#that i am not to be trusted with remote access

[des8pudels8kern]

I went from I've been kind of sick since last week but I'm not sicksick to oh, look who's got a fever yesterday and am consequently spending today in bed.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

EFF’s lawsuit against DOGE will go forward

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on May 15 at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE. More tour dates here.

In my 23 years at EFF, I've been privileged to get a front-row seat for some of the most important legal battles over tech and human rights in history. There've been tremendous victories and heartbreaking losses, but win or lose, I am forever reminded that I'm privileged to work with some of the smartest, most committed, savviest cyberlawyers in the world.

These days, it's more of a second-row seat – I work remotely, mostly on my own projects, and I rely on our Deeplinks blog as much as our internal message-boards to keep up with our cases. Yesterday, I happened on this fantastic explainer breaking down our most recent court victory, in our case against DOGE on behalf of federal workers whose privacy rights have been violated during DOGE's raid on the Office of Personnel Management's databases:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/our-privacy-act-lawsuit-against-doge-and-opm-why-judge-let-it-move-forward

The post is by Adam Schwartz, EFF's Privacy Litigation Director. I've been campaigning on privacy for my entire adult life, but I still learn something – something big and important – every time I talk about the subject with Adam. His breakdown on EFF's latest court victory is no exception.

EFF was the first firm to bring a suit directly against DOGE, representing two federal workers' unions: the AFGE and the AALJ, and our co-counsel are from Lex Lumina LLP, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and The Chandra Law Firm. At the heart of our case are the millions of personnel records that DOGE agents were given access to by OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell.

The OPM is like the US government's HR department. It holds files on every federal employee and retiree, filled with sensitive, private data about that worker's finances, health, and personal life. The OPM also holds background check data on federal workers, including the deep background checks that federal workers must undergo to attain security clearances. Many of us – including me – first became familiar with the OPM in 2015, after its records were breached by hackers believed to be working for the Chinese military:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach

That breach was catastrophic. Chinese spies stole the sensitive data of tens of millions of Americans. The DOGE breach implicates even more Americans' private data, though, and while DOGE isn't a foreign intelligence agency, that cuts both ways. It's a good bet that a Chinese spy agency will not leak the records it stole, but with DOGE, it's another matter entirely. I wouldn't be surprised to find the OPM data sitting on a darknet server in a month or a year.

In his breakdown, Adam explains the ruling and what was at stake. We brought the case on behalf of all those federal workers under the 1974 Privacy Act, which was passed in the wake of Watergate and the revelations about COINTELPRO, scandals that rocked the nation's faith in federal institutions. The Privacy Act was supposed to restore trust in government, and to guard against future Nixonian enemies lists:

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llmlp/LH_privacy_act-1974/LH_privacy_act-1974.pdf

The Privacy Act's preamble asserts that the US government's creation of databases on Americans – including federal workers – "greatly magnified the harm to individual privacy." This is the basis for the Act's tight regulation on how government agencies use and handle databases containing dossiers on the lives of everyday Americans.

The US government tried to get the case tossed out by challenging our clients' "standing" to sue. Only people who have been harmed by someone else has the right ("standing") to sue over it. Does having your data leaked to DOGE constitute a real injury? Two recent Supreme Court cases say it does: Spokeo vs Robins and Transunion vs Ramirez both establish that "intangible" injuries (like a privacy breach) can be the basis for standing.

The court agreed that our clients had standing because the harms we alleged – DOGE's privacy breaches – are "concrete harms analogous to intrusion upon seclusion" ("intrusion upon seclusion" is one of the canonical privacy violations, set out in the Restatement of Torts, the American Law Institute's comprehensive guide to common law).

But the court went further, noting that DOGE's operation is accused of being "rushed and insecure," rejecting DOGE's argument that it only accessed OPM's "system" but not the data stored in that system. The court also said that it wouldn't matter if DOGE access the system, but not the data – that merely gaining access to the data violated our clients' privacy. Here, the judge is part of an emerging consensus, joining with four other federal judges who've ruled that when DOGE gains access to a system containing private data, that alone constitutes a privacy violation, even if DOGE doesn't look at or process the records in the system.

So in ruling for our clients, the judge found that the mere fact that DOGE could access their records was an injury that gave us standing to proceed – and also found that there were other injuries that would separately give us standing, including the possibility that DOGE's breach could expose our clients to "hacking, identity theft, and other activities that are substantially harmful."

The US government repeatedly argued that we weren't accusing them of disclosing our clients' records, every time they did this, the judge pointed to our actual filings, which plainly assert that DOGE agents were "viewing, possessing and using" our clients' records, and that this constitutes "disclosure" under the law, and according to OPM's own procedures.

The judge found that we were entitled to seek relief under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which proscribes the conduct of federal agencies – and that our relief could be both "declaratory" (meaning a court could rule that DOGE was breaking the law) and "injunctive" (meaning the court could order DOGE to knock it off).

Normally, a plaintiff can't ask for a judgment under the APA until an agency has taken a "final" action. The court found that because DOGE's actions were accused of being "illegal, rushed, and dangerous," and that this meant that we could seek relief under the APA. Further, that we could invoke the APA here because the remedies set out in the Privacy Act itself wouldn't be sufficient to help our clients in the face of DOGE's mass data-plundering.

Finally, the court ruled that our claims will allow us to pursue APA cases because OPM and DOGE were behaving in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner, and exceeding its legal authority.

All of this is still preliminary – we're not at the point yet where we're actually arguing the case. But standing is a huge deal. Ironically, it's when governments violate our rights on a mass scale that standing is hardest to prove. Our Jewel case, over NSA spying, foundered because the US government argued that we couldn't prove our clients had been swept up by NSA surveillance because the details of that surveillance were officially still secret, even though Snowden had disclosed their working a decade earlier, and our client Mark Klein (RIP) had come forward with documents on illegal mass NSA spying in 2006!:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-flagship-jewel-v-nsa-dragnet-spying-case-rejected-supreme-court

So this is a big deal. It means we're going to get to go to court and argue the actual merits of the case. Things are pretty terrible right now, but this is a bright light. It makes me proud to have spent most of my adult life working with EFF. If you want to get involved with EFF, check and see if there's an Electronic Frontier Alliance affinity group in your town:

https://efa.eff.org/allies

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/2025/04/09/cases-and-controversy/#brocolli-haired-brownshirts

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

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

--

EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/opm-eye-3b.jpg

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

[nightmare-writes]

Succubus Soulmate pt.2

Wanda x Succubus!Reader

Hello everyone! Long time no see. I apologize for the unintended hiatus, life got in the way of me writing on here. I found this sitting in my drafts and I felt like some of you might have wanted to read it. I can’t guarantee that I will write another part of this soon, but if enough people want to see it I can write a part 3. Anyway! I hope you enjoy.

Warnings: masturbation (Wanda) it’s mostly very fluffy and domestic otherwise.

Summary: Your first few days on earth!

You stared at Wanda as she sat huddled up against her wall for a moment or so. You’d never been in this kind of position. You’re used to having some sleeze bag summon you, use you for two minutes, and then go straight back to the underworld while said sleeze bag knocks out in his post nut bliss. With this being your usual, you had no clue what you should do in this situation.

Eventually you fell asleep curled up on the couch with Wanda sitting awkwardly right next to you.

The more Wanda sat there, the more she started to think over logistics. What was she meant to do when she goes into work tomorrow? She couldn’t call out sick so she would have to leave you alone for a few hours. She couldn’t trust that you wouldn’t try to do anything silly while she was away, so she got to ‘succubus proofing’ her apartment.

She didn’t have any baby locks for cabinets so she assumed duct tape would have to do for now. She duct taped all of her cabinets shut, along with the fridge doors, the oven, the microwave, and anything she thought you could get into. She duct taped the cabinet in her bathroom with all her cleaning supplies in it and then went around to every window to duct tape the locks so you couldn’t access them. It felt like she had just gotten a new, untrained, puppy that she needed to ensure wouldn’t accidentally kill itself by drinking bleach thinking it was milk. It took her a few hours but she felt like she had successfully ‘succubus proofed’ her home. She rewarded herself by going to her bed and passing out for the night.

It felt like the moment Wanda closed her eyes, she had to open them back up. Her blaring alarm clock gave her no reprieve as it woke her up. She shut it off before getting ready for work as she usually did.

When she got out to the living room, she saw you were still curled up and resting. She felt a bit guilty as she gently shook you awake, but she needed to talk with you before she went off to work.

You groaned as the movement of your body got you out of your dreamland and forced you back into reality. Rubbing your sleepy eyes, you looked up to Wanda and mumbled “Mornin” almost too quiet for her to hear. She had to admit that you did look cute all sleepy, but she couldn’t be distracted from the task at hand.

“Look, I have to go to work so I’m gonna lay down a few ground rules for when I’m gone.” She says firmly while crouching down to be at eye level with you. “You’re not allowed to leave apartment unless it is burning down or someone broke in.” She starts and you interrupt by saying “If it was burning down I’d stay right where I am, I finally wouldn’t be freezing to death. Do you like living in an ice block?” which garners you an eye roll from the red head. “Second rule, don’t touch any of my things unless it is this remote or-“ she says while looking around for something for you to eat. She spots the cheerios she had set out and decided that that would be a sufficient food source for you before she could go grocery shopping. She scampers over to grab the box from the kitchen along with a water bottle before returning to your side and placing the box and bottle on the coffee table. “- this cereal and this water, got it?” She added. “What if I don’t like the way it tastes?” You ask while poking at the box.

“Well it’s just for now, I’ll be back with more food for you. What do you even eat?”

“Souls of the damned” you say with a straight face before laughing at the disgusted and slightly horrified expression on Wanda’s face. “I usually just eat meat, but now that I’m stuck as this flesh sack I guess I’d eat whatever humans would.”

“Okay, noted.” She says while looking around to see if she needed to say anything else. “You can watch whatever you want on the tv, I have a few streaming apps if you wanna look through those too.” She says and you look at her like she was speaking a whole other language. “What the fuck is a tv.” You deadpan and Wanda thinks you’re joking again until she realizes that you’re serious. “What did you think the remote was for?” She asks and you simply say “A vibrator”

Wanda couldn’t help but laugh while saying “Why in the world would I give you just the remote to a vibrator?” You shrug as Wanda sits down next to you and explains the wonders of the television to you. When she turns it on, you were absolutely terrified at first. You yelped and hid behind her while she giggled at your antics. “It’s not going to kill you, here let me show you how it works.” She says softly while gently coaxing you out of hiding. She didn’t want to put on anything scary since she didn’t want you to think it was real, so she went to her disney+ account and put on some kids show that her coworkers kids absolutely loved. “You can watch this while I’m gone, okay?” She says while gesturing to the colorful dogs that were dancing on the screen. The moment your eyes hit the screen, you were entranced by what you were seeing. You didn’t look away from it as you nodded.

Wanda gave you a small pat on the head before setting the box of cheerios next to you so you’d actually remember that they were there. She moved her hands in front of your eyes when you didn’t turn to look at her and you immediately swatted her hand away so you could continue to watch. She just giggled to herself before saying “Have fun, I’ll be back soon.” and heading off to the office.

You quickly learned that your first favorite thing on earth was a show called Bluey. You’re second favorite thing were the delicious crunchy circles that Wanda gave you. You had devoured the entire box of cereal after about 10 or so episodes of bluey and you wanted more. You figured out how to pause the funny dogs on the television so you could go find more crunchy circles.

Your quest begins in the place where Wanda brought the box from in the first place, the kitchen. You were greeted by a collection of places where the sugary treat could be, but when you tried to open up one of the cabinets it was stopped by something. You let out a low growl at the offending silver strip before your short nails grew into fierce claws that tore through it. The first cabinet you opened was filled with random white disks. You grabbed one and tried taking a bite to see if it was tasty like your crunchy circles, but it didn’t break in between your teeth so you gave up on it.

You spent a few more minutes tearing through all the tape in the kitchen and looking for snacks. You eventually stumble upon a heavy bag that was easy to rip open. It was filled to the brim with tiny white crystals that looked edible, so you gave it a lick. You were instantly hooked. It tasted so yummy, kind of like the crunchy circles but this time it was just the sweet tasting part.

You returned back to the couch so you could keep watching the silly dogs while licking your delicious new treat.

———————————————————

Wanda was thankfully able to get off of work early and was able to convince her supervisor to let her work from home for a few days by giving some excuse about having to take care of some relatives child while they were in the hospital for a bit.

She returns home to see you, still sitting on the couch watching the show she put on earlier, but now you were eating something that was definitely not cheerios. “Hey, what are you- are you eating my sugar?!” She exclaims while taking the half eaten bag away from you. You whine and try to take it back from her but she hold it up above her so you couldn’t reach. “How did you even get this?” She questions while shutting the tv off. “I wanted more of this but there wasn’t any in the tiny compartments in the food room so I found that and ate it.” You say while picking up the box of cereal and holding it up. Wanda’s gaze moves over to the kitchen to see all the ripped up duct tape. She sighs and says “I’ll get you more cheerios, okay? No eating just sugar, it’s bad for you.” before giving you a reprimanding bop on your head. She almost changes her mind when she sees the adorable pout on your face, but she stays strong. You give in with a small nod while mumbling “No more… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, you’ll do better next time.” She says softly while sitting down next to you and hesitantly rubbing your back. You let out a soft purring sound before leaning against Wanda’s side. “More bluey.” you say while pointing to the television. She just chuckles to herself while switching the show back on. “We have to work on your manners, a please would be appreciated.” She says half jokingly.

————————————————————

After you went to sleep, Wanda went about making preparations for the next day. She went back and decided to hide the sugar bag somewhere else in the kitchen. She also put back another layer of duct tape just in case you got any ideas of stealing again.

She went on a late night trip to the supermarket to get a few boxes of cheerios for you and some general groceries since she was running low on practically everything. While she was browsing, she noticed a cute pair of pink mittens and got an idea to stop you from tearing through the duct tape again.

When she got home, she put the groceries away before making her way to her bedroom to make a few modifications to your new mittens. With a bit of ribbon and a lock for each hand, she successfully made a way to keep your hands locked in place. Was it a little evil? Maybe, but you did break a rule that she explicitly said… and the thought of you needing her to do everything for you was too tempting to pass up. She imagined your cute pout as you looked up at her and begged for her to hand feed you your cereal, or having to help you drink your water, or having to beg her to touch you since you couldn’t touch yourself…

Her mind began to wander towards the delicious sounds you would make. Would you whimper and whine while not using your words or would you be begging for more the entire time? Would you be quiet or loud just for her? These questions were burning her mind and sending a certain undeniable heat to her core. As she laid on her bed, her hand slowly crept down her stomach and into the waistband of her panties. She was soaked just from her little fantasy of you. She was desperate to feel your soft, supple skin under her fingers. She wants to squeeze and mark every inch of her body for herself. Her fingers make feather light touches around her clit before slowly speeding up. She was doing it just the way she liked it, but it didn’t feel right.

It didn’t feel right cause you weren’t the one touching her.

While she wanted to keep going, she knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere. She pulled her hand out and inspected her fingers that were dripping in her arousal. Her thoughts immediately went to you sucking her fingers clean before she shoves them down your throat so you’d gag on them.

“Get yourself together, Wanda” she muttered quietly to herself while rubbing her face. To stop herself from getting too carried away, Wanda forced herself into the bathroom to take a cold shower and then straight to bed.

——

“You want me to wear what?” You questioned while pointing towards the offending objects in Wanda’s grasp. “I told you not to touch anything and you did it anyway. So until I can trust you enough with your own hands, you’ll be wearing these.” She says while showing you the pretty pink mittens she made for you. You knew she was getting a kick out of this. A part of her wanted to humiliate you and that was clear from the way she was trying not to smile or the way her hands were slightly shaking. The tell tale sign though was the distinct scent of arousal wafting off of her. You knew she had no clue that your sense of smell was leagues above her own, but what she didn’t know didn’t matter. What did matter is that Wanda was starting to express her sexual interests, while indirectly, with you. You felt some weird sense of pride that she was maybe more of a pervert than you thought.

You sighed and held your hands out for her. “Alright, get ‘em on me.” You acquiesce and almost instantly Wanda gets your hands into fists so she could fasten the mitts. When they were both padlocked, you couldn’t stretch your fingers out so it was impossible for you to rip them. “Happy?” You say while waving your imprisoned fists up towards her. “Very” Wanda states before getting the next episode of Bluey on for you. “I’m going to be in the other room doing some work, you stay here and watch your show. I’ll come back in an hour for lunch.” She explains while going to the kitchen and returning with a bowl of cheerios for you. She sets the bowl on the couch next to you before giving you a small pat to the head. “No trouble while I’m working.” She reminds you before going off to work in her room.

——

You could tell that the redhead was distancing herself from you. Whenever she could, she would work in another room than you. She would come check up on you occasionally to make sure you had food and that you were drinking water since “Humans need to drink water to survive.” While it was odd, you did enjoy being doted on even if it was for a few moments. You could tell Wanda was enjoying herself too, but she was too nervous to fully let herself go.

After the fifth time of noticing Wanda checking on you from her bedrooms doorway, you decided to put matters into your own hands. You fiddled with the remote to turn it off before tip toeing over to Wanda’s room. You give it a soft knock and ask “Can I come in? I’m bored.”

You could sense the hesitation from the other side of the door. Wanda was anxious to have a real conversation with you. It was safe to keep your conversation to a bare minimum. The sokovian couldn’t imagine the things she’d admit if she spoke to you for longer than five minutes. However, she had to rip the bandaid off. She couldn’t just leave you to waste away in front of her tv all day. “You may.” Wanda pipes up and you fumble with the door handle until it opens up. “Stupid cloth hands.” You whisper while glaring down at the pristinely pink fabric that was still tightly locked around your hands. “You can sit on the bed if you’d like.” You barely heard Wanda when she said it. You didn’t want to tease her about her nerves since it was easy to tell it might’ve made things worse. You sat down on the edge of the bed closest to her, bouncing a bit on the springy surface. Wanda didn’t look away from her laptop and continued to type away at it as she sat next to you. You scooted closer to her until your cheek rested against her shoulder. You looked over her laptop screen to see a collection of tabs open while Wanda’s cursor was frantically switching between all of them. Her logic was that if she could overstimulate her eyes then she wouldn’t have to think about how close you were to her.

“What are you doing?” You ask while nodding towards the chaos unfolding on the screen in front of you.

“Working.”

“Working?”

“Mhm, this is what humans do for money.”

“What’re you doing to the screen?”

“Important technological stuff. You wouldn’t get it.”

“It doesn’t look that hard, you’re just looking at different pictures.” You point out while putting one of your mitts to the screen.

She sighs when she realizes she’s been caught before closing her laptop. “You got me, you’re more clever than I thought.” Wanda praises you before giving your hair a quick ruffle. You lean into the touch before Wanda could pull her hand away which leads to her giving you a few soft pets. “Now why did you come in here? I thought you’d want to sit and watch your show.” She asks while slowly moving her hand away from you. You whine quietly as she does and Wanda has to resist the urge to play with your hair. “I told you I was bored. I wanna do something.” You reiterated while turning your gaze up towards Wanda’s face. She sits there for a moment thinking about what she could do with you since she was also rather bored. “Why don’t we watch a different show together? I’ll make you a new snack to try.” She suggests and you eagerly nod your head at her idea.

——

“Here, try this. It’s called popcorn.” Wanda says while sitting next to you with a bowl filled to the brim with a new treat for you. You examine this ‘popcorn’ and after giving it a few sniffs you decide that it was good enough to eat. You try to pick up a few pieces but your mitted fisted could barely do anything. Wanda noticed your struggle and giggles to herself. You could tell that she wanted you to ask for help since she was too nervous to offer it herself. “Can you help me eat this?” You ask the redhead and you immediately notice a spark of an idea in those bright green eyes of hers. “You have to ask me nicely if you want help.” She says smugly while watching your face to see if she might’ve stepped over the line. You groan but give into her. “Can you help me eat this popcorn… please?” You ask again and she happily takes a few pieces in her hand and up towards your mouth for you to start snacking. Your face lights up as you’re hit with a completely new taste. “More! Please- I want more popcorn.” You blurt out before opening up your mouth slightly as Wanda feeds you some more popcorn.

——

Wanda soon put on one of her favorite shows, Malcom in the middle, for the two of you to watch as she continued to feed you. You could feel Wanda’s tension start to ease as more episodes went by. She hasn’t had anyone to watch shows with in forever. It’s always been something she did with her family, but since she moved countries that was near impossible now. It felt blissfully domestic, which was something that Wanda didn’t know she wanted until now.

After some time, you fell asleep curled up next to Wanda as the show continued on in the background. Wanda wasn’t paying any attention to it though, her sole focus was on you.

I hope you all enjoyed! Leave a comment if you want to see this story continue.

[morgana-ren]

Has your opinion/understanding on Astarion's character changed much as you play through the full game?

Actually, yes! Big spoilers again btw.

So, I will admit, my perception of characters is always slightly biased. It's always tilted in favor of my own predilections and desires, so I tend to see things in a skewed way. The less information I am presented, the more my brain will fill in the gaps thusly.

In the early access, Astarion is presented as a selfish vampire spawn clawing for his own survival from the vicious vampire lord that spawned him and has held him captive for centuries. It should be noted that he is one of the only companions open to the idea of abusing the tadpoles rather than removing them and only seeks to cure them if they cannot be controlled. It becomes apparent that he craves power above all else. He dislikes altruistic speech options, tends to veer directly towards ones that bolster said power, especially at the expense of other people. He seems the closest to a stereotypical 'chaotic' follower that you really get.

However, he isn't evil. He's a very rounded character despite his inherent selfishness. He is manipulative and vicious, but he is also desperate and afraid and slow to trust. Most of what he does, he does for his own survival and comfort rather than active malevolence-- though that isn't always the case.

You get an alright idea of him in the early access, as in enough to know if you're going to want to keep him around and invest time into him as opposed to just dropping him at camp perpetually. You catch glimpses of the man he is behind it all, but mostly he appears flamboyant, resourceful, flirtatious, and of extremely dubious morality. Fun, right?

Very, very wrong, actually.

As you progress through the game, you come to understand him better, and it's... tragic.

The first thing to slip is his explosive temper. He is confused, bitter, and frightened. He expects Cazador around every corner, stalking in every shadow, watching and waiting to sling the collar around his neck and yank once more. Paranoid. He has mystery scars painstakingly carved into his flesh that he cannot see because of his condition, in a language he cannot read, with horrible memories he doesn't want to recall. He is angry, and he isn't in the company of people he trusts even remotely at first and literally cannot remember the last time he was in centuries. He bottles up all those emotions to avoid the devastating vulnerability of showing emotion and shoves them down beneath his posh and nonchalant facade, and eventually, it finds a way out.

Occasionally, he snaps. He becomes enraged and has these moments of intense anger.

And then, there is what you might think to be a moment of connection.

Astarion, once he decides that he approves of you, will make a move to seduce you. Should you accept, you might find that he says something along the lines of "Isn't that why you came? To lose yourself in me?"

It seems like typical seduction dialogue at first, but this is very deliberate. The wording is very deliberate as is everything he does. Like a choreographed waltz that he has danced again and again and again--

Until it comes as natural as breathing.

After your night together, he evades a conversation that would take anything any further. No relationship, no nothing. Just a one off that turns you into the equivalent of ye olde fuckbuddies. He stays by your side, of course, but nothing changes between you other than him acknowledging what happened.

So, you progress a little more.

Eventually, both through necessity and happenstance, he does end up opening up little by little. And you find out bits and pieces about him. But there's one that stands out to me:

The crazy blood bitch in Moonrise dehumanizes him, speaks down to him, and refuses to even acknowledge his personhood. She only speaks to you, and makes you an offer regarding your 'property.' An invaluable potion for a moment with 'your pet vampire spawn.'

And he has a visceral reaction to this.

If you have a fucking heart and you don't make him do this, he comes to speak to you later and confides in you. Cazador had used him essentially as a honeypot, forcing him to use his body to lure unsuspecting citizens back to the vampire's den-- against his will. He was so degraded, so dehumanized, and so looked down on for so many years that he has genuinely come to believe that it's the truth. He thanks you genuinely for considering him and viewing him as a real person with emotions and feelings, but is also... confused. He doesn't understand, because that rotten, stagnant belief is still a truth to him: That he is nothing but a tool and a means to an end; that he doesn't matter. That he is a filthy thing to be used and cast aside when convenient. He doesn't understand why you didn't make him do it when it was only his comfort on the line.

And if you ask him to drink from her, he will. He stiffens his upper lip and drinks despite the fact that something is wrong and he knows it. He does it because you command him to. Because that's what he has done for so long that you don't have to have the lord's control over him anymore for him to follow orders.

There is a moment of stark, dreadful realization that sex and seduction have an entirely different meaning to him but he has still been doing it. That the love and connection that he truly needs might be support and a friend and not a bedfellow. That his agency and personhood have been stripped away for so long that he doesn't even recognize them anymore. He is bitter and mean but vulnerable and confused and terrified and he doesn't know how to seek comfort, so he resorts to what he knows while simultaneously distancing and degrading himself.

He does not believe that he is worth loving or caring for, or anything but being an object to be molded. Used. Discarded. He suffered for so long that this is a fundamental truth to him. He is a monster. A filthy vermin barely a step above the rats he's been fed.

You do what you should do: You give him the power. You try to build him back up. Try to help him understand that he isn't a monster or a tool. He is a man; he is a person, and he deserves a say in his own fate. His wants and desires matter. What he wants matters.

If you've done things right, he will take a gigantic leap of faith. He will be with you-- truly be with you. It's slow and he doesn't understand, but he knows he wants it, and you take it as slow as he needs-- but he's still hurt. He is still scarred.

In the Sharess Caress, there are a pair of Drow twins that will attempt to seduce you into what is essentially a foursome. If Astarion is there and he is a love interest and you attempt this, he will say "I'm really not ready for this." while looking extraordinarily uncomfortable, and almost panicked. The scars are still there, and they're barely healing over, and still so, so tender. Easy to tear right back open. Easy to push back into his shell to never come out again, because he tried vulnerability and it burned him.

He does not think he is worthy of love or happiness. He doesn't get to have a loving partner who adores him. Even slipped free of Cazador's yoke, his claws are still stuck steadfast in his soul. He is taking it slow and barely learning to trust another being again, leave alone put his neck out and care for one. He wears his misery as a shield because it cannot hurt him that way. He is a monster who has done horrible things and deserves to be alone forever. And even if that isn't the truth, then Cazador is still lurking out there, waiting to strike-- to rip away that newfound happiness.

Astarion is, above all things, a truly tragic character, and one that I empathize with. It makes my adoration for him slightly guilty. I'm not all the way through the game quite yet, but what I have seen hurts my heart something dreadful. With my character, he is slowly learning to trust and love again, but it's painfully apparent that he thinks he doesn't deserve this, and he is simply waiting for something to fall apart and send him back into the spiraling black chasm that is his life. He still believes all these miserable things about himself. He was forced into immortality, and he believes he's going to spend it alone, reviled, and wretched - not to mention enslaved.

As fun as it is to have a sexy, dark, controlling Astarion, I don't think it's necessarily true to his character as he is presented if you choose to do things right. He isn't evil - he is a complex, tragic man who desperately needs to be able to see his own reflection in a way that isn't horrifically warped by everyone else's eyes.

Vampire. Monster. Killer. Slave. Pet.

It's been so long he's lost track of himself. Of Astarion the man.

He needs to find himself and find peace. He asks to view himself through your eyes, maybe because he's looking for something-- anything-- within himself to hold onto.

If you ask me again in a few days, I'll probably have a fully fleshed out idea of his character, since I'll probably have completed the game or at the very least gotten a bit further, but this is what I have at the moment. Doesn't mean I'll stop writing Astarion as I adore, but I've always openly admitted that my writings on characters are skewed despite their actual content lmao.

[pillow-princess-diaries]

 𝙵𝚎𝚖!𝙲𝚑𝚞𝚞𝚢𝚊 𝚡 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝙷𝚌𝚜...

Summary :- just an assortment of fem!Chuuya hcs!

Pairing:- Fem!Chuuya x AFAB!reader

Type:- headcanons

T/W:- cunnilingus,use of a strap, semi-public sex??and ass holding???

A/N:- Hi there! It’s Cheese again! These are just a few fem!chuuya hcs i had! And honestly the thought of fem chuuya is enough to just send me off tbh she’s so ughhhhhhh 😫😫😩😩

I hope you enjoy my silly little thoughts and see you next time!

OKAY SOOOO FEM CHUUYA-

Like i would legit let her peg me for dayss

Eat me out,mark me up Ms Ma’am I AM YOURS🫡

Like imagine her acting protective and the moment she Sees someone so much as glace in your direction,she puts a firm hand on the small of your back,slowly trailing it down to cup your ass.

When you ask her what she’s doin she just shrugs and says “nah just remembered you were mine😎” (oh and she says it loud enough for the other person to hear!)

Imagine steamy desire filled rendezvous in her office-

She has a meeting to be at but she doesnt mind being a few minutes late if it means she’ll get to see you fall apart on her fingers~

Personally i feel like she’d love the sight of seeing you on your knees eating her out as she leans back against her desk.

Her grip on the edge of her desk turning her knuckles white with how hard she’s holding on.

she moves her hips slowly allowing you better access and when she comes she expects you to take it all and leave nothing behind.

Will kiss you right after,savoring the taste of her arrousal on your lips as she hungrily kisses you,only leaving when you’re properly marked up.

she can’t let anyone think you’re even remotely available now can she~

When it comes to you i think she’d love to see you enjoy yourself just as much as she does,but would NOT get on her knees nah uh~ only place she’s eating you out is in your bedroom.

Keeps a spare strap in a secret little compartment in her desk just in case.

And Godd does she know how to use it😫😩

you’re a babbling mess by the time she’s done with you! Barely able to string a single sentence of words together from how good she’s made you feel and trust me she love the sight.because not only does she love to see you satisfied,she also takes great pleasure AND pride in knowing its only her who can make you feel this good.

Taglist (open):- @diagonal-queen

All rights reserved © 2023 pillow-princess-diaries. Please do not repost, modify or claim as yours. Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated!

[listentoace]

This will freak you out

... or at least I hope it does. Yes, I know most of the stuff I post on here is just kinky and horny talk and that's totally fine. By now, thousands of users have found their way to my blog and I'm very grateful for the support. I know I don't share much about myself, but the following will be about a more personal matter. I work in IT, or more specifically, with data. Lots of data. Being into data science, I am hyper-aware of the constant collecting and aggregating of user data. I know it's somewhat common knowledge that you're being tracked, but I want to take this opportunity to point out how bad the situation is and why privacy matters. I'll try to keep it as easy to follow as possible, so please bare with me!

The Trackers

Right now, you're on Tumblr. As you are reading this, your app connects to over a dozen servers that are not from Tumblr itself. They are from companies like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, but also lesser known companies such as Adjust and Moat. Within a single day, the Tumblr App sends about 5.000 tracking requests to the aforementioned and more companies, sharing your personal data. That's once every 15-20 seconds, regardless of whether you have the app opened or not. While I can't say exactly what data is being shared, it is likely that this is personal information that can be utilized to assume your opinions, target ads, or predict future behavior, as these are ways how companies will ultimately make money. Depending on what permissions you have granted the Tumblr app, it might also scan your gallery, your entire file system, access your call history, or your camera and microphone. By granting this permission, you are essentially giving Tumblr the keys to your phone on a complete "just trust me, bro"-basis. To me personally, that sounds scary.

But why do you use Tumblr yourself, then?

Very good and fair question! I actually am conflicted regarding using Tumblr, but I have put several security measures into place to minimize tracking potential as much as possible. While Tumblr can still see when I go online, read all the messages I send to others, know what content I view, like, comment on, and otherwise engage with, that is about it. Tumblr cannot acces my general file system, it cannot remotely access my camera and microphone, and even all the aforementioned trackers are blocked. I'll go more into this later.

"So what, I've got nothing to hide."

It's great that you think that! That's just what the big tech companies want you to believe. But answer me this: have you ever found it uncomfortable when a person next to you was reading all your texts, looking at your gallery, and just generally kept an eye on what you do on your phone at all times? Well, if a single person doing that is bothering you, how much worse must it be to know that several companies with thousands of employees spy on you for a living? Yes, they have seen your nudes, your breakup texts, your hours of Whatsapp calls with your best friend. It's literally a Big Brother Dystopia.

"Why would they be interested in me?"

I bet you have heard about the Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal from 2018. Just to summarize: a data analytics company CA worked closely together with Facebook to target adds specifically tailored to users to manipulate them into voting for Donald Trump as President. If you are asking how specific this could be, just look at this demonstration by Signal, where their ads are extremely specific to a point where probably only a few thousand if not only hundreds of people would fit the description and just those exact people saw their ad.

"You got this ad because you're a newlywed pilates instructor and you're cartoon crazy. This ad used your location to see you're in La Jolla. You're into parenting blogs and thinking about LGBTQ adoption."

Facebook took it down within hours. But imagine you seeing this ad of a random company knowing this much and lots more about you. Note that Instagram and WhatsApp belong to Facebook/Meta, so even if you're not using Facebook directly, you're still being watched just as closely.

Knowing exactly what you like, dislike, fear, and love, strong emotions can be triggered for political or financial gain. You're into sustainability? Buy this product and we will retrieve one pound of plastic from the ocean! You are conservative and maybe slightly racist? Immigrants are taking over more and more healthcare jobs! You are scared by a possible nuclear war? Vote us for safety and peace!

This is how Cambridge Analytica managed to pull in millions of voters in the US and manipulate the election in a way that Donald Trump wouldn't have won without their manipulation. This is literally a threat to democracy. And as you know, my allegiance is to the Republic, to Democracy!

You might be aware of how right-wing and extremist parties all around the western world use very polarizing and emotional topics in their campaigns and are doing very well on social media. Often much better than more centered, leftist, or conservative parties, who tend to polarize less. This is not a coincidence. Not only is this because of customized, targeted content, but it's also because strong emotions generate more attention

Doom Scrolling & Dopamine

Social Media has had decades to perfect their dopamine lottery. The algorithms know exactly what you are into, no matter how much of a niche it might be. A good, user-oriented algorithm would show you a few posts, the best ones of the day, and then simply say "well, that's been all the good stuff. Wanna see the rest anyways?". But that's not how it works, is it? When opening an app like Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, etc., you usually immediately land on a recent top-post. This is to give you the instant gratification and that sweet hit of dopamine.

Have you ever noticed how you had to scroll a bit before you got a post again that you really loved? That's by design. The mix of top-posts and mediocre ones is on purpose, to keep you waiting for more. You never know when the next super funny TikTok will come by. All you know is that it might be the next one. In-between top-posts, you're met with mediocre garbage and an add or two and just before it gets too boring, you hit gold again. The constant release of much higher than normal amounts of dopamine make your brain temporarily lose touch with what levels are normal. Why is it that you feel drained and tired after scrolling through social media for a few hours, even though you've done nothing but sitting around? You didn't think hard, you didn't move much, so what is it? It is the dopamine-rollercoaster that is mentally straining you. And there are tens of thousands of highly trained software engineers and corporate executives designing their platforms to keep you scrolling for as long as possible. If that little chiming sound increases your screen time by as little as 2%, it will be added. It is designed to suck your life away, chain your eyeballs to the content they want you to see, just so they can literally sell you to anyone who has the cash. You need that new gadget, visiting this country is an absolute must, this new sports competition is amazing, definitely vote for this cool party. Trust them. They know what you want. You don't know anything about them, but they know everything about you.

"What do I do now?"

Well, it is unlikely that you'll stop using social media at all. I mean, even I am still here. But there are things you can and should do for your mental and financial health, and for your own safety and protection against manipulation. Here is a list of things you should consider

Limiting social media to only a few apps you actually use and are interested in

Spend no more than 2 hours on social media per day

Meet friends irl instead of only texting

Stop sharing personal information. It is not illegal to enter false names, birthdays, etc into random sign-up forms! Protect your children as well!

Use privacy- & user-oriented platforms, such as Signal instead of WhatsApp, or Mastodon instead of Twitter. They finance themselves through volunteers and donations instead of by selling your data and lifetime to any buyer

Use privacy-oriented frontends (the visual interface and application you interact with), such as NewPipe or FreeTube instead of YouTube. You also won't be seeing any ads there

Don't buy anything impulsively. Take a week or two to think about whether you really need and want it.

Check facts, do your own research, use multiple sources, be critical

And in case you're interested in what I use:

I'm have an Android phone running /e/OS and a total of 5 computers/servers which run Linux and a Windows laptop for work. My phone block any trackers, fakes my GPS location (not VPN/IP) to where I am in Barcelona. All devices have a 24/7 encrypted VPN connection. I don't have WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or even a Google account. For personal use I have Signal, Element (Discord alternative), and Proton Mail. That's it. Every website or platform I have an account on has it's own, unique, single-use email, a randomized password and 2FA whenever possible. I use KeePass as my password manager, encrypted with a password, key file, and hardware key. I enter false data into any random form, use hardened Firefox browsers to resist fingerprinting and tracking, and back up all my data at home on a hard drive instead of using a cloud service. (Yes, there is much more)

For my content, I use Tumblr and a semi-active Discord account, Reddit accounts are banned.

For my professional life, I am forced to use Microsoft Teams and Outlook, yet I only use those on my work computer & phone.

Privacy = Freedom

Yes, I know my measures are far beyond average, but I wanted to present an example and hopefully inspire some of you to take back your online freedom and privacy! Because that's what it is! Privacy is Freedom!

I hope this inspired you and please ask any questions in the comments! This truly is a topic that means a lot to me so thank you for reading all the way through it. Please reblog to further share this important topic and encourage others to protect themselves!

- Ace

[homestuckreplay]

this would be funnier if dave’s beverage of choice was a lemon lime soda

(page 1645-1657)

The empty scaffolding of Dave’s apartment is a sight to behold. On the zoomed in version you can see the wavy edges where the other apartments have been wrenched from the penthouse, which is pretty fucked up to think about. I’m starting to think we won’t see Dave actually enter the Medium, but what happens next with his sprite is WAY more significant – and unique to his entry.

We circle back to Dave and John’s pre-blastoff conversation from a few pages ago, now from the other perspective. It’s a trick Homestuck has used often, but this is the first time the conversation changes, with Dave telling John to wait where before he let him leave. And then Future Dave shows up, who is WAY cooler than Present Dave.

When John asked ‘what kind of gullible stooge do you think i am?’ (p.1648) I said OUT LOUD, ‘maybe the kind of gullible stooge who’ll fuck up a whole timeline for a cool leetspeaking troll girl you just met?’ And what do you know, on the very next page present Dave says ‘[Future Dave] says i dunno gullible enough to trust a leetspeaking troll who wants you dead and strap on a rocket pack cause she said to’ (p.1649). Because like. John has befriended aliens and captchalogued a salamander and created remote controlled ghost weapons and resurrected his long dead grandma and the idea of Future Dave is where he draws the line? Dave is right to say ‘this sort of cornball horseshit is your cup of tea not mine’ because he’s the guy who recently invented a convoluted piss drinking prank and decided it was too much effort to go through with (p.1440-3). This is the guy who will only put in the work on something if it contributes to his very specific self image, and even then, he’ll act like he didn’t work hard on it at all (see: all of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff).

It looks like John still blasts off, but while he’s in the air, something Dave said resonates – probably the realization that he and Dave have been friends for years, and yes Dave is a dickhead, but he’s still stood by John’s side and never tried to hurt him. Meanwhile, John’s only been on good terms with GC for a couple hours, and she’s previously expressed a wish to hurt him and his friends. It’s pretty common (in regular, non-life and death situations) for people to get excited about a new friendship, go all in on that, and neglect their previous friendships. John is learning not to do that in a much harsher way than most people, but it’s still a good lesson. And I’m so relieved it worked and we don’t need a whole other loop, because three Daves would just be too many.

And then. And then Future Dave jumps into the god damn sprite. Just drops all his cool loot, says nothing, and jumps the fuck in there.

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

^ it probably feels something like this??

Okay. Thinking this through. We have two Daves, both of whom have the exact same life experiences up to and including Dave telling John ‘it definitely sounds like youre fucking something up over there. but alright later’ (p.1637 / 1646). Davesprite, additionally, has had four months of emotional growth. Four very traumatic months in which he’s lost and grieved his best friends, been haunted by a ghost puppet, and had to learn skills fast and fight his way across a land of burning metal. But also four months in which he’s been free of Bro, able to live independently for the first time, literally master time, and work towards the goal of saving himself and his friends. I’m not saying it’s worth the suffering, but I’d say he’s almost certainly a better person for all this. On top of that, Davesprite now might have birdlike qualities including a desire to nest and lay eggs, and he has access to l kinds of knowledge about Skaia, Sburb and Dave’s quest that just filters into his head now through his merging with the game code. Present Dave doesn’t have any of that, but he does have his future self to advise him, and stop him from making his mistakes. He’s also gone from a life of trying to live up to his bro’s example, to a life of trying to live up to his own cooler future self’s example.

Where do you even begin trying to unpack all that? From either of their perspectives????

Yeah that’ll have to do for now. But there’s definitely some big existential questions about what it means for there to be two Daves who are so the same and yet so different, what their relationship will be like, how they’ll interact with their other friends, and how becoming a sprite affects personality. I also noticed that we've seen future Dave drawn in a cool action hero style, like we've seen for John and Rose, but back in the present he's all sprite art again. It's not a hard switch over, there's examples of both on both sides, but I think this softer, more dynamic art style might be associated with the kids being in their Lands.

One difference is that Davesprite is able to troll gallowsCalibrator, and pick the right point on her timeline to do this. I’m not sure the kids have the power to contact the trolls first; all evidence so far says they can only respond. GC does get pretty handily trolled here, and I don’t buy her ‘OBV1OUSLY 1 KN3W 1T W4SNT GO1NG TO WORK’ (p.1657) for a single second – she’s saying that in hindsight to save face, but she genuinely wanted to try this. She’s also definitely flirting with Davesprite – just like GA, she immediately gets a crush on the first person to out-troll her.

Davesprite asks ‘whos in charge of timeline management’ among the trolls, and GC has previously mentioned a ‘M41D OF T1M3’ (p.1524) who we now learn isn’t interested in trolling the kids. None of the troll usernames mention time directly, but apocalypseArisen and twinArmageddons both predict big, world ending events, suggesting knowledge of the future, while caligulasAquarium has the same god’s eye view, person observing their domain feeling as the ‘Godhead’ in Dave’s name. So I’d guess one of those three for the time domain.

Finally, we get to see Rose again!! There’s another conversation recap, this time of her earlier Pesterlog with Jade, followed by the most Rose phrase of all time – ‘the luxury of Harley's narcolepsy’ (p.1654). It continues to be one of my favorite things about Homestuck that the narrator is pretty hands off with the kids, and really lets their voices come through.

We get a first glimpse of Rose’s dream self in her bedroom on Derse!! Vodka Mutini is there too, and has clearly grown up across the last few months. I’m horrified that Future Dream Vodka Mutini is ceasing to exist. It is the real tragedy here. I'm also big on how she's alchemized her laptop with the power supply, AND how Dave throwing her bed out the window persisted into the dream realm, so she has to sleep in her knitting. (Hey, it's been four months. She could've alchemized a new bed. This is a choice.)

But, we now have 3 of 4 lands revealed, 3 of 4 sprites fully prototyped, 3 of 4 dream selves… really checking off some lists. I like that Rose’s dream outfit isn’t just a colorswapped version of Jade’s, but is also based on her waking outfit with its shorter skirt and headband. The miniflash confirms that Rose’s future dream self is able to merge with her present self, which might give present Rose some additional knowledge that she didn’t have access to before, especially knowledge about Derse. It’s not as extreme as the Dave and Davesprite situation, but this is still going to impact her, especially once her present self finds out what’s happened.

[kittynugg]

chapter 2 of A Little Dilemma is out!

<- prev . . . 2 . . . next ->

words: 2,872

(also hey maybe reblog this if you like it :> just sayin it helps me spread my words to the world)

Ford limped into the kitchen with a heaved sigh, flanked of course by a panicked Soos.

“Dude, I’m just saying, but when you just poof into a little baby I promise me and Mister Pines are gonna take care of you,” assured the well-meaning man who just happened to be pushing every button Ford had.

He jerked open the fridge, casting a “I could kill you in fifty different ways and hide your body in twice as many places at the same time” glare at Soos who still didn’t get the message, and took out a can of soda. “You’ve said that eleven times in the past fifteen minutes.”

And this had been going on for two hours. Two. Hours.

He bumped the fridge shut with his elbow and hobbled past Soos. Unsurprisingly, he followed him all the way to the couch, the place he’d been for most of the day. And Soos, Soos had been there most of the day as well. Waiting for something to happen. He’d even closed down the shack for the day! ..Honestly Ford didn’t mind that, that just meant he didn’t have to explain “yes, I do have a laboratory in my basement which is accessible via this vending machine but that’s none of your business” to six different tourists.

But he did mind Soos breathing down his neck when he was just trying to drink some damned Pitt!

He settled down on the couch again, remote in-hand, (character development!) and turned up the volume to drown out Soos’ continued reassurances. He’d actually made a game out of the infomercials, and hence had decided to keep them on. The goal was to guess what they were advertising before it was outright said.

“ARE YOU TIRED OF THE CRUSHING WEIGHT OF EXISTENCE CONSTANTLY BORING DOWN ON YOU!?” The TV crackled.

..What was this one? Prozac?

“COME TO MAMA MISFORTUNE’S TRAVELING CARNIVAL, IN GRAVITY FALLS UNTIL MONTH’S END! THE PERFECT DISTRACTION FROM YOUR MODERN WOES!” 

Oh. The fair. Well, now that he knew he’d already been there the ad was just annoying, so he changed the channel. A documentary about how jellybeans were made came on by chance.

Now that was something he could ignore both Soos and the crushing weight of existence with.

And ignore, he did. 

It was fascinating, apparently Jelly Belly used natural ingredients whenever possible! So.. Hey, wasn’t there a dog food one? And.. barf?

He chose not to think about that. But the process was a marvel! First they poured a slurry of corn syrup, sugar, corn starch and “do you feel any younger yet Mister–”

“Soos!” Barked Ford, whipping in Soos’ direction. “Can you please let me enjoy my mindless entertainment in peace!?” He slapped a hand to his face.

Soos, of course, decided to act like a confused puppy about it! His shoulder hunched and he took a couple of steps back. “I was just tryna make sure you’re okay, dawg..”

Okay, he was done with this!

“It is tap water,” he sighed shakily. “I’ve found the actual fountain of youth. Trust me when I say that that vial has never gone near it.” A circular gesture was made with his finger vaguely near Soos’ pocket where he believed the vial to be. “I am.. Getting close to begging here.” And he was not going to let Soos push him to that point!

It actually looked like at least one neuron fired in Soos’ brain, and a faint smile spread across his face. “You’re sure, dude?” Hearing him not immediately reject Ford’s assurance was like a breath of fresh air. Ford nodded frantically.

“Yes! One hundred percent sure! Nothing is going to come of this, I promise.”

“But what if there’s, like, a tap of youth?”

That one made him do a double-take. Surely that singular functional braincell Soos had was trying its best, h– okay maybe he was being a little harsh now. He mentally vowed to stop insulting Soos. “There is no tap of youth, Soos.” He answered simply, then took a deep breath. In quickly, out slowly. Activate that parasympathetic nervous system before you have a heart attack. “Satisfied?”

“Alright, dawg, I trust you. You’re, like, the smartest dude I know anyway!” Soos chortled, facepalming. That was.. Surprisingly easy. “Dude, I don’t even know why I was so worried. Gonna start sounding like you or Dipper soon. No offense, dude.”

STOP SAYING “DUDE” IN EVERY SENTEN- 

Ford sighed. “Oh, none taken. I know we can be awfully paranoid.” Keep the peace, Stanford, you just got him to potentially leave you alone. “Speaking of which, have you seen him and Mabel?” A glance around returned no information. Wonderful.

“They just went in the kitchen! Hey, are you starting to smell smoke too or is it just me? ..Because I do this weird thing sometimes where I just smell smoke out of nowhere.. Is that some creepy paranormal thing?” Soos wiggled his fingers for emphasis, and Ford’s expression blanked at the sight of smoke starting to waft from the kitchen. “I’unno, dude, kinda suspicious.. And are you seeing that smoke comin’ out of the kitchen? Crazy coinciden-”

He was cut short by Ford jumping to his feet and sprinting into the kitchen. Dipper and Mabel were there, alright, coughing and frantically fanning at the smoke billowing from a pot on the stove. Because stars forbid he sat down for five minutes without something happening. On a habit he couldn’t remember building but couldn’t remember not having, his eyes scanned them for any injuries. 

They were fine at first glance (incredibly scrutinizing stare, actually), but sort of just stared back at him with the wide eyes of a couple of kids who had been caught. Dipper froze mid-panic, then slowly turned to Mabel. “..who’s taking the fall this time,” he whispered as if Ford wasn’t right there.

“I call not it.” Mabel hissed back. Ford was not impressed. He stood against the doorframe, arms crossed and fingers tapping impatiently against his sweater, sure to hover his injured foot off the ground ever-so-slightly because running on an injured ankle made it worse?

“I mean, it was your idea. You can’t just call not it when it was your fault in the first place.” Logic and reason, Ford was rooting for Dipper on this one. He wasn’t exactly planning on scolding either of them, though, just waiting for them to finish their routine so he could clean up the mess. He was the adult, after all, being injured didn’t change that.

Mabel blew a raspberry at him. “I just di- he’s watching us by the way but I just did!” They both looked back at Ford and his.. Disappointed father stance against the doorframe, then Dipper cleared his throat and stepped in front of Mabel.

“We were just–” he began, folding his hands, but Ford silenced him with a raised hand.

He muttered in a steady tone, “save it. Are either of you hurt?” They were subjected to another quick examination, his eyes darting over them before Mabel responded.

“Uh, we didn’t really get far enough to get hurt..” She cast a wary glance toward the pot as Ford limped over to shut off the stove and waved away the smoke. 

Dipper added, “but we did get far enough to completely obliterate that pot,” as Ford squinted into the charred bottom of the pot. There were a few bones resting in the bottom. 

Concerning. In fact, all he could say to that was, “ho.. How?” with a baffled look at Dipper and Mabel. He carefully picked up the dish by the handles and set it in the sink to deal with later, then leaned against the counter and lifted his foot slightly. Ouf, he could feel a headache coming on already.. “What were you even attempting to.. Cremate?”

“Food,” the younger twins said in unison, then Dipper branched off. “We thought you’d like it if we cooked something nice..”

The only thing you cooked is your chances of entering this kitchen without supervision again, Ford thought, whatever was in that pot is far beyond “cooked”.

“Ah, a pot of bones,” Ford commented dryly, but added a chuckle in case the kids didn’t realize he was joking. 

Dipper leaned over the sink with a playful smirk and pointed into the pot. “I mean, there’s also some ash in there if you look really closely.”

“And glitter!” Mabel added in a chirp, and all of a sudden Ford’s cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling.

He knelt down (awkwardly and painfully) to ruffle Mabel’s hair and rolled his eyes. “Of course there’s glitter, how could you forget glitter?” Then his expression dropped. ..Hold on a minute. “You were going to feed me glitter?”

Instead of explaining themselves, the kids each grabbed one of his hands and pulled him out of the room.

“Don’t worry about it!”

“We can handle the mess!”

“You need rest, Grunkle Ford!”

“Yeah, you’re hurt!”

They both reassured quickly before pushing him back onto the couch. Mabel scampered off to make the kitchen worse– I mean clean it, and Dipper lingered in the living room to fuss over his Grunkle. “You’ve gotta keep it elevated,” he reminded in a murmur as he lifted Ford’s foot onto the arm of the couch. “And what did I say about moving around?”

Ford cast a glare at the ceiling. His eye twitched. “Not for at least two days unless I absolutely have to.” He grumpily quoted what Dipper had told him an hour after he and Mabel got home. Knowing him, he probably spent that hour researching how to care for sprained ankles. Very sweet, but also a little bothersome because he was getting high and mighty advice from a child. “But this time–”

“Mabel and I had it under control! No buts, just..” Dipper sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Give yourself a break for once, okay?” Oh, great, now he was preaching it. The one person he thought was on his side had switched up on him. Wanted him to “rest”.

And yet he had no choice but to listen.

Begrudgingly.

So like any functional adult that wasn’t him, he shifted to make himself comfortable, turned his head toward the TV, shifted again because laying like that hurt his neck, let Dipper adjust his injured foot again, shifted, grumbled incoherently for the sake of grumbling, couldn’t reach the remote, and decided he couldn’t do this.

“I can’t do this.” His brows knitted together as he spoke. “I’m not.. Equipped for relaxation, Dipper.”

A muttered, “oh my god” from Dipper was not lost on him but he chose not to comment. “..okay. Compromise, then. Be stressed, but from a supine position.” That was.. Possible.

Ford crossed his arms and squared his jaw. He knew stress. He knew stress well. This was easy. He swung his legs off the couch to pace–

“Grunkle Ford! Lay! Down!” Scolded Dipper, causing him to flinch back into his original lying position. Yelled at by a child! At least that made being stressed easier! ..and a little harder as Dipper settled down on the couch by him to watch the TV. “Literally just.. Stare at the TV and do nothing. Grunkle Stan does it all the time, you’ll pick it up.”

He. Wasn’t. Stanley. Instead of saying that he decided to just sigh and look back at the television himself. “There’s nothing interesting on,” he complained, more of an excuse than anything. “Your Grunkle Stan thinks The Duchess Approves is quality television, he’ll watch anything.”

“Not anything, he won’t watch any more Dream Boy High with Mabel.” Ford watched as his nephew strained to reach the remote, nearly falling off the couch in the process. “But!” He tossed the remote in his hand with a flourish as if he didn’t almost just faceplant into the carpet. “We live in the future.” The remote clicked as he pressed a button on it, then Disney+ opened.

Hm, right, you can put applications on the TV. He forgot that sometimes. “We really do live in the future..” he whispered in astonishment. 

“Let’s see, uh.. What’s something you’ll like..” Dipper thought out loud, scrolling through the selection of movies. ”Bambi? Too old. Uh.. Frozen? ..ehhh.. You wouldn’t like Inside Ou– oh!” He stopped on a movie called Big Hero 6. Ford wasn’t so sure about it, considering the big marshmallow guy on the cover.. Promo art thing, but the child was excited about it and damn his paternal instincts.

So, of course, he lied! “It looks interesting,” he stated. “Go on, play it. I can tell you want to.” 

Grinning, Dipper put on the movie and they watched.

----

“Have I been perfect? No!” Aunt Cass ranted as she walked toward the building, nephews in tow. “Do I know anything about children? No!” She moved to unlock the door. “Should I have picked up a book on parenting!? Probably!”

Ford gestured with a hand toward the screen. “I can relate to this,” he stated blankly, eliciting a chuckle from Dipper. It was true. He had no idea how those kids hadn’t died yet under his and Stan’s care.

And.. they kept watching. A quick summary:

“Oh, there’s the marshmallow guy.”

“The whole ‘invention getting a person into college’ thing hits just a bit too close to home.”

“TADASHI NOOOOOOOOOO”

And so on. The ending? Pure agony. 10/10. He was wrong about not being interested. Stan and Mabel had joined them sometime during the movie and Mabel had long since made herself comfortable on top of his chest. 

“Is that all I am to you?” Ford complained without any real bite in his voice. “A cushion?”

Mabel giggled in response, “you were gonna get up if I didn’t! I’m helping!” Then shifted to hug him and pulled Stan into it as well. “You and Grunkle Stan are the best cushions, anyway.”

“Quit bein’ sappy, Mabel.” Stan grumbled, though he hid most of his emotions beneath that gruff shell that was completely transparent to Ford. He was clearly trying not to cry. “I can’t take that right now.” He sniffed.

Dipper leaned over to look at him, pausing the credits with the push of a button. “Are you.. Crying?” 

“Wow, would you look at that!” Stan whipped to his feet and enthusiastically pointed at the clock, reading 11:34. “It’s half an hour past your bedtime!” Instead of acknowledging Dipper and Mabel’s groans and protests, he nudged them toward the stairs with a grumpy, “eh!”

Then he turned to Ford with the same stern look. Why did that make him nervous?

“You too, Ford,” the dreaded words came out flatly, like they had no meaning. Ford shot him a glare as an unspoken no. “Don’t gimme that look. You need sleep if you wanna get better.” Stan knelt to nudge his shoulder. “Dipper told me everything.”

Oh, what a rat! ..Not actually he would never say that about his nephew. 

He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look like he wasn’t about to hoodwink his way out of.. “Bedtime”. Eugh. “You know I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to, I’m not tired whatsoev-”

A bottle of red gummies was slammed into the coffee table in front of him, causing him to flinch back and go silent. “..you were saying?” His twin gave an unimpressed look. 

“Is that melatonin?” Asked Ford, clearly reading the “melatonin” label and knowing damn well it was melatonin. “In- In gummy form, nonetheless?” Being the pragmatic problem-solver he was, he’d already developed a plan. Stall for as long as possible. “Hey, wait– how long have you had those?”

As Stan opened the bottle and shook two gummies out, he realized it might be a little late to just rant about neurochemicals until he got bored and left. “Eat,” he ordered curtly and dumped them into his hand. “They’re pretty good, honestly.”

“You didn’t answer my-”

“Stop stalling.”

Ford let out a similar groan to those of Dipper and Mabel after being told to go to bed, then shoved the gummies into his mouth.

Hm. They weren’t bad.. Strawberry with a hint of some kind of chemical. Spicy in a weird way, but it was better than you’d expect a medication to taste.

“You know, I normally get my sugar-right-before-bed fix in via jellybeans,” he commented. Popping gummies just to sleep at night. Gummies. He couldn’t believe this. 

Stan wasn’t impressed, brows lowered and a hand on his hip. “Sugar in something that’s supposed to put you to sleep would be stupid.” He closed up the bottle and shook it. “These don’t have sugar. Anyway, yeah, go to sleep.”

Ford let out a soft sigh as Stan ruffled his hair, blinked up at him a couple of times when he pulled his hand away, then watched as he undid the brace around his ankle (Dipper must have informed him that he wasn’t supposed to wear it in his sleep) and walked out of the room. He reached back in to turn off the light and called, “night, Ford.” 

“..Goodnight, Stanley,” he murmured in response and turned over to go to sleep, figuring he had no other choice.

[r3dkn0ts]

I'm somewhat curious because everyone has their own perception of killers in dbd before they came into the realm. Out of all your faves (like Caleb, Tarhos, Billy ect..) do you think any of them are still....well virgins?? Most of them were either too focused on revenge and bloodshed to even think about ass or coochie (lookin right at you slinger also I LOVE UR BLOG SM)

I have other stuff in the drafts I'm working on atm ( do not worry followers! it will be posted! eventually! ) but Man this just. rattled my brain so hard that I had to start writing Immediately

I'm just gonna pick the guys you listed or else I'd be rambling way too much and also idk what the hell to categorize this as so ummmmm just putting it under the cut. I guess these are more like character studies than anything?

SEXUAL HEADCANONS FOR THE DBD KILLERS Featuring Caleb Quinn, Tarhos Kovács, and Max Thompson Jr.

Themes: Smut, smut, and a little bit of fluff at the end. Honestly, what did you expect? Warnings: Mentions of canon-typical violence

The Deathslinger / Caleb Quinn - I'd imagine Caleb is around his mid-to-late 60s ( if you don't think too hard about the time-fuckery that is the Entity's Realm ), so the man definitely has some years under his belt. - When it comes to sex, though, he might've fooled around with one or two folks in his younger days. Like most other cowpoke of his time, he didn't really care what gender he was laying down with. - Yes, I am saying that Caleb is pansexual. All cowboys are at least a little bit gay. I don't make the rules. - He definitely didn't see any action after nearly killing Bayshore and being stuck in a penitentiary for 15 years straight, that's for sure. - Plus, there's no good reason to be horny in a place like that. - That being said, he knows the basics and maybe a trick here or there, so he's not a total buffoon, but he's not a floozy either.

The Knight / Tarhos Kovács - Being taken from his home and put into slavery at such a young age, he didn't exactly have a normal childhood. - Tarhos didn't have the time to be concerned with anything remotely romantic or sexual, constantly going on campaigns with his men and killing everyone that stood in their way. - He would never admit it to anyone, even himself, but this man is so touch-starved and needy that just hugging him would probably give him a boner as stiff as his claymore. - Tarhos tries to ignore sexual urges until they go away, but that doesn't always work, so he might have to rub one out once in a while. He feels guilty about it every time. - Yeah, he's a virgin. No experience at all.

The Hillbilly / Max Thompson Jr. - Oh, this poor boy. We all know his story by now. It's pretty obvious that he never had any physical contact, much less that of a romantic or sexual nature. - Back in his time, television shows weren't nearly as scandalous as nowadays. There was no way of accessing pornographic material unless you got special magazines, which he of course never did. - Going through puberty, he would feel strange and uncomfortable, just trying to ignore the weird feelings he had. It made him want to crawl out of his own skin. - Those habits stuck with him into his adulthood, constantly fighting his own body and trying anything to get the strange feelings to go away. Eventually, he figured out that friction was the easiest method. - You could say he's "innocent", but I prefer "clueless". - If someone were to truly earn his trust and explain to him what erections, masturbation, and sex are, he'd get super flustered and cover his face in shame. - His first time would need to be slow and more of a tutorial than anything else. Dude's probably gonna cum as soon as a hand touches him. Just be patient.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Demon-haunted computers are back, baby

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

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

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for 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.

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/2024/01/17/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

Image: Mike (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillwellmike/15676883261/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[quietbluejay]

Transformers Infiltration #3 (part 1)

All right, this issue we meet the rest of the gang!

Sunstreaker pushes the mute button

Sunstreaker: easily sorted

Prowl (the guy pointing at our friend Ratchet here) puts both his hands on his hips

Prowl: So you say. Nevertheless, Ratchet, you broke protocol - direct contact with a native species is an infraction of sub-section six-alpha of-

Prowl: well, you know the code violations. Intimately

also here are Bumblebee, Wheeljack, and Jazz!

and I'm trying to cut down on images so I can't show rn but I really love how this artist does Transformers feet and okay I know that sounds weird

Ratchet: clearly, the Decepticons had not found what they were looking for, as they'd left an operative in the field to see who, if anyone, came sniffing around

in the flashback it's showing one of the decepticon car dudes firing mini missiles at Ratchet

(also oooo take a shot at the "humans are special") (and Prowl continues to have a wildly different characterization here than later writers would go for)

veritycarlo and hunteronion you'd think by this point they'd have figured out the given name/surname thing

Prowl:...had the data storage device, yes, I understand all that. What I don't get...

Prowl: ...is why you saw fit to intervene in the first place and risk exposing us all!

Ratchet: tell me something, Prowl, why are we here?

Prowl: what?

Ratchet: And I mean that in a literal rather than existential sense

Ratchet: why are we here on this planet?

Ratchet: I…

Ratchet: no, it wasn't like that. They were already in the firing line. I-

Ratchet: you're going to alert Prime, right?

Prowl: no, Ratchet, I am not. Not until I'm satisfied that that there's anything that remotely warrants his direct involvement.

Prowl: end of discussion

Ratchet glooms in silence for a panel

Ironhide just stares at him wow that's a different characterization for Ironhide than anything I'm used to

blitwing and skywarp!

Blitzwing: next?

starscream: subtlety is for the weak!

next up, back to the kids

Verity: You! Only you're not a "you", are you? You're some kind of hologram

Ratchet: more or less. It's holomatter. But the general principle is the same

Ratchet: Now…

Verity: a bigger box. Nice

Ratchet: an unfortunate necessity. Your being here at all…

Ratchet: ...was conditional on somewhat limited access

Ratchet: you're on the bottom of Lake Michigan, about ten miles northeast of Chicago

Hunter: oh

Ratchet: Now, the computer.

Ratchet: please.

Ratchet's avatar plugs it into a cable

Ratchet: It will be returned to you, I promise, but I must have access to the data stored within. I believe the very future of this planet depends on it

Ratchet: This won't take long. I had Wheeljack prepare an interface ahead of our arrival based on web specs for the SM-40, I just hope…

there's an identical beat panel

Jimmy: and…is there a phase six?

Ratchet: trust me, you don't want to know

Ratchet: strange thing is, not only is it far too early for siege mode...

Ratchet: there appear to be two distinct command bunkers - one in Oregon and the other in, ah, Nebraska

wow lot of info they got there

"Looks abandoned"

Ratchet: but inconclusive

Ratchet: If I'm to convince Prowl and the others of the imminency of the threat...I need more

Verity: so…why'd they move?

i think that's blitzwing again lol

he's here to destroy stuff and he's having a pretty nice time

the tank fires at the building, which explodes

Blitzwing transforms into a jet

he and skywarp fly off through another portal the portals are so bizarre

and this one is gonna be a two-parter!

to be honest, I've found this bit about the involvement of the humans to be a bit contrived.

but I'll probably get a little more into it next time

tbh this early stuff kind of wants to have its cake and eat it too it wants to be all adult and grown up but also have its young human protagonists involved in the plot and the type of contrivance you can use for kids shows etc look a lot more threadbare when you're trying to go for something "realistic"

also i feel like i shouldn't have to say this and i've said it before but for clarity's sake me pointing out something like this doesn't mean i hate it and it's a dealbreaker

just feel like i should bring it up to be fair

[chuuyascumsock]

Hiiii!!! (It is past midnight which means i am legally allowed to be unhinged!)

OKAY SOOOO FEM CHUUYA-

I- SHES SO HOT SMHHHHHHH

Like i would legit let her peg me for daysss

Like imagine her acting protective and hovering over reader after their little slumber party~

Imagine steamy lust,love and desire filled rendezvous in her office-

She has a meeting to be at but she doesnt mind being a few minutes late if it means she’ll get to see you fall apart on her fingers and strap~

Personally i feel like she’d love the sight of seeing reader on their knees eating her out as she leans back against her desk.she grips the edge of the desk her knuckles turning white with how hard she’s holding on.she moves her hips slowly allowing them better access and when she comes she expects you to take it all and leave nothing behind.will kiss you right after,she savours the taste of her own release on your lips as she hungrily kisses you,only leaving when youre properly marked up.she cant let anyone think youre even remotely available now can she~

When it comes to you i think she’d love to see you enjoy yourself just as much as she does,but would NOT get on her knees nah uh~ only place she’s eating you out is in your bedroom. Keeps a spare strap in a secret little compartment in her desk just in case. And Godd does she know how to use it.youre a babbling mess by the time she’s done with you! Barely able to string a single sentence of words together from how good she’s made you feel and trust me she love the sight.because not only does she love to see you satisfied,she also takes great pleasure AND pride in knowing its only her who can make you feel this good.

(I hope this was okay and ALSO UR PRESENTATION SOUNDS INTERESTING AF!!! I HOPE IT GOES WELL!!!!!)

(Also also i wanted to ask what pronouns you use if its okay for me to ask that is,if not its totally fine!!!)

Please stay safe,hydrate and slay that presentation like absolutely slayeddd that fem chuuya fic!!!!!!

-🧀

OMG THE UNHINGED SMUT RAMBLE, I’M LIVING FOR IT.

Literally would absolutely keep a strap in her desk for you (hc that Dazai found it once and that’s the REAL reason why she left the PM). And she has no problem making you wear a bullet vibrator all day and fuck w you during meetings while you’re trying to talk 🫢

I just— AH, I love fem. Chuuya. I also added a fem. Dazai smut to my list as requested by someone in my DMs, so that’ll happen at some point (After the Chuuya-verse smuts most likely).

(I loved your little ramble 🧀. My presentation went well, but some bozo copy and pasted all his slides from Wikipedia and got all of us hw everyday from that class so he’s an ass smh.)

(My pronouns are She/They, idc which is used!)

SLEEP WELL 🧀 ANON, and make sure to hydrate throughout the night lol ✨

[applesfallingfromblondehair]

Well, if only one-third of the usual voters participate, most of the people who were rooting for George probably can’t be bothered anymore.

It’s simply not fun to see one character get screwed over for the 100th time

oh so you think I haven't noticed how dead it's been around here?

I work on a chapter for a full month and it fills me with joy until the moment I release it and all I get in return is silence—just because for one chapter everyone's favourite doesn't show up?

let me tell you something, because this has been making me very unhappy lately:

I have never claimed to be doing any kind of fanservice. the story outline has been the same for over a year and there never was any kind of change of plans that would have been brought about how much or how little people seemed to enjoy a particular storyline. maybe you don't care about the big picture and you like immediate gratification but this story was never meant to be that for anyone involved. I write it because it makes me happy, and I sure am happier if people react positively to it but it's not because of that that I will be changing my narrative

again maybe you don't care for it anymore but if you do, you have got to trust the process. that this POV structure (however idiotic it might seem) will always bring things back and give access to someone else's perspective on what's going on. that's why it's so hard to write and keep track of everything, and that's why I ultimately find it rewarding

the story ISN'T OVER. I don't know how many times I have to say this but there are STILL BIG THINGS that need to happen, and I am 99.9% sure it will all make sense in the end. you guys just throw in the towel way too fucking early and of course it's your prerogative but it makes me deeply sad.

and to reiterate that last point, I AM disappointed in the lack of engagement. and because I feel like shit about it, think you trying to make me feel even worse is really not very nice.

to anyone who still even remotely cares or feels like they can and want to read to the end, I am grateful for you. and to anyone else, it's been nice having you and it's a true shame to potentially have lost you. I thought we had a good thing going on here, but apparently every chapter is a standalone story to you and the big picture doesn't matter at all.

(sorry for the rant but I've been feeling like shit for over a week about this and I'm going through a lot at the moment and I really didn't need this.)

[emrenvs3000f24]

UNIT 10 BLOG POST

As I develop as a nature interpreter, I am driven by the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to access and appreciate nature, regardless of where they live or the resources available to them. I find profound beauty not only in vast, untouched landscapes but also in the pockets of green in urban spaces, like city parks and community gardens. To me, nature exists wherever there is life, growth, and connection. I believe that helping people see this, showing them that nature is not just a remote wilderness but something within reach, can foster a more inclusive and widespread love for the natural world.

https://wwf.ca/stories/nature-based-cities

I recognize that privilege often dictates who has access to vast natural areas, shaping whose experiences are enriched by nature’s presence. Many people may never see a national park or wilderness reserve, but this doesn’t mean they should miss out on the lessons and joys nature can offer. For those living in cities, for example, urban parks and gardens are opportunities for connection with the outdoors, and it’s my mission to help people see these spaces as valuable, accessible natural areas.

My goal as an interpreter is to bridge this gap, making nature both accessible and relatable. Breaking down barriers means meeting people where they are, whether that’s through guided walks in a city park or providing virtual content like videos and podcasts that bring nature to them. It’s about reshaping the idea of what nature can be and expanding the places where people feel connected to it.

Another pillar of my ethic is the responsibility to protect and restore natural areas. I believe our relationship with nature impacts us deeply, not only for the ecosystem services that sustain human life (like clean air and water) but also for the emotional and spiritual benefits we gain. Nature has a unique power to ground us, to remind us to slow down and reconnect with ourselves and the world around us.

https://runwildmychild.com/sit-spotting-nature-meditation

I see it as my duty to help others understand this, especially the role that conservation plays in preserving these spaces for future generations. Teaching people about the benefits of clean air, water, and biodiversity, and helping them see how protecting nature is a form of self-care, can inspire actions that support both personal well-being and environmental sustainability.

I feel a deep responsibility to convey the importance of nature and conservation in a way that resonates with diverse audiences. This isn’t about simply telling people what they should feel or believe, but rather about opening doors for them to develop their own relationships with nature. Whether it’s taking people on guided hikes, leading them in reflective activities, or creating accessible content, I strive to be a resource and a guide.

For those who may be less able to explore natural spaces on their own, perhaps due to physical limitations or other barriers, I’m committed to finding alternative ways for them to experience nature. This might involve creating content that’s accessible to all, like podcasts, social media stories, or even documentary-style videos that showcase the beauty and resilience of nature. By bringing nature to people in these ways, I hope to inspire them to seek their own outdoor experiences when possible.

I am passionate about getting out into nature as often as I can, fishing, camping and hiking are all big parts of my life. I find that  physically interfacing with nature is one of the best ways to manage the stress of university life. There’s something about being in the woods, away from deadlines and to-do lists, that allows me to reset. The rhythm of nature, with its slower pace and its reminders of resilience, teaches me to be patient and trust in life’s cycles. This personal experience gives me a sense of responsibility to share this source of calm and balance with others.

Whether it’s taking a quick study break in my backyard or spending an entire day fishing on a remote lake, nature has a way of bringing clarity and peace that I think everyone deserves to experience. And as an interpreter, I’m in a unique position to make this possible for people from all backgrounds.

From my personal experience I believe that hands on, immersive experiences are the most effective way for me to connect with people. I feel as though guiding individuals and groups in natural settings would be most suited to my abilities. In these face-to-face settings, there’s an energy that comes from shared discovery, from spotting an unexpected animal or seeing the beauty of a plant up close.

https://www.skilouise.com/explore-summer/guided-hikes

However, I also know that not everyone can join these in-person experiences. For these audiences, creating digital content is essential, and easier than ever before. I am drawn to developing social media posts, podcasts, and videos that can spark curiosity and encourage people to explore on their own. I want to help them feel connected to nature, even if that connection is happening from a screen.

As I continue to grow in this field, I’m committed to being adaptable in my approach. Everyone comes to nature with different perspectives, experiences, and needs. For some, a short walk in a city park might be enough to find peace, while others may need the challenge of a backcountry trail. As a nature interpreter, it’s my job to honor these differences, provide multiple ways of connecting, and celebrate nature in all its forms and locations.

Through every method I use, whether it’s guiding hikes, sharing stories online, or simply helping others see nature as an essential part of life, I hope to foster a love for nature that feels personal and possible for everyone. And ultimately, I believe that by making nature accessible and meaningful to people of all backgrounds, I’m contributing to a future where more people will care about protecting the world around them.

[quoteablebooks]

Genre: Fiction, Adult, Science Fiction, Space Opera

Rating: 5 out of 5

Content Warning: Death, Grief, Violence, Xenophobia, War, Terminal illness, Sexual content, Drug use, Genocide             

Summary: Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space-and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe-in this light-hearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star.

Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.

*Opinions*

I am not a huge sci-fi reader, but with how much I absolutely adored Becky Chambers’s Monk & Robot novella series, I wanted to give her other series a try. I was not disappointed. There is something about this book that is cozy even though some serious topics come up during the events of this novel. This is very much a world-building and character-centered story, which might not be for everyone, but by the end of this novel, I was tearing up over the ship's AI.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet follows the crew of the Wayfarer, a vessel that tunnels wormholes to make transportation around space easier. Rosemary Harper joins this interspecies crew with her own baggage only to find that this crew is as rough around the edges as the ship itself. When the crew gets a long-haul job in new alliance territory, they have a lot of time to get to know each other and test the bounds between them as new issues arise internally and externally. It’s a job that will give them enough credit to live comfortably for a long time, but they have to survive the job to reap the rewards. 

Does that seem like a short overview for a four-hundred-page book? Well, that is because while there is a plot to this novel, it kind of isn’t the point. While the trip to Toremi space is always in the background, what you follow is the relationships between the crew members and the universe that Chambers created with her different alien races and their customs. Chambers approaches all of them with respect, but there is obvious tension between a few of the groups and misunderstandings that are bound to happen when different cultures intermingle. There are also a lot of conversations about AI and how it should be treated when it is sentient. Now, there are some areas of action in this book and I became tense on a couple of occasions, but this is firmly a character-driven novel. 

The crew of the Wayfarer is eccentric and loveable, think Firefly without all the war trauma. Even the members that aren’t very likable, to begin with, you grow to care about as the story progresses. They all also have very distinct personalities and issues that are dealing with. The reader is given an access point to the Wayfarer and the world via Rosemary as she grew up on Mars and had never been in open space before. However, throughout the novel, you get points of view from everyone on the ship as well as some other individuals that they come across. I didn’t think that I had become too attached to them, but the first time that the crew was in danger I was worried for them. By the end of the novel I was tearing up over the emotional turmoil they’re all going through. 

This is a really short review for a 5-star read, but I don’t have much to say other than I loved my time with the crew of the Wayfarer and can’t wait to get back into the world. I think that this is a good gateway book into the sci-fi genre. I can see why some people will not love this as much as I did, but truly I always wanted to get back to this book whenever I put it down. I also think that this would be a good audiobook if that’s your preferred way of reading. 

[adickaboutspoons]

❄️🪐🦷 for the ask game!

what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

As easily distracted as I am by new madcap AUs and jotting down little snippets from which they might grow, I'm pretty terrible at thinking in-depth about plots other than the one that's currently right in front of me, so I don't know that I have a good answer to this question. I've written a lot of meta about how Stede has been actively discouraged from being emotionally vulnerable by pretty much everyone in his life, unfortunately including Ed, but that he has put a lot of work into trying to carve out a space for himself where he CAN trust others with his feelings even if they're less than palatable. And I've seen a lot of people talk about Ed's life after piracy and his journey to feeling safe and cared for and able to be soft and loved unconditionally, but I haven't really seen any of the same sort of consideration extended for Stede. What I'd really love to see is a thoughtful exploration of what it would take for Stede to learn that he doesn't have to reign everything in and shove down his sadness - that he can have his own sloppy bathtub moment and still be loved. Total cop-out, but I also don't know who I'd like to see tackle it. share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on Gosh, this presupposes that I have my shit even remotely together. Umm... So there's a lot of people raising alarm about the disappearance of physical media. That goes for your personal media, too - word documents, photos on the cloud, etc. Don't trust that the companies that are supporting them will be there forever. Save that shit somewhere you'll be able to access it if they were to go down tomorrow - a thumb drive, and external hard drive, whatever. As cool as it is to look at old photos of from the past, no one is going to be able to do that for you if they don't have access to your accounts. name three good things going on in your life right now I'm close enough to the path of the total eclipse that I should be able to see 99% of it today! My wife got COVID last week, but she seems to be on the mend, and neither my son nor I have gotten ill. I have tickets to go see Heart perform live in May!