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coochiequeens · 5 months

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Critically-acclaimed transgender horror author hails Osama bin Laden's 'principled' destruction of Twin Towers - months after sharing her desire to slit JK Rowling's throat

Gretchen Felker-Martin, a well-known transgender horror author and journalist, tweeted on Thursday that she admired bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks

Felker-Martin, who in February declared that she wanted to slit JK Rowling's throat, later deleted the tweet and apologized

Bin Laden has returned to public consciousness this week thanks to TikTok users suddenly 'discovering' his 2002 'Letter to America' justifying 9/11

By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 22:56 EST, 17 November 2023 | UPDATED: 23:32 EST, 17 November 2023

A transgender horror author who sparked outrage earlier this year by threatening to slit JK Rowling's throat has hailed Osama bin Laden's destruction of the Twin Towers.

Gretchen Felker-Martin on Thursday joined in the chorus of admiration for the al-Qaeda leader, sparked by TikTokers suddenly 'discovering' his rational for 9/11.

The Massachusetts-based author wrote on X, where she has 30,000 followers: 'Can pretty safely state that bin Laden and I did not, uh, agree on much, but blowing up the World Trade Center is probably the most principled and defensible thing he did.'

Bin Laden's 2002 'Letter to America' has been circulating widely this week, in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war.

TikTok users say that bin Laden opened their eyes to American foreign policy and taught them valuable lessons about global geopolitics. The revival in interest, and ignorance of bin Laden's ideas, have caused shock and anger.

Felker-Martin on Friday deleted the tweet, and apologized. She previously shared her desire to cut JK Rowling's throat over the Harry Potter author's stance on transgender issues.

Gretchen Felker-Martin posted, then deleted, a tweet praising Osama bin Laden

The other day in a moment of distress I talked out my ass to play devil's advocate in a tasteless, needless way,' she tweeted.

'I sincerely regret it, and I apologize to anyone hurt or offended by my thoughtless words.'

But one X user pointed out that she had praised bin Laden in the past.

He cited Felker-Martin's August 2020 tweet, justifying the September 11 attacks.

'The huge crime of 9/11 is that the s*** we do every day overseas gets done to us exactly once,' she said.

The revival of the 2002 document has bemused and enraged many.

The White House expressed dismay at the resurgence of interest in the letter.

'There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history – highlighting them as his direct motivation for murdering 2,977 innocent Americans,' said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House.

'And no one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden.

'Particularly now, at a time of rising antisemitic violence in the world, and just after Hamas terrorists carried out the worst slaughter of the Jewish people since the Holocaust in the name of the same conspiracy theories.

'Like President Biden said this year in remembrance of the Americans who lost their lives because of Osama bin Laden, 'it's more important now than ever that we come together' against a 'rising tide of hatred and extremism.''

TikTok said they will be removing all content invoking the letter.

'Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,' TikTokPolicy wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter.

'We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.'

The video-sharing platform claims the number of videos on TikTok is 'small' and 'reports of it trending [on the] platform is inaccurate.'

'This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media,' the post added.

Videos with the hashtag 'LettertoAmerica' have been viewed 7.3 million times.

Extraordinarily the majority are claiming support for bin Laden's reasoning - without a thought for the freedoms he criticizes.

The letter began to gain traction online after UK newspaper The Guardian linked to a 2002 article, which translated it in full, in a piece about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

It was subsequently deleted, with the outlet explaining to DailyMail.com that it was being shared 'without its original context.'

The letter continued to spread on X but was prevented from spreading on Reddit.

The Guardian did not explain further as to how the link was made between the current conflict in the Middle East and a verbatim letter from bin Laden that was more than 20 years old.

The link to the letter spread, with hundreds of TikTokers posting videos in response to reading it, in which they appear to confuse the hateful diatribe for an intellectual think piece.

The letter was originally posted with an article explaining that the original version was in Arabic in a website used by al-Qaeda to 'disseminate messages and 'was sent to hundreds of subscribers to an email list run by Mohammed al-Massari, the UK-based Saudi Arabian dissident.'

The message added that the US government was included on the list.

The various trending videos about the letter include no context around bin Laden's life as a jihadist.

In other sections of his correspondence, bin Laden blames the US government for spreading AIDS throughout the world, described homosexuality as 'immoral' and sought to turn America into an oppressive religious state similar to Afghanistan.

The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins who posted a video on November 14.

'I need everyone to stop what they're doing right now and go read - it's literally two pages - go read 'A Letter to America,'' she said.

In his infamous letter, Bin Laden ranted that the treatment of Palestinian people had to be 'revenged' and expressed justifications for the killing of civilians in the name of jihad.

Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid on his compound in Pakistan in May 2011.

'The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq,' bin Laden wrote.

For this reason, the Saudi Arabian terrorist wrote, all Americans and Jewish people were culpable for 'the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against [Muslims].'

Bin Laden wrote that AIDS was a 'Satanic American Invention' and repeatedly made anti-Semitic remarks including suggesting that American society was infiltrated by Jewish people who 'control your policies, media and economy.'

Felker-Martin is no stranger to courting controversy.

Earlier this year, named a series of writers she accused of transphobia - including Rowling - in a tweet sent on February 12.

She added: 'If they all had one throat, man.'

She had earlier decried the murder of British transgender teenager Brianna Ghey 16, and suggested Rowling and her ilk had stoked violence which led to the killing.

Another writer she railed against, journalist Jesse Singal, condemned Felker-Martin for making the death threat, and said she has a long history of making threats of violence.

In Felker-Martin's debut novel, Manhunt, published in February 2022, Rowling is murdered by being burned alive.

The book is promoted as 'an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and trans men on a grotesque journey of survival.' It has been lauded as 'visceral' 'gripping' and 'brilliant' by NPR and the New Yorker.

Felker-Martin's tweet - which she has now deleted - came shortly before she joined 180 activists in signing a letter to The New York Times attacking their coverage of transgender issues, which has seen the paper examine whether young children should be given puberty blockers, or gender reassignment surgery.

Rowling has shared similar views, and also questioned whether trans women should be allowed access to some female-only spaces such as prisons, domestic abuse shelters, or sporting contests.

#Gretchen Felker-Martin is a man with violent fantasies #X #Interesting how he doesn't blame the people who actually killed Brianna Ghey #Two teenagers were arrested for Gheys death

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spaceyaceface · 10 months

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Ace's HL Writing Challenge

Well folks, we did it!!! After five long years, this blog has reached 1,100 followers, which is amazing!!! As a thank you, I wanted to celebrate your talent by doing a Hogwarts Legacy writing challenge! More inforamation under the cut :)

How it will work:

I'm keeping it pretty simple. The rules are down below. To sign up, simply send me an ask with the prompt number and character/ship you'll be writing for. For now, we'll do just one person per a prompt, but that may change depending on how much participation there is.

When you've written your work, just post here on tumblr and tag me! I'll be reblogging each of the works that are submitted and giving positive feedback!

The rules:

Must be focused on characters from Hogwarts Legacy. AUs, adding OCs, etc, is more than welcome, but make sure that it involves characters from the game.

That being said, it can be ANY characters from the game! It can be x reader/MC, ships of two characters from the game, or not have any romance and just the dynamics of different characters. Whatever tickles your fancy!

Please, no NSFW or smut. Keep things PG-13 for this one :)

No word limits---just have fun!

You don't need to use the exact prompt in your work. You can do so if you choose, or rephrase it, or just go off of vibes alone lol.

The Prompts:

I will keep this updated for what prompts are/aren't available. All of these are song lyrics, and a playlist of all the songs used is available down below :)

"I was never one for short endings or cheap goodbyes." @shiinzhon

2. "I still don't know how to get to you." @talesofesther Sebastian x Reader

3. "I hear a storm is coming in--My dear, is it all we've ever been?"

4. "You go to find another place for your sun to shine."

5. "For the record, I've made my hell."

6. "I will wait for you, though I can't wait forever."

7. "Let's dance until the sun aches, love until our bones break." @shadowtriovibes Sebastian x MC

8. "Expectation is the currency of fools, and I spent it on you." @boomingsmile

9. "Now I feel like I'm finally me."

10. "I pretended I could read your thoughts, now it's just the truth."

11. "I'm in love when you're around."

12. "Can you hold on just for a little while longer?"

13. "I lost you when I lost me."

14. "I've done so many things wrong, I don't know if I can do right."

15. "A man can never dream these kinds of things."

16. "If I shut my eyes, will you appear? Because I'm not me without you here."

17. "Lonely are the ones who fall from love."

18. "One look and it all falls down."

19. "Even while you hold me as I cry on the floor, I still don't know how to be yours."

20. "If you're leaving I gotta know why."

21. "All my emotions feel like explosions when you're around."

22. "I want to find a home and I want to share it with you." @shadowtriovibes MC x TBD

23. "I like you, say it back."

24. "How can I be the boy you dream about?” @ravenelyx Sebastian x MC

25. "Just so easy when the whole world fits inside of your arms."

26. "I hope I'm not the last of what the world gave you.”

27. "We thought love was something we weren't meant to find."

28. “I was afraid to let it happen, but now I cannot forget it.”

29. "I could cut my hands on your edges, but I won't pull away."

30. "I swore that I'd become a better man for you and I tried." @sallow-tales Sebastian x MC

31. "I usually hate these cliches, but loving you feels that way." @eggymf

32. "The funny thing about love is it makes you wait."

33. "It's hard to find an end to something that you keep beginning." @localravenclaw - Sebastian x f!MC

34. "It happened when I least expected it." @finalgirllx

35. "And we wait until one of us caves." @emptycauldron

Playlist link

#Spotify #Hogwarts legacy #sebastian sallow x reader #ominis gaunt x reader #garreth weasley x reader #sebastian sallow x ominis gaunt #sebastian sallow #ominis gaunt #garreth weasley #imelda reyes #poppy sweeting #leander prewett #amit thakkar #natsai onai #fanfiction #hogwarts legacy fanfiction #writing challenge

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ferociouslycreativemystery · 6 months

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I just finished the Button House Archives and it's SPECTACULAR. Here are some personal highlights:

I love Alison's additions and comments in lots of places. She is fighting tooth and nail to stay on those hinges, and we love to see a character with spunk!

Mick's facial reconstruction could be the most horrifying thing I have *ever* seen

Mary's bits are some of my absolute favourites. Her speaking/writing voice is just delicious

Pat was just a terrible group leader wasn't he XD the arrow was really just a matter of time. He should have gone orienteering with them first, then he might have lost the kids before they could kill him

HAH I unwittingly picked Kitty's "character quote" to use in my video edit :P I feel validated

Thomas with his painfully literal complaints about other people's poems OMG rip bestie you would have loved tumblr (I haven't listened to the audiobook yet but I swear I can hear his "counted them, did you?" through the page)

I really like the way you can glimpse parts of later documents around the edges of earlier ones (like with Pat's folder, where the layers are removed one at a time, p. 22-23, 40-41, etc)

Hang on, just gotta go put on One Night in Bangkok for Robin (wait, now I need to hear him say that out loud)

Cap's munitions requests and personally penned operations with their TERRIBLE hand drawn maps that he keeps sending to actual Southern Command; I am fascinated by your mind sir. I believe he suffers from the same affliction I had in school where a combination of the dunning-cruger effect regarding general knowledge and teachers not talking to you in person about what you write in hand-ins causes you to just sort of assume everything you do is brilliant and that then it simply disappears into an unknowable void, and therefore you feel basically free to confess to murder in writing without ever thinking of the consequences. Embarrassment and second thoughts are very much face-to-face kinds of emotions (as he. ahem. would come to find out). Like, is written communication even real? Did it ever really leave your head?

Also: his war diaries were published? 1) who chose to publish them and 2) did Havers ever come across them by any chance? (plus: love to see a fellow tiny handwriting person. Cheers!)

The hand lettering on everything is so well made!!! I know a little (heavy emphasis on 'little') about palaeography, and the writing styles are recognisably of their eras, if many of the letter forms have indeed been updated to be readable for modern audiences. Compare for example Arthur Pinhoe's writing from 1575 (p. 8-11) with this actual letter from 1547. Also this actual 1700s writing to Kitty's diary entries from 1779 (p. 70-71 etc). (These samples are in Swedish but minus åäö they're all the same letters.) The writing also follows the pattern of older script being generally more rigid and standardised, while the closer to present day we get the more individual the handwriting becomes, which is a great opportunity for additional characterisation—which has also been very well implemented I think. I'm devouring every page of this, line by line!

REST IN BRIEFS (also the sly tail of the 'y' from the Daily Mail title just visible above the only compassionate headline lmao)

The reason I cannot talk to people is that Fanny's etiquette rules on conversing take over my entire mind from the moment I see another person.

Oh Kitty, I am coming to pick you up—you can be my sister instead of Eleanor's. It was nice to read her final entry though; finally the trick backfired and she got something good out of it while Eleanor suffered. Bieetch.

FANNY. SINCERELY. YOU ARE INSANE. I already knew about the letter where she demands reimbursement for the unsunk 7/8 of the Titanic's journey that she was cheated out of, but to SIGN IT OFF WITH "Would be survisor/victim of the RMS Titanic". Unbelievable.

Pat write a legible word challenge

I have a slight suspicion Julian might have had something to do with the designs for the Boys Adventure Club badges...

The "pictures of the ghosts" will make excellent reference photos for the various rooms, I appreciate them very much (should we make a game out of copying them and filling in the ghosts? There is a lot of potential there)

Humphrey, my guy... do you need a hug? (Sorry.)

FLOOR PLANS FLOOR PLANS FLOOR PLANS THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH I WILL TREASURE THESE WITH MY LIFE

Robin's constellations are impeccable I say we officially replace the zodiac with these no more superstition only bum

Julian's final email was really well written; a single page yet it's oozing with character and story

The behind the scenes pictures at the end are heartwarming. I am slightly alarmed at my ability to pinpoint the precise scene in the specific episode many of them are from though... is it maybe time for a break?

No. Never!

#I did it! I read a book in a day!#not a very wordy book but still. I'm a very slow reader #bbc ghosts #button house archives #maddie's ghosts tag

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bizarrequazar · 5 months

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GJ and ZZH Updates — November 19-25

previous week || all posts || following post

This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

11-19 → Rising with the Wind completed airing for VIP viewers.

→ The Instagram posted eight photos of "Zhang Zhehan" and a drawing of a whale.

→ Gong Jun posted a douyin of himself with a paper airplane. Caption: "The finale [of Rising Against the Wind] has its own rules and can break the situation with one strike! Goodbye, Xu Si" Fan Observation: The hoodie that he's wearing is the same brand as the one worn by the figure in the golden mountain photos he posted on 2022-12-17 that many speculate to have been Zhang Zhehan.

→ Gong Jun's studio posted a behind the scenes video (flashing lights cw) of Gong Jun with a puppy. Caption: "It’s time to cook, and the puppy patted Mr. Xu Gong Jun Simon and said: Hurry up and add more dog food!"

→ Gong Jun posted a video of Xu Si for the show's completion. Caption: "Exploring what can be done and what cannot be done is Xu Si’s investment rule. Dear investor Xu Si, I wish you good luck in the future!"

→ Gong Jun Outdoor Office posted eleven gifs of Gong Jun from the Rising with the Wind set. Caption: "The project is over, Mr. Xu please take a rest"

11-20 → Zhenguoli posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Fresh posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

11-21 → One of the Zhang Sanjians arrived at an airport in Singapore. In a video of this, he seemed to respond to someone saying "Bai-laoshi".

→ 361° posted eight photo ads featuring Gong Jun.

11-22 → Gong Jun's studio posted three photos of Gong Jun in costume as Xu Si. Caption: "EP41 (extra chapter) has been updated: Xu Si @ Gong Jun Simon’s winter greetings are continuing to be transmitted 📱"

11-23 → Vogue+ posted two polaroids of Gong Jun to their Xiao Hong Shu.

→ Gong Jun's studio posted a video teasing the outfit Gong Jun would wear to a Vogue event that evening. Caption: "Embroidered panda, full of charm. A preview."

→ Gong Jun's studio posted a video from Gong Jun's photoshoot that day. Caption: "Curves weave everything, and the charm of ink is hidden in the texture. @ Gong Jun Simon wears 'home' on his body and inherits the prosperous ancient heritage."

→ Gong Jun's studio posted four photos from his shoot that day. Caption: "Use needles as pens and threads as ink, fully displaying the charm of Bashu. Elegant and modern, with a harmonious artistic conception, @ Gong Jun Simon pays tribute to the intangible cultural heritage culture."

→ Gong Jun posted six photos of himself from that day. Caption: "Thanks to @VOGUE for the invitation, GJXM is here 🐼"

→ Gong Jun's studio posted four photos of him at the Vogue event. Caption: "The ink is smudged, delicate and elegant. @ Gong Jun Simon uses the beauty of Sichuan embroidery to convey the romantic quintessence of China."

11-24 → Gong Jun's studio posted two promotional images teasing a new single by Gong Jun. (1129 kadian) Caption: "On the count of three / please hold your breath and / recite my name silently again. 'Tomorrow Will Be Clear and The Sky Will Be Thousands of Miles'. Countdown to the release in 3 days"

→ The Instagram posted eight photos of "Zhang Zhehan" at a stage rehearsal.

→ Gong Jun's studio posted twelve photos from his photoshoot for the Vogue event's second day, where he would speak in a panel with Jason Wu. Caption: "Profound, mellow and elegant. @ Gong Jun Simon explores the integration and development of traditional culture and modern fashion."

→ Gong Jun's studio posted six photos of him at the event. Caption: "Drawing on the power of fashion, @ Gong Jun Simon explores the cultural texture."

→ Gong Jun's studio posted a video from that day's photoshoot. Caption: "Walking as usual, hiding in ink. @ Gong Jun Simon went to the fashion appointment calmly and touched the spark of ideas." BGM is The Rime by SCSI-9.

→ Vogue posted three group photos and a solo photo of Gong Jun from their event. They later also posted a video spoken by him. [subbed video]

11-25 → Gong Jun posted six photos from the Vogue event to his Instagram. Caption: "Special work, from my hometown. Thank you Jason and Kang Ning!"

→ The lawsuit against Nada, the Word of Honor scriptwriter, was resolved with her found not liable. [details here]

→ Gong Jun's studio posted a teaser of the upcoming single. (1129 kadian) Caption: "Count to two / and say yes. No matter how long it takes, / you will never forget. Countdown to the release of 'Tomorrow Will Be Clear' in 2 days."

→ Jason Wu posted three photos of Gong Jun in the suit he had designed for him to his Instagram. He also shared a number of photos and videos in his story, with the caption on one including a 🍊.

→ The Instagram posted ten photos of "Zhang Zhehan". This was later followed by another ten.

→ The scam held a concert in Singapore. At one point Jian dropped the mic without it making a sound, which is... not how mics work when they're on. As refreshers, [here] is my breakdown of the previous Bangkok concerts and [here] are notes from a space that discussed how these concerts are most likely fronts for money laundering.

Additional Reading: → N/A

previous week || all posts || following post

#Zhang Zhehan #Gong Jun #Word of Honor #woh cast #lld timeline

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whumpsday · 1 year

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🩸 Kane & Jim Masterlist - Writing order 🩸

Click here for chronological order masterlist

(vampire whump, whumper turned whumpee, whumpee turned caretaker)

Jim had lived as the prisoner of a cruel vampire for years, forced to provide blood for his insatiable appetite, before finally escaping. A decade has passed since then, when he hears word of a vampire in the custody of a group of hunters matching the description of his former captor, Kane. Wanting closure, he negotiates to have custody of Kane transferred to himself. But when he finally lays eyes on the vampire, it’s like he’s a complete stranger: A sobbing mess begging for mercy, not the arrogant man he once knew.

listed in writing order! click here for chapters sorted by newest update (and click here for canon drabbles sorted by newest update).

emojis indicate arc :)

❤️‍🩹 It’s Been a While (#1) + Bonus + Bonus 2

❤️‍🩹 Grateful (#2)

🏠 Run (#3)

☀️ A Peculiar Device (#4) - Kane’s captivity arc is interactive, see here! anything tagged “canon kane whump” is canon!

❤️‍🩹 New Rules (#5)

❤️‍🩹 Visitor (#6)

🏠 You’re Mine Now (#7)

🏠 Tomorrow (#8)

☀️ Sunrise (#9)

❤️‍🩹 For the Wash (#10)

🏠 Too Sick (#11)

🏠 Family Reunion Part 1 (#12)

🏠 Family Reunion Part 2 (#13) + Bonus

🌱 The Knight (#14)

☀️ Hunger (#15) + Bonus (coming soon!)

🏠 Quiet (#16)

❤️‍🩹 Papercut (#17) + Bonus

❤️‍🩹 Guilt (#18) + Bonus

🔪 Something New (#19)

☀️ Opened (#20)

🏠 Broken (#21)

🏠 Out (#22) + Bonus

🏠 Home (#23)

❤️‍🩹 Refusal (#23.5)

🏠 Happy Birthday (#25) - i know i’m putting 25 before 24 trust me it works better this way

❤️‍🩹 Understanding Part 1 (#24)

❤️‍🩹 Understanding Part 2 (#26)

⌛ Crunch (#E1) + Bonus

🏠 Rebellion (#27)

☀️ Make Me (#28)

🏠 Slice (#29)

🌱 Clean Break (#30)

☀️ Choices (#31)

☀️ Impending (#32)

❤️‍🩹 Reminder (#33)

🏠 Curls (#33.5)

🔪 Power (#34)

❤️‍🩹 Kane’s Mark (#35) + Bonus

☀️ Bystander (#36)

☀️ A Small Funeral (#37)

❤️‍🩹 Heat Wave Part 1 (#38)

❤️‍🩹 Heat Wave Part 2 (#39)

☀️ Better Vermin (#40)

🌱 The Contents of Several Unopened Envelopes Delivered to Kane de Sang (#41)

☀️ Raw (#42)

🏠 Everything’s Different Now (#43)

❤️‍🩹 Sweet 116 (#44)

🔪 Names (#45)

🏠 A Nice Thought (#46)

☀️ Failure (#47)

❤️‍🩹 Basement (#48)

☀️ Helpless (#48.5)

❤️‍🩹 Sunny Days (#49)

🌱 On Your Own (#50)

☀️ Locked In (#51)

⌛ Stay With Me (#E2)

❤️‍🩹 Trust (#52)

🏠 Healing Right (#53)

🏠 Bad Night (#54)

❤️‍🩹 Feeding (#55)

Drabbles: (this is all canon content, just in shorter pieces. much of kane’s captivity arc happens in here.)

🏠 Jim’s captivity drabbles: Calm Down, Midday Snack, Jim’s Nightmare, Fuck you

🔪 Intermission drabbles: Playing With Food

☀️ Kane’s captivity drabbles: Deserve, Dartboard, Stitched, Take a Deep Breath, Taunt, Collared, Healthy Snack, Problem Solved, Five Minutes, Keep That In, Go to Hell, Cement, Iron Kane-den, Dog, Light & Laughter, Greatest Wish, Kane’s Nightmare 2, Bites Him, Barbed Wire, Blowtorch, Useful, Into

☀️ Kane’s Whumptober Bites: Masterlist

❤️‍🩹 Kane & Jim Present arc drabbles: Kane’s Nightmare, Bloodsucker, Stairs, Fangs, Sunburn, Haircut, Kane’s Bad Day, Jim’s Bad Day, Mirror, Thirty-Four, Spilled Blood

⌛ Epilogue drabbles: Accident

🩸 Click here for part 2 of the masterlist because i was approaching the link limit! contains:

AU writings where Kane & Jim get into new situations

Crossover series

Fanfiction

Related series set in the same universe

And more!

#masterlist #vampire whump #vampire whumpee #vampire whumper #whumper turned whumpee #whumpee turned caretaker

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h00nerz · 1 year

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h00nerz 1k celebration!

˚⁎⁺˳. ⊹ wowowowow we did it!!! thank you so much for 1k followers!! to celebrate, i am going to be hosting a oneshot game! below i will list the rules as well as some prompts you can use to send in! thank you again!!

RULES!

⊹ i will be accepting requests for mostly txt members, though you may also request enhypen or nct (maybe skz too) members and i may accept if i have enough inspo

⊹ to send a request, please send me the idol of your choice as well as a number from the prompt list. you are also welcome to include some plot points you would like to see, feel free to get as specific as you’d like!

⊹ i don’t write smut, pregnancy or any super dark themes so don’t ask please

⊹ if your request doesn’t inspire me, i might not write it.

⊹ please be patient and nice!! if you’re rude or try to rush me, i won’t do your request.

⊹ UPDATE : please send more hyuka and soobin requests pls pls pls pls pls i’m not accepting anymore for anybody except for him

PROMPTS!

i used this post and this post to come up with a list!

1. “shit, i think i’m in love with them.”

2. “i could never say no to you.”

3. “they would be so mad if they found out.” “fuck ‘em.”

4. “i’m tired of having to pretend we hate each other.”

5. “why are you crying?”

6. “i wish i met you sooner.”

7. “i told you not to fall in love with me.”

8. “let’s not go back. not ever.”

9. “i’d shout it from the rooftops if i could.”

10. “you know i only tease you cause i love you.”

11. “you’re cute when you’re jealous.”

12. “we should compare hands. y know, science.”

13. “you’re lucky that you’re cute.”

14. “i just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

15. “you feel like home to me.”

16. “how about a kiss before i go?”

17. “you always see the good in people. even me.”

18. “let’s go somewhere. just you and me.”

19. “we’re a team.”

20. “i’m not ever leaving you.”

21. “don’t listen to them.”

22. “i love you. every single thing about you.”

23. “i’m not blushing. i don’t blush.”

24. “friends kiss each other, right?”

25. “i was sort of hoping you needed me. is that selfish?”

26. “i want to deserve you. i’m trying to deserve you.”

27. “just let me look at you for a little bit.”

28. “i never realized how much i needed you until you weren’t there.”

29. “look at me.”

30. “is this what you think love is?”

31. “i didn’t know where else to go.”

32. “you don’t mean that.”

33. “i can’t pretend anymore.”

34. “you’re all i can think about.”

35. “i am so very in love with you.”

36. “it’s you. it’s always been you.”

37. “i cannot stand you, and yet, i cannot fathom being away from you.”

38. “you are everything. everything.”

39. “no one will ever come close to you.”

40. “you’re so cute when you’re half asleep.”

41. “i’ve kind of been in love with you since we were kids.”

42. “you don’t have to pretend around me.”

43. “all i want is for you to look at me the way you look at them.”

44. “can i convince you to stay?”

45. “close your eyes.”

46. “i really want to kiss you right now.”

47. “everyone else might be buying it, but i’m not. what’s wrong?”

48. “don’t change the subject. i saw you crying.”

49. “i can’t get you out of my head.” “…thanks?”

50. “i feel weird when you’re around.” “do you have a fever?”

#⊹ ˑ ִ ֗ ִ ۫ 1k celebration #txt x reader #txt drabble #yeonjun x reader #soobin x reader #beomgyu x reader #taehyun x reader #huening kai x reader #yeonjun drabble #soobin drabble #beomgyu drabble #taehyun drabble #huening kai drabble #choi soobin #choi yeonjun #choi beomgyu #kang taehyun #huening kai

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Fighting the privacy wars, state by state

In 2021, Apple updated its mobile OS so that users could opt out of app tracking with one click. More than 96% opted out, costing Facebook $10b in one year. The kicker? Even if you opted out, Apple continued to spy on you, just as invasively as Facebook had, as part of its competing targeted ad product:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

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/2023/02/23/state-of-play/#patchwork

The fact that Apple — a company that has blanketed the world with anti-surveillance billboards — engaged in deceptive, pervasive surveillance reveals the bankruptcy of “letting the market decide” what privacy protections you should have.

When you walk into a grocery store, you know that the FDA is on the job, making sure that the food you buy doesn’t kill you — but no one stops the grocery store from tracking literally every step you take, every eye movement you make (no, really!) and selling that to all comers:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/02/16/forget-milk-and-eggs-supermarkets-are-having-a-fire-sale-on-data-about-you

America’s decision to let the private sector self-regulate commercial surveillance is a grotesque failure of duty on the part of Congress, which has consistently failed to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. There are lots of reasons for this, but the most important is that American cops and spies are totally reliant on commercial surveillance brokers, and they fight like hell against any privacy legislation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

The private sector’s unregulated privacy free-for-all means that cops don’t need to get warrants to spy on you — they can just buy the data on the open market for pennies:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#ppp

The last Congressional session almost passed a halfway decent (but still deeply flawed) federal privacy law, but then they didn’t. Basically, Congress only passes laws that can be sandwiched into 1,000-page must-pass bills and most of the good stuff that gets through only does so because some bought-and-paid-for Congressjerks are too busy complaining about “woke librarians” to read the bills before they come up for a vote.

The catastrophic failure to protect Americans’ privacy has sent human rights groups hunting for other means to accomplish the same end. On the federal level, there’s the newly reinvigorated FTC, under the visionary, muscular leadership of Lina Khan, the best Commission chair in a generation. She’s hard at work on rules to limit commercial surveillance:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

But FTC regs take time to pass, and it can be hard for ordinary individuals to trigger their enforcement, which might leave you at the mercy of your local officials when your privacy is invaded. What we really need is a privacy law with a “private right of action” — the right to go to court on your own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

The business lobby hates private right of action, and they trick low-information voters into opposing them with lies about “ambulance chasers” who sue innocent fast-food outlets for millions because they serve coffee that’s too hot:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

With Congress deadlocked and privacy harms spiraling, pro-privacy groups have turned to the states, as Alfred Ng writes for Politico:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/22/statehouses-privacy-law-cybersecurity-00083775

The best provisions of the failed federal privacy law have been introduced as state legislation in Massachusetts and Illinois, and there are amendments to Indiana’s existing state privacy law — 16 states in all are working on or have some kind of privacy law. This means businesses must live with the dread “patchwork of laws,” which serves the business lobby right: they must do business in potentially radically different ways in different states, and small missteps could cost them millions, in true fuck-around-and-find-out fashion.

As Ng writes, these laws don’t have to pass in every state. America’s historically contingent, lopsided state lines mean that some states are so populous that whatever rules they pass end up going nationwide (the ACLU’s Kade Crockford uses the example of California Prop 65 warnings showing up on canned goods in NY).

As Congress descends further into self-parody, the temptation to treat the federal government as damage and route around it only mounts. It’s a powerful, but imperfect strategy. On the negative side, it takes a lot of resources to introduce legislation into multiple states, and to win legislative fights in each.

Think of the incredible fuckery that the coalition of Apple, John Deere, Wahl, and other monopolists got up to defeat dozens of state Right to Repair laws, even snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in New York state, neutering the incredible state electronics repair law before it reached the governor’s desk:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/17/more-details-on-how-tech-lobbyists-lobotomized-nys-right-to-repair-law-with-governor-kathy-hochuls-help/

Indeed, the business lobby loves lobbying statehouses, treating them as the Feds’ farm-leagues, filled with naive, easily hoodwinked rubes. Organizations like ALEC use their endless corporate funding to get state legislation that piles farce upon tragedy, like the laws banning municipal fiber networks:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

The right has always had hooks in state legislatures, but they really opened up the sluice gates in the runup to the 2010 census, when a GOP strategist called Thomas Hofeller started pitching Republican operatives on a plan called REDMAP, to capture state legislatures in time for a post-2010 census mass-redistricting that would neutralize the votes of Black and brown people and deliver permanent rule by an openly white nationalist Republican party that could lose every popular vote and still hold power.

Of course, that’s not how they talked about it in public. Though the racial dimension of GOP gerrymandering were visible to anyone on the ground, Hofeller maintained a veneer of plausible deniability on the new REDMAP districts, leaving the racist intent of GOP redistricting as a he-said/she-said matter of conjecture:

https://www.klfy.com/national/late-gop-redistricting-gurus-files-hint-at-partisan-motives/

That is, until 2018, when Satan summoned Hofeller back to hell, leaving his personal effects in the hands of his estranged anarchist daughter, Stephanie, who dumped all her old man’s files online, including the powerpoint slides he delivered to his GOP colleagues where he basically said, “Hey kids, let’s do an illegal racism!”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pked4v/the-anarchist-daughter-of-the-gops-gerrymandering-mastermind-just-dumped-all-his-maps-and-files-on-google-drive

Sometimes, laws that turn on intent are difficult to enforce because they require knowledge of the accused’s state of mind. But there are so many would-be supervillains who just can’t stop themselves from monologing, and worse, putting it in writing.

As bad as state politics can be, they’re still winnable battlefields. Last year saw a profound win on Right to Repair in Colorado, where a wheelchair repair bill, HB22–1031, made history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

That win helped inspire Rebecca Giblin and I when we were writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our book about how Big Tech and Big Content rip off creative workers, and what to do about it.

https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Many readers have noted that the first half of the book — where were unpack the scams of streaming, news advertising, ebooks and audiobooks, and other creative fields — is incredibly enraging.

But if you find yourself struggling to concentrate on the book because of a persistent, high-pitched whining noise that you suspect might be a rage-induced incipient aneurysm, keep reading! The second half of the book is full of detailed, shovel-ready policy proposals to get artists paid, including a state legislative proposal that works from the same playbook as these state privacy laws.

If your creative work entitles you to receive royalties, your contract will typically include the right to audit your royalty statements. If you do audit your royalties, you will often find “discrepancies.” We cite one LA firm that has performed tens of thousands of record contract audits over decades, and in every instance except one, the errors they discovered were in the labels’ favor.

This is a hell of a head-scratcher. I can only assume that some kind of extremely vexing, highly localized probability storm has taken up permanent residence over the Big Three labels’ accounting departments, making life hell for their CPAs, and my heart goes out to them.

Anyway: if you find one of these errors and you tell your label or publisher or studio, “Hey, you stole my money, cough up!” they will pat you on the head and say, “Oh, you artists are adorable but you can’t do math. You’re mistaken, we don’t owe you anything. But because we’re good natured slobs, we’ll offer you, say, half of what you think we owe you, which is good, because you can’t afford to sue us. And all you need to do to get that money is to sign this non-disclosure agreement, meaning you can’t tell anyone else about the money we’re stealing from them.

“Oh, and one more thing: your accountant has to promise never to audit us again.” As Caldwell-Kelly said when we talked about this on Trashfuture, this is like the accused murderer telling the forensics team, “Dig anywhere you’d like in my garden, just not in that corner, I’m very sentimental about it.”

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/amazon-billing-amazon-for-amazon-feat-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/

Now, contracts are a matter of state law, and nearly every entertainment industry contract is signed in one of four jurisdictions: NY, CA, TN (Nashville), and WA (games companies and Amazon). If we amended the state laws in one or more of these to say, “NDAs can’t be enforced when they pertain to wage theft arising from omissions or misstatements on royalties,” we could pour money into the pockets of creative workers all over the world.

Yes, the entertainment giants will fight like hell against this, and yes, they have a lot of juice in their state legislatures. But they’re also incredibly greedy and reckless, and prone to such breathtaking and brazen acts of wage theft that they lurch from crisis to crisis, and at each of these crises, there is a space to pass a law to address these very public failings.

For example, in 2022, the Writers Guild of America — one of the best, most principled, most solidaristic and unified unions in Hollywood — wrested $42 million from Netflix, which the company had stolen from its writers:

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/wga-wins-42-million-arbitration-netflix-1235333822/

Netflix isn’t alone in these massive acts of wage theft, and this is certainly not the only way Netflix is stealing from creative workers. There’s never just one ant: if Netflix cooked the books for writers, they’re definitely cooking it for other workers. That means there will be more scandals, and when they break, we can demand more than a bandaid fix for one crime — we can demand modest-but-critical legislative action to fix contracts and prevent this kind of wage-theft in the future.

The state legislatures aren’t an intrinsically better battlefield for just fights, but they are an alternative to Congress, and there is space to make things happen in just some of the 50 state houses that can ripple out over the whole country — for good and bad.

[Image ID: Blind justice, holding aloft a set of unbalanced scales; in the lower scale is a map of the USA showing the state lines; in the higher scale rests the capitol building.]

#pluralistic #states rights #laboratories of democracy #privacy #gdpr #federalism #contract law #chokepoint capitalism #wage theft #redmap

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daddysfangirls-marvel · 1 year

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Material list: Series

*smut / smutish

Polyamorous series (on going- slow to update) Three people fall in love with each other in a time when loving more than one person was looked down upon. But even in a time when it’s not allowed they still share love and memories. Here are their polyamorous memories

*Bonus*

Peggy Carter

*Let’s play a game

Howard Stark’s Video

The Rain

Bucky finds a child in the rain. After noticing a few weird things about her he decides it’s best if she stays with him. Now they’re on the run. [complete]

The Snow

Sequel to ‘The Rain’. The reader meets Thor, Bruce, and Loki. She accidentally tags along in their adventures. Along the way, she helps Loki. [ Loki x child! fem! reader] ( Complete)

Part 1 | Part 6 | Part 11 | Part 16 | Part 21

Part 2 | Part 7 | Part 12 | Part 17 | Part 22

Part 3 | Part 8 | Part 13 | Part 18

Part 4 | Part 9 | Part 14 | part 19

Part 5 | Part 10 | Part 15 | Part 20

The Storm series: Trilogy/ third to The Snow. “All life has water,” Someone said that to her once she didn’t understand how significant those words were until have the universe was threatened. The reader has been known to help everyone but this time she can’t help anyone.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

Lost Love: [ hiatus]Okay what if some write about the Winter Soldier instead of Bucky. Maybe read is forced to work hydra and she gets him to trust her and he protects her and she’s the only one who can calm him down and then he goes back to Bucky and doesn’t remember her and like has to fall in love with her all over again. ( Bucky Barnes/ Winter Soldier x fem! reader)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |18 | 19 | 20 | 21| 22 | 23| 24 | 25

Black White & Gray:( Loki x reader )reader is a prisoner in a high security prison in the Stark Tower, and she is incredibly dangerous, and Loki is being brought in by the Avengers and he wonders why she is in there, they escape together and travel the Galaxy and then just stop on a planet and like start a new life but then Thor finds them and calls them to help on Earth and everyone sees how good they are afterward and just lets them start a secret family Europe or something

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 - Complete

Scar series : [hiatus]Tony has a daughter for years he hides her away. When he finally lets her out she gets everyone’s attention. Including Loki’s.

A day of beginnings

Goth Boss

(on going - slow to update) Tony stark x daughter goth reader. The avengers find out that Tony has a secret teenage daughter and make tony ask her to visit. But when they meet her the avengers find out why she was kept secret.( could bucky and Steve he terrified of how y/n looks since they are from a different time and seeing a goth girl for the first time scares them) (tony has a strained relationship with y/n as she grew up without him and he kept her secret)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 - On going

70 years: Bucky Barnes x reader, Steve Rodgers x (sister) reader. After Bucky and Steve fail to come home after ww2 y/n is driven crazy from the hatred she feels from being abandoned by her brother and left alone in the world she becomes an Assassin to kill those who ruined her life. 70 years later the avengers are sent to find an Assassin that has been killing for the last several decades only for Steve and Bucky to be horrified by who it is. (Codename reaper)

Grief | Pain | Alone | Happiness| A thousand years of Happiness

#Material List #Material Series #marvel material list #marvel

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spadecentral · 1 year

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📂 400 Follower Special [All Fandoms]

>> rules: same rules for normal requesting! requests for genshin, obey me, and twst are acceptable :]

>> notice: different from other specials, there will only be one character per prompt. that means 28 fics in total.

this post will be updated every time there is another request for a prompt. if you ask for a prompt after someone else does, don't fret. if you are not on anon, i will send an ask into your inbox. if on anon, i will make a general post. happy requesting <3 you can request until there are no more prompts available

two characters max per request (unless poly first years)

1. "what are you do-" "look, now we match!"

2. "you're cleaning this up, right? since this was your idea."

3. "i don't think either of us are qualified for this but sure, go for it."

4. "shh- that's just what you think." "no, i'm pretty sure it's what i know."

5. "oh please, who's gonna stop us?" "the police."

6. "and why would i do this for you?" "because you love me." "not enough- fine."

7. "who let you look so cute today?"

8. "can we wait a second? i wanna take a picture of you right now."

9. "i think i'm gonna fail this test-" "it's okay, you pass in my heart." "that means nothing."

10. "this is unfair." "i can't help the fact that you're terrible at ______."

11. "since we're dating, does that mean i can hold your hand whenever i want?"

12. "i've been looking for my hoodie-" "my hoodie, you mean."

13. "i've always wanted to come here with you."

14. "this song reminds me of you."

15. "as much as i love food, i'm giving you the last piece just this once."

16. "you're cold?" "no? it's super sunny right now-" "take my jacket anyway."

17. "oh no, my head, it's falling conveniently onto your shoulder!"

18. "shut up and kiss me already."

19. "i've waited for so long just to say that to you."

20. "your hands are colder than the one time i lost a bet and i had to stick my hand into the snow for five minutes."

21. "you seem like you want ice cream."

22. "*resuraunt* is open, wanna go get some chicken nuggets?" "it's 3 in the morning." "and?" "let's go."

23. "you love me?" "i always have."

24. "what's that even supposed to be?" "it's a drawing of you, idiot."

25. "here comes the airplane!" "i can feed myself." "too bad."

26. "it's a 4000 piece puzzle and you've finished maybe 100 pieces max. and how long have you been doing this?"

27. "i know it's not the best but-" "i love it."

28. "i can hear your heartbeat- why is it going so fast all of a sudden?"

#400 follower special

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grumpygreenwitch · 8 months

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Fanfiction 1-2-3

I wrote some more.

I have a guilty pleasure read (one of so, so many). In this case it's Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter books. I recommend them if you like urban fantasy heteroromance with a touch of smut. They are fun, they are quick, and within the constraints of working for one of the big publishers, she tells a fantastic story. They've got the usual problems of heteroromance, but I don't read them expecting to solve the problems of the world. They pass a night well enough, and that's all I ask.

This is fanfiction for that world because there's always been one glaring problem with the world she created, and it's always jarred me, violently, every time it comes up in the books. There's a little under 30 chapters, it's already finished, and it will be going up here, on Pillowfort, Ko-fi and Ao3. Ao3 might actually get it faster than everyone else. Pillowfort will get it slower, simply because they don't have a queue and me remembering to post things is always dicey. Updates should come once a week.

Well, here we go, I guess. Please remember that reblogs give me life. The main tag is #Alyss and Jean.

Buy me a Ko-fi?

1-2-3 + 4-5 + 6-7-8-9-10 + 11-12 + 13-14 + 15-16 + 17-18-19 + 20-21 + 22-23 + 24-25 + 26-27

Alyss had never meant to be anyone important.

Angels, he understood, were the top creatures of the world. They were born to that privilege, they lived in that privilege. It never left their lives. No matter how low an angel might fall, and some did fall very low, they were still apex predators, apex lifeforms. A very, very old vampire might best a very young angel, but why would they risk the terrible destruction that would fall upon them if they did?

But there was wiggle room in that definition, in what was expected of an angel. And for most of his relatively short life Alyss had been of a very firm mind: he was going to be an accountant. This was not the sort of thing he told anyone. Humans were accountants. Vampires were accountants. Angels had other people do their accounting for them. And in truth, he'd learned many other skills throughout his few centuries: he was an excellent illuminator, a passable translator of multiple languages. If it had to do with books, he was good at it. If it had to do with numbers he was even better. But he didn't want to be an illuminator. He didn't want to be an archivist, or a librarian, or a historian.

He wanted. to be. an accountant.

On his second century, after the last of his teachers had given up on him in some specific fields, he'd left the Refuge and finally been allowed to openly do what he'd wanted to do all along. He'd found work in many angelic households and businesses; none that wanted him there permanently, but that was fun in its own way. He got to see so many new places, mingle with so many different people, meet so many of his kind, see how they lived, how they ruled.

Within a few years he was horrified.

Alyss understood, in theory, the process by which vampires were Made and trained. He'd never personally met any; in the Refuge they were distant satellites orbiting around the angels, or Archangels, they served. Until he'd left the Refuge the reality of vampires had been little but writing on a book: the meticulous scheduling needed to remove the build-up of toxins in an angel's body, the complex rules and regulations by which those humans who wished to undergo the vampiric awakening were measured. Hundreds of thousands applied every year. Most were turned away, found wanting or incompatible, though they were never told of the later. In exchange for the many gifts that came with becoming a vampire, they agreed to a hundred years of service to the angel whose choice gave them the chance to be Made. That century was meant to turn a feral creature into a self-willed predator, ruthlessly in control of their new instincts. It was a time for their angel to teach them what they were, who they'd become. To guide them and yes, if need be, to make them fear the ultimate authority of those who had created them, and could destroy them if they did not learn.

Alyss had seen no such teaching. He'd seen torture, lots of that. He'd seen cruelty beyond anything he'd ever imagined, for no reason other than an angel's entertainment. He'd seen the most stalwart hearts shattered, the strongest wills broken. He'd seen new vampires refused the kindness of going through their initial awakening in a medically induced coma, simply because their angel wanted to see them writhe. In Isabel's court he'd seen the angel wake a vampire from such a coma just because she wanted to hear them wail in incomprehending terror while she entertained some close friends for dinner. And that was just for starters; one hundred years was a long time to find out what harm you could do to a person to while the hours away.

It wasn't entirely unfounded, Alyss understood that. After the Cascade, when both the number of angels and archangels had beeen catastrophically low, the vampiric population had risen on a tide of mindless bloodlust. The Guild existed to hunt vampires who ran away from their contract for a good reason: too many vampires, well, ran away from their contract. And in theory the VPA was supposed to advocate for vampires, particularly those most vulnerable.

But after what he'd witnessed Alyss had begun to wonder if some of those vampires didn't run away for a good reason. He saw so much of the bad over the next century that the good seemed distant, faint, and eventually unlikely. It became shocking to him whenever he found an angelic home where the trainees were treated well.

In one of those houses he met Jean. And things kind of spiraled from there.

Alyss flew through the early morning light, deeply enjoying the chilly breeze coming from the sea, the sight of New England beneath him a vast landscape cloaked in every color of autumn imaginable. If he'd not been en route to a meet-n-greet he would have gone down just for the guilty pleasure of walking among the trees and kicking up clouds of gold, red and orange leaves.

But he was due at Kliman's house within the hour, and while the breeze was lovely it was also a headwind. He put his head down and pressed himself to further speed. Better to arrive on time and a little breathless than late.

The aerial picture he'd been sent of the estate didn't do it justice. Kliman oversaw New England from Maine but she was a reclusive, elderly angel; her agents did most of the legwork while she remained hidden away in a hundred acres of marsh and woodlands. The house was beautiful, a jewel nestled among wild-seeming gardens. There was a pond shaped like a crescent moon on one side of the manor, gleaming in the sunlight like silver. The autumn-touched woods went on forever, and a vast marshland glittered off to one side.

There was a helipad tucked away on the far side of the property, and a man waiting for him on it. Alyss landed as gracefully as he could while carrying his office in his frontpack, breathing hard. He’d tried traveling backpacks like those of most angels, but his wings were positioned in such a way that most laptop bags just weren’t comfortable.

"Morning wind caught you, did it," the man drawled, his Maine accent dulled not a bit by the many years he'd lived and served his angel.

"Height usually helps," Alyss admitted, wheezing. "Didn't this time."

The man laughed. He was of a height with the angel, which made him short; Alyss didn't quite reach the halfway mark to his sixth foot, though his oversized wings gave him the illusion of height. Kliman's Second was powerfully built, dark brown hair freely peppered with silver; he’d been made late in life. He was wearing comfortable, elegant clothing and two short knives on matching sheaths at his hips, the handles old and worn. His hand, when he offered it, was warm and heavily calloused. "Glad you could make it. I'm Gevaun, the lady's Second."

"Oh." Alyss faltered, as ever he did when he found a vampire that seemed content with their lot in life. Gevaun didn't just look well-adjusted but outright happy, and for a moment the angel didn't know what to do with that. Belatedly he scrabbled to take off a glove and meet the hand with his own. "Sorry. I'm still waiting for the day I won't feel the cold. A pleasure to meet you, Gevaun."

"I'll let the staff know to keep the place warm for you." Amazed, Alyss realized the vampire was teasing him. "Bring all the extra blankets out."

"What a sight I'll make, bundled up with only my eyes peeking out," he replied automatically, and felt an unexpected surge of gladness when Gevaun chuckled in response. The vampire gestured them on and they meandered towards the manor home by way of a winding stone path. "May I ask you why I'm here or should I wait until I'm speaking to Kliman?"

The vampire seemed to think on that far longer than the simple question merited. "You know she's old," he said at last.

"Very. But with the Cascade, it's said there's just no one to replace her if she goes into Sleep."

"Oh, there's plenty. There's none she trusts is the thing," Gevaun replied. "She's done a good thing here. Raphael's never had a reason to worry about New England because she knows the difference between a velvet glove and an iron fist. The others..." The vampire grimaced.

"That's not something an accountant can fix," Alyss pointed out primly.

Gevaun grinned at him. "No. But a good accountant can sniff out which of them's already cheating. She wants to clean house before she even considers looking for a replacement."

"Do you think they're cheating her?"

"Oh, absolutely. Well, barring Evie. But, you know, I'm her Second. I'm expected to be suspicious of everyone, even if I'm the only one."

"You've not met many accountants, have you."

Gevaun was still laughing at that when they reached the house. Alyss was surprised to be led to a bedroom, spacious and colorful, where a vast balcony had been seamlessly added to the wood and stone of the house's architecture; this was a room meant for an angel. He opened a door to an exceptionally modern bathroom, equally set up to accommodate someone with wings. Another door led to a walk-in closet empty except for boxes labeled "Books", "Kitchen", "Clothes" and the like. The last door led to an empty office where he dropped off his bag.

A maid, human, came to get him, peeking in not-so-discreet awe at him. That, at least, was behavior familiar to Alyss; he wasn't much of an angel to his own people, but to humans he was still one of those apex creatures. He was even passingly nice to look at, he often thought, though he knew most of it was his wings: they were amber-colored, some unknown quality of the feathers making them gleam in the right light, the rich hazel going to darkest honey at the tips.

Otherwise Alyss had always thought himself unremarkable. Short. Skinny. Rather than his mother's auburn hair he'd ended up with his father's fine brown curls, and rather than his striking green eyes he'd got his mother's brown gaze. At least he'd not inherited Maura's abundance of freckles. Or Elian's nose.

Compared to himself Kliman was exquisite, and he found himself tongue-tied the moment he saw her. The angel of New England was a porcelain figurine with flawless, pale skin and a long, rich golden braid at her back, between wings where every feather was tipped in various shades of violet and indigo, her eyes of matching hues. She wore clothing as comfortable as her Second's, dark gray slacks and a knit sweater fitted to her wings.

"Ah, the accountant." She beamed at Alyss and offered her hands, and when he would have instinctively bowed over them she instead pulled him into an unexpectedly strong hug. "None of that! Kissing knuckles, really now. This isn't the Dark Ages again, and thank goodness for that." She pulled away and stared at him. "Goodness, you're so young." She sounded a little crestfallen.

Alyss couldn't blame her. Time swam and lingered in the other angel's gaze, and for a moment he felt crushed under the burden she carried. "I assure you, ma'am, I got all my wild-oating out on my second century," he managed, breathless under what little he'd glimpsed of her age.

She burst out laughing in surprise. "Did you?"

"Terrible, I was. There's books still shelved in the wrong place at the Refuge's library. Truly I don't know a worse criminal."

Kliman laughed even more.

They sat and had hot cocoa and warm croissants, and Kliman told him much the same thing Gevaun had said. "I'm old, Alyss. I'm tired. This Cascade has left me hollow. So many dead, such terrible scars on the world. The healing will take decades, centuries. I’ve done my duty by my Archangel, but I’m tired. I don't have the strength for it anymore, I just don't." Gevaun, standing behind her, put a hand on her shoulder and she covered it with one of hers, smiling a little at her Second before facing Alyss again. "I want to Sleep. But after everything that was lost, after everything we fought for, I will not leave my people, my land, my charges, to someone less than worthy. I will see them cared for as I would care for them."

"I'm not the sort to ferret out plots or villains, ma'am," Alyss pointed out nervously. That simple gesture, that moment of unthinking, trusting intimacy between angel and vampire had got him so distracted he'd nearly forgotten what he was there for or what the older angel had just said.

"I know. But you are the sort to hunt down numbers to the last decimal. You can tell me if they're already taking advantage of their position. You can tell me how badly they're abusing the power I've given them. That's all I ask." Her smile turned so sharp that it made Alyss slick his wings back instinctively. "I'll take it from there."

Alyss began with Rhode Island. It was small, it was uncomplicated, and Gevaun already had a list of Andrew's pecadillos. "He's a vampire, he was never in the running, and he knew it from the beginning," Kliman's Second told Alyss. "We put him there because it was safe, in every way that matters. If you find anything beyond what we have I'll just go down there, put the fear of God back into him and see that he cuts it down to more reasonable levels." Alyss frowned and Gevaun grinned. "What were you expecting, Alyss?"

"That you'd kill him," the young angel admitted readily.

"Jesus! He's not bad, he's just lazy. Rhode Island's just about what he can handle."

"Yes, but he's cheating you. He's cheating Kliman. You already know this." At a loss for words, Alyss shrugged. "It's what anyone else would do. A few angels would make it linger but the end result's the same."

Gevaun stared at him a long time. "You've been to... a lot of angel homes, haven't you?"

"I've been to enough," the accountant admitted tightly as he set up his laptop. "Enough to know this place is the exception, not the rule."

"Raphael is not unfair. Ruthless, stern, but not unfair. He doesn't like his angels to be unfair either."

"That doesn't seem to stop them."

"Vampires are dangerous, Alyss. I'm one and I can tell you that. I don't trust half my breed half the time, and the other half I'd split fifty-fifty still. We're predators, and blood sings a helluva song. Bloodlust is a very real threat."

"Vampires are predators, yes. I know that. I've seen a great deal of them, I've met a great deal of them, in passing." Alyss put down his tablet a little more forcefully than he'd intended and turned to look at Gevaun. "But humans learned to gentle horses to saddle rather than break them. They learned not to uses whips or fire or hooks on animals for entertainment. You'd think we angels could do better than them with a sentient creature. Except we don't." He drew and let out a deep breath, and realized he was an inch away from blowing up at his employer's Second. He went so profoundly red he felt it like radiant heat, and flailed with his equipment. "Rhode Island first then, got it. On it. Right away."

Gevaun's brows, unseen, went up minutely. So, there was steel to the little goldfinch. Interesting. "Leave you to it," he drawled and walked away, closing the door to the little office soundlessly.

Alyss waited until he was sure he was alone to collapse on his keyboard with a pathetic sound. Ah, yes, just the sort of first impression that got him recommended to others. Well, nothing to it now, he'd just have to let his work impress instead.

If not because Kliman insisted that he take dinner with the household, Alyss would have lost all track of time buried in his work. Ever since he’d been little, when he’d first realized that what went on in his head did not have a spoken form, he’d realized he would have to be his own translator for the rest of his life. Numbers ruled his mind, his dreams, shaped and defined his world. When he was at work numbers danced in his mind's eye, falling into serried, organized rows and columns, order that he brought about. It was a very small sliver of the world, but one he controlled, one he knew, one that did exactly what he told it to do. It was hard to peel himself away and accept that he belonged to a very different reality, but for the angel of New England he did, every night, even as he spend his days working.

The first thing he noticed was that Gevaun was keeping a very good watch on Andrew.

The second was that Kliman's own accounts were not what they should be.

After confirming a fourth time, he threw himself out of the office and onto the balcony, gliding down to one of the paths likely to take him into the woods. He needed air, he needed space, he needed his thoughts to stop harassing him. He hadn't been brought in to audit his boss, for the love of prime numbers! Well, technically he had been, but!

The woods welcomed him with whispering breezes and unexpected torrents of leaves, and Alyss' mood changed almost immediately. He spread his wings and shook them, laughing a little when he realized he couldn't fully dislodge the leaves caught in his feathers. He dragged his shoes through piles of gold and brown, red and orange, gleeful as a child. He found a few wild rose-hips and left a tiny offering of blood on the rose thorns when he picked them and ate them, sweet and tart like little pieces of sunlight made solid.

The thwack of the ax splitting wood nearly made him jump out of his skin. He froze, eyes wide, sucking on his bloody fingertips. When the sound came again he flinched, but it was also reassuring proof that he wasn't hearing things. The third time he straightened up and began to earnestly follow the sound deeper into the woods.

The sound was coming from a clearing where a falling tree had dragged two more of its brethren down with it. It had happened long enough ago that all three trees were dry and dead, prime pickings for firewood. Kliman's manor ran on solar power, but it did have a number of fireplaces that were probably very cozy when they were going. The trees had been cleared of branches, which had been cut into kindling and neatly bundled up on the bed of a small wagon attached to a muddy ATV. The logs had been split into sections at some point, the chips from the chainsaw's work littering the ground beneath them.

There was a man splitting those sections with an ax, and Alyss immediately felt as if he were intruding into someone's privacy.

The man was nothing but muscle. He'd stripped off his jacket and shirt, which were hung on the side slates of the wagon. He was tall, swarthy, what Alyss' mother would have called 'sun-kissed' with an appreciative purr. The thought only served to make Alyss flush, flustered. His hair was short and wavy and very, very dark, and his shoulders were exactly the sort one would expect of someone splitting wood as if it were butter under a hot knife.

Alyss suddenly choked; what he'd thought to be dappled light falling on the man's skin wasn't. It was moving when he moved. It was scar tissue. The lumberjack's back and arms were covered in it, thin lines spread out with sickening regularity and creating a very precise grid all over him.

The man whipped around at the tiny sound, the ax held up like a weapon. Alyss scrabbled back and away, arms coming up to appease. Before he could say anything one of his wings slammed into the tree behind it, and the other ran right into a mass of brambles. "Wait, no, I don't mean -" The rest of whatever excuse he'd been about to offer went out of him in a startled cry of pain.

"Don't move!" The stranger barked, tossing aside the ax and putting his gloved hands out as if to calm a frightened animal. "Don't move, don't move your wings."

Alyss was finding some small measure of reassurance in the ax not being brandished at him, but it was about the only part of the current situation that wasn't worth some panic. "Oh, it hurts!"

"You're caught in a greenbrier. Don't move." The man repeated, his tone low and slow. He had an accent Alyss couldn't place. His face was carved stone, his features stark, lean and austere; there were very dark shadows under his bright green eyes, and he looked starved but calm. He put his hands up. "I'll get you loose but I need my knife."

The silence grew between them. "Alright?" Alyss said uncertainly, not sure why he'd have to be informed of such an obvious thing.

The stranger gave him an unreadable look. He stepped back to the wagon, chucking off one of his heavy gloves, and grabbed a plain leather sheath from one of the jacket's pockets. Slowly, carefully, he approached Alyss and then moved around him, to the tangled-up wing. "You can fold the other one," he said.

His voice was low, the accent giving it a pleasant sort of music that under better circumstances Alyss would have appreciated as much as the man’s looks. "I'm afraid they get on the buddy system when I'm stressed," he admitted. From up close the scars were even more obvious in their methodical, almost mechanical pattern. The man was sweat-sheened, he smelled of his work, of wood and forest... and of the faint, alluring scent of a particular predator.

A vampire.

"Fair."

Alyss saw him gingerly grab something, felt the tug of it against his feathers, and stiffened in anticipation of pain. It didn't come. "What is it? What did you call it?"

"Greenbrier. Tangly sort of vine." The pressure eased in part of Alyss' wing, and the vampire showed him the culprit, a thin green vine covered in spines nothing really ought to need for anything but a nefarious purpose.

"I don't think I needed to see that," Alyss admitted breathlessly, his whole body tightening up again. "But it's good to know what to avoid in the future, I guess."

"If you're in the habit of not staying to the path, that might be wise," the vampire said mildly as he carefully, so carefully, cut the greenbrier off in bits and pieces. Of all the things he'd expected, to find an angel in the middle of the woods hadn't been part of the schedule. He'd planned to spend the day alone, working on the firewood. The silence and the solitude were balm he sorely needed. Instead he was cutting greenbriers off of one of the most delicate-looking angels he'd ever seen, and that included Kliman. The thorns of the greenbrier had ruffled some of the amber-colored feathers, had twisted a few, and the sight wounded him. It had to hurt, but the angel was doing as he'd been told, holding perfectly still, even if by angelic standards the vampire was practically groping him. "You're the accountant."

"Yes. I'm Alyss."

"Hn." The vampire threw aside a massive loop of the spiny vine. "Jean."

"John?"

"Jean," he corrected, grunting when the greenbrier, unsurprisingly, punched right through his glove. He got a better grip and cut another section off the wing.

"Oh, Jean." The angel huffed shakily. "Well, I'm glad to meet you."

"Are you," Jean paused to stare dubiously at him.

"Yes. Very glad actually. Otherwise I'd be stuck here with no one to help me."

"If I wasn't here you wouldn't have had a reason to come looking. Why'd you come, anyway?"

"I heard the ax, I couldn't tell what was going on."

"You've never heard someone chopping wood?"

"Not for a century or so."

"Fair," the vampire admitted after a moment. "Alright, move. Slow. I can't tell if I got it all from this angle."

"So... get behind me?" Alyss suggested blankly.

Jean had to pause and digest that suggestion, so innocently, so trustingly put out there for him. "Would, but there's a tree in the way. It's gonna win whatever fight I start." Alyss made a nervous sound and the vampire leaned back. "Hey. Look at me." When those sweet brown eyes met his gaze he spoke as calmly as he could. "You're alright. Just move slow. If something tightens up, stop."

Alyss closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and let it out very, very slowly. He tried to fold his wings -

"Stop." Next to him, Jean dropped to his knees and slipped beneath the wings. Some more greenbrier began to fly off in pieces.

"Thank you for being careful,” Alyss murmured, even though a flush of embarrassment was slowly but surely creeping over his face. “I am not a libertine, I'd like to point out," the accountant said primly, wrapping his arms around himself.

The comment was so outlandish, so out of nowhere, and such a complete betrayal of the angel's current state of mind as well as his efforts to ease it, that Jean barked out a laugh before he realized what he'd done. He had to stop and pull away, leaning back on his knees to look up at that fine-boned face. He could feel the ghost of a grin trying to break free. "Too much action for you?" Jean watched crimson spread over the fair skin, and the angel could only offer a high-pitched, wordless sound in response, covering his face with one hand. "I won't tell, I promise."

"I'm not a virgin, either!" Alyss declared staunchly from behind his hand. Somehow it seemed very important that he declare that, and yet as soon as the words were out he couldn't believe he'd said them.

"Duly noted," was all the vampire said in response. "Alright, try now. Slow." When Alyss managed to pull both wings tight to his back, Jean further instructed, "Lift your wings up. Alright, now step forward, three steps. Ought to put you clear of the greenbriers." When the angel obeyed and was finally both safe and free, Jean rolled smoothly to his feet and moved to the wagon to clean his knife.

"Oh, it itches, it itches, it all itches. Thank you, Jean, but it itches. Please, excuse me."

"Excuse wh-" Before he could finish, Alyss had sprung up. The vampire jerked away and crouched down instinctively; such a take-off was usually a maneuver only seasoned angelic warriors learned or mastered. But Alyss, Jean realized, had an unexpected advantage: his wings were big for his size, larger than those of most angels the vampire had ever seen. He leapt and cupped them and they caught the breeze, effectively parachuting him up and away. Just like that, the accountant was gone. "Anytime," Jean told the empty clearing, and went back to chopping wood.

#fantasy #modern fantasy #urban fantasy #fanfiction #nalini singh #guild hunter #alyss and jean #my writing #angel #vampire #male on male

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