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cassanovancats · 3 years

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felicitate. two.

one < current > three

Jan. 2017

Two months have passed since Yuta’s first day. You were able to convince Satoru that, because he shared the similar disadvantage of not having an inherent technique, you should control his training. Maki was still his primary partner when it came to afternoon sparring. But he was your partner in the mornings.

Every morning, the two of you would focus on a different part of the body or a different form of exercise. You spotted him in the weight room, you logged his mile times, and, most importantly, you became his friend. Over before-dawn laps and cool-down stretches, you got to know Yuta and Rika.

For the first month, Rika stayed as an intangible ball of energy hovering around Yuta. Then, slowly, she began to manifest a form. Only for a minute at a time initially, but with time, she would appear for the entire session. Rika would hover a few feet above the weight bench or make flower crowns from the wildflowers that grew around your preferred trail. Yuta seemed just as surprised as you when she placed one on your head after a week of her practicing making them. She explained how she wanted to make something just as pretty as you, with all the innocence of a child. You had thanked her with watery eyes.

But with all the peace that came after settling into a new routine with Yuta joining your class, something was bound to ruin it. This time it was a required meeting between the big three clans. The invitation that arrived specifically asked for both you and your brother’s presence. Satoru tried to squirm out of it saying, “They didn’t say which brother had to attend,” but Megumi's unimpressed look and point at the name Gojo sprawled across the top ended that excuse.

Which lead to where you are now, dragging your human classmates through the Ginza streets to collect a custom gown. Maki grumbled all morning, but you were finally able to shut her up with a promise of buying everyone coffee, lunch and take-out dinner. Inumaki was content with any excuse to go into the city (even if it meant he had to carry your bags) and Yuta didn’t have the nerve to reject your offer when you smiled so hopefully. Though, he was curious after the employee of the shop greeted you like an old friend. “Why do you need such a fancy dress?”

“I don’t,” you rolled your eyes. “I have, or had, several custom ones already. I donate almost all my clothes after wearing them to these events. These meetings, when me and Nii-chan are both requested, are used as an excuse to find ways to undermine the political status of Gojo’s. Nii-chan did not force me into years of tutoring on sorcerer history and politics for me to get clowned about wearing the same outfit as last time.”

Maki adds, “The Zen’ins and Kamos are the standard for sleazy shamans. Not every sorcerer is as nice as us.” Yuta nods hesitantly, which makes you snort.

“I know us kicking your ass constantly may not seem ‘nice,’ but trust me when I say I’d rather be getting tossed around by Maki or Panda than attending this dinner.”

“Bonito flakes.” You can tell Inumaki is pouting behind his face mask.

“C’mon, Toge-chan,” you draw out the ‘-chan’ and grab his free hand to swing it back-and-forth. “You know I didn’t mean it like that. It’s a good thing to not be grouped with Maki! She’s such a meanie when it comes to training.” Maki moves too fast for you to dodge her punch. Yuta laughs under his breath at your group’s antics. “Anyways, the most exciting part of this dinner will be seeing what Kamo schmuck they dig up to try to convince Satoru to marry me off.”

“They’re still on that?” Maki laughs and throws her arm over your shoulder. “You would think they’d catch the hint after you stopped wearing furisodes.”

“Salted fish roe,” Inumaki offers.

You sigh, “I would, but you know they wouldn’t treat you well. Escorting me would just mean you get to deal with their passive aggressive comments too.”

“What if I escort you?”

Your group stops walking in the middle of the crowded streets. People continue to push past, but the three of you continue to stare dumbfounded at Yuta. “Is it that bad of an idea?” He flushes bright red and turns his head to stare at the ground.

“No, no,” you reassure as you get the group moving again. “It’s just… well, you remember how we reacted when you came into the class initially, yeah? While they would make fun of Toge-kun, the people at this meeting would try to kill you without hesitation. There’s no guarantee even Rika could stop the full force of everyone in both the Zen’in and Kamo clans.”

Yuta gives a small, “Oh.” He continues to stare at the ground.

“Seriously, I would love to have an escort, especially if it was either of you. There’s only so much of clan politics I can take alone. But I’d never ask you or Toge to go through that for me.” You move from in between Maki and Inumaki to bump against Yuta. “Like, these people are the ultimate bullies. I want you to deal with them only when absolutely necessary.” He finally seems to cheer up some and you take the moment to grab his hand, tugging him forward. “Now c’mon! The bakery Nii-chan got those pastries from last week is only a few blocks away!”

The day of the meeting arrives without much fanfare. Satoru took Megumi out on a mission in the morning to exorcise some low-level curse and you were left at the school to start what would be a long day of preparations. You shuffle into the common area and begin making a cup of coffee. It isn’t until you turn to get creamer from the fridge you realize Yuta, Inumaki and Panda are eating breakfast in the same room. You flush, suddenly aware that you didn’t grab any sweatpants when you left your room and you had slept in a stolen pair of Satoru’s boxers. “Please tell me I’m still asleep,” you mutter, shutting your eyes and whipping back around to finish preparing your coffee.

Panda falls over laughing. Inumaki gives a loud whistle. Yuta is redder than you are and has his face almost flat against his rice. Of course, to add to your humiliation, Hakari and Maki come in from training.

“(y/n), I was never here and I never saw you,” Hakari throws his hand over his eyes and immediately turns to run towards his dorm room.

“You know, I don’t see why you don’t just attend dinner in this outfit,” Panda says.

“Of course you don’t, you literally don’t wear clothes. At least Hakari is smart enough to have some shame and not ogle at her.” Maki moves forward to steal a sip from your cup and gags, “God, how much sugar is in this thing?”

You pout, “The appropriate amount to get me through today. I need to borrow one of your thigh holsters, by the way. Nii-chan doesn’t want me to have to use his technique if something happens.”

“Nori?” The three jerks finally stop laughing, though Panda still seems particularly delighted at your embarrassment.

“Mm, I don’t think so. But some elders got pushy when I was sent to the last meeting and not my brother. Satoru wants me to be able to scare them, not maim them.”

“Salmon,” Inumaki still seems hesitant, but you and Maki move onto a different topic easily as you two walk to her room.

Yuta watches until he’s sure neither of you will hear him ask, “Will she really be okay?”

Inumaki, despite seeming hesitant before, gives a stronger, “Salmon.” He gestures for Yuta to pick up his phone (the boy has gotten better at understanding Inumaki, but wasn’t able to have a conversation yet) and sends a message in a group chat appropriately named Da Bois while Panda grumbles about how unfair it is that he has paws and can’t use a phone.

osamu: (y/n)ie is smiley but she’d kill someone if they tried anything lol

fushiguro: what did the idiot do

fushiguro: who is osamu

osamu: ofc u don’t know hq

fushiguro: what’s that supposed to mean

creepy-kun: when did you change my name >:(

Yuta pouts about the name change for the rest of the day and avoids his phone to keep from Inumaki’s teasing. He almost misses the photo you send in JJH Thots.

It’s you and your brother pressed cheek-to-cheek and making faces at the camera. Satoru has on his circular sunglasses instead of a blindfold, even though it’s clearly night in the photo. His bright, blue eyes peek over their edge, his smile wide, and he has one hand throwing a peace sign and the other on your side. Your mouth is tugged back into a snarl, but Yuta can see how a smile is starting to break through and your eyes are lit up. Both of your hands form claws, like you were a second away from jumping through the phone screen and pinning the viewer.

the good gojo: time to annoy some bastards!!

maki: tell naobito he’s a bitch

fushiguro: ^

osamu: you!! look!!! hot!!!!

the good gojo: the way satoru thought that was for him

the good gojo: it’s delusion luv

Yuta has seen the two of you in almost this exact pose in person. But you weren’t dressed like that, with the slightest hint of the black leather holster you wore peeking out from underneath soft layers of tulle. Even his usual carefree teacher is in Western formal wear, with a tie that matches the floral print on your dress. Yuta knew you had bickered over who got to pick and who had to match. He almost couldn’t imagine the people in the picture wrestling like the two of you had. Together, you two are blindingly beautiful. It wasn’t fair.

Yuta covered his face with his pillow and screamed.

#felicitate #cass.writes #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #inumaki x reader #yuta okkotsu x reader #inumaki x reader x yuta #female!reader #jjk spoilers #jjk volume 0 spoilers #this was written before panda's fan page said he can use phones #womp womp

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senju-sekhmet · 3 years

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Leporina venatio

leporina venatio (latin): rabbit hunt

Summary: You’ve cleaned it. You’ve groomed it. You’ve run your fingers through it - time to get around to wear it. Tobirama’s fur collar has got to be the number one prize - except he’d never actually let you adorn it. You’ll just have to help yourself to it a little bit differently, no? I COULDN’T RESIST... In response to the lovely headcanons @cafeinthemoon! Go check them out!

Warnings: the fact I really suck at comedy? And slightly suggestive tones in the end. SFW, though, don’t worry!

~3.200k words Read on AO3!

He opened his eyes lazily. The sun was already filtering warmly through the window and with a content sigh he reached over to - Empty. Tobirama turned over to find your side of the bed vacant - cold, even. He huffed. Now he couldn’t deny being slightly miffed that you’d rather rise on your own than spend a few precious moments with him, awake, in bed - as you used to, on your off-duty days; but being the man he was, there must be a reason behind all this. Maybe you had prepared breakfast, received an urgent message… a multitude of logical reasons were plausible.

He still was annoyed. Those were your shared off days, after all. Precious and few inbetween. With a shake of his head and sigh he rose to get dressed in his dark casual attire. His scarlet gaze swept the room for any clues regarding your departure. At the very least he expected you to leave some kind of message behind for him to find - if you really did leave without any hint at all? However he came up short. Leaving the bedroom and entering the narrow hall, he found there was no smell of fresh food being cooked either, which ruled out the breakfast option. Tobirama’s heart sank a little. So much for a calm day off, then.

Quietly, as a last resort he tentatively called out - “Y/n?”

No answer. Closing his eyes momentarily he sent out a weak pulse of chakra and tuned into his sensor skills to see if you were anywhere nearby, but none of the signatures belonged to you. Opening his eyes again, he stemmed his palms to his hips and frowned deeply. Had you actually left just like that?

Suddenly, his gaze widened as a more sinister thought occurred to him.

Had something happened to you?

His frown deepened. Should he check the hospital - should he -

Then he noticed it. The door of your shared armoury - really, the small room in which you both kept your weapons, armor and other items for combat and missions was slightly agape. His eyes narrowed to tiny slits. That door was always closed. He stalked over cautiously, nudged the door open - then he saw it. All the puzzle pieces fell into place immediately.

His ultramarine battle gear, polished. Shining.

His white fur collar - missing.

“Why, you…”, he muttered, no, snarled. For a moment the world was red and hot ire burned inside of him - then he gazed through the window, huffing.

He whipped around on his heels and stalked out of the house. Already, he channeled his chakra to let his sensor skills fan out in search of you.

You wanted to hide from him, an extremely skilled sensor?

Game on.

_________

Your neck and shoulders were comfortably warm. It was spring, so the temperatures were rising indeed, but not quite there yet - though it did make you wonder how Tobirama handled this in summer. Occasionally you’d tilt your head to the side to nuzzle into the warmth of the white fur that adorned your shoulders, inhaling the scent of your husband.

With a snicker, you thought about how he’d wake up to you - and his precious floof - missing.

Honestly, this was a godly prank, or so you’d like to think. Waltzing through Konoha, wearing what obvious was Tobirama’s trademark piece of attire was bound to turn a few select heads - and it did. You even happened to meet Madara - who had regarded you with a fine smirk. He understood immediately, of course - the fact Tobirama wouldn’t part willingly with this and was somewhere else, royally pissed off.

“Does he know yet?”, the Uchiha clan leader mused darkly, a glint to his obsidian eyes.

You blinked innocently, putting a slender finger to pursed lips. “Do you hear him yelling and ripping it off me?”

He merely gave a low laugh and waved goodbye, going on his merry way.

As you did yourself. You weren’t stupid, of course. Stealing Tobirama’s fur collar was one thing. Hiding with it for a prolonged amount of time was another - by now he’d be awake, have figured everything out and probably even be using shadow clones to look for you.

His sensor skills were an extremely unfair advantage in this game.

Which was another reason you kept to the broad public - the more chakra signatures were around you, the more difficult it’d be for him to discern yours. Really, it’d just buy you a little bit more time - and dignity. Tobirama wouldn’t make a scene to recover his most prized possession in front of the entire village.

You hoped, at least.

It was just in front of a flower shop when you spotted him - his silvery hair would always stand out, just like the three red facial markings he used paint on. He was down the road, way off; however his stare might as well have been a kunai flying in your direction for how enraged it was.

You gave a cheeky grin, waved at him and entered the shop without looking back to see his face become contorted by a furious scowl.

Inside the shop were a handful of customers and the keeper of course, who you approached politely. “Hello, might I take a look around? I’m looking for a little surprise for my husband and your display had me enraptured, really.” Your tone was honey-sweet, you almost felt guilty knowing what would follow in here.

The man blinked, blushing a little. “O-oh, sure, go ahead,” waving you towards his sortiment with a bright smile.

You made a mental note to buy some flowers from this poor fellow later.

____

Tobirama couldn’t believe his own eyes.

Not only had he located you amidst the bustling streets - it was a quite busy morning - but every single aspect of the situation fuelled his fury more. Obviously - obviously - you had been mingling in an effort to make tracking you down with his sensor skills more difficult (How pathetic - he’d know your chakra’s signature between a thousand, always), but you actually also had the gall to stare him in the eye once he found you, grin at him and, by all that is holy, waltz away.

With his fur collar on.

He wasn’t a conceited man nor did he care for appearances, but frankly a part of him quite liked the idea of you wearing it (for a short time, anyway) - your scent on it, the idea of it being warm by your body’s warmth -

But this was his fur collar! And he hadn’t given you permission to saunter around with it in public like some - some - look-alike? Furiously he stalked over to the shop you had just entered, paying no attention to what was being sold there exactly. People made way for him simply for how he walked - likely his expression helped with that bit too - but he didn’t care. This game was over, now.

Inside, his scarlet gaze locks with yours immediately and his eyes narrow to tiny slits. “Y/n,” he sternly calls as though his voice was a weapon - a threat he’d make good on.

The shop’s owner turned his head, mouth slightly agape when recognition settled into his expression.

You weren’t fazed the slightest, of course. That grin of yours was as cheeky as ever and had he been slightly more prepared - had this not been about his fur collar - maybe, maybe he’d have found it funny. A little bit.

But as it was, he didn't. Not the slightest. Nope.

“Tobirama!”, you waved, “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you before, dear, I’m glad you found me now.”

He was sure at this point his face became as red as three red streaks of paint that adorned it. The shop owner ducked behind his counter a little. “It wasn’t all that difficult, Y/n, with that outfit you’re brandishing right now, you know.” The tone of his voice was subzero, but quiet. He took a few measured steps towards you.

Your smile didn’t falter the slightest. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” You tilted your head slightly to rub your cheek over the fluffy white fur, closing your eyes to inhale the scent again.

Tobirama took a sharp breath and his eyes widened slightly as that motion alone did something else to him. His fists balled though. “Shall we, then? We got a lot more to do today.” He extended his hand for you to take, taking another measured step towards you. If you weren’t going to take his hand, he’d simply take your arm or make body contact somehow else to use his hiraishin seal and end this prank.

Unfortunately - of course - you were too smart for that. Your loving ministrations to the floof ceased immediately as an attentive eye caught his hand nearing you; your lips formed a wicked smile. “Sure - go ahead, Tobi. I’ll be right along, I promised Mito to stop by and - oh, I needed to buy something else, too.”

Tobirama nostrils flared and his gaze narrowed to tiny slits. Momentarily his jaws clenched so hard it hurt, but he raised his chin as he identified this for what this was. Defiance. And the proverbial gauntlet being thrown down again. “Then let’s go together, shall we?” He raised his hand to casually lay it on your shoulder as he stood by your side - as wife and husband would -

But you pranced to the side nimbly and towards the door before he could do so much as lay a finger on you or get within arm’s reach. “Wonderful! This will be fun. I’ll be back later, mister, your flowers are delightful!”, waving the shop owner goodbye, you already were out of the shop.

Tobirama’s hand dropped to his side, his hands balled into fists again. Darkly he stared after you. So this is how we’re going to do this. Not sparing the shop owner a second glance he was out before you could slip out of his sight again.

________

With no small amount of satisfaction you were sauntering down the main street of Konoha again, ignoring the ominous presence that was following you. The look on Tobirama’s face had been priceless. Unfortunately you had a problem now: he literally only needed to graze your skin now to whisk you away to your shared home.

Then the un-fun part of this prank would begin. You’d have to find a way to pacify him before that because right now, you knew he was royally pissed only.

Still. It was fun to watch, once in a while. And you really loved this lovely floof.

His low timbre reached your ears again, nearer than you expected. Already, you sped up your playful gait, throwing a glance over your shoulder. “Enjoying yourself?” He inquired darkly.

If looks could kill, you might drop dead now. There were honest shadows cast over his face from how enraged he was. But - and this was most important - he was far enough away still. You smiled cheekily again. “Quite a lot.”

His voice became chilly again. “You realise this is no match for my hiraishin?”

You giggled. “Yeah, I’d be in real trouble if you ever used it.” To accentuate your statement, you picked up your pace a little bit more. By now you were quite close to running.

Tobirama gave a low growl in response and answered by picking up his speed, too. The way the two of you walked must look comical by now. Not like you cared - and Tobirama seemed fixated on his goal now.

Truth be told, you needed a plan. Another shop would just strain his patience more - and that trick was old. Reaching a familiar destination - like Hashirama’s house - was dangerous. Tobirama might unleash his fury there or simply grab you and really haul you away. Briefly you considered seeking out Madara - but the fun would stop right there, or the probability of an actual incident was too high.

That left you with one option.

Within the blink of an eye, you bolted into a sidealley.

_______

Tobirama skidded to a halt for just a moment as you ran - right down into the narrow alley to your right. Snarling, he began the pursuit - gloves off now. If you actually thought you could outpace the fastest shinobi alive, you had another thing coming.

Though you weren’t exactly holding back either - nor were you a sluggish person. Your footwork had always been nimble and in the small streets it was possible to zigzag past narrow corners, under clothes lines and down even more narrow alleys that barely deserved the name.

He had to be careful. This was not some panicked move, this had been a calculated decision of yours. Quite possibly you had more planned. His best option remained to stay as close as he could - no, get close enough to touch you and teleport home.

His increasing fury didn’t help maintain focus, though. All he did see was his white fur collar trail in front of him and away, alongside the endlessly amused laughter of his wife.

Were he not so frustrated, he might find the challenge entertaining. Enjoyable. Perhaps he did, right now.

Nonsense, this was ridiculous! He had better things to do than running after you like some schoolboy!

Just as you turned around yet another corner he lunged forward for you to narrowly miss his grabbing hand - so narrow he could still feel the air draft of your movement as you had to dance to the side in order to avoid capture.

“Ahaha!”, you giggled, “It seems you got to be faster, dear husband!” - and with a literal twirl you were on your merry way again.

That did it.

_______

After your very narrow escape, you had turned yet another corner - quite frankly you were surprised Tobirama hadn’t shouted anything back. There are no people in these alleys; and by now you expected him to be frothing by the mouth or something. Instead he actually lost a few meters on you - hah.

Then you frowned.

That was quaint, actually. Had he stopped for some reason? You spurred yourself to greater speeds but nonetheless you couldn’t deny the tiny shiver down your spine. Your husband was an extremely intelligent man and the fact he had hatched some plan that had required him to stand still even for just a second - that didn’t sit well with you.

You had to change your tactic, again.

But quite frankly you were running out of options at this point. A disguise was out of question due to his sensor capabilities - back on the main road, maybe?

You took another quick turn-

Only to be slammed into the ground by a tall, silver-haired man. With a yelp, you rolled forward to ease the incoming fall as you lost all balance due to your speed, but your assailant was quick as well - before you could gain your footing again, he used the weight of his body to tackle you. You managed to roll on your back to identify the attacker as - who else could it be - Tobirama.

“How?!”, you breathed, incredulously, but already, you raised your legs to kick out viciously to shake him off; though he was faster.

With a low huff he seized your wrists simply and dragged you up with him - damn it all. This was as good as over now. After a short scuffle he had wrestled your arms behind your back and turned you around to face down the alley, where the answer was coming from.

Another Tobirama was striding down towards you. He clapped his hands, once twice, lazily. The smirk in his voice was unmistakable. “Well done. Shall we go home, dear?”

You struggled still against the shadow clone that held your arms wrenched behind your back, scrunching your nose and huffing. “That was low, Tobi. I thought we were having a fair chase here,” you moped.

He finally stood in before you, arms crossed in front of his chest. His eyebrows rose lazily. “I was chasing you. Apologies for not reading the rules, you didn’t leave any behind.” He sounded entirely unimpressed now, but there was a certain glint in his scarlet gaze as he stared his quarry - you - down. You were unsure if it was fury or plain annoyance.

Your lips formed a pout. “At least make your clone disappear now. You won.”

He didn’t move an inch. In fact, his clone reinforced his grip, earning him indignant “Hey!” from you. Tobirama only blinked, gaze never leaving you. “Do you think I’m stupid? You’re going to bolt the moment I release you.”

You click your tongue in feigned hurt. “Ouch? Please, have some faith, husband. I lost a fair chase, I’m a good sport.”

“You just called it unfair, my dear.” He cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed.

You just stared at him for another moment after he had called your rather obvious bluff. Finally, you bit your lower lip and attempted a little bit of a smirk again. “Come on, Tobi. You did enjoy yourself a little.” He still didn’t move an inch. His intense gaze simply kept mustering you, only narrowing ever so slightly. “We’re going home now.”

Instantly reality twisted and a familiar lurch later you were in your bedroom, Tobirama right in front of you. The clone was gone - he must’ve released it the moment it had teleported you. In a swift motion he backed you up closer to the nearest wall, closer and closer - until you felt your back make contact with the wall. Defiantly, you crossed your arms in front of your chest.

“Well, go ahead then. Take the floof back.” At the very least, you were surprised he hadn’t been shouting or something. Remembering his face when he initially had spotted you, you’d been rather sure you were in for something.

Right now? Right now the scarlet gaze of his was near liquid, ablaze but narrow nonetheless. His jaw was working and slowly, he put a hand to the wall next to your head. “Hm,” he gave a low hum that rolled right off his tongue.

You raised an eyebrow. Was he going to prank you now? “If you’re waiting for me to give it back, no can do. I’m rather attached to this. Literally.” You smirked again, confidently, turning your head slightly to nuzzle the soft fur again for a moment.

From the corner of your eye you saw his throat move as he swallowed heavily, his eyes widening slightly. He was staring you down like a hawk now. Silence stretched for a few moments before - “Maybe I quite enjoy the sights right now, actually.” His baritone voice had taken on a sultry tone now and his free hand moved up to first ruffle through his fur, then trail up your neck and cup your cheek tenderly.

Your eyebrows climbed up. So that was what that look had been about. You leaned into his touch a little and couldn’t help but smile gently, looking up at him. Right then you wanted to lose yourself in that intense gaze of his. “Then ... I’ll wear it a bit longer?” you murmured headily, quietly.

He took another small step closer until his body almost touched yours, his fresh breath hitting your face as he seemed to ponder the notion for a moment. The hand next to your face slipped down to linger between the soft fur and your neck alike, his thumb stroking your skin gently. For a moment all he did was caressing you, pinning you with gaze; no marvelling you.

“A tiny bit…”, he finally murmured, then a fine smirk formed - and his voice turned stern. “But you’re not going to leave this house. With my collar on. Ever again.”

You rolled your eyes.

This was still Tobirama, after all.

#tobirama #tobirama senju #tobirama x reader #tobirama senju x reader #sekhmet writes

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bloodfcst-a · 4 years

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given the revival of the vii fandom with all of the hullabaloo surrounding remake, i can think of no better time to do this meme. i also suggest you check out my updated nav page if you haven’t already! i worked really hard on it okay sobs.

things a new rp partner should know about me !

write 3-5 things a new rp partner (or those who want to be) should know about you and tag 3-5 people! it should be related to rp and not to other interests.

tagged by: no one, but it’s a shame bc... i got thoughts. you were warned.

tagging: @angereve @enshijou @breselin @serophs @strfe @fractempyreal @extremepath @localmagicalboi @shimmerseas @duplikiss @verumking @asterites + if it strikes your fancy.

i. i am not your mother’s/father’s yu.ffie blog. while i do have a verse reserved for compilation content, that’s not the main premise of this blog. if you came here for oversexualized underage ninjas.... i’m going to have to direct you elsewhere. out here we’re primarily an adult modern interpretation... who does not daylight as a ninja constantly. she can, however, be a y.akuza or a sheltered member of high society who enjoys kicking ass for justice so if you’re interested in that, y’know. c’mon down.

ii. the typical ‘ yu.ffie is a kleptomaniac ’ / ‘ stop stealing my stuff ’ trope is like. one that grates my very existence. i have talked about this many times, but for those of you who are new: yufi has only stolen out of necessity to her cause. the only time i’ll refer to petty theft on this blog is if she like steals a fry or something. if we’re joking around, okay, but... please don’t consider that to be the sole core of her characterization. i’m begging. i’m on my knees. i’m warning you, i’ll cry and then i’ll probably ignore whatever post you’ve mentioned it in if you’re serious. just. don’t be that person if you’re following me.

if we’re going into it, the only times she’s stolen anything were: > in crisis core, as the ‘ treasure princess. ’ but this is arguable, as the treasure is truly up for grabs to start with & zack repeatedly goes after these locations she’s sent to him ( which, by the way, were sent to her from rufus to attempt to retaliate against + destroy shinra hq ). zack already knew what was up when: 1) she showed up in his spam folder; 2) she literally said she’s on the hunt for treasure; and 3) he knew at least after the second time that he was gon’ get goinked ( please see definition #2 ) so... can’t help him there. > in vanilla vii, when the party is foolish enough to meet her and not recruit her off the bat ( it be ya own self ). to be fair, 99% of her interactions with easterners / non-wutai prior to that moment had been people who either wanted to kill her or exploit her, so... it’s only self-preservation to use them before they use her or worse, leave her for dead. a sad reality for a 16 year old. > in vanilla vii, only after the party arrives to wutai & she thinks she can successfully finish her mission of “ getting all the strongest materia. ” after she’s captured, she does apologize, and then afterward makes cloud sign it in writing. so. y’know, she did learn from her mistake & said “ ugh, guess i gotta put that diplomacy training to use. ”

y’all could argue that she’s a thief class and that’s what they do, but note that it’s NOT one of her core skills-- it’s a MATERIA. which means everyone out there with a steal materia could be out here being a kleptomaniac. cloud? barret? tifa? red xiii? none of your favs are safe. her skills in the game, however, are shit called “ blood festival ” ( oh? see the username’s relevance all of a sudden? aha! ) and “ doom of the living. ” she’s out here summoning ghosts and reigning otherworldly power on ur ass but... fandom wasn’t ready for that conversation !! some folks were too BASIC and couldn’t handle her true strength... so i will gladly champion that for you.

iii. i like to emphasize that yufi is an emotionally strong yet traumatized figure, which stems from her origins and that i just put that in the forefront. we have a character who is haunted by her mother who died after childbirth, seemingly rejected from her father yet held to the highest of his standards, has attachment issues because she’s the “ black sheep ” and doesn’t just accept defeat or dejection even if it comes from her core community, survived multiple wars, has led in post-war rescue efforts on multiple occasions, was wrongfully imprisoned, was on the forefront of pandemic outbreaks as a first-responder, joins and rises to the top of an organization created to restore world order, is one of the two top operatives in said organization ( and the one out on the field longer--sorry vin.cent, but u only got involved at lu.cretia and when the actual gunshots disturbed your brooding and wine session filled isolation sessions. but like, mood tho ), pretends to be cheery despite clearly remembering all the hauntings and death and other bullshit she’s been facing since she was a toddler.... oh, and she disarmed bombs when her country was wrongfully targeted + used as political bait for terrorists...when she was a child. that’s canon, if we’re talking about “ accuracy. ” even in vanilla vii, she had no outlets, no one to turn to, ‘cause everyone was cloud vc: “ not interested. ”

so if you’re on this blog, it’s not like you won’t see happy yufi... but realize that i recognize that she is multifaceted and has a lot of baggage. emotional issues which unfortunately i bring to every verse gfdohfofh but u know, it’s core to her character + y’all gon have to deal, or... idk, go find another yufi. i’m not forcing you to be here.

iv. in my opinion, the best plotting comes with ooc conversations/interactions. i’m not saying if we plot that we’re required to be friends, ‘cause i don’t wanna force anyone into friendship, but i truly believe that if you want super deep plots with frequent interactions, we should... probably talk more than once. pretty simple, imo ! sometimes people claim i play favorites, but i really don’t... if you never talk to me and you don’t respond to my attempts to interact, then how am i supposed to know you’re interested?

as a general rule, i’ll put in as much effort as i receive. if i see you’re interested in me, if we’re really vibing when it comes to plotting, if you’re sending asks & liking posts, we’ve got some threads going, rad ! if i like starter calls and send you asks and message you and you never respond to me... ? i’ll take that as a sign you don’t wanna talk + i should move on to someone else. if i’m wrong, well... do something to change my mind.

v. i know i went hard as fuck on this meme, but that’s bc I’M REALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT ABOUT THIS MUSE. in reality i’m actually quite soft + a weenie babie. if you ask.......... most people, i think they’d say i try really hard to be approachable and adaptable. i think everyone who talks to me on discord laughs at me because i’m scared of the stupidest things + i love to make jokes and just be funny and relatable. so please be nice and love me and my sassy fighty extremely tough deprived child. we both need hugs.

kthx i’m finally done.

#♝ mun.#long post /#WHEW.#also my nav legit has a f.a.q so like.....#i'm trying y'all !#but ! if u never ask u'll never know.#until i decide to drop a wealth of knowledge on you all gdoifdhodgd #whoops my hand slipped......

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christophe-delorne · 5 years

Text

Good Dog: Chapter 14

Warnings: Blood, violence, NPC death.

Notes: Took forever just to get the energy to write another chapter. I've never sighed so much in my life more than I have this past week. Memory & ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ

AO3 Link.

The rain on the old rusted tin roof was near deafening, a dull roar in the old abandoned warehouse. Christophe wondered why it hadn't been torn down already, maybe it was just too much money to spend on a location that wasn't ideal. The fringes of Denver, where the poor and the degenerates scraped to survive on what they could. It was Kenny's natural setting, people would be more loyal here to their own kind than in the more upper class parts of the city. Good for making deals that weren't meant to be noticed. Out here, you knew what to expect from a person, they were more upfront with their desires than in the city. That meaning they would stab you in the front than in the back.

With nothing to occupy his mind, Christophe's addiction clawed at his insides until he finally broke and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. He'd smoked more this month than he had this entire year, a sign of how much he hated this job. He wasn't certain which was was, a slow death or staying in Colorado for another day. He lit up the cigarette just as he heard the sound of a door creak on rusted hinges, in this part of town, the 'rats' would be more stealthy if they intended on stealing something. So it must've been on purpose, Christophe didn't turn to look though his hand fell to the pistol holstered near his chest, hidden beneath his jacket.

He could hear the footsteps approaching, purposefully making noise to alert Christophe, smart move as the Frenchman didn't like to be snuck up on. Finally, he turned his head, peering over his shoulder to see the outline of someone holding a small flashlight. There was no light in the old building, leaving Christophe mostly in the dark, the only sight was the flare of his cigarette but it was enough to catch the other resident's attention.

"Who's there?" A familiar voice called out, recognizing it as none other as Kenny McCormick.

"Just me." Christophe didn't particularly care enough at the moment to toy with the blonde.

"Fucks sake, Chris. Creepin' around like a freak." Kenny grumbled as he made his way over before dropping a bag on the dirty floor at their feet. "Also, fuck you for leavin' Butters out there, shit move, man."

"Butters? Cute." Christophe exhaled smoke politely away from Kenny, even if the other was pissed at him, Christophe still held Kenny in some regard. "I got the job done and he wasn't harmed. Just like you requested."

"He's goin' to have nightmares for fuckin' ever after this shit, dude." Kenny shook his head, trying to calm his nerves. "Whatever, I got you what you wanted. Two uniforms and some ID cards. Better not fuck this up."

"I don't fuck up, its usually other people who fuck things up for me." He flicked his cigarette onto the ground, grinding it with the toe of his boot before picking up the bag. He hefted the strap over his shoulder, not bothering to check the contents, Kenny was reliable in a sense and wanted Cartman gone just as much as anyone did. Christophe and Gregory where their only hope in squashing out this menace before it got worse, not to mention Kenny seemed fairly attached to this 'Butters'. Love had a way of making people desperate, and stupid.

"Whatever, dude." Kenny didn't seem to keen on holding much of a conversation with Christophe, but he couldn't blame him. It was rare that anyone could stand him after a few minutes anyways, Kenny had been different, a level of understanding. However, Chris had harmed someone more important to Kenny, something Christophe could understand. While his relationship with Gregory was abnormal, he would not tolerate anyone harming the Brit either. A strange bond that couldn't be broken, no matter how much Christophe was aware of how much it wore at him mentally. It was his life, all he ever knew and though at times he thought of just vanishing from Gregory's life, he would never be capable of doing so.

"Pleasure doing business with you." Christophe nodded, though he looked ready to get back to Gregory. Something was unnerving him, maybe his mind lingering on the relationship between Kenny and Butters had twisted him up inside, he wasn't certain. However, he was certain to always trust his instincts, they had saved his life in the past and he wasn't going to ignore them just because he didn't want to feel anything that would turn him into a moron. He lifted a hand in a return of a farewell as Kenny departed, seemed like the blonde didn't want to spend any longer out and about than necessary or else he'd likely would have invited Christophe out for a drink.

Christophe pulled his phone out of his pocket, checking it just in case he missed any messages, nothing. He took a moment to send a text to Gregory though, updating him on receiving the goods for their next mission and he'd be heading back now. Gregory was always keen on wanting updates, Christophe didn't want to bother with him nagging and complaining for days on end. Better just to do whatever Gregory wanted than suffer the consequences of displeasing him. He used one hand to send him a message, short and straight to the point as usual. Christophe had never been one to hold decent conversations, even in text form.

He waited before he received confirmation from Gregory, wanting to make sure the Brit received the message before heading out. His phone chimed, alerting him of a new text, Gregory seemingly pleased with how easy the transaction went down, as if he doubted that Kenny would hold up his side of the deal. In their line of work, it was always good to have a reasonable amount of doubt, people had a way of turning on you in an instant, without warning. It was good to never let your guard down around anyone, especially ones closet to you.

Christophe pocketed his phone and exhaled out heavily, time to face the downpour of rain, he wasn't looking forward to that. Settling his shoulders, he pushed open the old metal door and stepped out into the torrent of rain. Immediately he was drenched down to the bone, the sheet of water falling from the sky made it near impossible to see much. It'd cover up his whereabouts for anyone he might be following him, though he doubted anyone could truly keep up with him, he was far too paranoid. Instead of calling to be picked up by a driver, he decided to walk for a bit, another paranoid trait he'd picked up, not wanting anyone to know where he'd been and what he'd been doing.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, alerting him he received another message. Annoyed, he pulled it out of his uncomfortably soaked jeans. Rain splattered over the screen, making it hard to read. Luckily it was water proof, in his line of work he needed a durable phone, he couldn't count the times he'd ruined a phone from various, unorthodox ways. The text was from Gregory again, 'asking' him on what they should get for dinner. It wasn't much asking as it was just Gregory mocking him, Christophe knew Gregory wouldn't agree to anything Christophe suggested unless it was something Gregory originally wanted.

Christophe decided not to play this game, he was soaking wet and still had a ways to travel before he could be picked up. So he began to type a response, which left him distracted from his surroundings. He'd let his irritation for the Brit hone his focus so tightly that the surroundings fell away, the reason why thinking with your dick and your heart was never a good idea. Pain suddenly flared out across his torso, starting just below the ribs, closer to his side. He immediately knew what had happened, the pain was familiar. He'd been shot, the sound of the gun muffled by the rumbling of thunder and the roar of the rain, though out here, he doubted that gunshots were unusual.

He didn't hesitate to react despite the pain threatening to crumble him to his knees, instead he dropped his phone into a puddle so he could reach for his own pistol hidden under his jacket. The movement made the person behind him panic, firing off two more shots but only one managed to land in his shoulder, the other grazing his cheek. It wasn't enough to stop a man like Christophe though. He'd already whirled around to face his assailant, such sloppy work made him aware that this was no true hitman, likely just someone looking for money, or someone who didn't really know how to hire a proper killer.

Unlike the man shrouded in rain, Christophe wouldn't miss. He only needed a single shot, one pull of the trigger and the bullet was sent on its way, nailing the would be mugger right between the eyes. Even in such shitty conditions, Christophe would come out on top because he'd be damned if he'd let some scum put an end to him. Dying out in the gutter in such a way wasn't appealing, after everything he'd lived through, it would've been pathetic. Tucking his gun away, he pressed his hand against his side with a wince. It was hard to tell how much blood he was losing already when rain poured down his body, washing away the scarlet liquid into the darkness.

Hunching over a little as if that would lessen the pain, he limped is way over to the fallen mugger who stared blankly up at the clouded sky. Christophe didn't bother, wasn't the first time he'd seen a man's face contorted with surprise and horror right before death and likely wouldn't be the last. Crouching down with a pained grunt, Christophe searched the man until he found a wallet. He needed to ID this man, just in case he was a hired hitman, a terrible one at that. He took his pistol too, tracing guns was fairly easy if one knew where to look. Thinking about this made it easier for Christophe to focus on something besides the pain that threatened to consume him.

Tucking the wallet into his jacket pocket and the gun in the back of his jeans, Christophe went back to find his phone in the dark of a rainy night. The sidewalk wasn't smooth or new, leaving puddles just deep enough to hide a phone. Lucky, or unlucky, for Christophe, he managed to find it by stepping on it. He grimaced at the feel of it cracking under his boot, but regardless, with a smidgen of hope, he picked it up out of the rainwater. It still worked as light faded on the screen, but the screen was badly cracked. Great, probably wouldn't work for long though in this rain. He had to act fast.

He had to get out from the open, away from the body before someone found it. He doubted it'd be anytime soon, but Christophe wasn't going to risk it. The rain would wash away any trail he might leave behind as blood and water streamed down his body, draining into the gutters. Christophe quickly texted Gregory, sending him his coordinates and a single word. Help. That was all he needed to say, Christophe wasn't the type to ask for help lightly, so Gregory would take this summon seriously. Christophe tucked his phone away again, hoping it'd last long enough for Gregory to track his location if Christophe's address wasn't correct.

Honestly, Christophe could barely see clearly at this point, but far too reluctant to admit to it. He was aware that he'd likely pass out soon from blood loss, so he had to find somewhere to hide, and quick. Luckily, the grimy alleyways offered the perfect source of hiding places. Overfilled dumpsters forgotten by the city maintenance, forgotten boxes and even an old cushion-less couch lay to waste in the alley. There was also danger here as he likely wasn't the only one lurking in these shadows, but Christophe was willing to take that chance for now. He slumped against an old brick wall, feeling exhausted, a sign that he was fading from consciousness.

He could only hope that Gregory found him.

#south park #good dog #gregstophe #fanfic #gregory #christophe

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flamehairedwritings · 5 years

Text

Pinned Up

Characters: Steve Rogers x Female Reader

Words: 2,044

Rating: E, 18+ ONLY

A/N: For Hallowe’en Prompts 2018! A v v v v v v v v big thank you to two of my faves for requesting:

‘maybe there was a halloween costume party and steve’s girl wore something,,,revealing,,,and then they Get It On 👀’ — @persephone-divine

‘Hi yes how about a costume party with Steve 🤓’ — @fearandloathing-in-missouri

I adore you both v much, more than I can say, and I’m v sorry this is so damn late.

This story contains swearing and unprotected sex.

MASTERLIST

Please don’t copy, steal or repost my work; credit does not count.

“Oh, sweet Lord.”

“Oh, stop.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Stop.”

“But look at you.”

You can’t help the heat that rises on your cheeks as you lower your gaze to your outfit.

Dressing as an army pin-up girl for Stark’s annual Hallowe’en party had been a last minute decision. You just hadn’t had the time to really sit and plan it out. The day before you’d raced to a thrift store after work to find something for a starting point, not being able to think of anything you had at home, and after half an hour of ransacking every section, you’d found it; a green, military style button-up, random patches and stripes on the arms and all.

That’s when the idea had come to you.

“Steve’s gonna go crazy.”

That’s the idea.

Your smile widening, you turn to the mirror to inspect your outfit one last time.

You’d pinned your hair into victory rolls, spent ten minutes perfecting your winged eyeliner, knotted the shirt at your stomach, found a pencil skirt in nearly the same shade of green that stopped at your mid-thigh, clipped your thigh-high stockings to them and slid your feet into your high, but comfortable, black heels. Feeling a little bit more daring after the one glass of wine you’ve already finished for a pre-drink, you unbutton the first few buttons of your shirt, showing a little more than a hint of your black bra.

Blowing out a breath, you turn back to your laptop and present yourself one last time to your best friend.

Thank God for Skype.

“I think I’ve fallen in love with you myself, to be honest.”

“Oh, doll, you know you’re my one and only,” you grin as you sit on your bed, checking the contents of your bag for the third time.

“Is he gonna meet you there?”

“Yeah, he came home from a mission earlier today and has been in meetings since. I said we could just skip tonight and spend it together but he said Tony sent him several texts, emails and voice messages reminding him that he did say he’d go. I said we’d only be there for a couple of hours, show our faces, you know.”

“With you looking like that, I bet he won’t last a minute.”

Your lips twitching, you close your bag and smile at the screen. “I adore you.”

“I adore you, too. Now, go. And, hey, call me the minute you wake up and tell me every vivid detail. Every detail.”

Jesus Christ on a cracker, it’s cold.

Folding your arms across your chest, a tiny part of you is starting to wish you’d chosen a more weather appropriate costume. Of course you could just go back inside but you’d messaged Steve to tell him you’d meet him on the balcony after he’d said he was on his way, knowing it would be the easiest place for him to find you due to the small amount of people.

Stark’s party is heaving, and you don’t know why you’re surprised; it always ends up like this, despite how often Tony describes them as ‘just a small get-together’.

Sipping your cocktail, you take a step back to allow a small group to pass, smiling politely at them as you swallow.

And then you see him.

He’s not in a costume, which doesn’t surprise you. He’s wearing his blue jacket, a white shirt and jeans, and he makes your heart stop. You allow yourself the few seconds in which he doesn’t see you to just gaze at him, the corners of your mouth lifting higher.

Then his gaze meets yours.

He smiles. It’s a warm, relieved smile that tugs at your heart and warms you to your core.

Then his gaze trails down you and his smile falters.

Your breathing hitches as he moves closer to you, your hand tightening on your glass. You know that look. It’s a look you’ve had the utmost pleasure of seeing many, many times before.

Finally, he stops before you, his hands out of his pockets, a muscle in his jaw twitching. He doesn’t say a word as his eyes travel over you, roaming every inch of your body.

Clearing your throat, you wet your lips.

“Hello.”

His gaze flicks back up to meet yours.

“Hi.”

The intensity of his gaze makes you shift slightly, acutely aware of both how incredible you feel and the people around you.

“Good flight?”

“Yeah.”

You don’t know what else to say; there’s already so much being said as you look at him. Then his hand reaches out and two finger tips skim along your collarbone, pushing your shirt aside a little.

“I like this,” he murmurs, his voice low despite there being no one close to you.

“You do?” you ask, your tone matching his.

“Very much.” His fingers slide up your neck and he cups your jaw, tilting your chin up. “You always look so damn beautiful.”

Your hands settle on his chest as you close the small distance between you. “I’ve missed you, Steve.”

“I’ve missed you, too, doll.” Lowering his head, his lips just barely brush against yours as he murmurs, “And I’m gonna show you just how much.”

You don’t know how you make it back inside and across the room without someone stopping you.

Maybe it’s because a sultry song is playing and people are too wrapped up in one another, or it’s because the lights are flashing, making it difficult to linger on features and faces.

Or maybe it’s because Steve Rogers is striding, his expression one of complete and utter determination. You can feel how tense he is, his hold on your hand firm; if anybody does try and stop you, good luck to them.

Your breathing quickens as you let him guide you through the crowd, your eyes fixed on his back. You’re already wet for him, anticipation making you hyper-aware of your clothes brushing against your skin with each movement and your nipples hardening against the soft cups of your bra.

You follow him without a word, even as he leads you past the elevators and down an empty corridor. He continues on, right down to the end, the music from the party growing slightly quieter. Then he’s shoving a door open and pulling you through.

It’s dark and he doesn’t turn the light on, but your eyes quickly adjust as you hear him close the door and you realise you’re in one of the many, many conference rooms that are scattered throughout the Avengers Headquarters.

Hands skim over your hips, up to your waist. All you can hear is your own slightly ragged breathing, the sound-proofed room doing its job of aiding you in forgetting about the party raging on down the hall.

“Did you wear this for me?”

His low voice against your ear as he draws your hair away from your neck has you leaning back against him, your head tipping to the side. And you know exactly what to say.

“Yes, Captain.”

You feel his smile against your skin as he presses a lingering kiss just under your jaw. Your eyes close as you hum quietly at the delicious feel of it, noticing, as a result, a second or two late that his hands have slid up to the buttons on your shirt and he’s starting to undo them. His lips remain at your neck, moving just as slowly as his hands.

Fuck, you’ve missed this.

Your head is leaning back against him by the time he’s finally unknotting your shirt and letting it fall open, your knees growing weaker with every gentle brush of his lips on your sensitive skin. His fingers glide up the bare skin of your stomach, all the way up to your bra where he cups your covered breasts. His thumbs brush over where your nipples have already peaked, drawing a low moan from the back of your throat.

The sound seems to trigger his barely controlled lust into action.

His kisses become more hurried, more purposeful, as one hand drops down and grips at the edge of your skirt, dragging it up. Sliding his hand over the soft curve of your inner thigh, two of his fingers brush over the front of your panties.

Steve groans into the crook of your neck at the wetness he feels, his fingers firmly pressing over you. Inhaling sharply, you release another moan as your back arches, pressing your ass back against his straining erection.

Then his hands are on your hips and he’s turning you, holding you tightly and walking you backwards before you can quite catch up. His lips descend on yours when you feel your back meet the wall, one hand cupping the back of your head as the other returns to between your legs, caressing over your wetness.

Your eyes fall shut once more as you moan, your hands gripping the lapels of his jacket.

Wait, why is he still so clothed?

Shoving the jacket off of his shoulders, you drag it down his arms, a thrill coursing through you as he removes his hands from you momentarily to allow you to pull it off of him. His hands return to you before the jacket even touches the floor, this time pulling your hips against his as his tongue strokes across your lower lip.

“Not gonna be able to be gentle, doll,” he mumbles against your lips as his hands slide down to grip the back of your thighs.

“Good,” you breathe as he lifts you, drawing your legs around his waist.

Wrapping your arms around his neck, you gain control of the kiss, your tongue stroking against his as his hand dips between your legs. Pushing your panties aside, his fingers stroke up and down your slick lips, the intensity of your kiss swallowing the moan that escapes you as he brushes against your swollen clit.

Then, two fingers are pressing into you, and you nearly bite down on his lip as you groan.

“Christ, always so damn wet and ready for me,” he murmurs, almost to himself, almost in awe.

You roll your hips impatiently and it’s his turn to groan, taking the hint and starting to move his fingers in and out of you, though far too slowly for your liking.

“Steve...” you breathe, your eyes opening as you lean your head back against the wall, finding his gaze.

“Thought it was gonna be Captain?” he answers, arching an eyebrow.

“Thought you weren’t gonna be gentle,” you counter, your lips lifting into a smile as his do, too.

“You’re saying far too many coherent words for my liking, doll.”

Adjusting his stance, Steve slips his fingers from you, and your groan of protest is swiftly silenced as his lips return to your neck. Closing your eyes, you feel his hands move from you and hear the familiar sound of metal scraping against metal as he unbuckles his belt. Grazing your teeth over your lower lip as you tip your head to the side to offer him more access, you hear a zip sliding down.

A hand settles on your hip, and then you feel the tip of his cock brushing down your folds. You both seem to slow your movements for a moment or two as his cock slowly sinks into you, both just feeling him stretch and fill you.

Tipping your head back, your mouth drops open as he pushes all the way inside you, a low moan escaping you.

“Christ...” he breathes, his hand tightening on your hip as he just revels in the feel of your warm, wet pussy enveloped around him.

For a few moments, the only sound that fills the room is your combined, ragged breathing. Then, he slowly draws his hips back, and then sinks back into you.

You groan as your eyes fall shut, your back arching from the wall slightly. His fingers suddenly lift to grip your chin gently, his thumb brushing over your lower lip.

“Oh, no, you’re gonna look at me, doll. You’re gonna look at me as I make you come on my cock.”

A breathless smile spreads across your lips as you tighten your grip on him, your gaze fixed on his.

“Yes, Captain.”

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged or removed in my future work!

Tagged: @fearandloathing-in-missouri, @persephone-divine, @jobean12-blog, @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan, @multireality, @gifsbysimplysonia, @saltyspiceduh, @thejealousorchard, @series-obsessed

Banner from https://allaboutjohnmcblain.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/happy-halloween/

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers #marvel fanfiction #steve rogers x female reader #flamehairedwritings #marvel smut #captain america #captain america x reader #halloween prompts #halloween fanfiction #my writing

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wordsinwinters · 7 years

Text

Then Again: P1 Peter Parker x Reader

Author’s Note: This is the first fanfiction piece I’ve ever posted, so I’m learning how this all works as I go. I’ll probably post this on AO3 sometime soon, but because I’ll need to make an account, etc, it might be a little while before it’s available there.

Additionally, please review!

I’m excited (and extremely nervous) to put my writing out there for the first time, so any comments, questions, or advice are absolutely welcome!

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11

Then Again, Part 1:

(Word count: 1,358)

Living in New York City rarely feels as glamorous as the movies and aesthetic blogs make it seem. Most days, that lively hustle and bustle of our beautiful, always dreaming city reminds me of a horde of flies conducting emergency drills underwater. Especially on foggy days. And muggy days. And Mondays, Tuesdays, occasionally Wednesdays. However, the almost-weekend to weekend days that sprinkle in refreshing breezes alongside bright sunshine - those days pull you up by the back of your collar and shove optimism down your shirt like it’s a cool, wet towel. The city tingles from the ground up.

Today is one of those good days.

Ironically, I woke up exhausted. I nearly spilled my breakfast in my lap (but didn’t, thanks to Peter) and I walked with my three best friends to school through fields of exhaust fumes half-awake. Once there, however, it all seemed to turn around. The classes I attended went wonderfully and the classes I didn’t attend, I’ll assume went just as well. I skipped half of them for the first time in my life.

Besides occasional “homework sharing,” I rarely break rules, it’s just that Ned and Michelle can be extremely persuasive… not that I needed much persuasion today. The suggestion was enough. I’ve been so giddy this week that I embraced the tiny taste of teenage rebellion with open arms. (“Tiny” seems like an appropriate description: all we did was hide out in random parts of the school watching Vines, playing minor pranks in the hallways during breaks, and stealing food from Peter’s stash of locker snacks as payback for his refusal to join us.)

Today has been a great day, and outside of Peter acting a bit strange, it’s been a good week overall. It’s just so easy to be happy with everything going on. Tonight: special dinner with our friends. Tomorrow: Midtown’s academic decathlon team heads to Washington, D.C. Shortly after, my friends and I will attend Prom, go on summer break, and enter our senior year of high school. My anticipation for this trip, the dance, the summer, and our eventual graduation bubbles up inside my stomach anytime the conversation between me and two of my best friends takes a short dip as we walk back from school.

Despite all of the upcoming things I have to think about, this walk is making my thoughts drift back to the one topic I’ve been trying most to avoid. Why wouldn’t Peter sneak out of class? He isn’t always such a rule follower anymore. And then why leave seventh hour when we all have class together? Is it just a today thing? He’s seemed… off all week.

I need to stop thinking about him. Wondering why he’s been strangely reserved or else imagining the previous seven hours with him more present in their events is not going to help me keep our friendship normal. Just think about something else. Anything else. Even someone else.

“Should we invite Flash?” I ask. I ask this partly because it’s a question nobody has brought up yet, and partly because the conversation has certainly dipped and my brain wants to sprint away from my control. I even thought I saw Spidey a minute ago. By now he’s on the other side of Queens. Think of something else.

We stop on the sidewalk, traffic rushing in front of us, countless buzzing people behind everywhere else.

Ned and Michelle turn to me with matching expressions.

“And why would we do that?” Ned asks.

“Because every-”

“Oh, shit.” Michelle groans. “Because everyone else, bar Mr. Harrington, is going. The entire team except Flash. For being so smart, we’re all a bunch of fucking idiots.”

“Technically we don’t have to do anything,” Ned says, obviously resistant to the idea. “It isn’t an official team dinner or whatever. We can’t get in trouble for it.”

“Still, as captain, I can’t organize a social gathering with everyone but Flash and pretend it isn’t a shitty thing to do. God damn it.”

The walk signal turns white as Michelle starts a text to Flash. Peter’s apartment is only a few blocks away.

Once we reach the door, Ned knocks. We all know Peter and May won’t be in, but Ned has a habit of politeness that even that can’t shake. After a couple seconds, he unlocks it himself with one of the five total keys to the apartment. (Strictly speaking, May isn’t supposed to have had three extra copies made, but she wouldn’t be May if she paid mind to that rule.)

“So,” Michelle says, heaving her bookbag onto a chair. “Music and clean, then Netflix and chill?”

The three of us look around at the destruction our last night of studying brought the apartment. Snacks and dishes are strewn in odd places and our fallen pillow fort is a ruin. A sticky 5 Hour Energy must have splashed on the carpet at some point, given the pink stain to the right of the couch. Coating most of the colossal mess are countless pieces of scribbled-on paper.

Ned and I nod in agreement.

Michelle’s speaker beeps awake and we set to work.

As I gather garbage, I let the music fill up my skull. I imagine confetti raining down inside of it, each piece sparkling with tiny letters that read: It’s just one of those good days.

The only thing that could make this day better would be the presence of Peter and May Parker. But then again, Peter ducked out of last hour, I suppose to get a head start on his “internship” (he’s never done that before though, so the irony of his skipping part of Psych and not any other classes did not slide by unnoticed by Michelle or Ned either) and May has… a job, a hobby? I really don’t know. Wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, I can’t help wishing they were home.

May returns around 5 p.m. As usual, she is unsurprised to find us watching Netflix. Over the last couple weeks, we took study breaks by picking out a lighthearted show and making questions from an episode. Today is an exclusively no-studying day, but we can’t help continuing the mini-tradition while we marathon Friends.

“Ah, the Studying-Not-Studying game.”

May walks over smiling, her arms crossed.

“It’s a vital healing process for our near-fatally strained brains,” I joke.

A phone buzzes.

“Wait, Miss MJ! You can’t answer that text until you answer my question for this episode. Were they,” May says, “or were they not,” she pauses, “on a break?”

“Oh god, no,” I plead. “Please, please, don’t start this again! Ned and MJ argued about this for twenty minutes before you got here!”

“Okay, but Rachel did say-” Ned begins.

“Oh my god, Ned! We talked about this!”

Michelle begins explaining with her hands and May grins, walking into the kitchen. Feinting defeat, I put my head in my hands and sink into the couch cushion. Slumped, I take out my own phone. Nothing.

I text Peter.

“Still good for 7:30?”

Whoosh. And now the waiting game begins. Actually, it began at 3:00 p.m. when I sent the first of a dozen messages. But none of them were questions, so an answer wasn’t necessary.

“Hey MJ,” I say. “What was that text you got?”

Michelle and Ned halt, hands frozen in expressionistic flight.

“Let’s see.” She flips her phone over. “It’s from Flash.”

Ned clasps his hands together.

“Dear merciful God,” he prays. “Please, please, let MJ read us a rejection text from Eugene ‘Flash’ Ass-Hat Rich-Boy Bitch-Boy.”

We made up that nickname today while cutting fourth hour. Not quite eloquent, but to the point. Plus, it’s almost impossible to say seven times fast. (We made a game of trying.)

Michelle types a quick response and takes a breath, placing her hand on Ned’s shoulder.

“Prepare yourself for something dreadful, Ned.” She hangs her head. “Eugene ‘Flash’ Ass-Hat Rich-Boy Bitch-Boy is… ‘super doped out’ to accept our invitation.”

“God damn it.”

“Kids!” May calls from the kitchen. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you to watch your language?”

Part 2

A/N: The content above is only 3 pages of a current 44 pages. If there are any mistakes in it, I apologize. Tonight was my self-set deadline and I didn’t edit it as thoroughly as I would have preferred. (Betas welcome!)

I’m hoping to update again around Saturday,

but because my weekend is so busy, I’m can’t promise anything. Still, I am planning to update weekly!

Again, please let me know what you think – I’d love to hear from you!

P.S. I love writing stories that have background plots spinning behind closed doors, so if you have any questions about little nods/hints you might find in this, I wouldn’t mind writing some “note” posts to explain details that may not be explicitly explained throughout this story.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker x you #spider-man x reader #spider-man fanfiction #spiderman x reader #spider-man fanfic #tom holland x reader #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland imagine #tom holland #peter parker #spider-man #spiderman #tom holland x you #spider-man homecoming #spider-man homecoming fanfic #marvel #part 1

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techcrunchappcom · 3 years

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/fact-checked-on-facebook-and-twitter-conservatives-switch-their-apps/

Fact-Checked on Facebook and Twitter, Conservatives Switch Their Apps

Corey Adam, a political comedian from Minneapolis, joined a mass social media switcheroo last week.

That was when Mr. Adam, 39, a conservative and libertarian, watched Twitter and Facebook add labels to social media posts from President Trump and other Republicans who falsely claimed he had won the election. Many of the labels said the assertions were disputed. And on Twitter, some of Mr. Trump’s tweets were hidden completely.

To Mr. Adam, the social media companies appeared to be singling out conservative voices. So he decided to shift to Parler, a social networking app that he has used on and off for a year, and to largely ignore those two big platforms, he said.

“Facebook started muting, deleting and labeling every conservative political post in my feed,” Mr. Adam said. “If you’re going to do something, you have to be fair to both sides. You don’t just get to pick one side to promote.”

Mr. Adam was one of millions of people who have migrated away from Facebook and Twitter since the election. As the companies have clamped down on misinformation, they have clashed with Republicans and conservatives who have spread lies about the election’s outcome, leading to claims that the tech platforms are censoring them.

Among those who have spoken out are Mark Levin, a far-right radio host with millions of listeners, who vented on his show last week that the tech and media companies were not representing the conservative point of view. Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News anchor, also expressed frustration with Twitter and said it was blocking conservatives’ statements.

But Mr. Levin, Ms. Bartiromo and others did not stop there. They directed their followers to other social media apps and news sites that have positioned themselves as alternatives to Facebook and Twitter. The beneficiaries are Parler, a Twitter-like app that describes itself as the world’s “premier free speech social network,” the right-wing media app Newsmax, and other social sites like MeWe and Rumble, which have purposely welcomed conservatives.

Over the weekend, Parler shot to the top of Apple’s App Store in downloads. As of Monday, it had eight million members, nearly double the 4.5 million it had last week. Rumble said it projected 75 million to 90 million people will watch a video on its site this month, up from 60.5 million last month. And Newsmax said more than 3 million people watched its election night coverage and that its app has recently been in the top-10 daily apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store.

While social media sites marketed at conservatives have existed for years, they have often struggled to catch on more widely. Their invigoration now may add to a fracturing of the information ecosystem.

“There are real dangers around a fractured misinformation system, especially as it relates to organizing against our electoral integrity,” said Shannon McGregor, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and senior researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.

But Ms. McGregor said she was skeptical that any migration would lead to permanent departures from Facebook and Twitter. “If there is no one to argue with, no omnipresent journalists or media entities to react to, how long will it last?” she said.

Facebook and Twitter declined to comment. The companies have denied censoring conservatives and typically point to their terms of service when an account breaks the rules. And while many conservatives are upset about their content being labeled or hidden, they are less willing to acknowledge that their posts can often clash with Facebook’s guidelines around disinformation and harmful content.

Next week, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, are scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing over their sites’ treatment of an unsubstantiated New York Post article that was critical of Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The hearing was called by Republicans who were incensed that the sites initially limited the distribution of the article.

Despite the conservative ire, Facebook and Twitter have long taken a mostly hands-off approach to digital speech. In recent months, however, the companies ramped up their efforts to prevent election misinformation. Facebook and Twitter said they would label false posts and slow down how quickly they could be shared, among other moves. They said many of the changes would be temporary.

Last week after the polls closed, Facebook and Twitter began using many of those measures. When Mr. Trump posted that the election was being stolen from him, the companies labeled his messages. Facebook on Thursday also took down a rapidly growing Facebook group, Stop the Steal, which promoted the idea of a stolen election.

That moved people like Mr. Adam to switch to alternative apps like Parler, which is owned in part by the conservative media personality Dan Bongino. Founded in 2018 by two Nevada-based software engineers, John Matze and Jared Thomson, Parler — which is named after the French word meaning “to speak” — has said it is a free speech platform, with much looser guidelines around what people can post to the site.

On Parler, users can see posts about MAGA fodder and QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that asserts that some top Democrats are satanic pedophiles. Anti-Semitic theories abound. Donald Trump Jr., Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, all have Parler accounts.

“Parler is a breath of fresh air for those weary and wary of the way they’ve been treated by our competitors,” Jeffrey Wernick, Parler’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “Our growth is not attributable to any one person or group, but rather to Parler’s efforts to earn our community’s trust.”

Updated

Nov. 11, 2020, 6:57 p.m. ET

Parler’s recent growth has been so staggering that thousands of users have complained about how difficult it was to sign up because of the logjam of people creating new accounts. Mr. Matze said in a letter to Parler’s community on Tuesday that the influx “strained our networks’ capacity and caused some glitches and delays,” but the site was fixing the problems.

Some new Parler users said the site was an alternative to extreme platforms like Gab, another social media site that has been a haven for racist memes and content. Andrew Torba, founder and chief executive of Gab, said in an email, “Jesus is King, speak freely on Gab.com.” He also sent a link noting that Gab had seen record user growth over the last week.

Others have gravitated to Rumble, a video site founded in 2013 that has emerged as a conservative YouTube. Rumble makes money in a variety of ways, including by running ads and selling its technology.

Chris Pavlovski, Rumble’s founder and chief executive, said the site had been on a “rocket ship” of growth since the summer — and even more so since the election. Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, and Mr. Bongino are on Rumble and have seen their audiences expand rapidly on the site, he said.

Mr. Pavlovski added that Rumble prohibits explicit content, terrorist propaganda and harassment. But he said it was largely not in the business of sorting out misinformation or curbing speech.

“I don’t want to pretend to sit here and know what the truth is or have the capabilities to know how to do that,” he said. On other platforms, he added, “people are not allowed to have debate anymore.”

Many people have also sought out further-right news publications. That has been a boon for Newsmax, a right-wing news website and television channel founded in 1998 by the conservative journalist Christopher Ruddy. Last week, Newsmax gained steam after Fox News called the swing state of Arizona in favor of Mr. Biden, incensing Mr. Trump’s base. (The New York Times has not called Arizona in favor of either candidate.)

Melissa Zepeda, 32, a Republican and a registered nurse in northern Mississippi, said she and several of her co-workers recently switched to Newsmax from Fox News after it showed “favoritism to Biden.” Newsmax has not called the election in favor of Mr. Biden, one of the few news outlets not to do so.

“So far, I like that they are non-biased, and cover a variety of information, not just the election,” Ms. Zepeda said.

Mr. Ruddy, Newsmax’s chief executive and a confidant of Mr. Trump’s, said viewership and social media interactions with his site have soared. The surge came partly from conservatives who were searching for a place where their opinions are represented, he said. He added that it was important for publishers to have ideological diversity.

“There’s a liberal echo chamber that’s pretty damn big,” he said. “Conservatives just have less options, but if they seek them out, they’re there.”

It might be too early to know whether a widespread, permanent shift away from major outlets will last, especially given the reach of Facebook, Twitter and Fox News. While conservative threats of mass migration away from mainstream apps and news have occurred periodically, people still seem to return to the biggest platforms.

Ms. Zepeda, a longtime Facebook user, said she would keep her Facebook account to maintain access to the pictures she’s uploaded over the years. But she expects to drop the social network as a daily destination, joining one of the many Facebook groups that are planning a “Mass Exit off Facebook to Parler & MeWe,” scheduled for Friday.

“I’m tired of the bias towards Democrats and liberals,” she said.

#Technology

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android-for-life · 4 years

Text

"Protecting users from government-backed hacking and disinformation"

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) works to counter targeted and government-backed hacking against Google and our users. This is an area we have invested in deeply for over a decade. Our daily work involves detecting and defeating threats, and warning targeted users and customers about the world’s most sophisticated adversaries, spanning the full range of Google products including Gmail, Drive and YouTube.

In the past, we’ve posted on issues like phishing campaigns, vulnerabilities and disinformation. Going forward, we’ll share more technical details and data about the threats we detect and how we counter them to advance the broader digital security discussion.

TAG tracks more than 270 targeted or government-backed groups from more than 50 countries. These groups have many goals including intelligence collection, stealing intellectual property, targeting dissidents and activists, destructive cyber attacks, or spreading coordinated disinformation. We use the intelligence we gather to protect Google infrastructure as well as users targeted with malware or phishing.

Phishing

We’ve had a long-standing policy to send users warnings if we detect that they are the subject of state-sponsored phishing attempts, and have posted periodically about these before. From July to September 2019, we sent more than 12,000 warnings to users in 149 countries that they were targeted by government-backed attackers. This is consistent (+/-10%) with the number of warnings sent in the same period of 2018 and 2017.

Distribution of government-backed phishing targets in Q3 (Jul-Sep 2019)

Over 90 percent of these users were targeted via “credential phishing emails” similar to the example below. These are usually attempts to obtain the target’s password or other account credentials to hijack their account. We encourage high-risk users—like journalists, human rights activists, and political campaigns—to enroll in our Advanced Protection Program (APP), which utilizes hardware security keys and provides the strongest protections available against phishing and account hijackings. APP is designed specifically for the highest-risk accounts and now has more than 15,500 users.

In the simple phishing example below, an attacker has sent a phishing email with a security alert lure from “Goolge” suggesting the user secure their account. The user clicks the link, enters their password, and may also get asked for a security code if they have two-factor authentication enabled, allowing the attacker to access their account.

Sample lure used to phish Gmail users

Threat detection

Last week at CyberwarCon, we presented analysis about previously undisclosed campaigns from a Russia-nexus threat group called “Sandworm” (also known as “Iridium”). It’s a useful example of the type of detailed threat detection work that TAG does. Although much of Sandworm’s activity targeting Ukraine and their attacks against the 2018 Winter Olympics have been covered publicly, some campaigns have not been reported.

In December 2017, TAG discovered a series of campaigns from Sandworm attempting to deploy Android malware. The first campaign targeted users in South Korea, where Sandworm was modifying legitimate Android applications with malware. They then uploaded these modified apps to the Play Store using their own attacker-controlled developer accounts. During this campaign, Sandworm uploaded eight different apps to the Play Store, each with fewer than 10 total installs.

Malicious apps targeting users in South Korea

We also identified an earlier September 2017 Android campaign from Sandworm where they used similar tactics and deployed a fake version of the UKR.net email app on the Play Store. This application had approximately 1,000 total installs. We worked with our colleagues on the Google Play Protect Team to write detections for this malware family, and eliminate it.

In November 2018, we saw evidence that Sandworm shifted from using attacker-controlled accounts to try and upload malicious apps to compromising legitimate developers. Throughout November, Sandworm targeted software and mobile app developers in Ukraine via spear phishing emails with malicious attachments. In at least one case, they compromised an app developer with several published Play Store apps—one with more than 200,000 installs.

After compromising the developer, Sandworm built a backdoor in one of the legitimate apps and attempted to publish it on the Play Store. They did this by adding their implant code into the application package, signing the package with the compromised developer’s key, and then uploading it to the Play Store. However, the Google Play Protect team caught the attempt at the time of upload. As a result, no users were infected and we were able to re-secure the developer’s account.

Disinformation

TAG is one part of Google and YouTube’s broader efforts to tackle coordinated influence operations that attempt to game our services. We share relevant threat information on these campaigns with law enforcement and other tech companies. Here are some examples that have been reported recently that TAG worked on:

TAG recently took action against Russia-affiliated influence operations targeting several nations in Africa. The operations use inauthentic news outlets to disseminate messages promoting Russian interests in Africa. We have observed the use of local accounts and people to contribute to the operation, a tactic likely intended to make the content appear more genuine. Targeted countries included the Central African Republic, Sudan, Madagascar, and South Africa, and languages used included English, French, and Arabic. Activity on Google services was limited, but we enforced across our products swiftly. We terminated the associated Google accounts and 15 YouTube channels, and we continue to monitor this space. This discovery was consistent with recent observations and actions announced by Facebook.

Consistent with a recent Bellingcat report, TAG identified a campaign targeting the Indonesian provinces Papua and West Papua with messaging in opposition to the Free Papua Movement. Google terminated one advertising account and 28 YouTube channels.

Partnerships

TAG works closely with other technology companies—including platforms and specialized security firms—to share intelligence and best practices. We also share threat information with law enforcement. And of course there are multiple teams at Google at work on these issues with whom we coordinate.

Going forward, our goal is to give more updates on the attacks that TAG detects and stops. Our hope is that shining more light on these actors will be helpful to the security community, deter future attacks, and lead to better awareness and protections among high-risk targets.

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

#jeprog

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softsnuper · 7 years

Note

that girl you said was stealing gifs (which i totally agree with) is out there saying bad things about you again... i know you probably don't care, but don't listen to anything she says or said or will say. you're amazing person. out there doing god's work. you were also super polite about it all. and she hasn't been. i think she's just trying to get attention or sympathy or both??

i almost forgot about this whole ordeal, i haven’t visited her blog ever since this happened. and you’re right, i stopped caring at this point (but not really bc i’m still typing on a long-ass answer for this lolol), she’s complaining about me when in fact she has yet to block me (i just tried and i can still visit her blog even when i’m logged in?? just like everyone else hmm fishy ??) and if she really wanted to resolve the “drama” she would be messaging or @ing me instead of indirecting me like that. plus if she really did go through my blog, as she said, she would’ve seen my explanation as to why i didn’t dm her and instead made a public post. i explained it twice, yet she’s trying to paint me as the bad guy who succumbs to tumblr’s stupid callout culture when in fact this is the first time i’ve done something like this. it’s not like i wanted to get myself into this kind of mess and argue nonstop with someone who won’t admit to their wrongdoings lmao! that’s why the rest of this message is not directed at her but my followers, or whoever has seen my recent posts about this issue bc she obviously isn’t trying to understand or change her ways.

in all seriousness, i’m tempted to dissect her tags and point out all the discrepancies in her claims but i’ll address the main point. she pretends to not know exactly what i accused her of doing and says she gets hate. tbh if she believed she could get away with this then receiving hate was inevitable, however there is little to no reason why anyone would send her death threats. i’ve been on tumblr for 5 years, i’ve watched the kpop gif/gfx community grow and eventually joined to help post content, and i’ve yet to see someone get death threats merely for stealing gifs. content creators, when they find out their stuff has been taken without their permission, aren’t looking to send hate or make reposters miserable. they genuinely and sincerely only want an apology or for their works to be taken down; it’s rare for a content creator to resort to something as lowly as death threats. so if she really did receive death threats, especially from people who did not have their content stolen and are only trying to help, please understand where content creators are coming from bc that’s not okay. i didn’t intend for hate messages and death threats to be involved (as i have previously stated several times, but she probably didn’t see on my blog bc she only likes to see what she wants to see smh) and i apologize for the actions of those who may have sent them. but this doesn’t mean i’ll back off on my callout bc what she did was wrong and receiving death threats does not dismiss it. reposting and sending death threats are both unacceptable behaviors and i will apologize for my part if it did happen.

unfortunately, she really has missed the entire point of my post. i have used nothing but civil language and maybe a bit too much sarcasm, but i genuinely did not aim to have people target her with hate. my aim was for her to be aware that people know she’s practicing unacceptable behavior and for others to know that their creations have been misused. but sure, she can keep calling me a bully when the fact is, she called me a “piece of shit” and told me to “eat her ass”. go off, i guess.

last but not least, i’m glad i ruined snuper for her lmao this fandom doesn’t need someone as toxic as her and if she keeps acting like that, we don’t claim her. these swings and the entire snuper playground is off-limits and she can stay pressed. i’m over it.

(i really do mean that i’m over it, guys. if i hadn’t gotten this message then this wouldn’t have dragged on any longer. please refrain from notifying me whenever she makes a new post directed at me and from sending her any more messages, whether it be hate or not. she can call me a bitch or a piece of shit or whatever on her blog, i’m cool with that, but i could care less about her pettiness. it’s ugly and tiring to see, plus if you give me more chances to clear my name and defend myself it’ll only make her feel obligated to keep going. thank you for caring enough to tell me tho, i really appreciate the thoughtfulness! try not to dwell on this too much and focus on more positive, uplifting things and i hope you have a wonderful day ahead of you ♡)

#anon #ask #i'll take her lead and say that this will be the last official statement i make regarding this reposting issue #if i get anything else i'm just going to post minhyun memes as a response aldfjalkd #aLSO screenshotting stuff may seem a bit excessive but i gotta do what i gotta do to make sure nothing gets lost in translation my dudes

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ascensionstories-blog · 7 years

Text

Menace #40: Villain

Nate Coplin fiddled with the goggles hanging down from his neck as he lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. The night was young, but dark, and the room was lit only by the screen of his phone, exploding with text messages from his various acquaintances. The ceiling looked bland and disinterested, as if staring down on his lethargy was boring the entity that was the upper wall of his room. He didn’t care. He was sick of being entertainment, sick of playing games, sick of it all. The fallout from Vanish’s event had left the whole city afraid — of both the villain and Nate himself — but Nate did not care. His phone continued to buzz. He was still wearing his costume; it had been three days since he’d stepped outside. He played with his goggles in his hands. He reached to the side and grabbed his phone, picking it up to scroll through the messages. Most of them were from Courtney. He noticed a few from Jenny and some from Anthony, even one or two from Jake, the Engine. He swiped them all off of the screen and put his phone back down. The room was dark. Then his phone buzzed again. It was from Courtney. He risked a glance at the message content, and it read: You promised you wouldn’t leave again. He sighed. He opened his phone and typed out a long explanation as to how he had not left, he was still in the same spot he’d always been, but deleted it before he sent it. The ceiling was not impressed. He shot her a text back: I didn’t. It was the truth; he was still in the same spot he had been for the past few days, since the last time they had spoken. He had entered into the first stage of his powers some time ago, forgetting to release himself — he enjoyed the sharp feeling of the cool sheets against his skin, the sounds of the outside world during the day, the strength he felt as he could lift his mattress with ease. A text back from Courtney. Then meet me at the Library in 10 minutes. He sighed again. He left his goggles on, but began to slowly strip from his costume, putting on his yellow Ultraman T-Shirt and some khaki shorts. He remained in the first stage of his powers as he walked from his house.

Nate and Courtney sat at an outside table of The Royal Jester eating a slightly undercooked dinner of burgers. The bar scene was very active behind them, but where they sat there were few people. Those who were there, looked at them with weary eyes, and whispered things to each other that Nate, being in the first stage of his powers, could hear. “That’s the one who killed all those people,” “They call him the Menace because of his terrorism,” “Why is that young girl sitting with that monster?” He fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. Courtney was smiling at him though; her eyes were tired but her grin was wide. She would pat his hand every once in awhile, as they sat there silently, just to reassure him that things were okay. He was not amused.

“Why are we here, Courtney?” Nate asked.

“I wanted to see you,” she answered. She was wearing a small, light blue top with the shoulders cut out with white shorts. On her feet were blue-and-brown sandals that matched her top. She was wearing her hair down. “Plus I figured you could use some more meat on your bones, I don’t know how much you’ve eaten in the past day.”

“No, I mean, why are we here?” He asked again. “This is where Eloise and I had our first date.”

“Oh! Oh I’m sorry,” Courtney stammered, putting her hands to her face, “I didn’t remember, I just know you liked this place, I’m so sorry.” She looked up at him nervously but he just took another bite of his food and placed the sandwich back on his plate. “Nate, I’m worried about you.” “Well, don’t be, kid,” he spat back. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“But that’s what people who have things to worry about say. And I know you have a lot to worry about recently, and you've decided to go through it alone which is not healthy and I just thought maybe you might like some company. Plus I always like your company, you’re very fun to be around most of the time.” Nate did not respond. “And I love you, you know,” she concluded after a brief pause.

“Shut up,” he told her. “Just, shut up.”

She looked at him then, with wide eyes and her hands balled in fists on the table. There were tears in her gigantic brown eyes. She swallowed hard before she started speaking again. “Nate I don’t think that’s fair I’m just trying to- ”

“I said, shut up!” He yelled at her, and the whispers from the surrounding tables stopped. The party inside did not, and an odd combination of reckless partying and noiseless tension loomed in the air. Courtney reached to pat his hand, but he pulled it back.

“Okay, Nate,” she said to him. “Okay.” She stopped for a moment to compose herself. “You are going to apologize for that right now.”

“Just leave.”

“Nate.”

“Courtney.”

“Apologize.” “Leave.”

“No,” she said, defiantly. She was at least half a foot shorter than him, and the chairs were fairly high off the ground, so when she stood to accent her point, she did not rise above him. “Now you are going to look me in the eye and you are going to say that you are sorry,” she informed him. “And then you are going to tell me that you love me too, and then also that you have decided out of the kindness of your heart to pay for dinner and walk me home tonight.” He stared at her. “Go on.”

“I’m sorry, Courtney.”

“And?”

“And I love you too.”

“And?” “And out of the kindness of my heart I am going to pay for dinner tonight.”

“And?” “And walk you home.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, ‘and?’ Wasn't that it?”

“I mean, you could mention these shoes I just got.”

“Are you serious?”

“They are new.”

“They look nice.”

“Are you just saying that?”

“Really?”

She laughed then and he had to crack a smile.

“I love you,” he said.

The walk home was long. She lived a long ways from town, and, were she to fly home, it would take her five minutes or so. Walking was closer to an hour. They walked and made small talk about school and politics, and magic and other heroes. They had turned onto a rural street, where trees lined the sidewalk, towering over them as they walked. The air was warm with a soft breeze blowing through. Nate felt at peace.Then they came across a man in their path, whom both of them immediately recognized.

“Vanish,” Nate addressed him as he stepped towards them. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I’d heard you were in a bit of a slump and I thought I might come to correct that with a fun new game to lead you down your path of righteous heroics. This game I liked to call ‘the detective in the city.’ Want to know how to play? It’s simple. Here’s the game: I hide a loved one of yours that you care about; let’s say, oh, your mother. It’s your job and privilege then to go find her! Think of the adventure!”

“Clyde, I’ve wanted to talk to you for awhile now,” Nate admitted, grabbing Courtney’s arm so that there was no way he could steal her. “Why are you doing this?”

“You asked me, some time ago, to train you to be like Ultraman, Nate,” Vanish reminded him. “We trained together for two whole weeks, remember? Well, this is how to be Ultraman. You have to make the hard decisions, work constantly, and never rest. You’re far more a hero today than you were last week. Congratulations! You are a hero Nate, and no one can take that away from you. Now then onto our game…” Vanish attempted to continue but Nate, now in the second stage of his powers, had grabbed the villain’s neck. He was expecting Vanish to use his magic to disappear, but the villain — confusingly — seemed unable. Nate was attempting to summon flames to engulf the man, he was breathing correctly to produce magic, as his hand tightened around his neck. Clyde’s eyes seemed to scream at Nate — because his voice was certainly unable — as Nate retained his hold.

“Let go of him!” Courtney yelled from behind. “Nate, you’re killing him!”

Nate let go immediately, but noticed that the area of the neck that he had grabbed had frozen over, entombing the villain’s neck in a covering of ice. Vanish was dead. He turned to Courtney.

“I didn’t mean to,” he told her.

“I know.”

A public service announcement rang on television the following night, for those not watching, it read: The body of Clyde Marrows, better known as Vanish, was found on Nightwalk Terrace this morning. We have been unable to locate the prime suspect of the murder, one Nate Coplin, better known by the alias Menace. If you have any information as to where this man might be hiding, please contact authorities or the Hero Corps. immediately. Their numbers are listed below.

#menace #menace40 #villain #superhero #training #hero #sci-fi #fiction #writing #short story

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dandrea · 7 years

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The 2016 Election

by Hal Lindsey

The election of Donald J. Trump remains largely a mystery to the political class. They said, “He made a fatal mistake, on the very day he announced his candidacy, one from which he could never recover.” A few days later, he said something else that they were sure would sink him as a candidate. He ran as a Republican, but alienated the last two Republican nominees. Then, he alienated the last two Republican presidents.

The television networks quickly realized that he was ratings gold. Talk about him -- good or bad -- always drew an audience. His actual appearance on their programs sent viewership into the stratosphere.

During the Republican primaries, the mainstream media gobbled up the money they generated from covering his candidacy. They also gathered ammunition against him, should he actually win the nomination.

When he became the Republican nominee, the media games turned into a blood sport. In the fall, they released damaging tapes and information they had been withholding all through the Republican primaries. They not only expected to destroy him, but to give Hillary Clinton an overwhelming victory that she could use to finish “transforming” America.

Then came the great surprise: He won!

But, if you think that ended the war, think again. In Washington, fights don’t end with single elections.

In 1968, American elected a man that the political and media establishment fully hated: Richard Nixon. Their hatred was not just political, but personal. They should have loved him. He did all kinds of things that they wanted him to do. He ended the military draft; established relations with China; and created detant with the Soviet Union. He negotiated the SALT agreements that limited key components that the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Nixon advocated for universal health care. His justice department integrated more schools than all other presidents combined. And, he established the Environmental Protection Agency. He removed America’s money from the gold standard, and he created the petro dollar. He was not able to end President Johnson’s war quickly, but he did get it ended.

Those were accomplishments that the liberal mainstream media should have loved and applauded. Whatever the reason, during his administration, a level of vitriol entered Washington politics that had long been absent.

To one extent or another, it has been there ever since. Nixon won an unprecedented landslide re-election in 1972 taking 520 electoral votes to George McGovern’s 17, but it didn’t matter. The political establishment ferreted out crimes that Nixon certainly committed, but that had been tolerated in certain other presidents. And, they used them to drive him in humiliation from the White House in 1974. But folks, compared to what Donald Trump is facing, Richard Nixon had it easy.

One member of Congress, California representative Maxine Waters, started calling for Trump’s impeachment before he had even been inaugurated. And, that’s only the beginning. Her solo will soon turn into a chorus. The media, Hollywood, academia, and the political establishment are all arrayed against him.

Trump’s election is no reason for his supporters to relax. Just the opposite. Now, the real battle begins. The battle to roll back the damage that has been done to America

First Timothy chapter 2 verses 1 and 2 says,

“I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions, and thanksgiving, be made on behalf of all men; for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” (NASB)

If ever we needed to do as the Apostle Paul admonishes, it is now.

Representative John Lewis of Georgia refused to attend the inauguration ceremonies. He said, “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president. I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.”

Representative Lewis’ role in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s make him an authentic American hero, but it does not mean he can’t be wrong today, or that he should not be criticized when he is wrong.

Before we look at what the Russians did or did not do, it is important to remember that the first wave of emails that embarrassed Secretary Clinton were not leaked, they were released by the state department because a federal judge ordered them to be released. The emails leaked later were the ones US intelligence agencies believe were stolen by Russia.

Assuming that that is true -- and it’s by no means conclusive that it is -- did Russia’s actions alter the outcome of the election?

There are no allegations of foreign hackers getting into voting machines or county election computers. Numbers were not altered, contrary to what you have been led to believe as a matter of pure fact. Technically, no one was even hacked. The Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, gave the nefarious individuals access to their email accounts. Podesta and friends were not hacked, they were fooled. Duped.

Podesta fell victim to what is know as “Phishing”. He received an email saying that someone had tried to change his password. The email said:

“Google stopped this sign-in attempt. You should change your password immediately.”

The email included a link labeled: “Change Password”

One of Podesta’s aides clicked the button and the “Phish” was hooked.

The button link to a fake Google page designed to steal passwords. This happens to millions of people. You probably have received similar emails yourself, but you would expect the chairman of a major presidential campaign to be more careful than the average person.

Something similar happened to the Democratic National Committee. Also, some of the DNC emails were exposed by outraged employees [see ] who felt that the Bernie Sanders’ nomination had been stolen by the DNC.

I have not seen the CIA’s data implicating the Russians, but neither of these attacks required great sophistication. They were simple and unfortunately too common.

It is also worth noting that no one has disputed the content of the DNC or Podesta emails. They were real and included messages that could be considered embarrassing to the Clinton campaign.

But that’s not so big a deal. We all know that none of us are as careful in our private communications as we are when we’re speaking in public. Did they have an impact? Outside of Washington, very few people can describe the contents of even one of these thousands of emails. I seriously doubt that they changed the vote of a single American.

So, no. The Russians did not alter the election.

Then there are those who claim that Trump is illegitimate because he did not win the popular vote. Consider this: The Super Bowl 50, just one year ago, the Carolina Panthers had 315 yards of total offense, and the Denver Broncos had only 194 of total offense.

So, Carolina won, right? Wrong. The rules of the contest don’t say that you win by having the most yards. You win by having the most points. If you don’t like that, then try to get the rules changed, but in the meantime, total offense is just an interesting statistic. It does not decide who wins.

In the United States, the Constitution is designed to keep states relevant, and with some power, in the face of a strong federal government. One of the ways the founders did that was by putting states at the center of the process for selecting presidents.

If you think they were wrong, then work to change the Constitution. But don’t say, after the fact, that the contest shouldn’t count because you don’t like the rules. Both sides tried to win as many electoral votes as possible by winning as many states as possible.

Neither Trump, nor Clinton, was trying to win the popular vote. They would like to win the popular vote, but it was secondary. I’m sure the Broncos would have preferred having more total offense than the Panthers in the last year’s Super Bowl, but it wasn’t required to win the game and the championship.

In the election, if the rules had been different, each side would have employed completely different strategies, and we have no way of knowing who would have won. Speculate all you want, but don’t call the winner illegitimate cause you don’t like the outcome.

Either we have a Constitution or we don’t. Either that Constitution means something, or it doesn’t. If we cease to be a nation of laws, we become a nation where only the loud and violent have a voice.

Jesus warned that in the last days “...lawlessness will abound.” (Matthew 24:12 NKJV) And, that’s what people who want to ignore the rules, after the fact, are calling for.

In reflecting about the Obama Administration’s time in office, it struck me just how much change has taken place in such a short time. Most of it is bad. I don’t mean this strictly as an indictment of President Obama. He made plenty of mistakes and many wrong choices, but some things went badly because he was president near the end of the period known in the Bible as the Last Days.

President Obama has always been a favorite of political liberals, but today, if anyone took the position that Obama took eight years ago on the issue of same-sex marriage, political liberals will call him a bigot.

It became the law of the land. Not in a referendum of voters or by an act of the legislature, but by edict of the courts.

The day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, President Obama ordered that the White House be lit up in the rainbow colors of the LGBT community. As massive -- as precedential -- as that change was, it didn’t take eight years, it took only five.

Romans chapter 1 describes this as a symptom of a society in the last stages of its own self-destruction.

Eight years ago, ISIS did not even exist. Since then, the nations of the world has spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to fight this radical Islamic organization. Eight years ago, Egypt was considered one of the most stable governments in the Middle East, but that was before the US backed “Arab Spring”.

Since then, two Egyptian governments have fallen in coup d'états.

Iran was at peace eight years ago, and seemed to be on its way to becoming a stable democracy.

Syria seemed stable.

Libya seemed stable.

In eight years, chaos in those three nations has changed the face of the world. It has driven millions of their former citizens into a Europe that will never be the same again.

The former president claims the Iran Nuclear Deal as an example of progress during his term. But I believe that deal actually ensured that Iran will get nuclear weapons, if they haven’t already.

In eight years, Israel is closer to war and further from peace. It has been damaged immeasurably in the United Nations in just the last month. Russia and Iran now sit on Israel’s doorstep in Syria.

Three years ago, the president dismissed Russia as a “...regional power.” (President Barack Obama) But that regional power now threatens the peace of the whole world. It makes you wonder what will happen in the next few years.

What will happen to the European Union? What will happen in the Muslim world? What will happen to Christians in Africa and in South America?

Pope Frances has pushed the Catholic church far in the direction of liberalism. What will the next pope do? Will there even be another pope or US president? Or maybe onrushing events will now slow down for a while.

Jesus compared the endtimes to a woman having contractions while in labor. They come with intensity, and they ease up for a while. Maybe we’re in for a lull. Or maybe this labor has gone far enough that the contractions will be so close together, that we can’t tell where one ends and the next begins.

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That is why it is so important that all believers in Jesus Christ stay spiritually ready for His coming, because we do not know when it will be. And Scripture shows that it could be at any moment.

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neptunecreek · 4 years

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How Mexico's New Copyright Law Crushes Free Expression

When Mexico's Congress rushed through a new copyright law as part of its adoption of Donald Trump's United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), it largely copy-pasted the US copyright statute, with some modifications that made the law even worse for human rights.

The result is a legal regime that has all the deficits of the US system, and some new defects that are strictly hecho en Mexico, to the great detriment of the free expression rights of the Mexican people.

Mexico's Constitution has admirable, far-reaching protections for the free expression rights of its people. Mexico’s Congress is not merely prohibited from censoring its peoples' speech -- it is also banned from making laws that would cause others to censor Mexicans' speech.

Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled that Mexican authorities and laws must recognize both Mexican constitutional rights law and international human rights law as the law of the land. This means that the human rights recognized in the Constitution and international human rights treaties such as the American Convention on Human Rights, including their interpretation by the authorized bodies, make up a “parameter of constitutional consistency," except that where they clash, the most speech-protecting rule wins. Article 13 of the American Convention bans prior restraint (censorship prior to publication) and indirect restrictions on expression.

As we will see, Mexico's new copyright law falls very far from this mark, exposing Mexicans to grave risks to their fundamental human right to free expression.

Filters

While the largest tech companies in America have voluntarily adopted algorithmic copyright filters, Article 114 Octies of the new Mexican law says that "measures must be taken to prevent the same content that is claimed to be infringing from being uploaded to the system or network controlled and operated by the Internet Service Provider after the removal notice." This makes it clear that any online service in Mexico will have to run algorithms that intercept everything posted by a user, compare it to a database of forbidden sounds, words, pictures, and moving images, and, if it finds a match, it will have to block this material from public view or face potential fines.

Requiring these filters is an unlawful restriction on freedom of expression. “At no time can an ex ante measure be put in place to block the circulation of any content that can be assumed to be protected. Content filtering systems put in place by governments or commercial service providers that are not controlled by the end-user constitute a form of prior censorship and do not represent a justifiable restriction on freedom of expression." Moreover, they are routinely wrong. Filters often mistake users own creative works for copyrighted works controlled by large corporations and block them at the source. For example, classical pianists who post their own performances of public domain music by Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart find their work removed in an eyeblink by an algorithm that accuses them of stealing from Sony Music, which has registered its own performances of the same works.

To make this worse, these filters amplify absurd claims about copyright — for example, the company Rumblefish has claimed copyright in many recordings of ambient birdsong, with the effect that videos of people walking around outdoors get taken down by filters because a bird was singing in the background. More recently, humanitarian efforts to document war-crimes fell afoul of automated filtering.

Filters can't tell when a copyrighted work is incidental to a user's material or central to it. For example, if your seven-hour scholarly conference's livestream captures some background music playing during the lunch break, YouTube's filters will wipe out all seven hours' worth of audio, destroying the only record of the scientific discussions during the rest of the day.

For many years, people have toyed with the idea of preventing their ideological opponents' demonstrations and rallies from showing up online by playing copyrighted music in the background, causing all video-clips from the event to be filtered away before the message could spread.

This isn’t a fanciful strategy: footage from US Black Lives Matter demonstrations is vanishing from the Internet because the demonstrators played amplified music during their protests.

No one is safe from filters: last week, CBS's own livestreamed San Diego Comic-Con presentation was shut down due to an erroneous copyright claim by itself.

Filters can only tell you if a work matches or doesn't match something in their database — they can't tell if that match constitutes a copyright violation. Mexican copyright contains "limitations and exceptions" for a variety of purposes. While this is narrower than the US's fair use law, it nevertheless serves as a vital escape valve for Mexicans' free expression. A filter can't tell if a match means that you are a critic quoting a work for a legitimate purpose or an infringer breaking the law.

As if all this wasn't bad enough: the Mexican filter rule does not allow firms to ignore those with a history of making false copyright claims. This means that if a fraudster sent Twitter or Facebook — or a Made-In-Mexico alternative — claims to own the works of Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Juana Inés de la Cruz, the companies could ignore those particular claims if their lawyers figured out that the sender did not own the copyright, but would have to continue evaluating each new claim from this known bad actor. If a fraudster included just one real copyright claim amidst the torrent of fraud, the online service provider would be required to detect that single valid claim and honor it.

This isn't a hypothetical risk: "copyfraud" is a growing form of extortion, in which scammers claim to own artists' copyrights, then coerce the artists with threats of copyright complaints.

Algorithms work at the speed of data, but their mistakes are corrected in human time (if at all). If an algorithm is correct an incredible, unrealistic 99 percent of the time, that means it is wrong one percent of the time. Platforms like YouTube, Facebook and TikTok receive hundreds of millions of videos, pictures and comments every day — one percent of one hundred million is one million. That's one million judgments that have to be reviewed by the company's employees to decide whether the content should be reinstated.

The line to have your case heard is long. How long? Jamie Zawinski, a nightclub owner in San Francisco, posted an announcement of an upcoming performance by a band at his club in 2018, only to have it erroneously removed by Instagram. Zawinski appealed. 28 months later, Instagram reversed its algorithm's determination and reinstated his announcement — more than two years after the event had taken place.

This kind of automated censorship is not limited to nightclubs. Your contribution to your community's online discussion of an upcoming election is just as likely to be caught in a filter as Zawinski's talking about a band. When (and if) the platform decides to let your work out of content jail, the vote will have passed, and with it, your chance to be part of your community's political deliberations.

As terrible as filters are, they are also very expensive. YouTube's "Content ID" filter has cost the company more than $100,000,000, and this flawed and limited filter accomplishes only a narrow slice of the filtering required under the new Mexican law. Few companies have an extra $100,000,000 to spend on filtering technology, and while the law says these measures “should not impose substantial burdens" on implementers, it also requires them to find a way to achieve permanent removal of material following a notification of copyright infringement. Filter laws mean even fewer competitors in the already monopolized online world, giving the Mexican people fewer places where they may communicate with one another.

TPMs

Section 1201 of America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is one of the most catastrophic copyright laws in history. It provides harsh penalties for anyone who tampers with or disables a "technical protection measure" (TPM): massive fines or, in some cases, prison sentences. These TPMs — including what is commonly known as "Digital Rights Management" or DRM — are the familiar, dreaded locks that stop you from refilling your printer's ink cartridge, using an unofficial App Store with your phone or game console, or watching a DVD from overseas in your home DVD player.

You may have noticed that none of these things violate copyright — and yet, because you must remove a digital lock in order to do them, you could be sued in the name of copyright law. DMCA 1201 does not provide the clear, unambiguous protection that would be needed to protect free expression. One appellate court in the United States has explicitly held that you can be liable for a violation of Section 1201 even if you’re making a fair use, and that is the position adopted by the U.S. Copyright Office. Other courts disagree, but the net effect is that you engage in these non-infringing uses and expressions at your peril. The US Congress has failed to clarify this law and tie liability for bypassing a TPM to an actual act of copyright infringement — “you may not remove the TPM from a Netflix video to record it and put it on the public Internet (a copyright infringement), but if you do so in order to make a copy for personal use (not a copyright infringement), that's fine."

The failure to clearly tie DMCA 1201 liability to infringement has had wide-ranging effects for repair, cybersecurity and competition that we will explore in later installments of this series. Today, we want to focus on how TPMs undermine free expression.

TPMs give unlimited power to manufacturers. An ever-widening constellation of devices are designed so that any modifications require bypassing a TPM and incurring liability. This allows companies to sell you a product but dictate how you must use it — preventing you from installing your own apps or other code to make it work the way you want it to.

The first speech casualty of TPM rules is the software author. This person can write code -- a form of speech — but they cannot run it on their devices without permission from the manufacturer, nor can they give the code to others to run on their devices.

Why might a software author want to change how their device works? Perhaps because it is interfering with their ability to read literature, watch films, hear music or see images. TPMs such as the global DVB CPCM standard enforce a policy called the "Authorized Domain" that defines what is — and is not — a family. Authorized Domain devices owned by a standards compliant family can all share creative works among them, allowing parents and children to share among themselves.

But an "Authorized Domain family" is not the same as an actual family. The Authorized Domain was designed by rich people from the global north working for multinational corporations, whose families are far from typical. The Authorized Domain will let you share videos between your boat, your summer home, and your SUV — but it won't let you share videos between a family whose daughter works as a domestic worker in another country, whose son is a laborer in another state, and whose parents are migrant workers who are often separated (there are far more families in this situation than there are families with yachts and second homes!).

Even if your family meets with the approval of an algorithm designed in a distant board-room by strangers who have never lived a life like yours, you still may find yourself unable to partake in culture that you are entitled to. TPMs typically require a remote server to function, and when your Internet goes down, your books or movies can be rendered unviewable.

It's not just Internet problems that can cause the art and culture you own to vanish: last year, Microsoft became the latest in a long list of companies who switched off their DRM servers because they decided they no longer wanted to be a bookstore. Everyone who ever bought a book from Microsoft lost their books.

Forever.

Mexico's Congress did nothing to rebalance its version of America's TPM rules. Indeed, Mexico's rules are worse than America's. Under DMCA 1201, the US Copyright Office holds hearings every three years to grant exemptions to the TPM rule, granting people the right to remove or bypass TPMs for legitimate purposes. America's copyright regulator has granted a very long list of these exemptions, having found that TPMs were interfering with Americans in unfair, unjust, and even unsafe ways. Of course, that process is far from perfect: it’s slow, skewed heavily in favor of rightsholders, and illegally restricts free expression by forcing would-be speakers to ask the government in advance for permission through an arbitrary process.

Mexico's new copyright law mentions a possible equivalent proceeding but leaves it maddeningly undefined — and certainly does nothing to remedy the defects in the US process. Recall that USMCA is a trade agreement, supposedly designed to put all three countries on equal footing — but Americans have the benefit of more than two decades' worth of exemptions to this terrible rule, while Mexicans will have to labor under its full weight until (and unless) they can use this undefined process to secure a comparable list of exemptions. And even then, they won’t have the flexibility offered by fair use under US law.

Notice and Takedown

Section 512 of the US DMCA created a "notice and takedown" rule that allows rightsholders or their representatives to demand the removal of works without any showing of evidence or finding of fact that their copyrights were infringed. This has been a catastrophe for free expression, allowing the removal of material without due care or even through malicious, fraudulent acts (the author of this article had his New York Times bestselling novel improperly removed from the Internet by careless lawyers for Fox Entertainment, who mistook it for an episode of a TV show of the same name).

As bad as America's notice and takedown system is, Mexico's is now worse.

In America, online services that honor notice and takedown get a "safe harbor" — meaning that they are not considered liable for their users' copyright infringements. However, online services in the US that believe a user’s content is noninfringing may ignore it, and they are only liable at all if they meet the tests for “secondary liability" for copyright infringement, something that is far from automatic. If the rightsholder sues, the service may end up in court alongside their user, but the service can still rely on the safe harbor in relation to other works published by other users, provided they remove them upon notice of infringement.

The Mexican law makes it a strict requirement to remove content. Under Article 232 Quinquies (II), providers must honor all takedown demands by copyright owners, even obviously overreaching ones, or they face fines of UMA1,000-20,000.

Further, Article 232 Quinquies (III) of the Mexican law allows anyone claiming to be an infringed-upon rightsholder to obtain the personal information of the alleged infringer. This means that gangsters, thin-skinned public officials, stalkers, and others can use fraudulent copyright claims to unmask their critics. Who will complain about corrupt police, abusive employers, or local crime-lords when their personal information can be retrieved with such ease? We recently defended the anonymity of a person who questioned their religious community, when the religious organization tried to use the corresponding part of the DMCA to identify them. In the name of copyright, the law gives new tools to anyone with power to stifle dissent and criticism.

This isn't the only "chilling effect" in the Mexican law. Under Article 114 Octies (II), a platform must comply with takedown requests for mere links to a Web-page that is allegedly infringing. Linking, by itself, is not an infringement in the United States or Canada, and its legal status is contested in Mexico. There are good reasons why linking is not infringement: It’s important to be able to talk about speech elsewhere on the Internet and to share facts, which may include the availability of copyrighted works whose license or infringement status is unknown. Besides that, Web-pages change all the time: if you link to a page that is outside of your control and it is later updated in a way that infringes copyright, you could be the target of a takedown request.

Act now!

If you are based in Mexico, we urge you to participate in R3D's campaign "Ni Censura ni Candados" and send a letter to Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights to asking them to invalidate this new flawed copyright law. R3D will ask for your name, email address, and your comment, which will be subject to R3D's privacy policy.

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mrsteveecook · 5 years

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should I warn a store their new hire will steal from them, manager mocks me for my chair choice, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Should I warn a store that my relative who they’re about to hire steals from them?

This may be a bit of a weird question, but I know someone who is about to be hired at a corner store that we both frequent. The issue is, this person steals from that store every time they go. It’s to the point where I refuse to take them (they are a member of my family). They have had multiple jobs in stores and it’s always the same: start working, steal as much as they can (cigarettes, candy, drinks, whatever), get their first check, and either quit or get fired.

Should I warn the manager/owner about this person? I know the cashiers because I went to school with them and thought about sending them a message, but I’m worried about them telling my family member that I did it.

If you know someone is about to get victimized by a criminal, I think you should warn them if you can do that safely, even if that criminal is a family member, and even if your family member will be upset with you if they find out. Alternately, you could tell the family member directly that you know people who work there and that you’ll feel ethically obligated to tell them about the theft if they pursue work there.

2. My manager disparages me for using a chair I need for medical reasons

My office, which has about 25 people, has biweekly staff meetings which take place in a central, convertible space. As such, the majority of the seating options are folding chairs, usually arranged in rows for the staff meeting. I have a medical condition that can be triggered by sitting in certain kinds of seating for long periods of time, so I will usually retrieve one of the full-backed chairs from a conference table at the back of the room to use instead. I’m an otherwise young, healthy, and physically active woman, and my health issues aren’t visibly noticeable. There are a few other people who also pull up the more comfortable chairs, usually about five or six of us in total.

My supervisor, however, has started making disparaging comments about this, saying things like “it won’t kill you to sit in a folding chair for an hour!” when I pulled up my chair and “I left the back row empty for those of you who are special” when it was her turn to set up for the meeting. These comments have left me feeling embarrassed since others overheard them and, frankly, a little angry. I’ve tried sitting in a folding chair for a staff meeting once, and it triggered a multi-day, painful flare of my condition, so I’m not doing this just because folding chairs are uncomfortable. No one else in the office, including our executive directors, have said anything negative about the few of us pulling up more comfortable chairs.

The strange thing is that my supervisor is usually very vocal about supporting individuals with disabilities — including spearheading related projects and sending articles on improving accessibility to our office email list — so I’m really not sure how to address this with her. And it isn’t like she isn’t aware of my condition — I informed her when I was diagnosed because I wanted to be clear about any accommodations I might need moving forward. Do you have any suggestions on how to bring this up without offending her or impacting our work relationship? She can sometimes be very defensive when criticized, and has a forceful personality, to say the least.

The part about her normally being vocal about supporting people with disabilities might give you an easy opening here. You could say, “Jane, I know you’re normally vocal about accessibility and supporting people with disabilities, so I think you must not realize why I and some others use the full-backed chairs in meetings. I’m doing it because I have a medical condition that can be aggravated by the folding chairs. Once when I used one, it trigged a multi-day, painful flare-up. I know you normally want to be sensitive to this kind of thing, so can I ask you to stop the comments about it?”

Frankly, even if she hadn’t been vocal about disability support in the past, you could still use similar language. Sometimes telling people “I know you care about X” or “I know you want to be thoughtful about X” will work even when they’ve given you no evidence that they care about X, because then they feel like they should live up to that (or at least that they can’t say “no, I don’t care about X at all!”). Doesn’t work 100% of the time, but works a lot.

3. I’m fed up with an excessive interview process

I’m a marketing professional who’s been on a serious job hunt for several months now so I can be somewhere with better career advancement (and a higher salary!). A lot of the jobs I’ve applied for have required writing samples and/or content exercises. But recently I encountered a job application process that seems like overkill! It’s for a senior content writer at an e-commerce company. I sent a resume and cover letter and filled out an application online. A recruiter reached out for a phone screening. I was requested to resend my resume and cover letter, fill out another job application again (by hand so I had to scan and send it), fill out a personality assessment, send my college transcripts, and send three writing examples. I was then contacted for a second phone interview followed by an in-person interview. Prior to the in-person interview, I had to complete a 48-hour content exercise in which I wrote a 600-word article and created a PowerPoint. At the in-person interview, I had to complete three exams (math, logic, and grammar).

After a week, the company said they offered the position to another candidate, but would like to consider me for a similar role. They asked me to complete another project (and offered to pay me for it). Three weeks after completing it, they asked me for yet another write-up explaining my thought process for the project.

We’ve now hit the three-month mark for this whole process. I’d like to quit the process. They’re taking far too much of my time and energy! As a tech company, I was really surprised they asked me to resend items that I submitted on their website and that I had fill them out by and scan-send them — that doesn’t seem very progressive for a tech company. And I also feel they’ve asked for far too many materials. I’d rather spend my time focusing on other job opportunities and companies that are more respectful of my time. I’d like to know what you think, and what would be an appropriate way to inform them?

Yep, this is excessive. It’s good that they offered to pay you for the project you did, but this is too much to ask — and I say that as a huge proponent of exercises and simulations in the hiring process. (And a grammar exam, really? This is a writing job and they can assess your grammar skills from the many writing samples you’ve already produced for them.)

Do you want to drop out of consideration entirely, or would you be willing to entertain a job offer from them as long as you don’t need to invest more time in their process? If the latter, then the next time they reach out to you with a request for more of your time, you can say, “I’ve invested a lot of time in your hiring process so far — several interviews, a personality assessment, transcripts, writing samples, new written content and a PowerPoint, three exams, a handwritten application, what I’d thought was a final project, and then a write-up about the project. At this point I can’t invest more time in the process, and I’m hoping that you have what you need to evaluate my candidacy.”

But if you want to drop out entirely, you can simply say, “At this point I’m not able to invest more time in what seems to be a very lengthy hiring process, and so I need to withdraw from consideration. Best of luck filling the role.”

4. My coworker treats me like her personal pharmacy

My coworker is regularly asking me for over-the-counter pills while we’re at work, whether it be Advil or allergy pills. These things cost money and I’m completely done supplying them with pain relievers. How do I politely tell them to go to the drug store next time they ask? They easily take offense to everything.

“Sorry, I don’t have enough to keep giving them away!”

If that won’t ring true because they see you occasionally given them to others: “Sorry, I can occasionally share in a pinch, but I don’t have enough to supply them regularly.”

If they take offense to everything, they may take offense to this too — but that would be unreasonable! And if they’re unreasonable and take offense to anything you say, then there’s no language that will change that, and you’re better off deciding not to care. Say it cheerfully as if of course they will understand this is reasonable, because it is, and then don’t worry about it further.

5. My company is evaluating salaries — can they cut our pay?

I work in a group of about 50 people at a medium sized company. Our group will be spinning out and become an independent company in the next few months.

We were told that when the spin out happens, everyone’s salary will be evaluated and subject to change “so that everyone is paid fairly.” When I was hired I worked hard to negotiate my salary (your column was helpful to me during that time, so thank you for that!) and I am being paid at the top of the pay scale for my position. Now I’m worried that they might reduce my pay.

Can they do that? Is this a normal thing that happens? It seems unfair that after two years someone can suddenly decide to reduce my salary. What should I say if I’m told my pay will be decreased?

Legally, yes, they can reduce your salary (as long as they don’t do it retroactively; they can only do it going forward after they tell you). That doesn’t obligate you to accept that salary, of course; you can attempt to negotiate, and you can leave if you can’t come to terms on it (which is obviously not an ideal outcome).

But what’s most common in this situation is that some people will have their salaries increased to create internal equity, or salary bands will be adjusted (so the maximum salary level for your role might come down, rather than your current salary). It’s unlikely but not impossible that they’d actually decrease people’s current salaries, but no employer does that without realizing that they will severely demoralize people and lose staff over it … so if they do it it anyway, they’ve likely calculated that they’re willing to deal with those consequences for some reason.