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inkskinned · 10 months

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so while i was writing the book, i became violently suicidal.

this was mostly due to the fact that i had a very bad reaction to some meds and my brain stopped producing any serotonin. also i was in the last semester of grad school where it's actually illegal to feel anything but dread. so it wasn't going well.

somewhere in the fog of it i became aware i needed help. nobody was taking clients or my insurance. i didn't want to do inpatient care - it wasn't right for my needs. there's not really an "in between" stage between "inpatient" and "no care," but i was trying to do the right thing. i was trying to activate the chain of command that was my emergency plan. i knew i needed help now.

i used betterhelp.

i know, i know. i'm a straight-A student and so smart and so clever, how could i ever use something so blatantly bad. to be honest with you, i didn't feel particularly keen on it from the getgo - things that seem too good to be true usually are. also, if something online is free, the price is usually your privacy.

the thing is that there was kind of a global pandemic happening at the time and i worked 5 jobs alongside of being a fulltime student and also like writing a book on the side. it is a miracle that i even thought about getting help. i would love to tell you i had the mental wherewithal to like, process whether this was the right choice for me. mostly i was desperate. i was so suicidal that i was trying to find a reason to stay inside of fortune cookies. i was the kind of suicidal that looks like splatterpaint. i hadn't been that bad in an entire decade.

they took my data. i gave them it freely. somewhere out there, they have a dossier on me. on everything i survived. my story in little datapoints, scattergraphed beautifully.

the first woman told me that really i should be grateful, because (and this is a direct quote): "at least you're not anne frank." i said that i felt that statement was antisemitic, as anne frank's life and experience shouldn't be compared to like, a nonbinary lesbian in western massachusetts. the therapist said that i should try to use lucid dreaming to try to picture myself in an actually scary situation, like running from nazis.

i applied for another therapist. i was willing to accept the possibility that there was a bad apple in the bunch. the next therapist and i even laughed about how inappropriate that statement was. and then, in our next session: the new therapist said if i was struggling with body image issues, i should just work harder on my appearance. she spent 3 sessions in a row talking about how she was grieving, and made me memorize facts about her grandmother so "she can live on through my clients."

i am a three's-a-charm kind of person. okay, so what if the last person made me uncomfortable. i figured it was just a misunderstanding of priorities - she had felt she was sharing with me, i had felt like i had to take care of her. i applied for another therapist.

the last woman asked me to help her pray. she bowed her head. i stared at her, frozen, while she said: lord, i beg you: cure her. take the pain of being gay away from her.

i spent somewhere between 2.5 and 3 months on betterhelp. in that whole time, i was not getting the professional help i so desperately needed, even though i was fucking trying.

in the end, i survived this because i finally could get off the meds that were literally killing me. a request for a real therapist finally went through. i survived because my friends saved my life. because nick let me sob myself dry in his arms. because maddie took the razors out of my room when i asked them to. because grace slept over in my bed for like 3 weeks in a row since nobody trusted me not to hurt myself when i was alone. i survived because i got fucking lucky. because even when i was desperately suicidal, i was too old and too self-aware to take "you need to be prettier" as good advice.

the thing is that there's a 19 year old me who isn't like that. who would have heard "just think about how grateful you should be" and said - oh, i see. i would have assumed that is what it means to be in therapy: the same thing my abusers used to tell me. that i am just pretending and lazy. that i am ugly and unworthy.

betterhelp positioned itself to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable community. it preys on desperation. it knows it is serving people who are not doing well mentally. it saw that there is a huge need for real, immediate, compassionate mental health care: and then it fucking takes your money and privacy.

i still get their ads on instagram. last night i watched as a woman in a pool pretends to talk to a different woman. they discuss her anxiety.

there's a 19 year old version of me, and she didn't survive this. she was too tired, and drowning. i almost fucking died. this thing almost fucking killed me.

in the ad, the woman playing the therapist takes a note on a clipboard and then nods once, sagely.

i have to admit it's a pretty scene. the steam and light coming off the pool water lands on the actresses. like this, it almost looks baptismal, holy.

#writeblr #the book....#coming soon #hey so if ur someone who has ever said “you need to write a book”#i wrote the book #it's ... probably the best thing ive ever written #this is maybe too honest lol #okay to reblog thank you for asking i love u i am in love with u our wedding will be in may

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exeggcute · 11 months

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the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators; reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

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divorcedfiddleford · 6 months

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stanley pines really is one of the characters of all time. he's a gemini and an identical twin but knowing this is a major spoiler for the show. he punched a pterodactyl in the face. he wore groucho marx glasses to his b'nei mitzvah. he invented imposter syndrome. he's a massive jerk. he's transgender and a misogynist. he scares children for fun and actively seeks out reasons to fight them. he's from new jersey. his adhd and autism are battling to the death. he has a tattoo but he doesn't have a tattoo. he punched his brother in the face. he's been to jail in three different countries. he dropped out of high school only to spend 30 years teaching himself nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. he's divorced. he hired a gamer as a handyman 10 years ago and the gamer is kind of his son now. he lives off of brown meat, soda, liquor, bad puns, and cigars. he's a professional con artist. he's a terrible liar. he banished his brother to the nether realm for decades, but like, it was an accident. his dad kicked him out of home. he regularly commits massive tax fraud. he needs dentures by the age of 60. his niece will tell you he has a heart of gold. his nephew will say it's probably pyrite. he will hold on to a grudge until it kills him. no one can hate him more than he already hates himself. he saved the world by lying. he's bi and no one wants him, but that's okay because he gets sick of them all the morning after anyway. he's living out his dreams on a boat but realistically he's gonna get seasick and want to go home in less than a year. he killed the devil by punching him in the face. he's stealing your wallet right now

#tales of the wild zeep #putting some hot takes in here but they need to be said.

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adreamfromnevermore · 28 days

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Headcanon that the Bats must be the most infuriating members of the justice league. And it's got nothing to do with what they do or don't know or even their general skills and egos. Everyone is very used to Batman and the expectation that him and any of his spawn are somehow going to be three steps ahead of any issue they bring to the table ever.

No no, the infuriating bit? The stalking.

Listen, this is a family of freaks and weirdos. They work so well together because none of them were normal to start with and then they ended up traumatized. It's practically common practice in that family to accept that nothing is what it seems at face value and that all of your siblings are attempting to pry into your private life and cases at any given moment. I think for them it's honestly weirder if you take what they say at face value. They speak a language holy separate from any normally socialized person and it is a language of lies and half-truths that relies on the assumption that all parties are aware of that.

They're the most infuriating bitches around.

They'll tell someone something and appear to do the opposite and when confronted will have the most convoluted but sound reasoning of why they actually did exactly as they promised too.

They regularly pick people's pockets and hack into personal information because for them? That's practically a love language. They're obnoxious and they aren't even aware of it. Someone asks them to just tell the truth and they react like they've been shot. They're probably offended when they realize that someone hasn't been at least attempting to dig into them back, like come on man. I thought we were friends but you didn't even Google how long Nightwings been around? We've already put the bar on the floor for you guys? My siblings already have a full dossier ready on you because they caught us on camera in your home city during that 2 minute conversation we had 3 months ago. They sent it to me a few hours later. I think they got Oracle to help cause usually it takes them at least 12 hours.

You think they're being nice and friendly and then you realize that they have a nice little file compiled of everything you've done in the last five years, where you went to school and every note your teachers ever made about your behavior a decade ago when you were still a high schooler and fairly normal. If asked they'd probably be willing to bring out the family tree they built for you. They know what you did last summer better than you know what you did last summer. They have pictures, pictures that should be impossible because there's no way they were stalking you then and those sure don't look like security camera footage.

In reality Bats and Superman get along so well because that man is an investigative journalist and when they first met he could not leave it alone. Bruce was charmed the first time Clark Kent started doggedly attempting to ask him if he knew anything about Gothams new cryptid. It was cute how off base he was. But he was trying!!!! Bruce was sold for life! He dropped an dossier on lexcorp off in Clarks apartment a few days later. As a gift.

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cryptidghostgirl · 3 months

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hiii can i request a silly little scene i have in my head? ok so!

alastor x wife! reader- theyve been together since they were alive, legit partners in crime they both encouraged eachother to kill and when they reunited in hell after around 8 years they were independent once again UNTIL They got in trouble with Lilith and she took reader to be like her slave until Alastor finished helping Charie with her dream (until he helped prove that demons can be redeemed) so they didnt see each other for another 7 years (his absence)

And all throughout the first season hes like “I miss my wife, Husk. I miss her a lot” (while drunk-) like that one sonic dub meme and starts shaping his shadow creature into reader and talking to it and everyone is like “m yep he’s officially lost it.”

BUT then Sir Pentious is redeemed and Lilith sees and shes like “damn :/“ and send reader to the new hotel via portal and reader just. falls on the ground in front of the big entrance and everyone hears it and they rush out and Alastor is quiet, wide eyed and reader goes smth like “i know- i shouldnt have accepted it in your name but-“ blah blah she rambles on about it and Alastor just goes “Youre as beautiful as the day I los you.” LIKE THAT HEARYBREAKING SCENE FROM HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 ;-; and everyone reacts in their own way

I REALLY NEED THIS BUT I LACK THE ABILITIES TO DO IT HEEELP (love u)

A/N oh bestie,, i got you. I was actually planning on something similar where Alastor was getting drunk at a bar and talking about the love of his life (I'm still gonna write that one too but I really like this prompt!!) You guys really come up with the best requests, please keep sending them in.

Fuel and the Fire (Alastor x Wife!Partner-in-Crime!Reader)

Pairing: Alastor x Reader

Warnings: ANGST also bad words (idk why i wrote the warnings like this). Also Angel Dust is in this one and I love him but he is a warning on his own.

Word Count: 2,392

Master Lists:

Master Lists

Hazbin Hotel Master List

Alastor and Y/n, partners in crime, the fuel and the fire. On a first glance, it would be assumed she was his fuel, the coal and dry leaves he fed himself by. Once anyone got to know them -- and god, what trouble a person was in if they got to know them -- they quickly realized it was the other way around.

Hand in hand from day one, from childhood. Running from the cops, washing the blood off one another's faces. In the living world and life after death, nothing could tear them apart. He was the soil she planted herself in, he was her rock and Y/n? Well she was Alastor's everything. He'd do anything at all for her, all she had to do was ask.

For a decade, they terrified the living world. They were the reason to double check the lock on the door before bed, they were the ominous shadow at the corner. When cold death wrapped them in his reckless grasp, they turned their terror on Hell.

The pair made a name for themselves quickly, filling up the airwaves and making waves in the underworld. For generations, they reigned supreme. For generations, they knew no fear. Then one day, they simply disappeared.

When Alastor reappeared on the streets seven years later without his shadow, the town was alight with gossip. No one knew where he had been, where she still was, or why he had returned but Alastor quickly rebuilt his operation, setting up shop at Lucifer's daughter's Hazbin Hotel along with several of the souls he owned.

The hotel's other residents and workers were distrustful of the man, to say the least. He was shifty, wore a constant smile, and rumors circled around him like birds of prey. That was until about three months into his stay, at least.

Angel hadn't meant to eavesdrop. He'd been coming down to the bar for a drink and a rant of his own when he'd heard the familiar, crackling voice of the Hotel's host.

"I just... I miss her so much, Husk."

He sounded sad, utterly dejected. Angel crouched down on the staircase, hiding his slim body behind one of the ornate posts supporting the railing.

"You keep saying that but do nothing to go find her. She disappeared the same time as you, you know." came Husk's gruff reply.

"I know she did."

"You keep saying that, acting like you know something. Admit it: you don't know shit, Alastor."

Alastor's radio waves faltered, squeaking slightly. Angel tensed in terror, wondering if he'd been found out. This was clearly a private conversation, and the Radio Demon was testy at the best of times. Right now he seemed positively furious.

"Don't test me, Husk." Alastor said after a moment, breaking the tense silence, "She... we both got roped into something. I am doing my part, she is doing hers."

Angel straightened himself up, deciding it was high time he entered the room. He still wanted that drink, after all. He let his feet fall heavily on the stairs, alerting the others to his presence. Husk turned toward the sound, meeting Angel's eyes as he entered the bar. Alastor, on the other hand, kept his back to the spider demon.

Taking a seat beside Alastor, Husk immediately poured Angel a drink and slid it across the counter towards him.

"So, tough night, Smiles?" Angel asked, turning to Alastor who downed the rest of his drink in a single gulp.

"I don't know what you're talking about, my good fellow." Alastor hummed in response.

There was a threat in his voice, but Angel could tell the demon's heart wasn't in it. Everything was just, odd.

"Yeah... sure..." Angel scoffed, taking a sip of his own drink.

"Radio man was crying to me about his wife five seconds ago." Husk grumbled and Angel's eyes went wide.

"You have a wife?" he asked, turning back to Alastor, "I mean, I get it. I'm in to the whole 'tall dark and creepy' thing too but, you care about someone? I don’t know if I can see it.”

Alastor's eyes narrowed as he turned on Husk. The cat demon rolled his eyes in a brazen display of disrespect. He knew his master well, knew this was the only thing he had any leverage with the man on. With a deep breath, Alastor placed his hands firmly on the bar top and pulled himself to his feet. Not saying another word, he disappeared into his shadows.

That had been the first odd occurrence. Of course Angel had told Charlie and Charlie had told everyone, had even approached Alastor about it. The Radio Demon brushed it all off with skill and for a while, things were quiet.

About a month later, the second strange thing began happening. Alastor had always had a certain sway over shadows, everyone knew that. However, he very rarely used them, brought them out if it wasn't to hide him or take him where he needed to be. Then, suddenly, one began to follow him.

"Uh, Alastor?" Charlie had timidly approached him the first time she saw this happening.

"Yes, Charlie my dear?" Alastor asked, turning to face her as he tossed his microphone in the air, catching it neatly in the center of the stand.

"Well, we were just wondering if everything was... okay?" she asked, her hands behind her back and a pointed gaze on the shadow.

"If everything..." Alastor trailed off, following the path of Charlie's gaze and realizing what was going on, "No, no my dear. Everything is quite all right, quite alright indeed."

"Well, okay... If you say so." Charlie had relented after a few moments, unsure of what else to do.

Eventually, the members of the Hazbin Hotel grew used to the shadows, they too slipped out of their minds. Overcome with impending doom of the extermination just a month away, Alastor's strange behavior was no longer a priority.

That had been until the third odd occurrence came into being. It was Sir Pentious who had noticed it first, drawing it to the group's attention as Alastor walked through the lobby and past the group doing trust exercises there on his way to some meeting or another with the other overlords.

"Sir Pentious?" Charlie had called, trying to bring him back to earth as he watched the place Alastor had occupied, "Sir Pentious?"

"Pentious!" Vaggie yelled and his head snapped to her, "You're not coming up with some new plan to attack Alastor, are you?"

"No!" he quickly exclaimed, waving his hands frantically in the air, "Not at all just..."

"What?" Vaggie asked through gritted teeth, advancing a step forward, her spear in hand.

"It's just... doesn't that shadow Alastor has had following him well.... doesn't it kind of look like a woman?"

Husk broke out into wild laughter while Angel widened his eyes.

"Oh, he's definitely lost it now." Husk exclaimed as he calmed himself, clutching his stomach, "If I knew Y/n was the secret to breaking him down, I woulda done something about it years ago."

"No you wouldn't have, ya big talker." Angel teased, elbowing the cat demon lightly.

"Y/n?" Sir Pentious asked.

"Alastor's wife. That was her name." Husk replied.

"Did you know her?" Charlie asked.

Alastor had left the hotel, the threat that had held their questions at bay for months was gone and the topic was right. Husk nodded.

"So, what's she like?" Angel asked suggestively, "Is she more of a dom? Does deer boy like to get dicked down by his lady?"

"Gross." Charlie shook her head, her hands to her temples, "I do not want to know that."

"She's a good kid." Husk said after a moment, "She's nice..."

He trailed off.

"But?" Vaggie prompted, sensing there was more that he wanted to say.

Husk sighed.

"If you think Alastor is trouble, she's a fucking house fire set for the insurance money."

"So probably not interested in being a guest." Charlie dejectedly stated.

Husk shrugged.

"You never know. It has been seven years since anyone has seen her. Alastor allegedly knows where she's at but, he hasn't gone after her. Just keeps whining to me about it so, I don't know. Maybe she's changed. I doubt it though. Sweet as a pea, sharp as a knife."

Charlie had never felt such relief as when she learned Alastor had not died in the chaos of the battle. The hotel was destroyed, heaven was pissed, Sir Pentious had died but, at least he was alright. They rebuilt the hotel, Alastor's same shadow of a woman trailing after him wherever he went. After about a week, thanks to all the angelic and demonic powers involved in the construction, the new Hotel was finished.

It was just as they put the finishing touches on the place, hung the portrait of Sir Pentious they'd commissioned above the fire place, that a portal opened in the lobby. Everyone tensed, banding together behind Charlie and Alastor. Angels were coming, they were sure of it.

A crash echoed from the other side, a sharp yell and then something tumbled through the portal. With a flash, the portal disappeared behind the shape of a person huddled on the floor. She coughed violently.

Alastor's eyes went wide. Everyone else was too distracted to notice, but if they'd have been paying attention, they would have seen his shadow disappear.

The girl was filthy, her clothes torn and her hair tangled. She let out another, sharp cough before slowly lifting her head. Alastor took a trembling step forward.

"Y/n?" he asked, his voice soft in disbeleif.

A smile, wide and sharp, split the woman's bruised face in two.

"Hey hun, I'm home."

In a flash, he was at her side, helping her to her feet, checking her for wounds.

"Jesus, Y/n." he sighed, "You're a mess."

"I know."

"Y/n-"

"I know. I shouldn't have done it, you don't need to lecture me. I didn't have a choice. It was you or me, Al. I couldn't... I can't... I had to. You've gotta understand."

"Sweetheart-"

Y/n cut him off again, her speech a single, constant, stressed-out stream.

"It was stupid, I know. I know. I really do but, she gave me the option and I couldn't say no cause then if I said no you'd really be the one in trouble a-"

Alastor raised a hand gently to her cheek and Y/n's words caught in her throat. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes at last.

"You're as beautiful as the day I lost you."

His voice was soft, so quiet the others could barely hear him. Y/n's cheeks flushed a bright pink. Her hands found the lapels of his jacket, holding them lightly.

"I.." she stuttered, her mind racing.

With a sigh and a slight shake of her head, she gave up in the search for words and buried herself in his chest. Alastor wrapped his arms around Y/n, pressing her tightly into his frame.

"God, I missed you." she said, her voice muffled by the fabric.

Alastor pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

"I love you." she continued, "I'm so sorry."

Alastor pulled her off of him, leaning down the slightest bit so they were eye to eye. Y/n, wiped a stray tear away, letting out a slight, sad laugh. Alastor's eyes traversed her face, caressing every crevasse.

"I'm so glad your alright but, I don't understand." he said at last, "How are you back? The deal..."

Y/n nodded and Alastor's eyes went wider still. Leaning on Alastor's shoulder for support, she turned her eyes onto the rest of the group.

"You must be Charlie." she hummed softly, meeting the young demon's gaze.

Taking a deep breath, Charlie stepped forward and nodded.

"Yes, I am. I run the Hazbin Hotel, which is where you are, to help rehabilitate sinners."

"I know." Y/n nodded, her voice quavering slightly, "I've heard so much about you. You... my dear, it worked."

"I- what?" every other question died in Charlie's throat, shock shot through her body like a bullet.

"It worked." Y/n confirmed, "You did it. I had a deal, a deal which Alastor went to your side to get me out of. If you succeeded in redeeming a soul with his aid, I would be free. And here I am."

"Here you are." Alastor repeated, spinning Y/n to face him once again.

She wobbled unsteadily on her feet. Catching sight of this along with the numerous wounds all over her body, Alastor scooped Y/n up into his arms like he did when they had first been married, when they had crossed the first threshold together. Y/n looped her arms around his neck, exhaustion seeping in with the relief as she let her head fall on his chest.

"Vaggie..." Charlie began as she turned to her girlfriend, "you don't think..."

"Pentious?" Vaggie asked and Charlie nodded.

"It's gotta be." Angel confirmed.

"You did good, kid." Husk smiled, patting Charlie on the back.

Y/n raised her head at the sound of a familiar voice, her eyes opening.

"Husker?" she asked with a smile.

The cat demon stepped forward, bowing slightly.

"Husker! I-"

"Enough of that, my love." Alastor cut her off, tapping her nose gently, "You need a shower and some rest. You can meet everyone in the morning."

Y/n crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at her husband.

"Promise?"

"Yes, I promise." he sighed.

"Does that mean you're staying?" Charlie asked tentatively and the couple turned to her.

"Whatever the little lady desires." Alastor stated, looking back down at his wife in a lovestruck daze.

"Yes, Charlie. We're staying." Y/n laughed, "Things need to start changing around here and I don't see anyone else doing a god damn thing to make that happen except for you."

"I.." Charlie was speechless, the kindness this fear inspiring woman was directing towards her, having never met her before. What Husk had said made sense, she smiled, "Thank you. I don't know what you did, but that you both so much."

"Anything for my favorite girl." Alastor kissed Y/n softly.

"Oh, get a room." Angel scoffed, rolling his eyes.

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