library with card catalogue. i would also not call Erin crazed or hidden, bc he is the richest man in the city. reclusive, yes. single-minded, yes. pretty sane though. he is a little person and i think the book handled this fairly deftly for 1980? most of his obstacles are physical and not societal. finally, the evil force is not working to keep them apart bc it doesn't even know about the outside kid. they mostly just want to stop anyone from leaving.

now that we know the back blurb is lies, what's the deal with this book? mostly wrestling with how automation leads to a loss of purpose and flattening of culture, breaking cycles, cyclical natures of histories thereof, and repeating old sins. however, one of the more frustrating endings ive ever read with the very last paragraph containing the suicide of a minor character. we simply didn't fucking need that last paragraph.

i found the dialogue a little bland but book overall quite evocative. it felt like a sixties scifi show constructed from castoff theater sets. it felt like this screenshot from rollerball. a lot of shapes. a lot of giant gardens. a lot of flattened textures.

i also liveblogged the cowboy book here. we've previosuly looked at the one with the balloon and the jailbreak but this is the one with the mad englishman and the imported castle and the missing scientists. i love a description of Legally Not Lee van Cleef Because We Don't Have A Royalty Agreement

-

watching

X-Men: First Class (2011, dir. Vaughn) was way more fun than i was expecting??? it's fun to watch these with my bestie's husband who is a fairly intense x-men fan and Will pause the movie for several minutes to explain why a specific character's death was fucking bullshit or answer one of my stupid costuming questions

-

playing

the new mesoamerican fire-aligned nation of Natlan is out in genshin impact! VERY beautiful region even though i think it is a crime, to me personally, to show me a village of observation balloons and then tell me i can't actually go there for six weeks until the next patch.

this is a little bit more of a frustrating experience bc my tolerance for the least little thing going wrong is at record lows. once you hit 100% on a map region it feels more like a true 100% ing the area, which is a little scary bc this usually means you have anywhere from 10-20% more Stuff to do and find and collect. one quest is straight up bugged for me (very unusual) and i cannot get a specific mechanic (the yunkasaur, the little green pokemon lookin motherfucker above, flame spitting) to fire with any sort of accuracy. why have a sight and a center pip if you CANNOT aim it.

some parts of the map look a little more seussical than others.

to whoever made sure this observation balloon lined up with the window when you entered this waypoint building, i see you. thank you.

-

making

fallow week.

[reasonsforhope]

Non-paywall version here.

"When Arley Gill, head of Grenada’s National Reparations Committee, envisioned his work seeking repair for centuries of enslavement on the Caribbean island, one thing was certain: It was going to be a long slog.

But just two years since its founding, the task force is fielding calls from individuals around the world looking to make amends for ancestors who benefited from enslavement in Grenada. 

“If you had told us this would be happening, we wouldn’t have believed you,” Mr. Gill says, crediting a burgeoning movement of descendants of enslavers getting wise to their family’s history and taking action. 

In Grenada’s case, the momentum began with a public apology made by former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan and her family in February at a ceremony on the island. They apologized for their forebears’ enslavement of people in Grenada and their enrichment from it, pledging an initial contribution of £100,000 ($130,000) toward education on the island.

“She opened the doors for people to feel comfortable” coming forward, says Mr. Gill.

In April [2023], Ms. Trevelyan and journalist Alex Renton co-founded an organization called Heirs of Slavery. Its eight British members have ancestors who benefited financially from slavery in various ways...

Heirs of Slavery says wealth and privilege trickle down through generations, and that there are possibly millions of Britons whose lives were touched by money generated from enslavement. 

The group aims to amplify the voices of those already calling for reparations, like Caribbean governments. And it supports organizations working to tackle the modern-day consequences of slavery, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, from racism to health care inequities. But it’s also setting an example for others, drafting a road map of reparative justice for enslavement – at the individual level...

“Shining a light is always a good idea,” says Mr. Renton, who published a book in 2021 about his family’s ties to slavery, donating the proceeds to a handful of nongovernmental organizations in the Caribbean and England. “You don’t have to feel guilt about it; you can’t change the past,” he says, paraphrasing Sir Geoff Palmer, a Scottish Jamaican scholar. “But we should feel ashamed that up to this point we’ve done nothing about the consequences” of slavery.

Start anywhere

Most Africans trafficked to the Americas and Caribbean during the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended up in the West Indies. The wealth generated there through unpaid, brutal, forced labor funded much of Europe’s Industrial Revolution and bolstered churches, banks, and educational institutions. When slavery was abolished in British territories in 1833, the government took out a loan to compensate enslavers for their lost “property.” The government only finished paying off that debt in 2015. 

The family of David Lascelles, the 8th Earl of Harewood, for example, received more than £26,000 from the British government after abolition in compensation for nearly 1,300 lives, while “the enslaved people were given nothing,” Mr. Lascelles says. He joined Heirs of Slavery upon its founding, eager to collaborate with peers doing work he’s been focused on for decades.

“People like us have, historically, kept quiet about what our ancestors did. We believe the time has come to face up to what happened, to acknowledge the ongoing repercussions of this human tragedy, and support the existing movements to discuss repair and reconciliation,” reads the group’s webpage.

For Ms. Trevelyan, that meant a very public apology – and resigning from journalism to dedicate herself to activism...

For Mr. Lascelles, a second cousin of King Charles, making repairs included in 2014 handing over digitized copies of slavery-related documents discovered in the basement of the Downton Abbey-esque Harewood House to the National Archives in Barbados, where much of his family’s wealth originated during enslavement. 

“What can we do that is actually useful and wanted – not to solve our own conscience?” he says he asks himself...

“Listen and learn”

...The group is planning a conference this fall that will bring together families that benefited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade along with representatives from Caribbean governments and Black Europeans advocating for reparations. In the meantime, members are meeting with local advocacy groups to better understand what they want – and how Heirs of Slavery might assist.

At a recent meeting, “there was one man who said he wanted to hear what we had to say, but said he saw us as a distraction. And I understand that,” says Mr. Renton. “Maximum humility is necessary on our part. We are here to listen and learn, not try to take the lead and be the boss.”

Mr. Renton’s family has made donations to youth development and educational organizations, but he doesn’t see it as compensation. “I see this as work of repair. If I sold everything I own, I couldn’t begin to compensate for the lives my ancestors destroyed,” he says."

-via The Christian Science Monitor, August 1, 2023

Note: I know the source name probably inspires skepticism for a lot of people (fairly), but they're actually considered a very reliable and credible publication in both accuracy and lack of bias.

[mariacallous]

MADISON, Wis. — A bombshell report this morning from Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that Banco Azteca, a bank reportedly tied to the Mexican cartel flew $26 million of cash across the U.S.-Mexico Border to Eric Hovde’s bank in California.

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel detailed, Banco Azteca was cut off by several other U.S. banks over “risk and compliance concerns” after reporting linked it to cartel activity. An executive of the bank was recently implicated in a federal indictment detailing his attempts to bribe a member of the U.S. Congress to get U.S. banks to once again do business with the bank. Despite this, Eric Hovde’s bank flew $26 million of cash from Mexico City to Irvine, California as part of a deal with Banco Azteca last December.

This shocking revelation comes as Hovde has refused to disclose which foreign banks and governments his bank has done millions of dollars of business with. What else is Hovde hiding?

Read more below:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bice: Democrats question Eric Hovde over his bank’s $26M deal with a troubled Mexican bank

By: Dan Bice

Banco Azteca, the 10th largest financial institution in Mexico, has had its share of problems in recent years.

Accused in past news stories of having links to the Mexican drug cartel.

Dropped as a financial partner by some U.S. banks because of “risk and compliance concerns.” 

And now caught up in a Texas bribery scheme with an American congressman.

But Sunwest Bank, the Utah-based financial institution run by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, doesn’t mind doing business with it.

In December, Banco Azteca sent $26.2 million in cash to Sunwest on four airplane flights as part of a massive currency conversion called “repatriation,” records show. Hovde, who is running against Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, is chairman and CEO of Sunwest.

Now Democrats are questioning the deal, saying it gives voters a window into how Hovde runs his businesses by putting personal financial stakes above other issues.

Arik Wolk, spokesman of the Democratic Party, said Sunwest’s transactions with Banco Azteca are “extraordinarily concerning,” especially given the alleged past ties between Azteca and the drug cartel. He added, however, that Democrats were not suggesting Hovde or Sunwest had done anything illegal.

“Hovde is willing to do anything to enrich himself, even flying cash across the border for a bank suspected of working for criminal groups that are pouring deadly fentanyl into our state,” Wolk claimed.

As recently as 2021, Banco Azteca had no correspondent banks in the U.S. with which it could transfer U.S. currency.

Over the past decade, several news accounts, including two by Reuters, have drawn links between Banco Azteca and Mexican gangs, which are the leading suppliers of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and other illicit narcotics to the U.S.

In 2023, a Reuters reporter wrote that drug cartels are using remittances – money transfers favored by migrant workers – to send illicit earnings back to Mexico. 

The Reuters reporter said he witnessed five individuals on motorcycles collecting cash from people leaving branch offices of three banks, including Banco Azteca. Locals said these were couriers for the Sinaloa Cartel picking up drug money sent as remittances.

In a 2014 story, Reuters quoted a prominent anti-kidnapping activist saying Mexican gangs involved in kidnapping migrants ask for the money to be sent to Banco Azteca. Also, the Yale Journal of International Affairs reported that Banco Azteca was one of four banks that the Mexican cartel was using to process extortion payments.

A little more than a decade ago, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency investigated Banco Azteca’s ties with its then-correspondent bank in the U.S., Lone Star National Bank of Pharr, and turned up money-laundering concerns. Repeatedly cited and fined, Lone Star soon ended its relationship with Banco Azteca.

Other financial institutions, including Fifth Third Cincinnati and CBW Bank, soon followed.

According to a May story in the Wall Street Journal, Banco Azteca has struggled doing business with U.S. banks since regulators began enforcing rules cracking down on money laundering from drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. Many U.S. banks have cut ties with Banco Azteca because of “risk and compliance concerns.”

For years, that left Banco Azteca holding onto large sums of U.S. currency with no place to offload it.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Favorite character: John Henry Irons, aka Steel, from DC comics!

John is my favourite male superhero from all of DC. I grew to love him a lot from the 97 JLA run, and slowly have been going through his backlog after that series. John is such a really interesting character to me- he’s a character based really heavily off of trauma and hardship, who grew up prioritising his family above all else due to losing various family members like his parents when young, and desired to be able to become rich and successful in order to uplift his family. He was able to find a job with a military company, and was on his way to becoming a major player, until he discovered that his inventions were being used to hurt and kill people globally in the name of military interests. John left the company, and through a series of life changing events, mainly meeting Superman, he went on to become a superhero and to try and become a better person and to actively help other people, instead of just the people he cared about / knew personally. I really really love characters who learn to care more about other people / develop compassion for humanity at large, especially when they’re not super exaggerated bad guys but instead normal but flawed people who have very very understandable reasons for their previous selfishness / lack of regard for the wider world, and I think John really embodies that, especially because it’s connected to iirc John being seen as an icon and hero for the Black community as a whole at least amongst his close friends and family. John grows to become such a kind person in his comic appearances, and he has such an enjoyable and down to earth / grounded personality- he’s funny as hell too, I feel like no one ever appreciates how genuinely charming he is and how much good chemistry he has with so many characters. And speaking of relationships, I really love his dynamic with his family, especially his niece Natasha 🩵🤧 Idk. I just think Steel is a really great and compelling superhero and he’s really underrated and I think more people should read his comics, at least his stuff in the 90s- if anyone wants recs, then definitely check out at least his appearances during the whole “Four different supermen” fiasco after the death of Superman, and his 90s solo (also just called “Steel”)

I do love the reference to John Henry, the legend! I didn't know about this character and I feel enriched for learning! thank you!