#so hit me up if i'm doing things wrong here

[writersdrug]

Thinking about Simon with a goth! gf, and introducing his team to you.

Warnings: cursing, very slight nsfw, pda

Typed this up on my lunch break, not thoroughly proofread, ending is meh but it's been rotting in my brain so I had to push it out. Feel free to send me asks about this headcannon, I'd love to write more about it! <3

Simon insists on dragging his team to the nearest pub after a particularly rough day, offering to buy then a round of whiskey. They are all reluctant at first, complaining about aching backs and heads, and Price saying that the missus was expecting him.

Then Simon mumbles something about how his girl would've loved to meet them.

"Yer wha' now?"

"My girl."

Suddenly, Gaz's headache is gone. "Must've just been dehydrated, I suppose." Soap's back feels much better, after being able to sit in the car for just- five minutes, now. And Price? Apparently, the missus was at a dinner raffle for her charity- thing, and he'd just now remembered.

So, drinks and a quick bite at the pub you worked at. It was settled.

Simon leads them in shortly after parking the truck. The other three quickly scan the room for anyone who stands out. As Simon brings them to a booth in the back, they all take a seat, heads on a swivel for some pretty thing to come bouncing over and latch herself onto him.

"Gonna hit the head." Simon says. "I'll put our drinks in- she'll bring 'em over, she'll be done with 'er shift soon."

As he leaves, Soap, Gaz, and Price all sit there in a few moments of observatory silence. It's much harder to sample the crowd, they realize, since there's apparently no dress code for the servers. Johnny eyes each person like a hawk, until he sees a potential pick.

"Tha' one." He says, nodding towards a busty, long-legged blonde. Price and Gaz follow his line of sight to her as she leans against the bar, playing with her hair and laughing at something her friend says. Her bootcut jeans and frilly top accentuate her curves, and it's obvious that every man in her vicinity is ogling. "Twenty on 'er. Seems like he'd be into swimsuit models, eh?"

Gaz humms, scrunching his nose disapprovingly. "Nah, mate- too simple."

"Feck is simple 'bout 'er?"

"I mean for Simon." Gaz corrects Soap. "Don't think he'd want someone so... ditzy- no offense to her." He adds. "I think he wants a girl who can hold her own, in the physical and the figurative sense. Someone..." he narrows his eyes, searching through the crowd of people. "Like her."

He discretely points to a woman across the bar. She's playing darts with a few people, and hits the bullseye perfectly just as Soap and Price look her way. Her tank top and cargo pants show how defined, yet lean her muscles are. She looks like she could last a few decent minutes in a brawl. "I bet on her."

"Well I'll raise ye forty - I ken LT wants someone more... passive."

"Forty it is, then. I'd love to have you pay my bill tonight."

"If I may..." Price chimes in, leaning against the back of the booth with a smug look, arms folded over his chest, "I'd love to get in on this little game o' yours, and walk away with eighty pounds t'night - because you're both wrong."

Soap smirks. "And how's tha', Cap?"

Price smooths his fingers over his mutton chops. "Well, for starters, I'm a bit ashamed o' you boys. Neither of those girls actually work here, do they? Mm?"

Gaz groans, letting his head drop against the wall behind him. It takes Soap another moment, but then he remembers Simon saying this was where you worked. The whole point of them going to this specific pub was because you'd already be here, on the clock.

"Shite..." he mumbles.

"Alright, sir." Gaz says defeatedly. "Lay it on us."

Price leans his elbows on the table and points his finger straight ahead; Gaz and Soap both follow it to the bar, where a sweet-looking girl is punching orders into a server tablet. She has long, silky, red hair, and a petite frame. She smiles so kindly at every patron who speaks to her, and when she makes their drinks, she is quick with it, still engaging in conversation as she shakes the mixer with a powerful arm. Despite the crowd, she seems to be managing fine on her own.

"Her." Price says, tucking his hand back onto the table. "Y' see that face? The way she talks to 'em all? How she's soft and tough at the same time? Imagine that birdie tucked under his wing, eh?"

Soap and Gaz can imagine it. She's a cute little thing, a social butterfly, it seems - the perfect polar opposite to Simon that just might be the perfect fit.

"And I know he's got a thing for redheads." Price adds.

"Piss off, how d'ye ken tha'?" Soap grumbles.

Price shrugs. "Call it intuition."

Simon comes around the corner, carrying several glasses of neat whiskey. "Sorry-" he says, setting a glass in front of Price, and handing out the others as he sits down on the end of the booth. "She's on 'er way now."

"No worries." Price says, trying to hide his smirk. "Didn't know y' were into redheads, Simon."

Simon pauses, looking down at the table in confusion - then he chuckles. "Yeah, s'pose I am. How did y' know? Did she come by already?"

Price laughs. "No, son. We were just sayin'-"

"Hey baby!"

You turn the corner and lean down, squealing as you throw your arms around Simon's neck and kiss him. The other three look on with shock, and Soap is about ready to throw this random woman off of Simon, until he holds you just as tightly and kisses you back.

Price's smirk falls right onto the table when he realizes that he is just as wrong as the other two.

You're Simon's bird. Simon's raven. Black, styled hair, with black lipstick that is currently smudging Simon's chin. You have a choker - no, several chokers, wrapped around your neck, as well as a tiny corked bottle filled with red liquid that makes Soap and Gaz nervous, dangling from a chain. Long, black-painted fingernails, with small spiderwebs decorating the tips, caressing his face and the back of his neck. Your arms and legs are covered with torn fishnets and small tattoos, and you're wearing a black number with a corset, paired with studded Doc Martin's.

You finally pull away and look at the rest of them. "Sorry- nice to finally meet the lot of you." You say, shaking each one of their hands. Your eyes are striking, with full, dark lashes, eyeliner, and red contacts. Gages and a bull ring, too. Soap feels a shiver run up his spine when he looks at you head on, and Gaz hasn't picked his jaw up off the floor since you came around.

"Erm-" Price clears his throat, "pardon us- call me John. This is Kyle, and Johnny." He gestures to the other two, still watching you with a mix of curiosity and awe.

"I've heard so much about you. It's good to put names to the face." You say with a smile, shaking the other two's hands. Gaz manages to smile a bit, but Soap has the same shocked expression plastered onto his face.

Simon has a love-drunk, black-smudged smile on his lips as you sit down in his lap. "She's been wantin' t' meet you all for a while, now. Sorry I kept 'er a secret."

"To be fair, I'm usually hard to find." You say, grabbing a napkin and wiping the lipstick off Simon's face. "I'm either here, at class, or roaming around and people-watching... at night, of course. People are more interesting when it's dark out." You traced a fingernail along his jugular as he stared up at you.

"John 'ere knew you were a redhead."

"How?! Oh my god- are my roots showing?"

"Nah, luvie, he's just observant. 'S our job." Simon places a kiss to your forehead. You smiled, leaning into the kiss.

"Oh, kitchen's about to close. You wanna split a burger, Si?"

"Sure, get what you like."

"'S no onions ok?"

"Fine w' me - chips?"

"You know it." You giggle, making a show of squishing his cheek and biting it. You turn to the rest of his team with a smile. "You boys hungry?"

Price is the first one to speak, taking a heavy breath in, causing Soap and Gaz to finally snap out of their trance. "Erm- whatever you get, we'll do the same. On us tonight."

"Oooh, you sure?" You asked, raising your eyebrows. Simon looked at Price curiously.

"You positive, cap?"

Price nodded. "Lost a bet."

Simon looks even more concerned. You pat his shoulder and stand up. "I'll go punch it in, be right back." You give him a peck on the cheek, and begin to walk away - Simon's attention returns to you as he hooks a finger in the chain choker around your neck and tugs you back.

Soap, Gaz, and Price all watch, stupefied, as you land back in Simon's lap with a giggle. He grabs your chin between his thick fingers and kisses you on the lips, shamelessly letting his tongue slide past your teeth and squeezing your thigh. You laugh into the kiss, letting him devour you for a moment, before tapping his cheek and breaking away.

"I got fifteen minutes to put everyone's order in, Si."

"That's plenty of time, dove."

"Yeah, but then kitchen will get mad for doing it last minute, and I don't want-"

He chuckles, gently shoving out off of his lap and smacking your rump through your skirt. "You're fine, go on."

You smile, then disappear behind the booth, boots thudding against the hardwood floors.

Simon looks back at the three of them - Soap is staring between you and him, a blush covering his face. Gaz immediately turns to look at the wall, scratching his chin, and Price is gazing into his whiskey, though there's a lingering surprise in his eyes.

"So- what bet?" Simon asks, adjusting his hips; Soap notices his hand reaching down to palm at the fabric over his groin. "I don' remember bettin' nothin'."

"We weren't bettin' on ye pullin' her out ye pockets, LT." Soap comments, trying to avoid Simon's eyes. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out forty pounds, slapping it onto the table.

"It makes sense..." Gaz, chimes in. "With your whole skeleton look, she fits you."

Simon slowly smiles, understanding what they had bet on. "Oh... I see. Lemme guess - you thought I's with someone more... simple? Lile that blonde at the bar, is tha' right?"

"Tha's what I said!!" Soap exclaims, dropping his fist to the table. "You got te give me credit fer pointin' t' a swimsuit model first, aye?"

"Oh- because every bloke on earth is shallow enough to care about swimsuit models." Gaz scoffs. "I at least picked someone who didn't look so bloody helpless." He gestures to the girl playing darts with her friends. "You don't even know if the other girl's a model."

"Well, one can imagine..."

"Feel as though I's the closest..." Price mutters under his breath, making the other two glare at him.

"Ye were not."

"Get off your high horse, cap-"

"Well- try this." Simon leans on his forearms with a smug look on his face. "My bird? She's a model, and she's a black-belt in Judo, and-" he looks at Price- "she's a natural redhead."

They all look between Simon and you, as you stand behind the bar and punch their orders in, laughing with the other redhead. Their eyes would drop onto the table if they were any wider.

"You sly dog-" Gas comments with a chuckle.

"I don' believe ye." Soap says, crossing his arms. "Wha' kind o' model?"

"Lingerie."

Price chokes on his whiskey.

"Bullshit." Soap snaps. "Pictures or ye lyin'."

"Nah." Simon sighs, leaning back in his seat and daking a sip of his whiskey. "Not the ones I have, at least. But pick up the last "Bloodletting" magazine, and she's there."

They all sit there, a bit dumbfounded, watching you walk back to the booth. How on earth did someone like Simon land someone like you?

Simon's full of surprises, even in his personal life.

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #ghost headcanons #simon riley headcanons #simon ghost riley headcanons #cod x reader #cod mw2 #cod headcanons #ghost blurbs

[homestylehughes]

shower sex

pairing(s): luke hughes x fem!reader

summary: after a terrible day, luke knows just what y/n needs. because what's a better relaxation than shower sex?

wc: 1.7k

warnings: smut 18+. little plot, mostly smut! pure filth, no use of y/n. cussing, pet names, dirty talk. oral, fem receiving. unprotected sex, p n v. hints of some angst, and cute fluffy boyfriend luke.

authors note: hiiiii!! luke smut! luke smut! luke smut! i loved writing this, i love luke, going through a luke phase rn badddd. i got this idea when i was writing the headcanons for him earlier. so here it isssss. i loved writing this. like and reblog if you enjoy<3 as always much love<3

happy reading<3

I've actually had the worst day ever. Everything. I mean everything is going wrong today. I was late for work today because I missed my alarm, even with me sprinting throughout our apartment, and speeding to the office. I was still late.

Then, I spilled my coffee all over me. That was my second straw. The worst part about it was that I had to work in my coffee-covered clothes the whole day, not being able to afford to leave work, which would cause me to be even more behind than I was.

I had so much work to do, i stayed 3 extra hours over, not pulling out of the parking lot until almost 8 p.m. everything hurt, each part of my body was exhausted. To make things worse, if they could get even worse, I haven't seen Luke in almost a week. 

The hockey season is wrapping up but Luke has been busy with spending time with his family, after Jack's surgery and training for the worlds. 

We both had hoped that I'd be able to get time off from work to spend time with him and his family, taking a little break for myself. That obviously didn't happen. 

So now, im driving back home to our apartment, in coffee cover clothes, with a pounding headache and empty stomach. The tears are threatening to fall over my waterline. 

Parking quickly in the lot, I get out and grab my things, making my way through the lobby to the elevator. The ride to the 8 floor feels like 30 years before the door opening signaling its floor. 

I slowly trudge down the hall to our door, pushing my key in and turning the lock, the refreshing smell and sense of being home felt in my body. Immediately I drop my things by the door, kicking off my shoes as I do. 

There's three things on my mind right now: shower, eat maybe, and bed. Luke is also on my mind but I'm so exhausted I can't even bring myself to message him back from earlier. 

Making my way to the bathroom, turning the water on to the highest it can go, wanting to burn and wash away the aftermath of the day. Peeling off my clothes, my body quickly relaxes as soon as the hot water hits my body. Leaning my head back letting it run all over my face. 

I can't tell if the wetness on my face is just water or a mix of tears, at this point I'm not sure I care. 

After five or so minutes of letting the water run along my body I reach for the shampoo, starting to wash my hair. The scrubbing on my scalp and the smell of my shampoo is enough to send me into a daze. Wash and rinse and wash and rinse again, the same action repeated with conditioner. 

As I'm rinsing the last bit of conditioner out of my hair, my back turned away to the door of the shower, my eyes closed in relaxation. I feel a hand slowly trail around my waist, my eyes quickly open in confusion, my body fast to move away from the person behind me.

“Hey baby its just me” luke chuckles from behind me, pulling me back into his body from behind, his hands circling my waist rubbing small circles on my hips. 

“You scared me '' I say as I lean back into his body, “sorry baby didn't mean to”, he says, breathing into my neck, his warmth on my neck is enough to make my knees weak. 

“How was your day?” he says, face still nuzzled in my neck. I sadly laugh before i speak “my day was terrible so fucking terrible.” I can feel my eyes begin to fill with tears again. 

Luke is quick to turn me around, grabbing my face in his hands holding it to look at his. “Hey baby, don't cry, it's okay. I'm here now, i'm sorry i haven't been here recently” he says while his eyes are locked with mine, wiping his fingers under my eyes where tears have now fallen. 

Feeling stupid for crying i mute out a small “sorry” to Luke, feeling bad he has to watch me cry like a baby. 

“Hey no, don't feel sorry. It's okay to cry". I don't deserve him, I say to myself. Not knowing what else to say, I push my face to his, locking our lips together. It's been almost a week since i've kissed luke, i missed the feeling of his lips, i've missed the feeling of him around me in general. 

Luke is quick to respond by pulling my hips closer to his body, his other hand on the back of my head. Taking control of the kiss by pushing my lips harder against his.

His tongue pressing against my lips, begging to be let in, opening my mouth slightly against his, lukes hot tongue slides into my mouth. I don't even try to fight for dominance, I just let him take control.

Our bodies moving together against the stream of hot water, the glass door fogging up around us. My body feels like it's on cloud nine just from that. Lukes the first to pull away, his pupils blown with lust, lips swollen and pink. 

“Fuck i missed that” he says, hes hands begin trailing up my body grabbing at my hips, tracing his hands along the under neath of my breasts, the action alone causing me to shutter. 

“Luke” I breathe out, now looking up at him, “what baby” he smirks down at me, now trailing one of his hands to my left nipple, rolling it in between two of fingers. 

“I need you now” I say quietly, “what do you need baby?” Luke says, bringing his face close to mine.

“I want you to fuck me, please” luke wastes no time smashing our lips back to together, walking us backwards and turning us around. My back hits the cold tile, the sensation causing me to moan into lukes mouth, our tongues began to move against each other again. 

Luke suddenly pulls away from me, I whine at the loss of contact. “Be patient baby” he says, as he tails his hand between my legs, pulling my thighs apart, caging me in by putting one of his legs between my thighs and the other on the outside of my other leg. 

I gasp as a feel his fingers slide in between my folds, “fuck baby, who got you this wet?” “you luke, you.” I say trying to push my hips to meet his fingers, my body craving some type of release. 

“Youre a needy little thing tonight arent you baby” he says to me in a teasing tone, “yes i am, and i need you to fuck me now please luke, stop teasing me” i say finally finding my voice. 

“You want me to fuck this little cunt huh?” Luke rasps back to me as he begins to slowly enter two fingers inside of me, I'm so wet, that they just slide right in. 

“I think i might just tease you for a little while longer baby” still slowly moving his fingers in and out of me. My body is rocking against the motion of my fingers thrusting in and out of me.

“Fuck i need more luke, please” i say moaning out to him, hoping he can see how desperate i am for him right now. 

  “Since you asked so nicely” he says, quickly removing his fingers from my pussy. Grabbing one of my legs pulling it up against his hip. 

I pull his face against mine, my hands finding his hair tugging and pushing his mouth against mine, our teeth and tongues clashing against another.

Luke takes a hold of his cock, giving it a few quick pulls before he pushes into me completely. “Oh fuck luke” i moan against his mouth, “you feel so good around me fuck baby” he groans out from above me pulling our lips apart, as he begins thrusting in and out of me.

Each roll of his hips feels like a gift sent from god, his grip on my things hurts so good. I begin to roll my hips to meet his thrusts. 

“Fuck yeah right there baby” luke moans out “keep fucking yourself against me” he says dropping his face into my neck leaving bites in his wake. 

Luke brings my leg higher against his hip, the new angle causing my vision to fog over. “Luke fuck. Oh my gosh,” “right there baby please”. My hands running over the landscape of his back, my nails definitely leaving a trail of red hot marks in their wake. 

The sound of the shower running, and the sound of our skin slapping together fills the shower. I can feel the sweat forming on my body, as luke continues to fuck me. His hand sliding inbetween our bodies, to my clit. 

“Fuck luke, yes right there” i moan out loudly. “That feels good baby, right there yeah? You want me to rub your pretty clit as i fuck you?”. Fuck him and that dirty mouth, “yes luke please, dont stop im close” my eyes falling shut in pleasure. “Fuck baby, i can feel you squeezing against me”

Luke's thrusts began to speed up, I can feel my high approaching. “Fuck luke, dont stop” “im almost there” i say, pulling our lips back together, moaning into each other mouths. 

One last snap of Luke's hips hits right against my clit, causing my whole body to start shaking. “Im coming fuck” i can barely get out as waves of pleasure taking over. My vision is completely white, as my climax racks through my body. 

Luke drops his face against mine, as he comes his moans filling my ears, his hips still snapping against mine, as we both ride out our highs. 

Luke's hips stop moving, trying to catch his breath, as he pulls his face from my neck, I open my eyes slowly to see Luke looking back at me with a slight smirk on his face, our chests still rapidly falling. 

“I think the shower is cold ”Luke says to me while smiling, “I don't care.” I whisper back, pulling our lips together once again in another kiss. Already forgetting about the terrible day, once his lips are back on mine. 

#nhl fanfiction #nhl hockey #nhl imagine #nhl x reader #nhl fic #new jersey devils #luke hughes smut #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes

[calaisreno]

Make a Choice

702 Words / Prompt: Choice

John’s therapist smiles. She’s the new one, he thinks. Or the one after that. Sometimes it’s hard to keep it all straight. 

“How are the wife and kids?” she asks. 

John sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. “Here’s the thing. You ask me that about half the time. The other half, you ask me how my flatmate is, what crazy stuff he's got up to.”

She blinks, then frowns. “Do I?”

“Yes, you do. It’s like I’m two separate people to you. Two John Watsons.”

“Perhaps… you could say a bit more about that.” She’s fallen back into therapist-mode, and John knows it will be hopeless to explain. 

He will try, though. “This is what my life is: two non-intersecting realities. In one, I'm living in Clapham with Mary and my two kids, Rose and Hamish. I have pub nights with my old army buddies, started biking to work a few months ago, and work at a surgery, treating sniffles and rashes. Sort of boring, but it's what I always expected my life to be.”

She smiles, uncertain. “Yes, I remember. You’ve mentioned your friend Bill.”

“Right.” He leans forward, shaking his head at the absurdity. “But that’s just half of it. In the other life— well, let’s call it another reality. I have one life, split between these two. In the other reality, I'm living with Sherlock Holmes. I never know what's going to happen when I wake up each day. There will be a spleen in the sink, no milk in the fridge because it's all been used for an experiment, and Sherlock will either be nowhere in sight, or flopped on the sofa, taking up as much space as possible with his notes. We go out on cases a few times a month. I've been shot at, stabbed, and got some sort of fungal infection from whatever that was in the sugar bowl. Sort of crazy, but never boring.”

She’s biting her lip now. “John. It’s not unusual for PTSD to manifest itself in… well, imaginings.”

“You mean hallucinations. And that’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is that I am living two lives. The wife-and-kids one, and the Sherlock one. I never know which one I’m going to wake up to. And I have no idea why it’s happening.”

Notebook open, she’s writing something. Upside-down, he reads: possible psychosis.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he says. “I’m not psychotic. I always know which reality I’m in. I’m not confused. So, I'm wondering. You're the only factor common to both of these worlds. Do you realise what's happening to me? Is this... an experiment?”

Yesterday, when he explained this, she offered to schedule him in twice a week and send him to a sleep specialist. 

Today, in a different reality, she regards him with a half-smile. “Well, John, that’s a good observation. Very good. I would say that it’s time to make a choice.”

She holds a gun. 

...

His head is splitting. Sherlock is talking, and John is trying to make sense of it.

“Every decision point creates two parallel realities. Yes and no. Turn right, turn left. Go through the park, get on a bus. You’re not aware of all the consequences of your choices, but they exist, as real as the fact of your life—”

“The park,” he says. “I went through the park.” 

“I know.” Sherlock frowns. “Are you all right, John?”

“Of course I’m not all right—I’ve been shot!”

“Wrong. You’re concussed.” He leans over John, studying him like a specimen. “He hit you on the head and stole your wallet. Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do. You’re my mad flatmate. And my therapist shot me.”

“Wrong. I’m your husband. And you don’t have a therapist.“

He closes his eyes. “I think some wires got crossed.”

Sherlock kisses him. “You’ll be fine.”

...

In a parallel reality, a thief is talking to his therapist.

“How are the wife and kids?” she asks.

He sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. “Here’s the thing. I stole this bloke’s wallet, and ever since, I’ve been living two lives.”

She smiles and leans forward. “Perhaps you could say more about that, John.”

@lisbeth-kk @keirgreeneyes @ninasnakie @raina-at @friday411

#mayprompts2024

[yanderecookierunkingdom]

The Final Sunset

Previous | First | Next

You entered the quarantine area with a heavy sigh and a weight on your shoulders. You shrugged off your cloak and placed it upon the coat rack. You did the same with your lantern, blowing out the flame inside before you did.

Brushing off whatever snow made its way onto you, you walked deeper into the building, the warmth of the building familiar yet oh-so foreign. Walking deeper and deeper into the building, you were soon greeted by Chili Pepper Cookie, who was tossing one of her daggers up and down. She had a look of anger, maybe even resentment on her face as she gazed through the window.

"Chili Pepper Cookie?" You called out, voice soft.

"Reader Cookie!" She stumbled a bit before grabbing her dagger. She sighed and put it away. "C'mon, don't do that. Really scared me there."

"Sorry," you apologized with a gentle smile. You then walked next to her and peered into the window. "..you okay?"

Chili Pepper Cookie paused before she looked away. Her shoulders trembled. ".. it's my fault. I should have been watching him."

Your gaze softened as you walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder. "We don't know if he's infected just yet."

"He could be."

".. I know," you relented with a frown. You gave her a quick hug to reassure her before pulling away and grabbing some gloves. You slipped them on before putting on a tight coat, followed by a mask.

"It's really snowing hard out there," Chili Pepper Cookie muttered as looked towards the entrance.

"It is." You nodded in agreement, approaching an iron door. "At least it wasn't snowing when this all started."

After a nod of both agreement and confirmation from Chili Pepper Cookie, you flicked the lever beside you, and you walked in.

The door hissed shut once closed, and you exhaled slowly. You approached the young Cookie on the bed first. "Hey, Pancake Cookie!" You smiled at him. "How're you feeling?"

"Hi!" He chirped, looking up at you with a wide smile. "I'm kinda hungry, do you have any Acorn Jellies?"

"None at the moment, but I'll try and get you some." You hope he can't sense the melancholy in your voice. "So, Pure Vanilla Cookie told me you were feeling a lot more cold than everyone else."

"Yeah, I dunno why." Pancake Cookie looked down as he kicked his feet. "All the snow was hitting me and I felt like I was an ice cube!"

Your expression softened. "How do you feel right now?"

"Still kinda cold, but not as cold as before!" He shook his head.

"Okay, that's good. I'll see if I can get you some blankets."

You gently patted his head before walking to the next door. You pushed it open and your expression fell, seeing Black Raisin Cookie pacing.

Her worried gazed fell upon you, and you could only look at her assuringly. "You did the right thing," you told her as the iron door behind you hissed shut.

"I know." Black Raisin Cookie looked down. She clenched her hand to a fist. "I just wish I had been faster. If I had been.."

"Black Raisin Cookie," you gently cut her off as you walked closer. You placed a gloved hand on her shoulder, and her tired eyes met yours. "The fact that you managed to bring Pancake Cookie here even with those Frost Cookies chasing you is more than enough." You smiled behind the mask. "Just focus on the now, okay?"

As the other Cookie nodded, you pulled your hand away. "Now, how are you feeling?"

"Tired," she admitted, rubbing her face. "It also feels like I may have gotten frostbite.."

You frowned from that and you held out a gloved hand. She placed her bandaged hand in yours, and you looked over her hand. She wasn't wrong, her fingertips were a bit red. Scars marked them as well, and you narrowed your eyes a bit.

"I'll mention this to Pure Vanilla Cookie," you told her, wrapping her hand back up. You looked her up and down before your eyes caught a scar on her cheek. You reached out and gently brushed a finger over it. "How did this..?"

"A branch scratched me." Black Raisin Cookie shook her head, doing her best to quell your worries. "The Frost Cookie didn't get me, and it's jam didn't get in me either."

You paused to consider her words before you relented. You moved away from her and gently cupped her cheek. "Do you remember what it looked like? The infected?"

"It.. didn't look like a Cookie." Black Raisin Cookie stepped away and began to pace again. "It had cake hound legs, but a snow lion tail.. it just.." She shook her head. "All I know is that.. it was an infected, and it was a terrifying hunter."

You nodded softly.

You learned nothing more, so you said goodbye to Black Raisin Cookie after informing her that her crows were doing fine. It was only her and Pancake Cookie that were showing signs of the Frost, after being ambushed by an infected.

Walking through the sterile halls, you thought back to when Black Raisin Cookie and Pancake Cookie returned. Chili Pepper Cookie had lost sight of the young Cookie, though it wasn't her fault. She was stressed, everyone was. The younger Cookie had thought he saw some acorn jellies off in the forest, and he had rushed off towards it.

It, of course, wasn't.

Black Raisin Cookie had luckily found him, just before an infected had found them. It still made you shudder, how Caramel Arrow Cookie and Pastry Cookie came rushing in, supporting Black Raisin Cookie as best they could.

Ah, you should probably check on them, now that you think of it..

As you stepped back out to the common area, you spotted Pure Vanilla Cookie discussing with Chili Pepper Cookie. His staff caught sight of you first, and soon the Ancient's head turned to look at you. "Oh, you are here, thank goodness.."

"What's wrong?" You asked as you took off the mask, setting it aside as you then slipped off your gloves.

"The acorn jellies, they're.. they're freezing over more and more," he informed you as he clutched his staff. "My spells are doing nothing, and no fire is able to melt them. It's like someone is.. deliberately freezing them over."

"We don't know that." You shook your head. "It's a fair chance that the cold is just freezing them over. I'll come with you."

As you followed him out of the building once slipping on your cloak and grabbing your lantern, you couldn't help but have a bad feeling brewing. You tried to push it away, merely saying that it was due to everything that had happened.

But still..

* This choice will affect your future. Decide what will help you gather more information on the Frost.

taglist: @speadrunner / @haveneulalie / @queensharotto / @luv-sorrow / @imaginarydreams

mention - Infected!Arsenic Cookie (Arsenic Anon)

#crk infection au #series: the final sunset #crk x reader #cookie run kingdom x reader #cosmos constellations #cosmos polls #you guys can discuss in comments or send in asks about what should be voted for! just thought I'd mention that

[seriousbrat]

I'm extremely unfair to Remus on this blog, the truth is fanon remus is personally offensive to me on many levels so I'm loath to give him protagonism of any kind lol. But that's not fair at all to a character that actually, when all's said and done, I do love. perhaps the marauder I'm least interested in (lol) but he still rates high on my list of fave hp characters and I honestly find him a very pleasant perspective to write from. he's just like some guy. his big crime is negligence/avoidance and I love that for him. to be honest I think his position is a difficult one to fully understand, he is a character that I'm able to muster up a lot of empathy for because of that. like can any of us irl understand what it's like to turn into a literal monster every month since childhood, the point-blank rejection and hatred from society, and what effect that might have on someone's psyche? it's interesting!!!

moony's worst hits, lets go:

remus tolerating the marauders' bullying: obv this was wrong. he was the only one who recognised it was wrong, and he tolerated it. he 'made them feel ashamed of themselves' sometimes per sirius, but honestly I can understand why he never spoke up. I don't think we should underestimate how rare the marauders' tolerance, not only tolerance but the lengths they went to to help remus with his condition was. for a teenager? I can only imagine how that must have felt tbh. he likely thought that he barely deserved their friendship and loyalty and that he was lucky to have it so why would he do anything to ruin that

remus not telling anyone about sirius being an animagus: bad lol, his worst moment probably. again, though, I can understand it even though I don't justify it. the trust dumbledore had placed in him, first to accept him at hogwarts and then again as a professor (we know how difficult it is for werewolves to find employment of any kind) and he just couldn't face betraying that trust. Luckily for Remus it turned out ok but it is kind of insane that he didn't tell dumbledore tbh.

remus not writing to harry: idc about this personally lol but to me it ties into remus's inferiority complex. he doesnt, and will never, see himself as anything like a father figure to harry the way sirius does. he barely sees himself as a worthy father to his own kid let alone the complex case that is harry. is that unfair to harry and unempathetic? yeah probs but also it makes sense to me even beyond the reason Remus gives in canon for not writing. He put Harry in terrible danger in PoA and given Remus's self-hatred he probably feels guilty about that lol.

walking out on Tonks: his other worst hit. But I can understand him, even though I think Harry was 100% right to tell him off. Again we've got this man's crippling inferiority complex, from what he says he thinks he's a burden and a curse to both Tonks and Teddy-- and you know what, society isn't exactly contradicting this belief. Obviously Tonks doesn't agree and that should be all that matters, but sometimes it doesn't seem that way. There's avoidance here (Remus's big flaw) and I legit think he thought he was doing Tonks a favour by disappearing on some quest with Harry and likely dying in the process. Interesting stuff but also very sad.

all this to say, I don't believe in "defending" characters, just understanding them, and even though I barely post about him I do find Remus very interesting, worthy of empathy in many ways. I'll admit the werewolf thing leads me to give him more of a pass than other characters just because I find that so horrible lol and feel so sorry for him but anyway. a good character in my opinion.

#similar to regulus who is also a character i very much like but fanon regulus is literally murdering my entire family & destroying my crops #remus lupin #meta #remus

[tackytigerfic]

WIP Snip

Does anyone want to play? Please consider this a tag. Here's an excerpt from my current multiverse WIP. This scene is a rare Ron POV, in which Ron and his daughter come across Draco and Harry fencing in the library. However, Malfoy (who came from another universe and is waiting to be rescued back to his own timeline) is also watching.

"Sword!" Rosie shouted, and put her hands over her mouth in delighted shock, face alight with interest as she stared upwards. And it was a sword, a small, slim, dangerous-looking streak of silver in the high golden light. Draco was holding it higher than he seemed comfortable with, probably to compensate for the fact that Harry was above him, biting his lip in frustration, hair curling with sweat behind his ears.

"Come down, you cheater," Draco called to Harry, then took a tricky backwards step down the stairs to avoid a jab from Harry’s blade, dipping his body low, quick as a snake, before meeting Harry’s blade with his own. Harry was fast and strong, but he was clumsy—Ron could see that his wrist was tensed awkwardly behind the guard, and his balance on the bannister looked shaky as he attempted to parry.

“With any luck, at least one of them will fall and break his neck,” Ginny said blandly, licking a finger to wipe over the crumbs on her plate. “They’ve been at this for at least half an hour now. I can’t concentrate with all the noise.”

They were both panting like they had been running, Harry with a dark tide of sweat down the back of his grey t-shirt, his jumper discarded in a heap on the desk. Draco was more composed, seemed to be fighting defensively rather than on the attack, which probably helped conserve his energy, but he was still pink-faced and shiny with effort.

“Why do they even have foils in the library?” Kingsley murmured without opening his eyes, hand still stroking Percy's hair.

“They’re épées, actually,” Malfoy said thoughtfully. Ron had almost forgotten about him, but he was sitting on a leather swivel chair and he had Rosie on his lap, his hands curled loosely at her waist to keep her from slipping, but not holding on so hard that she might decide to wriggle away in spite. Malfoy was gently spinning the chair back and forth, and her head was thrown back in delight. “You can see, the blade is much less flexible.” He raised his voice. “The wrist, Harry! Go for the wrist!” then subsided again good-humouredly when Draco threw him a brief irritated look between darts forward and back on the top steps.

“Harry’s not bad, actually,” Malfoy said to Ron. “For someone who’s obviously never fenced before.”

“Draco did fencing at school,” Ron told him. “It’s one of the school sports, only Harry and I were too obsessed with Quidditch to bother with it. But loads of the Slytherins used to do it. I always thought it must be a bit like ballroom dancing, or something. But it’s actually sort of impressive, seeing it now.”

“I took it at my Hogwarts too,” Malfoy said. With a grunt of effort, Harry jumped off the bannister and took the stairs at a run, sweeping past Draco and landing heavily on the bottom step with a wince. “His form’s not exactly anything to write home about, that’s for sure,” Malfoy said, watching Harry.

“That’s what you get for showing off, Harry,” Draco called, though Ron thought that was pretty rich coming from someone who had just disdained the stairs in favour of launching himself off the top, right over the balustrade, and landing cat-like in a crouch, self-satisfied. “I haven’t fenced in years and I’m still kicking your arse. I thought you were supposed to be highly trained in combat?”

“This isn’t combat,” Harry said, too breathless for the full force of his outrage. “I just wanted to spar—” he took a wide swing, almost got a lucky touch as his weight took Draco offguard where his blade met Harry’s “—but you're refusing to play fair.”

Draco had rebalanced himself and was holding himself in a more formal stance, and Ron was right, actually, it did look a bit like a dance, with the swift back-and-forth of his footwork, and the graceful way his free arm moved. Harry was not even as good at fencing as he was at dancing, in fact, though Ron knew for a fact that for about six months he had rotated a longsword in and out of his daily training. Maybe the heavier sword used different muscle groups, or something.

Rosie was still sitting with Malfoy, who was whispering something in her ear that made her face shift almost imperceptibly into the not-quite-a-smile that showed she was genuinely amused. When Draco whipped his blade up and did something fast and businesslike with the épée that had Harry dropping his blade with a clatter and wringing out his hand as though he had grasped a handful of nettles, Rosie tutted loudly.

“Naughty,” she said to Draco, sliding down off Malfoy’s lap and looking up into Draco’s sweaty face. “Be kind now, please.”

#really loving writing this rosie #also trying to think of a new name for her #any fencers in this corner of tumblr btw #i am probably getting everything wrong #my entire experience of swordplay is 1998's the mask of zorro and my recent audiobook listen of fenced:disarmed #so hit me up if i'm doing things wrong here #six sentence sunday #wip snip #tacky's fth #final note #hell yeah this harry can dance #there's an earlier scene where he talks about #being brought up by wolfstar #and how they taught him ballroom dancing #in case you were wondering why hj 'two left feet' potter might be good at dancing

[cosmic-kaden]

.

#a post thats in the tags so I don't take up space. Sorry for not being as active the last few days. got another thing piled onto the #'Kaden can't stop having things wrong with their body' So I'm dealing with bs. This one hit suddenly and I spent the day trying to get #into walk in clinics (and failed) they either weren't open or they were already filled for the day. #hoping I can get in sometime tomorrow and if not then its back to urgent care which is really something I'd not do as the wait times #are astronomically long. but if I have too I have too. #If I ever feel a little better I'll be here to bombard you with content and rb your stuff. please keep tagging me. i won't get to it #straight away but usually when I see I'm tagged I will rb it into my drafts so they don't get lost 💜 #I feel like I haven't been existing lately irl and its really got me at an extremely low mood point. #sleep pain sleep pain eat/drink sleep pain repeat the cycle and I'm just so mentally exhausted. #I love you all /pl and I hope I can start being a little more cheery soon and I'm sorry a couple of my posts havent been. im just having a #real rough go of it rn #cosmic chatter

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Beginning to really wonder how much of my financial concern is manufactured and handed to me as opposed to something I'm genuinely concerned by

#bc like. i'm getting by just fine. i don't have anything to be reasonably worried about #but also when i was a kid my father would break down my mother's paycheck and basically explain how broke we were #and that May Have Affected Me Somewhat #as well as just. the way you consistently see the advice to just save! don't get takeout! necessities! and i'm not intent on living like #a monk nor am i intent on being on that grindset for financial gain #it's like i don't intrinsically care but i have so many messages given to me about how i need to care a lot and it puts me in a weird spot #i am simultaneously standing still and moving at mach speeds #i mean right now i just need a safety net while in between jobs; after that i need to save up to move out of state bc the uh #political situation and upcoming presidential election don't seem very sustainable for someone like me anymore #they weren't to begin with but i don't wanna stick around to see how bad it's gonna get #but it's like. okay and then what? save for what? going back to school i guess? idk #i feel like i keep asking myself what i'm trying to accomplish and keep trying to force myself to have answers #here and now when i have to be okay with taking things one step at a time instead of having everything here and now #it's simultaneously fine and terrible and i am holding two conflicting yet equal truths #i feel i may have a clearer head once i leave my current job. i'm trying to look but nothing feels appealing given how #burnt out i already feel. i dread going back into my workplace and i fear it's showing to the patients and i don't want that #i want a month off to rediscover who i am as a person outside of getting yelled at in retail and then pick something back up #could be feasible. genuinely could be. i need to sort out the health insurance aspect but. that's lowkey the plan? #to construct a financial safety net and then slam on the breaks for a while; see if i can strike up a deal with the staff about me #coming in for specific tasks bc we already know i'm quick and efficient with the inventory so i do have a little leverage #you know what. this is getting some of it off my chest and i'm starting to feel confident again lmao #i won't be doing weekends starting either next week or the week after so that's a start! i just think i want everything done right now #bc i'm afraid i won't have the chance again but i will. i definitely will #i just need to let myself get to that point; it's just the immense drain from the register work and the Everything that comes with retail #also having to accept that it's okay to leave this; there's not something wrong with me like. ''not being able to handle it'' or w/e #no mindfulness or detachment could've saved me; it was shit and i'm hitting the bricks and that's all there is to it #i've been thinking a lot about it all lately bc it's what's most prominent in my life rn of course #idk. pondering. introspecting. as i am wont to do #anyways if you've read all this you're a real mvp and i am kissing you on the hand #shai speaks

[general-du-vallon]

I like the episode where porthos finds his father. Sort of. Aramis going off to be romantic hero to the girls used to annoy me but I quite liked it this time. He's always off after the next something. Treville being all stubborn i used to think was wrong but actually, maybe he was right, maybe Porthos did have to find out things for himself, and treville letting him go off and be angry I guess?

The scene where porthos asks treville if he kidnapped him and his mum and hen treville says yes, and doesn't get it all straight because him and porthos are twisted about in belgard's lies is interesting. Treville can't just out and say it cus anything he says gets twisted up and incorrected. But then he asks porthos to trust him and porthos makes a tiny noise of distress and look like he's crying it is super sad. Then he storms off and crashes the door good for him.

It's funny. Aramis is angry at once, then off he goes after the women, crashing into the house. d'Artagnan manages like ten minutes in the room before the auction before he is begging to murder someone. Athos is slow, he takes his time over things and gathers facts, but he gets mad too, and he's persistant, always asking treville about porthos. And then he's the one who at the end cuts through all the bullshit 'is porthos in danger?' and off they go to the rescue. Nice.

Aramis and Porthos shoud've got some more nice scenes in. The beggining is so nice for them and then they barely see each other till their little thing at the end over the uniform. Porthos's 'It's bigger than yours' to athos is hilarious tho. like, is he making a dick joke? I think he's making a dick joke, but that could just be the poeple I hang around with.

#musketeers '24 rewatch #I have no one to subject to my thoughts so here they are for the void #I liked Constance in this episode but idk. a misture of her being framed as not in the right for greiving her husband #not wrong per se but like. it is framed as her holding up her own happiness rather than. you know. he's been unkind to her and kept her #trapped for years in this miserable little house #and he hit her but that's not really the problem. i mean dont hit her obv but like. he was dragging her home and forbidding her from things #and 'i only let you come here to win me favour' and the first ever episode he apologises for her talking. he's not good to her. #and then he died right after she decided to leave him! that all is complicated. Give her time #lemay is very sweet. i like the way he says she can rely on it or smth after constance turns him down. and i do like when she says to dart #'i'm not finished' when he tries to interupt. #she's so pretty when she rushes happily throught he palace. and when she comes crashing in on rochefort and the queen

[nyarthru]

the fact that so many child abuse laws are like "its not child abuse unless it leaves a lasting mark" is so fucking crazy to me. You can hit a kid as long as your fists weren't closed and you hit them light enough

#It's actually so hard for someone to be convicted of child abuse. especially if what happened is under the guise of ''discipline'' #yeah the kid was fighting me so its not MY fault that he hit his head and arm on a counter and was also on edge of having a panic attack. #this is the proper reaction to a kid being guilty of talking back and being bossy - my uncle #also my uncle: I've never been found guilty under the law for child abuse. you are wrong. also you are the one needing to grow up bc somehow #I'm circling this conversation about you assaulting me over thinking something bad was happening to your brother back around to the fact you #are still living with me #its so funny to me bc even if I did try to leave my mom would try to stop me lmao. ''you're mom is enabling your lifestyle for some reason'' #my dude. my mom is ENFORCING this lifestyle. not to mention when you were shaming me for how old I was and still living here...you got my #age wrong??? do your research before talking to me. #literally told me I had no goals or plans for the future. lmao even. he only ever talks to me to tell me that he wants me out #quickly! name 8 interests I have that I did not have while in elementary school!!! #like I'm so mad. at least I can revel in the fact that my uncle was such a pussy you didn't commit to calling the police on me when he said #he would lmao. I can also revel in the fact that he fucking hates it here and tries to avoid being home. and that hes failing at parenting #his own children. I'm sorry brenna. I mean no slander. but you sneaking around and being found out about it and that all the adults knew #about it before he did thus making him look bad is so satisfying. its like watching him judging his gf and my mom for being bad parents #while his kids do much worse things (in his eyes) so fucking poetic #I'm sorry for going batshit crazy in the tags. I am. venting #tw child abuse

[neverendingford]

.

#every time I come home from my community group I'm reminded how important it is to get out and meet people and be a part of something #every time I put theory into practice I'm reminded that we learn things so that we can grow more able to love people #everything good thing reminds me that I can create the good I want to see in the world #contrast the hug that was unwillingly given to the pastor who was unwelcome to the big that I earned by being supportive and understanding #I will never shut up about getting a tumblr degree and then putting it to work in real life #I love being on the nerd and educator side of tumblr because it's full of people who care about knowing history and teaching it to others #full of people who care about learning about the hardships humans face and how to grow past them #and I learn from people who are twice my age and have lived through struggles similar to what I have #and I get to pass that knowledge along to others in my life. I get to share the fire that's kept me warm through my coldest nights #because that's what humanity is about. breaking the rules to share fire. paying the price for doing what you believe in #and changing the world one hearth at a time. #especially cause I've gotten to share some of the things I've learned about escaping abuse. which like. was never really relevant to me #but it's information I've learned on here and now I've gotten to share that with someone to help and encourage them to leave the situation #which.. that's the meaning of life y'all #you see hurt and you help. you see harm and you step in. you see someone getting beaten and you fucking wreck somebody's shit #you see someone crying and you offer a hug. you see someone getting hit and you fucking kick their attacker in the back of the head. #you speak up. you let your anger channel. anger tells you something is wrong. so fucking fix it. #anger is stigmatized and I hate it. anger is good. anger is self defense. anger is self preservation. let it fuel your desire to do good. #you cry and you scream and then you defend the ones you love.

[dirt-mccracken]

Spent a lot of time this week thinking about the inherent vulnerability of being loved and was hit with the overwhelming realization of how much love I have been surrounded in and refused to let myself experience thanks to my own deep insecurities.

#all the ways my friends have been screaming 'I love you' for years that I shrugged off calmly and ungratefully #all the times I refused the idea anyone could love or care for /me/ the way I often do for others #all these things hitting like a stone #all the times I wish I would have said 'thank you #'thank you for seeing something in me' instead of assuring them they were wrong. instead of insisting I MUST be bad because I felt bad #and even now knowing all this how hard it is to combat that instinct and finally let myself be loved the way I love #all the different ways crashing like a wave #'i miss you' #'come visit' #'move back here' #'when will I see you again?' #'can I call?' #'I'm glad you're still here' #and all the ways I just. never let myself think they meant it and how ungrateful I have been #it's a lot and it's not just me but god im so so.lucky #so lucky to live a life full of love and friends who stay and new ones all the time and its just hard #seeing all the ways i worsened my own pain in my worst moments because I just refused to see a beyter world #i couldn't imagine telling myself a decade ago where we end up #and i couldn't imagine that kid even believing we stayed alive #and it hurts but also feels very veru good #to be here #to see the love #to get a second chance with all of it #sorry guys lol

[tsukuyomiland]

Someone:

-Abuse my affection by making me an emotional slave that had to be ready to talk to them at the time they said or otherwise get guilt-tripped ("I feel so alone" "you said you would be here").

-I had to be ready to comfort them at any time, with situations like me having my baby niece crying in my arms and they DEMANDING my total attention even knowing it, or demanding drawings to make them feel better.

-Lies to me. Blatantly.

-Makes me feel miserable filling my life with constant negativity. I wasn't allowed to express any kind of personal happiness publicly because it "hurt their feelings". Me drawing better than them also hurt them, I felt compelled to pretend I was less skilled.

-Contacts IRL friends of mine and tell them my now husband is "manipulating me". (He was in fact saving me of their toxic influence).

-Steals my art. Lies to me when I demand my art to be removed. Sends me a broken link to a blog. Later I find out they only changed the username and I find my art again used without my permission.

-Steals concepts and characters I created. Lies blatantly about their creation to erase my contribution and real origin.

-Erases my name from collabs.

-Writes a journal on Deviant Art full of blatant lies. When I call out, they say my screenshots are fake.

-Copies drawings from me (and other artists). They get comments like "nice pose", they only say thank you without mention it was referenced-copied.

-I demand those drawings to be deleted or at least, get credited. I'm ignored. The drawings are still there.

-Impersonates me, takes my username and posts stuff with the intention of discredit me. Some allude to things like "how to make fake screenshots" showing that they were aware of their activity and were ready to use that argument against me even knowing it would be false, showing their bad faith.

-Sends me repeated insults, some as tasteless as calling my newborn son "broken condom". Allusions to the fascist dictatorship my country suffered. Calling me lazy for not drawing my comic... The day after I gave birth. And much more. I have screenshots of all of them, so I have proof.

-Accusations of plagiarism. I only took the characters I made and put them in a completely different context. Telling my story is a copy of theirs is like saying Gone with the Wind is a copy of Jurassic Park.

-Accused me of being friends with a person with who I exchanged barely a couple conversations and with which I have no connection at all.

Me:

-Decided to cut a friendship after months of emotional suffering that was affecting my relationship with my husband, my mood, my skills, after I found a "secret blog" full of stuff I feel unable to support, after they told me a thing that was the final red flag I was able to put up after a history of ignoring red flags.

-I decided to choose my own happiness.

-I decided to choose mental health.

-I never insulted.

-I never lied.

-I felt manipulated, with the feeling my only value to them was my drawing skills to be used for their project and my relative popularity in a fandom to help them to get noticed themselves. I had the feeling the only reason they clinged to my friendship was that they would lose the use of my skills. The episode of the stolen drawings confirmed it to me.

-I only asked my stuff to get removed, ready to move on and hoping my characters and concepts won't be used never again. After they lied to me, I decided I earned my right to recover and use what was mine. I even surrendered one of those characters completely as a gesture of good will because they had an attachment to said character.

-I've shown repeatedly actions of good will and hopes of stable terms.

-I deleted my Deviant Art account, that they helped to boost in watchers, in order to not be accused of 'taking advantage' of their action. I haven't had an account on dA ever since.

-I've sent private emails to manage our problems directly. Ignored by them.

-There is no one left on their side who was a witness of our friendship, relationship and exchanges at the time, because I was the only friend they had then -another lie: they said once that I wanted to isolate them so I could be their only friend, totally false because I always encouraged they could search new friends in their area and even helped them actively to set the accomodations for an Erasmus trip. In the opposite, they are who made actions to get me afar from my irl friends and husband so I could focus only on them. They can say whatever they want to the people surrounding them now and be believed because they don't know me at all, never worried about knowing my side, and I don't expect it. My image is at their mercy, and they don't hesitate in using lies. There is nothing I can do against it that doesn't require legal action.

But I guess I'm the baddie, huh.

#sick of shutting up #the only thing I've been doing is to live my life #but I've been suffering and still suffer that person's bad faith and insecurity #a bunch of nice words are useless if it later goes with more wrong actions #i'm sick everybody can say and do whatever they want and I have to be here swallowing and swallowing and living with a broken heart #pretend everything is fine #and being unable to even vent #i just wanna cry #I only wanted to be happy is the only thing I wanted like everybody does #all these years being blamed for searching my happiness #for defending myself #people want me to be their punching ball and stay quiet while being punched and even say sorry because my face is hitting their fist #i'm tired I'm so tired so so fucking tired

[sureuncertainty]

i officially do not like my job at the museum anymore. the bad has outweighed the good. as soon as i can go full time for the mouse i’m gonna manifest this image

#i have to go to work tomorrow and i don't. want to. #i will bc it's why i get my medication #but they're being so fucking annoying every time i go in i get more annoyed #and the one person i wanna see and hang out with isn't in the next two days so i'm just gonna have to suffer #(but yeah i'm sticking it out for the healthcare and to hit my year in 15 days so my pay will go up for my last few paychecks at the very #least) #but GOD if management isn't making me want to throw things at a wall #like man. this job could have been so great for me if it weren't for the horrible ceo and corporate fucking everything up #and refusing to spend money on things like getting us radios #they're more concerned about the fact that i made the Wrong Expression once #i'm not even remotely joking i've already vented so much about this job irl so i won't do it here but dear god #dear lord it's horrible. no amount of my love for history and for people can save it now #i'm...........................jumping ship #(i'm so sorry pls forgive me)

[jewishvitya]

A pro-Palestine Jew on tiktok asked those of us who were raised pro-Israel, what got us to change our minds on Palestine. I made a video to answer (with my voice, not my face), and a few people watched it and found some value in it. I'm putting this here too. I communicate through text better than voice.

So I feel repetitive for saying this at this point, but I grew up in the West Bank settlements. I wrote this post to give an example of the extent to which Palestinians are dehumanized there.

Where I live now, I meet Palestinians in day to day life. Israeli Arab citizens living their lives. In the West Bank, it was nothing like that. Over there, I only saw them through the electric fence, and the hostility between us and Palestinians was tangible.

When you're a child being brought into the situation, you don't experience the context, you don't experience the history, you don't know why they're hostile to you. You just feel "these people hate me, they don't want me to exist." And that bubble was my reality. So when I was taught in school that everything we did was in self defense, that our military is special and uniquely ethical because it's the only defensive military in the world - that made sense to me. It slotted neatly into the reality I knew.

One of the first things to burst the bubble for me was when I spoke to an old Israeli man and he was talking about his trauma from battle. I don't remember what he said, but it hit me wrong. It conflicted with the history as I understood it. So I was a bit desperate to make it make sense again, and I said, "But everything we did was in self defense, right?"

He kinda looked at me, couldn't understand at all why I was upset, and he went, "We destroyed whole villages. Of course we did. It was war, that's what you do."

And that casual "of course" stuck with me. I had to look into it more.

I couldn't look at more accurate history, and not at accounts by Palestinians, I was too primed against these sources to trust them. The community I grew up in had an anti-intellectual element to it where scholars weren't trusted about things like this.

So what really solidified this for me, was seeing Palestinian culture.

Because part of the story that Israel tells us to justify everything, is that Palestinians are not a distinct group of people, they're just Arabs. They belong to the nations around us. They insist on being here because they want to deny us a homeland. The Palestinian identity exists to hurt us. This, because the idea of displacing them and taking over their lands doesn't sound like stealing, if this was never theirs and they're only pretending because they want to deprive us.

But then foods, dances, clothing, embroidery, the Palestinian dialect. These things are history. They don't pop into existence just because you hate Jews and they're trying to move here. How gorgeous is the Palestinian thobe? How stunning is tatreez in general? And when I saw specific patterns belonging to different regions of Palestine?

All of these painted for me a rich shared life of a group of people, and countered the narrative that the Palestininian identity was fabricated to hurt us. It taught me that, whatever we call them, whatever they call themselves, they have a history in this land, they have a right to it, they have a connection to it that we can't override with our own.

I started having conversations with leftist friends. Confronting the fact that the borders of the occupied territories are arbitrary and every Israeli city was taken from them. In one of those conversations, I was encouraged to rethink how I imagine peace.

This also goes back to schooling. Because they drilled into us, we're the ones who want peace, they're the ones who keep fighting, they're just so dedicated to death and killing and they won't leave us alone.

In high school, we had a stadium event with a speaker who was telling us about a person who defected from Hamas, converted to Christianity and became a Shin Bet agent. Pretty sure you can read this in the book "Son of Hamas." A lot of my friends read the book, I didn't read it, I only know what I was told in that lecture. I guess they couldn't risk us missing out on the indoctrination if we chose not to read it.

One of the things they told us was how he thought, we've been fighting with them for so long, Israelis must have a culture around the glorification of violence. And he looked for that in music. He looked for songs about war. And for a while he just couldn't find any, but when he did, he translated it more fully, and he found out the song was about an end to wars. And this, according to the story as I was told it, was one of the things that convinced him. If you know know the current trending Israeli "war anthem," you know this flimsy reasoning doesn't work.

Back then, my friend encouraged me to think more critically about how we as Israelis envision peace, as the absence of resistance. And how self-centered it is. They can be suffering under our occupation, but as long as it doesn't reach us, that's called peace. So of course we want it and they don't.

Unless we're willing to work to change the situation entirely, our calls for peace are just "please stop fighting back against the harm we cause you."

In this video, Shlomo Yitzchak shares how he changed his mind. His story is much more interesting than mine, and he's much more eloquent telling it. He mentions how he was taught to fear Palestinians. An automatic thought, "If I go with you, you'll kill me." I was taught this too. I was taught that, if I'm in a taxi, I should be looking at the driver's name. And if that name is Arab, I should watch the road and the route he's taking, to be prepared in case he wants to take me somewhere to kill me. Just a random person trying to work. For years it stayed a habit, I'd automatically look at the driver's name. Even after knowing that I want to align myself with liberation, justice, and equality. It was a process of unlearning.

On October, not long after the current escalation of violence, I had to take a taxi again. A Jewish driver stopped and told me he'll take me, "so an Arab doesn't get you." Israeli Jews are so comfortable saying things like this to each other. My neighbors discussed a Palestinian employee, with one saying "We should tell him not to come anymore, that we want to hire a Jew." The second answered, "No, he'll say it's discrimination," like it would be so ridiculous of him. And the first just shrugged, "So we don't have to tell him why." They didn't go through with it, but they were so casual about this conversation.

In the Torah, we're told to treat those who are foreign to us well, because we know what it's like to be the foreigner. Fighting back against oppression is the natural human thing to do. We know it because we lived it. And as soon as I looked at things from this angle, it wasn't really a choice of what to support.

#riki babbles #I had this in my drafts for ages and I was like 'not the time' but a friend encouraged me to share so here it is #palestine

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How I got scammed

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/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

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

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

#pluralistic #social engineering #phishing #ai #swiss cheese security #infosec #finance #fraud #carding