#custom auction site

[marlequinncos]

Cosplay Build Guide: Marko's Jacket from The Lost Boys (1987)

I am a lover of the horror genre; horror movies, books, games, you name it! And one of my favorite horror movies is the 1987 classic “The Lost Boys”, which focuses on a gang of motorcycle-riding vampires in the fictional California town of Santa Carla. I'm also a big fan of thrifting and modifying items for cosplay. I decided to combine those two things and make a garment that has lived rent-free in my head since I first saw the film: the colorful patchwork jacket worn by the vampire Marko.

I'm going to walk you through how I made Marko's jacket, breaking down the different parts that comprise the garment.

Marko’s outfit is made up of several components: a white cropped tank top, light wash denim jeans, leather chaps, custom painted leather moto boots, fingerless motorcycle gloves, a black skull earring, and of course, that iconic and extremely loud jacket. 

All four titular vampires have a signature jacket they wear in the movie, and Marko’s is by far the most elaborate and distinctive. It consists of three main parts: the base jacket, the Italian tapestries, and the patches. Because of the nature of this build, I had to do a ton of intensive research to determine the individual and highly specific parts of the jacket. My main references were photos from movie memorabilia auction sites whenever one of the original jackets went up for sale, since they photograph the jacket from all angles.

Part 1: The Base Jacket

Marko’s base jacket is, according to my research, a men’s black Levi’s denim jacket in a size 40, which I believe translates to a medium. Now, I’m a petite woman (5’3”, athletic but slim), so I knew that the exact jacket would be too big for my frame. Instead, I found a men’s black denim jacket in an extra small; it's very similar in style to the original, but a little better proportioned for me. It's still very much oversized though. The first things I did were remove the buttons and pockets, and I cut off the hem of the jacket and the sleeve cuffs. Then I tossed the jacket in the washing machine to fray the edges. 

Part 2: The Tapestries

The hardest part of the jacket by far was finding the tapestries, for two reasons. The first is that the tapestries were all from the 1960’s and 1970’s, meaning I had to scour vintage stores and websites to find the right ones. The second is the variation. Six jackets were made for each Lost Boy in the movie; this is standard for a film, since some jackets would be used for closeups (the”hero” jackets) while others were used for stunts, and a few even have intentional holes in them for harness rigging. Because of that and the thrifted nature of the jacket, the Marko jackets for the film all differ slightly in the placement of the tapestries and patches.

There are five tapestries in total. Three are velvet: the matador, the peacock, and the leopard with the messed up face. These are impossible to dupe via Spoonflower or Contrado (custom fabric printing websites) due to the fact that these three are essentially small rugs. The other two, chariot lady and cat lady, are dupable via Spoonflower or Contrado printing since they aren’t the same fabric as the others.

The two pin-up tapestries are nearly impossible to find, more so than the velvet ones. In my months of searching, I never found either pin-up tapestry, so I had them printed by Contrado, along with the collar trim.

If you go searching for the velvet tapestries, you'll notice that there are several different versions of each one, with slight changes in color and placement of things in the art. How accurate you want to be is up to you. My peacock and matador are accurate to the tapestries on one of the stunt jackets, whereas my leopard is the correct color but wrong direction. That's doesn't bother me much, personally, especially since the leopard is the hardest of the velvet tapestries to find by far.

Once the tapestries were acquired, I measured different sections based on the dimensions of the jacket, mapped it out using washi tape on the tapestries, and then cut them all out. There was a decent amount of math involved here, specifically regarding scaling the sections of tapestry down by a few inches since my jacket is smaller than the original. I then arranged them all onto the denim jacket and pinned them in place before hand sewing them (yes, you read that right; I hand sewed this whole thing) on in the correct overlap. I also added the rhinestones to the cat lady.

I recommend using embroidery needles and upholstery thread to attach the tapestries to the jacket, due to the thickness and the weight. I also sewed along the designs in the tapestries themselves to better hide the stitching within the image.

Part 3: The Patches

Marko’s jacket has a total of 26 different patches on it, most of which are motorcycle or punk themed. For these, I found a seller on Etsy who makes 24 of them, and I used Contrado to print the remaining two (the anarchy symbol and the large skull) on canvas and added the stitching. You could thrift and find the patches as well, but here's the thing: while some of these patches are pretty easy to find, others seem to be nonexistent, to the point that I wonder if some were made exclusively for the movie. That's why I went and purchased my patches instead of hunting them down. My personal favorite is the “Screw U” one. One fun fact about the patches is that the large winged skull on the back is a leftover from the movie “The Warriors”.

I once again hand sewed these all on as per the references from the movie. You might think that ironing the patches on is an easier method, but there's a few reasons why that won't work: 1) the patches in the movie are sewn on; if you zoom in, you can see the stitching 2) I'm not sure the patches would even adhere to the velvet and velour of the tapestries and 3) if you decide you don't like the placement of a patch that you sewed on, you can just seam rip the stitching and adjust it, which you can't really do as cleanly with an ironed-on patch.

Part 4: The Tassels

The tassels on the jacket’s shoulder are not tassels at all; they’re squid skirts (a type of fishing lure), which is something I never knew existed until I started researching for this build. For these, I found a fishing tackle website that had the closest match to the colors I needed, a blue-grey/orange and a yellow/green. Both squids also have glitter and little eyes painted on.

Part 5: Weathering and Finishing Touches

Lastly, I weathered the jacket to give it that lived-in look. For the dirt/dust on the patches, I used powder eyeshadow. I also picked at the edges of the tapestries to fray them a bit. And to make the patches less stiff, I just broke the jacket in by wearing it around my house. The great thing about this jacket is that the more I wear it and the more it weathers, the better it'll look.

FAQ

How heavy and warm is the jacket?

The jacket is made of denim and rugs, so its pretty warm and heavy. It honestly feels like wearing a weighted blanket, which is a nice bonus if you're anxiety made flesh like I am. It makes a lot of sense for the jacket to be on the heavier side, because if you’ve been to Northern California, you know how cold it can get on the coast, especially at night (not sure if vampires can feel cold, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

How long did it take you to make the jacket?

I don’t time my cosplay builds, but I can guess based on the amount of TV/movies/podcasts/playlists consumed as I was working on it. I'm also pretty fast when it comes to hand sewing. By my estimation, the jacket took me about 45-50 hours of work, and that’s not counting the time I spent searching for the tapestries.

Can you make me one?

Sorry friend, I don't take commissions. Even if I did, there's no guarantee I could find the exact tapestries again. I appreciate the interest though!

I hope you enjoyed this walkthrough of Marko's jacket! This was a fun build and I'm really proud of the finished product. I'm going to make the rest of Marko's outfit + wig to complete the cosplay, so stay tuned for that!

If you have any other questions, feel free to plop them in my inbox! In addition to tumblr, you can also find my cosplay work on instagram and bluesky @/marlequinncos

#this might be my favorite thing I've ever made #the lost boys #marlequinncos #marko tlb #cosplay #my cosplay #marko the lost boys #horror #horror movies #80s movies #long post #build post

[majimasleftasscheek]

alright since RGG seems bent on putting merch behind things like UFO catcher shit, here's my crappy how to use a proxy guide lol

gonna be using buyee as an example but most proxies are more or less the same so it's your choice on what to use. I look at fee prices and customer service reviews to decide on my proxies. sorry if it's wordy! but I think I cover the most important bits for general use.

so on the landing page you got all the goobly gook but what you'll mainly be looking at is the stuff in the red box. all the shops are listed there - the ones I mainly use are yahoo! japan auctions and mercari. the other shops are more like regular shopping sites. pretty much all proxies use the same sites as they're just a directory for wherever you wanna shop.

auctions are self explanatory - you bid on things till the time runs out or some auctions offer an immediate buyout price.

mercari is largely a secondhand seller marketplace but you can find companies on there as well.

when I search for stuff, I prefer putting in the actual terms for better accuracy over auto translating. so here I put in ryu ga gotoku (龍が如く). on buyee, I have rgg and dead souls as saved searches so I can just click on them to easily autofill the search bar which is handy.

items will populate and you'll see prices in yen and for me, usd. these are the *listing prices, not the *final price. since I'm using a proxy, there will be additional fees per item I get. also, the currency exchange rate occasionally changes so if something goes up or down in price, that be why.

💥 pls also note prohibited items that proxies cannot ship internationally such as items with flammable fluid which can include perfumes, lighters, etc. other things like alcohol, which may be okay for like 99% of countries is not okay, for example, in the US lol unless you go thru customs paperwork n shit. *ebay is usually where you want to go for prohibited items as those sellers *will go thru the process of filing the proper forms to send such items.

💥 pls be aware of scalpers! I tend to browse multiple pages and multiple listings of the same item to see what the prices typically fall around. if it looks too cheap, be aware of an item's description. if it looks too expensive, it probably is.

let's use this bad boy as an example. the main things you wanna look at on any item is the condition and the photos to be *sure* you are happy with what you're getting. if you see the same photos across listings, be a lil wary. you can see estimated shipping times and the seller's general ratings. always read item explanations if there is one in case the seller makes any notes of defects or other things.

you can add to shopping cart to keep browsing or you can go to the order page to immediately purchase.

so proxies typically have different plans you can choose when you buy items and that adds towards the fees. these can include inspections, insurance, etc of items when they arrive at the proxy warehouse (see your proxy's FAQ for plan descriptions). it's up to you what you deem worth choosing, if at all. for most things, I just go with whatever costs me 0 lol - especially if it's a cheaper item that I really don't feel needs to be inspected or insured, like a plushie or keychain. regardless of plan, you'll have to pay some proxy service fee (here the "buyee service fee"). in the top right, you'll see the total cost of everything. once you're happy, then you pick your form of payment. I usually go with paypal.

you can go to your page and see typical stuff like orders, settings, and the like. there's often specific tabs for certain sites like auctions so you can go there for anything you purchase in that way. the cart is anything you've added but haven't bought.

the orders tab is for anything bought and you may see the status of its shipping to the proxy warehouse which I'll get to in the next bit.

package information is everything that has arrived to the warehouse so here you can see I have 12 items currently waiting to be shipped to me.

user information, pretty basic but do MAKE SURE your addresses and things are 100% correct. it would really suck nuts if you pay out the ass for international shipping and it gets sent to the wrong place.

on the orders tab, you can see the status of the item. it contains important bits like date ordered and order # (I've blotted out mine). order received is *you* paying for the order. order completed is *buyee* paying for the order. shipped means the seller has shipped to buyee's warehouse address and arrived at warehouse is self explanatory.

*sometimes, a seller may cancel an order after you've paid for it and you will be refunded. this is often due to the seller unable to actually send the item for whatever reason or they don't sell to proxies. nothing you can really do about it but I've only had it happen a couple of times in dozens of purchases.

back to the package information tab, here you can see all the packages that have arrived at the warehouse waiting for shipment. proxies will store packages for free for a certain number of days - buyee being 30 while I've seen other go to 45 days, etc. after that time is up, you will be charged for storage per day so be aware of that!

here you can consolidate packages which means putting everything into one shipment instead of going individually. you can see estimated costs of shipping per item which, if you did each item individually, that would be mad expensive. when you consolidate, things can still be pretty pricey but imo better to pay idk 150 bucks in shipping for 10 items instead of 300 bucks for all 10 individually.

💥 shipping is calculated by weight so be aware of that when you buy items - however baseline costs will be the same for lighter items regardless of how much they weigh. baseline costs for me is around 15-30 bucks regardless of what I get. for example, I have a teeny tiny keychain in storage and several figures. the shipping for that keychain is the same cost as the figures so it's only sensible to lump them into one package cuz I ain't paying out the ass to ship 1 keychain lol.

you are free to consolidate what you want and how. if you wanna consolidate some packages to ship now and you wanna do others later, you are free to. just keep in mind your budget and storage time!

proxies also offer services to protectively wrap your packages. if you're concerned about damage, then choose that option when you consolidate. I don't often do it unless what I'm buying can break otherwise all my packages have arrived relatively unharmed.

💥 proxies will consolidate things AS IS so if you have a buncha figures that don't have their boxes, the proxy will put them in a shipping box just as they are, however they received them from the seller. so if the seller only bubble wrapped the figure, it will be sent to you just like that, no additional protection unless you pay for that option.

*consolidation can take some days and you'll be informed when items are ready to ship. at that point, you pay the shipping and that's it! you can choose what type of shipping you wanna go with (such as DHL, EMS, sea mail (if it's available), etc at differing prices and arrival times. pick what's best for you. *note, sea mail is often the cheapest but the slowest (like several months arrival time) and not available to every country (plus you'd want protective packaging for this just in case cuz boat rides be bumpy)

here are some examples of shipping costs for a single one of my items. some of these options will disappear when I consolidate cuz shipping a lil figure is very different from shipping a larger box full of multiple things.

💥 be sure to read EVERYTHING and make sure you know what options you're choosing to make sure it fits your budget and expectations of arrival time.

one more thing proxies can do is order from a number of sites that aren't on the main page. for buyee, you want to go to the other sites information tab and then click "purchase request for other sites."

here you can input the information of whatever site you want to see if the proxy can purchase it for you. this is how I buy things on ebten like the jpn only preorders. if the proxy cannot buy the requested item, they'll let you know.

if they can go thru with the order, they will confirm your payment and it goes thru the same process as any other order.

#pls ignore the one piece crap I'm buying I'm very sick you see #proxy guide #blog mod

[wolfsbanesparks]

Wolfsbanesparks FTH 2024 Fanbinding!

Hey y'all!

Welcome to my Fandom Trumps Hate 2024 Crafts Bazaar stall!

What I'm Offering

A custom made, handbound book, fully typeset with a hard cover. Full color title page optional. Inclusion of full color fanart if permission is granted by the artist.

Depending on the length the fic, the book can be bound as either a foilio, quarto, or octavo.

For ease of binding, the fic should be < 150k words OR a collection of one-shots in the same range. (If the story is slightly over, there is some leeway here)

If you have specific design requests such as color scheme, cover design, decorative paper, etc. I am more than happy to work with your ideas! Final decisions will be made based on the materials I have access to.

Worldwide shipping! I am located in the US so if you will require international shipping let me know up front so I can plan for shipping costs and possible delays.

What I'll Bind

Your own work (fanfiction or original work)

Another author's work only if the author gives permission or has a public blanket permission statement for transformative works. Such a permission statement must be on their AO3 page or the site where they posted the fic. The bidder is responsible for obtaining permission for the story of their choice. (You can check here for a non-exhaustive list of authors/artists with blanket permission statements)

I will bind any fandom, ship, or rating with the caveat that you must be 18+ to receive an E rated work.

How It Works

The auction will run from Feb 29 to Mar 10 at 10 pm PST.

To enter the auction please fill out this google form.

You can check the current highest bidder on this spreadsheet.

I will contact the the winner by email within 24 hours after the auction ends.

Upon winning the auction you must donate the amount specified on your bid directly to one of Fandom Trumps Hate's listed nonprofits.

You will have until March 20th to send me proof of your donation.

Once I have received proof of donation, I will contact you to hash out the details of your project!

The final product will be shipped within 3-4 months. I will provide you with tracking info once it is available.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about this fanbinding offer.

Good luck! I look forward to working with you!

#fandom trumps hate #fth 2024 #fan crafts bazaar 2024 #fanbinding #bookbinding #fanfic binding

[ltwilliammowett]

Today we have door 18 and here we have an East Indiaman. A fragile beauty hiding in Salem- The Friendship of Salem

Friendship of Salem

More about her:

The original Friendship, a two-decked, three-masted, square-rigged, 342-ton vessel was built from 1796-1797. The ship was constructed in the Stage Point yard of Salem shipbuilder Enos Briggs across the South River from today's Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Friendship was launched on 28 May 1797 and registered at the Salem Custom House to merchants Aaron Waite (1742-1830) and Jerathmiel Peirce (1747-1827).

Friendship was an “East Indiaman,” the type of merchant ship that was used in the East Indies trade in the years after the American Revolution. Friendship made 15 voyages to countries including China, Indonesia, India, Venezuela, Spain, and Russia. The cargo brought back to Salem consisted of pepper, silk, sugar, coffee, ale, sherry, tin, salt, cheese, candles, and other goods and merchandise.

On 5 September 1812, Friendship was returning from Archangel, Russia, when the ship was captured by the British sloop of war HMS Rosamond. The War of 1812 between the British and the United States began while Friendship was in Archangel, Russia. The war had started in June, but the captain and crew were unaware of that fact and set off for Salem, only to be captured in the Atlantic Ocean and taken as a prize of war. The captain and crew were able to return to Salem, but Friendship was sold at auction in London, England on 17 March 1813.

The replica tall ship, is docked at Derby Wharf and was designed to present the appearance an original 1797 Salem-built vessel. The keel was laid in Scarano Shipyard in Albany, New York in 1996 and uses modern technology and materials to meet today’s safety and accessibility requirements.

She represents New England’s influential role in the development of global and domestic maritime trade and in the economic and political development of the United States.

#naval history #naval artifacts #friendship of salem #tall ship #advent calendar #day 18 #age of sail replica #18th century

[saltminerising]

Okay, I need to talk about this. A blacklist system in the form that people are requesting it is not simple. At all.

First off the blacklist system for just site images would only realistically extend to just to items in your hoard (or lairs for dragon images) or in the database. What about the items showing in coli/bios/forums/tab info? As far as I'm aware those don't pull info from personal player settings, just their main database. There would need to be a system that checks all of those for your supposed blacklisted items. There is no 'it just blurs the image' here. There's a 'we would need to make an entire extra triple layer cake of code to check everything' or 'the basic blacklist blurring exists but only on these three areas and is visible everywhere else.'

And suppose they do all that, every bit of it and all that effort. It still won't matter. Forums, clan pages, dragon bios, all these allow for custom images. I could save a photo of my dragon that falls under someone's blacklist, slap that into imgur, and put it in the bio. Maybe I wanted to photoshop my hatchling into a silly hat? Dragon picture in bio. Artwork depicting a seemingly 'safe' dragon not on someone's blacklist with a feature that upsets them? Well it wasn't blurred so clicking it should have been okay. Saving someone's avatar dragon image to use as forum decoration? Not linked to any actual player icon and therefore exists outside of any blanket blacklist. Someone just buys a dragon off the auction house and finds it has a hatchery banner in the bio with an image they don't like? At least the code doesn't show image previews, but you're still going to wind up seeing the image.

The only way around the above issue is heavier moderation on what people can post and do with their custom spaces, which goes against the primary argument of a blacklist only affecting the person who sets it. Even then I can see such toxic hostility sprouting up when someone does something as simple as showing off a silly dragon edit because 'well some people would have that dragon blocked!' It already happens, even in spaces where it is perfectly clear spoilers aren't required.

I understand not wanting to see things. I understand things making you uncomfortable. But please stop saying this is 'simple accessibility' because it isn't. This is so heavily multi-layered from not only a basic gameplay stance but from a social gameplay stance.

#long post

[oliversrarebooks]

The Rare Bookseller Part 8: Joe's Story

Masterlist

September 1925

TW: Imprisonment, conditioning, restraints

There was a bright light in Oliver's eyes. The sun? Had he left the curtains open? He reached for his nightstand to grab his pocket watch and a glass of water to soothe his parched throat, but his hand hit a wall. 

A wall? Where...?

His eyes flew open as he remembered where he was. For one brief, blissful moment he'd believed himself to be home. Instead, he'd awoken inside of a cell in a vampire's prison -- his fitful dreams of vampire fangs weren't just nightmares, but his terrifying reality.

"Oliver? Are you up?" said Emily from the cell next to him. "I think they're serving breakfast soon."

"I'm up. Good morning, Emily," he said. He stood up, filling the pitcher with water and taking a long drink before splashing some on his face. He needed coffee, but he suspected he wouldn't get it here. That'd be a headache later.

There was shouting coming from the cell on the other side. "You fucking bastards! You can't do this!" Cage bars rattled. "Hey! Is anyone there?"

Oliver recognized it must be his new cell neighbor. "Joe! You're awake! How are you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a ton of bricks," he said. "Was hoping last night was just a dream. Who're you?"

"My name's Oliver, and I've been kidnapped, too," he said. "What do you do for a living, Joe?"

"I'm a construction foreman. Just got promoted, too," he said, with obvious pride. "I was on the site late at night when all of a sudden this woman grabs me. Strongest woman I've ever seen in my life. She drugged me, took me here, then she drugged me again when I woke up and tried to fight her off." He shook the door of his cell. "Say, are they really...? It sounds crazy but..."

"I think they really are vampires."

"...Shit," he said simply. "I always expected an accident would get me like it did my old man. They're really vampires? That woman said she was going to sell me at an auction."

"Yes, I think that's what they told all of us."

"So what's your story, then?"

"I'm a bookseller, and --" 

He was distracted by the sight and smell of a tray of food being placed in his cell.  Oliver hadn't even realized that the breakfast cart was in front of him, piloted by the same cheerful human thrall as the dinner cart yesterday. He had so many questions he wanted to ask. "You're a slave here? How do they treat you? Do they drink blood from you?" spilled out of his mouth as she poured a cup of hot coffee and set it in his cell.

"Here you are! Please enjoy!" she said, ignoring his questions and moving on to Joe's cell.

He looked down to see a steaming hot bowl of porridge, an orange, and the mug of coffee. He was surprised to have any coffee at all. 

He talked to Joe and Emily as they had breakfast. The porridge didn't taste like much, but it filled him, and the coffee tasted like brown sludge, but it would help wake him up. They filled in Joe on what had been happening in the prison, and Joe told them a little about himself.

He had no spouse or kids, and was primarily devoted to his work -- same as Emily, who had fled an abusive home life to pursue art in the city; same as Oliver, whose close kin had died years ago. Oliver was beginning to sense a clear pattern: people who were somewhat isolated, who didn't have close family to look for them. Oh, Joe would certainly be missed, since he was the foreman and, in his estimation, well respected by his fellow workers. But Joe's workers and Oliver's customers and Emily's patrons weren't family or lovers or close friends. They didn't share the kind of bonds that would cause them to pursue an investigation deeper than a cursory police investigation, or to seek revenge against the vampires.

Oliver's heart sank with the realization. The vampires knew exactly what they were doing, choosing people who flew under the radar. That's how they managed to spirit this many people away to their auction house without being caught. For all he knew, the police were even in on it; for all he knew, some police were vampires. 

The sound of heels down the hallway caught their attention. The vampire who had kidnapped him, Colette, was walking down the line of cells with another petite woman in tow, both carrying clipboards and looking all business. They stopped in front of the cell next to Emily, the one with the waitress who didn't talk or sing any more.

"...already had one session..."

"...one more should be enough, either today or tomorrow. Frank can handle it. Good work. For prep work, she can go with the group slot 7pm Tuesday."

They stood in front of Emily's cell next. "Lot twenty-seven. Pet conditioning. Keep it light and natural."

"Got it," the woman with Colette said.

"Let's get a half slot for her, Tuesday 8pm."

"A half slot? Her blood's not anything special."

"I'm willing to take a chance on her. I think she'll clean up real nice, and with only light conditioning, some of our patrons would jump at the chance to fully break her mind in."

"What do you mean?" Emily demanded, shaking the bars of her cell. "What are you going to do to me?"

"Sell you to the most appropriate owner," said Colette. "Be glad we're spending this much effort on you. Now do quiet down. We have gags readily available, you know."

"Go ahead and do it!" Emily yelled. "Coward!"

Colette paid her no mind at all, instead moving on to Oliver's cage.

"I'm not afraid of you," he lied, hoping to match a bit of Emily's defiance.

"This is Lot Seven, of course," said Colette, ignoring him. 

"The star of the auction. I can see and smell why," said her assistant. "What are you thinking for him?"

"What makes me the star?" Oliver demanded.

"He's best suited for being a long-term servant, so... let's go with a medium course of conditioning. Two or three sessions at maximum, heavily focused on obedience and docility."

Oliver's chest tightened, his worst nightmare coming true. "You can't do that to me."

"Use your gentlest approach. The last thing we'd want to do is damage him. I already have some prospective buyers in mind for this one. The sorts of vampires who like their humans' minds intact."

He could hardly feel relieved by that, given that they were still discussing his conditioning and sale. And there were already prospective buyers? For him?

"His blood hasn't been graded yet, but he's obviously better than A grade, so let's switch his diet to something more appropriate. And I'll schedule him a full hour of prep just before the auction display, Tuesday at 8."

"Certainly. I should start on him tonight, then," said Colette's assistant, writing it all down. "I can't wait to see how he turns out."

"I'm not your goddamn project or your merchandise, you monsters!" Oliver yelled, his head spinning with everything he'd just heard. A course of conditioning. Blood grading. Prospective buyers. A full hour of prep.

"We have no shortage of gags," said Colette, finally acknowledging him. "I can retrieve one for you, if you'd like."

"I don't care."

"How tiresome. I don't know what you're hoping to accomplish. You'll be much more agreeable once Lily's dealt with you."

"I look forward to it," said Colette's assistant with a smile that almost seemed pleasant if he didn't know better. Lily didn't look at all the part of a vampire, with her dusty blue sundress and mouse-brown hair pulled back into a sensible ponytail, the kind of woman you would barely notice even if you were looking straight at her.

"She's our conditioning specialist," said Colette casually. "You truly will feel much better once you've spent some time with Lily. I promise."

Oliver's knees trembled and his hands went cold. They really were going to try and do something to his mind, some kind of training or torture or hypnotism -- from the sounds of it, later that night. He might have only a few hours left as himself.

"Nothing to say to that? Just as well," said Colette, turning away from his cell to move on to Joe's.

"Do your worst," said Joe with clearly false bravado.

"Lot forty. Erase him."

"What?" Joe and Oliver cried out in unison.

Lily sighed. "Another erasure? Dull..."

"Erase me? What the hell does that mean?" said Joe, pulling at the door of his cell. "You're fucking crazy, is what you are. Fucking crazy!"

"You should get started on him, sooner rather than later," said Colette, unfazed.

"Do I have to? I'd rather play with Lot Seven."

"Take care of him first and then you can spend the whole rest of the night playing with Lot Seven. I'll reschedule Lot Twelve to Frank."

As Joe loudly cursed them, their words sank into Oliver's mind. He felt sick.

"We have to stop them! They're going to erase Joe," Emily was shouting.

"...What can we do?" said Oliver, despairing. Those bars were no closer to budging than they had been at any point, and their vampire captors were still so much stronger than them.

Nothing to do.

Nothing to do as Colette and Lily called in a few more vampires.

Nothing to do as they pulled Joe from his cell, kicking and screaming.

Nothing to do as they slapped on restraints and dragged him away.

And as Oliver watched him disappear, he felt guilty, and not just because there was nothing he could do. It was because, even though he felt sorry for Joe, all he could really think about was that he was next.

Part Seven >> Masterlist >> Part Nine

Thank you for reading this story of people who are about to be erased. If you'd like to know more, my ask-box is open.

Tag list - please note if you'd like to be added

@d-cs @latenightcupsofcoffee @thecyrulik

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[fandomtrumpshate]

2024 Supported Org: Spread the Vote

Although civics curricula throughout the United States boast about the country’s democratic ideals, the US has a long history of denying the right to vote to specific groups. Black men only secured the right to vote in 1870, and women in 1920. In practice, Black women were still effectively banned from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1975.

Even in the decades since the VRA passed, the right to vote is still unevenly distributed in practice. In cities and neighborhoods with higher percentages of Black and Latine residents, there are often far fewer voting sites per resident, and these sites are often inaccessible to people without cars. The hurdles are particularly high for incarcerated or formerly-incarcerated people, many of whom face even more dramatic practical hurdles, or who have even been misinformed about their right to vote.

Spread the Vote acts to secure the future of the US for everyone, working every day to ensure that people have what they need to vote. They offer their services to every eligible American, including those who are incarcerated. In 2020, they launched Vote By Mail in Jail (VBMIJ), in partnership with Vote.org, and have run it independently as a cornerstone of their Justice Services program since 2022.

The mission of VBMIJ is to provide all necessary education, training, and resources to assist detention center staff in facilitating a voting program for incarcerated citizens. VBMIJ recruits jails across the country, trains and supports internal staff, matches jails with local community partners, and provides materials, custom voter guides, PSAs, postcard reminders, ballot boxes, and more to each partner to aid in their efforts to assist incarcerated citizens in their efforts to register to vote and ultimately cast a ballot.

You can support Spread the Vote as a creator in the 2024 FTH auction (or as a bidder, when the time comes to donate for the auctions you’ve won.)

n.b. Spread the Vote is one of two voting justice organizations on our list this year! You can read about the other one, VoteRiders, here.

#fth 2024 #fanworks charity auction #supported org #spread the vote #voting rights #democracy

[jahayla-parker]

writing prompt:

"We can't afford to gamble like this."

"Are you kidding? This is the perfect time to gamble."

for character of choice

To Gamble or Not To Gamble: Jesper Fahey x Reader

Description: 6.6k wc, Jesper and reader find themselves in a situation where they must decide how to proceed and Jesper suggests he puts his gambling skills to the test.

Warning: mention of injuries and some descriptions of that and blood, angst but happy ending, guilt and remorse, curse words, typical six of crows warnings, mentions of gambling and addiction.

“How are we supposed to sneak it off the table?” Y/n groaned, the side of her head resting against the brick wall in annoyance.

Kaz had sent her and Jesper to retrieve some antique chest that had saints-knows-what inside of it.

According to the intel Kaz had, it was supposed to be here, this dingy and cramped gambling den that is buried deep in the abandoned outskirts of the barrel.

The gambling den also operated as an auction house whenever their crew’s leader came into possession of something worthwhile; such as this allegedly valuable chest.

Kaz’s intel was right about the chest being present.

However, the chest was not up for sale during some auction.

Instead, it was being used by some gambler as payment for his night.

Y/n had frequented enough of these shabby gambling sites around Ketterdamn to know that it was rare for a gambling house to let someone pay in anything other than Kruge.

But anyone who looked at the chest, its shine nearly blinding despite its evident old age, knew it was likely worth a hefty price.

Not to mention, the house likely knew what was allegedly inside of it.

It would help if Jesper and y/n had been told of it’s contents, but Kaz once again elected not to share this crucial detail.

So, here they were leaning against the entrance to the smoky gambling hall trying to decide how to proceed.

A simple theft was one thing, but now that the gambling den’s customer had used the chest as payment for however many hands the house had agreed to, it was being closely monitored by countless guards and in full view of the remaining patrons.

“Relax love,” Jesper grinned, kissing her cheek, “I have an idea”.

“Care to share there, Jes?” Y/n teased, pulling her slumped frame off the bricks.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” he winked.

Y/n laughed and rolled her eyes, “Jesper, they aren’t going to let that chest leave here”.

“They won’t have a choice if we win it” Jesper said, with a shimmer in his pupils.

“How are we going to do that?” Y/n asked, scanning the room.

“Do you see how the chest is resting on the table to the right, along with that box of Nastoki?” Jesper asked, placing his arm over her shoulder.

As her eyes made contact with the overpriced alcoholic import in question, she nodded.

“That means it’s not just being used in exchange to fund a few hands for whatever mercher brought it here. Instead, it’s up for grabs, assuming one wins at least the total amount the house exchanged for it, plus usually twenty five percent profit.” He explained confidently.

“Okay, so, I somehow calculate the worth of the chest.. maybe by asking around without striking suspicion? Even if so, how do we get it? Claim we played a few hands and then offer the money from Kaz as our alleged earnings in exchange for whatever it’s worth?” She questioningly planned aloud.

“No darling, it’s much simpler than that; I play for it” Jesper winked, smirking over at his girlfriend before looking at the den ahead of them.

“Jesper, honey, Kaz doesn’t want you -“ y/n began, feeling iffy about the idea.

“I know, I know, but come on it’ll be fun!” Jesper pleaded, practically bouncing with excitement.

“Jesper, we cannot afford to gamble like this” she told him.

“Are you kidding? This is the perfect time to gamble” he joked, flashing the kruge from Kaz.

“Unless we lose, then we’ll be far worse off than if we just tell Kaz we couldn’t get it today” y/n pointed out.

She didn’t really fear Kaz herself, but she knew that regardless of the outcome, Kaz wouldn’t react well to Jesper’s idea and that Jesper would in turn, pout the rest of the day until Kaz moved on.

“We won’t lose” Jesper said confidently.

“How do you know that Jesper?” Y/n sighed.

She didn’t want to make him feel bad about this, but she also needed to keep him level headed.

“‘Cause I’ve got you. You’re good luck” Jesper grinned, kissing her cheek flirtatiously.

Rolling her eyes she whispered “come on, let’s just go Jesp”.

“Doll, I’m serious, we can easily get that chest, we just gotta play a few rounds and it’ll be ours” Jesper swore, playing with the hair that hung on the sides of her face just next to her temples.

“Kaz will kill us, that is unless they kill us first” y/n resisted.

“Nah” Jesper said, wrapping his arm back over her shoulder, “we’ll be fine”.

She rolled her eyes, “no Jesper, now come on, we need to get out of here”.

“Kaz wanted us to grab the chest” Jesper argued, getting a bit irritated now.

He found a solution!

Why wasn’t she letting him fix this predicament?

“Yes, but not in this way” y/n reminded him.

He shrugged carefree, “then he should’ve specificed”.

“Jesper again, Kaz’s money or not, we cannot afford to gamble like this” y/n said, her eyes making note of each weapon she could spot the patrons hiding on their bodies.

“Love! Are you kidding?! I’m serious about this being the perfect time to gamble” Jesper defended.

“For you, I’m not sure there is such thing” she scoffed, giving him a soft but knowing look.

She wasn’t going to get on him about his issues, but she was also not going to encourage him to partake.

“Rude” Jesper feigned offense, “let me show you what I can do.“

While he knew she meant no harm and didn’t judge him, he wanted to show her this wasn’t a big deal.

He wanted her to see that he didn’t always lose the way Kaz liked to tell her he did.

Jesper cupped her face with his palm, “let’s go”.

As he guided her across the hall, his right hand never left her waist.

His left hand was resting on his hip, signaling to everyone he was carrying a gun should they try anything.

He was well aware that this wasn’t the most reputable gambling house in Ketterdam.

As such, he wasn’t sure how these patrons would behave around someone as radiating as Jesper found y/n to be.

He slid into an empty seat at one of the scuffed up dark mahogany tables.

Jesper tapped her hip bone softly as he guided her to sit down.

As she sat cautiously on his leg, he whispered into her ear, “relax love”.

“It’s not a good idea, Jes” she stubbornly stated, head buried in his neck making it seem flirtatious instead of appearing as a random couple suspiciously whispering inside the den.

As Jesper signaled that he’d be joining the game, he rubbed her back, “want to bet?”

Y/n leaned back to look into his fieldstone colored eyes, “ isn’t that already what you’re doing?”.

He smirked and kissed her cheek before turning his attention to the table.

Jesper was feeling lucky tonight.

He wasn’t lying when he said she was his lucky charm.

Perhaps it was merely that he paid more attention to the bets in an attempt to impress her.

Tonight only fueled that desire.

He knew Kaz had told her of his frustration with Jesper’s gambling.

He knew Kaz saw it as problematic and to be fair Jesper knew it could cause problems from time to time.

But he was hoping that maybe tonight he could show her it isn’t a big deal not was it always a bad thing.

Plus he didn’t want her to think he was horrid at the game, even if she didn’t really care if he was skilled in this area or not.

“Doll, play along please” Jesper pleaded in a low voice, leaning his chin over her shoulder as he placed his latest bet.

Y/n gave him a look when no one was looking their way, before her eyes once again analyzed the room for threats.

“Y/n/n, they’re going to know I’m up to something if we don’t “ Jesper whispered with a sigh as he examined his hand.

“I thought you didn’t recognize anyone Jesper” y/n asked with clear irritation in her tone despite the way she leaned into him to speak without anyone hearing.

“I didn’t, until now” Jesper said tapping her left arm softly before stroking it to remove any suspicions from the other patrons over his movements.

After a few moments of bickering between some of the other gamblers playing at their table, y/n looked slyly over to her left, flipping her hair flirtatiously as a mask for her real intentions.

As she snuggled into his body, her lips against his ear, hair covering her lips from view, she asked, “tall, white guy in stripes?”

Jesper bent his head in a sly nod as he smirked when a patron began watching him and y/n closely.

“Should we leave?” She asked, hand on his chest as she lifted her head and looked around the room as if bored.

“No doll, let’s just enjoy our date, hmm?” He asked, his tone as he said ‘date’ emphasizing his point.

Jesper knew this person in stripes to be Mr. Callaghan.

Mr. Callaghan knew Jesper and of his gambling troubles and it wasn’t good news if he was here.

However, Jesper figured if she could keep up their cover and make it seem like they were on a date, he wouldn’t find it questionable.

After all, the couple did have some nights she’d join him for a round or two, so it wouldn’t be too unusual.

The worker at their current table shoved the round’s winnings towards the undercover crows as soon as it was deemed Jesper won the round.

“Yes!” Jesper smirked, kissing her cheek, “what did I tell you doll?”.

Playing her part and loving the grin that formed on his face she smiled and cupped his face, “fine, you won”.

“Mmm” Jesper smirked smugly, “always do”.

“So not true” y/n teased, shaking her head softly.

“You do know who I came in here with, right?” He winked, “like I said, I always win”.

Y/n rolled her eyes as her cheeks heated up, shuffling closer to him.

They deliberately made their way to the lead table, trying to take enough time to not look suspicious.

But they also couldn’t take too long as y/n was certain Jesper’s luck would surely run out soon.

She hadn’t seen him this lucky in his wining streak before.

And while she was happy for him, especially as he seemed even more confident than normal, she knew it would take just one wrong overly wagered bet to make things go terribly wrong.

In order to earn a spot at the main table and be considered for the chest (and the similarly placed higher value winnings), the couple had to wage some large bets.

And while they’d been lucky so far, the luck was only making Jesper even more cocky and blind to the risk.

The wagers he was placing were now not only enough to keep them going to their goal, but were well above that for no reason other than Jesper needing that rush.

“Jes, honey” y/n softly spoke, rubbing his hand as he went to double his wager.

“Yes darling?” Jesper asked, kissing the bare skin between her collarbone and neck.

As y/n saw some eyes on her, she put on the facial expressions of an irritated girlfriend, giving Jesper a look with her eyes so he knew it wasn’t genuine.

“Can’t we just go Jesper?” Y/n wined, a dramatic pout on her face as she dragged her hand down his chest.

Jesper suppressed a smirk, not having any problem with her ruse if it meant her hands stayed on him.

Yet, he knew what she was doing, also having seen the other patron watching them closely.

Jesper felt a bit on edge, uncertain if they were scrutinizing their ruse or worse, checking y/n out.

As the man’s eyes glanced up and down y/n’s body as she sat on Jesper’s lap, Jesper restrained from laying his hands on his pistols and guiding his girl home.

Giving the man a warning glance before smirking and kissing y/n’s cheek, Jesper responded, “we will soon love, gotta win you that chest you wanted first, hmm?”

Y/n batted her eyes and nodded, “really? You can win it for me?”

Jesper grinned at her dramatic statement but also took it as a true challenge, “for you, of course“.

Jesper’s attention was drawn back to the other guy when he groaned and commented that Jesper needed to place his bet already.

Jesper smirked and slid some kruge across the table as he moved y/n to his other leg away from the guy.

“Jes, I can’t see the back office from this angle” y/n whispered, dipping her head into his neck.

Jesper hummed, squeezing her hip, “I know, but I don’t like you near him with the way he had his eyes on you”.

Y/n looked up from his shoulder to see what he was referring to; instantly making awkward eye contact with the man in question.

Swallowing thickly, she gave the man a look she hoped showed her lack of interest before turning back to Jesper.

“Where’s the chest?” Jesper asked, resting his hand on y/n’s small back as they stood at the table.

“When you’re ready to cash out, you’ll get it” the handler said, waving to his left; the direction where another worker had moved the chest.

“That’s not how this works” Jesper argued, starting to sense something was off.

“Look man you don’t want to have to carry it around all night “ the employee pushed.

Y/n rubbed Jesper’s arm as she stared at the man, “oh don’t worry! He can still play, I can carry it”.

Jesper fought back a grin and smirked, “as my lady stated, she can hold it until we leave”.

“That won’t be necessary. What, do you not trust us or something?” The man asked, staring at Jesper with a taunting gaze.

“I could give you just about a thousand reasons why that would be reasonable” Jesper remarked, moving his arm from behind y/n to her front.

The man looked Jesper up and down, “that is rich coming from you”.

Before Jesper could respond or y/n could react, the man continued, “the boss needs to record it for the books. You’ll get your winnings soon, why don’t you stay and play a few more rounds?”.

Jesper glanced over at y/n who sighed loudly, “it’s fine. We can wait a bit babe, as long as it doesn’t come back all scratched up”.

The man chuckled, “course not, no damage will be done to your pretty chest darling”

Y/N’s hand twitched against her leg, her fingers brushing Jesper’s thigh briefly as she restrained her disgust.

Jesper sent a harsh glare at the man and guided y/n away.

Jesper huffed as he walked back to the table.

“Play a few more rounds, I’ll find the chest” y/n whispered while no one was nearby.

Jesper raised an eyebrow at her, “says the one who didn’t want me to play tonight”.

Rolling her eyes, she sighed, “you got us into this, but now it’s hidden. Might be back to plan A of just stealing it. But we have to know where it is to do that. Three rounds max though”.

Jesper nodded, rubbing her back, “agreed. I am sorry doll”.

Y/n smiled at him, “it’s fine Jes, but be conservative on these rounds Hmm? Don’t need to go home short handed tonight”.

Jesper understood her message, not only should he do smaller bets, but he should also drag out the rounds by contemplating his betting decisions.

Partially because it meant less chances for him to lose his winnings, but also because he needed to make it seem like he had been trying to leave before he lost money rather than just because they’d earned the chest and were therefore done.

Y/n waited with Jesper for another few rounds, sipping on very watered down drinks.

Once the staff were back to ignoring her and Jesper, she stood.

“Where are you going hun?” Jesper covered.

“I need to pee” y/n said, pretending to as if she wanted to whisper but was too drunk to do so.

Jesper chuckled and nodded, squeezing her hand, “don’t be long”.

Y/n squeezed his hand back before moving through the crowd.

Y/n was just about to check if the next closed door in the long dingy hallway was locked when she heard voices.

She’d checked at least five rooms which were all useless, but no one had been present in them.

Y/n froze and leaned against the wall next to the door to keep steady so she wouldn’t accidentally make a sound but could still hear.

“He’s never this lucky” she heard someone remark.

“I don’t care. You weren’t to let anyone else play for it, Bracken!” The other voice barked.

Y/n felt a sinking feeling in her gut, it had to be about the chest.

This room was one of only three rooms left in her search of the club where she’d seen the chest be moved to.

Did they know what was in the chest?

Is that why they weren’t supposed to be waging the chest?

How did it get thrown in as part of the den’s possible winnings then anyways?

As she heard more arguing and feet shuffling closer, she glanced around before sliding back down the hall and through the bathroom door.

She took a moment to compose herself, feeling her hidden leg belt holding her small blade.

It was better than nothing, but far less ideal than what she normally liked to have on her.

But Kaz was insistent that this was to be an auction and even in Ketterdamn women were expected to wear dresses at such events.

Y/n was just glad she had brought a hair tie, having snuck it in by placing it inside her heel.

It was uncomfortable to walk in, but it meant her hair could be out of her way should things go sideways.

Taking it out, she tied up her hair and swiftly made her way back to her boyfriend.

Chest or no chest, the staff were getting suspicious and the couple would be wise to leave soon.

Meanwhile, Jesper had finished his third round and began panicking that she wasn’t back.

He did another round to distract himself and focus on trusting that she’d be able to handle herself.

“Saints, that girl really is your good luck huh? You suck without her” His opponent asked mockingly as Jesper lost yet another hand.

Normally, he’d be offended or at least give some sarcastically witty retort but his kind was on her absence.

She should’ve been back by now.

Jesper looked up and saw she was empty handed as she gave him a look that communicated she didn’t get the chest.

But he couldn’t have cared less, he was just glad she was okay.

He majorly regretted having suggested they stay instead of just telling Kaz the chest wasn’t up for auction.

Regardless that she hadn’t found anything and seemed okay, Jesper intended to keep her close to him now.

“What did I miss?” Y/n asked, adjusting her dress as she sat down.

“Nothing love” Jesper sighed, biting his lip.

The other guy scoffed and laughed, “you’ll see, he’s about to lose again”

Y/n glanced at Jesper who just shook his head, setting another kruge down to increase his bet.

“Something is up!” The man shouted, slamming his hands on the table when he lost.

“Woah” y/n giggled, playing her roll of ignorant girlfriend “you okay over there?”

The man’s nostrils flared as he growled, “hey! Security, it’s her!”

Jesper promptly stood, pulling y/n behind him.

She no longer had to pretend she was confused.

She felt like a lost and pathetically naive girl in that moment.

A large crowd formed around their table as her boyfriend shielded her, one hand on her and the other on one of his pistols that he was no longer concealing; his fingers twitching to pull them from their holsters.

She was too busy measuring the threats around them to listen to the argument, letting Jesper focus on that part.

But she knew from his tone Jesper wasn’t pleased, “not going to happen”.

“Look, she’s pretending to be scared and confused! Such a sneaky little bi-“ the gambler argued angrily as he moved closer.

Jesper pulled his pistol out within a split second, it now being positioned at the man as the den’s security freed their weapons in response.

The man stopped mid curse and smirked “see how defensive? He’s protecting his secret stash”.

“You’re done talking about her” Jesper remarked, his empty hand still on y/n as he moved her to a slightly more guarded spot behind him.

“Stash?” Y/n questioned, shaking her head.

“The innocent doe eyes thing isn’t going to work sweetheart “ the man remarked.

Jesper’s grip on his pistol tightened but he let his eyes flicker to his girlfriend’s hand that she’d rested on his hip when the scene first started.

Jesper felt horrible.

He’d gotten them into this situation.

He was the reason why there were not only men crowding them but armed men.

Not to mention, it was his reputation of bad luck that had this man doubting Jesper’s sudden string of good luck tonight.

“Leave her out of this. If you think I’m cheating take it up with me, not her” Jesper stated sharply.

Y/n glanced at the back of his head before back to the others and stepping sideways as she came to understand what was happening.

Jesper’s eyes shot to her in panic and disappointment, a firm whisper, “y/n/n”.

Y/n waved an arm down her body, “you think I’m concealing cards on me?”

Only one single man was decent enough to look embarrassed as she pointed out the fact her dress didn’t cover much; and therefore there weren’t many hiding spots.

“I mean, there’s not many places I could,” she chuckled, “but feel free to look”.

Jesper stepped closer to her, uncertain what she was doing.

The guy who’d been eyeing her earlier, smugly moved forward far too eagerly.

“With your eyes, not your hands” she demanded holding a hand up to stop the man.

Jesper glared at the man, his second pistol out and now pointed at the men as he clenched his jaw.

One guard looked her over, “how do we know you’re not hiding cards were your skin is covered?”

“Where?” She asked, hands running down her dress everywhere but the area of her knife belt, “there’s not even any pockets or sleeves”.

“You know where” the guard smirked, explicitly eyeing her breasts.

Jesper clicked his revolvers as he stepped closer with a low growl deep in his throat.

“Enough, we’ll just get out of your hair then. Let’s just cash out and leave , Jesper. “ y/n said, knowing Jesper was at his end.

He kept staring at the men for a little longer but nodded his head once.

He lowered his pistols at the same time the security did, but didn’t place them back in their holsters until after the others had put theirs away.

Not that it would matter, y/n knew very well that Jesper would easily be able to pull his guns back out long before the others could even attempt to raise theirs.

An obese man tossed a bag of their winnings towards the couple and y/n caught it.

Jesper placed his hand on her back and gently lead them to the door.

“My chest” y/n reminded them, turning around and stopping their exit.

Jesper wanted to groan.

Yes, they needed the chest.

But, he’d have found someway to make it up somehow.

Just not now, not when the staff were already on edge and eyeing y/n.

“Wouldn’t you rather have the money?” The man asked , “maybe your man will get you something nice with it”.

“My girl wants the chest” Jesper argued, “so, where’s the chest?”

“The chest is not for sale” some random person spoke loudly.

“That’s fine because we’re not buying it” Jesper smirked.

Y/n caught a glimpse of the chest next to the man who’d recently spoken up.

She nodded her head his direction and Jesper raised an eyebrow.

Looking back at the house boss, Jesper gave him a questioning gesture.

The unknown man pushed the chest against the ground, the box scrapping against the bottom of the bar.

Y/n and Jesper shared a moment of eye contact before all hell broke loose.

Y/n unsheathed her blade as Jesper flipped his pistols around on their way up to his hands.

The guards weren’t too far behind and soon the couple were separated.

Jesper wasn’t even watching where he was pointing his guns, his eyes following his girl as she fluently leaped between tables as she fought off some of the guards while trying to get closer to the chest.

He was glad she wasn’t only skilled at avoiding gunshots, but also that the guards were poorly equipped.

Most had a few, dirty but sharp blades, but few had anything of larger concern.

And for those that did, Jesper guarded her from them.

As someone tried to grab his left pistol, Jesper faced him and snapped the barrel upwards against the guys’ hand, using the man’s stumbled response to send him to the floor. Jesper hit the man’s head with the butt of his gun on his way down; knocking him out.

Jesper’s eyes had just located y/n when she hissed loudly, his wide eyes seeing red pour down her exposed leg; the color visible even under the minimal glow of the club.

Even though she kept fighting her way to the chest, Jesper rang shots out faster as he rushed towards her.

As he shot the man who had stabbed her, y/n looked over at him and gave him a weak cocky smile.

Jesper could see the strain through it and his heart dropped.

She looked away and clumsily jumped off the bar counter and towards the man and his chest.

“Y/n!” Jesper called, pleading her to stop.

“I believe that’s ours” she said to the man, ignoring Jesper.

“Psycho little -“ a guard said just before y/n used her good leg to swipe his legs out from under him and knock him down.

Jesper kept one gun pointed at the guards before her who were holding her at gunpoint.

His other was turned sideways to hit the man charging at him from across the room.

Y/N’s sharp inhale rang through the air, making Jesper’s eyes freeze for a moment in fear.

But as he turned to her, he saw her nearly on the floor.

None of the guards he’d pointed his gun at had even moved.

What happened?!

Y/n pressed a shaky hand on the dingy floor to catch herself, groaning as her wrist screamed at her.

The man she’d knocked down had returned the favor by tugging her dress’s edge downwards, making her land on the floor in front of him.

She looked down and faintly made out the dull knife the guard had in his grip just as he dug it into the already broken skin.

Y/n cursed and broke the guy’s wrist as she moved her blade to his neck.

She heard the men above her moving in response and she could envision all their guns directed downwards at her.

But, she couldn’t do anything about that.

At this one she had pinned would pay for the scar he likely was causing.

She knew Jesper was there, and she hoped he’d seen what was going on.

But, she knew he had countless other threats surrounding him in the packed bar, so she wasn’t certain if he had.

She flinched and squeezed her eyes shut as she heard the familiar clicking of guns and braced for their shots.

As gunfire rang out through the now-stuffy air, y/n felt the man pull his knife out of her leg, going back for another strike.

She pressed her blade to his throat tightly, knowing she had enough pressure to subdue him as she heard him start to squirm.

Upon hearing bodies hit the floor next to her, y/n peeled her eyes open and saw Jesper had wounded each man.

Jesper was beside her, kicking the guns away from the men as he bent down to lift her up.

“Hang on love” Jesper huffed, one hand around her waist as he hoisted her back to a standing position.

He positioned his other hand so it was pointing his pistol toward anyone who dared to try and come forward.

He didn’t want to have to shoot anyone else but he would willingly shoot-to-kill every person in the bar if that’s what it took to get his girl out and he wanted them to know that.

Y/n mumbled something unintelligible as she pressed her palm to her wound while trying to brace herself on Jesper.

Jesper fought to keep his sorrowful and pained eyes off her leg as he helped her walk out of the bar.

“Wait” she gasped, making him freeze as his wide eyes snapped to her face.

“T-the.. Ches-“ she groaned, eyes squinting in pain.

Jesper huffed in irritation but leaned her on the counter as he rushed back to the chest, hurriedly grabbing it and then her hand, “now come on”.

Once they’d ventured down the narrow side-street alleys far enough to feel somewhat less at risk, she slowed her pace as she moved to rest against the wall.

Jesper fell to his knees before her as she pressed her back against the cold mossy bricks, sliding down until her butt hit the ground.

He finally let his troubled eyes examine her leg, his teeth grinding as they did.

“Shit” he sighed, looking around for water to clear the wound so he could see it better, “love, fuck”.

Y/n chuckled faintly, rolling her head side to side as the back of it rested against the bricks, “it hurts like the bitch they said I am, but I’ll be fine”

Jesper shook his head, tears flooding his vision as he faced her, using his hand to wipe the blood away since there were no liquids around.

“Fuck, Jesp-“ she moaned, pushing her fist to her mouth to keep quiet.

He glanced up at her with remorse as he wiped some sweat beads from her forehead with his other hand.

Jesper stared back down at her leg, trying to problem solve, “I know baby, I’m so sorry. Shit I- I don’t. Okay so-“.

Y/n reached out and tenderly stroked his face, making him let out a choked sob, “Jesper, honey,-“.

He shook his head firmly, pulling the bottom section of torn material from her dress and pressing it against her wound.

She grimaced but nodded as his eyes looked into hers, “let’s go”.

Jesper gave her a thankful smile at how strong she was being despite their situation.

By the time they made it back, y/n was dragging her leg so much that Jesper was nearly carrying her.

In fact, he wished he was, but her stubbornness and pride got in the way.

Ironic, right?

He used his free hand to throw open the doors, not caring that they slammed against the wall loudly.

He was glad it helped announce their entrance, his focus on finding Nina.

“I-it- just a scratch Jes” y/n tried to comfort, gripping the material of his shirt.

He knew the wound wasn’t life threatening but he hated that there was one at all.

She shouldn’t have been hurt.

He shouldn’t have gotten her hurt.

As Nina finished up the stitching on y/n’s leg, y/n continued drawing shapes on Jesper’s palm.

He hadn’t left her side from the moment it happened, not even when Kaz tried to pull him out so they could talk.

He’d face Kaz’s wrath later even if delaying it only made him angrier.

He wasn’t ready to leave her side.

Kaz had taken the chest to hide it wherever and hadn’t returned since.

Nina had already fixed the pain and bleeding and was just stitching up the skin to aid in her healing.

“Twice daily, rinse between applications” Nina stated, facing Jesper as she handed him a jar.

“What is that?” Y/n asked, reaching for his other hand.

“It’ll keep it clean and fix the infection” Nina said softly.

“Infection?” Jesper asked, the way his head was still hung and the pain and guilt in his voice made y/n frown.

“Whatever Saints-forsaken dagger was used wasn’t exactly clean, nor is Ketterdamn” Nina explained.

Jesper nodded, turning the jar over in his hand as he scrutinized the material.

Y/n gave Nina a pleading look to which her friend smiled in understanding.

“But, she’ll be fine, you got her out” Nina said, “she’s lucky you were there, it could’ve been worse”.

Jesper began to argue but y/n squeezed his hand to stop him.

Nina gave them both a kind smile before she stepped out.

They both called out a thank you to Nina before y/n tilted Jesper’s head up so she could his pewter-green eyes she adored.

He took a shaky breath, setting the jar beside her as he cupped her face with his hands, “I’m so sorry y/n, if-“.

“Please stop Jes, it’s not your fault “ she sighed.

“Doll, -“ Jesper argued softly as a tear rolled down his cheek.

“Jesper!” Kaz’s booming voice called out the sound forced into the room before the man himself did.

“Ka-“ y/n began defensively.

Jesper shook his head at her, willing to accept his punishment.

“I wasn’t speaking to you, was I?” Kaz snapped, sending her a harsh stare.

But y/n noticed the way a grimace formed as his eyes fell to her patched leg.

It lasted only a split second before his anger returned and he looked at Jesper.

“I know” Jesper admitted, not moving his eyes from his girlfriend’s leg.

“Then look at me when-“ Kaz demanded.

“Look at you?!” Jesper scoffed shaking his head, “y/n’s hurt because of me, I’m not taking my eyes off her until she’s healed”.

Y/n pouted as she sighed, unsure how to help him.

“You two were to get the chest. That’s it! Then you come back bloody” Kaz stated looking at y/n.

To Jesper, he said, “and you gambled with the kruge I gave you I said to only use to purchase the chest!”

Jesper nodded, looking intently into y/n’s eyes, “I should’ve listened. We should’ve left when y/n suggested”

“Aye! Brekker, we got the chest did we not?” Y/n smirked, stretching her leg on the bed.

“And came back inoperable for at least a week” Kaz griped.

“At least two” Jesper corrected firmly.

Kaz raised an eyebrow at him, having spoken to Nina himself moments ago.

“Jes,” y/n shushed, “not helping. And Nina said one week”.

Looking back her way, Jesper gave her a pleading look, “two”.

Kaz wanted to keep criticizing them Jesper but even as mad as he was at the behavior, after watching the way Jesper looked at y/n, Kaz could tell he wasn’t going to be making that mistake ever again.

Y/n played with Jesper’s rings as he held her torso to his side.

“It’s not your fault” she reiterated for the hundredth time.

Jesper let out a loud sigh, watching her fingers spin the rings he donned.

“You had said we should leave. I should’ve listened” he admitted.

The scene had been playing over in his mind on a loop.

“You had an idea Jesper, and it would’ve worked if things hadn’t changed twice on their end” y/n said encouragingly.

Jesper stayed silent as he wished he could take her place.

He deserved to be the one with a gash in their leg not her.

“Jes, my beautiful baby boy, Kaz’s intel was wrong. You tried to adjust so we could still accomplish the task. You had no way of knowing they’d change things again on us” she pointed out, lifting his knuckles to her soft lips.

It was true.

Inej had just left y/n’s room after informing them that the auction had been cancelled moments before they’d arrived.

Allegedly because the seller argued for a better price for which to sell it to the auctioneer.

Then, the seller made a deal to wager the chest instead, in a bet he wagered against the auctioneer.

Through all of that, Jesper’s plan would’ve worked.

However, unbeknownst to them, the auctioneer/gambling den’s leader had staged one of their own employees at the tables to win it.

But, the seller too had arranged a ploy, intending for the box to be won by his true buyer.

Evidently whatever was in this box was not something one could legally sell or even auction off.

Not that Ketterdamn much less the bare ever stuck to the laws or legalities.

But, Inej found out the intended buyer was a high ranking merchant and therefore had to make it seem they’d stumbled upon the chest on a routine night of high stakes gambling in some abandoned part of the barrel.

“Doesn’t matter” Jesper mumbled.

“Jesper Fahey, come on now” y/n pouted.

“I let my ego get in the way and you- you’re hurt becau-“ Jesper rambled.

“Don’t you dare finish that Jesper “ Y/n warned, holding his hand tightly as she kissed his knuckles again.

“Y/n, just…please, you don’t know the underlying motive I had” Jesper remorsefully whispered.

“Which was?” She asked, letting him explain in hopes he’d feel better after.

“I wanted to impress you- and Saint’s! I just.., like I said, my ego won and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should’ve been. I should’ve been more focused on our safety. Your safety. But instead I was thinking about showing off to try and impress you. I’m so sorry y/n, I-“ Jesper mumbled, voice strained.

She pushed her tailbone into the mattress beside him as she leaned to sit up without moving her leg.

Y/n turned to look at him as he copied her movements with a mixture of confusion, fear, and sadness swimming in his normally comforting eyes.

She shook her head vehemently, grabbing his hands in hers.

“Jesper Llewellyn Fahey” she hummed and shook her head with a smile on her lips, “you, my dear, do not need to try to impress me. You already impress me on a daily basis. Okay? You’ve got nothing you need to prove; certainly not to me. I need you to know that”.

Jesper let a few tears trail down his cheeks, hitting her thumbs until she tenderly wiped them off before kissing both of his cheeks.

“I really am so terribly sor-“ Jesper began again, his arms locking behind her to hold her to him.

“Fahey, if you don’t stop apologizing I swear I will hide your ever so precious pistols somewhere in Kaz’s office” y/n threatened.

Jesper chuckled into her hair, kissing her ear softly.

“I like that sound” she hummed, snuggling into him, “are you okay now? This is over, hmm?”

“Two weeks” he spoke, playing with her hair.

“Ugh” she complained, “fine but only if you’re keeping me company during those two boring ass weeks”.

Jesper tucked her head deeper into his shoulder, as he held her, listening to her breathing to soothe any remaining negative emotions.

“Darling, I’m never leaving your side again” Jesper threatened sweetly, closing his eyes.

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#jesper fahey fluff #jesper fahey x y/n #jesper fahey angst #jesper fahey hurt-comfort #jesper fahey x you #jesper fahey #jes #jes fahey #soc #soc fluff #soc jesper #soc fahey #soc jesper fahey #soc angst #sab tv show #sab jesper fahey #jesper fahey x reader #six of crows jesper #jesper fahey x reader fluff #jesper fahey x reader angst #jesper fahey imagine #six of crows imagines #six of crows x reader #six of crows duology #six of crows #six of crows fluff #six of crows angst #six of crows reader #original post #sab

[kierapbjd]

Official-ish Intro Post!

I wanted to update this, so... Hello! You can call me Kiera (　＾▽＾) I'm a 22 year old college student and I customize dolls as a hobby. I'll make a few bullet points below sharing the gist of stuff as well as some FAQ.

• My pronouns are she/her and I'm biromantic. Somewhere on the ace spectrum but I do like writing/drawing smut from time to time (I may post nsfw doodles but they will be censored and also hidden beneath page breaks).

• A walking boatload of anxiety but doing my best to power through it >:D

• I am a big fan of Bungo Stray Dogs and other anime. A lot of my dolls are based on canon characters!

• I'm a shameless OCxCanon shipper. I think we should all be free of the constraints of cringe culture and embrace what makes us happy (so long as it isn't hurting anyone/illegal/yk)

• Other socials: milkyneko_bjd (dolls) and kieracraftycreations (art) on Instagram, kiera2456 on Twitter (or X I guess lol), strawberryneko2456 on Discord

FAQs

- Do you sell dolls?

- Yes, my commissions are open! The official commission info post is a WIP but I will likely add a link to it here on the 27th or 28th of May. I also plan on potentially doing an auction for one or two! You’re welcome to ask any questions about it beforehand and I’d be happy to chat with you~

- Can I reach out to/tag you for friendship/questions/memes/general tomfoolery and mischief?

- Yes! Please do, I'm looking for more friends on discord/insta and stuff ( =＾ω＾) I promise I do not bite, I'm actually super insecure irl so chatting (or shitposting lmao) would be nice!

- Do you allow reposts to other sites/usage as pfps/headers etc?

- Yes, but please credit me! (￣。￣) I don't give permission for my photos to be uploaded anywhere without credit.

- Art requests?

- It will usually say in my bio whether or not these are open! Lately I am only doing BSD related requests and there are some stipulations (have to be following me + reblog the original requests post which I can link to you if you need it)

- Can I spam likes/stalk your profile?

- Honestly feel free to spam me with likes, replies, reblogs etc– as long as it’s within reason (no links or unrelated/hateful comments), it does not bother me!

Finally, since I can’t think of anything else to add I’m going to put some of my favorite works here! Thanks for reading and I hope you stick around :D

#intro post #introduction #bungo stray dogs #bungo stray dogs fanart #bungou sd #bsd #bsd fanart #ball jointed doll #meet the artist #artists on tumblr #bsd artist #bsd art

[autolenaphilia]

I kinda cursed myself by getting into Diablo, which I've written about before. Because Activision-Blizzard is a terrible company. They are horrible towards their employees first and foremost, and have been for decades. Especially their women workers, who have made credible allegations of a culture of misogyny. They have had a massive lawsuit about this in the 2020s but even Diablo II was made using horrible crunch back in the late 1990s.

Their treatment of their customers is of course a far lesser evil, they have just been assholes to them. Still just looking at the Diablo series, there are examples of pretty much all the bad practices triple-a game studios towards customers have made in the last 20 years.

Diablo III is infamously one of the first notable examples of always-online DRM, despite the game having a single-player campaign. Now the game servers have stayed up a remarkably long time for Diablo III, because it was widely succesful (the fourth best-selling pc game of all time according to wikipedia with 20 million copies sold). But requiring a central server to play will mean the game will eventually die when the server is shut down. And not “die” in the sense that you can’t buy it anymore or can’t play multiplayer, it will die in the sense that you can’t ever play it at all anymore. This is despite the game having a substantial single-player campaign. This is a terrible practice for game preservation and I encourage you to join this campaign against it.

And Diablo III also had a foretaste of the predatory monetization to come, with the infamous real money auction house, that was so bad that it got shut down by Blizzard after a few years. But it was just a prologue to what would come with the next major installment: Diablo Immortal.

Immortal is a mobile game that became a meme right from its announcement. That was because the announcement that it would be mobile-only was greeted with boos at Blizzcon. And we should keep in mind that Blizzcon is a convention just for Blizzard games that cost 199 dollars to attend at the time (now it costs 299 dollars), so a very receptive audience to Blizzard’s bullshit, and Blizzard still got deservedly booed.

And then the actual game released, and it had such predatory monetization that it got nicknamed Diablo Immoral. I use the site macrotransactions.org, which grades games according to the presence of predatory monetization and they gave Diablo: Immortal a well-deserved F.

And this trend has only continued with the recent Diablo IV, which is again always-online and has predatory microtransactions.

Not that Diablo II is free from Blizzard bullshit. Both the original and remastered versions of Diablo II can only be bought from Blizzard’s own website, which I wouldn’t begrudge them if they didn’t also have DRM.

The installer for the original Diablo II only requires a key code you either got from the CD or e-mailed to you when you purchased it digitally. So not so bad. The original Diablo II however kinda shows its age and has always been a janky game, despite patches it still has serious bugs like the lying character screen. And the game shows its ages otherwise, despite the excellent art design, the game is also resolution locked to 800 x 600, and that’s only after you install the expansion. And the base game plus expansion still costs 20 dollars, despite being more than 20 years old and not properly patched.

It’s the kind of game that deserves a remaster. And Blizzard thought the same and released a remastered version in 2021, Diablo II: Resurrected that attempts to fix these issues. But the catch is that it also upped the DRM, this time the game requires you to “check in” online at least every 30 days, so the remastered game is just as doomed as III and IV when the servers shut down.

You just can’t win with Activision-Blizzard. The only Diablo game that actually feels worth getting legitimately is the first Diablo, which you can buy drm-free on GOG, and reasonably cheap too when there is a sale.

And it’s not that the games are bad either. They have very talented programmers, writers and artists working for them (which they treat horribly). Diablo II despite the jankyness is a great game, a very good sequel to the excellent first game that massively expands the scope of the series in interesting ways while remaining true to the first game.

I recently watched Noah Caldwell-Gervais’s excellent franchise retrospective video on the series, and he has played all the games, and finds much to praise about even the most reviled entries of the series. Even Diablo: Immortal, despite being a mobile game with predatory monetization, is a full-fledged entry into the series, a proper meaty action RPG with lots of story content. We will actually lose something valuable when the servers are shutdown.

The problem with Blizzard is not that they make bad games. It’s just that they are an evil company, which mistreats its workers (especially the women), ruthlessly monetizes their artistic efforts, and DRMs so badly that it will eventually destroy the games entirely once they are no longer profitable.

At this rate I can at best recommend getting Diablo I from GOG when it’s cheap in a sale, anything else is too heavy with Blizzard’s nonsense to really recommend. And "gamer boycotts" are kinda worthless, so I won't call for one, but I'll admit supporting that kind of company is worth questioning.

And frankly if you want to get into action rpgs, I would recommend playing Torchlight 1 and 2 instead of getting into Diablo.The Torchlight games are very much “Diablo-clones”, spiritual successors to the older series and clearly modeled on Diablo 1 and 2. But the gameplay is so polished, with many added quality-of-life features and way less bugs than Diablo II, that they improve the player experience enough to fully justify being so derivative. And they are not made or published by Activision-Blizzard, so you can buy both of them on GOG without DRM. Torchlight deserves its own post, and there are other worthy diablo-clones out there (i’ve played a bit of Dungeon Siege and enjoyed it). The positive legacy of Diablo lives on, despite Blizzard’s best attempts to pollute it.

#my writings #diablo #activision-blizzard

[quinnhills]

Good to know you're feeling welcome! :D this is our little place in the internet, and we've decided to make it trans and gay as hell (n i gotta say, i did think "they-them gang! :o" when i found out you started using they/them too a while ago X3 ) n if you received this ask more than once, my tumblr bugged out before i could finish, sorry (。_。)

anyways, and sorry if this is long, but Woe- More Tumblr Things Be Upon Ye:

there used to not be an image limit before, causing a few- interesting posts… tho that changed a few years ago and recently, at first the limit being 10 images per post to now 30 images per post (you can also move the images around a bit)

if you plan on staying long term on tumblr and use desktop the most, i recommend getting the browser extensions Xkit &/or New Xkit cuz… yeah, tumblr is pretty nice, but it sometimes gets hard to use. it also adds extra useful things to the tumblr experience, which is nice to have. i'd say tumblr is like living in a cheap apartment in a calm area of the city. the place's great for what it is, just gotta be sure to leave rat traps near holes and dont worry about the Beast down the hall,

speaking of rats, we got an infestation. you may or may not have heard of it with the voter fraudage going with the polls a bit ago; since tumblr has little to No email verification, people outside tumblr buy bots to get in here and start posting malicious links. tho the bots are surprisingly easy to identify (often times blank blogs with very weird descriptions + stolen picture of lady or ai generated. you'll know it when you see it), and the protocol here is block and report spam so staff can deal with it

and btw if you want to keep a post for as long as your blog stands, i recommend rebloggin! thanks to how tumblr is build as, even if the original post or that blog is gone, the reblog will stay with you (+ tags on reblogs dont really make a post expand outside of your own blog, so many use this to create Very intricate personal tag systems to make easier finding posts, bc once a blog gets 1k+ post in it, it gets hard finding anything on it... <- knows this from experience u.u)

oh and last thing before i go again (and something i found out recently), another browser extension ive been loving: Stylus! with it you can customize a ton of sites to your liking And with a specific style found in the archive of this extension, you can change how the dashboard looks! even changing the background to any image you might want :D

so yeah, thats it, for now. i got more info if you want it, just lmk 👉👈

and you probably already noticed this, but there isnt really any word limit for posts or asks around these lands. tho on tags, the character limit on a single tag is 139. but you can put a Lot of tags, so there! be free mx quinn, no character limit holds you down no more ヽ(✿ﾟ▽ﾟ)ノ

Thank you so much for the knowledge!

Some Quinn Facts:

Mx., Ms. and Miss are all acceptable :)

I use “gay as hell” as a sort of tongue-in-cheek shorthand, but I also identify as trans as hell, queer as hell, non-binary as hell, lesbian as hell, and anxious/depressive as hell

I’m a vegetarian

My favorite food is pineapple pizza (controversial, I know)

For a few years in the early 2000s, I was a licensed auctioneer

The most times I’ve ever cried during a movie is 5 times during Happiest Season

I like the idea of books, but I’m bad at reading them

Overalls give me gender euphoria, and I don’t know why

I hope to release a solo album within the next year

I hope to direct a feature-length film by the time I’m 40

Coming out was the best thing I ever did

#i am now testing the one hundred and thirty-nine character limit of the tagging system—not because I don’t believe you but because this just #is how my brain works #limit reached #test complete #thank you

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Monopoly's event-horizon

When a superdense, concentrated mass forms a black hole, the laws of physics around it change, giving rise to an eldritch zone where the normal rules don’t apply. When corporations form a concentrated industry, the laws of economics likewise change.

Take copyright: when I was a baby writer, there were dozens of comparably sized New York publishers. The writers who mentored me could shop their rights around to lots of houses, which enabled them to subdivide those rights.

For example, they could separately sell paperback and hardcover rights, getting paid twice for the same book. Under those circumstances, giving authors broader copyrights and easier enforcement systems could directly translate into more groceries on those authors’ tables and more gas in their cars’ tanks.

But today, publishing has dwindled to five giant houses (possibly four soon, depending on whether Penguin Random House successfully appeals its blocked merger with Simon and Schuster). Under these conditions, giving exploited authors more copyright is like giving bullied schoolkids more lunch-money.

Whatever copyright authors get will be non-negotiably extracted from them via the near-identical, unviolable core contracting terms from the Big Five publisher. Today, the bullies don’t just take your paperback rights, they also acquire your audio and ebook rights.

Most of them now want your worldwide English rights, so you can’t resell the book in the Commonwealth, and some have started demanding graphic novel, film and TV rights.

In our new book, Rebecca Giblin and I call this “chokepoint capitalism”. In today’s highly concentrated creative labor markets, copyright’s normal role of giving creators bargaining leverage over their supply chain is transformed.

https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Instead of being a tool for creators, copyright is inevitably transferred to part of the supply chain — a publisher, label, streamer, ebook retailers, etc — where it becomes a tool to beat up on the rest of the supply chain, especially creators.

But copyright isn’t the only policy that breaks down at the event horizon of monopoly’s black hole. Policy itself breaks down, too. When power is pluralized among lots of firms an expert regulator can ask a technical question like “Does net neutrality lead to a decrease in private infrastructure investment?” and get lots of answers.

Some companies — cable operators hoping to override your choices about which data you want by slowing down traffic from sites unless they pay bribes — will insist that they can’t afford to build fiber without this incentive.

Others — ISPs who want to raid the cable operators’ customer base by giving you the data you request as fast as they can — will answer this charge. Both will provide supposedly empirical about their investment choices and capital and running costs, and both will vigorously probe the others’ submissions for factual weaknesses.

But when all the internet in your country has been monopolized so that nearly all Americans have little or no choice of ISP, the truth-seeking exercise of regulation becomes an auction, with the monopolists bidding together to bend reality (or regulation) to their will:

https://muninetworks.org/content/177-million-americans-harmed-net-neutrality

This is called “regulatory capture”: when there are four or five companies running an industry, nearly everyone qualified to understand it is an executive at one of those companies. Obama’s “good” FCC chair was a cable lobbyist, Trump’s “bad” chair was a Verizon lawyer.

Ironically, the term “regulatory capture” originated with right-wing, anti-regulation nihilists. They argued that capture was inevitable and the only way to preserve competition was to eliminate all regulation, including the regulation that blocked monopoly formation.

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

Eliminating anti-monopoly rules had the entirely predictable effect of producing lots of monopolies. Today, nearly every global industry — beer, shipping, banking, athletic shoes, concert tickets, eyeglasses, etc — is dominated by a handful of firms:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Today, the same people who advocated for removing anti-monopoly rules in every administration since Reagan’s insist that their deregulation has nothing to do with the growth of monopolies — that these monopolies arise out of some mysterious force of history: when it’s monopoly time, you get monopolies.

This is a wild thing to say aloud among reasonably intelligent adults, like claiming, “Well, when we put out rat poison, we didn’t have a rat problem. We stopped, and now we’re overrun by rats. But it would be hasty to assume that removing the rat poison led to the explosion of rats (by the way, does anyone have a cure for the plague?)”

But if you haven’t paid close attention to the history of antitrust law since the late 1970s, all of this might feel mysterious to you — or worse, you might mistake the cause for the effect: regulators keep making corrupt choices, so regulation itself is impossible.

This is like the artists’ rights advocate who says, “artists’ incomes keep falling, so we need more copyright” — in mistaking the effect for the cause, both blame the system, rather than the corporate power that has corrupted it.

The same is true in our online “censorship” “debate,” which poses the issue of speech online as one of “which speech rules should the Big Tech companies that have transformed the internet into five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four adopt?”

https://doctorow.medium.com/yes-its-censorship-2026c9edc0fd

Good communities need good rules, sure — but by focusing on which rules we have, rather than what keeps people stuck in social media silos that have manifestly bad rules, we miss the point. Absenting yourself from the major social media platforms and online messaging tools extracts major costs on your personal, professional, educational and civil life, so many of us stay within those silos, even though every day we spend there is a torment.

The focus on penalizing firms with bad rules is another one of those mistaking-the-cause-for-the-effect-and-making-it-worse phenomena. A fine-grained, high-stakes duty to moderate makes it effectively impossible for small platforms — say, community-owned co-ops — to offer an alternative to Big Tech.

And once Big Tech platforms have a duty to police their users, they can argue, reasonably enough, that they can’t also be forced to interoperate with other platforms whose users they can’t spy on and thus can’t control.

The case that bad community managers give rise to toxic communities breaks down under conditions of monopoly, since attempts to improve platforms with billions of users are a) doomed (there is no three-ring binder big enough to encompass all the rules for three billion users) and b) inimical to standing up smaller, easier-to-administer communities.

Monopoly’s singularity also applies to free software and open source. In the mid-1980s, Richard Stallman coined the term “free software” to apply to software that respected your freedom, specifically, the freedom to inspect, improve and redistribute it.

These were considered the necessary preconditions for freedom in a digital world. Without a guaranteed right to inspect the code that you relied on and correct the defects you found in it, you were a prisoner to the errors or ill intentions of the software’s original author.

In 1998, another name was proposed for software licensed on “free” terms: “open source.” Nominally, this term was intended to resolve the ambiguity between “free as in beer” and “free as in speech” — that is, to make it clear that “free software” didn’t mean “noncommercial software.”

This was said to be necessary to resolve the fears of commercial firms that had been frightened away from free software due to a misunderstanding. As part of this shift, advocates for “open source” shifted their emphasis from free software’s ethical proposition (“software that gives you freedom”) to an instrumental narrative.

Open source software was claimed to be higher quality than proprietary software, because it hewed to the Enlightenment values of transparency, replicability and peer review (“with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”).

Along with this claim, there was a second argument that open source software was cheaper to develop because a “community” would gather to help maintain it. Sometimes, this was couched as a “commons” where lots of actors, large and small, would work to produce a community good.

In 2018 Benjamin “Mako” Hill delivered a keynote to the Libreplanet conference that was a kind of postmortem to the 20-year experiment in instrumentalism (open source) over ethics (free software):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBknF2yUZZ8

Mako concluded that the experiment was a failure, producing a situation in which the tech giants enjoyed unlimited software freedom (because they ran the cloud servers we all depended on) while the rest of us merely had open source (the right to inspect the software powering the cloud, and to suggest ways to modify it).

In this account, the shift from ethics to instrumentalism paved the way for a series of compromises that turned the commons into a sharecropper’s precarious farmstead. When the open community was asked whether cloud software should be subjected to the same copyleft terms as software distributed for users, they weighed this as an instrumental proposition (“will this make the software better”), not an ethical one (“will this give users more freedom?”), and concluded that the answer was “this is fine.”

I think there’s a lot to this explanation — if nothing else, it explains how such a drastic shift took place without much hue and cry. But there’s another phenomenon at work that Mako’s account doesn’t grapple with: the rise of tech monopolies.

The reason that ethical propositions related to software freedom were sidelined so effectively in the decades after 1998 is the increasing power of tech monopolies: as tech giants gobbled up their competitors or put them out of business with predatory pricing, they gained power over regulators, universities, and individual technologists (increasingly employed by or dependent on a tech giant).

Copyleft — like copyright — breaks down at the event horizon of concentrated corporate power. With copyright, the breakdown manifests as the appropriation of copyright’s “power to exclude” by the firms it was supposed to be wielded against. With copyleft, it manifests as “software freedom” being hoarded by the same firms that copyleft licenses were supposed to keep in check.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to free software — it also plagues open-licensed “content” — material released under Creative Commons licenses, say. A year ago, Paul Keller and Alek Tarkowski published an important essay on “openness” entitled “The Paradox of Open”:

https://paradox.openfuture.eu/

In this essay, the authors — both significant contributors to the world of free software and open content — identify a phenomenon akin to the Mako’s observation of “freedom for big companies, openness for the rest of us.” From Openstreetmap to CC-licensed creative works, corporate monopolies have supercharged their power by plundering the commons.

This month, Open Future, who published “Paradox,” published a series of responses to the original paper:

https://paradox.openfuture.eu/responses/

They are uniformly excellent, but the one that I am most interested in comes from James Boyle, “Misunderestimating Openness”:

https://openfuture.eu/paradox-of-open-responses/misunderestimating-openness/

Here, Boyle sharply disagrees with Keller and Tarkowski’s argument, grouping it with similar claims about content moderation and censorship, arguing that openness was only ever a necessary — but insufficient — precondition for a better world. In the same way, online speech forums might be terrible places, but this is a failure of their moderators and their communities and their business-models, not an indictment of the idea of online discourse itself.

Both papers grapple with concentrated corporate power as a corrupting force, but neither puts it in the center of the breakdown of otherwise sound practices.

Reading all these people whom I respect and admire so much debating whether “openness” is good or bad makes me even more certain that fighting concentrated corporate power is the precondition for success in all other goals.

Fighting concentrated corporate power may seem like a tall order, and it is, but in that fight, we have comfort in a key idea from Boyle’s own work.

Boyle describes the history of the term “ecology.” Before this term was in widespread use, it wasn’t clear when two people were engaged in the same struggle. If you care about endangered owls and I care about the ozone layer, are we on the same team?

What do charismatic nocturnal avians have to do with the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere?

The term “ecology” turns these issues (and a thousand more) into a movement.

Today, there are people of all walks of life living in all kinds of hurt who think their pain is caused by phenomena that are downstream of corporate power. Once we figure that out — once we figure out that to make our tools work again, we need to escape the event horizon of the capitalist singularity — then we can really begin the fight in earnest.

Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (modified)

CC BY 2.0 (asserted; more likely public domain) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[Image ID: A NASA rendering entitled 'Neutron Stars Rip Each Other Apart to Form Black Hole,' pictured as a Fibonacci spiral of glowing red lines on black background. Superimposed over this is an image of Monopoly's 'Rich Uncle Pennybags,' clutching a Grim Reaper's scythe rather than a cane, his face a skull. The lower half of his body has been stretched and is disappearing into the black hole at the center of the NASA image. He is limned with red and orange and sports a red/orange comet-tail.]

#pluralistic #the paradox of open #monopoly #singularity

[vinceaddams]

Top five extant waistcoats 👀👀

How dare you make me choose, agh! I have exactly 1302 images on my 18th century waistcoats pinterest board right now, so here are 5 that I especially love, but picking a definitive top 5 is impossible. (I already have a long post with 20 of my favourites, but I kept those confined to just the last 2 decades of the century.)

1. c. 1790's, Cooper Hewitt collection.

This one is super cool, because it's the only one I've ever seen with net overlay. Look at it! Teeny tiny baby 2mm silk ribbon, all hand knotted.

2. c. 1750's, V&A.

This one is printed to shape! Someone made a big engraved plate with this design that's specifically made to fit the front of a waistcoat! It's a bit off looking around the edges, so I think maybe the customer was a bit smaller than the pre-printed fabric shape, but it's still so cool.

There are more examples of this technique, and I have a pinterest board section for them.

3. This one. Wool thread on linen, sold by Christie's. Ugh, I want one!! Wouldn't this look amazing with my dark green wool 1730's coat and breeches?

I would love to do a crewel embroidered waistcoat like this someday. This grainy picture is the only one I've been able to find of this one, and I once tried emailing Christie's to see if there were more pictures, but they have a lot of employees and didn't seem to understand what I wanted, and the listing was from 2009, so I was not successful.

I hate it when auction sites take down the pictures after the sale!! >:( Nowadays when I pin pictures from auction listings I always make sure to back them up on the wayback machine. There are so many old ones that I wish I'd done that for... Crewel waistcoats are pretty rare, so there aren't many closeups out there, but these 1734 pocket flap samples are a great example of something similar. (got a subsection for crewel on my embroidery pinboard)

4. c. 1735-45, Historic Deerfield. There are tons of woven to shape waistcoats out there, but this is one of my favourites. I love huge flowers, I love sleeved waistcoats, and I love green.

It looks amazing at nearly 300 years old, so just imagine it when all those silver threads were new and not tarnished!

Similar to the blue printed one, this would have been woven with the brocade flowers in the shape of the front of a waistcoat, and then sold to a customer who'd then bring it to a tailor to have it made up to fit him. One of those things that was easy to find in the 18th century, but is completely unattainable to modern costumers, alas.

5. c. 1795-1800, The Met.

Heeheehoohoo. bugs.

There are a lot of late 18th century waistcoats with weird little pictures embroidered on them, and I can't choose a favourite, but bugs is way up there on the list. This isn't even the only bug embroidered one, there are others!

This one has been altered. I'd say it was probably originally made in the 1780's, and then cut down to be shorter and given a different collar shape sometime in the early 19th century. Lots of waistcoats were altered like this, and with the embroidered ones it's really obvious. I would have liked this one better in its original state, but oh well.

So! Those are not the very best 5, but they're 5 very good ones!

#ask #ask meme #extant garments #waistcoat #18th century

[satorugojoswiife]

JAW DROPPED WHEN I READ UR PACKAGE GOT SELECTED FOR INSPECTION but ahem err where did you order those doujinshis and how many are there in the world so that i can buy them all (says my broke ass) it's for research purposes 🙏🙏

the customs worker when he checks the package:

( ofc for research I get you 👍👍 )

.......I buy them sometimes on jp mercari and yahoo auctions 😭 since they are second hand they are usually cheaper. Newer ones can sometimes be found on doujinshi sites like toranoana and melonbooks

#in my experience second hand from japan is almost always like brand new quality #they seem to always take such good care of their stuff

[chorusfm]

Record Store Day Roundup: 2024 Edition

Another Record Store Day has come and gone. Did you snag that coveted pressing of that album you had your eye on? Hopefully your experience was as good as mine was, and you were able to grab at least something on your list either in-person or online afterwards. In this article, I’ll be recapping things I noticed about the most popular titles going first, providing feedback on the pressing numbers for this year’s collection, and ways to keep vinyl fans engaged with their local record stores throughout the year. Most Popular Titles Across the board, it seemed that the fastest title to leave the record store shelves were the ultra-coveted 7 inch split between Olivia Rodrigo/Noah Kahan for “Stick Season/Lucy.” The single was pressed on a colored vinyl, and was limited to 15,000 copies. If you weren’t able to snag this title, the good news is that it’s labeled as “RSD First” title, meaning that it plans to get a future pressing. Another title that was unique and in very limited quantities was a cool looking mini record player plus 3″ singles from a little band known as The Beatles. This Bluetooth-enabled mini turntable featured a Beatles-branded dust cover and was packaged with four mini singles of “She Loves You,” “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “Til There Was You,” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” The cute set was limited to 2,300 units, and was partially responsible for the long lines during Record Store Day. Another surprisingly coveted release was the ITEIAD Sessions by The Japanese House, which was limited to just 800 copies. This set featured alternate session versions of In The End It Always Does, including an alternative version of lead single, “Boyhood,” and a cover of ABBA’s “Super Trouper.” This “RSD First” title will get another pressing, but this 6-track EP pressed on white vinyl was a hot item on the secondary market. The last “hot item” that I was lucky enough to get my hands on was the long out of print sophomore album by At The Drive-In called In/Casino/Out. This Craft Recordings “RSD First” exclusive was limited to 3,500 copies, and was a fast mover at record stores across the country. It was pressed on a cool, Purple/Green Smoke LP, and it sounds pretty damn dynamic to my ears on my turntable. The Introduction of Discogs’ Record Store Day Afters Another cool component of this year’s Record Store Day was the unveiling of an International Discogs database of RSD-exclusives from 13 countries. This is called the “Record Store Day Afters” website, and launches today at 3 PM (Eastern Time Zone) here. Additionally, other stores across the U.S. released their Record Store Day stock on Discogs and their own websites, at retail cost, as early as the day after Record Store Day 2024. This greatly helped me, and thousands of other vinyl collectors, in obtaining those RSD exclusives without being scalped on Ebay and other secondary auction sites. Recommendations for Improvements for Future Record Store Day Observances While my experience was overwhelmingly positive, I have heard from others in the vinyl community that there is still room for improvement in the Record Store Day process. The lines are a tough situation to navigate, but I feel like our indie record stores are getting better at keeping the lines moving by having helpful staff determine which titles are gone throughout the day and assisting customers with finding their wanted titles in a timely fashion. Other suggestions would be to limit the “flip through” process of the RSD bins by having customers with their lists handy to ask if certain titles are in stock so they don’t hold up the lines searching for a title that isn’t there. Many great indie stores across the U.S. were up front and communicative about their RSD stock, and this transparency will help out customers in feeling a sense of community with their local shops. The pressing numbers were fairly on point this year, with a few exceptions that I’ve already outlined. As long as Record… https://chorus.fm/features/record-store-day-roundup-2024-edition/

[saltminerising]

Things Lioden has the right idea about that would be really nice to see in FR, but won't for [insert reason]: - Having an "official side account" (i.e. an account linked to your main and you can quickly switch back and forth from your side to your main, but you can have only one) - Having every Friday have an update of some kind, with 1 Friday a month (or was it every other week? every 2 weeks?) being dedicated to a big update - Official site raffle with big name items except everybody can only buy one ticket each (can't recall if this extends to side accounts, but in general since side accounts are a Site Promoted Thing, you probably can technically buy two tickets so everybody has a theoretical 2 chances to win something) 1/2

Things Lioden has the right idea about, etc etc. (2/2) - Custom apparel (decor), but you have to at least *try* to match the site artists' style. Custom apparel goes through the same vetting process as skins would on FR. - A 'giving tree'-type area where people can throw out or leave things from their hoard voluntarily and other people can pick them up - User-made shops you can still see items from in the "auction house" equivalent on Lioden but you can also get to them through the user profile

NOTE: Posting this bc it's about ways FR could improve. Asks solely about other pet sites will not be posted. -Secretmin