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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

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

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

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

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

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

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

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

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

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

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

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

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

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luxaofhesperides · 5 months

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Accidental Bride Sacrifice ; requested by @starlightcat04!

Danny has long since gotten used to the feel of summonings. They don’t happen often, but sometimes the right components are put together to force him into answering, and he’d have to go as the new Ghost King.

Which no one told him was a thing! He hadn’t protested too much about the whole Ghost King deal when they finally told him about it after he graduated high school. It gave him a good excuse to ditch life in the living realm and not worry about college or a career, and let him really embrace his ghost side.

The summonings are a problem, though. They always feel staticky and bad, like a dumpster that just got struck by lightning. The taste of iron on his tongue, a clear sign of blood being spilled, lets him know that it would be one of end the world for us summonings, because some people can’t put in the effort to do it themselves, apparently.

But this time, the summoning feels different.

Danny pauses, eyes going unfocused in the middle of his conversation with Jazz. He had been looking forward to spending the week with her, now that she’s on winter break, but his luck is as bad as always.

“I’m being summoned,” he tells her, cutting off her rant about a transphobic professor she had.

“Oh, no. Do you need me to do anything? Should I go with you to beat up whoever it is that’s summoning you?”

Danny tilts his head to the side, considering. The taste of blood is noticeably absent. In fact, this summoning pull doesn’t make him feel sick at all. It makes him feel warm, as if he’s just been wrapped in a hug.

“No,” he says. “I think I’m good. This one feels different.”

“A good different?” Jazz asks, worry clear in her voice.

“Yeah. A good different. I’ll come back soon, okay?”

“Alright. Be careful, Danny.” Jazz pulls him into a quick hug, then steps back to watch as Danny stops fighting the pull of the summoning and disappears into a swirling white rings that flashes into existence behind him, blinding her for a moment, and is gone when she manages to blink the spots out of her vision.

For a minute, Danny drifts in a void of stillness, traveling through the realms as the summoning draws him closer to the correct realm. And then he’s rising out of the ground in a dark building made of concrete, candles of green flame scattered all over the place.

“Great One!” someone in a hooded cloak cries, raising his arms in jubilation. “Our calls have been answered!”

“I’ll fucking kill you!” a mechanical voice yells from farther back. When Danny looks past the cultists’ heads, he spots a man in a red hood and leather jacket chained to a pole, along with a bunch of other people in strange costumes tied up, desperately trying to free themselves.

“Silence!” The leader of the cult, or who Danny assumes is the leader, snaps at the hooded man and gestures to the people off to his left. They force another costumed person forward, this one in yellow armor. He can see the blood running down their face from beneath their helmet and from their nose, dark lines of blood cutting through their brown skin.

The cultists throw the armored person forward, forcing them to kneel. Then they bow to Danny and step back.

“Great One,” the leader says, voice unpleasantly reverent and grating, “Welcome to the mortal realms. We offer you this sacrifice to feed your strength. He will make a fine general for your undead army in your crusade to rid this world of its filth.”

The people in the back begin shouting all together, panicked voices overlapping, and Danny is left staring down at the cultists in shock.

The summoning had felt so nice. What the hell was this? He did not sign up for another ‘end of days’ insane cult. He just wanted to be hugged.

His silence makes the cultists nervous. They begin to shift uneasily, whispering to each other, and the leader clears his throat, then pulls a large crystal dagger out of his cloak. “We shall prove our devotion to you through an offering of a hero’s blood!”

And then he moves towards the sacrifice and Danny snaps out of his shock to yell, “Wait!”

The entire room freezes. Even the costumed people in the back go still.

Danny winces, then tries to smother his power, make himself more palatable to the humans of this dimension. “Wait,” he says again, and he sounds closer to human now. If he could, he would drop his ghost form entirely, but he knows better than to endanger himself like that. “What, exactly, did you summon me here for?”

The cult leader stares at him for a moment. “To… To rid the world of filth and allow your loyal followers to spread word of your power. You will be worshiped again, Great One, and serve as a reminder to man that Death shall always prevail.”

“Okay, I get that, but I was talking more along the lines of the summoning. What ritual did you use? What specifically were the summoning requirements?”

Normally, he’d be able to figure it out himself, but these cultists didn’t use a summoning circle. So they did something else, something less visible and therefore harder to figure out, in order to bring him here.

A woman standing off to the side speaks up, stepping forward hesitantly. “I had pieced together a few summoning spells from this book to bring you here. You had to accept our chosen sacrifice to your side in order for the summoning to work.”

“Hold up that book for me, please?”

She does, and Danny flies down to grab it from her hands. “Point out which lines you used,” he says, already reading a few of the words written down. It’s definitely ghostspeak written down, which should be near impossible for living humans to translate without being skilled in magic.

“Ah, these ones.” She points to each line, reading them out for him, and Danny starts understand what, exactly, went wrong.

“Is there a problem, Great One?”

Danny returns the book then floats over to the sacrifice and picks him up. The costumed people make alarmed noises, but quietly quiet down again when all Danny does is move him away from the cultists.

“Okay,” he says, “So. The lines you used to summon me were not translated properly. What you interpreted as ‘accepted to stay by the king’s side in loyalty and strength’ is not meant to be, like, him being part of my undead army or whatever. It’s a royal marriage vow.”

“They married us?” the sacrifice shouts, disbelieving. The cult leader buries his face in his hands and sighs.

“My deepest apologies, Great One. We meant no offense. We simply wanted to aid in your destruction of this depraved world.”

Danny scrunches his nose and shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not gonna fly with me. I do not do the biding of random people, especially those who are ready to murder innocent people for no reason. Frighty, if you would.” He snaps his fingers, calling up Fright Knight who always enjoys getting to torment the people who summon Danny for murderous reasons.

Fright Knight appears in a swirl of darkness and screams. Shadows swallow the room, and when they recede, no cultists remain.

“Thanks, Frighty. Have fun with them. I need to figure out all… this.”

Fright Knight bows to him, then disappears. Danny lets out a breath, then floats down lower to be eye level with the sacrifice. “Hey,” he says gently, with a smile, “I’m so sorry they did this to you. I’m Danny. What’s your name?”

“Du— Uh, Signal,” the sacrifice says, sounding rather dazed.

“Signal,” Danny repeats. “Like… a traffic signal?”

“No. I mean, maybe? But it is Signal. That’s my hero name, not my real name.”

“Oh, you’re a hero!” His getup makes more sense now. Danny checks him over for any signs of injuries. So far, only his head and nose seem to be injured, but his wrists are tightly bound behind his back. Carefully, Danny calls upon his ice and shapes it into a sharp knife, then cuts through the zipties.

He helps Signal up to his feet, floating by his shoulder. “All good?”

“Yeah, man, all good. Let me just get the others free.”

“Oh, I can do it!” Danny flies over to the other costumed people, who must also be heroes. All it takes is one link in the chain being frozen and broken for the entire thing to go lax, allowing them to free themselves. Hooded guy spares Danny a single glance, then hurries over to Signal to check on him. The other three, a man with a blue bird across his chest, a blond girl with a yellow bat outline on her chest, and a guy with bandoliers and a golden bird emblem, all watch him warily as he floats back towards the center of the room.

“So,” the blue bird man says, “If they summoned you with a marriage vow, and you accepted, does that mean you’re planning to steal Signal away from us?” He’s smiling, but it’s not a nice smile.

“No! I had no idea they did this! I am so sorry you all got caught up in this. You most of all, Signal.”

Signal shrugs, nudging hood guy away from him. “Nah, man, it’s all good. This is definitely the better outcome.”

“I don’t know, being married off isn’t really a good thing.”

“Hey, at least they married me off to a decent guy.”

“You don’t know that,” Danny says, “What if I’m secretly evil?”

“If you were secretly evil, you’d be destroying the world right now. I think you’re fine.”

The blond girl waves at him, demanding his attention. “Quick question! They were calling you ‘Great One’. Are you a god or something?”

“Not really? I’m the Ghost King. So I’m a ghost who rules over other ghosts and also a majority of the Infinite Realms.”

She nods as if this is all totally normal for her, then shoots Signal a grin. “Congrats on bagging a king! Not the worst way to spend a night, right?”

“Can you break the marriage?” blue bird man asks, the lines of his shoulders tense.

Danny awkwardly rubs the back of his neck, not looking any of them in the eye. “I honestly don’t know. I can look for a way! But I genuinely have no clue. This was unexpected.”

“But you accepted.”

“I didn’t know what I expected! It just felt like a hug, and I wanted a hug! I thought I was being summoned for something nice for once!” Danny curls up, bringing his knees up to his chest, and hides his pout behind his hands. He knows he’s being childish, but he can’t help but be upset that he couldn’t have this one good experience from being Ghost King.

It’s always responsibilities and death cult summonings and fighting ghosts who don’t think he should be king. Sure there have been some good things, but they’re comparatively few when looking at all the other stress and pain that comes with the crown. Sue him for wanting to have a nice night for once. Hell, at this point, he’d take being summoned to help with some kid’s homework, because at least then he could have a quiet night helping someone.

“Hey, man, can you come down here?” Signal asks.

He wants to stay out of reach, hiding himself away for a bit longer, but Signal is his new, surprise, accidental husband, so Danny lowers himself to the ground and peeks through his fingers to look at him.

He tenses when Signal hugs him, soft and warm and comforting. It takes a moment for him to realize what’s going on, and then he’s melting into Signal’s embrace, dropping his hands to wrap them around Signal’s back.

Distantly, he can hear the other heroes talking quietly amongst themselves. He blocks out the sound as much as he can, determined to enjoy this hug while it lasts.

Which is… fairly long. Signal makes no moves to end the hug, so Danny closes his eyes to really savor the moment.

“So,” Signal murmurs into his ear, “As newlyweds, how about we get to know each other a bit better before we start working on fixing all this?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Let’s ditch these guys and take some time to ourselves.”

“I promise I’ll get this fixed,” he says, just to make sure Signal knows. “Genuinely, I am so sorry to have married you through an old Realms vow when you had no say in it.”

“Hey, if it lands me a very nice, very attractive king, then I don’t mind at all. I could have done without the murderous cultists, though.”

Danny huffs out a small laugh. “Oh, for sure. Thanks for being so cool about this. Want me to fly us out of here?”

“Yes please,” Signal says. Danny smiles and tightens his grip on Signal, then lifts them both up. “I’ll see y’all later! Have fun with the rest of your patrols!” he calls out to the other heroes, who start shouting at him.

Danny flies them right out the roof before the other heroes figure out a way to kick his ass. The city they’re in is smoggy and dark, tall buildings rising up into the cloudy sky, and police sirens ring through the air. There’s no where that looks like a particularly nice spot to land for a conversation, so he asks Signal where he’d like to go and follows his directions from there.

They end up phasing through a building, then into the floor, which leaves them in what Signal calls The Hatch.

Danny takes a quick moment to freak out over being in a hero’s secret hide out, the composes himself and finally pulls away from Signal.

“So,” he starts, looking around The Hatch and taking in the giant computer, the workstation, the motorcycle farther down the way, “What did you—Woah!” Danny spins around, slamming a hand over his eyes the instant he realizes that Signal is taking off his helmet, leaving his face bare.

It’s not like he’d know who Signal is anyways, being from a different dimension, but it’s the principle of the matter.

Signal laughs when he sees Danny’s attempt to keep from looking at him. A warm hand wraps around his wrist and gently pulls it away. “It’s okay, Danny, you can look,” he says. “It would be pretty weird if my own husband didn’t know my face.”

Slowly, giving Signal to change his mind, Danny opens his eyes. He moves his gaze up, going from Signal’s armor to his face, his very cute face and his warm brown eyes, and Danny stares for a moment.

“Hi,” he whispers.

“Hi,” Signal says, fondness coloring his voice. “My name’s Duke. Are all Ghost Kings as cute as you?”

“Duke,” Danny repeats. “Hi. Um, no. The last one really sucked, actually, which is why I fought him. He was so bad the Infinite Realms didn’t want him anymore, so though I technically didn’t beat him in single combat, it was enough for the Infinite Realms to kick him out and get me on the throne.”

“Man, I can not wait to hear more of your stories. Think we got time for that while we search for a way to undo that marriage vow?”

Taking his chance, Danny says, “Sure! It’s a date.”

He’s awarded by Duke’s bright smile and idly wonders how long he can keep them married. Hopefully long enough for them to get into a real relationship where he can propose properly. And then he can get Jazz’s blessing too—

“Oh shit,” Danny realizes.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I need to tell my sister or she’s going to actually kill me.”

Duke winces. “And I should probably tell the others before Spoiler makes a mess of things… B is not going to be happy with me.”

They share a despairing look, already dreading the amount of scoldings they’re both going to get. He’s not looking forward to it.

“...Put it off until tomorrow?”

Duke nods. “Yeah. That’s a tomorrow problem. For now, how about a late dinner?”

“Sounds perfect.”

. . .

[send me a ghostlights prompt!]

#ghostlights #dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #dpxdc #dpxdc fanfic #dp x dc fic #prompt fill #my writing #dukes pov is just: u're abt to be sacrificed. u're mildly concussed. a cute guy glowing like the north star saved u and is now ur husband #he's had a night but all in all it ended pretty nicely!#they're gonna work together and just hang out while trying to undo the marriage summoning ritual and find they're super compatible #and then in a few years they'll be marrying each other for real :)#thanks for the prompt!!

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devoti · 1 month

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cosmic persona quiz

tried this out and the results were kind of super accurate, so i wanna know everyone's too, naturally :p

tagging: @euseokz @lisztomqnia @pradadoie @explicitlyfine @peachsayshi @tetsuskei @tetzoro @scarabrat @kentoangel @fyodorloveclub @sleepygetou @saeue @fedyenkas-main @nkogneatho @zorosdimples @gojoath @kannra21 @izvmimi @likelilacwine @angelcent @st4rlingz @shujistars @missworld1994 ++ everyone interested ♥︎

#txt's (－‸ლ)#anyways i hope i am compatible with all of you so that we can continue this polygamous marriage

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stellarsagittarius · 6 months

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🍁✨️ Mars in Natal Chart: The Men you are Attracted To✨️🍁

(Does anyone know the name of this turkish movie/drama, from the GIF.)

Mars in Aries

You love a man who is bold, and doesn't hold back from speaking up for himself. As an Aries Mars you have plenty of energy within you, and you move in a very direct manner regarding the things you want to have. So you really need a man who also has his own set of goals while supporting you as well, but not to the point that he gets in your way. You like a masculine energy that is sure of what they want to achieve and what they are going after. Someone who is very much in touch with their physicality and is always on the go. A person who respects, especially, the fact that you both are two separate individuals and both of your guy's desires matter. You like a masculine energy that can be physically playful with you. Someone who is very loud and clear with their actions, is really gonna give you the butterflies. This man is someone who feels proud when they see you succeeding, and someone who isn't afraid to lead you through life.

Mars in Taurus

You get butterflies big time when a masculine energy is stable and grounded. You value a man who is very much connected to his physical senses and enjoys a slow and steady lifestyle. A man who is also very much connected to his sacred femininity. As in, he has a healthy connection with the feminine aspects of life such as art or channeling his intuition. You feel energetic when the things around you have a solid future and that you know it'll give you much stability later on. So that's the same you look for in a man. His ability to plan ahead and tackle the physical aspects of life such as managing money or deciding on things like vacations or the home, it's all very important for you. You are also attracted to a man who is interested in the matters of your home, like making sure everything is good quality and that you are well provided for. Someone you can sit and simply relax with, either in a nice spa or baking something together.

Mars in Gemini

You like a smarty pants. Lol, I mean you love when a masculine energy is eloquent in the way they express their words and can explain literally anything in the world to you with extreme ease. Someone who is very good at regulating his words, and you really get the butterflies when a man can flatter you with his intelligence. Someone who is both quick to understand things and also someone who can take their time to strategically plan their way around getting things done. You like playful banters or atleast have this thing for having conversations with your partner in a way that looks like you both are fighting, but is actually very fun to do and is not serious fights at all. Because for you, you are bit of a conversationalist yourself even if you don't have any major placements in Gemini itself. You love a man with whom you can genuinely connect on an intellectual level. Also, I think Gemini Mars women are attracted to men who work with their hands in some way 👀.

Mars in Cancer

You like a man who isn't afraid to show his emotions, and talk about his feelings whenever it's needed. There is a strong sense of being comfortable with one's feminine side, as in him being connected with his nurturing qualities. You like a man who lives a more easy-going lifestyle, someone who is domestic and focuses more on bringing peace in his home. Now with Mars in Cancer, it's not a beneficial placement as the energies of Mars and Cancer contradict each other. So you can be a bit distrustful or closed off with the masculine energies and figures in your life. And with men who appear to be on the sensitive side, you can get attached very quickly. A masculine energy that is not only just a physical provider, but also an emotional provider is what you are heavily attracted towards. Cancer rules the chest and stomach, so perhaps men with a defined chest or a toned stomach can really get you attracted. In short, it's someone connected to his emotions and is much more on the gentle side of life.

Mars in Leo

You love a fabulous man. Someone who isn't just a plain old attention seeker, but someone who actually exudes confidence wherever he goes. You are attracted to men who are quite on the creative side of life, like someone who lives a colorful life, someone who isn't afraid to add their personal touch to things, someone who honors their individuality. Often times you can attract cocky men, or men who are super insecure on the inside, so be aware of that. With your Leo Mars you are quite stubborn and fixated towards the things you want to achieve, and you might move a bit slow, but you make those moves so loud. You need a masculine energy that can sustain this nonstop fire within you. You also like praises, so definitely a man who knows how to appreciate you well enough. You enjoy a power couple dynamic, so the masculine energy in your life should be someone who knows that you both add even more shine to each other's light. You also desire to be seen by your partner, so if a confident man does that for you, it's one major butterfly inducing factor for you.

Mars in Virgo

You love men who knows what they are doing. Men who mindlessly go about their days or don't even know how to do basic tasks, really turn you off. You love a man who is sure of what he is trying to do, while also being able to give you the practical knowledge about that thing. With Mars in Virgo you go about your life quite statistically by planning your moves, and you love a man who does the same. You really are attracted to a handy-manny type of masculine energy, that can make you feel physically comfortable by improving the way you live. Small practical gestures like holding the door open for you or bringing you a glass of warm honey tea at the end of the day, or something, it really makes you feel like you can rely on that person. You are attracted to witty and often sarcastic men. You also need a mental attraction with a person, while also being able to use all that exchange of information into some practical use. You are also pretty attracted to men who prioritize cleanliness and hygiene.

Mars in Libra

You experience a very dynamic yet subtle kind of attraction. By subtle I mean you aren't the type to directly approach the men you are attracted to or be very driven with your crush. Instead, you like the sneaky flirtations, the slow burn that slowly yet gently gets you to understand the other person. You are highly attracted to the classic gentlemen type. Someone who is a smooth talker, a man with a charismatic yet soothing demeanor. You can easily get turned off by men who are overly aggressive or the men who push other people around or the men who cannot hold a conversation without creating drama. With your Mars in Libra, you are attracted to a diplomatic masculine presence. Someone who knows the power of staying still, listening to both sides and knowing when to put their feet into the conversation. The quality of being able to carry oneself with much grace, is something that highly attracts you to a man. On a challenging note, you may happen to attract men who are all talk and no action.

Mars in Scorpio

The way you want a man to be with you is to be completely obsessed with you from head to toe. Honestly it's really that intense and possessive Christian Grey vibes. You love the intensity. You love it when a man holds a certain amount of mystery to himself which can allow you to be completely intrigued. You love to peel the layers one by one, all by yourself. So a man who knows how to keep you hooked, while also being able to reveal himself to you one quality at a time, it's very butterfly inducing for you. You love possessive men, like that's not even something we don't know. Men who are calculative, on the quieter side around people and slightly have a rbf. You are also the type to love the hot-cold dynamic, where there are intense arguments after a session of giving cold stares to each other and then even more intense make ups. Masculines who are in touch with their sexuality are sure to drive you crazy. Beware of manipulators or extremely closed off individuals.

Mars in Sagittarius

You love honest men. Honestly, honesty and being able to say things without sugarcoating it, is your best quality. You like a man who is on the same page of thinking as you. A man who has his belief systems in order, and a man who is good at understanding motives, intentions and meanings behind the things people do, is really someone you would enjoy spending your time with. Your choice in men is quite unique, because you want someone who has a rich way of thinking, a rich way of going about life. At the same time the masculine figures in your life need to be adventurous, both in the physical side of life and also mentally. Someone you can completely connect with on a mental level, and can bounce around ideas, discuss things like law or philosophy. You rarely like a boring man who is all about his boring life. You need someone to be your best friend, as well as your partner. On a challenging note, you may get attracted to men who are just too focused on their own freedom, not at all stable in life, and quite hard to open up emotionally.

Mars in Capricorn

You love when a man is the provider. Not because you can't provide for yourself or anything, but because you yourself are very much of a busy-body, and you know the importance of having a goal and stability in your life. You are immensely attracted to a man who has goals, whether big or small. An ambitious man catches your attention big time. For you it's very important for the masculine figure to be able to provide and be the reliable one. Men who has goals, has a plan, is ambitious, cares about providing for the domestic life. It's not a desire fueled by greed or laziness to achieve on your own, that you would want someone else to do it for you, instead, it's a genuine desire to partner up with a man who knows the importance of actions following his words. You also love to be with a man who knows how to appreciate himself for his work. On the challenging side you might happen to attract someone greedy, unproductive or someone with a directionless life.

Mars in Aquarius

Attraction for you is very much rooted in the fact that you can be yourself around a man. If he's comfortable, then it's super attractive. You love men who have a very intellectual and a forward thinking, open minded mindset. Because for you attraction is also very much rooted in the fact that you can connect on an intellectual level with that man. A man who has his emotions under control, who knows how to stay calm and see situations for what they are, really gives you the butterflies. On the same note, men who are unique, whether it's in the way they think or take action or dress, seem to catch your eye, a lot. Masculine energy that has a certain purpose in life, no matter if it seems childlike, and masculine energy that knows how to create a path forward, are very attractive for Aquarius Mars. On the challenging side, you might happen to attract men who are completely ruthless or emotionally closed off. You might be attracted to men who seem to keep their composure sustained for a long time without getting bothered.

Mars in Pisces

You like gentlemen. There is something so precious about a Pisces Mars, because they are just harmless. You really need a man who matches the same kind of vibe. You like sweet, gentle and easy going men. Because you really can get turned off by dramatic, aggressive and raging men who can't stay still for one moment. Men who are much focused on the pursuit of a deeper meaning in life, and men who are quite sensitive, really make you feel some type of way. You enjoy the presence of a masculine figure that knows how to cater to your emotional needs, and treat you like the soft princess you are deep inside. Someone who isn't overly critical of things, someone who contributes to things in a very creative manner, someone who knows the importance of being gentle with you whether physically or simply emotionally/mentally. On a challenging note you may attract men who are overly lost in their own worlds or men who can just never take anything seriously.

Thanks for reading 💕

#mars #astrology compatibility #astrology #natal chart reading #mars astrology #future spouse #natal chart #astrology husband

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