#like i be in english learning about human rights

[preposterousjams]

Girlhood and Cassandra Cain: a messy analysis

I love how through Batgirl (2000) we just see Cass learn to be a semi-functioning "normal" girl and how she slowly goes from a life centred around justice and violence to a girl with so much wonder in her heart

Like girl starts out only knowing that she can be one thing: A good fighter. So obviously, to her, her own life outside of that means nothing if its non existent.

And at the same time, she doesn't really know what being a "regular person" means. She's had 2 identities: Weapon and Batgirl. In between both she was just surviving and it probably sucked rlly bad. She used to not picture a life outside of Cain, and now she cant picture a life outside of Batgirl. She literally has met like a total of 30 ppl in her life and talked to like 4.

But even with her very limited idea of normal social interactions she is unafraid of trying to show ppl love. She sees through their body language that the opposite of pain is love. But that kind of love requires an interaction outside of fighting.

She can't understand english much at the beginning but her initial drive to learn is not to be a better detective or batgirl related, its her love for people. For them to be happy. Its like a way of being useful.

But when others treat her in the same way, when others show her affection, she wants so bad to experience those connections over and over again. Mutual loving relationships are a new experience to her and she can't get enough of it.

She needs help on a case so what does she do? She breaks into Stephanie's room after meeting her like a single time because who knocks anyways?

wdym its not normal to knock ppl out when they're annoying? Like its convenient so y not?

She quickly makes her first friends but doesn't really know how to act or communicate but still manages to joke around in her own way. But they're happy, and she's happy, so it works.

She even watches crime shows and reality tv like guides on how to interact with people on missions and irl.

But gradually, all these small interactions let her become a person, for her to share small things about herself with others. Relationships let her be someone. Sharing thoughts, having conversations, working together, and anything that involves the small human pleasure of company become things she looks forward to.

And little by little, she starts doing things for herself. Like bro runs around Gotham, night into morning, holding onto a rose because its something thats hers and its pretty but she doesn't even know how plants work, but she's got the spirit. (yes ik that the rose is a randomly placed metaphor for cass having a bad work life balance but its so cute)

She starts going outside as a normal person instead of only for missions. She does normal girl things like going to restaurants but kind of not really cause wtf is a balanced diet.

Being able to share something about herself with someone and to sit in a mutual understanding of each other becomes easy. She lets herself be open to change and finds herself looking forward to living.

Wanting something for herself and being her own person is such a foreign concept to how she was raised but she loves it.

She experiments with everything to see what feels right. She starts flirting with boys, going to parties, dressing up in different styles of fashion. She wants to experience everything that girls do

She also learns that being a girl is different from what the other bats experience

Which sucks especially when she can read people's body language. As batgirl, in her scary ass outfit she was only terrifying and strong. But as a normal girl, people sometimes objectify her which has to be the oddest experience when u could kill someone with the blink of an eye.

Even her new father and brother see her differently than she sees them. Theres a weird social thing that comes with "girlness" that she doesn't understand, where girl things are supposed to be weak and have to be protected. But logically, shes like, yall gotta be protected from me be so forreal.

She dont gaf. Shes got bigger things to be ashamed about and being a girl is not one of them.

As she experiences the downsides of girlhood, she learns of the social expectations that come along. And instead of playing along blindly, she uses them to mess with ppl (and bruce). Cass understands more than anyone that social expectations and behaviours are just created performances that bring ppl together. So she chooses the ones she likes and completely rejects what she doesn't like.

and in the end she picks girly things like bold lipstick, fancy dresses, fashion, because she loves pretty things not because its whats expected. Social norms are like toys she can play with and put aside when they aren't fun.

Like she'll still get into a bar fight after eating the entire menu cause she can. Anyways ted talk over

[awkward-teabag]

I have to wonder how many people celebrating AI translation also complain about "broken English" and how obvious it is something was Google translated from another language without a fluent English speaker involved to properly clean up the translation/grammar.

Because I bet it's a lot.

I know why execs are all for it—AI is the new buzzword and it lets them cut jobs thus "save" money and not have to worry about pesky labour laws when one employs humans—but everyone else?

There was some outcry when Crunchyroll fired many of their translators in favour of AI translation (with some people to "clean up the AI's work") but I can't help but think that was in part because it was Japanese-to-English and personally affected them. Same when Duolingo fired many of their translators in favour of LLM translation. Meanwhile companies are firing staff when it's English to another language and there's this idea that that's fine or not as big a deal because English is "easy" to translate and/or because people don't think of how it will impact people in non-English countries.

Also it doesn't affect native English speakers so it doesn't get much headway in the news cycle or online anyway because so much of the dominant media is from English-speaking countries and English-speakers dominate social media.

But different languages have different grammar structures that LLMs don't do, and I grew up on "jokes" about people speaking in "broken English" and mocking people who use the wrong word when it was clearly a literal translation but the meaning was obvious long before LLMs were a thing, too. In fact, the specific way a character spoke broken English has been a way to denote their native tongue for decades, usually in a racist way.

Then Google translate came out and "Google-translated English" became an insult for people and criticism of companies because it was clearly wonky to native speakers. Even now, LLMs—which are heavily trained on English compared to other languages—don't have a natural output so native English speakers can clock LLM-generated text if it's longer than a sentence or two.

But, for whatever reason, it's not seen as a problem when it goes the other way because fuck non-English readers or people who want to read in their native tongue I guess.

[cillyscribbles]

i love you broken speech i love you heavy accents i love you regional dialects i love you pidgins i love you sociolinguistics i love you beginner speakers i love you interjections i love you language

[raayllum]

Gosh yes, your tags on that last post. Like, I don’t blame people for liking Viren, for enjoying his character, for finding him sympathetic (or attractive, even if I personally don’t). He’s a compellingly written character! But don’t be offended if people hate him or find him evil… he’s the villain, that’s literally his role in the story

"How dare this villainous character do villainous things" / "how dare the protagonist get narratively rewarded for making good choices" like do y'all even hear yourselves sometimes, y'know?

especially when - and i cannot stress this enough - tdp is for children and will ultimately have a happy ending. this isn't a grown up drama or tragedy or even a grimdark fantasy by any means. it's a hopepunk high fantasy story. people who further retaliation and violence and push people into inherently defensive positions are the 'bad guys'

like i love viren! i think he's very well written and interesting. he's a great examination of how we can lie to and martyr ourselves in a search for security that is also about status & wanting to feel special, about the harm done when trying to win a rigged system rather than solidarity in tearing a system down and making a new one. i appreciate his dry/deadpan sense of humour. he's also one of two primary antagonists in the first 3 seasons. and like, all that can coexist? it's multifaceted character writing? we all presumably passed grade 10 english class?

i also cannot emphasize the importance of being able to separate audience reaction or response from what a piece of art is actually doing or saying enough. "this story is bad because it was personally upsetting to me" without examples given or analyzed it is not well, analysis, it's just a currently very unfounded opinion. and sometimes stories are supposed to be personally upsetting, so like. you also gotta know your lanes

it's why subjective analysis is very useful but learning structural (objective) analysis is arguably more important. something can be structurally pretty weak but very enjoyable (frozen). something can be abysmal enjoyment wise but very structurally solid (1984, which i'd argue isn't meant to be enjoyed, either). and it's important to know the difference if you want to write actual analysis rather than opinion based stuff. analysis isn't necessarily better than opinion based pieces but analysis is more expansive because it can cover the subjectivity and the objectivity and more. which is precisely why i can read "the iliad" and think "wow that was good" but if i wanted to write an essay on it i'd have to do a lot more thinking because i'm demanding something greater of that artistic experience by virtue of wanting to expand on it

a lot of people take "art for art's sake" as a statement regarding the fact that art - which is inherently symbolic in its construction, even in what meaning we construe to words themselves - doesn't have to mean anything and fighting back claims that art should mean something. but i think of "art for art's sake" is more worthwhile to examine under the lens of "this art doesn't exist for the sake of capitalist consumption, but amid it, or sometimes precisely in spite of it" and like. very few things artistically have zero meaning precisely because meaning is also "what was the reasoning behind this" and if there is none (think a tattoo you got "just because") that's typically a subjective reflection of the creator and still indicative of their personality. sometimes the meaning is meaninglessness (nihilism is still a creation in response to us searching for meaning, after all)

i'm getting into the weeds now but the point is that there's definitely been an upswing in recent years of people thinking opinions = analysis and while that often is the case (particularly if that opinion is expanded upon enough to be grounded in the text and the text's context) it absolutely is not as often actual analysis as people think it is

[snezhishka]

Years have passed since I've given up on tianshan being developed properly without mo constantly being made fun of by the narrative. I've still checked on 19 days from time to time. Then the fucking kiss happens. Then last fucking update. Feeling like a clown. I've been there since the beginning reading tons of fanfics and even making fanart which I only do for things I'm obsessed with. I suppose I never really gave up on the ship itself. It's just constantly seeing people in comments of chapters making light of how Tian treated Mo. How everyone acted like that's normal and ok and nothing should change. So I believed them and thought that that's how it is and that's author's intention and the way I saw this ship won't be canon. And then it fucking became canon. Still hate all these people in the comments though they're fucking annoying

[gregrulzok]

This is something I love SO much about Kuro, and about Dunmeshi's portrayal of Bilingualism.

Like ... When we first meet Kuro it's so easy to assume he's a dummy. He's a big doofy-looking dog man that only talks about food, and his sentences are disjointed and broken, so you think oh, haha, token dumb character.

But then we swap to speaking Kobold and it hits you like a truck - Kuro is a person, and he has a full and complete train of thought that he can articulate. This is a grown ass man, and in his native language he speaks just as well as anybody - not only that, but here we see that Kabru, who is usually so good with words, speaks Kobold just as poorly as Kuro does common.

It's such an easy, obvious, and common trope to depict broken speech in a characters non-native language as a funny gag at the expense of their intelligence - not even just in fiction! Making fun of non-native English-speakers for their broken English is so fucking common and normalized - and here you have such a clear and simple portrayal that, no, in fact, Kuro isn't stupid.

And the thing is, common is common for a reason, right. In general high fantasy, "Common" means "Language that is effortless for everyone to speak". But in Dunmeshi, it's explicit that Kobolds can't fully learn Common - Common is designed for Humans, but Kobolds are demi-humans with different mouths and throats that don't allow them to enunciate in the same way.

And yet Kuro is doing his best to study it. He's going out of his way to master a skill most others don't even have to think about. Speaking of which ...

We get this exchange between him and Kabru, which I also wanted to focus on.

Because when we first see Kuro, then portrayed as a simple-minded dummy, it's easy to think that Mickbell is taking advantage of him and Kuro is unaware. Here, Kabru even assumes they can't truly be friends unless they speak the same language perfectly.

But that's not really the case - Mickbell isn't taking advantage of Kuro, not in the way we (and the rest of the party) assume - because Kuro isn't as stupid as we assume. He's thankful to Mickbell, he wants to repay him, and the food is a nice perk - but ultimately he cares about Mickbell enough to put this much effort into learning a whole language for him (while Mickbell cares about him in his own way, though since Mickbell grew up without a family or friends, it usually just manifest in over protectiveness and a fear of losing him. His goal in life is to buy a house for them to live in together. Cmon.)

I think generalising Kuro and Mickbell's relationship as unhealthy (whether you perceive it as romantic or not) is doing a massive disservice to Kuro's intelligence due to his speech - something Kui goes out of the way to disprove.

I love these idiots.

[inkskinned]

in the time loop the only way out is to leave her there but you don't ever leave her there, never in the roughly one thousand years you have been in the same day. it is probably like "50 first dates" but you haven't stooped so low as to watch "50 first dates" yet. (but who is to say what another thousand years of the same media will bring to you, maybe you will develop a new taste).

you spent about 200 of these years sulking in a bathtub or on the couch or staring at the seaside. 300 of them have been spent slowly mapping the geographical distance you can actually get before the time loop restarts. you have a list of favorite places: one library in Western Massachusetts called "The Bookmill", which has weird hours and has never raised an eyebrow to you arriving out-of-breath and panting, asking to see a specific book on a specific shelf. There is one beach without a name in North Carolina; it is an accident of geography and ownership title disputes - and it is pristine, untouched, warm and cozy. you've taken her on a lot of picnics there. Acadia National Park. One specific birdhouse in the mountains.

you were stuck in the time loop with the money you entered it with: not enough to rent a private jet. you've robbed a bank a few times, you don't like the way it ends. maybe next century you'll get the hang of it. you don't like the look on her face when you say hang on i have to stop at the bank.

you just have to leave her, and you can go back to being a person again. you took 5 years just catching a flight and sitting in the Grand Canyon. if there's one thing you regret more than anything, it's that you hadn't gotten your passport renewed before this fucking time loop. maybe you should spend some time learning forgery - but also, like, you look like an english teacher. nobody is going to be cool about you asking to see their paper printing machines.

the world is very big. that is one of the things groundhog day gets wrong. there are no consequences, so you have literally all the time (or none of the time?) in the world. in groundhog day, he does a lot of very cool things, but in reality - your muscle memory never gets better. you can't necessarily learn how to play piano or sculpt ice, because your hands never remember the practice. but hey - maybe you'll try violin next. drums. synth.

you can open any door and walk into any conversation. money isn't really an object. you can try every meal off every menu, forever. take her on helicopter tours and into every museum and on every event that is happening right-now at-this-moment. parades and funerals and calligraphy classes.

but you are somewhat trapped by the limitations of your body. if you were reading a book, you still need to get up and go back to the library and find that book again when the day resets. (thank god for the internet). it still takes like 2 hours to board a plane, and then takeoff and landing and traffic. you've gotten off to run around on the freeway. one of the little thankful things: since your brain isn't actually developing (it's a muscle too), the days thankfully don't feel shorter to you. that would be agony.

all you have to do to leave the timeloop is let that man get away with it. that's all. in every version of yourself - forever - you have stopped him.

the problem is that this experience has convinced you of the existence of the human soul. after all, how else are you forming memories? your very cells reset. information has to be transferred somehow. and if timeloops are real, you can convince yourself other magic exists. so you have two choices here: this hell, or the next. there might be a millennia where you have been worn down to the point you can accept fate's decision. this is just not one of them. ironically - she is the one thing you have left.

and besides! if you can't always find something new in your partner, aren't you failing them? there is something new about her, every day with the same morning. every brutal day with the same orange sunset.

after all, you wanted to live with her in heaven, in eternity, and, well - isn't this second-best.

[ninapiro]

I've recently been in the dpxdc fandom, it's awesome af and I just had an idea, a weird prompt.

We usually see Danny is or ends up as part of the batfam: Damian's twin, the new adoptee, something like that.

So how about Danny being Talia's older brother? Ra's favorite and the one who set all the standards that Talia, and later Damian, have to reach?

The original idea was: Danny left the LoA when he was young enough to never get to meet Bruce, so he never knew his sister had a son and thus that he was an uncle, he never knew his nephew was a hero nor that his nephew's father and his family were heroes.

So when an adult Danny, Phantom since 14 and High King of the Infinite Realms since 18 (or whatever age you feel like, I feel like that experience makes him very indifferent to a lot, and his morals are more similar to those of ectoentities than living things), met the JL and more specifically the batfamily, he felt the pits in RH and more slightly in Robin, and knew they were on some level involved with the LoA, so he just asked

"So… How did you get dad to let you use the pits?"

To which the batfam responds with "YOUR DAD!"

Then a second idea, derived from the og, was:

JL and JLD found out that the Ra's al Ghul was trying to summon the King of the Infinite Realms, so they go to stop him but fail to do it in time, then Danny in ghost king form appears.

He sees the scene, sees that his father is the one summoning him, and goes

"Oh hey dad!" as he transforms from his eldritch form to human form "You know you can call me right? I have a phone, no need for all this crap" .

Everyone, even Ra's, is shocked.

Idk sounds funny in my head

Feel free to make a fic out of this and sorry if I sound too formal or if there are mistakes, English is not my first language and I'm learning it

It is also my second time publishing something and I don't know how to use tags

[chaethewriter]

You're dead to me [4]

dad!Jake Sully x human!daughter!reader

In which Jake Sully leaves his life on earth to settle down with the Omatikaya people as Toruk Makto. Having a family that consists of four kids with Neytiri, everything seems to work out just fine, but what if the past comes back for him? And his babygirl is right there in front of him?

warning: english isn't my first language, angsty, vulnerable Jake, PTSD, night terrors

Word count: 3k

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Jake Sully felt like gripping his dreadlocks out of his head. He barely showed it when he felt conflicted and unfocused, usually able to hide it well. But right now he couldn't keep the facade up the entire time, acting like everything was fine and it seemed like Neytiri caught on to his behavior as well. He was pacing around the pod as he thought of you, the young warrior that was giving him the silent treatment and he wanted to know why. "Ma Jake," a hand is placed on his shoulder and he stopped his frantic pacing, turning his head to the side to come face to face with his mate, "what is up with you lately? You have been so tense these days." Ever since he met you a few days ago, you didn't leave his mind, wondering what it was with you that made him want to treat you as his own. Was it your name? The fact you were so young? Could it be possible that you really were his daughter? Then why didn't you say anything? Is he officially turning delusional right now? Neytiri wrapped her arm around him as she helped him sit on the woven carpets, her cheek leaning against his shoulder, "talk to me, speak to me." It felt nice to know he could rely on someone, but this wasn't an ordinary problem he could talk about. He never really spoke about his life back on planet earth to anyone, because it was his past life. His present self is on Pandora, so he focused on learning the Omatikaya ways and his focus was on his future. But he always wondered how you were and what you were up to. If you were well and living your life to the fullest. He wished he could have been there to watch you grow up. But now that this warrior was here, he had to know. Was it you? His sweet babygirl? The one who would ask for cuddles everytime you saw him? The one that sat on his lap on his wheelchair as they went outside? His sweet child? Answers is what he needed, but he didn't want to be a bother or seem delusional. What if he made all of this up, because he missed you? "I don't know how to say this, yawne, I'm so conflicted. So guilty." He expected her to reply, but she stayed quiet. She wanted him to explain at his own pace without interfering. His hand dug down to take his hunter's knife in his grip, as he hold it upside down. Neytiri watched his grip on the knife as she squints her eyes. She noticed how something is dangling from the end. She saw it a few times around the pod, knowing it was Jake's. Yet she didn't want to pry him into telling her what it was. He would tell her himself eventually and the time to tell was now. A bond is formed around trust and she trusts him. The locket tiny is in comparison to their size. She watched how he untied the small chain from the thumb hole at the end of the handle. He struggled a bit, because of how tiny the knot was. Pulling at the chain with his fingernails, once he pulled the chain away from the hunter's knife he sheathed the sharp object back to his hip. He pulled Neytiri closer to him as he sucked a ton of air into his lungs, preparing himself for the one big thing he hid from his family this entire time. He had a lot of explaining to do.

Neytiri awaited what he was about to show and tell her. He clicked the photo locket open with his fingernail, revealing a picture of an adorable little girl that are you. Your head was tilted to the side as you flashed a bright cute smile, your chubby cheeks making you ten times more adorable. "This is my daughter, from back on earth." His index finger traced your face as he started feeling even more guilty for never telling his mate. What would she feel at the moment? Betrayal? He watched as Neytiri's expression retorted into an upset one. His hand grabbed a hold of hers, shaking his head as if he could know what she was thinking, "there was no one special back on earth. Only you, ma yawne. I adopted her after her parents passed. I raised her since she was a baby like she was biologically mine." The way Jake spoke about his daughter with pride made a smile creep onto her face, "she's adorable for a human." Jake rolled his eyes in response, of course, she would say something like that. "But why did you stay?" The question came out of nowhere, one he definitely wasn't expecting and one he definitely couldn't answer clearly, "what?" Jake didn't really ask her that question to his mate, he was surprised. "Why did you stay here on Pandora, instead of returning to earth?" The question was overwhelming him, as his lips were pursed and his hand went to his face, burying his nose into his palms. He thought back to his life as a human: he felt miserable, lost, and an alcoholic as he mourned. He was paralyzed, full of PTSD and night terrors as an ex-military. Yet he had one thing that made his life a good one: you.

His head was pounding as his vision was blurred, his ears ringing in pain. When he opened his eyes to look around, all he saw was blood. His dead comrades are covered in blood, bombs, and explosions going off around him. His head feels fuzzy as he turns to his right, coming face to face with your biological father, lying dead on the ground. Even though his eyes were wide open, they were dull and lifeless. Jake lets out a scream, but he couldn't look away. Then your biological dad's body opened his mouth, "you should have jumped in front of the bullet for me. You don't deserve to live, you had nothing. I had everything, a family, a daughter yet to be born. You stole her for me, you don't deserve this life! You don't deserve her!" The words felt like a knife stabbed him in the heart, someone holding onto the handle to twist it around some more to intensify the pain.

Daddy..

The words were faint.

Daddy..!

Who was that?

Why did it feel so familiar?

"Daddy!!" He was shaken to the core as your hands frantically shook his shoulders. He opened his eyes as he was met with your teary eyes. You were seated on his chest in your cute Disney pajamas, the ones he bought you, as you shook his body, "daddy was crying, me woke up and scared." You babbled as you leaned in to wrap your arms around Jake. "Daddy hurt?" Jake immediately wrapped his arms around you as tight as he could, squeezing you in his arms as he shook his head, "I'm not baby," he reassured you, but those words kept ringing in his head. He didn't deserve you.

The next night he drank, drank all he could to distract himself from the pain. He doesn't deserve you. It's his fault. He doesn't deserve to be your dad. He was drunk when he wheeled himself home in his wheelchair, feeling all dizzy as he unlocked the front door. He put you to sleep before he left, so surely you would still be sleeping right? Wrong. When he opened the door, he was met with your teary eyes yet again. He felt a pang in his chest. He kept hurting you, yesterday and now today as well. "Daddy is back? Couldn't sleep without daddy." You babbled as you walked towards him with a plushie in your arms. It was old and about to fall apart. He always told you how you should throw it away since you were gifted a lot of other plushies that you got from people you knew. You always told him no, because it's the plushie you got from him. He drank a lot yes, but seeing you it felt like he already sobered up. He picked you up from under your armpits and put you on his lap, "Yes babygirl I'm back, worry no more." You smiled at him as you pressed your lips against his, "I love you daddy!!" He was scared to say it back, he didn't deserve you to love him. Instead he just held you close, one arm on your head as the other was wrapped around your back.

I love you too my baby, I really do. I'm sorry I can't do better.

Jake finally opened up to Neytiri. About his night terrors, the guilt that ate him up from the inside how he watched you grew up and not your biological parents. How your biological dad, his comrade, died during the war they fought in. How he should have taken the bullet and died to give you your real dad. How your mom died during your birth and that's how you got into his arms. Then he talked about you. That he fell in love with you the moment you were in his arms. He told her what you were like and how you were the light of his life during his dark human times. How you always wanted to bake with him, but it ended up in a flour fight because none of you could cook. So in the end he would order pizza and sit on the couch with you on his lap, eating as you watched a Disney movie with him. She didn't know what flour was, or pizza and Disney, but eagerly listened to his words with a smile. Her mate was smiling as he was talking about you and it made her love you. "And she never wanted me to go shopping without her, to protect me from bad people. She would climb to stand on my lap to get something from the top shelf as I held her short legs." You truly were his angel and Neytiri could see how much you meant to him, but one thing was bugging her.

"But why is your sky daughter distracting you now out of all days, after so long of not seeing her? what is the entire story, ma Jake?" Neytiri really did know him the best, better than he knew himself. He couldn't lie to her, so he told her the truth, the thoughts that have been eating him alive from the inside. What the Tsahik, her mother, told him. The conflicts he had the day he met you, how you gave him the cold shoulder. The dots connected in his head, this wasn't coincidental, Eywa doesn't do coincidences like these. And Neytiri seemed to agree with the look she gave him, "why don't you talk to that demon child?" She hissed as she spoke, the girl she called cute moments ago not looking so cute anymore once she connected that little face to the young warrior that disrespected her mate. If you really were his daughter, she still wouldn't think twice to teach her a lesson. Are sky people all born with that disrespect, ignorance and selfishness? She remembered when she met Jake, he was ignorant like a baby and making noise for no reason. Jake rubbed his temple, the situation getting even more complicated than he thought it would get. His mate who hates sky people together in a room with the sky girl that could be his daughter. Oh Eywa, how was he supposed to handle this? "Ma yawne please don't call her that. And yes, I tried, many times. But every time I try to look for her, she always manages to just slip past my fingers." A huff left his lips as the entire situation frustrated him to the core. He didn't want to jump to conclusions, or get his hopes up. So he needed to get her to talk. He was deep in thought, but then he got an idea as if a light bulb lit up above his head. "I-I need to go somewhere!" He frantically got up from his sitting position, feeling utterly stupid that he didn't think of this before. Ask Norm. Neytiri shook her head with her lips pursing, a small smile forming, hoping everything will turn out well for him. Because even though she hated sky people, she wanted the best for him.

"You can't run away forever," Norm says as a matter of fact as he watched you sharpening your katana on one of the lab tables with his arms crossed, the map of files under his armpit. A groan leaves your lips as you sent him a frown. Norm only smiles, ", you know you have to face him eventually." He took a seat next to you, and he put the map down on the same table you were working on. Norm read your file the same day you had your checkup, the fighting without a mask. Stupid idea by the way. Being a close friend to Jake Sully, he couldn't help but be curious as he spoke to you about it. That's when you told him the whole story. He felt for you but nagged you to eventually talk to him to make up for all the lost time. And to this day he is still nagging you. You let out a groan as you slammed your forehead against the metal table, "Norm, please! Why is everyone forcing me to talk to him?!" "Because he's your dad?", he says as a matter of fact and you frown at his smug face, "whatever mister know it better, I'm going to get some fruits from the forest." You got up from your seat and sheathed your katana into the safety strap on your hip. You walk towards the door as you took your mask off it, putting it against your face. "Think about it while you're gathering those fruits! Maybe Eywa will knock some sense into you when you walk through mother nature." With an annoyed hiss, you took off.

At the same time, Jake Sully made his way toward the lab. The two of you just missed each other as you went the other way. He slammed the first door open, the door disinfecting him as he took the oxygen mask off the wall. He then opened the second door and immediately took a whizz of the Pandorean air through the mask, attaching it at his hip, "NORM!" His voice boomed through the room, but there was no response in the common area. He stepped further inside the room in an awkward position. He couldn't fit inside the room, so he had to bend his back, yet his head still hit the roof. One of his hands was placed on the roof to keep his balance. "Norm!" He screamed yet again, huffing in annoyance as no one seemed to answer him. No scientist was in sight. Was everyone busy? He decided to walk around the room, well it wasn't really walking in his instance as one step was already almost across the room. His head cocked to the side as his eyes met the map on the table. It was the map from a few days ago, the one Norm gave him and was ripped from his hands by you. He knew he shouldn't do it, but curiosity took over. The same curiosity when he first got into the forests of Pandora. His knees hit the cold floor as he sat down. He took the map in his hands, it being the same size as his palm as he flipped the page with his finger. It was all in Na'vi, as the resistance didn't mind integrating into their culture. The first page was the checkup, with notes all around the text, about Seb, Raja and you. He continued flipping, a page about Seb. He didn't care about him, so he continued flipping and flipping. He grew frustrated as he couldn't find your information. Then he reached one of the last pages.

(Y/N) (L/N) SULLY.

His eyes widened, his heart cracking and beating in his throat all at the same time. Your birth date was the same, your birthplace was the same, and the names of your biological parents. As well as his name right under it. He felt dizzy all of a sudden. His breath hitched in his throat. It really was you. "Norm, I'm back." You walked into the room once you put your mask away, a lot of fruits in your arms that humans could digest. "I was so kind to bring fruits for everyone, you better tha-," when you got into the room, you weren't met with Norm, Max, or any other of the scientists that stayed on Pandora. No, you were met with Jake Sully. Your father. You dropped the fruits you were holding on the floor and at the same time the map fell out of his hands. Jake Sully got up from the floor, proceeding to hit his head against the ceiling at the way he suddenly got up. But he didn't feel the pain, he couldn't feel anything except his heart beating so fast with his eyes focused on his daughter, "my babygirl.." the way he spoke your nickname in his English accent made your heart beat in your throat. He took a step towards you, but you backed away, "don't, don't touch me." Your lips pursed as the tears welled up in your eyes. "My baby-" "I SAID DON'T!!" your scream filled the room, "Don't say anything, Jake Sully." Your voice was harsh as you spoke his name, your expression furious yet so upset.

And he felt his heart break.

A/N: thank you sm for reading. I appreciate the comments you all leave me. Thank you for all the support! I also thought of writing a Neteyam x reader after this, so let me know if you would like to read that. <3

Taglist in the comments cause it doesn't fit here [legit felt like I was tagging like 200 people, so annoying I can only tag 5 per comment]

Y'all have some interesting usernames

[natalievoncatte]

On Krypton, vows had meaning. Proclamations were not made lightly, and promises were not given casually. Kara’s peers wouldn’t throw one out as a reassurance, or to settle an argument. They were a logical people. They didn’t deceive, didn’t speak words they didn’t know to be true, and didn’t give opinions that were not informed. Society was ordered and regimented, and everyone put the greater good before themselves. So if you made a promise, no matter how great or how small, you would do it.

Kara learned, later in life, that a lot of her birth culture was, to use an English word that had no equivalent in her language, bullshit. Kryptonians would, she thought, claim that they had no use for such a vulgar term for cavalier prevarication because they did not practice it. That would had been a lie.

Her parents bullshitted her. They bullshitted her about the society she was growing up in. Her world wasn’t a real of perfect logic and order, it was a hidebound, decaying ex-empire that put tradition so irrationally high on a pedestal that they let their world be destroyed and all but a handful of their people wiped out because tradition said that her uncle was wrong about the planetary core going unstable.

Nevertheless, when Kara made a promise, she meant it. When she said she’d vowed to protect her adoptive home with her life, she meant it. Those words all but signed her life away in service to the cause. She was this way in everything, from saving the world down to brining Cat Grant a precisely prepared cup of coffee. Her promises meant something.

That was why she filled herself with dread the instant a promise, given unthinkingly in the heat of the moment, tumbled out of her mouth.

I will always be your friend, and I will always protect you.

She’d dishonored herself with the promise, one broken as it was made. She held Lena tight, speaking with conviction, and promised to be a friend even as she lied, swore to protect even as she deceived. It was a promise that couldn’t be kept no matter what she did.

Kara had become human in so many ways, and it gnawed at her. Another English word that had no exact Kryptonian equivalent was freedom. A proper Kryptonian would be horrified at ideas that boiled down to “I can do what I want”; I can choose my career, my partner, my life. I can put fulfillment ahead of the role chosen for me by those who know better. Yet Kara had embraced it full throated, making choices whenever she could.

The one thing she would never give up was the value of an oath.

She was over the Pacific, thinking. She would come out here from time to time to think and clear her head when the city soundscape became overwhelming, and just let herself drift in the air. There were no texts to agonize over, no emails from Snapper, nothing but herself and the lapping of waves and the distant rumble of storms over the open ocean.

She’d been coming out here more and more of late, not to think but to avoid thinking.

Because Lena knew, and Kara knew something was wrong. She could be dense about human behavior sometimes, but she was no fool… and she had super senses. She could read Lena’s pulse and see infrared flush of her skin and spot micro-movements of her eyes. Kara wanted desperately to believe that nothing was wrong but her instincts said otherwise.

When Kara told her, Lena had gone stock still and stared at her with what Kara thought was hatred, bringing tears. She’d tried to tell her how sorry she was, but Lena had just walked right past her and only later returned to her usual self.

Almost.

Kara had thrown herself into it, going on a campaign of what Alex had called ‘peacocking’ for some reason, all but burying Lena with super-stunts like fetching fresh pastries from French patissiers. Lena had smiled and thanked her but there was something flat and distant in it, and Kara ignored it and insisted that all was well.

Out here, with just the storms and her secrets, she knew it wasn’t.

Kara fingered the crest on her chest, worrying her thumb over the crimson fabric of the El rune. This meant something. It meant both ‘hope’ and ‘stronger together’; the two ideas were inextricably linked but her cousin only understood one of the meanings, because Kryptonian pictographic language was complex, and he was not Kryptonian in any way that mattered.

That was another great failing, a promise that Kara made but didn’t keep. By her people’s standards, there was no shame in that; one did not bear the responsibility of a promise made under duress, or a promise that others demanded knowing that it couldn’t be kept.

The only one she’d kept Kryptonian was herself, deep in a secret corner of her soul that meant it if she said she’d be at your birthday party or bring you a donut. The part that treated promises like promises.

There was only one way to cleanse herself, and remove her shame. She knew what it was, but she was afraid. Kara had battled monsters and gods, faced death more than once, lost more than any person should have to lose in a dozen lifetimes, but there was one thing she feared above all others.

She feared that first honest look on Lena’s shocked face more than she feared an eternity without stars. She could live in the void between realities; a void without Lena would kill her more surely than any green poison.

Now. She had to do it now, before she lost her nerve. She flew back to the city, flew hard, slowing only to land on Lena’s balcony, softly. As she raised her hand to knock on the glass of the door, she hesitated, nearly turned back.

Lena opened it, and Kara let out a slow breath. Lena was wearing only a loose, flowing floral robe, with clearly nothing beneath it. Terror made her listen- if Lena had a guest in that state, Kara might just fling herself into the sun and be done with it.

She was alone. Lena shifted on her feet.

“Why are you all wet?”

Kara’s hair was damp with sea spray and she’d flown through a few clouds on her way back.

“I like to fly over the ocean and think.”

“Well, come in here already. Let me get you a towel. Do you want something to change into?”

Kara swallowed hard. No. She wanted the honor of her family on her chest right now. She needed it to make her brave, like her father said it would when he sent her into the void. She did take the towel.

Lena had been enjoying her tea and sad breakfast -toast with jam- before Kara arrived. She left it on the counter and sat on her couch, leaving Kara to pace.

“I can tell you’re upset,” said Lena. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Everything,” said Kara. “I have a lot to say and I don’t know how to say it. I haven’t told you the full truth and I have to. I need to. It’s eating me alive inside.”

Lena swallowed hard, her heart racing.

“Please don’t tell me you’re Batman, too.”

“Lena, this is serious.”

Kara swept across the room and knelt in front of her, and Lena’s eyes shot open wide in surprise. Kara looked at the carpet in front of her, unable to look Lena in the eye.

“A long time ago, I promised you I’d always take care of you, and I didn’t. I was lying to you when I said it and I lied to you for years after.”

“Kara…”

“Please,” desperation choked her voice, “let me finish. I owe you the full truth. I promised, and promises are sacred to Kryptonians. My soul will be stained forever unless I fulfill the oath I made.”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Yes it was,” said Kara. “It was to me. It was everything to me. Please.”

Lena cleared her throat. “Okay.”

“I told you I lied to you to protect you. That was another lie. That’s not why I did it. I lied because I was weak and I put my own feelings ahead of doing what was right. I was scared. I was scared that if you knew it would change how you saw me and it would change our relationship. You were the only person I could almost be myself with and I didn’t want that to change. You were a safe person I could go to without having to be Supergirl.”

Lena was studying her, a soft hint of skepticism in her expression.

Kara stood up and paced.

“I don’t know how to do this, Lena. I may act human and look human but I’m not. I grew up on another planet with another culture and so many things about this world are just totally different from how I was raised.”

Kara took a deep breath.

“On Krypton we didn’t have queerness. People didn’t value freedom of choice. You did what society told you to do. You joined the guild you were pledge to at birth and married the person you were told to marry and had the offspring you were told to have and raised them to do the same thing. The same fucking thing.”

Lena sat up at Kara’s sudden, vehement profanity.

“I didn’t know the word freedom until I arrived here. I had no concept of it. I had no idea how fragile and precious it is. Sure, I talked about it and wrote essays about it in school, but I didn’t get it. Not until I met you.”

Kara looked at Lena.

“You are my freedom. You’re the first thing I’ve ever chosen, really chosen, in my life, besides being Supergirl. It was you that made me look Cat Grant and Alex both in the eyes and say ‘no, this is what I want, this is how it’s going to be for me and it’s my choice, not yours.’ Back home I never, ever would have even thought what I’m about to say now.”

Kara swallowed, hard.

“I was afraid to tell you because I was afraid it would change our relationship. I was afraid you’d hate me because I kept the secret too long, but I was also afraid of what has to come after confessing my identity to you, Lena. The next part is even harder.”

“Kara,” Lena began.

“I have feelings for you.”

Lena went still, her eyes wide. “What did you say?”

“I want to be myself with you. My whole self, my real self. Not the person I think I have to be to please someone else. I want to tell you everything you want to know about my home and my people and my life and I want to know everything about you. I want to hear you laugh for me and see the look in your eyes when you’re happy to see me. I want to care for you when you’re sick and hold you when you’re sad and be the person that matters to you like you matter to me.”

Kara sucked in a deep breath.

“I used to think I was happy just being Kara with you. Not being Kara Danvers or Kara Zoe-El, just me… but I’m not me without both of those pieces and being without them isn’t good enough. I want you to know the real me. The girl from Krypton who went to high school in California.”

Lena stood up slowly, clearly forcing her breathing even. She adjusted her robe around herself, and looked at Kara for too long a time, silent.

“I hurt you when I promised I’d protect you and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

“What do you want from me? To tell you it’s okay?” said Lena. “Is that what you want? Because it’s fucking not.”

Kara flinched. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

Lena had given her this courtesy and she’d give it in return.

“It wasn’t just you, Kara. I built my whole life around you and your friends and they became my friends. You gave me a normal world. I got to be a regular girl when I was with you and the others. Do you have any idea what that means to me? What you did to me when you ripped it away? Do you have any idea how you’ve torn me to shreds?”

Kara choked a little, and tried to hold back the tears, and failed.

“I killed Lex. I killed him and I hid his body, myself. I killed my brother for you. And the worst part is I’d do it again. If it was him or you I’d kill him again.”

Cold dread flooded through her.

“That was my fault. That was exactly the kind of thing that I should have protected you from, and I failed you." Kara's breath hitched as she bit back a sob. "I should go."

Lena moved quickly and grabbed her arm tight. "Don't you fucking dare leave. You can't just say those things to me and leave."

Kara's nostrils flared as she sucked in a big breath.

"Lex told me who you were as he was dying. He showed me."

Kara looked at her. "Oh."

"I started to hate you. I started to believe the things he said about you. And what happened then? You told me! You just blurted it out!"

Lena choked down a sob of her own, and something in Kara shattered. Tentatively, carefully, Kara pulled her into a gentle hug, and Lena let her.

"I don't know what to do anymore," Lena whispered into Kara's chest. "I've lost everything."

Kara held her closer, breathing the soft scent of her shower-damp hair.

"I don't know what to do either," Kara admitted. "I just knew I couldn't bear to lie to you again, even by omission. I'll go if you want."

"You're not leaving," said Lena. "I don't want you to go. Promise you won't leave me."

Kara shivered. "Lena…"

"Promise."

"I promise," Kara whispered.

[rad-batson]

Damian Wayne Headcanons :) in which I give him actual character growth, suck it dc writers

this is extremely long, I am not sorry

He has literally no footsteps, you cannot hear him walk, even when he stomps around in one of those moods, it’s just barely a little *pat pat pat*

He doodles on everything. With everything. Some Gothamites have found intricate floral designs etched into the roof or random brick walls (most likely with a knife) after seeing Robin patrol.

He has like 20 weighted blankets, all different weights and sizes depending on his mood.

His favorite item in his room is a silver Nintendo DS. (He likes to use the little chat rooms, even if no one else is on the other end. He doodles and writes little messages. It’s like his diary.)

He loves all animals, and that includes the creepy ones. Especially the creepy ones.

Once, Tim started screaming bloody murder over a massive bug with a bajillion legs in his room. Damian now houses it in an enclosure in his bedroom. Her name is Mildred, Millie for short.

When he was in the LoA, he was forbidden from stimming in front of others. It took two years for anyone in the batfamily to ever witness him stimming.

His most common stimming behaviors are shaking out his hands, scratching his palms, and rubbing his hands across different surfaces. When he’s really stressed, he’ll snap his fingers.

He absolutely hates cameras. They’re loud and make him uncomfortable. One reporter almost got scratched when they got too close to him with the flash on. He only barely tolerates the security cameras in the manor. Barely.

He can and will be roped into any dare imaginable. Bruce repeatedly forbids him from taking dares from his siblings for months at a time.

He has a compartment in his utility belt dedicated to treats for any animal he sees on patrol.

When he’s tired, he’ll speak a mixture of Arabic, Mandarin, and English. Only Bruce can make sense of it, and occasionally Jason.

Bruce absolutely refuses to yell at Damian. Even if some of his other kids argue that he’s being too nice, he’ll only use his Batman voice and his Soft But Disappointed Dad Voice, but he will Never yell.

(He doesn’t tell them it’s because of what happened the first and only time he yelled at Damian. Bruce moved his hand a bit, and Damian flinched wildly. Bruce cried for hours over the implications of that.)

Damian only feels comfortable sitting if he can clearly see the main entrance. If not, he’ll sit with his back against a wall or he’ll stand.

He dutifully takes the responsibility of feeding and grooming every Wayne animal. They receive the most nutritious and filling meals on the market (all while receiving lots of head pats.)

He has very strong eyebrows just like his father. They tend to pull the same exasperated expressions too, highlighting their resemblance.

Talia taught Damian at a very young age how to write perfectly with both hands. He no longer remembers if he is naturally left or right-handed.

The one insult he cannot handle is “spoiled brat.” A few months after he arrived, someone in the family called him that as a joke, and he completely shut down emotionally. No anger, no sadness, no resentment. Literally just nothing. For days. No one knows why, but they will never let it happen again.

You know he’s Up to Something TM if he swings his legs back and forth while he sits.

He is obsessed with those cheap TV documentaries about famous plane crashes and shipwrecks. After finishing one, he’ll find the nearest family member and tell them all about it: how it happened, what human error caused it, and his fool-proof plan for if it ever happens again and he is nearby. Usually, it’s Alfred.

For the first few years at the manor, Damian’s favorite spot is the family graveyard. Everyone calls him dramatic. He just likes how it’s so quiet. (And he’s dramatic.)

When Jason waxes poetics about dying over dinner, Damian just groans and says, “So have I. You’re not special.” That’s how the family learns he was repeatedly revived in the Lazarus Pit due to the fatal nature of his training and abuse.

His first ever crush was on the cute male tech at Alfred the Cat’s vet. Damian was 12. Jason, who accompanied him, proceeded to give him both The Talk (“It’s okay to like boys”) and The Talk (“Your body is ✨changing✨”) on the drive home.

He will not text back unless it is absolutely necessary. He will leave people on read. He does not hate you. (…Probably.)

Titus is a registered therapy dog, trained in helping Damian through panic attacks and sensory overload. If you ever see Damian asleep on the floor, eyes cried out with Titus resting on top of him, you know why.

When he was 13, he tried to fake his own death after he failed a test at school and “dishonored the family name.” Bruce and Dick had to sit him down and explain that grades aren’t everything, and they still love him unconditionally.

He talks to animals like they’re human. He has a habit of venting his frustrations to Batcow in particular. And his fish while he feeds them.

His love language to others is a mixture of gifts and quality time, usually without words.

One day, Damian was snooping around the house and found that one of the electrical closets leads to a tiny space—barely two feet wide—in between the sheetrock and the foundation wall with nothing but a single hanging lightbulb. It took years before anyone else found it, but by then, Damian had painted an 8x10 ft mural on the wall and created a small bed of blankets and pillows for when he needs a quiet place to escape unwanted stimuli.

When he sleeps, his cheeks puff out like a little chipmunk. It’s adorable.

During the Winter Olympics one year, Damian falls in love with figure skating and decides he wants to try it out, but he never asks to take up lessons in fear that he will be horrible at it.

Duke figures this out and now takes him ice skating just enough to avoid suspicion. It’s become their bonding activity.

Once, Jason and Tim made him try a Sour Patch Kids-flavored energy drink. He immediately spit it out and said, “What the fuck?! That’s even worse than drinking from the Lazarus Pit.” And that’s how the family learns that Ra’s made Damian drink from the Lazarus Pit a few times.

One day, Steph told Damian about the wonders of concealed self defense products. Now, about 80% of the mundane items Damian owns is secretly a knife. He will purchase any item that is secretly a knife. Including several fake lipstick tubes.

He has rigorous self-control when it comes to sleep. Sure, his schedule is a bit fucked up for someone his age, but he is in bed and asleep exactly when he tells himself. (His siblings could never.)

His entire wardrobe is soft items he “found” stole from the laundry room. If it’s comfortable, it’s his now. (No one complains. In fact, having Damian steal your clothes is considered a privilege.)

He hates whenever Alfred tries to recreate dishes from his childhood. It’s just not the same. Alfred understands.

When he’s really stressed—like the “I am one stubbed toe away from a complete meltdown” stressed—he will finger paint. He likes the feeling of it on his skin.

Due to his time in the LoA, Damian has a habit of never telling anyone if he’s injured. Instead, he’ll pretend nothing’s wrong until he passes out or literally can’t move right and someone calls him out. He’s working on it, though.

There’s a massive system of fish tanks in his room complete with handmade decor and multiple venomous species. No one even realizes until Alfred mentions it during dinner.

He has hyper fixated at least once on every single artistic medium you can imagine. His top three are oil paintings, mosaics, and pottery, but he mostly sticks to drawing in his free time.

He has taste tested all of his pets’ treats at one point for “research purposes.”

Giving friends their own nickname is one of the most intimate things Damian does to express his relationship with someone.

Once, he was having an argument with a sibling, and they said, “Oh yeah? Well at least Bruce wanted me!” Damian didn’t leave his room for exactly six days. He even stapled blackout curtains to his windows and the vents. Bruce chewed the shit out of whoever said it and spent hours every day talking to Damian through the door to convince him that, yes, Bruce wants him and couldn’t ever think of a family without him. Damian didn’t come out, however, until he heard Bruce crying while begging him to eat. Damian slept in Bruce’s bed that night and the following week.

When he turns 15, he gets really obsessed with Måneskin.

He’s exactly the kind of Art Hoe that is completely loyal to his favorite brand of art supplies and wouldn’t touch other brands with a 10ft pole.

He has weirdly thin fingers. Like creepily thin, especially as he grows older. Someone commented on them once, and Damian proceeded to wear gloves nonstop for a week.

There are exactly four (4) people who are allowed to touch him without permission first. Dick, Jon, Bruce, and Talia in that order.

His eyes are actually naturally blue. The reason they are green is because of the Lazarus Pit. It’s always the Lazarus Pit. (They barely glow in the dark too, but you need to really pay attention to notice.)

He can wiggle his ears. The only people to ever witness it are Cass and Duke. They’ve been sworn to secrecy.

Whenever one of his many pets sleeps in his bed, he tries to stay as still as possible without touching them so they don’t get annoyed and leave, but they always worm their way into his arms.

As he grows, his family is surprised to learn that he isn’t building the same muscle as his dad. Instead, he’s lean like his mother due to an extremely fast metabolism. He eats a lot to maintain proper health. (His cheeks are still puffy when he sleeps, though. And when he smiles.)

Dick is his emergency contact for school, partially because Dick isn’t as busy, partially due to that time Bruce “died,” but mostly because Damian is terrified of disappointing Bruce if he ever gets in trouble. Thankfully, Dick is convincing Damian otherwise.

His favorite ever birthday gift comes from Tim. It’s a pottery studio he spent months building on their property in secret with several pottery wheels and a kiln.

His hands have always had a sort of surgical accuracy to them due to his stealth training, but it never came to the forefront of everyone’s mind until one particular mission when Tim got shot, and they needed to get the bullet out as quickly as possible. Despite being bigger than most of his family members by now, and Tim refusing to stay still the whole time, Damian was the only one capable of taking the bullet out. While riding in the Batmobile. Going 80 mph. Completely painlessly. Damian is immediately given the de facto role of Combat Medic.

Jon likes to send Good morning texts to Damian. At first, he didn’t know about the “only responds if it’s an emergency” thing, though, so he decided to stop after a few weeks of Damian never replying. Within an hour of not getting the usual text, Damian was at Jon’s house in full Robin gear to make sure he was okay.

He and Steph like to paint each other’s nails when one of them is stressed. After Damian comes out as pansexual, Steph paints little pride flags on his fingers.

He only plays Minecraft on creative mode. He likes building farms and wildlife preserves.

At 16, he gets asked out by a pretty girl in school that Damian had a crush on last year, but he thinks it’s a joke because he can’t fathom anyone liking him so he turns her down.

As he grows, his looks become more androgynous, again eerily resembling his mother, but his voice drops low enough that it doesn’t cause much misgendering.

Then he starts thinking of his gender a bit more and wonders if he’s also a They.

He likes to paint all over the soles of his shoes whenever he gets a new pair. No one will ever really see it, of course, and it eventually wears off the more he walks, but he knows it’s there.

It’s a nice day in the park. He’s doing homework on a picnic table while Titus and Ace run around, and he can’t stop thinking about his future.

Yesterday, there was a school assembly about choosing a career path. Alfred slid him an SAT prep book during breakfast. And his class was assigned one of those “Which career path is best for you?” quizzes.

He gets Veterinarian.

It takes a full five minutes as Damian stares at the results, thinking about the crazy, out-of-this-world idea of not being a vigilante or assassin his entire life, what it would be like if he just turned his back on the future which was so carefully laid out in front of him since birth, before it clicks into place.

Damian doesn’t want to be Batman.

He doesn’t want to lead the LoA either.

Two years later, Damian enrolls in Gotham University and majors in Wildlife Biology on the Pre-Vet track with a minor in Studio Arts. He gets a dorm room, works in the pottery studio, and volunteers at the local animal shelter.

He is content.

Does some of this stray from canon? Yes. However, I do not give a rat’s ass. Thank you, and goodnight.

[another-lost-mc]

Can you imagine the om! cast flirting with mc and thinking they're mc's only romantic interest when mc already has a booty call at RAD? There are no feelings involved, just intimacy, but still. I think the cast is too arrogant to ever think mc could be interested in anyone else.

(English is not my native language, so please excuse any possible mistakes)

a/n: that’s fair! I mean, mc has needs too, right? maybe trying to hook up with one of the avatars is daunting, but a hot lower-ranking demon lord who promises a good time every once in a while? that could be fun.

➤ when they find out you have a fwb | the demon brothers

0.9k words | nsfw | suggestive | gn!reader

c/w: jealousy and implied dark themes/sketchy behaviour squints at beel and belphie

read more: the dateables | when solomon is your fwb

Lucifer finds it hard to believe at first. Once he knows the demon’s name, he watches you two interact more closely. He picks up on the shared glances and flirtatious touches he somehow missed before. He’s been stewing in his own desires and feelings for you all this time because he wasn’t sure the best way to declare his intentions. He thought subtlety and patience would be best, but perhaps he can admit just this once that he was mistaken. Learning about your dalliances with someone else finally gives him the push to show you what a real demon lover can offer you. Once you have the Avatar of Pride to warm your bed, you'll be satisfied with no one else but him.

Mammon is one part incredulous, one part jealous, and just a teensy bit turned on. He can’t stop staring at the blurry photo Asmo managed to take of you sneaking out of a utility closet at RAD. His cock twitches when he takes in the image of your rumpled clothes and the way your forehead glistens from a light sheen of sweat. He wants to make you look like that, not some random nobody that doesn't deserve you. His mind races when he imagines his own fingers tugging your clothes aside for better access to your naked body. What did you sound like when you tried to muffle your moans so no one would hear you? Mammon would give anything to take that demon’s place. Y’know, both of you have a spare period after lunch—would you follow him into one of the dark corners of RAD for a little fun if he offered? Maybe it’s time for him to find out.

Levi is seething. Mostly he’s angry and jealous and he wants to tear the building to pieces. He’s also ashamed because the fantasy of you dragging him into an empty room at RAD for a midday fuck is hot as hell. He doesn’t think he deserves you, but he knows that the demon you’re fucking doesn’t either. What do they have that he doesn’t? He’s burning with curiosity about your little affair, but he’s incensed by the idea that he might not be good enough for you. Envy can make him a little desperate. He's tempted to beg you for even a morsel of your love and affection. If he's pathetic enough, maybe you'll even take pity on him and oblige.

Satan is furious because he should’ve realized something was going on. The signs are all there and he missed them somehow. It takes all his willpower not to hunt down your little demon friend for daring to touch you that way. Satan is well-versed in human world literature—maybe declaring his intentions with a romantic gesture would convince you to give him a chance instead? Or maybe sweet and romantic love isn’t what you crave. If fast and rough is more to your tastes, all you need to do is mention your friend’s name—you’ll be too fucked out of your mind to remember it by the time he’s finished with you.

Asmo’s reactions are all over the place: he’s giddy that you’re so daring (fucking at RAD of all places!); he’s devastated that you turned to someone else instead of coming to him; and he’s frustrated that he didn’t realize sooner this was even happening. He pays more attention after he catches you the first time, and it seems so obvious when the current of lust between you and your friend flickers with interest throughout the school day. He finds reasons to keep you two from sneaking off together and pretends he’s not jealous every time he interferes. Perhaps when you’re frustrated enough, he can finally entice you to join him for a little pampering session in his room. You seem so frustrated today! But don’t worry—he knows exactly what you need to loosen up.

Beel is one of the few demons that understands what hunger and starvation feels like. Sometimes you need to do whatever it takes to satisfy those cravings, even on a temporary basis. You’re important to him, and he cherishes your friendship. He’s hidden his true desires from you because he doesn’t want to risk losing control if he’s too hasty, too rough, or too demanding before you're ready to embrace being with someone like him. His love is all-consuming and you're a constant strain on his self-control. If you weren’t turning to someone else for affection, maybe he could be patient and satisfy his urges for you elsewhere. Now that he knows someone else has had a taste of you, he wants you even more. When he finally confesses his desire to be with you, he hopes for both your sakes that you feel the same.

Belphie lashes out with barbed insults and backhanded compliments to hide his own hurt and jealousy. You’re not that bad looking for a human, I guess it was only a matter of time before someone wanted to fuck you. Once he learns the truth about that demon you’ve been fooling around with, he’s suddenly glued to your hip like he can’t stand to be parted from you. He’s selfish with your time and clings to you in his bed during naps. He sneaks his way into your dreams because he wants to make sure you’re not dreaming of anyone else. He might even have a private chat with your little friend, but he doesn’t tell you since it’s nothing for you to worry about. It’s a shame that your fuck buddy suddenly decides to call things off between you after that. At least you still have Belphie to comfort you and wipe away your tears. He appreciates you, even if that random asshole doesn’t—the only demon you ever needed has been here for you all along.

[byunpum]

I can be a better father

Pair: Tsu'tey x Child y/n x Child spider

Warning: Sad, jake being a bad parent, tsu'tey being the peer we all love. Neytiri being a sweetheart.

Note: I had a previous version, but I wanted to make this one from scratch. But if you want to read more about "bad dad jake" HERE. I hope you like it a lot, I really enjoyed making this oneshot.

Request: (anonymous) Idk if your the one who did Jake having a daughter from a one night stand thing and him and her having a strain relationship , I was thinking if Tsu'tey is alive and him seeing her and Spider being literally outcast and kinda neglected by the humans for one reayor another he kinda adopted both of them as his own ( and proybe bit petty for Jake being the way he is he do things better) Like reader just call Jake Jake and not dad but have a good relationship with their half siblings ( they call Tsu'tey dad and he may be rough he dose care about his kids )

Avatar masterlist | Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3

If there was one thing tsu'tey liked to do in the afternoons, it was to go hunting alone. Walking through the jungle, with his bow and enjoying the silence that the jungle provided. He was very comfortable in various branches and bushes, the austrapede was right before his eyes, standing still while eating grass. Just as he was about to shoot, he saw the animal raise its head in alertness and run away. At the same time, he heard a noise coming from his feet. Looking down, he found a small creature. Little Y/N. He relaxed his shoulders, and lowered his bow. Watching as the girl was still literally sitting on he feet with a fruit. The girl was moving the fruit up and down and tapping it on the ground in order to break it.

"y/n" tsu'tey speaks softly, watching as the little girl looks up to see her favorite person. "Tsu…look!!!" speaks the little girl, lifting the fruit in the air. Tsu'tey laughs a little, and kneels down so that he can be at the same height as the little girl. The girl gets up from the ground, and automatically approaches the na'vi. Showing her the fruit. " I want….hunger" y/n speaks, in a very basic na'vi language. The poor thing was trying to learn to speak na'vi and English at the same time. Tsu'tey takes the fruit in her hands, the fruit was very big for a little girl. "What are you doing here alone?" asks tsu'tey stroking the little girl's hands, noticing that she had some scratches and her clothes were all dirty. Out of nowhere, a noise calls her attention…looking up to some bushes ahead. Tsu'tey takes the girl by the arm. Hugging her in order to protect her. "Y/N!!! LOOK…I FOUND MORE!!!" shouts spider, running to the direction where the girl was. Tsu'tey's heart calmed down, as he saw the other human child passing by in the village.

The child run, and bumped into tsu'tey's arm which had them reached out for the child to hug him. "spider…what are you doing here?" asks Tsutey, he knew that spider spoke the na'vi language better and was more extroverted than y/n. "We were hungry and went out hunting" says spider, playfully gesturing with his wooden bow, which tsu'tey had given him as a gift a couple of months ago. "you guys are hungry…wow" says tsu'tey, watching as y/n settles more on his chest. Tsu'tey noticed that spider was also dirty and his tired little face was showing. "Are you tired?" asks tsu'tey, wiping some of spider's hair. They both nod their heads. "How about we go to my hut and I help you cut this fruit?" says Tsutey, the children got happy and started jumping up and down. Tsu'tey stood up and began to guide both little ones home. He didn't have to worry much, both children knew the way very well.

It was not the first time tsu'tey had encountered these two human children. Left alone in the jungle, without parental supervision. This made him uncomfortable and annoyed him. He knew that spider was the son of the man who had hurt his clan, his planet. And he also knew that Y/N was the daughter of jake, well…of the human version of jake. He knew the whole story, neytiri had told him. At first it all seemed strange to him, but with time he could understand. What he couldn't understand was why jakesully didn't love you and always rejected you in some way. Y/n was still his daughter…whatever it was. But apparently he didn't understand this, which caused the man to care much more about the young children. They were both 5 years old, and he could not stop worrying about the welfare of both children. At first it was difficult for him to get close to the two children, but he got used to it.

"Ok…sit over there…and I'll help you cut that fruit" says tsu'tey watching the children running around the hut. Laughing and playing as they sat down where tsu'tey had ordered them to. The man reached for a container of water and a cloth. He had to clean the children up a bit, it pained him to see them so careless. He sat down next to spider, while y/n sat on his lap. "Tsu…I want a giant piece" says spider, yelling a little. Tsu'tey tapped him on the glass of his mask. "Spider…don't scream…I'm right here beside you" says tsu'tey laughing as he watched the boy get up to start playing with some toys tsu'tey had. He made some wooden toys for when they would visit him at his home. "Let's see…you know what you have to do. Hold your breath, pull up your mask and put the fruit in your mouth" says tsu'tey handing a piece to y/n. She was sitting on his lap all this time, quietly.

After the children eat their fruit, he cleans the children. Cleaning their hands, face, combing some of their hair. He even put some beads in their hair, according to him to make them look more of the clan. "How about if I make you some new clothes?" said tsu'tey. The children were so happy, spider grabbed y/n's hand, inviting her to play with him. Tsu'tey enjoyed the view, watching the children play and run around the hut. This felt so good, he always wanted a family. It all seemed so far from reality…he had gotten the idea that he was never going to find his mate. And that he would never have a family. So he enjoyed these moments with the children. After a fun afternoon for him, he decided to take the children to their respective homes. That was the ugly place which humans called 'laboratory'. Tsu'tey had the children carried in his arms, spider was on his neck holding his head, while y/n was on his left arm. The child was holding a little flower she had found on the road. "Y/N!!!" a somewhat loud voice was heard from the distance, tsu'tey watched as jake approached him. The man approached tsu'tey, and tried to take y/n in his arms. But the little girl clung to tsu'tey's arms. "Come here…we have to go home. Where had you gone?" asks jake, his tone of voice sounding annoyed. "They were in the jungle…both children" says tsu'tey holding both children tighter. "I think they ran away from me and…" jake started to give an explanation.

"There is no excuse…you have to be more aware of them. If you don't want y/n, at least watch out for their safety," tsu'tey says even more annoyed. Jake remains silent, he knew his friend was right. Jake did love you, but he didn't have the same connection he had with his children. He was never there during your pregnancy, or in your first years of life. So to him…y/n was just another child. Tsu'tey carefully handed both children to jake. "Take them to a safe place…please" tsu'tey talks, while releasing the little ones. They didn't want to get away from him. Spider was whining and y/n was starting to cry. Tsu'tey gave him a little kiss on the crown of his head and said goodbye to the children. Watching as jake tried to soothe them. It broke his heart, how he wished he could stay with them. But how could that be possible? He could pick up spider, he had no one. But y/n? She had her father…he couldn't go and ask her…that would never happen.

That same week, the children continued to hang out in their hut. Playing and spending all day with him. He practically had two new little tails. He would feed them, which was a difficult task because of the oxygen masks. He also taught them what they needed to know to survive in Pandora. And he gave them lots of love…who would have thought that a man like tsu'tey could be so loving. He combed and cared for his children. He liked to think of them as his…his little babies. Everyone in the clan was surprised to see tsu'tey with two human children, treating them as if they were his own. They talked and said comments but he didn't care. Someone had to take care of these two orphans and he was doing it. While jake and norm were in their own worlds…neytiri noticed tsu'tey's new behavior toward the human children.

Unlike jake, neytiri cared about you. She always tried to take care of you, when you were in the family hut. After all, you were half-sister to her children. It was the middle of the day…and she was sitting in the hut, looking after and watching her young children play. And in that group was y/n…playing with lo'ak. She watched as the little girl ran up, screaming. "'Dad…daddy!!!'" says y/n. Running toward the entrance, neytiri turns around expecting to see her mate. But she was surprised to see tsu'tey standing in the doorframe. The man had a basket full of vegetables, and was kneeling down waiting for the little girl's hug. The girl hugs him with all her heart, as he lifts her into the air, settling her in his arms. Walking to where neytiri was. "Hello…neytiri. I brought something for the family" says tsu'tey, he seemed to be very happy. "Thank you…I am grateful" says neytiri, accepting the basket and watching as her friend sat down next to her. All the children went to greet them, he lovingly greeted them one by one.

Neytiri appreciated the treatment and love tsu'tey had for her children. That's how it should be…after all he was practically her brother. After greeting all the children, Y/n hugged tsu'tey again and settled on her lap. "my pretty flower…how are you? Have you eaten?" asks tsu'tey, adjusting the girl's hair. "Yes… neyney gave me a nice meal" says the little girl lifting up her dirty shirt to show her stomach. Both adults laugh, neytiri reaches over and touches the little girl's stomach tickling it. She liked that nickname the little y/n had given her, neyney….sounded so adorable. "That sounds perfect…look I brought you something?" says Tsutey, pulling something out of a little pouch on his waist. Neteyam had come over, sitting right next to you on tsu'tey's lap. "Is that clothes?" asks the little neteyam, squeezing his sister. "yes, it's for y/n…it's just like kiri's" says tsu'tey, untangling the clothes. Stretching it out to show it to everyone, neytiri was surprised. It was small, but it was very beautiful. With feathers, and very delicate stones.

" My,my,my!!!" y/n speak, raising her arms so she could take her clothes. "Kiri…why don't you help your sister change" neytiri says, while kiri took y/n's hand. Behind the two of them, there was neteyam. "We have to put a bracelet on her" shouts the boy, both adults laugh. Tsu'tey was surprised at how attached the children were to y/n, even neytiri. So the problem was…jake. "She calls you dad," neytiri says, not mincing words. As she looked at what was in the basket. "She just calls 'jake' to her father…" neytiri was about to keep talking, when tsu'tey interrupts her. "Neytiri… being a parent is something you earn. And I think I have done an excellent job with those children." Tsu'tey says, he was proud of his words, for he knew they were true. "I know… and I am very proud of you. I'm aware that my partner doesn't give her the attention that child needs… so you've earned that title," the woman speaks. They both stand in silence for a while.

"I think I would be a better father to her? And also for the boy?" speaks tsu'tey, neytiri now looks at him with concern. She didn't know what to tell him now, this was a difficult situation. "You mean…you want to adopt them?" asks neytiri, she wanted to be sure she had listened well. "Yes, I want them to be my children. I will take complete care of them and Jake won't have to worry about anything…they will be in good hands."

Neytiri knows deep down that this is for the best. Although it was hard to believe, tsu'tey had accepted the presence of those human children. Maybe he felt sorry for them, since they spent all day alone. If Y/N was not with neytiri, she was alone with spider doing what things. She knew tsu'tey would be an excellent father, and she would support him. "I'll talk to jake…but I'm not promising anything" says neytiri, seeing how on tsu'tey's face a big smile was drawn. "She will still come and she will be with her brothers…I just want her to be safe" tsu'tey tries to convince neytiri. The woman puts a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Calm down…I will do what I can" neytiri speaks. They both looked up, when they heard the children approaching. Y/N had the na'vi clothes that tsu'tey had made for him. She also had a few accessories that her siblings had put on her. Y/N runs to neytiri, wrapping her small arms around her neck. "Let me see…you look very pretty. Do you like it?" says neytiri, arranging several pieces of the outfit. "Yessssss!!!" shouts the excited little girl. "Mom…did you see that I put my bracelet on y/n…it looks better on her" says neteyam, arranging more of the piece on her sister's arm.

"They did a great job," tsu'tey says. Neytiri fixes the girl's hair, while her brothers play with her. "Hey…how do you say?" orders neytiri looking at you with a serious look. "Thank you" y/n gets shy, while thanking tsu'tey. The latter reaches over and caresses a cheek of the little one. He could already feel the excitement, hopefully jake would accept. He felt grateful to know that someone cared for her, neytiri was doing a great job in taking care of her. And if he kept the little girl, he would bring y/n every day to spend time with her. He could tell they had a nice relationship. After a while, the man said goodbye to everyone, neytiri told him that she was going to stay with y/n and not to worry. He had to go to the lab to look for spider. He had also prepared an outfit for his little boy.

When he got to the lab, he knocked on the door. Norm let spider out, the man took good care of him. But not well enough, children need to be given love and time. And these people weren't doing that. He waited patiently for his boy to come out. According to Norm, Spider was asleep and he had to get him up. After about 5 minutes, the little boy came out, sleepy. Tsu'tey carries him, and the little boy hugs him. "I brought you a surprise," says tsu'tey, lowering the boy to the ground. As he pulled out a bundle, in which his new outfit was wrapped. Spider was so happy, tsu'tey's eyes lit up at the sight of the little boy's face. So excited, for such a simple gesture. Spider took the gift and ran inside the lab to change. "Wait for me here!!!" shouts the boy tsu'tey laughs and sits down on the metal stairs to wait for the boy. He is convinced that it was a good idea to create their own na'vi clothing, this way they will be cleaner and feel more comfortable.

The day happened just as he had planned it. If everything went well…Jake would agree to let him stay and take care of y/n. If he was a smart man he would agree to let him stay and take care of them. If he was a smart man he would agree right away. Tsu'tey began to clear away the mess he had in his hut. There were a few toys that the children had left in the morning, he was so happy. After a while, he heard someone enter his hut, "Hello…" tsu'tey spoke, noticing that it was Jake who had arrived. He quickly interrupts him. "You think you can just go to neytiri and ask her for me to give y/n to you. That's not how it works" says jake, he was a bit annoyed. This put tsu'tey on alert, how dare he complain to him if he didn't even want to and didn't even pay attention to y/n. "Are you listening to yourself… I'm the one who takes care of those children. I'm the one who feeds them, takes care of them and watches over them. You don't even pay attention to y/n" tsu'tey raises his voice, he is so upset. He wanted to hit this man right now, but he was controlling himself. Just then, neytiri arrives at the hut. She was agitated and you could see her worried face.

"Norm lost the children!!!" says neytiri worriedly. The woman had taken y/n to the lab in the afternoon. She handed her over to Norm, since y/n couldn't sleep all night in the hut, the oxygen wouldn't last long. But couple of minutes later, lo'ak came running to his mother saying that when he went to play with his sister and didn't find her and that norm was looking for her. And that with her was spider. Neytiri quickly tried to explain everything to the men in front of her, she felt that she had interrupted something that was about to end very badly. Hearing that spider and y/n were lost, he quickly ran, pushing jake aside and going to the lab area. Neytiri didn't even look at Jake and took off after his friend. Jake followed some time later.

Tsu'tey arrived at the lab upset, norm was in his avatar body holding a flashlight. Tsu'tey grabbed norm's shoulders, he had to tell him where the children were. "No…they said they were going to play nearby, they said something about some flowers" norm spoke quickly, tsu'tey could be quite an intimidating man. As soon as norm mentioned flowers, tsu'tey knew where both children are. He relaxed a little, but not at all, the road to that place could be quite dangerous at night. Tsu'tey started walking, ignoring some complaints from jake and some questions from neytiri. They decided to follow the man without any protests. The path was quite close, it was a place where tsu'tey used to take the children to play. A nice meadow that had a lot of flowers, bright. It was a beautiful place, but it could be a bit dangerous for two five year olds.

Arriving at the meadow tsu'tey saw two small figures in the dark, he approached slowly accompanied by jake, neytiri and norm. "And what are you two doing here?" speaks tsu'tey with a calm and sweet voice. Causing both children to look up, running a little towards the man. Tsu'tey wrapped his arms around them, sighing with relief. "I thought something serious happened to you guys…you shouldn't be here at night" says tsu'tey, looking annoyed at the children. "We're sorry!!!" says both children, holding hands. Jake walks over to where the children are, carrying them. "Well…we have to go" says jake, neytiri stood next to tsu'tey…she knew he was upset. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "I tried…but he's kind of stubborn" neytiri speaks. "He doesn't know how to take care of them…. y/n. He…" tsu'tey turns away from neytiri and starts walking home.

He could feel several tears running down his cheeks. He felt anger and insufficient… he only wanted the best for these children. He himself felt strange, to feel compassion and affection for human children. He arrived at his hut, and quickly lay down in his hammock. He had to get used to the idea that he could never have his own family, that he would never be able to take enough care of these children, because they did not belong to him and although he did not like the idea, they already had their own parents. He settled down, trying to relieve himself of his feelings. He almost got his sleep, but finally after a long time he was able to sleep. The night passed quickly, and as usual he got up early. Wiping his face, not noticing anything else around him.

Out of nowhere he felt someone moving something in his hut. Turning his eyes slowly, he saw a spider looking in the basket where the toys were. Then he saw y/n sitting down, she was playing with one of the wooden ikran. He couldn't believe it, what was going on? Why were the kids here so early in the morning? "Norm said he'll bring you an oxygen capsule later…so the kids can sleep in there" speaks jake…he was on the other side of the hut. Sitting on the floor. Tsu'tey is surprised, and pulls back. "What?" tsu'tey was surprised, he didn't understand what was going on. ""You're so right….I'm a bad father to Y/N"" speaks jake. Both men talk, and begin to set the record straight. Jake knew that he wasn't the best thing for Y/N, and that he neglected her too much.

He had talked to neytiri at night, she talked to him. That it was best for Y/N to be with tsu'tey. Jake had been thinking about it all night, it was the best thing to do. Besides, he wouldn't be far from her…besides, his daughter didn't call him father. To her, her father was the man in front of him the one who had taken care of her for the last two years. Like Y/N, Jake talked to Norm…he told him that Spider should go with Tsu'tey, that he was the best thing for these children. Jake said goodbye to both children, and walked away without looking back. Although he didn't want to admit it, it hurt him a little to admit that he was a bad father and that it was too late now.

Left alone with both children, tsu'tey sits still stunned by the situation. He could not believe it, eywa had heard his prayers. His heart wanted to burst out of his chest, he was so happy. The little girl approaches her father, and hands him the toy. She had a cute smile on her face. "You know you will stay with me…I-I will be your daddy" says tsu'tey, taking the hand of spider, who had come closer. Both children nodded their heads. "I promise I will take care of you…I promise" both children hug their new father tightly. Even though they always knew…that he was their father.

ps. Thank you for leaving your request, I know it took me a long time to reply. I have had some problems with my laptop, but I will be answering them this week little by little. But don't think I have forgotten you.

[vroomvroomcircuit]

Early Risers vs. Night Owls

(A/N): Special thank yous to @foreveralbon and @disneyprincemuke for helping me choose which drivers are morning people and which are more of night owls.

Summary: Some people are night owls, others are morning people. But there is another sort that some drivers learn to fear: Morning Monsters (it's the reader)

Pairings: (All platonic) daniel ricciardo x driver!reader, charles leclerc x driver!reader, carlos sainz x driver!reader, oscar piastry x driver!reader (max and lando get a guest starring)

Word count: 1.2k

🏎Masterlist🏎

________________________

It’s difficult, being a night person in a day people’s world. It really is. Especially when you are around morning loving human beings.

“Oh, don’t you look happy?” Carlos comments, when (Y/N) steps into the breakfast room. Coincidentally, several teams are accommodated in the same hotel during this race weekend.

As she lets herself fall in a seat at his table, the young female whispers an annoyed “Don’t”. “I wasn’t saying anything mean?” He genuinely questions. Is his English failing him again?

“Please, just stop talking. It’s only the ass crack of dawn, how can someone be so chatty?” (Y/N) puts her head onto the table, effectively stopping any further conversation with the Spaniard. He looks a little bit lost into his fruit bowl, not sure how to handle this situation adequately. 

“Top of the morning, my sunshines,” a smiling Daniel Ricciardo strolls into the room. The happiness radiating from him reaches (Y/N) even through her closed eyes.

Just as Daniel arrives at their table, she gets up with the most sluggish motions a sober person can muster. “Coffee” is the only thing mumbled, answering to the confused looks around her.

Shortly after, she sits down again with a cup in her hands, not even bothering to try to follow the chatting between Daniel and Carlos. (Y/N) just stares into space, wondering where she went wrong in her life to have to sit in between two morning people. Surely, this is a punishment of some kind.

“Ok, what is up with you? You look like you are about to murder everyone in this room if someone just dares to breathe in the wrong direction,” Daniel observes. (Y/N) takes another sip from her coffee. “Because it’s true.”

Carlos can’t wrap his head around it. “But what happened to the sunshine-in-person-(Y/N)?” “How am I supposed to be a sunshine, when I’m barely a person at this moment?” Well, that is not a lie. She does look pretty rough. Not everyone can wake up and look perfect like Florence Pugh. Some people have to look more like Merida herself in the mornings.

“Why are you talking to this woman during the early hours?” Charles, who just entered the breakfast hall, fears for their lives. “Because this is what people do? They talk when they sit together?” Daniel is confused. What is so bad about making conversations?

Charles steps closer to their table and (Y/N) immediately latches onto him, burying her face into his stomach.

“Don’t you value your life? A tired (Y/N) in the morning needs quiet and some hugs.” The young woman mumbles something, making the Monegasque laugh. “Yes, and coffee. This is the recipe to get the sunshine person you know and love.”

Confused, the other two drivers blink. Did they miss the manual that came with the rookie?

“And you know all of this, because?” Carlos asks the question that popped up in both their heads. “Because (Y/N) and Arthur were together in F2 and he had been ‘chewed out by her like a pack of gum by a class of elementary schoolers’, his words, not mine. She is not all bark and no bite, isn’t that right?” (Y/N) nods, her head still buried into his front.

“Do you want to catch a ride to the paddock with me? I plan on leaving in five minutes.” (Y/N) nods again and quickly gathers her things before waving the other drivers goodbye.

The ride is filled with silence, Charles even leaves the radio turned off. This lets the female drive in and out of a state of half-asleep until they arrive at their destination. At the same time a certain papaya wearing aussie his own car not far away from Charles’ Ferrari.

“Oh, is it still too early?” He asks her with a small smile. Just like Arthur, Oscar is aware how much of a night owl (Y/N) is, having witnessed her outbursts first hand several times during his own career in F2.

The driver nods as she throws herself into his embrace. A tired (Y/N) turns into the most cuddly person. “Let’s get you a cup of coffee, can’t have you go around screaming at people. You will scare everyone off.”

Oscar is pretty much the only smiling person she tolerates in the morning. Whenever another human being dares just grinning in her direction during her own waking up phase, she is ready to jump their throats. But Oscar is different. He doesn't do it out of mocking or pitiness. He is genuinely happy and wants to show and share it. Also, he radiates a nice calm aura, which is the complete opposite to what she experiences during the days of a race weekend.

When Carlos passes (Y/N) by later, he walks up to her with caution, keeping his teammates' warning in mind, “Hey Carlos, have you heard the rumors about the newest Taylor Swift album? Do you think it will feature a song about Nando?”

The woman in front of him has nothing in common with the one he interacted with just an hour ago. She somehow even looks completely different from her. It’s the kind of freshness that doesn’t come with a shower.

“Uhm, no I did not. Are you ok? You seemed… a bit out of it this morning.” There is a hesitation in his voice, not wanting to accidentally offset her.

But (Y/N) just laughs it off. “Oh yeah, that. I’m sorry for being a grump back there. Just like Charlie said, I’m absolutely not a morning person. During the first hour of being awake I’m an absolute monster. Just, don’t talk to me or only when it’s absolutely necessary during that time. I apologize for my behavior, it wasn’t nice. Today was particularly bad, because I do my best work at night and I have been pouring over some data until 2 am. I’ll try to give you a warning next time!”

With that she is off, looking for her partner in crime aka her teammate to start some kind of mischief with the social media team.

Carlos is just flabbergasted. The duality of some people and how a small cup of caffeine can bring that out of them is astonishing.

Just remember to never fuck with night owls during the early hours of the morning.

Bonus Scene

During a free week some drivers set a date to play a private paddle tournament together in Monaco. Daniel enters the court with a big smile. After all, it is a fresh, sunny morning. This day is a promise of having a good time with his friends and colleagues, playing their favorite game and having lunch plans together.

What sets the Australian off are the three frowning faces, sitting on a bench nursing each a can of Red Bull solemnly. “What happened to you?”

Max answers his question first with a grumpy voice. “I had to leave my cats cuddled up in my bed alone.” “My alarm woke me up while the first number on the clock was still a single digit.” Landoo sounds about as tired as (Y/N) next to him looks like.

“Life”, Daniel answers for the young woman already, who just nods and pulls the strings of her hood closed, hindering someone else to make more conversations with her until the caffeine has kicked in.

Desperate times call for desperate measures after all.

[writingforatwistedworld]

Self-aware au

Written before the English release!

I do not take any responsibility for you reading this no matter which age group you are from!

WARNINGS: Yandere themes, Jp-version spoiler(!!!), death, description of war, unhealthy mindset, religion, obsessive themes, unhealthy family dynamics

General! Lilia Vanrouge/(Platonic) Maleanor Draconia/(Platonic) Knight of Dawn-Yandere headcanons

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce? Lilia Vanrouge 1.0. The more cold, hard and ready to behead the next human version of the usual Lilia (also known as the Lilia Vanrouge 2.0 model)

Lilia back then was “rough” and I am being nice calling him that

Back then, Lilia was surrounded by loss and a lot of Faes getting everything they ever owned ripped away from them

Of course this impacts him (I mean he is strolling through battlefield after battlefield so of course it does)

Lilia wasn't always such a devoted follower

Yes, he did believe in the Overseer, aka you, but only after witnessing the brutality that came with him being a general did he turn into a follower with such drastic views

After all, if there was no higher meaning to all this violence, to all this loss and despair, what was even the point of it all?

You became his moral, mental and also a bit of a physical crutch for him

Whenever he felt like he was this close to just giving up, he thought about you and that this was part of your greater plan (totally not part of some valley church propaganda)

After witnessing that human hiding behind the Knight of Dawn in all his haughtiness and cruelty, he finally set out on his quest not only to make the humans leave his beloved home but also to make them into loyal believers of the Overseer

But sadly, everything was for nought and Lilia had to go into hiding

The only thing keeping him going was his believe in you having a greater plan

A few hundred years later and Lilia finally found out what that supposed plan of yours was

Laying in that cold, lonely crib was the child of his old, now deceased enemy

Taking the child, now called Silver, in he learned the joy of a family, the boy giving him more joy than anything ever before in his life

Finally, he had found peace. Of course he did. This was your plan all along, right? You must have ordered those three fairies to make his beloved son survive until now, right?

You were, after all, a kind deity. There was no way this was all just a war happening because of greed. Because if this truly was just events happening after events then...

Lilia never finished that thought

The great ruler of the night fae, mighty and powerful sorceress who could fell an entire nation in one swoop if she wanted to was despite her cruel and aloof outside appearance a pretty devoted follower since the beginning

Despite being a Fae, she was feared just like her unborn son due to her powers (and being more or less being on the same level as a nuclear bomb but hey, I doubt that anyone of us would stand next to one of those, right?)

So it is no surprise that she turned to something, someone, to feel less alone

Especially after her husband disappeared did she wish for some sort of sign that she was not alone

And oh boy, did religious propaganda from the high church take that loneliness away

When her beloved son, although in an egg, was born, she visited your altar daily, thanking you for her child being healthy

(This could also be the reason why Malleus is the way he is but I am just a writer and not some all-knowing God so idk, just a theory)

She definitely has "taken care" *cough*totallynotproblematicforarulertobeinfluencedbyreligion*cough* of Fae that were non-believers

How dare their sinful ways dirty your holy image?

See? Totally not problematic

At first she only tried to protect her subjects after the humans attacked and took over parts of her kingdom

But after a while she started to have another goal

What if she shared your splendor with those little useless invaders?

Humans were most definitely vile but you were able to unite so many different kinds of Fae in your name under the Draconia name

So why not also unite those humans in your name in a peace treaty?

Such a kind God you were! Allowing for peace in your name!

And, well, if violence and destruction was needed to make those beings understand and surrender, then that shall be what they get

Besides, she was only honoring her husbands wish to get closer to the humans so who was she to selfishly aim for another goal?

The Knight of Dawn (long name, I know) did not always believe in you

Heck, the poor guy probably never heard of you until he fought the Fae

But if the humans from back then didn't really know about you, then how did he find out about and why did he start to see you as his God?

On this part, I would say, he and Lilia were eerily similair

Both were pushed into a war neither liked, so of course he was also in a very unstable situation which made him, like Lilia, search for something to hold on to

The three Fairies had mentioned before when he was still training to become as strong as he was now, mentioning a kind deity who accepted all, who loved unconditionally

Back then he only thought of you as one of the many deities that were prayed to back then

But once the war started and he saw your churches and cathedrals for the first time, his opinion slowly started to shift until he saw you as the highest being possible

I mean, all of us would if we lost all stability over night, having only destroyed buildings and a half-standing church in front of us

He hated the plundering of your sacred placed even before he became a believer, having the opinion that it was just a cultural difference between the two kinds

This led to him kneeling at the cracked altars of many of your churches, asking for forgiveness, hoping that you would understand that he didn't have another choice

What he would do to witness one of your sermons…

And when he was lonely enough, he imagined you watching down on him from up above

Just like a... a parent

You see where I am going with this?

So when he was facing the Queen he only hoped for your forgiveness, hoping that his loving family member would forgive his gravest sin, him killing a mother

And he found salvation, in letting that child and the retainer escape

Perhaps you could forgive him now

[mostlysignssomeportents]

My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

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