#slider is a good bro | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

Text

Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in Skinner boxes

Enshittification is the process by which digital platforms devour themselves: first they dangle goodies in front of end users. Once users are locked in, the goodies are taken away and dangled before business customers who supply goods to the users. Once those business customers are stuck on the platform, the goodies are clawed away and showered on the platform’s shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

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/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Enshittification isn’t just another way of saying “fraud” or “price gouging” or “wage theft.” Enshittification is intrinsically digital, because moving all those goodies around requires the flexibility that only comes with a digital businesses. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can’t rapidly change the price of eggs at Whole Foods without an army of kids with pricing guns on roller-skates. Jeff Bezos, grocer, can change the price of eggs on Amazon Fresh just by twiddling a knob on the service’s back-end.

Twiddling is the key to enshittification: rapidly adjusting prices, conditions and offers. As with any shell game, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Tech monopolists aren’t smarter than the Gilded Age sociopaths who monopolized rail or coal — they use the same tricks as those monsters of history, but they do them faster and with computers:

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

If Rockefeller wanted to crush a freight company, he couldn’t just click a mouse and lay down a pipeline that ran on the same route, and then click another mouse to make it go away when he was done. When Bezos wants to bankrupt Diapers.com — a company that refused to sell itself to Amazon — he just moved a slider so that diapers on Amazon were being sold below cost. Amazon lost $100m over three months, diapers.com went bankrupt, and every investor learned that competing with Amazon was a losing bet:

https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html

That’s the power of twiddling — but twiddling cuts both ways. The same flexibility that digital businesses enjoy is hypothetically available to workers and users. The airlines pioneered twiddling ticket prices, and that naturally gave rise to countertwiddling, in the form of comparison shopping sites that scraped the airlines’ sites to predict when tickets would be cheapest:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

The airlines — like all abusive businesses — refused to tolerate this. They were allowed to touch their knobs as much as they wanted — indeed, they couldn’t stop touching those knobs — but when we tried to twiddle back, that was “felony contempt of business model,” and the airlines sued:

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/30/airline-sues-man-for-founding-a-cheap-flights-website.html

And sued:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/business/southwest-airlines-lawsuit-prices.html

Platforms don’t just hate it when end-users twiddle back — if anything they are even more aggressive when their business-users dare to twiddle. Take Para, an app that Doordash drivers used to get a peek at the wages offered for jobs before they accepted them — something that Doordash hid from its workers. Doordash ruthlessly attacked Para, saying that by letting drivers know how much they’d earn before they did the work, Para was violating the law:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

Which law? Well, take your pick. The modern meaning of “IP” is “any law that lets me use the law to control my competitors, competition or customers.” Platforms use a mix of anticircumvention law, patent, copyright, contract, cybersecurity and other legal systems to weave together a thicket of rules that allow them to shut down rivals for their Felony Contempt of Business Model:

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

Enshittification relies on unlimited twiddling (by platforms), and a general prohibition on countertwiddling (by platform users). Enshittification is a form of fishing, in which bait is dangled before different groups of users and then nimbly withdrawn when they lunge for it. Twiddling puts the suppleness into the enshittifier’s fishing-rod, and a ban on countertwiddling weighs down platform users so they’re always a bit too slow to catch the bait.

Nowhere do we see twiddling’s impact more than in the “gig economy,” where workers are misclassified as independent contractors and put to work for an app that scripts their every move to the finest degree. When an app is your boss, you work for an employer who docks your pay for violating rules that you aren’t allowed to know — and where your attempts to learn those rules are constantly frustrated by the endless back-end twiddling that changes the rules faster than you can learn them.

As with every question of technology, the issue isn’t twiddling per se — it’s who does the twiddling and who gets twiddled. A worker armed with digital tools can play gig work employers off each other and force them to bid up the price of their labor; they can form co-ops with other workers that auto-refuse jobs that don’t pay enough, and use digital tools to organize to shift power from bosses to workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Take “reverse centaurs.” In AI research, a “centaur” is a human assisted by a machine that does more than either could do on their own. For example, a chess master and a chess program can play a better game together than either could play separately. A reverse centaur is a machine assisted by a human, where the machine is in charge and the human is a meat-puppet.

Think of Amazon warehouse workers wearing haptic location-aware wristbands that buzz at them continuously dictating where their hands must be; or Amazon drivers whose eye-movements are continuously tracked in order to penalize drivers who look in the “wrong” direction:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur

The difference between a centaur and a reverse centaur is the difference between a machine that makes your life better and a machine that makes your life worse so that your boss gets richer. Reverse centaurism is the 21st Century’s answer to Taylorism, the pseudoscience that saw white-coated “experts” subject workers to humiliating choreography down to the smallest movement of your fingertip:

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

While reverse centaurism was born in warehouses and other company-owned facilities, gig work let it make the leap into workers’ homes and cars. The 21st century has seen a return to the cottage industry — a form of production that once saw workers labor far from their bosses and thus beyond their control — but shriven of the autonomy and dignity that working from home once afforded:

https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d

The rise and rise of bossware — which allows for remote surveillance of workers in their homes and cars — has turned “work from home” into “live at work.” Reverse centaurs can now be chickenized — a term from labor economics that describes how poultry farmers, who sell their birds to one of three vast poultry processors who have divided up the country like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” are uniquely exploited:

https://onezero.medium.com/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs-b2e8d5cda826

A chickenized reverse centaur has it rough: they must pay for the machines they use to make money for their bosses, they must obey the orders of the app that controls their work, and they are denied any of the protections that a traditional worker might enjoy, even as they are prohibited from deploying digital self-help measures that let them twiddle back to bargain for a better wage.

All of this sets the stage for a phenomenon called algorithmic wage discrimination, in which two workers doing the same job under the same conditions will see radically different payouts for that work. These payouts are continuously tweaked in the background by an algorithm that tries to predict the minimum sum a worker will accept to remain available without payment, to ensure sufficient workers to pick up jobs as they arise.

This phenomenon — and proposed policy and labor solutions to it — is expertly analyzed in “On Algorithmic Wage Discrimination,” a superb paper by UC Law San Franciscos Veena Dubal:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4331080

Dubal uses empirical data and enthnographic accounts from Uber drivers and other gig workers to explain how endless, self-directed twiddling allows gig companies pay workers less and pay themselves more. As @[email protected] explains in his LA Times article on Dubal’s research, the goal of the payment algorithm is to guess how often a given driver needs to receive fair compensation in order to keep them driving when the payments are unfair:

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-04-11/algorithmic-wage-discrimination

The algorithm combines nonconsensual dossiers compiled on individual drivers with population-scale data to seek an equilibrium between keeping drivers waiting, unpaid, for a job; and how much a driver needs to be paid for an individual job, in order to keep that driver from clocking out and doing something else. @ Here’s how that works. Sergio Avedian, a writer for The Rideshare Guy, ran an experiment with two brothers who both drove for Uber; one drove a Tesla and drove intermittently, the other brother rented a hybrid sedan and drove frequently. Sitting side-by-side with the brothers, Avedian showed how the brother with the Tesla was offered more for every trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UADTiL3S67I

Uber wants to lure intermittent drivers into becoming frequent drivers. Uber doesn’t pay for an oversupply of drivers, because it only pays drivers when they have a passenger in the car. Having drivers on call — but idle — is a way for Uber to shift the cost of maintaining a capacity cushion to its workers.

What’s more, what Uber charges customers is not based on how much it pays its workers. As Uber’s head of product explained: Uber uses “machine-learning techniques to estimate how much groups of customers are willing to shell out for a ride. Uber calculates riders’ propensity for paying a higher price for a particular route at a certain time of day. For instance, someone traveling from a wealthy neighborhood to another tony spot might be asked to pay more than another person heading to a poorer part of town, even if demand, traffic and distance are the same.”

https://qz.com/990131/uber-is-practicing-price-discrimination-economists-say-that-might-not-be-a-bad-thing/

Uber has historically described its business a pure supply-and-demand matching system, where a rush of demand for rides triggers surge pricing, which lures out drivers, which takes care of the demand. That’s not how it works today, and it’s unclear if it ever worked that way. Today, a driver who consults the rider version of the Uber app before accepting a job — to compare how much the rider is paying to how much they stand to earn — is booted off the app and denied further journeys.

Surging, instead, has become just another way to twiddle drivers. One of Dubal’s subjects, Derrick, describes how Uber uses fake surges to lure drivers to airports: “You go to the airport, once the lot get kind of full, then the surge go away.” Other drivers describe how they use groupchats to call out fake surges: “I’m in the Marina. It’s dead. Fake surge.”

That’s pure twiddling. Twiddling turns gamification into gamblification, where your labor buys you a spin on a roulette wheel in a rigged casino. As a driver called Melissa, who had doubled down on her availability to earn a $100 bonus awarded for clocking a certain number of rides, told Dubal, “When you get close to the bonus, the rides start trickling in more slowly…. And it makes sense. It’s really the type of shit that they can do when it’s okay to have a surplus labor force that is just sitting there that they don’t have to pay for.”

Wherever you find reverse-centaurs, you get this kind of gamblification, where the rules are twiddled continuously to make sure that the house always wins. As a contract driver Amazon reverse centaur told Lauren Gurley for Motherboard, “Amazon uses these cameras allegedly to make sure they have a safer driving workforce, but they’re actually using them not to pay delivery companies”:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-they-didnt-make

Algorithmic wage discrimination is the robot overlord of our nightmares: its job is to relentlessly quest for vulnerabilities and exploit them. Drivers divide themselves into “ants” (drivers who take every job) and “pickers” (drivers who cherry-pick high-paying jobs). The algorithm’s job is ensuring that pickers get the plum assignments, not the ants, in the hopes of converting those pickers to app-dependent ants.

In my work on enshittification, I call this the “giant teddy bear” gambit. At every county fair, you’ll always spot some poor jerk carrying around a giant teddy-bear they “won” on the midway. But they didn’t win it — not by getting three balls in the peach-basket. Rather, the carny running the rigged game either chose not to operate the “scissor” that kicks balls out of the basket. Or, if the game is “honest” (that is, merely impossible to win, rather than gimmicked), the operator will make a too-good-to-refuse offer: “Get one ball in and I’ll give you this keychain. Win two keychains and I’ll let you trade them for this giant teddy bear.”

Carnies aren’t in the business of giving away giant teddy bears — rather, the gambit is an investment. Giving a mark a giant teddy bear to carry around the midway all day acts as a convincer, luring other marks to try to land three balls in the basket and win their own teddy bear.

In the same way, platforms like Uber distribute giant teddy bears to pickers, as a way of keeping the ants scurrying from job to job, and as a way of convincing the pickers to give up whatever work allows them to discriminate among Uber’s offers and hold out for the plum deals, whereupon then can be transmogrified into ants themselves.

Dubal describes the experience of Adil, a Syrian refugee who drives for Uber in the Bay Area. His colleagues are pickers, and showed him screenshots of how much they earned. Determined to get a share of that money, Adil became a model ant, driving two hours to San Francisco, driving three days straight, napping in his car, spending only one day per week with his family. The algorithm noticed that Adil needed the work, so it paid him less.

Adil responded the way the system predicted he would, by driving even more: “My friends they make it, so I keep going, maybe I can figure it out. It’s unsecure, and I don’t know how people they do it. I don’t know how I am doing it, but I have to. I mean, I don’t find another option. In a minute, if I find something else, oh man, I will be out immediately. I am a very patient person, that’s why I can continue.”

Another driver, Diego, told Dubal about how the winners of the giant teddy bears fell into the trap of thinking that they were “good at the app”: “Any time there’s some big shot getting high pay outs, they always shame everyone else and say you don’t know how to use the app. I think there’s secret PR campaigns going on that gives targeted payouts to select workers, and they just think it’s all them.”

That’s the power of twiddling: by hoarding all the flexibility offered by digital tools, the management at platforms can become centaurs, able to string along thousands of workers, while the workers are reverse-centaurs, puppeteered by the apps.

As the example of Adil shows, the algorithm doesn’t need to be very sophisticated in order to figure out which workers it can underpay. The system automates the kind of racial and gender discrimination that is formally illegal, but which is masked by the smokescreen of digitization. An employer who systematically paid women less than men, or Black people less than white people, would be liable to criminal and civil sanctions. But if an algorithm simply notices that people who have fewer job prospects drive more and will thus accept lower wages, that’s just “optimization,” not racism or sexism.

This is the key to understanding the AI hype bubble: when ghouls from multinational banks predict 13 trillion dollar markets for “AI,” what they mean is that digital tools will speed up the twiddling and other wage-suppression techniques to transfer $13T in value from workers and consumers to shareholders.

The American business lobby is relentlessly focused on the goal of reducing wages. That’s the force behind “free trade,” “right to work,” and other codewords for “paying workers less,” including “gig work.” Tech workers long saw themselves as above this fray, immune to labor exploitation because they worked for a noble profession that took care of its own.

But the epidemic of mass tech-worker layoffs, following on the heels of massive stock buybacks, has demonstrated that tech bosses are just like any other boss: willing to pay as little as they can get away with, and no more. Tech bosses are so comfortable with their market dominance and the lock-in of their customers that they are happy to turn out hundreds of thousands of skilled workers, convinced that the twiddling systems they’ve built are the kinds of self-licking ice-cream cones that are so simple even a manager can use them — no morlocks required.

The tech worker layoffs are best understood as an all-out war on tech worker morale, because that morale is the source of tech workers’ confidence and thus their demands for a larger share of the value generated by their labor. The current tech layoff template is very different from previous tech layoffs: today’s layoffs are taking place over a period of months, long after they are announced, and laid off tech worker is likely to be offered a months of paid post-layoff work, rather than severance. This means that tech workplaces are now haunted by the walking dead, workers who have been laid off but need to come into the office for months, even as the threat of layoffs looms over the heads of the workers who remain. As an old friend, recently laid off from Microsoft after decades of service, wrote to me, this is “a new arrow in the quiver of bringing tech workers to heel and ensuring that we’re properly thankful for the jobs we have (had?).”

Dubal is interested in more than analysis, she’s interested in action. She looks at the tactics already deployed by gig workers, who have not taken all this abuse lying down. Workers in the UK and EU organized through Worker Info Exchange and the App Drivers and Couriers Union have used the GDPR (the EU’s privacy law) to demand “algorithmic transparency,” as well as access to their data. In California, drivers hope to use similar provisions in the CCPA (a state privacy law) to do the same.

These efforts have borne fruit. When Cornell economists, led by Louis Hyman, published research (paid for by Uber) claiming that Uber drivers earned an average of $23/hour, it was data from these efforts that revealed the true average Uber driver’s wage was $9.74. Subsequent research in California found that Uber drivers’ wage fell to $6.22/hour after the passage of Prop 22, a worker misclassification law that gig companies spent $225m to pass, only to have the law struck down because of a careless drafting error:

https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2021-08-23/proposition-22-lyft-uber-decision-essential-california

But Dubal is skeptical that data-coops and transparency will achieve transformative change and build real worker power. Knowing how the algorithm works is useful, but it doesn’t mean you can do anything about it, not least because the platform owners can keep touching their knobs, twiddling the payout schedule on their rigged slot-machines.

Data co-ops start from the proposition that “data extraction is an inevitable form of labor for which workers should be remunerated.” It makes on-the-job surveillance acceptable, provided that workers are compensated for the spying. But co-ops aren’t unions, and they don’t have the power to bargain for a fair price for that data, and coops themselves lack the vast resources — “to store, clean, and understand” — data.

Co-ops are also badly situated to understand the true value of the data that is extracted from their members: “Workers cannot know whether the data collected will, at the population level, violate the civil rights of others or amplifies their own social oppression.”

Instead, Dubal wants an outright, nonwaivable prohibition on algorithmic wage discrimination. Just make it illegal. If firms cannot use gambling mechanisms to control worker behavior through variable pay systems, they will have to find ways to maintain flexible workforces while paying their workforce predictable wages under an employment model. If a firm cannot manage wages through digitally-determined variable pay systems, then the firm is less likely to employ algorithmic management.”

In other words, rather than using market mechanisms too constrain platform twiddling, Dubal just wants to make certain kinds of twiddling illegal. This is a growing trend in legal scholarship. For example, the economist Ramsi Woodcock has proposed a ban on surge pricing as a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act:

https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-105-issue-4/the-efficient-queue-and-the-case-against-dynamic-pricing

Similarly, Dubal proposes that algorithmic wage discrimination violates another antitrust law: the Robinson-Patman Act, which “bans sellers from charging competing buyers different prices for the same commodity. Robinson-Patman enforcement was effectively halted under Reagan, kicking off a host of pathologies, like the rise of Walmart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

I really liked Dubal’s legal reasoning and argument, and to it I would add a call to reinvigorate countertwiddling: reforming laws that get in the way of workers who want to reverse-engineer, spoof, and control the apps that currently control them. Adversarial interoperability (AKA competitive compatibility or comcom) is key tool for building worker power in an era of digital Taylorism:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

To see how that works, look to other jursidictions where workers have leapfrogged their European and American cousins, such as Indonesia, where gig workers and toolsmiths collaborate to make a whole suite of “tuyul apps,” which let them override the apps that gig companies expect them to use.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For example, ride-hailing companies won’t assign a train-station pickup to a driver unless they’re circling the station — which is incredibly dangerous during the congested moments after a train arrives. A tuyul app lets a driver park nearby and then spoof their phone’s GPS fix to the ridehailing company so that they appear to be right out front of the station.

In an ideal world, those workers would have a union, and be able to dictate the app’s functionality to their bosses. But workers shouldn’t have to wait for an ideal world: they don’t just need jam tomorrow — they need jam today. Tuyul apps, and apps like Para, which allow workers to extract more money under better working conditions, are a prelude to unionization and employer regulation, not a substitute for it.

Employers will not give workers one iota more power than they have to. Just look at the asymmetry between the regulation of union employees versus union busters. Under US law, employees of a union need to account for every single hour they work, every mile they drive, every location they visit, in public filings. Meanwhile, the union-busting industry — far larger and richer than unions — operate under a cloak of total secrecy, Workers aren’t even told which union busters their employers have hired — let alone get an accounting of how those union busters spend money, or how many of them are working undercover, pretending to be workers in order to sabotage the union.

Twiddling will only get an employer so far. Twiddling — like all “AI” — is based on analyzing the past to predict the future. The heuristics an algorithm creates to lure workers into their cars can’t account for rapid changes in the wider world, which is why companies who relied on “AI” scheduling apps (for example, to prevent their employees from logging enough hours to be entitled to benefits) were caught flatfooted by the Great Resignation.

Workers suddenly found themselves with bargaining power thanks to the departure of millions of workers — a mix of early retirees and workers who were killed or permanently disabled by covid — and they used that shortage to demand a larger share of the fruits of their labor. The outraged howls of the capital class at this development were telling: these companies are operated by the kinds of “capitalists” that MLK once identified, who want “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.”

https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/821836823022354432/

There's only 5 days left in the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon's Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: Stephen Drake (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Analog_Test_Array_modular_synth_by_sduck409.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

—

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

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

—

Louis (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chestnut_horse_head,_all_excited.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A complex mandala of knobs from a modular synth. In the foreground, limned in a blue electric halo, is a man in a hi-viz vest with the head of a horse. The horse's eyes have been replaced with the sinister red eyes of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'"]

3K notes · View notes

malestransforming · 1 month

Text

Chronivac Twins

The moment I saw this AI image, I knew I had to write something. Probably one of the hottest things I have ever seen.

Special thanks to @octuscle for the image inspiration. Here is a link to their original story.

- - - - - - - -

Empty beer cans filled the table in front of the two men. The room was silent, the TV showing the console home screen, and darkness was creeping in from the night. The night was winding down, and the two friends were enjoying peaceful moment before the night truly wrapped up.

Mason breathed a heavy sigh, comfortable in his current state. He was clearly drunk, but happily drunk. He fished around in his pockets, feeling for the recent purchase he had received that day: a brand new Chronivac tablet. He pulled it out of his pocket, powering it on for the first time, watching the screen suddenly brighten, flashing the Chronivac logo.

“Check it out!” Mason suddenly exclaimed, surprising even himself with his boldness. “I got this new Chronivac in the mail.”

Beside him sat Chris, Mason’s best friend since grade school. Chris was drunker than Mason was, with his eyes closed and his body still, but he too was in happy state of intoxication.

“Oh yeah? What is that?” Chris slurred from the other end of the coach. The back of Mason’s head was resting on the top of the sofa, leaned back in an almost unnatural position. A massive drunken grin was plastered on his face, highlighting the comfortable state he was currently in.

Mason held up the sleek tablet to an oblivious Chris. A loading screen flashed again as the system booted up.

“Yeah, it’s a tool that lets me change a part of my body. Actually it will change a part of both of us. They had a deal on the twins package.”

“Cool…” Chris breathed.

“Yeah. I know you have been feeling down lately, so I thought it would be nice to spice things up for you. Plus, you know you’re my bro. We’ve been buds since we were five years old. I figured it was time we made it official.”

Mason began tapping at the screen, swiping at different sliders and dials. There were dozens of different settings with labels like “Hair”, “Muscle Levels”, “Race/Nationality”… Mason balked at the overwhelming choices and options, but forced himself to stay focussed; this was a change he had wanted for a while.

“So I was thinking of doing some kind of mixed race. Hmm. Japanese and Mexican? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. I bet that would look hot. With jacked muscles, like body builders. And since we’re gonna be twins, you’ll get it too. Sound good to you Chris?”

Chris only smiled and laughed to himself, the way drunk people often do. It was clear he was not fully present in the moment. Mason took Chris’ drunken laughter as a sign of agreement and continued with the settings page. He slid up the muscle slider to the max, added jock personalities and details such as personal trainer and fitness influencer. He double checked the ‘Race’ tab, making sure that Japanese and Mexican were both checked off. Pleased with his work, he continued on to the last section, “Target Selection” and “Transform”. He allowed the device a few moments to calibrate before confirming the two bodies in the room. He double checked that the “Twins” button was selected and hovered over the Transform button.

“All right bro. This is it. See you on the other side!”

And with that he tapped the button. The screen went blank for a moment, creating a quick sense of panic in Mason’s heart, but reappeared with a white, animated progress bar.

Mason looked down at his hands and arms. “I don’t feel any different,” he said.

He checked the screen again. The progress bar had moved up by one pixel and showed a time remaining of 1440 minutes.

“Oh shoot! I set the transformation duration to be 24 hours. Well that’s okay. When we wake up tomorrow, we’ll definitely see some changes! Next time you see me Chris I’ll be be a huge muscled-out bro. And a completely different race. And so will you! We’ll be twins. Pedro and Miguel. We’re gonna be so fucking hot.”

A gentle and rhythmic breathing came from the other end of the couch. Mason turned his head and grinned at Chris who had passed out on the couch.

“See you in the morning, Miguel,” he whispered.

Bright sunlight was pouring into the apartment. The morning was late, but the day was still young. Chris stirred on the sofa; he was now lying horizontally on the couch, shirtless and in his underwear. He blinked his eyes in the sunlight, rubbing his eyelids with a balled up fist, and stretching against the soft cushions of the sofa. His broad feet pushed against the far armrest, and his arms stretched off behind him. He sat up, and noticed his first change.

Looking down at his chest, Chris saw his pectoral muscles had ballooned out in front of him to a God-like proportion. He cupped his chest, making note of how his nipple had slipped down below his eye line, and squeezed the new muscle.

“What the fuck?” He exclaimed. “Why do I have tits?”

Mason launched himself off the sofa and dove into the bathroom. The flickering fluorescent light clicked on, revealing the extent of Mason’s initial changes. Below his chest were the unmistakeable beginnings of 6-pack abs. Mason ran his fingers over top of his stomach, remembering the slight beer gut that had been there the night before.

He leaned in closer to the mirror and begin poking and prodding his face. His nose seemed wider and his eyes were narrower. His lips were plumping as well, into two thick pillows. He ran his meatier fingers through his darkening hair; it seemed thicker, curlier and shorter than it had before. He pulled a strand and watched it bounce back into place on his scalp.

The sound of a door slamming brought Chris out of his trance. He stepped out of the bathroom and back into the main room.

“Bro!” Mason called from the entry-way. “Are you up?”

“Yeah! What the fuck is happening to me?” Chris replied in anguish.

Mason came around the corner and Chris immediately became aware that the changes he was going through were also happening to Mason. Mason appeared to be several inches shorter, and Chris noticed that he was roughly eye-level to himself now. His chest and abs were similarly large and muscled as Chris’ were, except Mason’s shoulders and arms were much wider. Veins pulsed across Mason’ skin and over his bulging biceps. His nose and eye shape seemed strangely familiar, as did the plumpness of his lips. Mason noticed that Chris’ hair was shorter on top with a shaved, faded appearance on the side.

“Mason, what the fuck is happening? I pass out drunk and wake up all top heavy like this! And then you waltz in looking like that! What the fuck?”

“Chill out bro,” Pedro said. “And my name isn’t Mason anymore. It’s Pedro. And your name isn’t Chris, it’s Miguel. You’re turning out to be such a hot twin.”

Chris/Miguel was unable to get anymore words out as sharp pains coursed through his arms and legs. He hunched over, wrapping his growing limbs around his torso. In front of his eyes he saw the muscles in his arms and legs double, triple and quadruple in size, into massive slabs of muscle. His trap muscles ached and burned as the fibres inside re-stitched themselves, growing to match the mass of his arms and chest. Across the room Pedro grinned in anticipation, as his adonis belt thinned out, becoming lean and chiselled, into his tight pelvis and butt.

“Miguel, we’re going to be so hot!” Pedro’s voice was deeper and more coastal sounding. His jock-instincts were bubbling in his brain, overwriting whatever personality he had before.

“Don’t call me that. My name is Miguel. I mean Chris.” Chris stammered. “How did you even do this?”

“Bro, it was the Chronivac. I told you last night. Just embrace it. I paid good money for this twins package.”

“I need to call them. There has to be a way to reverse this.”

With a wide stride, Chris/Miguel walked over to where his phone was, but doubled over as a burning pain seared through his stomach. He squeezed with his hands, feeling the muscles underneath swell and grow under his touch. Before his eyes his abs went from flat and empty to being completely ripped. His waist got tighter as his adonis belt and hip muscles also tensed and flexed, just like Pedro’s had.

“Bro, I have a six pack!” Chris exclaimed, his voice cracking as it matched the timbre of Pedro’s.

“They match mine, bro!” Pedro said.

Chris shook his head. If he could just call the company and explain what the problem was, then he figured he could stop the changes. He found his phone and brought it to his face, waiting for Face ID to unlock. The phone vibrated in his dark and meaty hand, refusing to unlock. In the black mirror of his phone, he saw a completely different face than the one he was used to. His nose was wider, and his jaw was leaner. His eyes had narrowed into Asian-like features and his hair was shorter and darker than before. His face was looking identical to Pedro’s, right down to the plump lips.

In a panic, Chris typed in his passcode and Googled the number for Chronivac. The phone began ringing.

“Hello?” said a voice on the other end.

“Hello, is this support? My name is Miguel, I mean Chris. My name is Chris. I don’t own your product, but my brother Pedro — I mean my best friend Mason does. He used the Chronivac on me last night and I woke up with big muscles and my face is looking Japanese and Mexican? And the same thing is happening to him! He says we’re becoming twins. This has to be against your Terms of Service! I didn’t agree to this.”

A dark skin spot formed on the back of Chris’ hand, spreading across his skin and up his bulging arms. His skin was darkening, to match his new ethnicity.

“It sounds to me like it might be too late to intervene. Our records show Pedro and Miguel Watanabe.”

“That’s right,” Miguel interjected. He was Miguel, not Chris.

“Yeah,” the agent continued. “So your brother got the Twins Package, and since you are legally twins now, there’s nothing that can be done to change back the transformation. But it’s going to be great being a pair of super hot Latino-Asian influencers, right?”

“Yeah,” Miguel replied absent-mindedly, and in a voice that was deepening. “Thanks anyway. Peace.”

He hung up and tossed the phone aside. Pedro wandered over and wrapped his hand around his twin brother’s shoulder.

“It’s at ninety-nine percent,” Pedro said, indicating the transformation process on the Chronivac.

Miguel felt another spasm in his thighs and legs and saw his skin was now completely browned and tanned now. His legs were thick and bulging, and so was the rest of his body. A wave of emotions came feelings rolled over his brain, and Miguel stood silently in place as his brain and personality adjusted to match his new physique. Pedro stood still for a moment too, as the twenty-two year old twins realized they could speak English, apanese and Spanish and had a long history of lifting weights and posting work-out videos on TikTok. The transformation progress bar clicked up one last pixel to one-hundred percent, snapping the twins out of their daze.

“Bro,” Pedro said. “You wanna get a workout in?”

“You know it!” Miguel said, high-fiving his twin brother with a grin.

#male tf #male transformation #jock transformation #reality change #male tf story #male body transformation #jockification #ai image #chronivac #race change #race tf #race transformation #latino transformation #asian transformation

260 notes · View notes

allyheart707 · 4 months

Note

Are you still taking art prompts?

I had an idea! It would be fun to see a little crossover between your fic and your comic!

Ex: Due to some cosmic glitch, Leo connects with LS Donnie instead of EDHPMW (tricky acronym lol) Donnie. Confusion ensues.

Leo: Where's Donnie..?

LS Donnie: I'll do you one better, WHO is Donnie?

Anyway, no pressure. Love to see your updates!

- Later, in a different universe -

Donatello. It was a name that felt as if it had been stuck on the tip of his tongue the second Carol had brought up naming them. He wasn’t sure why it felt so right, or where the warm feeling came from- like a dream long forgotten, but it was the perfect name. Raph, the snapping turtle, had insisted that he was their brother and this name was the second piece of evidence that pointed towards that possibility. The first one, of course, was him being a mutant turtle.

He still wasn’t sure he could trust the two strangers- especially the other one… Heishi. He had been nothing but a menace since he arrived. It seemed he was trying to get them in trouble. Currently, the slider was desperately trying to convince his brother- Michelangelo- to further break their bed.

“If we pull this part off here I bet I could use it to make a weapon! Now that would be a distraction!” He pushed Mikey, who looked to his brother for the answers.

Donnie shook his head- that would almost certainly get them in way more trouble than it was worth. Plus, they just wanted to go outside, not to hurt anyone. Mikey frowned, but turned back to Heishi and shook his head.

“Nu-uh, mm sorry, but they would get really mad if we broke our bed.” Mikey answered, making Heishi groan.

“Hmmm, welllll… what if I promise to show you all my cool warrior moves?” Donnie knew exactly how this would turn out, and groaned as his brother let out an excited squeal.

“REALLY?” He gasped, and Heishi gave him a big grin.

It did not take much to break his little brother, who thought on the new deal for only a second before giving in and nodding.

“Okay! But only if you do it on my bro’s bed- er… Dee’s bed! He likes his bed cuz the cameras can’t see it!” He whispered the last part as he pointed to the bottom bunk where Donatello currently sat, staring at the both of them in disappointment.

“You're going to get us all in trouble, you know.” He offered, but Heishi was already yanking on the middle rung to their bunk, attempting to pull it from the bed.

“Yeah! An’ what if they put those handcuffs on you again?! Or worse?” Raph added, making Donnie nod- at least someone had some sense.

Of course, his brother and Heishi were not listening- both now on his bed, pulling against the rung until there was a resounding C R A C K and they both tumbled backwards- the wooden rung now in their hands. Ugh.

“AH-HA! Now this is a plan!” Heishi shouted triumphantly, holding up the splintered remains of their bunk as if it was something spectacular.

Donnie turned and flopped against his pillow- refusing to see the end of this. ‘Will they fix our bunk?’ He wasn’t sure. When the light broke a few weeks ago- they fixed that but… him and his brother have never broken anything on purpose before. ‘They took away our books… would they take away their papers next? Or their bunk? That is what they broke so what if-’ Donnie shook his head, burrowing it further into his pillow-

‘no, Carol wouldn’t let them take their bunk. Plus, how would they fit it through the door? It wouldn’t fit!’

‘... wait… how did it get into the room? … was it always here?’ Donnie lost himself to his thoughts as he watched the large snapping turtle pace back and forth at the door and attempted to ignore the delighted chattering between his brother and Heishi.

“Master Draxum says I'm too ‘small and weak’ for big weapons… but he does let me use a wooden sword sometimes! I’m really good with it too!” His words were followed by whooshing sounds and Donnie's bed bobbing up and down with each thrust of Heishi’s “sword”- making Mikey gasp in excitement. Even Raph seemed to be a little impressed, stopping his pacing to watch, big eyes wide in a mixture of nervousness and awe. That only fueled the fire in Heishi. Ughhhh. Curiosity got the best of Donnie and he finally decided to turn his head to watch the ‘greatest warrior’ swing his ‘sword’ around.

He couldn’t stand on the bed without hitting his head, so instead he was moving around on his knees- despite that rather awkward position, he was keeping himself upright which was already a little impressive. He moved with surprising speed, twisting his arms and slashing the sword about as if fighting some imaginary enemy. Every time Donnie thought he would hit the wall or one of the bedposts he would pull away just in time and begin another set of random exercises.

It was… a little … cool.

Then, as Donnie tried his best to cool his expressions and Heishi swung upwards for what looked like a finishing blow, that the sword exploded in blue light. Heishi screamed, throwing the sword and hitting his shell against the wall as they all stared wide eyed at the bright blue that danced over the sharp wooden stick.

-Meanwhile-

-To Be Continued- (??? If people are interested.)

I thought it would be fun that, for the crossover, they switched media! My comic being written, and my fic being in comic format! :DD

I was so nervous to post this and kinda went blind re-reading it over and over again soooo there are probably grammar/spelling errors I missed. Sorry about that- I might go through and edit them later?

#rottmnt #tmnt #rise of the tmnt #ally asks #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #little subjects au #turtle tots #rottmnt seperated au #Even Dead #crossover

161 notes · View notes

the-ace-with-spades · 5 months

Text

So, kinda Mav's POV of this silly Slimav fwb ficlet thingy?? who knows, maybe one day there will be Ice's part... (tw: non-descriptive/implied sex)

Things with Slider keep...happening? Mav isn't exactly sure this is the right word but they're certainly going well.

Contrary to popular belief, Mav isn't dumb. He knows what Slider is doing, he's just not sure it's actually working at all.

They keep on having sex, usually at Slider and Ice's house, usually at least twice a week and honestly, the arrangement is better than Mav suspected.

Slider is good in bed, he's Mav's type, at least physically — cocky, tall, blonde, smart-mouthed in all the meanings of the word, athletic, and willing to try to keep up with him — and he's by far the safest and the most convenient lay Mav could have with a guy. He knows he's clean thanks to military health regulations, he knows he's discreet, also thanks to military regulations, and he won't ever sell Mav out to his CO because he'd be selling himself out too. He's got a safe place no one is going to question them using — to the neighbors, they're just some bros from the Navy that probably get drunk together twice a week and that's why Mav is staying overnight — and their only witness is also gay and would be selling himself out if he said anything.

Now, Mav says he knows what Slider is doing because said only witness is literally an eyewitness of what they're doing and it can't be a fucking coincidence.

At first, it kinda seems to be a coincidence. Mav shows up for their scheduled sex night — what? it's not a date night, it's a sex night — and Slider doesn't wait until Mav is in his room before they start kissing and tries to pin him down to the front door. It's admirable, and so hot, that he tries, but Mav gets his arms around the back of his neck and steps in, leg wrapping around his hip a bit. Slider's hands go down, taking a resting spot on the curve Mav's ass as he leans down, kissing the corners of Mav's lips with fervor and then his arms go lower, pulling Mav's waist into an arch, and he—

He lifts Mav up by the thighs, fingers digging into his jeans, and his knees instinctively lock around his hips and Slider bounces him up in his grip like he weighs nothing. Just as he moves them away from the door, he stops the ever-going kiss and Mav leans away, enough to see behind his shoulder, and—

That's definitely Ice, standing in the living room door frame, book in hand, staring at them, frozen in a perfectly still position, but blinking rapidly, and that alone says a lot.

Mav snorts into Slider's shoulder and feels Slider's chest rumble underneath as he chuckles into his hair.

The world swirls, Slider turns around, hands suspiciously high under his butt, and takes a step and Mav is so focused on how fucking hot it is that he can carry him around like he weighs nothing that he almost misses the "Sorry, man, outta the way. Don't want to drop this idiot, won't get laid if he ends up in ER."

He bites down on his neck for the comment and Slider, like the sick bastard he is, moans a bit.

It keeps on happening, always 'on accident'. Slider tells Ice the wrong time of their meet-up so he's literally still on the couch Slider throws Mav onto first thing after he comes to their house, or he forgets to close to his bedroom and has hands down Mav's pants as Ice walks by to the bathroom at night, or Ice comes back from church and they're buck naked on the wobbly living room table, or in the morning, Slider and Mav go to take a shower, together, and once again the doors aren't closed so—

It has to be on purpose. Especially that on the one day Ice is actually out of the house the whole night — Mav has no idea where, but it's their third sex night that week so he probably is desperate enough to go to a hotel — Slider starts their second round in the morning, perfectly timed with Ice's return.

They're eating the french toast and scrambled eggs Mav made, not really that chatty, they're barely friends after all, and Mav is wearing one of Slider's giant band t-shirts, this time with Bon Jovi on it — it's comfy and this way, he doesn't dirt up his clothes, sue him — and his own white briefs.

He can hear Ice's old man car on the driveway just as Slider pushes away their plates, grabs Mav by the hips, plops him on the kitchen island's countertop like a doll, pulls his pants off, and starts trying to maul his neck, nicely prepared for him by already sticking out of the huge collar of his huge t-shirt.

Ice walks into the kitchen to see Mav splayed like a starfish on the counter, his briefs stuck on his ankles, his dick covered only by the hem of that godawful Bon Jovi t-shirt and Slider's massive hand, and he just stands there for a minute as they all just stare at each other to finally hiss through clenched teeth, "We eat on that counter."

And like, Mav is not complaining, it's just, well, whatever plan Slider has, it has some holes in it.

He tries to put a little bit of a stop to it, alright, he really does, he's not about to torture himself by reading too much into Ice's expression whenever he walks on them, fool's hope, dream on and all that shit. It's just—hard. He hasn't had such regular, good sex in since before college, and never with a guy, and Slider is fucking hot, okay? It's literally his only good quality — hot and good in bed.

So when one day, during their lunch break, Ice, who is sitting pressed into Mav, thighs, arms, elbows, it all touching, says, "Can we just have one night without you two—as friends, just three guys who are friends and—" Mav agrees to just have a chill night at their place.

It's a nice evening, in general. Slider fucks off god knows where for most of the time, leaving just Mav and Ice in the kitchen — Slider can't cook, the bastard just sponges off whatever they cook. They put the radio on, do some silly dances — okay, Mav does, but it makes Ice chuckles so it's almost the same thing — and just talk and talk, preparing food close to each other enough that their elbows touch. And Ice looks at him, just looks at him, with so much fondness, with so much vulnerability in his wide-eyed expression, with that soft blush and downturned face and it is almost enough for him.

But then he leans closer and closer and Ice is no longer there, turning away from him as if burned and Mav—Mav is not dumb enough to torture himself with this forever, at least not on purpose.

So Slider comes back when dinner is ready and Mav sits next to him at the table, even though he usually would sit next to Ice, and lets Slider steal bacon from his plate as Ice stabs the food with a little too much force to be fully cool about the whole thing — Mav isn't reading into it though, he's tried and tried and tried, and he won't make a fool out of himself, Slider's plan be damned.

They move to the living room, some action movie selected, Ice already sitting at one end of the couch under a cozy blanket, book in hand, Slider on the other end.

It's the beginning of September only, but the whole day was unexpectedly cold, with a storm picking up at various hours, and now that Mav isn't moving around the kitchen or hovering close to the hot oven, he's feeling a bit chilly.

He makes a small detour to Slider's room, to snatch one of his sweatshirts, way too big on him, sleeves covering his fingers almost completely, the hem pulling under his hips.

They both turn to him and the ugly beige sweatshirt is more than plain noticeable but he just gives them an innocent smile. "What? I was cold, I know where all of Slider's shit is."

"We could've just shared the blanket," Ice says, sounding as if his mouth is drier than the Sahara.

Mav raises an eyebrow at him, pointedly, as if to say, Could we really?

Slider doesn't smirk, exactly, but it's clear on his face his shit-eating grin is held up by his will alone. He props one arm behind his head and pats the couch next to himself with the other.

Mav plops next to him and Slider's arm wraps around the small of his back. Mav grabs the remote and turns on the movie, aware that Ice's jaw is clenched as he stares down at his book.

Mav—Mav clings. Slider is warm, really warm, he's always like a space heater, and he might as well use it to his advantage.

Not even fifteen minutes into the movie, Mav feels Slider's hot hand slip underneath the sweater and his t-shirt, scorching fingers dipping into his sides and bringing Mav closer, close enough that the leg he had crossed over his knee slides down onto Slider's thigh. Mav doesn't stay passive, seeking out skin, too, reaching into Slider's collar, and next thing he knows Slider leans in and kisses him.

And then does it again, and again, and again, until Mav is fighting for small sips of air in between.

(There's a tearing sound somewhere, but Mav is pretty sure Ice the control freak would have enough control not to tear his book pages out just because Mav is getting frisky with his best friend in front of him.)

Then Slider grabs him under his thighs, lifting him up and standing up at the same time, Mav's legs wrapping around him on instinct.

"What the fuck—"

"Oh, shut up," Slider cuts off and then slaps his ass and okay, maybe he squeals a little, sue him. "I know you like it."

Like hell he's going to admit but, yeah, he kinda does. He's starting to think Slider likes carrying him around and throwing him on different surfaces just as much, he sure does it a lot.

Ice clears his throat and cooly, voice too still to not be suggest how he feels truly, says, "I asked for one night—"

Mav almost — almost — feels bad but then Slider says, "Sorry, man, he looks too fuckable in my sweatshirt." Then, cheekily, as they leave the living room, Mav now held up in just one of his arms — and isn't that fucking hot? — adds, "You wouldn't understand."

And this time, he can't just pretend he doesn't know what's happening here.

"I know what you're doing," he tells Slider, just as he's thrown on his bed and swarmed by his long limbs.

Right before he dives lower, Slider remarks, "Eh, do you really though?"

"It's not going to work," he protests, even as he lets Slider bite down his neck, his hand arching his head back for better access, strong hold keeping Mav still and making him hornier. "Even if he was getting jealous—"

"He is."

"—I think he'd be past the boiling point now," he finishes.

Slider tilts his head back, meeting his eyes. "You don't know how stubborn he can be."

"So what? You're just going to fuck the guy he supposedly wants until he breaks?"

"Yeah, basically," Slider says, fingers still gripping his hair. "Just enjoying your tight ass until my best friend decides to think with his dick and not his brain, for once."

"Nice," is all Mav adds before they go back to business.

He'd be lying to say he doesn't care. He wants Ice to do something. He wants him to admit he doesn't like whatever deal Slider and Mav have going on, that he doesn't like it specifically because he wants Mav to himself.

He wonders if he and Slider talk about Mav. If he asks Slider what is going on with them, if Slider gives him the dirty details, if he gets pissed off at Slider for continuing to hook up with him, again and again. If all those little expressions he sees on Ice's face whenever he walks in on them, if they're louder and more pronounced when he leaves the house and it's just Slider to take them on.

But fool's hope and all that — so Mav claws at Slider's sweater and pops it over his head.

As time goes on, it just feels more and more as if he's wrong about the whole, that he just imagined the way Ice looks at him.

"So, Maverick," Slider begins when Mav and Ice are chatting at their cubicles, sitting down on Mav's desk like he owns it. "You free this Saturday? Ice is stuck at work so the house will be empty."

Right behind himself, he hears a snap. When he turns around, Ice's broken his pencil in half.

Interesting.

"I'm actually going with Bradley to the beach, I'm going to teach him to swim," he says slowly. "Or at least try. The kid's been getting panicky any time we leave him without the floaties."

"Ooof, that's tough," Slider says and he actually seems sympathetic because Bradley is everyone's favorite and everyone's weak spot. "You want a second pair of hands? Might make him feel a bit more secure if he's surrounded from all sides."

And why not? It's not like Ice has any more pencils to break.

It's a nice enough day, for one spent with Slider. Bradley can't swim by the end of it, but he can float in the water without screaming his lungs out, so Mav takes it as a win. Bradley giggles at their banter and finds their insults — dialed down, there's a kid with them after all — funny, and there's just something less irritating about Slider, like this, with Bradley as the buffer.

Mav drives them in Goose's old car to leave Bradley back with Carole, they chat for a bit, and then Mav takes his motorcycle and drives them to Ice and Slider's place. They're both in jeans and there's a lot of rubbing and some more-or-less intentional grinding, so by the time Mav parks on the driveway, they're both half hard and set on one goal. They pass Ice on the way to Slider's room, and maybe he's a bit red in the face and maybe Mav arches his hips with a bit of an exaggeration but well, he's having fun and it's not his problem Ice isn't part of it.

It happens again, mostly because Ice is fighting to get the upcoming promotion and often works on the weekends, Carole gives private lessons on Saturdays, and that just leaves Mav and Slider alone, usually with Bradley for most of the day and then alone and pent up in the evening.

Slider is good with Bradley, too. Baby Goose is a soft, sensitive boy, and many men would try to toughen him up, but Slider doesn't. No, Slider stops and holds him when he gets scared, carries him around when he gets tired or sleepy, can't resist the cow eyes almost as badly as Mav and buys Bradley anything he wants, and doesn't protest last all when Bradley asks if they can swing him around — just gives him his hand, waits for Mav to grab his other hand, and then just throws Bradley in the air as high as he can.

There start to be times when they don't even retreat back to Slider and Ice's place after, just say goodbye at the door to Mav and Carole's house — Bradley always insists Mav needs a hug goodbye too, Uncle Slider — and then Slider leaves without Mav.

"It kinda seems like you're dating him, Pete," Carole says one calm evening that Mav does not spend with Slider and Ice, after Slider took them back home in his embarrassing wagon BMW.

Bradley is already asleep and they're drinking wine (from normal glasses because they still haven't managed to buy the full dishware set).

Mav obviously finds it ridiculous. "You can't date someone you don't have feelings for."

Carole raises her eyebrow and takes a slurpy sip and yeah, fair enough, there's plenty of people who are married and hate each other, not to mention ones that are dating.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asks. There's a difference between having sex and dating, even if there aren't any feelings in either.

Carole has some—thing, for Slider, he knows. It's been over four years since Goose and he knows they won't ever fully move on but they have to at least try. He'd never hold it against her if she fell in love with someone, it's just—it's Slider of all people.

"Nah, have some fun," Carole sighs. "It's not like he'll ever see me anyway."

Slider's been equally dumb about all of Carole's flirting attempts as Ice was about his, which was an achievement in itself because Mav wasn't the subtlest, but Carole wasn't subtle at all.

"What a mess," he says and then pours more wine into Carole's glass.

@woodsywarbler, hon, I think you wanted me to tag you here? idk this is a bit disappointing b/c tumblr ate the longer draft and i had no energy to write it out in detail but 🤷🏻‍♂️

#okay there might a part 3 (ice's) that might or might not have ice's reaction to mav finally calling slider 'ron' and them going on a date #also this is the half-assed version bc tumblr ate the proper version and i didn't have the mental energy to write it all again #slimav #icemav #kinda? ice is still being dumb #i have no idea what ship name is there for carole/slider but there's a mention here #tropical heat and rick's ass are forever in my head so...#ron slider kerner #pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky

175 notes · View notes

g-xix · 4 months

Note

i literally NEED dating headcannons for Ginge😰PLEASE IM BEGGING

☁️AngryGinge13 Dating Headcanons

-Right, we all know how this man loves his lil Lightning McQueen Crocs -Now imagine that was the first present he ever got you. -You always let him know that you HATED crocs and that you thought they were SO UGLY... -Which is why for your birthday when you opened up a pair of Lightning McQueen crocs to match his own "hideous" pair, you were completely deadpan whereas Ginge was almost crying from laughter -Unfortunately, when the strap of your sliders broke, you did have to resort to the McQueen crocs... -And they ended up growing on you... -First time Ginge showed up to your house unexpectedly and caught you wearing the crocs he was laughing and videoing it in sheer disbelief and triumph over the fact he'd won you over with the crocs -They're comfy asw, although you'd never admit that to Ginge... -Oh, and if you're ever packing to go to a hotel or an overnight stay or anything, Morgan always reminds you to take your McQueen crocs or just packs them whilst you're asleep with a post-it note with an annoying little smiley face drawn on. -He was so obsessed with these McQueen crocs asw, that he saw a TikTok on his fyp of a couple doing the shoes trend thingie and he joked with chat that he should do that with his missus... But then he came home and ACTUALLY ENDED UP MAKING YOU DO WITH THE LIGHTNIGN MCQUEEN CROCS AND ALL... -(Acc kinda cute though) -This is what it turned out to look like:

Cute!!!

-Anyways, we all know Ginge is a big football player -Our favourite goalie, blocked the goal more times than he's cockblocked himself and not realised it until an hour later -You love going and watching his games -Not massive on watching sports, only really like the world cup and euros... -But seeing your boyfriend out and playing on the pitch has you some type of way -You're either up on your feet cheering him on, sat down with your head in your hands absolutely bricking it, or trying not to pass out because of how hot Morgan looks with his hands above his head, hair messy and out of place as he grins and kicks the ball out to the midfield -Either way, you're always gushing when he comes out of the locker room- grabbing his hand and telling him how good that one save was -He loves it to be honest, even after in his eyes he's had a shit game, in your eyes he's always the star player and he loves how you never fail to show that -When he comes back as well, you make him lie his ass down -Get him to lie on his front so that you can give a back massage and get all those tight knots out his back bc he gets SO stiff (😏🤭) -You need to smack a hand over his mouth because he fully GROANS every time you're getting the knots -You're hissing at him shut up before everyone downstairs think we're- -He let's out ANOTHER ungodly loud groan whilst has you threatening to leave the massage right there and then if he doesn't get his act straight -He also INSISTS he doesn't groan but that he grunts (as if that makes it any better???) -Once you're done, you get up from the bed and smack his ass to indicate it's done (and just to get a grip of the WHOLE BAKERY) -One time there wasn't a Sunday match so he stayed home instead, and ended up asking whether you wanted a massage -You agreed, not thinking anything could go wrong... -WRONG. -Bro literally straddled you to "get the technique right" -It felt INCREDIBLY painful but Morgan was insistent that was just because you were stiff, and the massage was going to make it better -Came away from that feeling stiffer than before... -Later that night you lifted your shirt and looked back into the mirror... -You had fucking BRUISES from how hard Morgan had been pressing -Morgan was horrified seeing it as well, smacking a hand over his mouth and tracing over the marks with a finger as if he couldn't believe it -Apologised profusely and gave you a massive bear hug, apologising for a straight minute despite the fact he was amused by it, as indicated by the wide grin on his face. -Did make up for it by getting you your favourite takeout and cuddling you all night until you fell asleep though, arms around your waist and legs tucked up against yours until he felt your breathing rate slow, indicating you'd fallen asleep.

-And right, I know Autumn's usually quite shitty- rain and proper chilly.... But imagine forcing Ginge to do an aesthetic, couples Autumn with you. -Would do baking at least once a week with him and fight the urge to throw flour at him every time he slammed the oven shut, looked across the room and groaned as he realised he forgot to put the sugar in... -First time you baked together, you tried to make cinnabuns with icing and all, for a stream -Instead you ended up doing the spoon-of-cinnamon challenge, almost choking, Ginge going bright red in the face and coughing up clouds of brown, powder-cinnamon like a dragon... -Oh, and Morgan went super-sus as soon as you started making the icing- picking up the spoon and watching it dribble down time and time again, either making zesty jokes or asking "How many people watching this probably have a boner because of this icing?" -The image of Morgan with icing all over his tongue became all of Ginge's Twitter replies for the next month. -And Morgan buys you candles every time he goes out to add to your collection which you light up whenever the two of you do movie nights together... -Oh, and another stream the two of you tried: pumpkin carving: +You laughed at how the pumpkin was Ginge's third cousin (the ginger hair gene's proper strong in his family...) +Morgan ended up accidentally slicing his finger and yelling that Chucky was gonna sniff him out and BUM HIM that night (You watched Chucky just the other night but didn't know where Morgan got the bum stuff from...) +Morgan tried to spray stuff from an aerosol and light it on fire instead of lighting his little tea light... -Fair to say that the clips from that stream went very viral.

-The two of you have SUCH different date night ideas as well. -I wanna say that you'd have a lot more aesthetic, quite cute little date nights, a bit more indoorsy and intimate... -But whenever Morgan organises date nights, it's absolute CHAOS. -You organise movie nights with pillow forts and homemade snacks; boardgame nights with homemade s'mores; Mario Kart tournaments with forfeits... -Most outdoorsy date idea you organised was a Summer picnic on Primrose Hill the day after the Sidemen Charity match, as a little London date -You didn't plan any dates after that because that date ended with some teen-roadmen insisting on joining your picnic in their bally's and all, and a whole load of pictures of yourself and Ginge all over Twitter :/ -But aside from that, what date nights did Ginge organise? -Well, he liked doing stream dates like the pumpkin carving stream -But he also considers his fifa streams where he gets you in as dates, despite the fact you're bored off your arse opening packs -Most fun streamed date night that Ginge had organised was the one just a few days before Halloween where the two of you played horror games together. -You started with the classic FNAF game 1 as a warmup which had Ginge a lot more scared than you (although at one point you did a little jump... which did make you accidentally topple off the chair, much to Morgan's amusement as he scream-laughed at you on the floor) -Playing Silent Hill had Morgan silenced though, as he insisted on you sitting on his lap to play so that he could bury his head between your neck and shoulder and hide behind your body whenever there was a jumpscare -You'd be getting butterflies as he holds his arms around your waist, squeezing you tightly whenever he started getting scared there'd be a jumpscare and resting his head on your shoulder... You're absolutely trying your best to focus on the game and not get flustered and dopily smile whilst the stream could see your every expression -Lots of cutesy edits came out the next day of how Ginge was "so in love with you" from the way he held you and looked at you in that horror stream... And you favourited every single one. -Those were some of the less chaotic streams though. -One time he installed speakers in his room and little fireworks and got you to play fifa against him- whenever one of you scored he'd blow an airhorn and play GET HYPER! loudly from the speakers, making you let out a scream every time a fireworks was set off behind you, charring the ceiling from the mini-explosion. -Another time he arranged a theme park date which was all good and fun apart from when after the first rollercoaster, Morgan realised he HATED rollercoasters and you LOVED them. -And you had a strong stomach, whereas Morgan felt queasy after each ride despite not even eating a thing beforehand. -Meanwhile you were eating all of the festive food: Caramel apple? Scranned. Candyfloss? Gone. Chocolate-dipped and icing-powdered churros? Absolutely decimated. -Ginge only touched food when the ice cream man tried to do the tricks with the icecream cone, flipping it around your hands so that you couldn't TOUCH the ice cream. Morgan was too quick, swiping the ice cream when the icecreaman least expected it- but also accidentally crushing the cone over the head of a toddler who was stood in front of you. -You tried not to laugh as Morgan profusely apologised to the crying four-year-old, trying to silence the youngling with "Any ice cream you want! You can have three scoops- oh please stop crying!" -Also get off from a rollercoaster and saw they had a little photobooth! -Ofc forced him to go in there 😍😍

-You thought the photos were done after just 2 pictures and left Ginge confused in the last one looking like that... -Had a heart-swell moment the next morning when you saw Morgan had posted it to his insta story with a little "<3 @yourUser" despite not being overenthusiastic to take the pictures in the first place 🥰

----

Quick lil amalgamation of Ginge HC's following the sdmn vid - send in more ginge requests though! Mocks finish this week and the new vid has me a little bit FERAL for Ginge, so flood the inbox w all your ginge ideas or even your own Ginge HC's, and I hope you enjoyed this quick little upload!!!

Hope you enjoyed reading!! Feel free to interact- whether that be a comment, vote or follow! Requests open, feel free to submit what u wanna see... Much love!!

To see more, here's my MASTERLIST

And here's my WATTPAD, with 50+ more oneshots to read

93 notes · View notes

reagi-df · 3 months

Text

Leon is so happy to meet other versions of himself at the @tmntaucompetition, Cleo on the other hand? Not so much, he's going through stuff and it's bad enough he's having to deal with Leon and Him. But Leon thinks it might be good exposure.... Hopefully there won't be any bloodshed

--------- “Bro, can't you just chill,? Leo whines. “Your not even 26 yet and I can already see the wrinkles in your face from the resting bitch face you keep sporting”

Leo turns his head to the side, amber eyes narrowing at him, “chill?” He echoes, turns fully to Leon now, “it’s bad enough I have to deal with you and him, but now there’s more of us?”

Leo drags his hands down his face with a groan and Leon catches the slight shake in his limbs. Brows furrowing, Leon adjusts his stance, shoulders drawing back as he fingers the scalpel that’s hidden in his wrappings, ready and waiting.

Keeping his voice low Leon speaks slowly. “It’s not a big deal, their not going to be here for long”

Leo digs his fingers into his skin and lets off a sharp hiss as he hunches his shoulders.

Leon curses and edges out from behind the settee and warily steps closer, “hey” he waits for a solid 5 seconds before the older slider lifts his head, and he hates the look the other is giving him.

His distorted pupils have retracted into slits, and a chill runs through Leon; he suddenly feels like he’s prey and those predators were locked onto him. He desperately tries to remember what he saw the other peepaws do when Leo gets like this, hell Leons sure Casey would have a better understanding of how to help his counterpart.

A low growl ripples out, shattering the quietness that had filled the room. Shit, he thinks, he stares down at the predator.

He feels a tug on his ninpo and dread fills him. He needs to defuse this situation as quickly as he can.

Leon’s eye catches onto a cup of water sitting on the table, eyes dart back and forth between the slider and the water, he’s seen Tello do the same and it worked then, sure Tello had to hide for a few hour a until Leo calmed down and stopped hunting him but it still worked.

He’s just hoping it’ll work now.

He edges toward the table as casually as he could, makes sure he’s out of arm reaches and keeps his tone soft.

“Look i'm going to be real with you, I’ve never been good on the whole “self help” stuff,” Leon air quotes, “but I know the usual process of getting people to calm down from panic attacks won’t usually work on you and I’d really like to not knock you out if I can help it”

Once he’s close, he inches his fingers closer to the cup; those irregular eyes were locked into his own, it unsettles him but if the older wasn’t looking at what his hands are doing then that’s fine.

Like magicians, it’s all about misleading.

Cup firmly in his hand he steps forward.

“So it’s either you let me help you calm down. Or I go get Tello, hell even Casey ” he’s a little disappointed name dropping Casey didn’t get a reaction out of him.

Sharp eyes peek out from his fingers, Leo’s golden eyes are a stark contrast to his black mask, making them all the more piercing as they stare into Leon’s very being.

When he’s met with no other reaction, Leon carries on, “okay that’s good, I’m probably the last person you wanna see but there’s nothing I can do.”

“And hey, I’m sorry” he grins and throws the cup of water at his counterpart's face, the slider flings back with a hiss and lands on his backside.

Leon waits with a bated breath, as Leo stares up at him, eye blinking while the water drips from his face. It takes a few seconds for either one of them to speak.

“What. The hell” Leo growls and Leon can’t take him seriously when he looks like a grumpy wet cat.

Faking casual Leo shrugs nonchalantly and sets the cup down, “shouldn’t have hissed at me then” even as he speaks he’s still creeping away, those same amber eyes narrowed into slits, and he sees the way the eldest slider's body tenses up.

Eugh boy

“Y’know, I’m curious” Leo gets up slowly, water droplets hitting his plastron and onto the floor. “I don’t remember how fast I used to be when I was younger” Leo regrets everything up until this point when he sees a smile twist onto Leo’s face, sharp white canines glisten in the light.

“You sure you won’t pop a hip” unable to hold back a snark, Leon regards him.

“Wanna test it?” His voice is low and menacing and Leo could see the sadistic look in his eyes.

“I just suddenly remembered Donnie wants me, so how about we test this some other time m’kay?” Grinning Leo turns and legs it with his counterpart hot on his tail.

“I shoulda just let you suffer!” Leo yelps just as a hand missed reaching out for him.

Please excuse my dyslexia

#forgive me #tmnt au competition #future leonardo #rise leo #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt leo #rise of tmnt #I haven't done anything like this before i'm nervous

96 notes · View notes

pollyna · 2 years

Text

Ron says it while Tom is at the phone with Pete and Tom doesn't know why it should be something important.

(Our dear Tommy isn't as blond as he used to be.

Yeah, I know, thank you so much Ronald. But it's not like they sell that shirt on this boat. With so much as rolling his eyes because Jesus man.

Mav laughs and Ice forgets what they were talking about.)

The next time he's on leave Pete greats him home with the longest of kisses, not that he's against that, and a blonde bottle on the bathroom sink. Tom gets back on that stupid boat, a month and half later, as blonde as he was the day they started TOP GUN and with so many love bits Ron is worried he's dating a vampire and not a human.

It becomes a sort of their thing, between Ron and Pete, while Tom is talking to the latter the first says less blonde and when he puts a foot on the ground a blonde bottle is already waiting for him at home. Sometimes Tom does them himself and sometimes Pete spends hours inventing new shades of ice blond just for him.

(They are still doing it, even years after, when Iceman's hair are more grey than blond and his tips stopped being frosted from a decade or two. Ron speaks, Pete buys the hair dye and they spend an afternoon in the bathroom kissing and talking about stupid shit while they wait for the dye to work.)

(The whole ordial still makes Tom stupidly happy and smiley. It's a win-win for everyone, at the end.)

#slider 🤝 maverick: working to preserve iceman's frosted tips #ron slider kerner is a very good friend #pete laughs: iceman brain.exe #slider & maverick tentative friendship #iceman & slider friendship #best bros™️#ron slider kerner #tom iceman kazansky #pete maverick mitchell #icemav #iceman's frosted tips #top gun (1986)#aircraft carrier are going to be stupid boats™️ until my brain says so #fluff #warm and fuzzy feelings #domesticity #kisses

215 notes · View notes

turtleblogatlast · 1 day

Text

One of the biggest things that makes me see Leo as trans is absolutely the size of his carapace in comparison to his brothers’.

And I’m not talking about height! I’m specifically looking at his shell here, because when you compare him to the others, particularly Donnie who is nearly the same height as Leo, it’s very clear that Leo’s carapace is much longer in proportion to the rest of his body.

Like - standing side by side, even though Donnie is shorter his carapace ends noticeably higher up than Leo’s does. And I like this not only because it really helps push the idea that Leo could very likely be trans (or intersex!), but it’s also just a fun design difference between them.

(It also lends way to future scenarios of Donnie eventually getting taller than Leo, but sitting down still has Leo being the taller one haha.)

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt leo #trans leonardo #rottmnt headcanons #rise leo #trans leo #it’s like 4 am and I’m having trans leo feelings again sorry guys #totally get if other people disagree with me on this! but it’s always gonna be my no.1 headcanon fr #his complexion the vibrancy of his colors staying even in adulthood his general demeanor and this? this hc is LOCKED in my brain #plus the times Leo’s depicted in pink white and blue throughout the series like I KNOW it wasn’t on purpose but damn if it doesn’t help #(his nails are also the exact same as his toe nails/claws but I don’t super count this one tbh)#(even though it is TECHNICALLY another point in favor of trans leo)#(mainly because all the boys’ nails are very much more humanoid than turtle)#(just like how their tails aren’t really a factor either since we see them only in their baby forms and never again)#I really like the idea that he was a female red eared slider pre mutation #and Lou Jitsu’s dna paved how his humanoid features came out (aka a more masculine build and voice)#but his turtle features are all very much more in like with a female res #love the thought of rise bros meeting og comic turtle boys and Leo being like wait you guys are res too?? but…you’re not colorful……#one headcanon I have is that - you know the cute chirping and stuff we have the boys do?#I like to think that Leo’s chirping actually sounds more feminine to himself and his bros (so he tends to not do it)#idk I love thinking about this hc a lot and there’s no time like four am to talk about it huh?#future scenario has future Donnie going up to future Leo all smug like ah Nardo how’s the weather down there #and Leo’s all like good *sits down* why don’t you join me :)#Donnie: …*sits and stretches his neck out to be taller still*#Leo calls him a cheater but Donnie calls it ‘making use of his species’s advantages’#but yeah basically for many turtles the case is - bigger carapace? female. smaller carapace? male.#so it’s very interesting to take that knowledge and apply it here #did you know one of the turtles that this rule of thumb DOESNT apply to is alligator snapping turtles? male ones are the bigger ones there!#by a big difference too so Raph’s size makes a LOT of sense

112 notes · View notes

punkeccentricenigma · 7 months

Text

Rise!Boys comfort Reader after losing a pet

Relationship status: Platonic

Reader prounouns: They/Them

TW: Comfort Angst, Pet D3ath, Some grammatical errors because english is not my first language.

Author's note: I know it's a bit unexpected post, but I went through something terrible when I got back from work after the night shift today. My beloved dog died for unknown reasons. I wanted to vent my frustration and sadness into something, and it happened to be writing more headcanons. I hope that if someone else is going through such a loss right now, they'll find comfort in this post. And don't worry, the other requests are ready and I will make them public soon.

Leonardo

◇ When he heard about your loss, he immediately used his sword to teleport to you.

◇ What happened was terrible; he didn't want to leave you alone with it.

◇ Most likely, the boy began to wipe away your tears with his hands and then hugged you.

◇ Sweet words of encouragement here, sweet words of comfort there, Leonardo is an expert in conversation.

◇ I think he didn't leave your side for at least a week. You were pampered from every side. Leo just couldn't stand seeing you in such a state.

◇ That's why he often appeared out of nowhere at your school.

"Leo...?" You whispered in surprise when you closed your locker and saw a red-slider turtle right in front of you, wearing one of his blue hoodies.

"Tadah! Your knight in shining armor has come to the rescue again!" The teenager announced, pulling a pack of tissues and a candy bar from his pockets. Before you could say or think anything, Leo wiped away your fresh tears and handed you the treat.

◇ If you kept falling into despair, he tried to only recall good memories with your deceased pet. Honestly, he would prefer you to forget the whole incident, but he suspected it would be entirely unhealthy for your mental well-being.

◇ I know this may sound controversial, but I think Leo is one of those people who will want to find a new pet for you as soon as possible to help you heal faster.

◇ If you agree, he'll scour every animal shelter and internet listing to find the best replacement!

◇ But if you don't, he'll try to listen to your opinion, although expect occasional reminders of the idea.

◇ In the end, he won't leave you without support.

Raphael

◇ He understands that this is a difficult time for you, so Raphael is ready to provide you with all the support you may need.

◇ His willingness to come to you whenever you need him is a testament to his dedication and care for you. Whether it's during a regular day or a nighttime patrol, he'll quickly come to your side!

◇ It's worth appreciating that despite the absence of your pet, you have a loyal friend in Raphael who will try to fill that void.

◇ In these challenging moments, you will surely be a tremendous source of support for each other, given that Raph has taken care of your pet before, and the loss has deeply affected him as well.

◇ Especially since animals usually don't like him very much, so your pet had a special place in his heart.

◇ Together, you will overcome the sadness of its loss.

◇ The turtle won't push the idea of getting a new pet on you, but he will either give you or specially sew a plush toy for you so that you don't feel too lonely.

◇ Just a real big bro for you.

Donatello

◇ Let's be honest, Donatello isn't particularly adept at understanding the feelings of others, offering words of comfort, or empathizing with specific situations.

◇ Therefore, the only consolation for now is listening to you and every thought you have about the loss of your beloved pet, while occasionally patting you on the back for comfort.

◇ He may not initiate it at first, but if you want it, he'll give you a strong hug.

◇ He knows roughly how long grief lasts, but the young genius won't want to let you wallow in bitter tears and sadness for too long on his watch.

◇ So he created an almost-perfect replica of your pet as a robot for you. Hey, it might be a little... unethical, but his way of showing he cares is by giving you devices he's made!

◇ Although a few drops of nervous sweat trickled down his forehead when the only response to the cheerful little robot was shock on your face.

"Cough! Don't worry, [Y.N]! Your dear evil genius has created something for you that won't plunge you into deeper depression! Behold, Pet 3000!"

"..."

"... damn."

◇ Maybe the initial impressions weren't the best... But slowly, you got used to having something like that around.

◇ But in the end, you still wanted Donnie to improve the robot so that it became its own separate entity, not just a copy of something dear to you.

◇ Nevertheless, you were grateful to the guy for his effort.

Michelangelo

◇ Hugs, sweet words, and support, but multiply that by 7. I don't know why by 7, I just love that number, lol.

◇ He's NOT LEAVING YOU ALONE WITH THIS! No matter how much you didn't want to burden him with all this, he won’t let you shut yourself up, especially after this tragedy!

◇ It's also worth remembering that the grieving process is individual, and everyone goes through it differently. Michelangelo will approach your needs patiently and understandingly, respecting your time and space.

◇ But he really would like to spend as much time with you as possible.

◇ Expect many sessions with Dr. Delicate Touch; thanks to understanding your feelings, accepting the loss of your pet will be faster and much easier.

◇ Together, you probably created special memorial spots for your lost pet, which will help preserve their memory.

◇ There will also be painting sessions. He'll expect you to pour your frustration onto a piece of paper.

◇ Another one who will want to spend whole days and nights with you.

◇ I have a feeling that if for some reason he can't be with you at a given moment, he'll ask April to 'borrow' Mayhem for you. It might be a bit painful for you feeling Mayhem snuggle up to you and purr, reminding you of your previous pet, but after a while, you'll feel much better.

#Angst #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #rottmnt x y/n #rottmnt x you #teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise donnie x reader #rise leo x reader #rise mikey x reader #rise raph x reader #rottmnt x reader #Headcanons #x reader #tmnt

90 notes · View notes