#they don’t have identity outside of violence

[jordanstark007]

Calex Kids 2/6

OC Character ~ Alec Cabot Novak

(The Detective)

(I’m gonna mess with the timeline here, so The Cabot-Novak Kids are present when Casey’s attacked in her office, Alex is still in Witsec.)

Detective Alec Cabot-Novak made her gold badge after collaring a rapist her putting herself in the line of fire to protect the victim.

She was given her gold badge and transferred over to Special Victims where the brass assumed she’d become less of a cowboy cop.

They were wrong of course, if anything her presence at SVU only worsened her bad habits, it only provoked her aggression.

Of course, when her mothers are involved the violence only worsened, she became erratic and outlandish.

She knew with money came affluence of course she did her mother was the sole heir to the Cabot fortune, an incredibly large sum of money that led to a lavish lifestyle and all the best schools for Alec and her siblings, as well as a comfortable cushion for her to fall back on should she need to.

What she couldn’t understand was the need to rape and murder when all you possessed all the money in the world.

Regardless, Alec was with her mother every step of the way, (per Casey’s request due to her mother large amount of knowledge that her daughter had inclination to fly off of the deep end.)

“Flowers.”

“You holding out on me?”

“No I’m not seeing anyone, not after Alex, maybe one of my kids was feeling generous, but if there from Jason Whittiker they’re going straight in the trash.”

Alec had been at home when Liv called, she’d woken in a haze answering the phone, but she flew out of her apartment in record speeds when she’d heard Liv telling her what had happened.

And God was she pissed. Of course her first stop would have been the hospital but she knew her siblings would have been there, her mother had a support system.

Her job was locating the bastard who hurt her mother. When Elliot saw who’d done it he’d immediately messaged Alec, and Alec was furious.

She’d kicked the door into his home and the look on Milan’s face, only fuelled her rage.

He stood as if he’d been expecting her, hands behind his back prepared for the arrest but Alec simply chuckled, dragging him from the building.

They made it to the outskirt of the city, Alec stalling the car at an abandoned warehouse, before dragging him out of the car, “Where are we?”

Alec smirked, a manic wolffish grin stretched across her face. “Somewhere no one will hear your screams.”

When they did finally arrive at SVU it had been at least a few hours since Elliot had let her know the identity of her mothers attackers and the beaten and bloodied face of their perp, was enough indication as to what had happened.

“What happened?” Alec shrugged eyes still blazing furiously,

“He resisted arrest, he’s lucky I didn’t shoot him.” Truthfully he had fought back and Alec had the defence wounds to prove it, but she wasn’t about to let everyone know shed been the original aggressor.

“Now I’m going to go see my mother-” Cregan had attempted to call after her, directing her to his office instead but it was futile and Alec was in the elevator before her name had left his lips.

“Hey mama, how you feeling?” Casey groaned lightly her hand grasping Alec’s as the detective sat gingerly at her bedside,

“What happened to your face.” Alec waved off her concern with a light smile,

“Its nothing Mama don’t worry about it. I’m more concerned about you, William says you’ll be alright to go home tomorrow, why don’t you come and stay with me for a while, just till your back on your feet?”

Casey wasn’t given the opportunity to answer when the police commissioner knocked on the hospital room door,

“Detective Novak, can I have a word.”

Alec near snarled at the sound of his voice, “You have some nerve, coming here. Get out.”

“Detective-“

“Get out, I won’t say it again.”

The man relented eventually nodding curtly, “I’ll wait outside.”

Her sisters hand graced her shoulder, Atlas’ expression soft, understanding, “Go talk to him Alec, we’ll be here, I’ve got her.”

She nodded slowly, standing, pressing a soft kiss to his mothers hairline, “I love you mama.”

When she stepped out of the room she was met with a number of the brass all staring at her with an expectant expression, “Are you suspending me?”

Lyle Morris, the Police Commissioner stepped forward, “We are putting you on temporary leave pending investigation.”

Alec nodded although she seemed to hold no guilt or regret in her expression, she simply handed over her badge and gun, “And for the record commissioner,”

The man nodded looking at her as she removed her gun, “I lost one mother, to a case where you all failed to do your jobs and protect her, if I’d have lost another, we’d be having a very different conversation right now. So if you’re going to take my badge and pension make sure you remember that this is the second time I’ve nearly lost a parent to a case, and it’s the second time I have stopped myself from pulling the trigger on the man who did it.”

Two weeks of unpaid leave later she was called in front of the Morris Commission, “Detective Novak, you’ve been called before the Commission to discuss your conduct, during the case involving ADA Novak’s assault, is there anything you’d like to say for yourself?”

Alec nodded walking over to the line of Brass, handing them the photos of his mothers injuries, “4 broken ribs, a torn ACL, a dislocated shoulder and over a dozen cuts and abrasions. Those where the injuries my mother sustained during the attack. My other mother ADA Alexandra Cabot was shot and placed into witness protection while prosecuting a case for SVU. I have no regret about the force I used while arresting the bastard who hurt my mother, and incase you missed it he resisted arrest and I have the documented injuries to prove it. I do this job to put away the bastards who prey upon those who cannot protect themselves, and if any of you here today can look me in the eye and say what I did was wrong then I know its my time to find another profession.”

I took no longer than a few minutes for them to reinstate her position, her rank and her badge.

And Alec walked away smiling, she had her badge back, and she could resume doing exactly what she had been doing for the past two years. Putting away the most sadistic of the population.

[hadesoftheladies]

masculinity is 99.9% grooming boys to be the bestest toy soldiers ever. the violence it is characterized by, so that oligarchs can always have bodies to throw at the territory they want from their competitors. “you are savage” “a meat-eater” “such a strong little boy” “buy another shooting video game” you are being bred for a war that will never end because the greed of your overlords has no limits. war wouldn’t happen if men didn’t start them and hinge the global economy on them. they want men to identify with the role they want them to play. and it’s worked so brilliantly. they really think they’re heroes. male identity is so steeped in violence on a peer and societal level. and it’s been happening for ages.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Forcing your computer to rat you out

Powerful people imprisoned by the cluelessness of their own isolation, locked up with their own motivated reasoning: “It’s impossible to get a CEO to understand something when his quarterly earnings call depends on him not understanding it.”

Take Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg insists that anyone who wanted to use a pseudonym online is “two-faced,” engaged in dishonest social behavior. The Zuckerberg Doctrine claims that forcing people to use their own names is a way to ensure civility. This is an idea so radioactively wrong, it can be spotted from orbit.

From the very beginning, social scientists (both inside and outside Facebook) told Zuckerberg that he was wrong. People have lots of reasons to hide their identities online, both good and bad, but a Real Names Policy affects different people differently:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/22/social-scientists-have-warned-zuck-all-along-that-the-facebook-theory-of-interaction-would-make-people-angry-and-miserable/

For marginalized and at-risk people, there are plenty of reasons to want to have more than one online identity — say, because you are a #MeToo whistleblower hoping that Harvey Weinstein won’t sic his ex-Mossad mercenaries on you:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies

Or maybe you’re a Rohingya Muslim hoping to avoid the genocidal attentions of the troll army that used Facebook to organize — under their real, legal names — to rape and murder you and everyone you love:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

But even if no one is looking to destroy your life or kill you and your family, there are plenty of good reasons to present different facets of your identity to different people. No one talks to their lover, their boss and their toddler in exactly the same way, or reveals the same facts about their lives to those people. Maintaining different facets to your identity is normal and healthy — and the opposite, presenting the same face to everyone in your life, is a wildly terrible way to live.

None of this is controversial among social scientists, nor is it hard to grasp. But Zuckerberg stubbornly stuck to this anonymity-breeds-incivility doctrine, even as dictators used the fact that Facebook forced dissidents to use their real names to retain power through the threat (and reality) of arrest and torture:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

Why did Zuck cling to this dangerous and obvious fallacy? Because the more he could collapse your identity into one unitary whole, the better he could target you with ads. Truly, it is impossible to get a billionaire to understand something when his mega-yacht depends on his not understanding it.

This motivated reasoning ripples through all of Silicon Valley’s top brass, producing what Anil Dash calls “VC QAnon,” the collection of conspiratorial, debunked and absurd beliefs embraced by powerful people who hold the digital lives of billions of us in their quivering grasp:

https://www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon/

These fallacy-ridden autocrats like to disguise their demands as observations, as though wanting something to be true was the same as making it true. Think of when Eric Schmidt — then the CEO of Google — dismissed online privacy concerns, stating “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

Schmidt was echoing the sentiments of his old co-conspirator, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it”:

https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/

Both men knew better. Schmidt, in particular, is very jealous of his own privacy. When Cnet reporters used Google to uncover and publish public (but intimate and personal) facts about Schmidt, Schmidt ordered Google PR to ignore all future requests for comment from Cnet reporters:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/how-cnet-got-banned-by-google/

(Like everything else he does, Elon Musk’s policy of responding to media questions about Twitter with a poop emoji is just him copying things other people thought up, making them worse, and taking credit for them:)

https://www.theverge.com/23815634/tesla-elon-musk-origin-founder-twitter-land-of-the-giants

Schmidt’s actions do not reflect an attitude of “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Rather, they are the normal response that we all have to getting doxed.

When Schmidt and McNealy and Zuck tell us that we don’t have privacy, or we don’t want privacy, or that privacy is bad for us, they’re disguising a demand as an observation. “Privacy is dead” actually means, “When privacy is dead, I will be richer than you can imagine, so stop trying to save it, goddamnit.”

We are all prone to believing our own bullshit, but when a tech baron gets high on his own supply, his mental contortions have broad implications for all of us. A couple years after Schmidt’s anti-privacy manifesto, Google launched Google Plus, a social network where everyone was required to use their “real name.”

This decision — justified as a means of ensuring civility and a transparent ruse to improve ad targeting — kicked off the Nym Wars:

https://epeus.blogspot.com/2011/08/google-plus-must-stop-this-identity.html

One of the best documents to come out of that ugly conflict is “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names,” a profound and surprising enumeration of all the ways that the experiences of tech bros in Silicon Valley are the real edge-cases, unreflective of the reality of billions of their users:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

This, in turn, spawned a whole genre of programmer-fallacy catalogs, falsehoods programmers believe about time, currency, birthdays, timezones, email addresses, national borders, nations, biometrics, gender, language, alphabets, phone numbers, addresses, systems of measurement, and, of course, families:

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

But humility is in short supply in tech. It’s impossible to get a programmer to understand something when their boss requires them not to understand it. A programmer will happily insist that ordering you to remove your “mask” is for your own good — and not even notice that they’re taking your skin off with it.

There are so many ways that tech executives could improve their profits if only we would abandon our stubborn attachment to being so goddamned complicated. Think of Netflix and its anti-passsword-sharing holy war, which is really a demand that we redefine “family” to be legible and profitable for Netflix:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

But despite the entreaties of tech companies to collapse our identities, our families, and our online lives into streamlined, computably hard-edged shapes that fit neatly into their database structures, we continue to live fuzzy, complicated lives that only glancingly resemble those of the executives seeking to shape them.

Now, the rich, powerful people making these demands don’t plan on being constrained by them. They are conservatives, in the tradition of #FrankWilhoit, believers in a system of “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”:

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

As with Schmidt’s desire to spy on you from asshole to appetite for his own personal gain, and his violent aversion to having his own personal life made public, the tech millionaires and billionaires who made their fortune from the flexibility of general purpose computers would like to end that flexibility. They insist that the time for general purpose computers has passed, and that today, “consumers” crave the simplicity of appliances:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

It is in the War On General Purpose Computing that we find the cheapest and flimsiest rhetoric. Companies like Apple — and their apologists — insist that no one wants to use third-party app stores, or seek out independent repair depots — and then spend millions to make sure that it’s illegal to jailbreak your phone or get it fixed outside of their own official channel:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

The cognitive dissonance of “no one wants this,” and “we must make it illegal to get this” is powerful, but the motivated reasoning is more powerful still. It is impossible to get Tim Cook to understand something when his $49 million paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

The War on General Purpose Computing has been underway for decades. Computers, like the people who use them, stubbornly insist on being reality-based, and the reality of computers is that they are general purpose. Every computer is a Turing complete, universal Von Neumann machine, which means that it can run every valid program. There is no way to get a computer to be almost Turing Complete, only capable of running programs that don’t upset your shareholders’ fragile emotional state.

There is no such thing as a printer that will only run the “reject third-party ink” program. There is no such thing as a phone that will only run the “reject third-party apps” program. There are only laws, like the Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that make writing and distributing those programs a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine (for a first offense).

That is to say, the War On General Purpose Computing is only incidentally a technical fight: it is primarily a legal fight. When Apple says, “You can’t install a third party app store on your phone,” what they means is, “it’s illegal to install that third party app store.” It’s not a technical countermeasure that stands between you and technological self-determination, it’s a legal doctrine we can call “felony contempt of business model”:

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

But the mighty US government will not step in to protect a company’s business model unless it at least gestures towards the technical. To invoke DMCA 1201, a company must first add the thinnest skin of digital rights management to their product. Since 1201 makes removing DRM illegal, a company can use this molecule-thick scrim of DRM to felonize any activity that the DRM prevents.

More than 20 years ago, technologists started to tinker with ways to combine the legal and technical to tame the wild general purpose computer. Starting with Microsoft’s Palladium project, they theorized a new “Secure Computing” model for allowing companies to reach into your computer long after you had paid for it and brought it home, in order to discipline you for using it in ways that undermined its shareholders’ interest.

Secure Computing began with the idea of shipping every computer with two CPUs. The first one was the normal CPU, the one you interacted with when you booted it up, loaded your OS, and ran programs. The second CPU would be a Trusted Platform Module, a brute-simple system-on-a-chip designed to be off-limits to modification, even by its owner (that is, you).

The TPM would ship with a limited suite of simple programs it could run, each thoroughly audited for bugs, as well as secret cryptographic signing keys that you were not permitted to extract. The original plan called for some truly exotic physical security measures for that TPM, like an acid-filled cavity that would melt the chip if you tried to decap it or run it through an electron-tunneling microscope:

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

This second computer represented a crack in the otherwise perfectly smooth wall of a computer’s general purposeness; and Trusted Computing proposed to hammer a piton into that crack and use it to anchor a whole superstructure that could observe — and limited — the activity of your computer.

This would start with observation: the TPM would observe every step of your computer’s boot sequence, creating cryptographic hashes of each block of code as it loaded and executed. Each stage of the boot-up could be compared to “known good” versions of those programs. If your computer did something unexpected, the TPM could halt it in its tracks, blocking the boot cycle.

What kind of unexpected things do computers do during their boot cycle? Well, if your computer is infected with malware, it might load poisoned versions of its operating system. Once your OS is poisoned, it’s very hard to detect its malicious conduct, since normal antivirus programs rely on the OS to faithfully report what your computer is doing. When the AV program asks the OS to tell it which programs are running, or which files are on the drive, it has no choice but to trust the OS’s response. When the OS is compromised, it can feed a stream of lies to users’ programs, assuring these apps that everything is fine.

That’s a very beneficial use for a TPM, but there’s a sinister flipside: the TPM can also watch your boot sequence to make sure that there aren’t beneficial modifications present in your operating system. If you modify your OS to let you do things the manufacturer wants to prevent — like loading apps from a third-party app-store — the TPM can spot this and block it.

Now, these beneficial and sinister uses can be teased apart. When the Palladium team first presented its research, my colleague Seth Schoen proposed an “owner override”: a modification of Trusted Computing that would let the computer’s owner override the TPM:

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

This override would introduce its own risks, of course. A user who was tricked into overriding the TPM might expose themselves to malicious software, which could harm that user, as well as attacking other computers on the user’s network and the other users whose data were on the compromised computer’s drive.

But an override would also provide serious benefits: it would rule out the monopolistic abuse of a TPM to force users to run malicious code that the manufacturer insisted on — code that prevented the user from doing things that benefited the user, even if it harmed the manufacturer’s shareholders. For example, with owner override, Microsoft couldn’t force you to use its official MS Office programs rather than third-party compatible programs like Apple’s iWork or Google Docs or LibreOffice.

Owner override also completely changed the calculus for another, even more dangerous part of Trusted Computing: remote attestation.

Remote Attestation is a way for third parties to request a reliable, cryptographically secured assurances about which operating system and programs your computer is running. In Remote Attestation, the TPM in your computer observes every stage of your computer’s boot, gathers information about all the programs you’re running, and cryptographically signs them, using the signing keys the manufacturer installed during fabrication.

You can send this “attestation” to other people on the internet. If they trust that your computer’s TPM is truly secure, then they know that you have sent them a true picture of your computer’s working (the actual protocol is a little more complicated and involves the remote party sending you a random number to cryptographically hash with the attestation, to prevent out-of-date attestations).

Now, this is also potentially beneficial. If you want to make sure that your technologically unsophisticated friend is running an uncompromised computer before you transmit sensitive data to it, you can ask them for an attestation that will tell you whether they’ve been infected with malware.

But it’s also potentially very sinister. Your government can require all the computers in its borders to send a daily attestation to confirm that you’re still running the mandatory spyware. Your abusive spouse — or abusive boss — can do the same for their own disciplinary technologies. Such a tool could prevent you from connecting to a service using a VPN, and make it impossible to use Tor Browser to protect your privacy when interacting with someone who wishes you harm.

The thing is, it’s completely normal and good for computers to lie to other computers on behalf of their owners. Like, if your IoT ebike’s manufacturer goes out of business and all their bikes get bricked because they can no longer talk to their servers, you can run an app that tricks the bike into thinking that it’s still talking to the mothership:

https://nltimes.nl/2023/07/15/alternative-app-can-unlock-vanmoof-bikes-popular-amid-bankruptcy-fears

Or if you’re connecting to a webserver that tries to track you by fingerprinting you based on your computer’s RAM, screen size, fonts, etc, you can order your browser to send random data about this stuff:

https://jshelter.org/fingerprinting/

Or if you’re connecting to a site that wants to track you and nonconsensually cram ads into your eyeballs, you can run an adblocker that doesn’t show you the ads, but tells the site that it did:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Owner override leaves some of the beneficial uses of remote attestation intact. If you’re asking a friend to remotely confirm that your computer is secure, you’re not going to use an override to send them bad data about about your computer’s configuration.

And owner override also sweeps all of the malicious uses of remote attestation off the board. With owner override, you can tell any lie about your computer to a webserver, a site, your boss, your abusive spouse, or your government, and they can’t spot the lie.

But owner override also eliminates some beneficial uses of remote attestation. For example, owner override rules out remote attestation as a way for strangers to play multiplayer video games while confirming that none of them are using cheat programs (like aimhack). It also means that you can’t use remote attestation to verify the configuration of a cloud server you’re renting in order to assure yourself that it’s not stealing your data or serving malware to your users.

This is a tradeoff, and it’s a tradeoff that’s similar to lots of other tradeoffs we make online, between the freedom to do something good and the freedom to do something bad. Participating anonymously, contributing to free software, distributing penetration testing tools, or providing a speech platform that’s open to the public all represent the same tradeoff.

We have lots of experience with making the tradeoff in favor of restrictions rather than freedom: powerful bad actors are happy to attach their names to their cruel speech and incitement to violence. Their victims are silenced for fear of that retaliation.

When we tell security researchers they can’t disclose defects in software without the manufacturer’s permission, the manufacturers use this as a club to silence their critics, not as a way to ensure orderly updates.

When we let corporations decide who is allowed to speak, they act with a mixture of carelessness and self-interest, becoming off-the-books deputies of authoritarian regimes and corrupt, powerful elites.

Alas, we made the wrong tradeoff with Trusted Computing. For the past twenty years, Trusted Computing has been creeping into our devices, albeit in somewhat denatured form. The original vision of acid-filled secondary processors has been replaced with less exotic (and expensive) alternatives, like “secure enclaves.” With a secure enclave, the manufacturer saves on the expense of installing a whole second computer, and instead, they draw a notional rectangle around a region of your computer’s main chip and try really hard to make sure that it can only perform a very constrained set of tasks.

This gives us the worst of all worlds. When secure enclaves are compromised, we not only lose the benefit of cryptographic certainty, knowing for sure that our computers are only booting up trusted, unalterted versions of the OS, but those compromised enclaves run malicious software that is essentially impossible to detect or remove:

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

But while Trusted Computing has wormed its way into boot-restrictions — preventing you from jailbreaking your computer so it will run the OS and apps of your choosing — there’s been very little work on remote attestation…until now.

Web Environment Integrity is Google’s proposal to integrate remote attestation into everyday web-browsing. The idea is to allow web-servers to verify what OS, extensions, browser, and add-ons your computer is using before the server will communicate with you:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md

Even by the thin standards of the remote attestation imaginaries, there are precious few beneficial uses for this. The googlers behind the proposal have a couple of laughable suggestions, like, maybe if ad-supported sites can comprehensively refuse to serve ad-blocking browsers, they will invest the extra profits in making things you like. Or: letting websites block scriptable browsers will make it harder for bad people to auto-post fake reviews and comments, giving users more assurances about the products they buy.

But foundationally, WEI is about compelling you to disclose true facts about yourself to people who you want to keep those facts from. It is a Real Names Policy for your browser. Google wants to add a new capability to the internet: the ability of people who have the power to force you to tell them things to know for sure that you’re not lying.

The fact that the authors assume this will be beneficial is just another “falsehood programmers believe”: there is no good reason to hide the truth from other people. Squint a little and we’re back to McNealy’s “Privacy is dead, get over it.” Or Schmidt’s “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

And like those men, the programmers behind this harebrained scheme don’t imagine that it will ever apply to them. As Chris Palmer — who worked on Chromium — points out, this is not compatible with normal developer tools or debuggers, which are “incalculably valuable and not really negotiable”:

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/Ux5h_kGO22g/m/5Lt5cnkLCwAJ

This proposal is still obscure in the mainstream, but in tech circles, it has precipitated a flood of righteous fury:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/

As I wrote last week, giving manufacturers the power to decide how your computer is configured, overriding your own choices, is a bad tradeoff — the worst tradeoff, a greased slide into terminal enshittification:

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

This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

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

All of which leads to the question: what now? What should be done about WEI and remote attestation?

Let me start by saying: I don’t think it should be illegal for programmers to design and release these tools. Code is speech, and we can’t understand how this stuff works if we can’t study it.

But programmers shouldn’t deploy it in production code, in the same way that programmers should be allowed to make pen-testing tools, but shouldn’t use them to attack production systems and harm their users. Programmers who do this should be criticized and excluded from the society of their ethical, user-respecting peers.

Corporations that use remote attestation should face legal restrictions: privacy law should prevent the use of remote attestation to compel the production of true facts about users or the exclusion of users who refuse to produce those facts. Unfair competition law should prevent companies from using remote attestation to block interoperability or tie their products to related products and services.

Finally, we must withdraw the laws that prevent users and programmers from overriding TPMs, secure enclaves and remote attestations. You should have the right to study and modify your computer to produce false attestations, or run any code of your choosing. Felony contempt of business model is an outrage. We should alter or strike down DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and other laws (like contract law’s “tortious interference”) that stand between you and “sole and despotic dominion” over your own computer. All of that applies not just to users who want to reconfigure their own computers, but also toolsmiths who want to help them do so, by offering information, code, products or services to jailbreak and alter your devices.

Tech giants will squeal at this, insisting that they serve your interests when they prevent rivals from opening up their products. After all, those rivals might be bad guys who want to hurt you. That’s 100% true. What is likewise true is that no tech giant will defend you from its own bad impulses, and if you can’t alter your device, you are powerless to stop them:

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

Companies should be stopped from harming you, but the right place to decide whether a business is doing something nefarious isn’t in the boardroom of that company’s chief competitor: it’s in the halls of democratically accountable governments:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

So how do we get there? Well, that’s another matter. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I lay out a detailed program, describing which policies will disenshittify the internet, and how to get those policies:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

Predictably, there are challenges getting this kind of book out into the world via our concentrated tech sector. Amazon refuses to carry the audio edition on its monopoly audiobook platform, Audible, unless it is locked to Amazon forever with mandatory DRM. That’s left me self-financing my own DRM-free audio edition, which is currently available for pre-order via this Kickstarter:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

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/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

[Image ID: An anatomical drawing of a flayed human head; it has been altered to give it a wide-stretched mouth revealing a gadget nestled in the back of the figure's throat, connected by a probe whose two coiled wires stretch to an old fashioned electronic box. The head's eyes have been replaced by the red, menacing eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Behind the head is a code waterfall effect as seen in the credits of the Wachowskis' 'The Matrix.']

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

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

[wildestdreamsblog]

Latibule: II

Pairing: Min Yoongi x Reader (Mafia/Detective AU)

Summary: In which you didn’t know who he truly was- until it was too late. Or in which he found heaven in you.

Warnings: Secret Identity, Yandere behavior, Obsessiveness, Possessiveness, Manipulative behavior, Violence, Mention of death, Disability, Sexual themes, If you’re not 18+ please, PLEASE, do not interact. Be mindful of the warnings. Let me know if I miss anything.

A/N: don’t do tag list my loves. Thank u for showing love to this fic, and also! Leave a comment and reblog

Masterlist, Latibule I

“Who’s that handsome man, dear?” Your elderly neighbor asked you as she peeked over your shoulder to look at the man who just wouldn’t tell you his name. He was trailing behind you, his face showing his apparent displeasure at having to wake up early in the morning. He detested the sun and he glared at the sky like it did him dirty. Who the fuck was sane enough to wake up at five in the morning?

Definitely not him.

You crinkled your nose at your neighbor. Handsome? Sure he was. But his grumpy attitude annoyed you and it did outweigh his good looks. You didn’t even know why you agreed on him staying- not that he asked. Yet when you inquired if he was in danger and he nodded his head, you agreed without another thought.

You wouldn’t turn away someone who was seeking solace.

You knew what it was like.

Additionally, it was as though you didn’t even have a roommate. What you seemed to have acquired was your very own shadow who just wouldn’t leave you alone. In his defense though, he was trying to have a read on you. It didn’t make sense to him that you were living alone. Yoongi wasn’t blind. He could see that you were an attractive woman who somehow had peculiar habits.

Like walking at night in the dark. Or looking at the stars every night without fail. Or the fact that you hadn’t kicked him out despite his unpleasant attitude.

Which you were seriously considering right now.

The man looked at you with brows raised as though anticipating how you would explain his existence in your life to which you merely rolled your eyes and smiled at him with contempt.

“That’s-“ you started as you gestured at him with your arms full of groceries that he never even offered to lift himself, “That’s a full-time problem and the human form of nuisance.”

You offered her a kind smile as she blinked in confusion at what you said. Meanwhile, he looked affronted by what you said.

Him? A nuisance? A full-time problem?

His enemies had insulted him less than you did and they all ended up getting tortured. Yet you had the audacity and courage to call him names that belonged to kindergarten.

Your neighbor frowned, confusion glinting in her eyes. “I’m sorry, dear. I’m afraid I heard you incorrectly.”

“Oh, I said he’s an extremely problemati-“

“Hi, ahjumma,” he walked closer to the two of you, his face painted with a charming smile as he extended his hand to her. Suddenly, he was a different person. This two-faced asshole, you thought to yourself. “I’m her-“

“-problem,” you whispered behind him.

“-her cousi-“

“-her nuisance,” you mumbled behind him once again.

“I’m her first love and I’m here to marry her,” he said with a grin so wide you could see his adorable gummy smile.

Wait. What?

Adorable?

First love?

Marry????

You turned your head so abruptly that your hair whipped on his face as soon as the two of you arrived at your home. You got into his space, your now empty hands pushing him against the door. He couldn’t even defend himself because you forced him to carry the groceries because he should be a good as fuck boyfriend. Yoongi gulped when he met your eyes filled with storm. And strangely, he felt his heart skipped a beat. It never did that- not when he was staring at the barrel of his enemies’ gun, not when he was looking at the chief of police, not when he was literally dying outside your house. Never.

But now that he was looking at your eyes, it strangely skipped a beat. It wasn’t as though he didn’t spend majority of his time observing you, or watching you wander in the dark at night, or following you out in the shadows when you took your evening walks. However, he never really spent time really looking into your eyes. It was only now that he realized your forehead had little sparse of faded wounds.

He tilted his head in perplexity. You were hurt. You were hurt so deep it left a scar…like his.

“What the fuck was that?!” You hissed at the nameless man. You looked up to glare at him only to find him putting the carrot in between the two of you as though in defense. “Did you hit your head during the accident? No, right? So why then did you spew out the worst lie ever known to mankind?!”

He gulped when you stepped closer to him. For someone so small, you sure did have a lot of anger in you. “I merely adjusted to what happened accordingly because what you were about to say would sound suspicious!” He replied in defense, the pack of sugar joining the raised carrot as an added barricade to your anger.

“I was about to say you were my cousin!”

“No. I clearly heard you said I am your problem.”

You nodded, seeing no issue in that. “That, too. A cousin and a problem!”

“Well, now I’m your boyfriend.”

“Fake.”

“Yup,” he agreed with a pop before smiling at you innocently. “Telling her that I’m merely a cousin will be a complication that I do not fucking need. For starters, I look nothing like you.”

You squinted your eyes at him, “Is that an insult?”

He nodded without hesitating. “Yes. Obviously. For starters, I’m prettier than you. Have you seen your skin? Have you seen how white and smooth my skin is?”

Taking the deepest breath known to mankind, you sighed before going straight to your kitchen. “Yes, fine,” you shouted in a deadpanned voice, having enough of this man’s incredulous statement. “You have a good skin. White skin. In fact, your skin is too fair that your name is now Suga.”

His face darkened as soon as you renamed him. He was stalking to the kitchen without any thought ready to fight you. “You will not call me Suga! You do not-“

“Shut your mouth and slice these carrots!”

Yoongi couldn’t sleep. He had always been a light sleeper. Or maybe, he just suffered from insomnia that he was used to staying up all night. Or also, maybe it was because the littlest sound could set him off just like now. These were all why he found it peculiar how he was able to sleep peacefully, albeit injured and fighting for his goddamn life, in your bed a few weeks back. God, he missed sleeping in your bed. The sofa sucked. And he hated it with a vengeance.

He watched you from the sofa he had made his bed. You were walking in the dark once again. Seriously, how difficult was it to turn on the light? Were you that considerate to walk around blindly in the dark just to not wake him up?

He watched you with his feline eyes, following your every movement. You made it seemed that you already memorized every turns in this house, and maybe you did. Yet what you didn’t anticipate was the chair he failed to return at the rightful place and with that, you fell to the ground.

“Fuck,” you whispered as you rubbed you forearm that took the most and painful hit. You almost jumped when light flooded the small living room with Yoongi looking unimpressed as he stood near the switch, his dark hair swept back from his face. From the looks of it, it did not seem like you disturbed his sleep.

“You do know we have electricity, right?” His deep voice asked in a mocking tone. “You know how to turn this on, right? If not I can teach you. You just press this gently or not, depends on your mood, really,” he explained like you were a child, even going so far as conducting a demonstration.

You glared up at him so hard from your position on the floor, wishing that your irritation at him could somehow turn into weapon and disintegrate him. “I know we have electricity because I pay for it!”

He smiled indulgently at you as he nodded his head, “And I thank you for your service. Now,” he trailed off as he walked to you, crouching down and resting his arms on his spread knees. “Does it hurt?”

“Nothing hurts more than looking at you,” you snapped back as he inspected your forearm without asking.

He hummed in agreement. He raised his dark brow when he saw the redness forming on your skin, “I know. It’s because my beauty shines too bright.”

You looked heavenward and groaned at his audacity. You were starting to question what you did wrong in this lifetime that you were burdened with this full-time problem. “What are you doing up at this hour, angel?”

“I was thirsty.”

He rolled his eyes before he unceremoniously pulled you up with him. But then…he was too close. He was so close that your front brushed up against his. So close that you could feel the heat emitting from his body. You spent the first week trying to keep him alive and after that, you spent it regretting your choice.

You really hadn’t looked at him for quite some time now. But now, this close and you could see him- all his perfections and imperfections. This close and you could see how he could looked so menacing, could see the lingering madness in his eyes and the swirling darkness in him.

And then you wondered how he came to be who he was. You wondered what made a man such as him to keep so much anger in him.

And while you were busy analyzing him, he was consumed by you. Notwithstanding his unparalleled intelligence, he did not, for the life of him, take his time to analyze why having you in his proximity calmed the demons in him.

He didn’t take his time to wonder why touching you calmed him. And instead, he opened his mouth to spew out another nonsense to you.

“You’re looking at me like you wish I’m your real fiancée,” he stated in a teasing way. His hand snaked on the small of your back, pulling you abruptly closer to his front. He was smirking as he leaned in, his hot breath tickling your ear. “You wish I was yours, don’t you?”

To which, you kicked his shin and stalked to your room, uncaring of his pained hiss. You locked the door for good measure.

It wasn’t much of a surprise that you woke up hours later with parched throat. Sighing, you opened your bedside lamp only to find a glass of water.

D-did that asshole put it there?

Latibule III

[novelconcepts]

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

[ewingstan]

I certainly didn’t appreciate it on the first read-through, but one of the biggest background characterizations of Alec is among first things we learned about him: that he painted the Undersider’s symbols onto the doors of their hideout.

The loft reads as almost ridiculous when you first read about it. Whatever you’re expecting the hideout of a bunch of hardened criminals to look like, your not expecting “the rich kid’s house with all the best video games.” It almost took me out of it; it felt like such a teen wish fulfillment of a supervillain base that I thought Wildbow must be pretty young—and didn’t really take in what it was telling the reader about the Undersider’s mindset. Because it is a teen wish fulfillment, filtered through the practicality of what cost, secrecy, and Brian would allow for. Its the derelict old building you dare your friends to go into to find some rumored amazing or horrible secret—but this building does have a secret, and its a pizza party with a sweet flatscreen setup.

For the most part, it is an especially cool hangout spot that would appeal to your average teen—and not necessarily your average villain. Taylor gets told to use the other’s civilian names while hanging out here. They wear street clothes instead of their costumes. Its built to be appealing to the non-cape side of your life, a welcome reprieve from that world. For the Undersiders who don’t have much of a real life outside of capedom, its something like a place to play make-believe. That’s part of why its so effective as an initial pitch to Taylor when she’s looking for friends and doesn’t want to be a villain, why its important for ingratiating her to the rest of them and making her backstabbing plan that much harder to follow through on. Its part of why getting her own lair, built for the specifications of Skitter the Warlord instead of Taylor the kid, represents such a big change in how Taylor sees herself and her goals. Its why there’s presumably dozens of Undersider fics of them just casually hanging out in the loft, away from any major cape shenanigans. Its why Rachel's first full appearance is her coming up into the room and breaking the bubble—ruining Brian’s pitch of sweet teen digs by bringing the violence inherent to cape life into the supposedly separate space. Because the loft is supposed to be for the Undersiders to be themselves as civilians, instead of capes.

But at the same time, everyone’s personal room has their symbol painted on their door. And the first real thing we learn about Regent is that he’s the one who painted them.

Regent did not get to have a double life. His cape stuff and his family stuff were inherently intertwined, and it was all bad. He’s arguably the only undersider to have a secret identity in a traditional, important sense: not just “you have a civilian life, and everyone’s gonna respect that its separate and not go after anything related to it,” like @artbyblastweave​ outlined here, but “your specific other identity is important, in a sense outside of just being something to target” way. People finding out who Skitter is means they know there’s an identity there to exploit—her enemies can trace her to her school, she can’t continue to go back to her old house, etc. You’d be able to get the same advantage by finding out the civilian identity of pretty much any cape. But not with Alec. People finding out who Alec is means they go “oh fuck, its Heartbreaker’s kid—” the effect is much more like finding out Taylor is Skitter, rather than vice versa.

And that’s important, because the persona of Regent is, to a large extent, his chance to live out the life he wants. Brian and Lisa both have circumstances that don’t allow them a typical childhood, and so they construct spaces to go through the motions of one. To roughhouse and play video games with friends, to plan shopping trips and visits to Fugly Bobs. They’re looking for a respite from their normal state, and that respite to them looks like civilian life. Alec is looking for a respite from his awful childhood, and that respite has a lot of the same things, but it also has the symbols and aspects of his cape persona. He draws his crown on his door, he uses his powers casually on Brian—he’s using the space to let him be Regent, in the same way Brian is pitching it to Skitter as a place where she can just be Taylor, where Tattletale can just be Lisa. This is pretty huge for understanding Regent early-on: Taylor obviously has a pretty expansive double life, as does Brian, and Lisa clearly wants to get into some non-cape-related shenanigans. We’re introduced with a clear divide between cape and civilian identities being the norm. Rachel is presented as bucking a trend, her lack of second identity making her an outlier. But if you read into Regent’s decorating choices, you realize pretty early that you can’t separate his cape identity and his current civilian idenitiy, because their both effectively the same thing: a persona where he can be something other than a Vasil.

Sheesh, now that I’m thinking about it there’s a lot to be drawn from each of the undersider’s lairs. I already talked a bit about how Skitter having her new base be a proper “villain lair” instead of “hang spot” represented a shift in perspective, and how Rachel being unable to behave the way your “supposed” to in the loft shows that she both can’t live a double life and has no interest in doing so (unlike Alec, who is very clearly interested in making a “new” life for himself with the Undersiders as Regent). But how about how Brian won’t take a room in the loft and insists on sleeping in a separate apartment he’s planning on shairing with Aisha? He obviously wants to be able to draw an especially clear line between his cape and civilian life, and doesn’t want Aisha to get involved at all. How about how Lisa’s eventual separate Coil-provided villain lair is a disguised community center she was pretending to work in, showing both that she has some interest in a life outside of capedom and that she’s inherently drawn to working with/having control over civilian culture? She doesn’t just want to hold territory, she wants to be an institution—not just someone the other capes have to play ball with, but who the mayor and civilian agencies have to go through. She separates capedom and civilianhood to an extent, but not to the same extent as Brian, and her goals are much more “civilian-oriented” than most.

I forget the specifics of Alec’s eventual Coil-base, but I know that it was a group of buildings (a campus, maybe?) with few people in the surrounding area outside of puppets—presumably not so different from the compound he grew up. But I do remember that one of the last times we see it is near when Taylor says something about his connection to Heartbreaker, and him getting upset by it. I wonder if it changes in the intervening two years, especially with Imp’s influence. I’m kinda sad we never get a chance to see it.

[jahayla-parker]

Made For : Finnick Odair x Reader

(Finnick Odair x Victor!Reader / Finnick Odair x Tribute!Reader / Finnick Odair x District4!Reader / Finnick Odair x Gf!Reader / Finnick Odair x fem!reader)

Descr: 5k wc, set to the time of What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish, Y/n finds herself questioning her worth and what she was made for when she finds herself in the same situation as her boyfriend Finnick Odair has been in since he won his games when his body began to be sold or given as gifts to those in the Capitol; Finnick seeks to help her through it. Hurt-Comfort, Angst, Fluff, Support, Healing, Etc.

Warnings: Hunger Games type warnings, mentions of Snow’s sex trafficking of victors (aka rape, but NOTHING explicit, everything post events), violence, trauma, bruising and injuries, crying, self-blame, and related. Please let me know if I missed anything!

I used to float, now I just fall down

I used to know but I'm not sure now

What I was made for

What was I made for?

Takin' a drive, I was an ideal

Looked so alive, turns out I'm not real

Just something you paid for

What was I made for?

Was this all there was? That seemed to be the case lately at least. To be fair, as a former victor, what else was there now? What was she made for outside of this? This had become not just a part of her life but her story, her identity. Was she really made for this? Could she be made for more? Would the Capitol even allow that?

These thoughts were on constant repeat in y/n’s head as she walked back to her house in the victor’s village. This was a routine occurrence as of late. So much so she actually debated if it made more sense to simply move to the Capitol rather than walking to the train and back every time she had a client to attend to. It would certainly save time and energy. But then again, her time was expendable and her energy was practically non existent by now. Besides, the train ride back to District 4 offered her solitude; something she had learned to equate to safety. The solitude that came with the train ride also provided her the chance to zone out, something she often resorted to after the events of the her visits to the Capitol. She also utilized the walk home from the train station as a way to try to compose herself before she returned to her boyfriend. Finnick knew what she was going through, far better than he should, given he was in the same position himself. But, that’s precisely why y/n wanted to make the most of the time they had together by not having to deal with the traumas imposed on them by Snow. She also needed the physical separation from the ever present carelessness and cruelty that was the literal foundation of the Capitol. Lastly, but by far the most important factor in her decision to not simply move to the Capitol, y/n wouldn’t live somewhere where Finnick wasn’t.

I'm sad again, don't tell my boyfriend

It's not what he's made for

What was I made for?

“Oh! Fin,” Y/n gasped, frantically wiping at her damp cheeks. Finnick had left a note saying he had some things to do in town, so she wasn’t expecting him home already. She hadn’t known he would be back from his errands so soon. If she had, she’d not have let herself break down this much.

Finnick frowned as he took in the state of his girlfriend. “Honey, what’s happened?” He asked, quickly making his way over to her. When she mumbled a quiet “nothing” in response, he sighed sympathetically. “Okay,” he nodded, cautiously taking y/n’s hands in his. “You don’t have to say anything honey, just know I’m here for you, okay?” He proposed, squeezing her hands as he scanned her tearful eyes.

“You’re allowed to cry,” Finnick commented lovingly when y/n seemed to whisper an apology before taking her hands back to resume drying her face.

“No,” y/n argued vaguely. She kept her eyes on the wood floor under her feet as she pulled the collar of her shirt up to dry her tears faster. He didn’t need to deal with this.

Finnick’s worried frown deepened. “Why not?”

“Because I should be used to this,” y/n answered, her tone laced with self-deprecating judgment.

Finnick’s chest caved in painfully as he came to understand what was troubling y/n. It wasn’t that he was truly surprised. While she was at the Capitol, he’d gone to the market to try to find some y/f/d for her for when she got home. It wasn’t much, but he was hoping it would help cheer her up slightly since he knew she’d unexpectedly had to leave two days in a row so far this week. He’d also been sure to tidy up and get some extra cozy blankets out of their closet for her. He had intended on being home by the time she got back, but the typical place he went to was out of y/f/d so he’d had tried to search for awhile. If he’d known y/n was already home, he’d have rushed back earlier.

As painful as it was to know what y/n was going through, and knowing he was powerless to stop it, this was almost worse. Finnick hated that she felt she had to become immune to the pain that came with having to attend to clients at the Capitol. She’d never expected him to do that, so why did she think she needed to? Finnick shook his head and took her hands in his once again, “no, you shouldn’t. This isn’t acceptable”.

Y/n mindlessly shrugged her shoulders. “I mean, if you ask Snow,” she commented, having actually done that herself not too long ago. “I.., this is what I was made for,” she concluded with a defeated sad smile.

Finnick felt his anger flare and he clenched his jaw to keep the tension in his face and not his hands that held y/n’s. “That’s such bullshi-”, he began but paused and sighed. His anger wasn’t going to help the situation, especially if there was a chance she might misinterpret it as being directed towards her. “Y/n,” he cooed in a much softer tone, “that’s not true”.

Y/n huffed lightly. She slowly lifted her gaze up from Finnick’s shoes until her eyes reached his troubled face. “Then what was I made for, Fin?” She asked timidly.

Finnick offered y/n a sad smile. He released one of her hands so he could use his now-free one to cup her cheek. “You were made to be you,” he said, his smile warmer now, “that’s all you ever have to be”.

“This is me,” y/n pointed out as she stared into Finnick’s attentive eyes.

Finnick’s brows scrunched together. “No”. He shook his head slowly. “This is something being forced upon you,” he reminded y/n delicately. “This is a chapter of your life, albeit a painful and traumatic one. But, you are not what is, or was, done to you”. When he noticed she was about to argue, he tapped her cheek tenderly. “Do you think this is who I am?” He asked, knowing full well despite them being in the same position, she was seeing herself through a much harsher lens than she would ever dare to see him.

Y/n rapidly shook her head worriedly. Of course that’s not what she meant! Seeing the way Finnick’s eyes and expression communicated the fact he already knew she didn’t see him that way calmed her. She slowly understood why he’d asked that question if he already knew her answer. He was right, it was ironic and hypocritical. But, she could see so many purposes Finnick had outside of this ordeal. The same couldn’t be said about herself.

Finnick silently gasped as he watched y/n close her eyes and begin to break down in tears. “Can I…” he trailed off, wanting to make sure he conveyed the message that it was her choice and he’d understand either way. “A-are you okay with me holding you right now?” Finnick questioned softly.

Finnick smiled faintly to himself when y/n gave him a silent nod in response. He made sure to give her enough time to change her mind if physical contact was understandably too much for her right now as he moved to he pull her to him. “Let it out love,” he encouraged, “you don’t need to keep this bottled up inside”. Finnick carefully let them to the couch, watching her to see if the action would be too triggering for her right now.

Y/n sat in silence in Finnick’s loving embrace for an unknown amount of time. Just listening to his whispered sweet nothings as she let his warm hands release her tension as he delicately rubbed her back. After a moment of contemplation, she leaned back to look up at her steadfast boyfriend. “How do you do it?” She asked quietly.

“What?” Finnick questioned, tilting his head down to see y/n more clearly.

“Live like this,” y/n explained. “I mean! I know you don’t have a choice either!” she corrected, cupping Finnick’s face apologetically. “But,” she sniffled. “You’re so much better at dealing with all of this,” y/n croaked.

Finnick pouted and sighed. That wasn’t something she should be trying to meet. He knew what she was seeking, the ability to get by without feeling the burden of all of this. But it shouldn’t be something anyone should have to seek. Much less something she should be ashamed for not having been able to do yet. “I’ve had a few extra years, honey,” Finnick reminded her solemnly.

Y/n smiled sadly and nodded minimally. “So,” she sniffled, tracing imaginary shapes on Finnick’s shirt. “I’ll get better at it?” She asked, her eyes moving up to meet his.

Finnick let out a long sigh. “I want to say no…” he admitted. “Because you shouldn’t have to. This shouldn’t be something you experience, let alone get used to.” He grit his teeth as he thought about the things he wished he could do to Snow for making y/n have to deal with any of this. “But, yeah…,” Finnick nodded sadly, “time will make it less noticeable. I’ll be here to help you with this too”.

Tears sprung into y/n’s still watery eyes again. She silently clung onto Finnick tightly. She knew her shaky sobs were making his shirt wet and was appreciative that he didn’t seem to be annoyed by it. “You know you don’t have to, right?” Y/n questioned in a hushed voice.

Finnick’s face furrowed slightly as he replayed y/n’s muffled voice, trying to see if “hearing” it a second time would allow him to understand what she’d said. Her face was buried in his chest, her lips pressed against the fabric of his shirt, making whatever she’d tried to say incomprehensible. “What’s that, darling?” Finnick asked tenderly as he brushed some of her hair away from her face.

Y/n slowly pulled herself off of Finnick’s chest in order to repeat herself. She needed him to hear her clearly. It was important that he knew this. “I want you to know that while I do appreciate everything, you don’t have to do all of this,” y/n told him breathily. “I know it’s a lot, and I’m needy, and I-“.

“Shhhh, honey,” Finnick whined, his face contorted with worry.

Y/n smiled faintly at her endearing boyfriend. “No it’s okay,” she promised, “I know I am, but I just…” She swallowed thickly and moved her arms away from Finnick’s torso, up to his face instead. “My worry isn’t about that. My worry is that I want to be sure that you know you don’t have to exert yourself to this extent.” Y/n once again offered him a tiny smile despite the turmoil in her mind. “You’re already going through a lot yourself, you don’t need to take me on as a burden too,” she assured him.

“You’re not a burden, my love,” Finnick argued with a soft shake of his head.

Y/n let out an airy half-laugh. “Regardless, Fin, I’m serious, you’d still be the best boyfriend, and the love of my life, without taking this on too. I need you to know that you don’t need to do this,” she explained fully.

Finnick smiled warmly as he continued to gaze down at y/n. “I do”. He leaned his head into her hand on his jaw. “I do know that, honey”.

“Good,” y/n breathed out in relief. “I don’t ever want to pressure you to do anything, even small, that-“ she began to ramble.

“I know,” Finnick nodded in understanding, his pointer finger trailing down her jaw. “I feel the same, angel,” he pointed out softly. “I want this. I want us. And, I want to be there for you, to lighten this darkness as much as I can for you since I can’t stop it.”

Y/n let out a choppy cry before she dove back into Finnick’s embrace. She held onto him tightly. “I love you so much, sweetheart,” she whimpered against his shoulder as her arms snaked around his back.

“I love you too, honey,” Finnick cooed, his own arms tight around y/n. “I love you too.” He closed his eyes and breathed in her familiarly comforting scent. “We’re going to get through this.”

'Cause I, 'cause I

I don't know how to feel

But I wanna try

I don't know how to feel

But someday I might

Someday I might

Y/n gasped as the bathroom door opened unexpectedly. She’d been staring at her bruises through the mirror for hours. Or so she suspected. She’d dissociated and lost track of time. As such, when the door opened, she had just been standing there alone in her and Finnick’s bathroom in only her bra and panties as she continued to take in her appearance.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Finnick guiltily rushed out, stepping back into the hall and quickly pulling the door shut. “I didn’t know you were home, I’m sorry,” he whispered. His brows were scrunched as he tried to keep his anger at bay over having seen the marks on her body. Whoever her body had been sold to today hadn’t followed the contractual restrictions of not marking her up. The limitation was one of Snow’s rules for the acts one could commit against the victors he sold to the residents of the Capitol. It was not for the protection or sake of the victors themselves, but rather because it decreased their worth until the marks healed; Snow didn’t take discounts, meaning injuries risked a victor being out of commission for some time.

“‘s okay, Fin,” y/n whispered. She wiped the unshed tears from her eyes. She felt bad for the way her gasp made him feel like he was in the wrong for simply opening the door to his own bathroom. But, there was a more prevailing sense of blame that she felt right now regarding what he just experienced because of her. “Sorry, you didn’t need to see that… to see… me… like….” She rambled.

Finnick rested his head on his side of the closed bathroom door. “Honey, no, please don’t apologize,” he frowned. “Are you okay?” It was a stupid question, but he found himself needing to ask it nevertheless.

“Y-yeah,” y/n’s voice trembled through the door.

Finnick winced and pursed his lips. “Y/n,” he whispered knowingly.

“I can’t…. I…” y/n huffed. “It’s just…, I don’t know how to cover them,” she choked out. “Snow’s…. Snow is going to blame me”. Despite being on the other side of the door, her worry was evident in her tone.

Finnick squeezed his eyes shut. She shouldn’t be worried about this. She shouldn’t be dealing with any of this. She was meant for far more than this. “It’s not on you,” he reminded her gently.

“It was…,” y/n began, but paused, not wanting to burden Finnick by informing him of the name of her client. It was something they both often protected the other from. Since they would have to run into previous clients at mandatory Capitol parties, knowing who they were would only cause them to be constantly be mad at those specific attendees after knowing what they had been capable of doing to their unwilling partner. It was a morbid resolution, but one the couple had settled on in order to survive.

Y/n shook her head as she stared into the bathroom mirror. She watched herself as she poked at the bruising on her side. She flinched at pain and stifled a hiss. “He…,” she paused and took a deep breath, “he’s too close to Snow”. While she wouldn’t bother Finnick with who he was tonight, she knew her boyfriend was set on understanding why she was worried about being blamed for this when it was the one thing that usually fell on the clients. “It’ll be pinned on me for not having stopped him, that I should’ve-,” y/n sighed.

“That’s not your responsibility,” Finnick quickly pointed out. Y/n needed to know that. None of this was her fault nor responsibility. She was merely trying to survive. Something that shouldn’t be this difficult. “That’s not even something you are allowed to do, don’t let them trick you into blaming yourself by pretending that you suddenly had the privilege to stop him. None of this is by choice. None of this is your fault,” he reminded her. Taking a deep breath, he pressed his lips into a thin line. “Regardless of what you have to do or not do, none of this is your fault. No matter what you did or didn’t do, do or don’t do. Okay?” Finnick practically pleaded softly.

“Okay,” y/n agreed. She stood in silence as she stared at the purplish stains on her skin. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she confessed after another moment of contemplation.

Finnick bit his lip. “We’ll worry about that later,” he promised. “For now, do you need medical attention?” He asked worriedly. He’d only seen y/n’s injuries briefly before quickly shutting the door so she could regain some privacy.

Y/n chuckled darkly. “Like that would ever be an option,” she scoffed. The sold victors, even when covered in injuries despite their clients being told not to cause any, weren’t allowed to seek medical services or treatment. No matter how small or severe. It was clear Snow feared that the victors doing so would potentially expose the villainous was he was running a sex trade for the Capitol’s most prized residents. Not that anyone would likely do anything even if they did.

“It is,” Finnick corrected, his worry increasing as he wondered if y/n had gone without help for injuries before tonight. “We might not be able to go seek it out,” he acknowledged. “But, I’ve got a kit.” Finnick bit the inside of his cheek as he prepared to hear her answer to his next question. “Do you need anything?”

Y/n sniffled. “There’s nothing you can do for bruises,” she sighed.

Finnick’s fists balled at his side as he heard y/n’s shaky breathing and sniffling. “I… there’s a… a uhhh..” he rambled, his mind spinning. “A balm in the bottom drawer, to the left of the sink, it helps with pain,” he offered. He leaned against the doorframe, his ear pinned to the door as he waited to see if there was anything he could do for y/n.

After a few moments of silence, Finnick finally heard y/n’s small voice call out his name. His head perked up against the door. “Yeah, honey?” He asked. “I’m still here, what’s happening?”

“I, uhhh…” y/n frowned, burdened with guilt. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I can’t… I can’t reach it.”

“The balm?” Finnick questioned. He tried to visualize where it was and what severity or type of injuries might be preventing y/n from being able to reach it.

Y/n hesitated for a moment, uncertain how to answer without sounding weak and worrying Finnick further. “No, the… the handprint on my back,” she choked out.

Finnick winced, his fists clenching together and eyes screwing shut tightly. “Do you want some help?” He asked once he’d regained some of his composure.

“Do you mind?” Y/n whispered.

Finnick opened his eyes and frowned as he stepped back slightly from the door. “No, ‘course not, honey,” he promised. “Let me know when you’re okay with me coming in, alright?” Finnick instructed tenderly.

“Uhh yeah..,” y/n agreed slowly. She gazed at her exposed body in disgust. “How much… uhmmm. How much do you want me to cover up?”

“What do you mean, love?” Finnick wondered.

“I…,” y/n sighed. “How much should I cover up? Like… just leave my back exposed?” She asked as she eyed her discarded pile of tainted clothes in the corner of the bathroom.

Finnick frowned at y/n’s worry. “Whatever you’re comfortable with, love,” he advised gently. “As much as you need.” Finnick quickly tried to find a better response, knowing that a direct answer would help her since she was feeling sorta out of it right now. “If you prefer, I can blindly apply it to your back under your top,” he offered.

“Okay so you want me fully dressed?” Y/n asked rhetorically as her slow mind thought through her next steps. “One moment,” she agreed, turning to her pile of abandoned clothing.

Finnick’s brows furrowed. “It’s not about what I want, honey.” He sighed silently to himself. He hated how much she was worrying about him right now when she was the one needing help. “I just want you to be comfortable… as much as you can,” Finnick explained.

“So, I…” y/n began as she made her way back to the bathroom entrance. She cracked the door open lightly. She held it in place, forming just enough of an opening to stick only her head out of it, the edge of the door pressed into her neck. This way she wasn’t exposing Finnick to the sight of her injuries just yet. Y/n hesitantly looked up and met his patient eyes. “You’re okay with me not putting my shirt back on yet?” She clarified.

Finnick nodded, “I’m fine either way”. “This is about you, y/n”.

“Okay,” y/n said with a weak nod since her head was pinned. She offered Finnick a small smile, “thanks”. “‘Cause the fabric hurts right now,” y/n confessed.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Finnick reminded y/n lovingly.

Y/n pulled her head back in through the slightly opened door. “I know, it’s just, I know how ugly my body looks right now,” she explained as she slowly opened the door for Finnick.

“Hey, hey, don’t say that,” Finnick scolded softly. “You’re beautifully breathtaking, honey, always,” he promised. “Of course I don’t want to see you like this, but that’s not because it changes your beauty, only because I hate that you’re in pain, that someone hurt you,… I mean, I know it always hurts… I don’t like that either… I just meant.. right now with it being… more than…” he rambled.

Y/n nodded in understanding. She grabbed Finnick’s hand tightly. The warmth from his palm helped soothe her some. A shiver went through her as her body began to release some of the tension she was holding in.

Finnick stared intently into y/n’s eyes. “You’re in charge here, okay? You control where I look or touch, okay?”

When Finnick finished his scan of y/n’s body for any more injuries to attend to, he sighed with the tiniest bit of relief. “I promise you,” he said as he stood before her and took her hands in his. “I’m going to see to it that we find a way to make this end, to take our lives back, because you’re made for much more than to be used for Snow’s cruel plans”.

“We,” y/n corrected lovingly. She smiled softly at him, temporarily forgetting about the painful bruises that had led them to this tender moment.

Finnick smiled back. “Yeah.” He stepped closer to y/n, never breaking eye contact. “We are made for much more than to be his pawns. And I vow, one day it won’t even be something we have to worry about ever again”.

Y/n stared deeply into Finnick’s calming and beautiful eyes. “Maybe I was made for loving you, Fin,” she commented dazedly.

“Wh-…What?” Finnick stumbled breathily. “What, honey?” He asked. He couldn’t have possibly heard her correctly.

Y/n smiled tenderly at Finnick. She pulled his hands towards her, pleased when his feet followed and brought the rest of him with. “I said, ‘maybe I was made for loving you, Fin’,” y/n happily repeated.

“I.. I don’t…,” Finnick gasped with a timid shake of his head.

Y/n smiled up at Finnick as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’s never even been a choice,” she admitted admiringly, “although if it were, it’d have been the easiest decision in all of Panem history”. “It’s just so easy and comfortable to love you, Finnick. It’s just so right”. She shook her head lovingly as she continued to peer into his sea-green eyes that felt like home.

Finnick knew he was undoubtedly a blushing mess. But he didn’t care. “Well,” he mumbled and cleared throat. “If that’s something one can be made for, then I was made for loving you, my dear,” he hummed. Finnick smiled lovingly at y/n before bowing his head to kiss her forehead.

“One day everyone will know that’s all we’ll ever have been made for,” y/n hummed, returning Finnick’s encouraging sentiment from earlier. She leaned into his kiss and cuddled up in his arms.

Finnick was careful in his positioning due to y/n’s bruises, but he nevertheless returned her embrace. He cautiously held her to him with a soft sigh. “One day, honey, one day”.

Think I forgot how to be happy

Something I'm not, but something I can be

Something I wait for

Something I'm made for

Something I'm made for

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[chaoticace2005]

List of WHERE THE FUCK DID VAGGIE COME FROM?? (and also other exorcists)

1. She was heaven-born: ichor as blood is limited to heaven-born, Adam named her, military schools from being exorcist, picked up Spanish elsewhere (a Winner maybe? We haven’t seen any other angels speak Spanish yet so…)

2. She was a human soul: ichor is in all beings living in heaven (as seen with Adam- but he may be a special case), Adam renamed her, military skills possibly due to past life?, where she learned Spanish

3. She is a human soul, and old info about Vaggie remains canon- she’s Salvadoran and died in like 2014

4. ^ That was a lie she told Charlie, and she either had a different life or doesn’t remember/have one on earth at all

5. She’s a human soul that died and went to heaven but lost her memories (either as all Winners do or just after she became an exorcist.) She didn’t have a name so Adam gave her one. Spanish was something she retained

6. She’s a human soul CHOSEN from Earth to be an exorcist. She didn’t die (maybe she was close though?) but they did take her from her life there and washed her memories away.

7. She went to heaven either by 5 or 6 and didn’t lose her memories. But she was forced to confirm and essentially take on a new identity.

8. She was spawned in some exorcist factory in heaven and that’s why Adam named her.

9. “Vaggie” WAS her name on Earth- Adam was her mom.

10. Adam actually went down to Earth and forced some random mother to name her daughter Vaggie because it would be “fucking hilarious.”

11. He actually didn’t name her, but Vaggie reminded him of Vagina so he started pronouncing it like that.

12. Adam laid eggs and she hatched from those.

13. She’s mothman’s daughter (the cryptid, not the icky douchebag demon.) She was raised on earth but because of her elevated status she became an exorcist when she died.

14. ALL exorcists are mothman’s children.

15. Exorcists are random birds picked from Earth after they complete a challenge.

16. Seraphims just pluck feathers out and boom: exorcist.

17. She wasn’t an exorcist. Adam just gaslit her really hard and also the stick up her ass caused her blood to change color so it resembles ichor. (Ghost written by Angel)

18. All exorcists were created at once by the angels. They all grew up and trained together.

19. Once you reach a certain level of the military on earth you become an exorcist when you die (so maybe it’s a free pass and you don’t have to be “good” to be an exorcist, which explains why some of them are so bent on violence. They didn’t have to go through the same screening as everyone else.)

20. They were conditioned to be like this, with Heaven propaganda and working in Hell made them so cold to demons, and having gone through a rigid military program.

21. They spawned fully formed whenever heaven needs more exorcists.

22. Vaggie isn’t real. She’s an illusion of their conscience. The real exorcist was in us all along.

23. Universe saw Charlie was lonely. Universe said, “here girlfriend.” What’s her backstory? They don’t know either.

24. Their blood is actually PISS and they’re spawned form porta-potties left outside too long.

25. Exorcists are people who died by lemons. When life gives people lemons (and kills them), they turn their blood into lemonade.

26. A glow stick factory in Heaven exploded due to Adam. This was the byproduct. Sera had no idea what to do with them so she gave them to Adam as punishment.

[rebellum]

nooo i wrote a whole RESPONSE to this but then tumblr app crashed and then I had to type the whole thing out AGAIN on my computer and then in that time period the op turned reblogs off. Since they turned reblogs off, I decided to cover up their name, in order to kinda respect that.

my response:

No. It is important to create new words in order to discuss specific phenomena. That’s why words like homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, exorsexism, and transandrophobia were invented. 

Sure, lesbophobia is covered under “homophobia”, but lesbophobia is an important word for describing how misogyny and homophobia affect women’s experiences of homophobia. Transmisogyny is covered under “transphobia”, but it’s useful to have a term that specifically describes how trans fems experience the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, not just for being trans, but for being specifically trans feminine, and the ways that expectations of womanhood, femininity, manhood, and masculinity factor into their oppression because of their assigned sex at birth, their presentation, and their gender. Exorsexism is covered under “transphobia”, but it’s useful to have a term to describe how transphobia affects specifically people outside of the gender binary. Misogynoir is covered under misogyny, but the term was created to specifically describe how Black women experience the intersections of racism and misogyny. Of course my explanations here are a little reductive, each one of these examples has much more to it than what I listed. 

In a similar vein, transandrophobia is useful for understanding how transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and the meta-epistemologies of those discourses affect trans mascs, not just for being trans, but for being trans masc. Oppression, both systemic and on individual levels of discrimination and prejudice, works differently for people depending on the intersections of their identity (assigned sex at birth, assigned gender at birth, presentation, gender identity, race, culture, ability, etc). 

So transandrophobia is useful for discussing specifics like:

The idea of “lost lesbians” and “the trans cult tricking little girls into mutilating their bodies”

The rhetoric of violence around testosterone-based HRT. There is the incorrect idea that people who take T become more violent because they are becoming more masculine. 

This association of masculinity with violence, and how that affects trans mascs. For trans people regardless of gender, proximity to masculinity puts people in danger in queer spaces. People are treated worse if they are trans masc, trans fem and don’t pass well enough to the surrounding people, or nonbinary and not sufficiently ‘safely’ androgynous (skinny, hairless, and white, with no prominent secondary sex characteristics). 

How trans mascs are treated differently when they come out, or when they start to transition. Many people find that people are colder to them, they experience higher rates of abuse, and if they are trans men they are told to not talk about their experiences because ‘they are men and can’t possibly understand misogyny’. The voices of people who aren’t trans masc often end up being listened to more about trans masc experiences, than the people who have actually lived through those experiences. Like, people are shitty to trans people that are masculine specifically because they are masculine.

Corrective rape 

Many people, even in feminist and trans spaces, believe that a man’s gender cannot factor into his experiences of oppression. Eg believe that the fact that they are men is irrelevant to trans men’s experiences, believe that a Black man’s masculinity has nothing to do with how he experiences racial oppression, etc. There are even some vocal people who believe that men cannot be oppressed, and that trans men cannot be oppressed, specifically because being men means they CAN’T experience oppression. 

The idea that trans men transition in order to try to escape misogyny 

Discrimination in reproductive healthcare 

A lot more, it would take ages to list the different kinds of transandrophobia

I also noticed you said “continue to feel its effects if they don’t pass”. But that idea is part of the issue: trans mascs continue to experience oppression for being trans masc when they DO pass. Even if someone is well passing, and stealth, they still directly experience discrimination for being trans masc through things like access barriers to reproductive healthcare, higher rates of abuse, sexual assault, etc. 

So transandrophobia (trans andro + phobia, not trans +androphobia as some people against the concept seem to believe) is, like other specific terminologies of oppression, really useful as shorthand for the specific forms of oppression people face not just for being trans, but for being trans masc.

[valkyriesaga-if]

Built a few years after the Collapse, the city of Yggdrasil was meant to be a haven, a refuge. A utopia, where everyone could find their place and be equals.

But that’s the thing with utopias and ideals; they don’t last very long.

Yggdrasil was barely 20 years old when the Magi Council rose above their human brethren, firmly splitting society in two: the magi on one side, who wield privilege like a sword, and the humans on the other, whose only privilege was to stay alive and quiet.

After all, how can you deny Magi what they want, when they are the only thing protecting you from what’s outside the walls?

You’ve been living in the Helheim district for almost as long as you can remember, raised amongst crooks, conmen and criminals all your life. While this hardly seems like ideal conditions to raise a child, it was better than having the Council find out your secret. Helheim was the best place for secrets. You knew it, your mother knew it, everyone in Yggdrasil knew it.

You’re an undeclared Magi. In a city where showing the barest hint of magic can get a child taken away from their parents and chain them forever to the Council of Magi, raising a child under the watching eyes of kingpins, thieves and prostitutes was a shield, an armor. The best protection love could offer.

Every day, you live on the edge of the razor. One wrong move and your life could be upended entirely. But when your mother is on the verge of losing her house, her business, her entire life to Greed, you can’t just sit there and watch it happen.

Being hired to steal the Eyes of The Watcher, the most precious gems in all of Yggdrasil, located right in the heart of the Council Chamber, didn’t seem like such a bad idea, at the time.

Genre

Post apocalyptic, urban fantasy, heist

Content Warning

The story will be 18+ for violence, potential sexual themes, explicit content and gore.

Fully customizable MC: name, gender identity, sexuality, appearance, personality and demeanor

Interact with a varied cast of NPCs

Shape your relationships with your fellow gang members, from lovers to platonic besties, all the while keeping in mind that they are all criminals and liars, just like you.

Experience the Nightmares™

Engage in highly illegal, highly dangerous activities, and maybe some light rebellion and overthrow of authority on the side

Polish your skills such as stealth, combat or knowledge, and discover more about your magic

Spend some time in the luxurious streets of Asgard and other delightful places such as a Helheim fighting ring, the city sewers or a defunct meat factory

Hallucinate?

Pet the cat

The selfish mercenary - Lònan [M, he/him]

Money is the only thing that matters to Lònan. He has made that very clear since the beginning. Obviously, he doesn’t seem to care that much about his own life, otherwise he would have found another way to make a fortune. One that doesn’t involve going into the heart of the enemy territory to steal the most valuable and well guarded artifact in town, for example. Just a thought.

The disgraced Magi - Yugō [M, he/him]

Magi have virtually everything they might want. Money, luxury, and an unending hoard of lackeys to cater to their every need. So you can’t help but wonder what might lead one of them to hide amongst the rats in the dark alleys of Helheim, and Yugo is not inclined to answer your questions.

The unwelcome guest - Halloran [M, he/him]

No one really knows who Halloran is or what he wants, but he seems to keep inviting himself in your dreams, taking great pleasure in playing with you and your sanity. Only he is a cat playing with a mouse, and you can only hope that he won’t eat you whole.

The estranged friend - Mavis [F, she/her]

Back in the time you lived in Midgard West, you and Mavis used to be friends, practically joined by the hip. While she remained as kind and gentle as you remember her, there is a hard edge to her eyes that wasn’t there before.

The mysterious outsider - Koyal [F, she/her]

A courier from outside of town, you’re not sure why she joined your ragtag group of criminals. Calm and quiet, she mostly keeps to herself, but you can’t help but feel her watchful gaze on you every time you have your back turned.

The disembodied voice - Morgane [F, she/her]

You’ve never met her in person, your only contacts with her being over the phone, as she gives instructions to you and the rest of the group. She seems to be the only one in direct relation with the person who hired you for some trivial B&E in the most secure facility in Yggdrasil.

Lònan/Yugō and Koyal/Halloran are potential poly routes.

TBA

This is my first IF and English is not my first language, so feel free to send any constructive criticisms and corrections my way.

This is very early development, so many things are subject to change as i work on the story

Asks are welcome and reblogs appreciated!

[latanyalove]

Don't Go PT Two

This is Part 2 of Don't Go! Here is Part 1!

Please support me by liking, reblogging and commenting on this! Also please follow for more content!

✧༺♥༻∞✧༺♥༻∞✧༺♥༻∞✧༺♥༻∞✧༺♥༻∞

Pairing: Portgas D Ace x Y/N

Dialogue: “Don’t go. I don’t even know who I am without you.” 🔥🏴‍☠️

A/n: I hope you enjoy this as much as I did writing this! <3

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Out of all of the jobs he could have had. It was a pirate.

The mere mention of the word 'pirate' sent shivers down your spine. You were terrified at the thought of encountering a pirate, imagining the ruthless and unpredictable nature of these seafaring outlaws.

The tales of their plundering, pillaging, and ruthless violence made you fear for your safety and the safety of those around you.

So when you heard Marco say that he and his group were pirates, your heart dropped. The fear and anxiety that had built up over the years came rushing back, and you couldn't help but imagine the worst possible scenarios of what being associated with pirates could mean for you.

"Sorry, I need to go," you quickly excused yourself from Marco, leaving the hall.

The last thing you wanted was to be caught up in any illegal activities or put yourself in danger by associating with pirates. . . .

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Ace saw you run away from the hall with a distressed look, and he couldn't help but feel a mix of concern and curiosity.

He wondered what had happened to make you react like that, so he excused himself from the group and went over to Marco, hoping to find some answers.

"What happened with Y/N?" He asked Marco since he was the last person you were with, standing beside him.

Marco then looked at him with a serious face, hesitated for a moment, and finally asked, "Why didn't you tell her that we were pirates from the beginning?"

Ace's eyes widened as the realization hit him like a tidal wave. He now understood why you had run off in distress. The revelation that Marco and he were actually pirates explained everything - the secrecy, the danger, and the constant need to be on the run.

Ace's concern for you deepened as he realized the magnitude of the situation and the potential risks it posed to your safety.

"I didn't want to scare her off," Ace admitted, his voice filled with regret. "I thought this island was going to be a small stop and the talk just kept being postponed," he said, glancing at the door you left at.

Marco sighed, "Go get her then," he said, his tone filled with urgency. "She deserves to know the truth, Ace. And if you truly care about her, you'll do whatever it takes to make things right."

"I will," Ace responded resolutely, determination shining in his eyes. He knew that he couldn't let you go without explaining the truth, no matter the consequences.

Ace quickly made his way towards the door you had left through, his heart pounding with a mix of anxiety and determination. He knew that he had to find you, to explain everything, and to make things right.

He couldn't bear the thought of you being left in the dark, unaware of the dangers and secrets that surrounded him, Marco and the others. As he stepped outside, he scanned the surroundings, hoping to catch a glimpse of you amidst the bustling streets.

Ace searched the busy marketplace frantically, his eyes scanning the crowd for any sign of you, but you were nowhere to be found. With a sinking feeling in his chest, he made his way towards your bakery, hoping that you had sought solace in the familiar surroundings.

As he walked, he couldn't help but replay the events in his mind, regretting his decision to keep his true identity a secret and vowing to make things right with you.

He took a deep breath before asking curiously, "Why are you so terrified of pirates?"

You let out a deep breath, saying, "They destroyed the village and killed my parents," the words caught in your throat as memories of that fateful day flooded back.

Ace's heart sank even further as he remembered the pain and fear in your eyes when you had shared your tragic past with him. He understood now why you were so terrified of pirates - they had taken everything from you.

He wanted to assure you that, even though he was a pirate, he wasn't like the people who attacked your village. He wanted to show you that he could be trusted and that he would do everything in his power to protect you from any harm.

"Let me go!" A voice he knew too well yelled from somewhere nearby.

Without hesitation, Ace sprinted towards the sound of the familiar voice, his heart pounding with a mix of worry and determination. He knew that he couldn't let anything happen to you, not after everything you had been through.

"You guys aren't from here, aren't you?" You accused them as you tried to free your hands from behind you.

"Wow, what a smart cookie!" One man laughed, "You're right, we're pirates,"

"We saw you with Fire Fist Ace on this island and we're going to use you for bait to get him and his bounty!"

The others laughed with him, their cruel laughter echoing in the air.

The realization hit you hard as you looked around and saw that there was no one else in sight except for the pirates. Panic welled up inside you as you realized the gravity of the situation - you were completely alone with them and there was no one to help you.

Despite the fear and panic, you clung to the memory of Ace, knowing deep down that he was different from these pirates.

You then felt a gentle hand push your hair behind your ears, and when you turned to look slightly, you saw Ace standing beside you with a hair tie in his hand, a warm smile on his face.

Your heart skipped a beat at seeing him so close, and you couldn't help but blush.

You felt your heart flutter and you felt your breath catch in your throat. You felt yourself relax as you looked into his eyes, your heart still pounding in your chest.

In that moment, you remembered the moment you had with Ace at your bakery. Everything about him made you feel safe and calm, except for your heart that was beating fast. His presence was reassuring, and you couldn't help but trust him as he gently tied your hair back, his warm smile melting away your fears.

"Now tell us where Fire Fist Ace is or you're going to die," One of the armed men said, holding a knife dangerous close to your neck.

"I don't know where he is," you lied, your voice trembling slightly. You couldn't risk putting Ace in danger by revealing his whereabouts, even if it meant risking your own life.

You just hoped that he stayed with Marco and the others. Then maybe your death wouldn't be in vain.

"Stop lying!" one of them yelled, his voice filled with anger and frustration. The knife pressed harder against your neck, causing a sharp pain to shoot through your body.

It's funny when you think about it. Your parents were killed by pirates and now you were going to die from one too. Yet you fell in love with a pirate and you were going to die protecting him.

"I told you I don't know where he is," you insisted, your voice shaking.

"Okay, your loss," the pirate sneered, tightening his grip on the knife. "If you won't cooperate, then we have no use for you."

The pirate's grip tightened on the knife, and you braced yourself for the pain that was about to come.

You closed your eyes tightly, preparing for the inevitable strike of the knife. But just as the pirate was about to deliver the fatal blow, you heard a loud crash and felt a rush of heat.

Opening your eyes, you saw Ace standing in front of you, his body engulfed in flames as he fiercely fought off the pirates.

With incredible speed and precision, Ace effortlessly dispatched each of the pirates, his flames dancing and crackling with intensity. In less than a minute, the once-threatening group lay defeated on the ground, and you couldn't help but marvel at Ace's sheer power and skill.

After defeating the last guy, Ace immediately focused on you, his eyes were still filled with the hatred he had for the enemies. However, as soon as he saw the fear in your eyes and the blood trickling down your neck, his expression softened and he rushed to your side.

"Are you okay?" Ace asked as he ran over to untie the ropes around your wrist, his eyes filled with concern. He gently inspected the wound on your neck and applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

"I'm sorry you had to go through this," he said softly, his voice filled with regret.

"It's- It's not your fault," you muttered, your voice barely audible. Despite the pain radiating from your neck, you managed a weak smile, grateful for Ace's timely intervention.

"Don't try and speak!" Ace warned, his voice filled with urgency. "You need to save your energy. I'll get you out of here and to safety as quickly as possible."

"I don't think-" you started, your voice trembling.

"Don't say it," Ace said, his emotions going on a rollercoaster. "You're going to make it. We're going to get through this together."

As you tried to speak, you coughed up blood, causing Ace's concern to deepen. He quickly applied more pressure to your wound and reassured you that help was on the way.

"Stay with me," he pleaded, his voice filled with determination.

"I know you're a pirate, Ace, and I don't hate you for it," you muttered, your words barely audible. Ace's eyes widened in surprise, and for a moment, his expression softened. He squeezed your hand gently, a mixture of gratitude and regret in his eyes.

You then felt your consciousness slipping away, your vision blurring as darkness closed in. Ace's voice became distant, but you could still hear the desperation in his pleas. As you fought to stay awake, a sense of gratitude washed over you, knowing that even in this dire situation, you were not alone. . . .

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You woke up with a pounding headache, and even the slightest movement caused sharp pain to shoot through your body. Opening your eyes was excruciating, and you winced as the bright light pierced through your eyelids.

After a few minutes, you cautiously tried to open them again, and to your relief, your eyes slowly adjusted to the light. As your surroundings came into focus, you realized you were in a small, dimly lit room with bare walls and a single window slightly covered by thick curtains.

You couldn't move your hands and you thought it was because you just woke up. There was something, however, that caught your attention. Someone was sleeping on top of you and you knew exactly who it was by the type of hat that was covering his face.

Why was Ace sleeping here?

Having your other hand available, you slowly reached out for his hat and lifted it from his face.

As you lifted Ace's hat from his face, a wave of affection washed over you. His peaceful expression and tousled hair made your heart skip a beat, and you couldn't help but smile at the sight of him. Despite the mysterious circumstances, seeing his face asleep gave you a sense of comfort and reassurance.

"Ace," you whispered, hoping to wake him gently without causing any alarm.

As you whispered his name, Ace stirred and slowly opened his eyes, blinking several times as he adjusted to the dim light in the room. 

"Hey there," Ace mumbled, his voice husky with sleep. He stretched his arms above his head and yawned, his eyes finally focusing on you.  

Ace's hair was tousled and messy from sleep, giving him a charming and disheveled look. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to tame it, but it only made it look even more endearing.

When he realized it was you, he jumped up in surprise, his eyes widening. "You're awake!" he exclaimed, his voice filled with confusion and happiness. 

"What happened?" you asked, seeing that you were in a hospital room.

Ace's expression turned serious as he explained, "You were losing so much blood."

You then remembered what had happened; you got kidnapped and then stabbed in the neck. The shock of the memory flooded your mind, and you couldn't believe the danger you had narrowly escaped.

Ace went back to laying half of his body on the bed, but this time he didn't go to sleep. Instead, he looked at you intensely, his eyes filled with a mixture of relief and concern.

"You scared me," he admitted softly, his hand reaching out to gently touch your arm.

"I thought-"

"But I didn't, did I? I'm still alive and breathing," you stated, trying to assure him and yourself of your survival. Ace's grip on your arm tightened slightly, his eyes never leaving yours.

"Thank goodness," he whispered, his voice filled with gratitude and a hint of vulnerability.

Feeling the warmth of his touch, you found comfort in the connection as he then slowly entwined your hands together, a silent expression of support and reassurance in the face of the danger you had both endured.

"Ace, I know that you're a pirate. Marco told me," you started, not sure what to say after that.

"Really? I'm sorry for hiding it from you," Ace replied, his gaze filled with regret. "I didn't want to put you in danger, but I should have been honest with you from the beginning."

"It's not your fault, I shouldn't have been hating on all pirates when there's people in the world like you,"

Ace's eyes softened, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

"You know, I got an invitation to join your crew by Marco," you said, watching Ace's eyes widen in surprise.

"Really?" Ace exclaimed, his surprise evident in his voice. He paused for a moment, processing the information, before a wide grin spread across his face.

"Have you considered joining?" he asked, his excitement palpable. "With your cooking and bravery, I know you'd be a valuable addition to our crew."

Blushing, you glanced down at your intertwined hands, feeling a mix of nervousness and excitement. "Well, um, I haven't really thought about it...but it's definitely something I'm considering," you replied, a shy smile playing on your lips.

"I'm so happy, Oh i'm so happy I could kiss you!" Ace said happily but stopped after realising what he said.

Ace's face turned bright red as soon as the words slipped out of his mouth. He quickly cleared his throat and awkwardly scratched the back of his head. "Um... I mean, I'm just really glad you're considering it. No need for any kissing, I swear," he stammered, his embarrassment evident in his voice.

You couldn't help but giggle at his adorable reaction, feeling your heart flutter with joy.

Quickly, you gestured for him to come closer, unable to resist the pull of his infectious enthusiasm. As he leaned in, a mixture of anticipation and nervousness filled the air, but deep down, you knew that this moment was the beginning of an extraordinary adventure.

You gently held his cheek and brought him closer, feeling the warmth of his breath against your skin. As your lips finally met in a soft, sweet kiss, you both knew that this moment marked the start of an extraordinary adventure filled with love, laughter, and endless possibilities.

But of course, gentle meant nothing to Ace, and the kiss quickly became more intense and passionate. The world around you faded away as you both lost yourselves in the moment, fueling the fire of your newfound connection and setting the stage for the passionate journey that lay ahead.

Ace's arms roamed eagerly, exploring every inch of your body with a hunger that matched the intensity of his kiss. The electric current that surged between you ignited a fire within, igniting a desire that could not be contained.

"Can you guys stop eating each other for one minute," Marco said at the doorway, interrupting the passionate moment between you and Ace.

Startled, you both pulled away, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but unable to hide the smiles on your faces that spoke of a love that couldn't be contained. . . .

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[nonpracticinghumanbeing]

So Izzy said a thing.

The thing seems to be a part of a redemption arc and makes him sound like a human rather than a monster.

The Canyon went wild with joy and jubilation. The haters are doing everything they can to rationalize the thing in a way that would fit their point of view. One of these things makes me feel like a part of a wonderful, welcoming, and very queer community. The other makes me perplexed, annoyed, and sad at the same time - in a way that feels very personal.

OFMD is an explicitly and unapologetically queer show. And not just that, it shows a variety of non-normative behaviors (Jackie’s polyamory, Geraldo’s humiliation kink, Lucius and Pete’s penchant for “having an audience” to say nothing of Izzy’s masochistic tendencies) in a completely non-judgmental way, making the viewer feel like all ways of performing one’s sexuality are valid.

Izzy wants to be a part of this world. For all his anger and manipulations, and (yes, let’s call him out for the sake of fairness) his abusive behaviors, he desperately wants to be a part of the world where he is free to love who he loves, in whatever way he is capable of doing so. No matter how much the haters don’t want to acknowledge it, this is ultimately a story about love. Both Con and Daddy Jenkins admitted Izzy is in love with Edward and the fact that the antis are willing to contradict not only the actor (who, may I remind you, was instrumental in shaping Izzy’s character) but also the showrunner is very symptomatic of the larger issue of how queer people have been treated in society.

No one in their right mind chose to become a pirate unless they had no other option. Piracy was fraught with constant danger and meant being an outsider everywhere. The only place one could be more or less safe was between people in the same lifestyle. In OFMD that is represented by the Republic of Pirates, where not being a pirate would get one in trouble. Sure, there is some violence but it comes with the territory and - much more importantly - it’s never motivated by someone being a pirate.

Izzy claims to hate the Republic - and for someone as repressed as him it makes sense. There are people being a different kind of a pirate than Izzy would like there - drunk, rowdy, and undisciplined. He clearly takes great pride in his work and has built his whole identity around being Blackbeard’s first mate. Seeing people be pirates while taking their responsibilities lightly doesn’t fit his worldview because he’s been taught that all of his energy should be spent protecting whatever freedom the pirates managed to carve out for themselves.

Someone once wrote that despite what the popular meme says, Izzy isn’t a real pirate dropped into The Muppet Treasure Island, but rather a hard boiled queer-coded character from a 50s noir movie dropped into today’s Pride. He’s had to keep vigilant against any threat for so long he hasn’t noticed that there was a way to be a pirate/queer and still enjoy one’s life. That one can like frilly robes and be a somewhat competent sea captain. That it is possible to pine for one’s boyfriend and keep one’s crew safe. That being soft doesn’t necessarily mean being weak.

He’s willing to do whatever it takes and sacrifice whatever has to be sacrificed (Stede’s life, Edward’s happiness, his own status of the loyal first mate) to keep his little pirate/queer world safe. It’s this conviction that puts him in the way of Ed and Stede’s relationship and makes him an antagonist. But - and it’s something the haters seem to be incapable of grasping - an antagonist doesn’t have to equal a villain.

Why does Izzy react so violently to Stede, exactly? Why is he willing to go against his captain's wishes in challenging Stede to a duel? Why does he sell Stede out, making a deal with the enemy in the process? Because Stede is a stranger infiltrating Izzy’s safe space. The English are a huge threat, sure, but they are easily identifiable from a distance. Stede seems to Izzy to be something far more dangerous - an outsider worming his way into the heart of Izzy’s world, where he can do truly irreparable damage. The English are cops who chase gay boys around the park. Stede has the potential of being an undercover cop sent into a queer bar in the 1930s to get the dirt on the patrons so they can be blackmailed and arrested.

Of course, he may not be that, but it’s a risk Izzy can’t allow himself to take. With his vision of what it means to be a pirate/queer he's sure he sees through Stede’s ruse. Now, I’m not trying to excuse abusive behavior, as some of Izzy’s choices were hurtful to everyone around him. But as a queer person I do have sympathy for someone (grossly) overreacting in defense of their safe space. Constant vigilance is an inherent part of the queer experience, especially for those living in conservative countries or remembering the times before the Pride.

Like, for example, Con does. Con, who - yes, I will repeat this because it’s super important here - played a huge part in shaping Izzy’s character. Con, who despite having a decades-long career where he often clearly gravitated towards queer characters, only got comfortable enough THIS YEAR (and thanks to this show and this fandom) to publicly come out. Con, who - as a friend wonderfully phrased it - is queer as in start a riot, not as in love wins.

And Izzy is the same. He is a start a riot pirate/queer in a show full of love wins pirates/queers. His way of being what he is is so totally different from everyone around him that it makes him an antagonist. (Sure, there are other start a riot queers in the show - Jim literally kills a man who wronged them and Lucius is very outspoken about his opinions in a way that makes him somewhat radical, but neither of them is as extreme in their ways as Izzy is and neither goes against the main characters’ romance thus becoming an antagonist.) But. The thing is, when you are a part of a minority, when you are being prosecuted and targeted for who you are, you need safe spaces. And those safe spaces need protection, because every freedom can be taken away if wrong people come to power. No doubt the queer movement would look much more tame and palatable to the bigots if we were all the love wins queers. But we desperately need the start a riot queers if we are to survive.

So yeah, you can say Izzy said what he said because he needs a structure and clear hierarchy in his life. He absolutely does. Some of it comes from his submissive and masochistic tendencies, sure (I wrote a lot about that, including a piece for the Above All Else zine). Some of it may come from neurodivergence (some people read Izzy as autistic, I’m not going to discuss this because as a neurotypical person I have nothing of value to say about it). But it also ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY comes from the desperate need to protect his safe space from outsiders.

And there is one more thing the haters conveniently forget about: OFMD is also a show about growth. It’s about Stede turning from a wooden puppet into a real boy and then into a man. It’s about Edward learning there is a life beyond the legend of Blackbeard and peeling off at least some of the leather. And judging from the trailer, it’s about Izzy learning you can be a start a riot pirate while being accepting of the love wins pirates in your life. 

The more I think about it, the more likely I find it that Stede’s “I don’t care what anybody says, he’s actually a good guy” line from the teaser refers to Izzy. But even if it doesn’t, I am 100% sure the haters will be proven wrong. This show never relied on stereotypes and cliches. In fact, it actively does everything to break them (from Jim’s sacred quest for revenge ending up with them befriending Jackie to the only names that get mispronounced being those of white characters) while killing off the real enemies of the pirate/queer crew (Badmintons, Jack, Geraldo) and giving all its characters place to grow.

So, maybe one day we will all learn to love Izzy? 

[waffles-art-writing]

Water Logged - Task Force 141!Platonic x F!Reader - JOKER

Summary: PART 2 of One Hell Of A First Mission. You end up crammed in the back seat between your team mates. You become aware that both you and your Scottish Teammate find the funny side to most things, you find out having to swim with a balaclava is like breathing through a wet sponge.

Proofread: NOPE

Pairing: Task Force 141!Platonic x F!Reader

WordCount: 4.2k ish

Age Rating: 16+

Codename: JOKER

KEY: Y/N - Your Name, L/N - Last Name.

Warning/Info: COD Violence, Swearing, description of injuries, Weapons, fighting, fluff and angst if you squint. A lot of time skips sorry. Sorry if its not identical to the game… ENJOY! Oh and Graves… he’s just a warning within himself.

Please go read the previous parts here MASTERLIST

If you want more please comment! Reblogs are appreciated!

Also sorry if it’s not any good, I’m going through a huge writers block…

Taglist: @studywithrosie01 (idk if you still wanna be tagged so I’ll tag you till you tell me otherwise if that’s okay?) IF YOU WANNA BE TAGGED PLEASE COMMENT!

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You sit crammed in the back seat of the vehicle. Ignoring how uncomfortable you are squished up against Soap and Ghost. Your arms crossed, legs crossed, practically twisted like a pretzel. Graves is in the front seat while Alejandro is driving, happy as Larry they are compared to you and your squished team mates, that could be compared to a can of sardines. You bite your tongue when the vehicle hits a pothole, Soap groans lightly and Ghost just tightens his grip on the seat. “Fuck this” you spit out, pushing yourself to stand, slipping over the back of the seat into the free space in the back.

“What the fuck” Soap states, looking over you, who looks a lot more comfortable than before. “I hate being crammed between two men who smell like shit” you chuckle, leaning onto your arms that are folded over your knees. “I don’t stink..” Soap growls, huffing as he turns back around to face the front. Ghost glances at you, you just shrug as you smile under the joker smile on your balaclava.

An hour passes of you sitting in the back, almost falling asleep in the darkness of the night and the few street lights that you pass by. You snap awake when you feel a hand shaking your shoulder, your mind groggy from the light slumber your brain was dancing with just moments ago. You groan lightly as you sit up, stretching out. You go to lean against the door that would open for you to be able to access the back from the outside, however your back doesn’t touch anything, you tumble out of the back. Going head over heels out of the vehicle, your gun clanging to the ground as you squeeze your eyes tight, bracing for the impact of the ground. Nothing comes, your body doesn’t hit the ground, warmth is raiding off two spots on your upper back.

You crack open your eyes to come face to face with Alejandro, his smile wide with a light chuckle. “You alright there Joker?” He asks, you just nod as he helps you up. “Yeah… thanks Alejandro.” You chuckle lightly, rubbing the imaginary kink out of your neck as you stand there looking down at your boots. “Any time.” He states as he pats your shoulder, you smile lightly, your mask shifting.

A deep voice sounds out from your left, you look over to see Ghost holding your rifle. “Oh… thanks Lieutenant'' You state, taking the gun from the taller man with a cold gaze. He just hums as he turns away, walking towards the large building you’re all supposed to be on top of. You strap the rifle to your back as you approach the building, following the rest of the team in, to your annoyance Graves is behind you.

He attempts some small talk but you shoot it down quickly with a “Shut up yank.” This caused the rest of the team to look over their shoulders down at you, Soap almost tripping up the stairs, Ghost almost getting whiplash with how quickly he looked at you. Along with nearly causing Alejandro to have a coughing fit when He coughs into his hand to hide his smile, you just keep your eyes forward passing the others on the way to the roof.

You perch yourself on one of the air condition units, looking at the fancy mansion in the distance, Ghost is a few paces in front of you, just off to the right. Alejandro, Graves and Soap all stand at the edge using binoculars to look at the mansion. Your mind focused on the heavy foot patrol around the compound, wondering how on earth you guys are gonna get in without a problem.

“Las casa de Sin Nombre?” Soap asks, which makes you look at him with a raised brow. ‘When did he learn that?’ You question, even Ghost glances at the Scotsman then to you. Alejandro sighs lightly before speaking “No. One of his Lugartenientes” you stand from your spot, walking up to stand next to Ghost. “The Cartel’s Lieutenant” you mumble to yourself, even though Soap states it louder. Alejandro states ‘Nice, brother. You’re learning’ in Spanish. Ghost looks over at you to see if you're gonna translate quietly again, you glance up at him briefly. “He praised him,” you shrug, looking back at the others.

“My sources tell me all the VIPs in Las Almas will be there tonight.” Alejandro continues “Some are invited, others are, umm….” Graves speaks up this time, his accent strong “Volun-told…?” “Yes,” Alejandro confirms.

“What’s the meet about?” Graves asks, looking over at Alejandro, who in turns says ‘Us’ in Spanish which you just whisper a quiet ‘us’ while motioning to everyone for Ghost. “Las Almas is burning, and they want to know who lit the fire.” Alejandro states, Ghost looks over at the Mexican “Sin Nombre will be there, yeah?” His accent is not helping his pronunciation of the Spanish words. “No guarantees but this is our best shot” Alejandro states while he turns to Ghost, walking a few paces closer.

Graves and Soap have done the same, Philip Graves taking the talking again with “Then we take it.” Which causes your skin to crawl,“I got enough Shadows here to take over the whole damn country.” “I’d prefer if you didn’t.” Alejandro protests, you take a step forward to defend Alejandro when Graves speaks up again.

Your actions fall short when Soap and Ghost give you a slight shake of their heads, you just let out a quiet huff as you back down. “Just saying … one house shouldn’t be a problem” Graves states, “We need Sin Nombre alive.” Ghost growls, Graves just lets out a small half chuckle of a huff, looking from Ghost over to the compound.

“Well…” he pauses. “Then we need to meet him.” He turns to look back at the group before looking at Soap who questions how. Your stomach sinks at the next statement that comes from the Shadow Company leader “Give ‘em what they want… Intel.” You glance at Soap then to Ghost “They wanna know who’s here. Let’s tell ‘em.” Both you and Alejandro ask “In person-?” You shift in your spot, uneasy with where this is going.

“Correcto… Get one of us inside, find the boss… roll him up” he states, looking around the group then to Alejandro properly.

There’s a brief pause before both you and Soap step forward with a “I’ll do it.” You both look at eachother, both not willing to back down. “Joker no, you gotta stay out here. You’re too…” Graves starts, his excuse fading quickly when you look at him. “Because I’m weaker? A girl? So fucking what Philip, you don’t get to say what I do.” You growl, he steps up to you, nose to nose at this point. “You ain’t going in there, we need you out here with Ghost.” He sneers. “You don’t give me orders mate, Ghost or Soap can but you can’t. SO, get off your high horse and realise I am as skilled as the rest of this team.” Graves backs down when he looks you in the eye, knowing how stubborn you are from previous encounters with you. “Lass, you stay out here with Ghost. Be my eyes for me on the outside.” Soap states, trying to level with you on you not going. You stare at the blue eyed Scotsman, brows furrowed under your mask. “You’re with me Joker, I need you with me while Graves goes and gets the Shadows” Ghost states, an order. You look to Alejandro to gauge his opinion, he just looks at you and Soap. “You go in there, and they’ll kill you.” He shakes his head lightly at you. “We need your eyes out here.” You just huff and back down, stepping out of the circle as the rest of them continue their conversation.

You follow Ghost to the spot he will be situated to be eyes for Soap and Alejandro, you’re there to watch his back as well as signal spot anything that Ghost doesn’t spot. You think its stupid in reality, this man is a bloody Lieutenant, he didn’t get to this point because of luck. He got his title because of skill, he knows how to keep himself concealed when sniping, he knows he’s vulnerable when he’s laying on his stomach and looking through the scope. You’re mere six feet away from him, knowing he likes his space just by the aura that radiates off him.

You haven’t talked much with your Lieutenant, you translated some words for him when he cocks his head to the side, or just doesn’t reply to a question. You have been his shadow for most of this mission, except for when you got separated and had to be by yourself for brief moments of time. You and Soap grew close quickly though, but you never talk much unless you’re spoken to, so right now you're a little anxious for Soap who is now being escorted into the large building.

You don’t talk over the comms, Ghost taking that role pretty well in all honesty. But once Soap is allowed to walk around the building, by means of Alejandro helping after getting inside and getting a disguise. You pipe up to tell him there’s a large trellis for him to be able to climb to help get to the balcony . “What now?” Soap asks, his voice crackling to life in your ear. “Y’know those plant thingys for them to grow up a wall…” you can see him shrug lightly through your scope. “For fucks sakes… a plant ladder Soap… that black thing with leaves” you hear a long “Oh” before you see him climb it with slightly difficulty before jumping the rest of the way to latch onto Balcony rails.

“Thanks Lass.” He states, you just hum in response. Moments pass as you quietly watch the building with baited breath. Your heart sinks when shots ring out, chaos ensues quickly onto Soap and Alejandro. You don’t have eyes on them, they are still inside the building. They just broke into the room with Sin Nombre in it, which turns out to be the woman that Soap got the displeasure of meeting down stairs in the makeshift interrogation room.

You go to push yourself from the ground, to run and help your team but a hand quickly catches your wrist when you go to get off the ground. “Don’t do anything stupid, kid.” That’s all that Ghost says before letting you go and nodding to you, that’s all you need before you’re bolting towards the compound. You’re just over a few hundred metres away from the fire fight, you can easily get there in a quick minute.

You sprint through the small forest that sits at the bottom internet he hill, jumping over and dodging low hanging branches. You see that the guards are scrambling to get to Alejandro and Soap, you take advantage of the distracted guards. Sliding up behind them one by one, taking them down like it was nothing, slicing their necks, kicking their legs out from under them. A quick bullet to each of their heads before moving to the next part.

“They’re on the roof, Joker, get yer ass there now!” You hear Ghost growl in your ear, your heart skips a beat when you realise how high the roof is from your position in the ground. You shake off the icy feel of dread, quickly scaling the same trellis that Soap used. You know it will take too long to find stairs to the roof, the next best thing is using the window sills to grab the gutter of the lower roof.

You shimmy across the small outcrop of stone, grabbing the edge of the roof as soon as it came into reach. The tiles creak under your weight, threatening to slip out from under you as you push yourself up to stand. A bullet flies overhead as you peek out to see where your team is. “Fuckin hell” you curse, throwing yourself over the small wall and into the flat surface of the roof you find yourself pinned to your hiding spot.

You hear a yell from a woman, you realise it’s the woman from earlier. The one you need, the one you need to detain as quickly as possible. “Put your hands where I can see them!” You yell, your rifle aimed at the woman’s back, right where her heart would be. Both Soap and Alejandro come sprinting around the corner, coming to a screeching halt when they see you aiming at the woman. Your breathing is heavy as you keep your eyes on the target, not batting an eye when you realise Shadow Company have arrived and are just hovering off the roof in a chopper.

You’re not even registering that anyone is talking to you, or to anyone for that matter. You’re solely focused on not letting this woman who you don’t even know the name of, out of your sight before she’s cuffed and taken to the base. Moments pass before Alejandro is cuffing her and dragging her away, you lower your gun as you let out a S breath you didn’t even realise you were holding. “Lass?” You whip around to see Soap, a small smirk on his lips as he looks at you.

You probably look like shit, you haven’t slept in days, haven’t been able to actually make yourself look presentable. “Hey…” you state quietly, barely audible over the sounds of the chopper, Soap approaches you when you adjust the balaclava slightly. “Thanks… to be honest we thought she was gonna be gone” he states, his hand clasping your shoulder with affection and gratitude.

You nod as you place a hand over his, he sees that you were worried, his grip tightens. “C’mere” his voice soft as he pulls you into his side, resting his chin on the crown of your head. “Let’s go kick some cartel arse, aye?” You just nod with a small chuckle as you pull away from the side hug, your eyes crinkle under your mask as you look up at the Scotsman.

——— Time Skip ——-

You’re beyond exhausted, you successfully got the missiles disarmed from the oil rigs and the large container ship. You despised being on the ship, the slippery deck and rocking of the ship on the stormy sea wasn’t helping you. The motion made you feel sick. The rain pelting down didn't help with the thunderous sound of the waves and cracking of lighting overhead, especially when the smaller containers started sliding across the ship.

You were almost crushed by one before you were dragged out of the way by Soap. Now you're in the back of one of the vehicles of the convoy, Alejandro in the front passenger seat, one of his men driving. You’re crammed in the back with Soap and Ghost again, your head lulling back with your eyes locked on the ceiling, your wet clothes now damp still sticking to your skin. Soap is man spreading, Ghost doing the same as you're crammed between the two. The sound of the rain hitting the windows and roof almost sends you to sleep, but you sit up when you feel the vehicle slow to a stop outside of the compound. Alejandro’s compound.

You lean forward, intrigued by the sudden stop. Alejandro gets out and approaches Graves, they both seem tense. The rain continues to pound against the metal of the vehicles. You can barely hear Alejandro and Graves talking, Ghost and Soap step out of the vehicle now standing in the rain. You go to follow the Ghost but he stops you, his body in the way. “Hold your tongue okay?” You just nod as he moves away, you stand next to him, slightly behind and furthest away from the others.

You can barely make out the conversation, your heart starting to pound in your ears as the rain slides down the back of your shirt, you left your jacket in the back seat. Your mask is drenched and sticking to your face uncomfortably. “Are you threatening us?” Ghost growls out, stepping forward. You look over to Graves, your eyes narrowing. You scan from the American over to Alejandro then to Soap, you want to say something, but you follow Ghost’s order.

You can’t hear a word that is being said, you're too preoccupied with watching all the Shadows slowly moving into defensive positions around you. There’s one behind you, the hairs on the back of your neck are standing on end. Suddenly Alejandro lunges at Graves, chaos erupts. You snatch the knife from your thigh holster, taking a large step backwards and lunging low, whipping around and slicing through the heavy military issued pants, digging deep into the Shadows knee.

Slicing through the tendons causing him to stumble, missing his shot. His body slumps to the ground when you hear a sickening wet thunk, one of Ghost’s knives embedded deep in the shadow. You see Johnny on the other side of the car, the brake lights bright in your eyes as you go to help him.

A hand grabs the back of your vest, dragging you backwards. “Get out of here now!” Ghost yells over the rain, shoving you towards the dark forest. “But-!” “JUST GO! GET OUT OF HERE KID! BOTH OF YOU! GET OUT OF HERE JOHNNY!” Ghost growls, his eyes filled with a swirling storm of anger, concern and desperation.

You nod as you grab hold of Soap’s vest, dragging him towards the concrete barrier. He manages to get to his feet, sending himself over the low wall. Soap slides down the slope, firing back at whoever is shooting at him. You didn't quite make it over the barrier in the same spot as Soap, you had to dash a few metres away from him. You flung yourself over the low wall, sending you into a tumbling mess down the slope, narrowly missing the trees and rocks.

Coughing as you push yourself to your feet, your legs feeling like jelly as you stumble through the thick bushes.

“Fuckin’ hell” you curse, you look up to see the light pollution form the nearby town. Branches and twigs snap back in your face as you push your way through the bushes, eventually stumbling into someone's backyard. Your arms are scraped and sliced to shit by the trees, your leg feels like someone kicked you with steel caps. You limp your way to the back door of the house, no lights are on. “Please no one be home” you mumble as you try the door, no luck. You crouch down, hissing when your leg protests against the movement. Ripping a small blade from your ankle holster, you smirk, thankful you didn't lose it in the tumble down the hill.

The house was practically empty, very few helpful items were scattered around. You managed to find bandages, which came in handy to do a half ass job of wrapping your knee. “Joker… this is Ghost. How copy?” Your earpiece crackles to life, you tried your comms before, just after entering the house to no avail.

“Alive… surprisingly” you mumble. “Good to hear from ya lass” Soap’s voice comes through, you smile gently. Happy to know your team is alive and well… maybe the well bit can be disregarded for you. “Good. Are you hurt? Ain’t bleedin’ out like Johnny are ya?” Ghost asks, you shake your head as an answer, even though he can’t see you. “I wouldn’t say bleeding out… but I don’t have as much blood in me as I had at the start of this god forsaken mission.” You state, falling quiet when you make your way down a dark alleyway between two houses.

You hear a small chuckle from Soap and a quiet sigh from Ghost. “I ain’t gonna drop dead if that’s what yer worried about L.T” you quickly add. Pushing your way through a door into a small corner store. “Good, cause I don’t wanna come back and hunt for yer body” Soap jokes, his accent thick over the comms. “We aren’t gonna do any hunting for anyone’s bodies, so keep your eyes peeled and ears open.” “Yes sir” both you and Soap reply.

What feels like an hour is more like ten minutes, you drop down from a balcony, your leg giving way immediately when you land. On your hands and knees you suck in a sharp breath as you lean back onto your heels, you have all agreed to meet at the church in the middle of the town. You’ve made a lot of distance from the very outskirts of town to nearly the middle quickly, light footwork on the tin and tiled rooftops made it easy.

Yet when you decided you needed to go by ground, you had to drop from a significant height.

You whip your head to the side when you hear a low voice talking, shuffling backwards on your ass. Crawling down a few stairs and sticking close to the wall you end up half submerged in a flowing river, a river that’s going through a tunnel. You are pretty sure it used to be a walking tunnel or driving one by the sight of nearly submerged cars.

You can hear Soap talking through the comms, replying to one of Ghost’s shitty jokes. Yet it sounds like Soap’s voice is echoing, like you can hear him talking before it comes through the comms. The next thing you hear is boots hitting the ground and a quiet groan, you peek over the edge of the wall, your hand gripping a pistol you snatched from a Shadow you killed. The dead man's rifle strapped to your back.

You stand quickly with the pistol raised, your eyes locking onto sky blue ones. “Soap?!” You question, lowering the gun as you hobble up the few stairs, drenched from the waist down. “Lass?” The Scotsman asks, his eyes widen as he realises it's you. “I’m assuming you found each other?” Ghost asks through the comms. “Yeah, found her swimming with the fishes” Soap jokes, placing a hand on your shoulder and bringing you into a small side hug.

“What…?” Ghost questions.

“I was hiding in the water cause I didn’t know it was Soap… it was gross” you chuckle, stepping away from Soap with a limp. “What’s wrong with you?” You shrug to the man's question, looking down at your knee.

“I think It got dislocated… but somehow popped it back into place?” You cringe when you lean into it more. “All I know is that it hurts like hell, and I just want to get out of here…” you growl out, moving to walk back down the stairs. “I second that.” Soap states as he follows you.

You’re soaked through, you feel like you swallowed more water than humanly possible. You ended up underwater, sneakily taking out some shadows yet one was able to get the upper hand on you. You ended up back to the ground under the water, desperately holding onto what little air you had left in your lungs before Soap shot the man point blank in the head. Your throat hurts, lungs burning like someone lit a fire in them. The urge to rip the fabric off your head to be able to breathe is strong, yet you flex your fists when Soap looks over his shoulder at you, you’re both holed up in the back of a small store now, trying to figure out where all the Shadows are located.

Ghost is saying something over the comms, you’re honestly not listening to his growling tone. “Joker? You good Lass?” You look at Soap like he’s crazy, in this situation he might as well be. “I feel like I'm breathing through a wet sponge, so I’m just peachy” the sass in your voice causes the Scotsman to chuckle. Suddenly Ghost’s rushed voice breaks through the silence and multiple gun shots ring through the air and the comms. You don’t hear everything as it feels like there’s water lodge in your ears, next thing you know is your sprinting through the open, firing at anything that moves and screams out nonsense.

Ghost is quick to climb the gate, landing with a thump next to you. Soap and Ghost talk as you watch as multiple shadows flood into the area, you hear something about needing a getaway vehicle. “I saw a pickup just across the way when we were running, looked like it still had life” you comment, which sets the plan into stone. Get to the pick up, get the fuck outta here without being shot dead.

You duck and weave through vehicles and tables, shooting and throwing whatever projectiles you had at the Shadows who were not being as effective as General Shepherd expected them to be.

You reach the pick up first, ripping the door open and cramming yourself into the middle, Soap close behind and Ghost throwing himself into the driver’s seat. You can’t do much other than duck down, allowing Soap to shoot and Ghost to drive. You slam into the dash when Ghost slams on the gas in reverse and hits one of the Shadows “I HOPE YOU CAN DRIVE MANUAL!” You yell over the chaos. “FUCK OFF” Ghost sneers as he jams the stick shift into first.

You chuckle quietly as you stay low, preparing for a shitty ride to wherever you are heading.

[axnrxn]

Being their squadmate (König, Simon “Ghost” Riley, Alejandro Vargas, Johnny “Soap” MacTavish) x GN! reader

TW: lots of angst for certain characters (marked w/ *), fluff?, mentions of violence/torture, knives

I made all of these stories distinctly different (as much as I could imagine, at least). These won’t have identical starting or ending points. Not everything has a particularly happy or hot ending, these are just my thoughts on the relationships these characters would form. Extra TW for Ghost and Alejandro, they’re mostly angst and violence. You’ve been warned.

König

It’s your first time working with König, you immediately took interest in him due to how much he literally stood out from the crowd

You were assigned to his unit as a sniper, only to be used on stealthier missions

This immediately put you on König’s radar, the man is still sour about being too large to be considered for a sniper

On your first day, König approaches you silently while you’re eating alone

He takes a seat next to you and simply says, “so you’re a sniper, ja?”

He doesn’t give a chance to respond before continuing “you know, I wanted to be a sniper too, but they told me I’d be of better use as their human battering ram”, finishing his sentence in a bitter tone

You turn to him, ignoring his tone and smile as you reply, “well, then that makes us a perfect team. I’m (Y/C/N). I’ll be watching your six.” and you hold out your hand.

“König.” he replies quickly, his bitterness no longer present as he is taking your hand in an extremely light hold, you assume because he is unsure how much pressure to apply without cursing your hand in his own.

From the first shake, you and König become fast friends

During missions, you keep your promise, saving König a handful of times from being flanked by enemy combatants.

Outside of missions, you let König use your rifle and discover that he actually does have a talent for sniping. Several soldiers gather around to watch him shoot empty canisters off the hillside. He seems thrilled to be given the chance to show off, little do you know it’s because he wants to impress you.

One day, he approaches your quarters after a particularly intense mission that ended with you being held at knifepoint by a man that crept up on your sniper’s perch. König had sniped the man with another rifle from across the field, saving your life.

He lightly knocked on your door, startled by you instantly opening the door (you heard his footsteps coming from around the corner, unmistakable given his size).

“Hey” you said softly. “uhmm, thanks. For today. For everything…” you rambled.

“For everything?” he asked

“Yeah… not just today, even though you literally saved my life. For everything, you being there, always having my back…” you cut yourself off and dove for his midsection, securing him in a hug.

His back tensed a bit before he relaxed into your hold, draping his arms over your shoulders.

“I’ll always have your six, mein schatz” he whispered into your hair.

Simon “Ghost” Riley *

You have worked with Ghost several times in the past as part of the US Intelligence

It is your first time on the ground, however. Ghost greets you about how you’d expect.

“Thrown from your ivory tower to get it on with us peasants, hm?”

You scoff before replying, “more like supervising daddy’s kids for the week, lieutenant”

He grumbles a bit before settling on saying, “Well, just don’t get in our way, yeah?”

You’re assigned to recon and penetration testing servers associated with El Sin Nombre. Your work requires you to physically access the servers rather than your usual remote gig, forcing you to be escorted by 141 to your targets.

Your lack of combat experience is made up for in your deviousness when it comes to chemistry and tech knowledge. A few household cleaners or phone batteries and you’re golden.

Ghost often mumbles things along the lines of, “being on babysitting duty” when escorting you during missions, but you always fire back with the fact that you’re “141’s only technologically literate member”.

Soap gets offended before you remind him that you showed him how to send an ‘invisible’ text over iMessage two days prior.

Despite repeatedly voicing his disdain for you, Ghost finds himself caring for you more and more.

Simon realizes that he’s been disguising his care for you by complaining about your presence. He’s afraid to lose you now, and that realization strikes fear into his cold heart. 

Following this realization, Simon will distance himself from you as much as he can, remaining quiet on missions.

You notice the change in his demeanor and eventually can’t take him ignoring you as much as the missions allow, so you confront him outside his quarters following almost being discovered during a recon mission.

You knock at his door and straighten your posture as you wait.

After what seems like a minute, the door cracks open to reveal a sliver of the skull mask you’ve become so familiar with.

“Simon, you know why I want to talk. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but I want to clear the air between us.” You said, glad you had rehearsed your sentence previously, as his eyes stare you down from behind the skull mask.

“Mmph, got no idea what you’re on about” he replied shortly, already starting to close the door.

“Wait!” you said, sticking your foot in the door. “Come on, Simon. Don’t bullshit me.”

He stared at you for a minute, and you refused to look away from his intense gaze. He finally sighed and opened the door to his bare quarters.

“Well, sit down and let’s talk.”

Alejandro Vargas *

You’re an informant for Alejandro

He saved your life years ago, and you have been grateful to him ever since.

Meeting with Alejandro is rare and dangerous for you both, so you savor every moment you get to see him

Alejandro serves as your beacon of hope, a contrast to your daily life as a sicario for El Sin Nombre.

Because you wear your heart on your sleeve, Alejandro plays into your obvious desires for safety and belonging to get more information out of you. He knows it’s wrong to take advantage of you when you’re vulnerable, but a part of him really does care about you and means what he says.

He promises you that you can stay with him after he takes down El Sin Nombre. Deep down, he knows that you probably won’t live that long. He hopes his promise keeps you alive somehow, though.

One day, you’re caught on camera meeting Alejandro in an alleyway of Irapuato by a man working for El Sin Nombre.

You don’t find out you’ve been caught until you’re on your way home and get jumped. You’re blackbagged and thrown into a van in broad daylight. You know what’s in store for you, wishing you’d simply been disposed of instead. But you’re not one of the lucky ones.

By the time 141 and Los Vaqueros find you, you’re worse for wear. New, large scars now adorn your entire face and body. But they don’t match the ones left on your mind.

After about two weeks of healing in the infirmary, you’re finally released into Alejandro’s care. He makes sure someone is by your side around the clock, but tries his best to make sure it’s usually him. He knows he’s responsible for what happened to you.

When you finally come back to reality somewhat, you cry. You cry seeing the state you’re in, you cry because you know you’ve outlived your purpose to feed information to Los Vaqueros.

Alejandro comforts you, providing you a shoulder to cry on as he tries to be strong for you. It breaks him inside to know he caused this pain.

Eventually, he lets you move into his quarters, so he can help you cope with your nightmares. You don’t want to burden him, but the pleading look in his eyes convinces you that he genuinely wants to look after you.

Rudy takes care of you when Alejandro is not present. Alejandro told him that you just need time and patience, but your wounds will heal.

After a year, you finally work through your war-torn mind. You start looking for revenge. Alejandro is more than happy to aim you at his targets.

He smiles as he watches you finally join his team. He knows you’ll be loyal til the end, til you get your revenge. He loves the anger that invigorates you and drives you forward, seeing you become strong and resilient. He feels a sense of pride and something else. An indescribable attraction to the firebrand you’ve become.

Johnny “Soap” MacTavish

You’re well-acquainted with the members of 141, tending to their wounds when the opportunity arises.

Johnny often indulges in with your dark humor, something you’ve missed from your days as a civilian EMT.

Within your first few weeks in 141, you and Johnny are joined at the hip.

Sticking together whenever you can on missions, always talking with one another outside of missions, eating meals together, training together

During a training session, you suggest to Johnny that you grapple with one another

Within a few seconds, Johnny realizes he’s no match for your clear prior experience.

“And where’d all that come from?” he asked, bewildered by how quickly you got him into an arm bar.

“My dad was really into self-defense stuff, so guess who ended up being put into Brazilian jiujitsu classes from age 9?” you replied coolly. He laughed a bit before getting up for another go.

You two trained a lot more after that, Johnny teaching you more about sparring as you taught him more about BJJ. 

Eventually, one of your training sessions turned into something more.

You were on top of Johnny, pinning his arms above his head as he attempted to shove you off with his legs behind you. You didn’t budge.

Suddenly, he stopped struggling and smiled up at you.

“Looks like you’ve got me,” he said, smiling up at you.

“Hmm, it seems I do. So what should I do now?” You asked coyly.

“Winner takes all, yeah?” Johnny replied.

Wordlessly, you leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips. The first kiss between you two. He groaned a bit into it, shifting underneath you. You took the opportunity to push down onto him further and deepen the kiss.

Finally, you pulled away and released his wrists from your grasp. His hands immediately found your waist. He used his newly established position to flip you two, landing you on your back, caged between his thighs.

“My turn,” he said smugly, leaning in once more.

Let me know what you think. If you’re interested in any of these ideas as an independent story, oneshot, etc. you can send in a request.

[cannedpickledpeaches]

Insert Your Name (10)

Mafia!Jade Leech x Mafia!Reader

Link to part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven, twelve!

Notes and TW: You have a conversation with a "god." This series will have mentions of blood, violence, crime (kidnapping, attempted assassination, extortion), and harassment, as one might expect from a mafia AU. Please enjoy!

Tags: @guava-enjoyer @itszzmoon @twstsandturns @myteacupisempty @rou-luxe @chikitasmol @night-shadowblood-writes2 @haveneulalie @owodi

You thought as much for a while—that this world exists inside a story. This world is created for “(Y/N),” and you are Friend A, according to that manuscript. But after all this time, your own thoughts and Jade’s persistent questioning has led you to doubt it. Jade was the one who said you aren’t a character, that the two of you have “thoughts and feelings that go beyond ink on paper.”

But a god? It isn’t a common word in Twisted Wonderland. The Seven are legends, but they were real mages who lived millennia past. Some religions exist, but they’re mostly local. To see someone proclaim themself as a god before your eyes seems like a joke.

The man notes your skepticism and chuckles.

“I only mean it in relation to your abilities. It will become clear as I explain.” He takes another sip of tea. “Twisted Wonderland is a place made from stories, for stories. Broadly speaking, it is a ‘story setting.’ And my purpose is to make stories come to life.”

You try to make sense of his words. Referring to himself as a god, talking about what he does to stories . . . . “Are you the author of that manuscript?”

“No, I’m afraid you have come to the wrong conclusion. I make stories come to life, but it has been a long time since I’ve penned one onto paper. As for the matter of the identity of the author, you would not have to look very far, as she has spoken to you only moments prior.”

You inhale sharply. Your eyes drift to the window as your thoughts start to whirl. That can only be (Y/N). She was the author all along? It would make sense since she’s the main character. But nothing else adds up. Her odd behaviour, her breakdown, her supposedly lost memories of you. You’re also pretty sure she has never met Jade prior to the events of the manuscript playing out in real life. How could she have written it before that? Furthermore, you don’t believe (Y/N) could ever be the type of person to imagine harm coming to anyone, even in a fictional story, even if it’s to Jade’s parents whom she has also never met.

“To clarify, that person is not the one you’ve known for some time.” He chuckles at your bewilderment. “(Y/N) was a character created to be a placeholder. Tell me, do you recall her appearance?”

“Of course I—” You cut yourself off. The only things you can think of are adjectives. Pretty. Dainty. A messy bun. A slim waist. Gorgeous, sparkling eyes. You can’t even remember their colour.

“(Y/N), which stands for ‘Your Name,’ is a placeholder. A blank space where anyone can insert their name.” The teacup clinks against its saucer. “It is supposed to be a one-size-fit all. However, the (Y/N) you know was created for a specific person. The name that was intended to replace this placeholder is that of a girl who lives outside this story setting—a girl who did not exist in Twisted Wonderland. That is the true author of this story.”

You don’t understand what he means by “placeholder.” But you know what he means by people who live outside your world. You recall the twins and Azul mentioning something similar. Shrimpy. Prefect. That human from their high school days, someone who supposedly came from another world. Someone who did not exist in Twisted Wonderland before coming here.

“Were there other cases of . . . well, people from other worlds?”

“Certainly. Like I said, Twisted Wonderland is a place made from stories, for stories. Seeing as tales of strangers in strange lands are the foundation for many stories, from folklore to modern novels, it is not strange to believe someone could be the protagonist of a story where they are pulled from another world to this one.” He pauses when he sees your furrowed brows. “I must apologize again. I am often chastised for my long-winded deliveries.”

“Yeah, you talk too much. Cut the fluff and tell me.”

He chuckles. “Yes, of course. The most recent prior to this case was one named Yuu, although that character was not under my jurisdiction. Your author, however, is under my jurisdiction. She was a fan of Yuu’s story. Once it ended, she sought to extend the story. Essentially, she wrote a fanfiction, which is the very manuscript you stumbled upon. The setting is Twisted Wonderland years after Yuu's story, and the main character she created is an idealistic version of herself—the person she wished she could be.”

It makes sense why you could only think of positive adjectives when describing her. (Y/N) was indeed, like you’d thought from the start, created to be perfect.

“Day after day, she wished with all her soul to insert herself into that story, to live out that fantasy. Eventually, I heard her wishes and decided to grant them. I gave her the opportunity to enter (Y/N)’s body.”

“You can do that?”

“My dear,” he says pleasantly, “there was a reason why I likened myself to a god from your perspective.”

So they weren’t empty words or narcissism. This man has powers you have never even heard of.

The first thing you feel is a wave of relief. So the person who came screaming at you with the intent to kill was not (Y/N), after all. It was someone who took over her body. A stranger took over the body of your beloved friend, took over her life, her relationships, her autonomy . . . A stranger. The second thing you feel is anger. How dare they. How dare they waltz in and ruin everything? You keep quiet and listen to the man’s explanation, resentment bubbling in your gut.

“So the author abandoned her previous life to enter your world. It came with a few caveats: she must lose her name and run the course of the story as (Y/N). Only after the story’s conclusion would she regain her name. Another caveat was that she did not have access to (Y/N)’s memories. I imagine it was a point of curiosity for you—why she seemed to forget everything about who you are.”

You narrow your eyes. “It wasn’t Walrus?”

“I am afraid not. She has never encountered Walrus.”

Deductions and contemplations can be wrong. You know this better than anyone. Yet, you can’t help but feel cheated. With all the information you had, how could you possibly have known? It’s as though you were blindsided by a truck. Looking back, it makes sense. The elusive identity of the author. How the manuscript contains insider knowledge about events concerning the Leech family. Of course it does, the author was the one who wrote those details into existence. Even her reaction to seeing you on the beach, which must have been her first time meeting you. Of course she was confused when Jade mentioned you to her. You don’t have a name in the story. How could she possibly know the name of Friend A?

“Walrus is a character who ties up inconsistencies from the original plot. I had to work hard to ensure it all fell in line.”

“Aren’t you a ‘god?’ Can’t you just, I don’t know, make it happen?”

He laughs. “I am not omnipotent. I can only influence factors that make the story more likely to happen. As in, I can create ‘events,’ which influence ‘responses and actions.’ Characters are defined by their base character traits and then shaped through events; this is what is called character development. I design and set into motion events that will most likely produce the desired characterization. Notably, I cannot control characters or their emotions. I must say, that young lady did not understand this concept very well. Her events were heavily focused on what her favourite characters could do for (Y/N), as opposed to building a foundation so they would wish to do such things. It was rather difficult to make sure the pieces fell in place so those events could occur.”

Several things connect in your mind like a line of dominoes tipping each other over. The manual first appeared in that attic with no clear origin—he must have planted it there because you, Jade, and Floyd are the only people who enter that room. Jade fell asleep in (Y/N)’s apartment because he was busy to the point of exhaustion after taking up the mantle as the leader of the mafia. (Y/N) did not become Floyd’s mood stabilizer. Jade did not fall in love with her. When she—the author—confronted you on the beach, she blamed you as the reason why Jade would not love her. But that isn’t entirely true, is it? Her “events”—Jade cooking for her, sleeping in the same bed—relies on Jade already having feelings for her. But to Jade, she was a stranger he met in an alley. You understand a crucial fact: actions and emotions cannot be manipulated.

“I admit that I panicked and caused you alarm when I tried to send you and Jade away from that beach. That whole debacle was not an event in the story, so I caused some factors that led to Floyd accidentally breaking one of Jade’s terrariums. It was not a serious emergency.” He grows pensive. “But now that the story has gone completely off the rails, I must figure out how to proceed. The author is quite upset with me, especially since she thought with my help, the story was guaranteed to go exactly as written.”

“You were communicating with her?”

“Periodically, yes.” He sips his tea, looking directly at you. “But she was terribly hard-headed and refused to listen to my words.”

What a waste. She had a god on her side, yet she couldn’t use her brain to take advantage of it? Perhaps it’s your bias against her, but you can’t think well of the author.

“Why did you decide to grant her wish, anyway?”

The man lowers his gaze with a soft smile. “I am a storyteller at heart, and she had a story she desperately wanted to become her reality.”

You grit your teeth. “So what? It’s only made things difficult for everyone. Is that shitty story even worth telling?”

“What do you use to judge a story’s worth? The number of people who read it? The number of critics or fans? These are all irrelevant.” His eyes, though gentle in the warm light of the fireplace, hold silvery clarity and resolution from the moonlight. “All that matters is that one person found enjoyment in it. Even if the only person who loves a story is its author, that story has served its purpose. There is no such thing as a meaningless story. Every writer sets out to write a story for a reason, be it wealth, fame, personal satisfaction, a creative outlet . . . . Why do you think this author wrote hers?”

It doesn’t take a genius. Her obsessive, near delusional insistence that Jade loves her. Her breakdown from seeing the two of you together on that beach. Her malice towards you, perceived to be standing in the way of her love. Of her happiness.

“She wanted to be loved.”

She wrote a story where she could project herself onto a perfect, infallible main character. In this story, her favourite character would love and spoil her. They’d overcome trials and eventually live out their happily ever after, blissfully in love, even past the story she wrote. She wanted to be loved fully, completely, and unconditionally.

You feel a little sorry for her. But if you were to be honest . . .

“Why the fuck should I care?” You slam your hands on the coffee table, glaring at the man sitting across from you. Your hands curl into fists. “I don’t give a shit about her personal life. Jade and Floyd’s parents are in a coma. They’ve been worried sick. And that’s just fine? Because she wanted to live in her little fantasy of being loved? If I believe everything you say, then she’s the one who wrote that assassination into our lives. Without her, Mister and Missus Leech would be perfectly fine and running everything as usual. Jade and Floyd wouldn’t be missing sleep and meals. Jade could go study terrestrial plants and fungi like he’s always wanted instead of working himself to the bone for the mafia. You’re telling me I’m just supposed to accept it just because she’s got a sob story? And even worse, none of this would’ve happened without you.”

The assassination attempt is mentioned in the story as an offscreen event. In order for it to be true, the man across from you most likely manipulated events so that the attempt would be carried out. Just like he’s been doing for every event, all this time.

You want to lunge across the coffee table. You want to wrap your fingers around his thin throat, dig your thumbs into his carotid arteries, punch his nose in. But you don’t. You restrain yourself, your hands shaking on the table. With his abilities, he could easily make your life impossible.

“Fanfiction is fine. People can write what they want. But her fanfiction has very real consequences on my life and the people I care about. Why would you even help her knowing the harm she’s causing?”

Hypocrite, Floyd has once called you. That author is selfish in that she’s chasing her own happiness at the expense of what she considers minor characters. You’re selfish in that you’re ensuring happiness for yourself and your loved ones at the expense of the author, a stranger to you. You’d be a hypocrite for condemning her, but you don’t mind. You haven’t gotten this far by sacrificing yourself for strangers.

“Why, of course.” The man tilts his head as though it’s obvious. “No story can progress without conflict. You are a supporting character, as are the main male lead’s parents. Forgive me, but such characters are expendable for the purpose of the plot.”

It suddenly dawns on you. You should’ve realized sooner. This man doesn’t see you as a person. He only sees you as another character within a story, a particularly troublesome one who has messed up the plot beyond repair. You might wholeheartedly believe yourself to be a fleshed out human being with thoughts, feelings, and everything else, but he will always think of that as you being a character. His powers and knowledge of the world make him vastly different from you. He cannot talk to you on equal terms.

It’s like if an ant gained sentience and spoke to a human. Even with the ability to communicate perfectly, the ant would never be able to understand why humans enjoy roller coasters or haunted houses, no matter how much either side tries to explain. Similarly, you would never understand this man’s desire to turn stories that are destructive to “characters” into reality. So, you won’t try. You’ll work with his rules.

“I may have a solution to the derailed plot.” You look at him with determination quietly burning in your eyes. “It’s pretty simple if you can do it. Make me the main character.”

[sleeplesssmoll]

Reverse 1999 Analysis: Why do people follow Vertin?

There is a common theme among arcanists in the Foundation, Manus Vindictae, and the Timekeeper's department: desperation.

Note: You'll see snippets from my other posts and Asks in here since I used them as the outline. If you have deja vu, its me not you.

Before looking at Vertin, we should take a step back and consider the world of Reverse 1999 as whole. There is a long history of humans associating arcanum with demons, evil, and witches. Humans are the majority in Reverse1999 and consider arcanists dangerous due to their unpredictability and powers. The discrimination against arcanists precedes the Storm, however as Manus Vindictae makes the Storm public, arcanists realize they have yet another enemy in a world that doesn’t want them.

With that established, we can look at each faction.

Both Manus and the Foundation use fear and hysteria to herd arcanists like sheep. The Foundation weaponizes humanity’s paranoia against arcanists while Manus utilizes the Storm for their agenda. Both factions also steal the agency and freedom of their followers. 

The Foundation seeks out children because it's easier to train and indoctrinate them to die as martyrs for mankind. They provide basic necessities but they strip their martyrs of their identities and cultural backgrounds. Conformity is a way to instill control. Diversity introduces too many factors and inspires ideas. The Foundation uses lies and corruption to hide the abuse they put arcanists through in the name of humanity but they also provide “shelter”. To choose the Foundation is to choose to be a dog on a leash (unless you're human), but at least you'll be safe from the Storm and you’ll have a roof over your head. They also capture “rogue” arcanists like Regulus if they deem them dangerous.

While the Foundation parades as an important and noble cause for the peace of mankind, Manus Vindictae plays the role of “savior” for suffering arcanists. However, revenge and violence are at their core. You can even see this in their name. 

Vindictae: ceremonial act claiming as free one contending wrongly enslaved; vengeance 

While players usually see these extremists as evil mustache-twirling villains, it's important to look at the role they play in the bigger story. In Nouvelles et Textes pour rien we can see an example of propaganda where they airdrop resources and pamphlets near the Foundation. This is a common tactic used in real life by rebel/fringe groups. If they only caused destruction, no one would join the cause. Their acts of "kindness" are part of a bigger scheme to recruit people to their cause by playing the part of the hero. “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you," encapsulates this mindset. They must bring people to their side to raise an army and grow support for their war against humanity. They will provide the desperate with food and shelter. In return, the arcanists must fight in the name of revenge. Then they brainwash them to take away their agency. However the fear of the Storm and the discrimination against arcanists make them one of the few viable options for arcanists seeking shelter from a world that despises them.

Finally, we can look at Vertin. Why do people follow her? 

Many of the arcanists Vertin’s recruits are cornered and don’t have many options to begin with. 

Regulus recognized the fact the Foundation would chase her down no matter how much she runs, which isn’t the freedom she wants. Jessica is scared of isolation and rejection from the outside world. Joshua is a troublemaker who doesn’t conform and suffers consequences. These arcanists already have a motive/reason to follow her. Another thing to consider is what would happen if they did not? They would be stuck in their current situations for who knows how long. Vertin gave them a way out.

Another important tidbit is Vertin’s approach. In the most simple terms, Vertin listens to people. Unlike the other factions, Vertin hears people’s concerns and addresses them directly. She isn’t herding them with lies or manipulating them with fear, she finds the source of their troubles. She does not make false claims and outright admits she will do what is in her power.

Examples: She wanted to understand Schneieder’s anger and reason for obeying Forget-Me-Not even while under fire. She appealed to Regulus’s love of freedom and appeased Jessica’s fear of rejection by the world. She recognized Druvis’s grief and tried to show her a glimmer of hope.

It’s important to recognize each character’s decision and situation instead of giving all the credit to Vertin. She should be receiving credit for her empathy and understanding of the situation, but not the final decision the arcanist made.

Unlike Manus and the Foundation, she genuinely wants to save people like the other factions claim to do. She’s proven it from her scheme with Regulus after Sonetto appeared in the Suitcase and when she tried to fulfill people’s wishes in Tender is the Night. In comparison, you had the corrupt Foundation taking bribes in Chicago and Forget-Me-Not blowing up people’s heads. Also, Her allies witnessed her and Schneider sacrifice themselves in order to slow Druvis down so the others could escape. Sotheby, Druvis, Sonetto, and their men all witnessed this sacrifice. If we look back in the story, we can see Vertin's selfless acts are done in the presence of others, meaning they know more than just talk.

Vertin is a girl, not an institution. She still depends on the Foundation. She was an insignificant piece of a larger machine where her only job was to record the end of eras. However, she earned very powerful allies because she cared about their wellbeing. Suddenly, the Foundation gave a damn. They were unsettled by her little army. 

Vertin is only as strong as the people behind her and her crew took that risk. They chose to stay with her and fight for her because she fought for them too. Vertin was trying to keep them under her protection instead of letting the Foundation have their way, which is the conversation she had with Madam Z.

Later, Constatine ordered to have her held hostage in a coma and her legs bruised for good measure to hinder Vertin's efforts. Luckily she had Madam Z and Sonetto to pick up her baton.

Vertin is the hero in the player's eyes but in the larger picture, she’s a girl who dared to care too much in an unforgiving world. This is why I believe the crew needs more credit because they are not only fighting for their freedom, they want to enjoy it with the person who gave it to them. Dare say, they have their own motives and compassion. They made these informed decisions on their own so it's not fair to attribute everything to Vertin being a charismatic cutie pie (but she totally is and I get how it's easy to overlook their contributions since we see most of the story through Vertin’s eyes).