Tumgik
#especially post tracker
dutyworn · 1 year
Text
                  open starter ↷
Tumblr media Tumblr media
❝ It’s almost like, ❞    she leaves the sentence hanging, runs both hands through her hair. Her voice softer than usual, as she makes effort to keep it even. She’s not fine, but she can handle it; she’s not falling apart.  She’s not falling apart.    ❝ I don’t even feel like a person, anymore. Just a patched-up-together collection of every shitty thing that’s happened. And I try to mask as a human being, but... It’s fine,  I’m fine,  I just... ❞
8 notes · View notes
skaluli · 1 year
Note
Are you alright dude? I saw that post, hope your alright /gen
Tumblr media
i would do a detailed thank you to everyone who said something to me but i dont know the words.
to lightly speak i struggle with a lot with mental shit and the situations around me. i dont know how to put any of this into words and i dont even feel like the words in the picture are correct im sorry.
4 notes · View notes
cagesings · 2 years
Text
hey  quick  psa,  but  since  has  happened  a  few  times  i  feel  the  need  to  clarify  that  my  interest  tracker  is  mutuals  only.  i  am  a  mutuals  only  blog  meaning  that  i  only  interact  with  blogs/muses  that  i  am  following  &  that  follow  me  back.  i  do  have  this  specified  on  my  interest  tracker  itself,  but  it  seems  i  need  to  say  it  again.  i  really  do  appreciate  that  you  are  willing  to  fill  it  out  for  me,  just  want  everyone  to  keep  this  in  mind.  if  we  are  mutuals,  please  go  ahead  &  fill  it  out  for  me.  i  am  but  a  timid  baby  bird  so  it  really  helps  me  out  a  lot  when  people  fill  it  out.  
2 notes · View notes
helluvapoison · 3 months
Text
jealousy, jealousy
˚✧₊⁎ The Vees ⁎⁺˳✧༚
warnings: violence, off page murdah, suggestive themes, possessive behavior
18+ only
watch out for red flags in real life and read at your own discretion ♡
ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ
˚✧₊⁎ Vox ⁎⁺˳✧༚
• The least jealous of the three, but that doesn’t say much, does it?
• Running an enterprise goes hand in hand with being an Overlord. Vox prides himself on being everywhere at once but he knows his limits. If wants to keep this cushy life he built, and you safe, he can’t spread himself too thin. That means occasionally cutting back on distractions
• So go out, have your fun— playtoys even! He’s not worried. Vox has literal eyes on you 24/7, access to your phone and all its contents, your lifeline is constantly synced to his peripherals. Really! He’s not worried!
• The problem arises when Vox feels threatened or undermined. If he’s in the same room, no one should even be looking at you! And if some sorry soul dared to touch you!? That’d be the last time they have hands
• “I’ve been looking for you!” He says from behind as his claws creep around your shoulders. He’ll ignore the Sinner, bringing your attention to him as security drags them away. You don’t need to know how jealous he can get
˚✧₊⁎ Velvette ⁎⁺˳✧༚
• Sharing, shockingly, is not in her vocabulary! Not outfits, not credit, not the spotlight and fucking especially not you
• You’re her favorite project, she so lovingly calls you, which is a giant compliment. She dresses you every day so if— for some hellish reason— you left her side, she knows she has a visual claim on you. Vel quickly snaps and posts a pic of the two of you together before you go, just to remind her audience the fact you’re spoken for! Don’t you feel safe? And stylish?
• Unlike her partners, Velvette can multitask so having you around the studio can be an everyday treat! Unfortunately she has to split her focus, occasionally crashing the conversation to a stop so she can snap at someone
• Her eyes are sharp, they pick up on every little detail and seldom miss a thing. No one in her workshop would even think about approaching you, unless Vel asked, so it was all too easy to spot that new-nobody-model break his neck to check you out
• You’ve seen Velvette reduce even the oldest, most thick skinned to a puddle of piss in the street with her words. She doesn’t give anyone the chance to touch what’s hers. She’s shameless and loud, stopping the inappropriate behavior from across the room if she has to, “Oy! You! You’re fuckin’ fired, get the fuck out of here ‘fore I set you on fire!”
• As they run for the elevator, she debates if the clothes they’re wearing are worth keeping or not. With a glowing finger she swipes them off the model anyways, stripping them of her brand… and their dignity
• Velvette marks the occasion with a kiss to your cheek, stained with black lipstick, and another posted picture with a clever caption
˚✧₊⁎ Valentino ⁎⁺˳✧༚
• Val invented jealousy
• He handles it as well as everyone expects
• It’s not limited to you, either! Business partners, employees, friends (if he has any left), play things, he’ll be up and arms about anything that belongs to him. There’s only one way to cut the cord tethered to him, and he’s always the one to decide how and when
• Val may have a lot of toys but you’re not one of them. You’re special— precious, actually!
• He has tabs on you at all times. Tracker in your phone, jewelry with his name on it, a bodyguard if he’s feeling particularly paranoid that day!
• Val also loves showing you off. Love bites are his favorite mark of ownership, he’ll show off wherever is most recent so be prepared to swat his hands away. Everyone can look, but only he can touch. He has four hands, one of them is on you at all times in public
• No one should manage to get in spitting distance of you— but if somehow they did and had the gall to talk to you… he’ll break their nose on the spot. He’d make quicker work with a gun, but then he’d get blood on you and he doesn’t want that
• “You’re so fuckin’ hot tonight, baby, look how clumsy you’ve made this idiot!” Val cackles, poorly masking his rage, “Seriously, I think you’re trying to get me riled up.” You open your mouth to deny it but he laughs again, carefully pulling you closer with both pairs of arms, “I’m only teasing!”
• Looming over you, Val shoots said idiot a murderous glare that gives them a five second head start. He’s yet to lose this game of chase. He always returns, clean as a crappy soap ad, to shower you in gifts in lieu of an apology for disappearing
2K notes · View notes
Text
Company that makes millions spying on students will get to sue a whistleblower
Tumblr media
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia handed down a jaw-droppingly stupid and terrible decision, rejecting the whistleblower Ian Linkletter’s claim that he was engaged in legitimate criticism when he linked to freely available materials from the ed-tech surveillance company Proctorio:
https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/ca/23/01/2023BCCA0160.htm
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/20/links-arent-performances/#free-ian-linkletter
It’s been a minute since Linkletter’s case arose, so I’ll give you a little recap here. Proctorio is a massive, wildly profitable ed-tech company that sells a surveillance tool to monitor students while they take high-stakes tests from home. The tool monitors the student’s computer and the student’s face, especially their eye-movements. It also allows instructors and other personnel to watch the students and even take control of their computer. This is called “remote invigilation.”
This is ghastly in just about every way. For starters, Proctorio’s facial monitoring software embeds the usual racist problems with machine-learning stuff, and struggles to recognize Black and brown faces. Black children sitting exams under Proctorio’s gimlet eye have reported that the only way to satisfy Proctorio’s digital phrenology system is to work with multiple high-powered lights shining directly in their faces.
A Proctorio session typically begins with a student being forced to pan a webcam around their test-taking room. During lockdown, this meant that students who shared a room — for example, with a parent who worked night-shifts — would have to invade their family’s privacy, and might be disqualified because they couldn’t afford a place large enough to have private room in which to take their tests.
Proctorio’s tools also punish students for engaging in normal test-taking activity. Do you stare off into space when you’re trying through a problem? Bzzzt. Do you read questions aloud to yourself under your breath when you’re trying to understand their meanings? Bzzzt. Do you have IBS and need to go to the toilet? Bzzzt. The canon of remote invigilation horror stories is filled with accounts of students being forced to defecate themselves, or vomit down their shirts without turning their heads (because looking away is an automatically flagged offense).
The tragedy is that all of this is in service to the pedagogically bankrupt practice of high-stakes testing. Few pedagogists believe that the kind of exam that Proctorio seeks to recreate in students’ homes has real assessment merit. As the old saying goes, “Tests measure your ability to take tests.” But Proctorio doesn’t even measure your ability to take a test — it measures your ability to take a test with three bright lights shining directly on your face. Or while you are covered in your own feces and vomit. While you stare rigidly at a screen. While your tired mother who just worked 16 hours in a covid ward stands outside the door to your apartment.
The lockdown could have been an opportunity to improve educational assessment. There is a rich panoply of techniques that educators can adopt that deliver a far better picture of students’ learning, and work well for remote as well as in-person education. Instead, companies like Proctorio made vast fortunes, most of it from publicly funded institutions, by encouraging a worse-than-useless, discriminatory practice:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/24/proctor-ology/#miseducation
Proctorio clearly knows that its racket is brittle. Like any disaster profiteer, Proctorio will struggle to survive after the crisis passes and we awaken from our collective nightmare and ask ourselves why we were stampeded into using its terrible products. The company went to war against its critics.
In 2020, Proctorio CEO Mike Olsen doxed a child who complained about his company’s software in a Reddit forum:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#moral-exemplar
In 2021, the reviews for Proctorio’s Chrome plugin all mysteriously vanished. Needless to say, these reviews — from students forced to use Proctorio’s spyware — were brutal:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/04/hypervigilance/#radical-transparency
Proctorio claims that it protects “educational integrity,” but its actions suggest a company far more concerned about the integrity of its own profits:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat
One of the critics that Proctorio attacked is Ian Linkletter. In 2020, Linkletter was a Learning Technology Specialist at UBC’s Faculty of Education. His job was to assess and support ed-tech tools, including Proctorio. In the course of that work, Linkletter reviewed Proctorio’s training material for educators, which are a bonanza of mask-off materials that are palpably contemptuous of students, who are presumed to be cheaters.
At the time, a debate over remote invigilation tools was raging through Canadian education circles, with students, teachers and parents fiercely arguing the merits and downsides of making surveillance the linchpin of assessment. Linkletter waded into this debate, tweeting a series of sharp criticisms of Proctorio. In these tweets, Linkletter linked to Proctorio’s unlisted, but publicly available, Youtube videos.
A note of explanation: Youtube videos can be flagged as “unlisted,” which means they don’t show up in searches. They can also be flagged as “private,” which means you have to be on a list of authorized users to see them. Proctorio made its training videos unlisted, but they weren’t private — they were visible to anyone who had a link to them.
Proctorio sued Linkletter for this. They argued that he had breached a duty of confidentiality, and that linking to these videos was a copyright violation:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/17/proctorio-v-linkletter/#proctorio
This is a classic SLAPP — a “strategic litigation against public participation.” That’s when a deep-pocketed, thin-skinned bully, like Proctorio, uses the threat of a long court battle to force their critics into silence. They know they can’t win their case, but that’s not the victory they’re seeking. They don’t want to win the case, they want to win the argument, by silencing a critic who would otherwise be bankrupted by legal fees.
Getting SLAPPed is no fun. I’ve been there. Just this year, a billionaire financier tried to force me into silence by threatening me with a lawsuit. Thankfully, Ken “Popehat” White was on the case, and he reminded this billionaire’s counsel that California has a strong anti-SLAPP law, and if Ken had to defend me in court, he could get a fortune in fees from the bully after he prevailed:
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1531684572479377409
British Columbia also has an anti-SLAPP law, but unlike California’s anti-SLAPP, the law is relatively new and untested. Still, Proctorio’s suit against Linkletter was such an obvious SLAPP that for many of us, it seemed likely that Linkletter would be able to defend himself from this American bully and its attempt to use Canada’s courts to silence a Canadian educator.
For Linkletter to use BC’s anti-SLAPP law, he would have to prove that he was weighing in on a matter of public interest, and that Proctorio’s copyright and confidentiality claims were nonsense, unlikely to prevail on their merits. If he could do that, he’d be able to get the case thrown out, without having to go through a lengthy, brutally expensive trial.
Incredibly, though, the lower court found against Linkletter. Naturally, Linkletter appealed. His “factotum” is a crystal clear document that sets out the serious errors of law and fact the lower court made:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aB1ztWDFr3MU6BsAMt6rWXOiXJ8sT3MY/view
But yesterday, the Court of Appeal upheld the lower court, repeating all of these gross errors and finding for Proctorio:
https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/ca/23/01/2023BCCA0160.htm
This judgment is grotesque. It makes a mockery of BC’s anti-SLAPP statute, to say nothing of Canadian copyright and confidentiality law. For starters, it finds that publishing a link can be a “performance” of a copyrighted work, which meant that when Linkletter linked to the world-viewable Youtube files that Proctorio had posted, he infringed on copyright.
This is a perverse, even surreal take on copyright. The court rejects Linkletter’s argument that even Youtube’s terms of service warned Proctorio that publishing world-viewable material on its site constituted permission for people to link to and watch that material.
But what about “fair dealing” (similar to fair use)? Linkletter argued that linking to a video that shows that Proctorio’s assurances to parents and students about its products’ benign nature were contradicted by the way it talked to educators was fair dealing. Fair dealing is a broad suite of limitations and exceptions to copyright for the purposes of commentary, criticism, study, satire, etc.
So even if linking is a copyright infringement (ugh, seriously?!), surely it’s fair dealing in this case. Proctorio was selling millions of dollars in software to public institutions, inflicting it on kids whose parents weren’t getting the whole story. Linkletter used Proctorio’s own words to rebut its assurances. What could be more fair dealing than that?
Not so fast, the appeals panel says: they say that Linkletter could have made his case just as well without linking to Proctorio’s materials. This is…bad. I mean, it’s also wrong, but it’s very bad, too. It’s wrong because an argument about what a company intends necessarily has to draw upon the company’s own statements. It’s absurd to say that Linkletter’s point would have been made equally well if he said “I disbelieve Proctorio’s public assurances because I’ve seen seekrit documents” as it was when he was able to link to those documents so that people could see them for themselves.
But it’s bad because it rips the heart out of the fair dealing exception for criticism. Publishing a link to a copyrighted work is the most minimal way to quote from it in a debate — Linkletter literally didn’t reproduce a single word, not a single letter, from Proctorio’s copyrighted works. If the court says, “Sure, you can quote from a work to criticize it, but only so much as you need to make your argument,” and then says, “But also, simply referencing a work without quoting it at all is taking too much,” then what reasonable person would ever try to rely on a fair dealing exemption for criticism?
Then there’s the confidentiality claim: in his submissions to the lower court and the appeals court, Linkletter pointed out that the “confidential” materials he’d linked to were available in many places online, and could be easily located with a Google search. Proctorio had uploaded these “confidential” materials to many sites — without flagging them as “unlisted” or “private.”
What’s more, the videos that Linkletter linked to were in found a “Help Center” that didn’t even have a terms-of-service condition that required confidentiality. How on Earth can materials that are publicly available all over the web be “confidential?”
Here, the court takes yet another bizarre turn in logic. They find that because a member of the public would have to “gather” the videos from “many sources,” that the collection of links was confidential, even if none of the links in the collection were confidential. Again, this is both wrong and bad.
Every investigator, every journalist, every critic, starts by looking in different places for information that can be combined to paint a coherent picture of what’s going on. This is the heart of “open source intelligence,” combing different sources for data points that shed light on one another.
The idea that “gathering” public information can breach confidentiality strikes directly at all investigative activity. Every day, every newspaper and news broadcast in Canada engages in this conduct. The appeals court has put them all in jeopardy with this terrible finding.
Finally, there’s the question of Proctorio’s security. Proctorio argued that by publishing links to its educator materials, Linkletter weakened the security of its products. That is, they claim that if students know how the invigilation tool works, it stops working. This is the very definition of “security through obscurity,” and it’s a practice that every serious infosec professional rejects. If Proctorio is telling the truth when it says that describing how its products work makes them stop working, then they make bad products that no one should pay money for.
The court absolutely flubs this one, too, accepting the claim of security through obscurity at face value. That’s a finding that flies in the face of all security research.
So what happens now? Well, Linkletter has lost his SLAPP claim, so nominally the case can proceed. Linkletter could appeal his case to Canada’s Supreme Court (about 7% of Supreme Court appeals of BC appeals court judgments get heard). Or Proctorio could drop the case. Or it could go to a full trial, where these outlandish ideas about copyright, confidentiality and information security would get a thorough — and blisteringly expensive — examination.
In Linkletter’s statement, he remains defiant and unwilling to give in to bullying, but says he’ll have to “carefully consider” his next step. That’s fair enough: there’s a lot on the line here:
https://linkletter.opened.ca/stand-against-proctorios-slapp-update-30/
Linkletter answers his supporters’ questions about how they can help with some excellent advice: “What I ask is for you to do what you can to protect students. Academic surveillance technology companies would like nothing more but for us all to shut up. Don’t let them silence you. Don’t let anyone or anything take away your human right to freedom of expression.”
Today (Apr 21), I’m speaking in Chicago at the Stigler Center’s Antitrust and Competition Conference. This weekend (Apr 22/23), I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books.
[Image ID: A girl working on a laptop. Her mouth has been taped shut. Glaring out of the laptop screen is the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Behind them is a tattered, filthy, burned Canadian flag.]
Image: Ingo Bernhardt https://www.flickr.com/photos/spree2010/4930763550/
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Eleanor Vladinsky (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canadian_flag_against_grey_sky.jpg
CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
6K notes · View notes
nicksbestie · 9 days
Text
Migraines - M. Sturniolo
Tumblr media
Summary : Matt struggles with chronic migraines, and some days there isn't much that you can do, but that never means you don't try,
Warnings : mentions of vomiting and nausea, a small bit of crying
Word Count : 1313
Pairing : Matt Sturniolo/Reader (romantic)
A/N : i got inspo from this photo of matt <3
Tumblr media
Living an entire two decades of life with chronic migraines was an absolutely miserable thing.
Matt was nearing his twenty-first birthday, and he was desperate to find something in his life that would help with these migraines. He had gone through prescription after prescription, doctor appointment after doctor appointment, specialist after specialist, and nothing had helped the splitting pain. He had a migraine tracker on his phone so that he could tell the percentage of how often he had migraines, and it was well over sixty percent of every month. It was quite depressing to look at, and even more depressing to live. It really affected Matt’s happiness and day to day life. 
All of their YouTube videos were filmed on Matt’s good days. They would change outfits so that they could film five to six videos in one day, gathering a lot of topics so that they would have tons to post when it came time to put them all up. Both of his brothers were incredibly caring and didn’t mind the way that they had to do things, and both wanted to do everything possible to make it easier for their middle sibling. They rode with Matt in an Uber every time his migraine was too bad for him to drive, so that he wouldn’t have to be alone, especially at a doctor’s office, a place he was already generally hesitant to be at. They truly were always by his side, arguing with doctors that told him it was anxiety based, or that he was exaggerating, when he didn’t have the energy to argue for himself.
Today was a bad day for him. Chris and Nick had left before Matt had woken up, so they had no idea that he was struggling, because the light from his phone, even at the lowest setting, wasn’t low enough to not send stabbing pains through his head, so he hadn’t texted. He hadn’t had the energy to call and speak to them either. All he had done was gotten up and shut the blinds, covering them up with blackout screens that he had bought a couple years back, because he needed all of the light out. They worked incredibly well, and he had cut off the dim lighting in his room that he’d slept with, needing complete darkness.
He had no idea how long he had laid there, he just knew he was in pain. Unbeknownst to him, when you noticed that he didn’t reply to your text, you were immediately concerned, and already on your way over. You’d seen that he’d read it, so you knew he was awake, and he hadn’t replied. He never left you on read, unless he couldn’t bear to look at his phone screen any longer, which meant he had a terrible migraine. You’d wasted no time getting ready, and due to the fact that Matt didn’t wake up until almost two in the afternoon, you didn’t get over there until almost four. You had your own key, both because of instances like these, and because of the fact that you had been together for almost two years now. Letting yourself in, you texted Chris and Nick, telling them that you were there as well.
You wasted no time in going upstairs, gently opening Matt’s door, and immediately closing it behind you, because while the light in the hallway wasn’t on, the daylight would filter in, and you knew it would aggravate his head. Seeing him face down on the bed, under covers and pillows, you gently whispered your greeting, telling him so he wouldn’t freak out, though you doubted he had the energy to freak out on you. You pressed a kiss to the back of his neck, rubbing his back and laying down next to him. He curled into your chest, and you could see the remnants of tear tracks on his face. You laid a kiss to his forehead, gently running your hand over it and through his hair. Your hands were a cooler temperature, and you could tell that it felt good and soothed his pain for a few seconds. You laid a palm on his forehead, wanting to help him feel better any way that you could. 
You laid with him for about an hour, helping hold the trash can at the side of his bed when the pain got to be so bad that it caused him to throw up, helping wipe his face off and get him laid back down, before realizing he hadn’t eaten anything all day, so it probably wouldn’t get much better. You laid there for a little while longer, thinking about what to do to help him, when you remembered a trick that had helped you when you had a terrible migraine one day. You softly untangled yourself from him, whispering that he could stay right there and you would be right back.
You went into the bathroom, turning a small, very dim, light on in the corner so you could see what was going on around you. You began running a warm bath, letting it run while you went to get Matt a small snack. You set it down on the edge of the bathtub, on the side touching the wall, and went to go get your boyfriend. You picked out some clean clothes for him, grabbed him the water bottle from his nightstand as well, and led him to the bathroom. He knew where it was, of course, but the thought of opening his eyes for the chance of any light just made the pain intensify, so he trusted you to guide him.
By this point, the tub was about three quarters of the way full, and you helped him get in. You knew he hadn’t showered that day, and the warm water on your legs and feet helped with your migraines, so you hoped it would help him as well. Judging by the way his face began to relax once he was in the tub, his back against your chest, you were glad it took away a little bit of his pain. You kept the temperature of the bathroom cooler so that he wouldn’t overheat, but not enough for him to get cold. His eyes stayed closed, but they were a calm closed, not a scrunched, wincing in pain, closed. He didn’t speak much, but he took the water and food that he was offered, and a gentle smile crossed his face the longer he sat in the tub.
The longer you stayed there with him, gently running your hands through his hair, the more his breathing evened out, and the deeper it got, and eventually, you realized he had fallen asleep. He had been so tired from being in pain, even though he had only been up for about four hours, that when the pain had lessened dramatically, his body was so exhausted that he just fell asleep in comfortable arms. You stayed there with him until the water went cold, and even longer after that, because you couldn’t bear to disturb him. After about half an hour, you softly shook him awake, gently helping him stand. By this point, you had both basically air dried, and Matt only pulled on boxers and loose shorts to sleep in. You tugged on one of his shirts and a pair of his boxers as well, going back to bed with him. 
As soon as he hit the bed, he was about to fall asleep again, and you pulled him back into your arms. You never minded taking care of him, knowing that he loved you more than words could say, and as he whispered a soft “I love you” into your chest, you knew you could do this for him for the rest of your life, and you could die happy.
“I love you more.”
Tumblr media
taglist : @blahbel668 @mattsgirlfrieeend @69isabella69 @mayhem-72 @iculdstealurgf @iluvm4ttsturni0l0 @sturnioloslife @heartsforkarina @nervousrebelglitter @sturniclo @elliegrace-7 @mattsturnioloisbae @strnilo @dazsha19 @patscorner @hailee22sstuff @tworosesblackthorn @sturniolo-fann
~ if you'd like to be added to my taglist, click here!
~ my inbox is open, come chat!!
527 notes · View notes
4theitgirls · 1 month
Text
productive ways to fill up your notebooks
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
money & savings tracker
it’s always a good idea to keep track of where your money is going and save when you can, especially if you’re looking to boost your finances and start taking charge of them. you can track your pay days, how much you receive, how much you can put away into savings, and budget the rest into what you’ll need until next pay day.
long & short-term to-do lists
a lot of us make daily to-do lists, but i also like to include long term to-do lists to keep track of the things i would like to achieve eventually. for example, a long term to-do would be to learn italian, while a short term or daily to-do would be to study italian for 20 minutes.
wishlist with a reward system
you may want to keep track of the things that you would like to buy for yourself, but if you want to be a bit smarter about it, you can make yourself a reward system tailored to your specific goals. for example, if your goal is to lose weight, you could allow yourself to spend a certain amount of money on your wishlist for every 5 or 10 pounds you lose depending on how much you’d like to lose.
books you want to read
i always see books i think look interesting or think i would like to read, but end up forgetting the title or where i saw it. you may want to keep track of the books you want to read and cross them off once you finish them.
prayer list
if you are religious or spiritual in a way where you pray or meditate, you may want to make a list of the things/people you want to pray for or meditate on.
habits you want to start with a plan for each
it’s easy to say you want to start waking up earlier, eating healthier, taking care of your skin, etc. but it can be difficult to make those things part of your routine without taking small steps each day to get used to doing those things each day. have one broad habit in mind and figure out what it takes to get there.
fitness tracker
whether you’re just getting into working out or if you’ve been doing it for a while, it can be useful to keep track of which workouts you do each day so you can see what you do the most and what you want to do more.
random beauty & health tips
i don’t know about you, but i hear random beauty and health tips all the time in media or just in daily life, but end up forgetting what i’ve learned. you may want to write them down when you hear them so next time you’re in a situation where you could use it, you remember it.
specific monthly goals & tracker
as y’all know, i make 5 goals at the beginning of each month and post them on my blog. i highly recommend this, as it is a great way to put emphasis on certain things you want to focus on at monthly intervals rather than trying to do every new thing at once.
659 notes · View notes
brainrockets · 2 months
Text
The Tracker phone call is bothering me A LOT. And not just the asking permission to post about her new girlfriend part. Most people agree that part was shitty. What's really burning my biscuits is the hard truths part.
Especially folks reacting like "oh that needed to be said."
And I know part of my reaction is rooted in how much I can identify with Kristen and her situation.
And I also know that Tracker is also really young so like yanno she's not a bad person even of she's being shitty rn.
With ADHD a lot of times people who are perhaps well meaning (x.x) will do this thing where they explain to you the situation you are in in excruciating detail like you are unaware. And I think that they think that this is going to help. It does not help.
Tracker was there for Freshman and Sophmore Year. So she's aware that Kristen does not have very many people in her corner. In fact the only person she had to help, with religion in particular, WAS TRACKER. And Tracker LEFT! Which she is fully entitled to do! But who was meant to fill that gap of support?
Also, not for nothing but she's also had the benefits of:
An established religion
Executive function
An entire summer of darkness to build her goddess' brand since she wasn't the one saving the world
I definitely took issue with the whole "now that we are broken up I'll tell you the hard stuff". Like bish what? Why didn't you tell her these things you think are important when you could also comfort fuck about it after? Instead of piling on while she's already NOT OKAY!?
Kristen is well aware that she's not okay. She knows shit is fucked up. Tracker is just giving her more ammo for her self loathing. If Tracker wants to tell her how fucked she is without offering anything to help her get unfucked then she should just not do that. None of this needed to happen. They aren't dating.
Things that Tracker could have done to help:
Offered to do a social media collab between the two SISTER GODDESSES while the night was unending
Minded her own business
Remembered how hard she took it when her goddess turned out to be a bitch
Waited to call
When Kristen was like I'm not okay, ending the conversation
Idk. I wasn't expecting to be ready to fight everyone in the parking lot about this whole thing but I am just so heated about it.
Anyways shout out to all my executive dysfunction babes who know they need help to get their lives unfucked but all folks seem to do is remind them shit is fucked.
478 notes · View notes
turtleblogatlast · 4 months
Text
[ cw: risk taking behavior / circumstantial self harm kinda / ignoring of injuries / self-depreciation / slight ooc-ness but for a reason! / ]
Post invasion, Leo is fine.
More than fine! He’s better than before, even. That is, if you don’t count the slightly cracked shell and still healing bones, but those are only a problem when the weather wants them to be!
Leo really is better in the ways that matter.
He’s not as cocky, not as self-centered, and overall just more heroic in general if he does say so himself.
Raph even said he was proud of Leo!
So obviously things are going well.
But.
It’s not enough.
Leo’s better, sure, but he’s still got work to do.
So - and here’s something that will probably make his brothers faint on the spot - he needs to train.
_____
His brothers do not faint, but it’s a near thing for Raph. Mikey has to fan the snapper’s face and Donnie almost brings out the smelling salts before Raph shoots back to his feet with an excited grin.
Leo’s big brother gets teary eyed soon after and envelops him in a bear hug, saying once again how proud he is that Leo is growing up.
Leo lets himself be hugged, even hugs back as fiercely as he can, because unbeknownst to Raph, this marks the end of Leo’s childhood.
He lets himself be hugged like a kid one last time, looking through the hole in Raph’s shell all the while.
_____
Leo only trains the regular way with his brothers and occasionally April and the Caseys, but most especially Raph.
But of course that’s not enough, it was never going to be.
So he goes through the motions of the stretches, the spars, the meditation, and then he leaves.
He makes sure to have his excuses ready, usually defaulting to Hueso as his go to since his brothers are easily bought off with the promise of pizza. Leo hasn’t yet found the tracker Donnie installed in him, but when he does that’ll be dealt with too! But for now, this should be good.
See, the invasion made him realize something.
It’s not about him, but it was his shortcomings that led to everything going to hell.
So he just…needs to get rid of those shortcomings.
He’s working on it, gaining fighting skill in training, but there’s more he needs to do, more skills he needs to train.
Leo watches intently as Repo Mantis swindles someone, he memorizes the sleight of hand that Hypno performs, he sneaks back into the Mystic Library and is so quiet the hush bats forget he’s there, he talks Big Mama into honing his manipulation, and he even sneaks into human hospitals and reptile veterinary clinics to get a clue on more serious injuries.
And after any of these, he heads to Run of the Mill to compete in the Maze of Death.
_____
This is his twelfth time going through the (newly remodeled and even more deadly) Maze of Death, and would be his fifth time winning. The first three times had him waking up in Hueso’s office, and each time he wakes his old persona shines through.
He always waves off Hueso’s annoyance and questions and insists on trying again next time before he steals some pizza and bails.
The skeleton actively tries to stop him from entering the Maze after the first time, but hey- mystics are allowed before you enter.
It’s easy enough to teleport on by.
Harder to meet Hueso’s - and later his brothers’ - eyes when he fails again.
When he first actually won, Hueso congratulates him in that typical deadpan tone of his.
“Ah, felicidades, Pepino. Now you can move on, sí?”
“Hm? Nah, boneman! That run was sloppy!”
And then Leo runs off before Hueso can stop him.
He doesn’t even look at his picture on the champion wall when he next comes around. It’s not much to look at anyway.
_____
His second win is much like the first, and only his third win is actually acceptable.
But he knows the field too much now. He needs a challenge.
When he attempts to go through it blindfolded, he’s quickly shown how much he doesn’t know the Maze. So, obviously, he loses again.
He got a bit more banged up that time around.
“Pepino, basta ya, you’ve already won. Where are your brothers?”
“I can’t stop yet, señor! This is for my brothers - no les digas, please.”
Even if Hueso wanted to tell Leo’s brothers, they haven’t been in enough for him to get to, and it’s not like Hueso has their number since Leo’s the one Hueso usually contacts. For now, Leo’s safe to continue as is.
Though his injuries are getting harder to hide, and there’s only so much his shell in particular can take.
So to speed things up, he incorporates the blindfold into his regular training.
His brothers question it, of course, but hey, he initially got the idea from seeing Lou Jitsu do it in the third best Lou Jitsu movie, so it comes as a great excuse now.
He’s only a little put off by how fast Mikey adapts to it when the others try.
“I dunno-“ Mikey shrugs when asked, “You guys shine so brightly anyway, a mask doesn’t do much.”
Seeing their mystic energies is pretty cool, Leo can admit.
He just wishes he could grasp that himself - and that it was useful for a death maze.
_____
Leo’s training pulls off eventually, and soon, after a few more losses, he wins a forth time. But it’s a near loss, and a near loss is the difference between someone living and dying.
He’s gotta go again.
Hueso’s more insistent than ever, though.
“You must stop, Pepino.”
“But I can do better-“
“You don’t have to! Your shell is bleeding - ¡por tu propio bien, poner fin a esto!”
“I told you, this is for their own good! For everyone’s own good!”
He forgets the pizzas when he leaves. He claims sickness when he hides under his covers.
He ignores how childish the act makes him feel.
_____
Leo’s getting better, and his reflexes and tact in training shows this. His other training of his subterfuge and medical skills also prove to be useful.
He’s pretty good at hiding injuries, now! Though not so good at hiding a pained shell. Even Donnie looks at him with blatant concern (and understanding) when Leo can’t help but take a sharp breath whenever he lands on his back.
It’s hard not to go right back into waving everything off with jokes like he used to. Deflections are easier when they’re annoying!
But- this is just another reason that he needs to get better, right? So his brothers won’t worry. He doesn’t need the spotlight anymore - he’s over that, thanks.
He squashes down the part of him that perks up when Splinter says he’s growing up. He actively kills the part of himself that cries at the same phrase.
_____
So. Yeah. This’ll be his twelfth time running the Maze. And, hopefully, his fifth win. Maybe he really will move on after this.
The Hidden City is pretty big! There’s probably a bigger challenge somewhere.
Maybe Big Mama has a more secret Nexus hidden away, out of the public eye.
Well, whatever. That’s a future problem for him to figure out, yeah? For now, he carries on like usual, teleporting to the entrance of the Maze and diving right in.
Even blindfolded, he works his way through, dodging and weaving and feeling as he goes. He even tries to evoke his inner Mikey and calls on his mystic energy. Not enough to cheat, but enough to feel.
Usually, when Leo teleports, he swears he feels every part of himself disperse into particles. Now, with energy thrumming under his scales, he can feel particles everywhere.
It’s not refined enough to tell him everything, and he gets a fun new burn and a nice whack to the back by getting distracted. Still, it gives him more than he had before. It makes him more aware of everything, like he licked a finger and held it in the air to feel the direction of wind, but every direction blew wind, all in different ways.
He makes it to the end with minimal injuries after that, and sure, his shell is screaming at him now, but he thinks he did a shell of a good job.
…Ah, he needs to cut that out, huh? Man. Maybe Donnie’s collar idea was a good call after all.
Leo needs to be a hero. Not a face man. Not a failure.
Not a kid.
_____
Leo doesn’t smile when the Minotaur takes his picture again for the champion wall, and he doesn’t listen when she tells him to “go home and never come back.”
He doesn’t plan to, anyway, yeesh.
He’s tired as he trudges out of the exit, and Hueso catches him when he stumbles.
Hueso doesn’t say anything. Leo doesn’t either.
Or, he doesn’t, until he feels a familiar large hand helping him up as well.
Leo’s face whips up as he flinches back, eyes wide as they meet with a worried (so, so worried) Raph’s.
“You told them?” Leo asks Hueso in betrayal, heart thudding wildly in his chest.
“Pepino…”
“Told us what?” Mikey pipes up from behind Raph, coming closer to get a better look at Leo, “Leo, what’s going on?”
“Your shell has been having pretty big setbacks on its healing, is this why?” Donnie demands, glaring fiercely as he motions toward the Maze.
Leo feels unmoored. “I-“
“Leo.” Raph interrupts, and no Leo doesn’t want to hear it- “Are you okay?”
And Leo wants to say “it’s not about me”. He wants to say anything that proved he learned his lesson, that he’s not a liability or worse, an active danger to his own family.
He wants Raph to continue being proud of him. He wants his brothers to trust him.
Instead, he passes out.
_____
The next time his eyes open, Leo’s on his side, staring at his blue lava lamp.
He knows without looking that his shell is re-bandaged. He knows his other injuries have been dealt with too.
And unless Leo learned how to do some pretty impressive medical sleepwalking, he knows he’s not getting away this time.
All three of his brothers being in his room prove that.
“What’s been going on, Leo?” Mikey asks, and his voice cracks partway through.
He’s looking at Leo like he’s searching for something, but Leo doesn’t have anything to show. Nothing’s hidden, he just did some light spring cleaning is all, throwing out all the parts he didn’t need.
All the parts they didn’t need.
And yet despite everything, he can feel himself falling back into old ways, a grin tugging at his beak and lackadaisical deflection on the tip of his tongue.
Maybe he should let that part of him show, just for once. It wouldn’t seem like too much of a setback would it? And he could really use a fun pun right about now-
No.
No it’s not about him. He needs to remember why he did all this in the first place.
“Okay- sorry, guys.” He smiles, softly, quietly, “I guess I got too caught up in training. I’ll work at it some more, don’t worry.”
“Oh, I see. Training. That’s all it was, huh? Training.” Donnie hisses more than says, nearly vibrating in anger.
“…yeah?” Leo nods slowly, because, uh, that’s literally the most honest thing he said. It was training.
“If it’s just “training” then why the secrecy, hm? Why in Curie’s good name did you prefer to sneak around rather than, oh, I don’t know, tell your family?”
Leo feels his shoulders rise at Donnie’s aggression, defensiveness welling up in him, “It was my training! Nothing went wrong, I’m getting better!”
“Better?” Raph asks incredulously, “Leo, you’re wasting away. A tap to the shell stuns you for minutes, you lost weight, and your dark circles are worse than Raph’s ever seen them! You aren’t getting better-!”
“YES I AM!”
The words rip out of Leo before he can stop them.
The room is silent as his brother look at him, all wearing expressions of hurt that Leo put there again.
“Yes I am.” Leo reiterates, shaking, “Because- if I’m not-“ He squeezes his eyes shut. “If I’m not-“
Then what was all this for?
Arms slowly wrap around him, and he knows now from the feel of the mystic that it’s Mikey.
“You’ve gotten faster, and sneakier.” Mikey says quietly. “When I accidentally cut my hand, you knew exactly how to take care of it.” His voice grows firm, and he backs out of the hug, “But those are your skills. You, though, you’ve been…you’ve been…”
“You’ve been dilapidating before our very eyes, and trying to hide it.” Donnie finishes, jaw tight. “You think we wouldn’t notice? After everything?” To Leo’s horror, Donnie’s voice is hoarse with tears, “You absolute dumb dumb.”
“I- but I need to train. The Maze is-“
“Leo, we don’t care that you ran through the Maze. We care you did it alone.” Raph says quietly. “We could have joined you, any time.”
“But- but I’m doing this for you-“
“Listen to your brothers, Blue.” They jump as a new voice joins the fray, heads turning to see Splinter make his way into the - frankly crowded - room.
“Dad, I-“ Leo begins, but trails off, suddenly more unsure than ever in the face of his father.
“It’s good you’re finally picking up training! Especially for your brothers’ sakes! But there’s such a thing as going overboard, you know.” Splinter pokes a sharp claw into Leo’s plastron, “Just because you’re dragging it out this time, doesn’t make this any less of a sacrifice. My son, you’ve taken after Karai an awful lot, haven’t you?”
Leo just looks at his father. At his brothers. Then, he looks down at his calloused hands, bandaged and scarred from overuse.
He swallows dryly. “Is that a bad thing?”
He feels his family crowd in around him, feels his father’s hand on his shoulder.
“It’s not wrong to want to be better, Leonardo.” Splinter says, softly and with so much grief and guilt that Leo can never begin to understand, “But you were never bad to begin with.”
Leo’s breath hitches.
“And-” Splinter’s hands rise up to frame Leo’s face. “You are much too young to ever consider sacrifice the best answer.”
“You got me to relax, Leo. So I’ll do the same for you.” Raph grins, eyes wet, “We’re still kids, right?”
And-
Leo smiles, watery but genuine. “Yeah, Raph. We are.”
429 notes · View notes
lordgrimoire · 1 year
Text
The Amity Parkers
Inspired by This Post, which is long, read the many reblogs and tags and comments, it’s fun!
Tim was Ninety Percent Sure that he was going absolutely insane, granted it was a long time coming. Danny Fenton, his Chemistry teacher and Dash Baxter, his Phys Ed teacher? That was two people from the same practically non-existent town in Illinois, but add onto that the fact that even MORE people kept showing up in Gotham from sleepy little Amity Park and proceeded to either A:Thrive or B:Thrive but with the Energy of a Kryptonian having nonstop contact highs.
After his two teachers, or more accuratly before, there had been Jazz Fenton, a new Psychiatrist working in Gotham and making rather noticeable strides in things. Then arrived her brother and Baxter, who had applied roughly at the same time in the aftermath of a Rogue attack on the cities water treatment plant, and the floodgates seemed to less open more fly off the hinges as though breaching charges had been used. 
Now there were MORE people here, there was Tucker Foley, working at Wayne Enterprises as a coder and a damn terrifying one to boot, Sam Manson, an activist who ended up throwing Tim during one of his Red Robin patrols where he’d come across her “Protest Site” which had been a small park in The Narrows. Wes Weston, a cop, had been giving his coworkers and his Chem teacher NOTHING but grief, insisting that Fenton was doing “Something” wrong but never quite being able to get things to stick, upon further digging this had been a long running one sided rivalry. There was also a SECOND Psychiatrist, Paulina Sanchez, at Gotham Academy who was also from Amity Park, and her files were airtight, as Damian’s most recent hacking attempt and Tim’s own follow up had failed to breach her firewalls.
So, here Tim was, staring at Danielle “Dani/Ellie” Masters, Dr. Fenton’s CLONE and the Academies newest but also most feral teacher as she boxed the Joker hard enough for an audible crack to be heard from their classroom from where she was fighting the demented clown on the field. Baxter was still running his class as normal, though a bit further away, and Dr. Fenton was still teaching their class, while Tim was trying to get Extra Credit and vengeance on the Doctor through today’s extra credit task, making a tracker that could track Doctor Fenton for Twenty Four Hours. 
Why was he seeking vengeance you ask? Well given the fact that Jason brought Doctor Fenton to Family Dinner last week [with Alfred’s blessing] and had come in with the most gremlin-esque energy he’d seen from a Non-Rogue. Now don’t get Tim wrong, he likes Doctor Fenton, he may be demented as all get out but he was regularly making counters to drugs and toxins that seemed to just inhabit Gotham. BUT! Doctor Fenton and Jason had been so sickeningly cutes-y with each other at Dinner, like a couple of Birds of Paradise trying to one up each other.
Then of course was the “Story Time” where the two had teamed up to tell embarrassing stories, though Danny held back, a touch. It didn’t absolve him, especially with how he egged on Jason, which very much didn’t help the whole “I know you’re the Bats” situation. AND THEN! There was the fact that a majority of the Amity Parkers KNEW that they were the Bats, It was as though they had gone through this whole song and dance before, which given prior statements of Doctor Fenton having “Hung up the Cape” seemed to imply he used to be a hero in Amity Park, where your average joe could one on one a rank and file leaguer or at least give them a rough time.
The fact that a semester of training from Baxter and Fenton alone had made Tim’s year group capable of facing off with the JL  was a testament to that.
Speaking of which, some Junior Leaguers were coming to Gotham, if only for a place where they were not as “Strange”. Some of those moves may have been encouraged with the recent custody battle between Luthor against Vlad and Danielle Masters regarding Connor, who was a Copyrighted clone as it turns out, which had resulted  in Connor being made a ward of Danielle Masters, who had chewed Superman out HARD along with her Original, Doctor Danny Fenton himself.
Suffice to say, Clark did NOT get majority of Custody, and only got every third weekend, which was terrifying in Tim’s opinion that this small town mayor who was as wealthy as Luthor, had turned up, legally thrashed Luthor, and then given custody over to his daughter, thrashed SUPERMAN with KRYPTONIAN LAWS, and then gone back to Amity Park Illinois to resume his Mayor-ship there. The fact the town was essentially a self governing and self sufficient region  meant that the League was now VERY AWARE of it, and the fact that the League of Assassins had tried and FAILED multiple times to infiltrate the town, with more people going rogue than staying loyal, with only one out of nearly two hundred assassins returning to Nanda Parabat, critically wounded and very much insane.
In Tim’s opinion? Amity Park raised people similar too but far more prepared than Gothamites, for while Gothamites may have the Fight in their bones, Amity Parkers seem ready to back it up with experience, training, and life experience. 
But then again, Mr. Lancer had been an immigrant to Amity Park, and he was the blueprint of sorts for all of his students who had gone into teaching, much the same for how Batman was the Blueprint for all the other Bats.
____________________________________________
Tagging some Folks included in the Masterpost
@plotwholls @welcometosasakiworld @bonebrokebuddy @transsunmoonwizzard @omnicrafts @vala-dreams @fox-sama97 @tired-mom @kyrianclawraith @americano-psycho @mikami1992 @thecatchat @stealingyourbones @mutable-manifestation @britcision @dxrksong @kawaiikenna @mrowsters @the-gay-florist @thatgaydemigodnerd @0satellite0 @afanofmanyships @pencil-for-a-dog @any-mouse
1K notes · View notes
Note
Ok, I just read your sweet yandere post and would like to add something.
I love the idea of like a mafia boss yandere or someone who is usually cruel (like maybe a Hades sort of character) but is an absolute sweet heart to their darling. One of my fave tropes
OOOOOOH I LOVE THIS TROPE! I have a character who's just like this actually, a total sweetheart to whoever he's with but has a very low tolerance for most other people.
Sorry, this is a long one lol
I'm gonna make headcanons now because you've inspired me lol.
(Banner/divider credit goes to @cafekitsune)!
Tw: Kidnapping, mentions of violence
Tumblr media
Mafia boss! Charlie who is no stranger to violence. He's lived his entire life surrounded by it, in fact. Having a mafia boss for a father will do that to you, he guesses.
Mafia boss! Charlie who's spent his whole life working for the mafia, being trained to kill, smuggle, and deal ever since he was a child. He grew up living a life of crime, rising up the ranks (thanks to his father), before taking over as the boss when his father was killed by an unruly client.
Mafia boss! Charlie who's a cruel, ruthless man. He's killed dozens of people, injured many more, and runs his organization with an iron fist. He may be young, but he's learned enough to know that any show of trust, any display of kindness is a show of weakness, a show of vulnerability. He can't afford that, not when he's the head of the mafia, so he makes sure to make it so that no one will question or challenge his authority by any means necessary.
Mafia boss! Charlie who has very few real friends, keeping those he does have at an arm's length. He'd rather die than admit that he craves real relationships, that he desires to make genuine, true connections with others. But he can't, so he pushes his wants to the side, reminding himself that his only purpose is to keep his business running smoothly, nothing more.
Until he sees you, that is.
Mafia boss! Charlie who meets you out on a grocery run one day. Your interaction is nothing special, at least to you, but Charlie can't help but marvel at how easily you make conversation with him while ringing up his items, how seemingly unfazed you are by his snappy attitude and unapproachable appearance. It's been a long, long time since he's met anyone unafraid of him, and those people are usually rivals who are too cocky for their own good. So this, this is new. He knows it's stupid, he knows that your tiny interaction shouldn't have mattered much to someone like him, but he can't help but feel giddy about the connection he's sure he felt.
Mafia boss! Charlie who, against his better judgment, wastes no time in trying to find out who you are. It's not hard, he has an entire organization full of trained trackers, stalkers, and informants at his disposal, and by the end of the day, he has your full name, address, social media accounts, family tree, medical records, and much more safely in his welcoming hands. He knows this is a bit overkill considering he only met you today and your interaction lasted five minutes at most, but now that he has a taste of real human interaction, he's addicted. He needs more.
Mafia boss! Charlie who quickly becomes awestruck and obsessed with you. His whole life, he's been surrounded by the craftiest, cruelest. most violent people imaginable, so to see someone, especially someone as precious as you, live a completely normal life, naive to the dangers he faces everyday? It's captivating! Of course, he can't follow you all day, he is a mafia boss after all, but he has enough people following you around and recording your every move that he doesn't need to! He's never been happier to be who his is than now.
Mafia boss! Charlie who thinks you're the most beautiful person in the world. You're a sweet little thing, too gentle and too unaware of the dangers around you for your own good. He loves everything about you, no matter how weird or embarrassing. He's content to watch you carefully for a couple months, but as time goes on, his need to feel our touch, to talk to you, to see you face to face is too much. He needs you. He needs you NOW. It doesn't help that you're so vulnerable and weak compared to him, with no knowledge of weaponry or stealth to keep you safe. What if someone were to try and hurt you? Of course, his goons wouldn't let that happen, not if they wanted to keep their organs, but he would feel so much better if he could keep an eye on you personally. Not to mention, every mafia boss needs a spouse, and some of his higher ranking associates have been hinting that it's about time he found someone...
Mafia boss! Charlie who immediately starts planning your "transfer" to his house, meticulously drafting out every last detail to secure your safety. He chooses his best, most skilled employees to carry out his plan, only the best for his darling, and sends them out to bring you "home". That day you come home from work, completely unaware of the people in your apartment, completely unaware of the sleeping pills dumped into your water while you weren't looking.
Mafia boss! Charlie who's ecstatic to finally have you with him, to finally have someone to hold, to talk to, to love. He brings your unconscious body to your new room, laying you softly on the bed while instructing his employees to pack up all your belongings and bring them to him. He doesn't tie you down or chain you up, he has enough security measures in place to make sure you won't be able to escape. You won't even be able to leave your room without him being notified.
Mafia boss! Charlie who watches the camera in your room as you wake up for the first time in your new home, confused and disoriented. All of your stuff is here, but this is NOT your apartment. Where are you? He watches as you start to freak out, guilt flashing through him for the first time in his life. He doesn't want you to be scared, he just wants to keep you safe!
Mafia boss! Charlie who sends one of his gentler employees into your room to explain everything, too afraid of scaring you even further by showing up himself. He waits a few days before revealing himself to you, when your terror has calmed down and you've become more familiar with your surroundings. He kind of just stands there, unable to formulate a sentence, which is extremely unnerving to you. You've been told you're to be married to a highly respected and violent mafia boss, and here he is, just...staring. When he opens his mouth to speak, your surprised at how soft his voice is, calmly explaining to you that you're safe, you won't be hurt. He reaches out his hand to touch you, but recoils when you flinch, not wanting to push you.
Mafia boss! Charlie who does everything he can to make you more comfortable and less afraid of him, getting you anything and everything you've ever shown interest in, giving you as much space as you need, and letting roam the rather large house freely. All you can't do is leave. He doesn't understand why you're still so scared, sure he's a criminal, but he promised he would never hurt you!
Mafia boss! Charlie who gets more desperate for your love as time goes on. He starts appearing in whatever room your in, softly talking to you about his day or about whatever you're doing, trying to get you to be more comfortable with him. Once you've gotten used to that, he starting slowly initiating physical contact, holding you in his arms like he's never going to let you go (because he won't). He tried his hardest not to push your boundaries, but eventually his need to be near you becomes too great. Rest assured though, he would never, ever dream of hurting you or purposely scaring you.
Mafia boss! Charlie who can't get enough of the feeling of your skin on his. He starts hugging/cuddling you whenever he can, holding you like you'll break if he presses too hard. He's always near you, cuddling up to you while telling you about how much he loves you, adoration shining in his eyes. He's the clingiest at night though, whispering sweet nothings into your ear as you fall asleep, him watching over you until he succumbs to his own tiredness. And his kisses? They are the softest, fluffiest thing you've ever felt. He cannot get enough of your lips, and he always kisses you passionately, like you'll disappear once he separates from you. With how loving and gentle he is, it doesn't take long for you to start loving him back.
Mafia boss! Charlie who starts giving you more privileges the farther you fall into stockholm. He'll even start taking you out in public on dates once he thinks there's no chance of you trying to escape him. He'd be able to find you if you did, he has many, many connections, but he trusts you won't. He loves going out with you and doing normal, coupley things with you, it's a nice break from his usual, violent life.
Mafia boss! Charlie who is insanely protective of you, never leaving you alone in a room with anyone except for himself. He knows how dangerous it is to be associated with him and now that he has you, he refuses to let anything happen to you. Any rival who attempts to hurt, kill, or kidnap you is met with Charlie himself, who enacts the most brutal, torturous death he can possibly think of on them. Nobody will come close to hurting you, he'll make sure of it. But no matter what happens, he'll always make sure you're far, far away from the violence. He never wants to subject you to the horrors he's seen (and done).
Mafia boss! Charlie who feels awful the first time you hear him raise his voice. It wasn't at you of course, he would never, ever think of yelling at his darling, you just happened to be in the room when he was meeting with one of his associates. It's scary seeing him yell, threatening brutal acts of violence on his own employee, and for the first time you realize how different he is with others than he is with you. He's quick to shut the meeting down once he realizes you're there, spending the rest of the night apologizing to you and assuring you he would never speak to you like that. This'll be the first time he truly opens up about what his job is like and why he has to be as cruel as he is, trying to help you understand why he behaved the way he did. It's difficult for him to make himself vulnerable, but he'd gladly to it if it meant easing your mind. From then on, he makes absolute sure you aren't around whenever he has to take care of business. He refuses to let you see him like that ever again.
Mafia boss! Charlie who never lets you forget how much he needs you in his life. You're the only thing keeping him from devolving into insanity, he wouldn't know how to handle himself if you were gone. He'll give you everything and anything if you listen to him and stay by his side, so please... please don't try to leave him.
Not that you would be able to, anyway.
148 notes · View notes
tempvstas · 5 months
Note
Um. Hello. Could I request Vil, Leona, and Jamil with a baker s/o? And when I say baker, I'm talking a baker that can make anything from a simple batch of cookies to those extravagant cakes you find on Pinterest.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Content Warning(s): none
Character(s): GN!Reader(no pronouns mentioned), Vil Schoenheit, Leona Kingscholar, Jamil Viper
Authors Notes: baking pog!
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Tumblr media
Vil Schoenheit
He's impressed by your abilities, and he thinks it's pretty impressive that you can make such intricate designs
Definitely takes a few pictures and posts them on his Magicam story, he's smug when he sees so many people praising your skills. He's like "That's right, my s/o made that."
He has to adhere to a strict diet so he wouldn't stuff his face with your sweets, but he feels bad when you stare at him expectantly, waiting for him to try it. Instead, he'll encourage you to share it with your friends, saying that you thinking of him in the first place is good enough for him.
Tumblr media
Leona Kingscholar
He's not a big fan of sweets unfortunately, he'll probably eat one or two of your cookies, but any more than that is too much for him.
Since he doesn't eat much of your sweets, he likes to watch you work. He thinks it's cute when you're focused, especially when you specifically scrunch up your nose.
Would definitely hug you from behind if it's just the two of you letting you do your thing. It's a win-win for him, he gets to hold onto you and keep you close to him while you get to work on what you want.
Tumblr media
Jamil Viper
Jamil knows his way around the kitchen, so if you need any assistance with anything, he's more than happy to help assist you.
He's content with doing things his way, but if you have a specific way of doing things, like a routine when it comes to making baked goods he won't impede on it.
He might ask for your assistance for Kalim's numerous parties. He's always tasked with making large amounts of food, but this gives him an excuse to get him job done, but also time to be able to spend with you.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Back to Navigation [ ❖ ]
Back to the Masterlist [ ❖ ]
Request Tracker [ ❖ ]
277 notes · View notes
yanderefictinallove · 2 months
Text
PT. 2 Yandere Hazbin Hotel Headcanons
A/n: rosie is pretty asf
Rosie🍖🌹
Tumblr media
She is very passive on anything negative, you have to say, like if u were in one of your fits. She would say something like, "Aww sweetie, you're just hungry, here have a finger." Ingnoring the please to go home.
She likes to dress up in the bedroom. Surprisingly, she wears lacey pretty lingere. She bites you just to satisfy her cannibal hunger, tho. Her favorite thing is aftercare. She likes the chaos, but the peace is also nice at times.
~The Darling Overloard~
🌹🍖🌹🍖🌹🍖🌹🍖🌹🍖🌹🍖🌹🍖🌹🍖🌹🍖
Vox🖥💵
Tumblr media
He is a chatter box. He never FUCKING shuts up. He has cameras watching your every move, from sleeping to a shower.
He rants and tells you about how much he hates the radio demon. All you wanna do is go home.
He is an insecure asshole, so he always has to prove that he is better than everyone and show he is the better "lover" bc that love is one-sided.
Something I noticed is that Vox talks very fast and seems to be very snarky, and I think that he makes you agree or do things you don't wanna do. He uses his hellish talking.
Feed his ego and you will be fine....I think
~Demon Of Tv~
💵🖥💵🖥💵🖥💵🖥💵🖥💵🖥💵🖥💵🖥💵🖥
Valentino💋💵
Tumblr media
He's a pimp, but when it comes to you, you are only for him. He spoils you, and honestly, he kinda seems out of character.
Till you want privacy or space. He trows shit and punches walls. This can also happen if he wants to record you and you refuse to undress on camera, shit, it was hard for you to get undressed willingly because, well, you were taken by force.
He can be ruthless and unbearable at times, he fucks any negative emotions out of you, weather u wanna or not.
You also get a lot of forced affection.
~The Moth Pimp~
💋💵💋💵💋💵💋💵💋💵💋💵💋💵💋💵💋💵
Velvet📱💵
Tumblr media
Very demanding yandere, when she tells you to come you come, if she says speak, speak, and if she says put this dress on, you say with pleasure.
She loves to dress you up, especially if there is an important event. She makes sure you are matching.
You are always posted on her social media, and she makes sure that you are used in advertisements.
She definitely has a tracker on her phone so she can find you easily.
~The Backbone Of The V's~
📱💵📱💵📱💵📱💵📱💵📱💵📱💵📱💵📱💵
Cherri Bomb🍒💣
Tumblr media
She is actually very laid back and cool. Sure, she can be forceful at times, but she still tries to understand were your coming from
She makes you drink a lot with her when you two are alone. She let's you walk around town, but not into certain parts.
She can be very gentle and cuddly, she loves to hold you though abd lay back and talk about life or afterlife or both.
She's not bad to be around.
~Cherri Bomb~
💣🍒💣🍒💣🍒💣🍒💣🍒💣🍒💣🍒💣🍒💣🍒
All done next is probably love letters, most likely...definitely
Stay tuned
Request: Open
176 notes · View notes
oleander-nin · 3 months
Note
Hi how do you think Yandere Leo and Yandere Donnie (together) hcs from rise would act as platonic yanderes friends who don’t wanna share the readers with others , turtles rather keep the reader to themselves , but what if reader got hurt by one of the villains how do the turtles react to that 👀
A/N, not important: Sorry for the late post. I've been busy. Any criticism is welcome, constructive or not. This is supposed to be a gender neutral reader, so if I screwed up somewhere, please tell me.
-Ollie
CW: Kidnapping, possession of a friend, manipulation, isolation, losing all friends, toxic behavior, toxic friendship, gaslighting(technically), hint towards murder, yandere behavior
Words: 718
Summary: ROTTMNT Platonic Yandere Leo and Donnie headcanons of when you get hurt
Tag list: @f1oricide @itsyagurlchip @lordfreg @acutiewithagun @rottmnttmnt2012 @lixnininotnay @lexiechr @ssak-i
They’d both be clingy, constantly vying for your individual attention while also trying to not annoy you to the point of attempting to remove them from your life. While they have you in their sights, neither is immediately trying to kidnap you off the bat. They like knowing you’re choosing to come to them. It gives them a superior feeling to the other people you used to call friends, even if they’re the reason you no longer have any other friends.
Neither let you go for very long without seeing one of them. They can’t go a day without checking in on you in person. Text or calls doesn’t cut it.
Leo loves to send you memes and funny videos, and gets upset if you don’t respond/react to them. He’ll probably end up at your window within half an hour of you missing a text, worried something happened to you.
Have slowly driven a wedge between you and all of your other friends, effectively isolating you. Neither Leo nor Donnie even let you hang out much with Raph or Mikey, preferring to keep you as reliant on them as possible. You’re their friend, and they’re the only friends you’ll ever need.
They’ll insist on sleepovers, or you staying over with them a lot. Leo especially likes to guilt trip you into staying over, constantly whining on how you’re avoiding them if you don’t. They’re trying to get you used to staying with them, hoping that the longer you spend with them, the less likely you’ll fight back when they decide you can’t leave.
They’re also incredibly protective of you, always judging who you’re with or who you want to make friends with. They have something on every person you try to form a bond with, trying to feed into your paranoia while painting themselves as your heroes. Donnie and Leo aren’t like everyone else, you can trust them.
Because of the different ways Leo and Donnie handle things with you, it ends up being in their benefit. You’re mad at Leo? Donnie will spend time with you and try to calm you down while making you see Leo’s point of view. You found Donnie’s tracker and are avoiding him? Of course Leo knew nothing about it, but can you blame Donnie? He’s only trying to keep you safe.
Their tag teaming makes it so you will never be able to have a break from them, and you won’t ever be able to be mad at one without the other coming to show you all the reasons you shouldn’t be.
They try their best to keep you away from the dangers of their ‘work’, telling you recounts of their fights while making sure you’ll never see one firsthand. They want to impress you and make you feel like they will be able to keep you safe, but never want you to be in the line of fire. Your safety will always be their top priority.
So when you show up with bruises and scratches one day, they’re both immediately on high alert. Both are nearly immediately up in arms and ready to kill as you tell them what happened. By the time you finish your account, Donnie’s already located the villain responsible and is having SHELLDON track their every move.
Neither of them leave your side until you’re feeling better and patched up. They’re delighted you came to them, and know that if they left now, you’d be upset while having to deal with your pain and fear alone. They’ll set up your favorite movie for you in the projector room, swaddling you in blankets and ordering your favorite take out.
As soon as you’ve calmed down, and hopefully fallen asleep, they’ll both go find who hurt you, and make sure they’ll never be able to hurt a single hair on you again.
When they return, they make sure to not alert you as they finally finish their preparations to the small train car they converted into your new room. The world is too dangerous for you, especially now that they’ve failed to protect you. They swear to never let something happen to you ever again, even if it means never letting you go. Which is fine by them, it’s not like this isn’t exactly what they wanted.
176 notes · View notes
Text
to expand lightly on my theory post regarding some of what might be afoot this season (devised and parsed through in collaboration with @stone-stars)
the actions against cassandra and kristen are a revenge plot, orchestrated by a combination of sol, galicaea, and helio. they each have their own vendettas contributing to this. sol has beef with kristen due to the “wholeheartedly reject all offers” scene, where he does turn on her first. he also was incapacitated in freshman year because she let aguefort into his domain. i imagine a sun god isn’t super pleased that there were 4 months of endless night. he also might not like cassandra due to who she used to be. helio once chose kristen and continued to supply her with spells despite her rejection of him and his teachings. she refused to spend any time with him and literally punched him in the face. he’s got some baggage there, for sure. galicaea experienced the first time kristen and cassandra connected, her attempt at convincing kristen was disrupted by the goddess eventually known as cassandra. her followers were responsible for killing the initial version of cassandra. her followers are now facing a revival due to tracker’s pilgrimage (kristen’s ex) and she’s just petty enough to blame kristen for that. plus, her snooty self hated her wolfy side. this revival would arguably make the snootier elves double down on that hatred. as above, so below.
the goings on against fig and the establishment of her cool new horrible luck are probably coming from a devil. the pride armor vision showed that it had ties to that sort of thing. and devils are lawful. fig is not. her ascension into the seat of the bottomless pit was on a technicality and the people who presided over it immediately hated that it happened. she’s been busy (she’s a mortal teen attempting to save the world) and has neglected her hellish domain on a similar level to her father, who lost his job about it. the lawful operatives running hell would not take kindly to that. so they could (would) reach out to her in a moment of her weakness and hand off a curse, as punishment. because hell is also about punishment.
now, i’m sure you’re thinking: why are these in the same post? easy. because i think they’re connected.
the rage stones that were corrupting cassandra and the mages were similar to what happened to ragh’s mom, as zac figured out. lydia is in a medically prolonged state of rage to keep the devil in her chest at bay. (there are some discrepancies over whether it’s a devil or a demon. but i trust ragh to know those minor details over arthur “i forgot to tell lydia i was doing this” aguefort). if something kept back by a prolonged state of rage was given leave to attempt its influence on something (on the astral plane, no less, where rules are almost always different), perhaps its influence would be rage inducing. and, just as she was taken over by one of these stones, kalina, who knew about lydia’s status in sophomore year since she did try to kill lydia, called out “ragh barkrock!”, bringing up another clear and direct connection.
the nightmare king sided with demons during the blood wars. the devils trapped the nightmare king in the forest (this is why arianwen needed gorthalax and why fig’s promotion was vital to their success). the devils would probably want to fight back. the gods we’ve met would probably dislike the imbalance that comes from establishing a new god, especially one who is a riff on one they already destroyed (cassandra establishes that she is not the same goddess she was before her sister killed her. but there have to be similarities. and maybe galicaea doesn’t know that).
the first time we meet our beloved garthy o’brien, they talk about how devils (they say fiends but are explicitly talking about devils and not demons) and celestials and gods are not simply opposed. they’re part of a system that balances out all its parts. angels fall. devils could rise. they work together as part of a bigger system.
so. so. if two specific mortals and their merry band of idiot friends are in direct opposition to some of the most powerful and petty entities in the universe, would they not want to perhaps join forces to attempt to take them down? especially if it could come from freeing one (“important”) devil from decades of being trapped, restoring balance further?
bonus here is the idea that bill seacaster’s goal in hell is to “kill the devil himself”, and perhaps he’s getting too close for comfort and balance must be maintained somehow. and what better way to distract him than by threatening his son?
plus, we know cassandra’s “i thought you were dead” wasn’t directed at kalina or the nightmare king. but maybe, in her brief time back as a god, she noticed the absence of a particular devil. and thought they might have died, when they were actually just trapped.
all that being said, it’s a fun theory to me and maybe we’re completely wrong. but everything we thought about more made it make more sense, which is a wild experience.
176 notes · View notes
Text
Kickstarting the Red Team Blues audiobook, which Amazon won't sell (read by Wil Wheaton!)
Tumblr media
Red Team Blues is my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller; it’s a major title for my publishers Tor Books and Head of Zeus, and it’s swept the trade press with starred reviews all ‘round. Despite all that, Audible will not sell the audiobook. In fact, Audible won’t sell any of my audiobooks. Instead, I have to independently produce them and sell them through Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/anti-finance-finance-thriller/#marty-hench
Audible is Amazon’s monopoly audiobook platform. It has a death-grip on the audiobook market, commanding more than 90% of genre audiobook sales, and every single one of those audiobooks is sold with Amazon’s DRM on it. That means that you can’t break up with Amazon without throwing away those audiobooks. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, I can’t give you a tool to convert my own copyrighted audiobooks to a non-Amazon format. Doing so is a felony carrying a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for an act that in no way infringes anyone’s copyright! Indeed, merely infringing copyright is much less illegal than removing Amazon’s mandatory DRM from my own books!
Tumblr media
I’ve got amazing publishers who support my crusade against DRM, but they’re not charities. If they can’t sell my audiobooks on the platform that represents 90% of the market, they’re not going to make audio editions at all. Instead, I make my own audiobooks, using brilliant voice actors like Amber Benson and @neil-gaiman​, and I sell them everywhere except Audible.
Doing this isn’t cheap: I’m paying for an incredible studio (Skyboat Media), a world-class director (Gabrielle de Cuir), top-notch sound editing and mastering, and, of course, killer narrators. And while indie audiobook platforms like Libro.fm and downpour.com are amazing, the brutal fees extracted by Apple and Google on app sales means that users have to jump through a thousand hoops to shop with indie stores. Most audiobook listeners don’t even know that these stores exist: if a title isn’t available on Audible, they assume no audiobook exists.
Tumblr media
That’s where Kickstarter comes in: twice now, I’ve crowdfunded presales of my audiobooks through KS, and these campaigns were astoundingly successful, smashing records and selling thousands of audiobooks. These campaigns didn’t just pay my bills (especially during lockdown, when our household income plunged), but they also showed other authors that it was possible to evade Amazon’s monopoly chokepoint and sell books that aren’t sticky-traps for Audible’s walled garden/prison:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/90282-we-wrote-a-book-about-why-audible-won-t-sell-our-book-and-snuck-it-onto-audible.html
And today, I’m launching the Kickstarter for Red Team Blues, and even by the standards of my previous efforts, I think this one’s gonna be incredible.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell
For starters, there’s the narrator: @wilwheaton​, whose work on my previous books is outstanding, hands-down my favorite (don’t tell my other narrators! They’re great too!):
https://wilwheaton.net/
Beyond Wil’s narration, there’s the subject matter. The hero of Red Team Blues is a hard-charging forensic accountant who’s untangled every Silicon Valley finance scam since he fell in love with spreadsheets as as a MIT freshman, dropped out, got his CPA ticket, and moved west. Now, at the age of 67, Marty Hench is ready to retire, but a dear old friend — a legendary cryptographer — drags him back for one last job — locating the stolen keys to the backdoor he foolishly hid in a cryptocurrency that’s worth more than a billion dollars.
Tumblr media
That’s the starting gun for a “grabby next-Tuesday thriller” that sees Marty in between three-letter agencies and international crime syndicates, all of whom view digital technology as a carrier medium for scams, violence and predation. Marty’s final adventure involves dodgy banks, crooked crypto, and complicit officials in a fallen paradise where computers’ libertory promise has been sucked dry by billionaire vampires.
It’s a pretty contemporary story, in other words.
I wrote this one before SVB, before Sam Bankman0Fried and FTX — just like I wrote Little Brother before Snowden’s revelations. It’s not that I’m prescient — fortune-telling is a fatalist’s delusion — it’s that these phenomena are just the most spectacular, most recent examples in a long string of ghastly and increasingly dire scandals.
Red Team Blues blasted out of my fingertips in six weeks flat, during lockdown, when technology was simultaneously a lifeline, connecting us to one another during our enforced isolation; and a tool of predatory control, as bossware turned our “work from home” into “live at work.”
The last time I wrote a book that quickly, it was Little Brother, and, as with Little Brother, Red Team Blues is a way of working out my own anxieties and hopes for technology on the page, in story.
Tumblr media
These books tap into a nerve. I knew I had something special in my hands when, the night after I finished the first draft, I rolled over at 2AM to find my wife sitting up in bed, reading.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I had to find out how it ended,” she answered.
The next day, my editor sent me a four-line email:
That. Was. A! Fucking! Ride! Whoa!
Within a week, he’d bought Red Team Blues…and two sequels. I finished writing the second of these on Monday, and all three are coming out in the next 22 months. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
Tumblr media
Kickstarter backers can get the usual goodies: DRM-free audiobooks and ebooks, hardcovers (including signed and personalized copies), and three very special, very limited-run goodies.
First, there’s naming rights for characters in the sequels — I’m selling three of these; they’re a form of cheap (or at least, reasonably priced) literary immortality for you or a loved one. The sequels are a lot of fun — they go in reverse chronology, and the next one is The Bezzle, out in Feb 2024, a book about prison-tech scams, crooked LA County Sheriff’s Deputy gangs, and real-estate scumbags turned techbros.
Tumblr media
The third book is Picks and Shovels (Jan 2025), and it’s Marty’s first adventure after he comes west to San Francisco and ends up working for the bad guys, an affinity scam PC company called “Three Wise Men” that’s run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi who fleece their faithful with proprietary, underpowered computers and peripherals, and front for some very bad, very violent money-men.
Next, there’s three Marty Hench short story commissions: the Hench stories are machines for turning opaque finance scams into technothrillers. While finance bros use MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) as a weapon to bore their marks into submission, I use the same performative complexity as the engines of taut detective stories. Commissioning a Hench story lets you turn your favorite MEGO scam into a science fiction story, which I’ll then shop to fiction websites (every story I’ve written for the past 20 years has sold, though in the event that one of these doesn’t, I’ll put it up under a CC license).
Tumblr media
Finally, there’s a super-ultra-limited deluxe hardcover edition — and I do mean limited, just four copies! These leather-bound editions have Will Staehle’s fantastic graphic motif embossed in their covers, and the type design legend John D Berry is laying out the pages so that there’s space for a hidden cavity. Nestled in that cavity is a hand-bound early draft edition of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues. The binding is being done by the fantastic book-artist John DeMerritt. Each copy’s endpapers will feature a custom cryptographic puzzle created especially for it by the cryptographer Bruce Schneier.
I often hear from readers who want to thank me for the work I do, from the free podcast I’ve put out since 2006 to the free, CC BY columns I’ve written for Pluralistic for the past three years. There is no better way to thank me than to back this Kickstarter and encourage your friends to do the same:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell
Preselling a ton of audiobooks, ebooks, and print books is a huge boost to the book on its launch — incomparable, really. Invaluable.
Tumblr media
What’s more, helping me find a viable way to produce popular, widely heard audiobooks without submitting to Amazon’s DRM lock-in sets an example for other creators and publishers: we have a hell of a collective action problem to solve, but if we could coordinate a response to Audible demanding the right to decide whether our work should have their DRM, it would force Audible to treat all of us — creators, publishers and listeners — more fairly.
I’ll be heading out on tour to the US, Canada, the UK and Germany once the book is out. I’m really looking forward to as many backers in person as I can! Thank you for your support over these many long years — and for your support on this Kickstarter.
Tumblr media
Today (Mar 22), I’m doing a remote talk for the Institute for the Future’s “Changing the Register” series.
[Image ID: A graphic showing a phone playing the Red Team Blues audiobok, along with a quote from Booklist, 'Jam-packed with cutting-edge ideas about cybersecurity and crypto. Another winner from an sf wizard.']
1K notes · View notes