I enjoy writing and love seeing people's creative pieces.
I reblog a lot of what interests me.
A LGBTQIAP+ BLOG, and if you don't like that, then dni.
I STAND WITH PALESTINE. π³οΈβππ³οΈββ§οΈπ΅πΈ
He/She/They. This is a place where I felt like writing fanfiction for something that I see doesn't get too much attention and so I wrote it. I decided to write and so I will. I AM ACCEPTING REQUESTS, PLEASE please give me requests. I like writing. I am a diagnosed Autistic, and I am a Hellenistic Polytheist. My current fixations are Batman, No I'm Not A Human, and The Amazing Digital Circus.
I am Jaafar from Gaza. I am currently in northern Gaza, and we have not yet been displaced to the south. Things are very difficult here β the cost of moving to the south is $1,000, and a single tent also costs $1,000, if we can even find a place in southern Gaza. The south is overcrowded, and renting a plot of land costs $1,000 per month, or even more depending on the area. ππ’
I started a donation campaign in the middle of the war and received good support, but due to personal circumstances, I recently created a new link, and unfortunately, I have only received a small amount of donations so far. ππ I appeal to you to help me with my new campaign and donate whatever you can π₯Ίπ. Every amount you give will save the lives of my family and me and may help us cover the cost of moving to southern Gaza! π Thank you, and I pray that God blesses you and provides for you π§‘π«
Here is the donation link β¬οΈ**
Hello, my name is Elizabeth Barnes and I am a US citizen organizing this campaign on behalf of my friend Jaafar, who is raising funds to sup
Okay, so, what do you like thr most about each variant of the Turtles? (2007 and 2012)?
Hmmm.π€ I know most variants like Bayverse, 90s, ROTTMNT, TOTTMNT, Mutant Mayhem, 2012 and 2007 sooo thatβs a bit many to answer, but consistently itβs been Raph and his dynamic with his brothers.
I have a soft spot for Raph (My first ever guy crush as a kid) so naturally heβs always my favorite, but in general I like seeing them interact with each other.
I love the different ways that they express their love like personally I see 2012 Raph being so mean to Mikey is because that is partially his love language but he doesnβt know when he goes too far sometimes.
Itβs not something I personally subscribe to, but if someone introduced it to me and then asked for it then maybe? Thereβs just so many AUs to talk of.
TLDR because Iβm bad at saying things. No but Iβm not going to kick someone out for asking it! Also I saw your other ask, Itβs a unique idea but some parts I might leave out due to my writing style.
PSA the "si" in shared YouTube links stand for Seal Indicator. This means there is a nefarious seal tracking your information and will give YouTube your data in exchange for fish. Please remove the part after "?si=" before you click on it or share the link with others because it is a tracking token!
alternatively titled,Β βhow to be a decent human being to people who are suffering enough as it is to help your supposedly entitled assβ
1. get off your cell phone. Β
Β Β Β - cashiers ( not to mention the people patiently waiting in line ) donβt need to hear about how little Kelseyβs doing on the soccer team, or how your mother-in-law is coming into town for her birthday and youβre just SO INCONVENIENCED by having to purchase paper plates and cheap napkins before her arrival. Β just tell them youβll call them back when youβre done.
Β Β Β - if you canβt be assed to think about other people, at least acknowledge the cashier with a smile or a wave. Β if they speak to you or ask you a question, donβt shush them. Β tell your BFF Tanisha to hold on for what might be a total of four seconds.Β
2.Β when an item doesnβt immediately scan, please say anything butΒ βoh, it must be free!β Β please, dear god, anything but that. Β youβre not being funny. Β or clever. Β or original. Β they hear this at least ten times a day. Β
3. Β the number of items listed on the express lane is not a suggestion. Β if you know that you have more items, donβt go there. Β itβs that simple. Β the express lanes have to be kept open for people who have small orders, so theyβre not stuck behind someone with a cart piled high with whatβs maybe a weekβs worth of food and clothes youβll inevitably be returning.Β
4. Β while unloading your cart, put the big items ( i.e., packages of toilet paper, crates of water bottles ) last. Β thereβs very little room for the cashiers to work with. Β when youβre done unloading your cart, pull it up to the loading space and start putting the bags and other items into your cart instead of standing there and staring off into space or fiddling with your phone.Β
5. Β when you ask a cashier a store-related question ( i.e., how many coupons are allowed per order, whether or not youβre getting the right BOGO deal, etc. ), and they answer you politely and confidently, donβt challenge them. Β they work there. Β you donβt. Β they know the way the store works. Β you donβt. Β if theyβve forgotten something or made a mistake, by all means, ask them about it β but do it politely. Β we all make mistakes. Β
6. Β do not β i repeat, do not β put your money down on the counter or conveyor belt, especially if the cashier is visibly ready to take it. Β hand it over to them. Β if you need to count out some change, tell them so they can wait. Β oh, and if theyβve already cashed you out, donβt hand over some random amount of change after the drawerβs open. Β
7. Β if your cardβs declined, itβs not their fault. Β donβt ask them why it wasnβt accepted. Β they donβt know. Β and donβt get angry or impatient with them, or insist you have money because you just deposited a check β they do not care. Β they cannot help you with problems that are clearly on your end. Β
8.Β do not yell at a cashier. Β once again, for the people in the back: Β do not yell at a cashier, especially someone whoβs clearly new to the job. Β would you appreciate being yelled at for something beyond your control, or a simple, fixable mistake? Β no. Β so donβt do it to them. Β
9. Β if you get an answer you donβt like from a cashier and ask to speak to a manager, guess what? Β youβre most likely gonna get the same answer from them. Β hereβs a news flash: the customer is not always right, the company will not always pander to your temper tantrums, and making a scene in front of a line of people with quickly-diminishing patience willΒ not change their minds.Β
10. Β overall, please just be polite. Β these people are working their asses off to help their customers, most of which donβt appreciate their efforts at all. Β theyβre constantly ignored, mistreated, questioned and degraded, and over time, it really does a number on their emotional state. Β just be kind and courteous. Β theyβre human beings, not mindless drones. Β smiles and nice conversations go a long way. Β
if anyone else has anything to add, feel free. Β floor associates, back room / production workers β go crazy. Β share your woes and pet peeves. Β
These are important and additionally Iβd like to add that if you pick up an item and decide not to get it, itβs not annoying to me (as a cashier) for you to hand it to me and politely say you decided not to get it. It IS annoying when I find items all over the store in wrong places or tucked away in random spots. We work on returns and we know where they go, itβs alright to give it to us so it goes to the right place. Maybe it isnβt like that everywhere, but yeah itβs very annoying when you put things in the wrong place.Β
This especially goes for anything perishable that is supposed to be frozen or refrigerated. You just create food waste when you do that.
When I still worked retail at a corner store I hated finding dairy in like the candy or granola isle. I had no way of knowing how long it had been sitting there so I had to dispose of it for food safety reasons. I would rather someone shoplift perishables than leave them in the wrong isle sitting out at room temperature. At least when someone shoplifts a carton of skyr itβs still getting eaten by someone, when itβs left in the wrong isle at room temperature it just goes in the trash and makes for food waste.
Also! Be nice to the baggers! They are the ones who are trying to bag all of your groceries! If they double bag something, itβs probably because itβs store policy!
And try to tell them you donβt bags before they start bagging because those bags are treated as worthless when theyβre wet from the cold stuff or stretched out because of the heavy or whatever.
And maybe donβt jump scare the bagger behind them while theyβre in the middle of a big order to ask them where the bathroom is! We will lose our place and maybe forget something.
Summary: You're back in your home country, Russia, in 2002, for certain circumstances. As you adapt to your new life, you'll find that this new year has a lot more in store for you than you're prepared for.
Warnings: Obviously +18, mentions of gore and death. There aren't many warnings to add right now, but do note that this series might have eventual smut and will have mentions of suicide. Not to mention, just heavy topics all around. (Specific warnings added to each chapter.)
Notes: I doubt many will read this. I'm considering this a passion project that I'm willing to publish so if you see this please tell me how it is! This is the first possibly non-smut fanfic I've published (wow,, what? no sex?????? but, lovethegenuine, you're so horned up 247...) shh just read it vro...
Word Count: 3.4k
Additional Notes: Various canon characters will make their appearances in later chapters! This first chapter is protagonist-centered :)
A criminal.
Thatβs what you were, at least in a different country.
A year ago, in America, you were arrested for shoplifting at your local Walmart. It wasnβt a felony, and you only had to go to court, but the experience was enough to make your parents embarrassed by you. Once you were released, they kicked you out of their home and sent you to live with your grandparents in Russia. You had dual citizenship and were technically an immigrant, so being sent back was no issueβlegally, at least. Mentally, it was draining. You watched as clouds zipped past your plane, and soon you were brought to a home that you barely recognized. Your grandma greeted you with a loving scowl, and your grandpa side-smacked your head so hard, your ears rang.
They werenβt happy to see you, and it showed.
You spent your time reading and polishing your Russian. Your grandma sat you down daily to test you over and over. After that, you were expected to clean the house. Even though you were an adult, it felt like you were a kid again. You had nowhere else to goβno connections or money. Forever stuck with your grandparents in their boring ass hometown, in a country that felt like its own jail.
For the first few months, your grandpa refused to speak to you. Maybe it was your elementary-level Russian. Every time you tried to speak to him, you could tell it pissed him off. After seven months of nonstop practice and cleaning, your grandpa spoke to you at breakfast. He asked if you wanted to start exploring the neighborhood more. You said yes, expecting him to scold you for some reason. Instead, he simply nodded and finished his coffee.
That evening, he came home with a bike. It looked slightly dated; maybe itβd seen better days. However, it had a sturdy basket and was a nice baby blue. And now it was yours. You spent the rest of that year riding around the area, exploring and running errands for your grandma. Russia wasnβt too bad, especially now, since it felt like your punishment was over. However, some days it felt too warm. Youβd often come home sweating hard, needing to take a cold bath. Your grandpa asked once if you were ok. He told you to wear lighter clothes and take water next time. You could tell that seeing your face red after only a short bike ride made him nervous.
Three days before New Yearβs Eve, your grandma sent you out to buy tangerines. Even before getting on your bike, you felt remarkably hot. You could see the heat waves warping the air as you rode to the market. Everyone was sweating just like you, and you could see and smell the sweat of the poor people who had to bake under the sun to make a profit.
But it was DecemberβDecember in Russia. Why the fuck was it so hot?
After you came home and had a bath, you could hear your grandparents at the kitchen table. They had the radio on, listening to the local news. It was about the weather. You could hear a man on the station talk about the increasing temperature. It sounded like he said it could reach 98Β°C soon. You became cross.
Around 200Β°F? Thatβs like, impossible.
You came out into the kitchen in your pajamas and sat with them. Your grandpa looked at you and then back at your grandma.
βMaybe we should send her back.β He whispered in Russian.
βWhat? Why?β You blurted in English.
βIt is getting too hot.β He replied, looking concerned.
βYou think itβs gonna be any better in America?β Your grandma retorted.
βI want my granddaughter here.β She continued.
They looked at each other for a second. The air felt tense to you.
βDonβt you think theyβd want their daughter back in a crisis? We should send her back before it gets worse!β He cried.
βSo youβre going to bake her in a plane?β She scoffed.
You stood up from your chair and walked to your room as they continued going back and forth, wondering if the planet could really get that hot. You found yourself in the kitchen, an evening later, peeling potatoes for dinner while idly watching what your grandpa had on the TV. It was a Russian crime show called Streets of Broken Lights, or something of the sort. It was quite fun, and you enjoyed finding things you could later bond with your grandpa over. Youβd pretty much forgotten about the heat until an alert came blaring over the TV. Your grandpa cursed as he jumped in his seat. It was a warning not to leave your home for any reason during the day. Tomorrow, it was going to be 86Β°C.
What the actual fuck.
Your grandpa looked at you and then cursed again as he leaped from his seat and ran to the house phone. You stopped peeling and went to find your grandma. Frantically, you ran around the house, calling for her. There was nothing. Your grandma was gone. You started to sob as you ran back to your grandpa. He told you that he was leaving to find her. You panicked as he started grabbing his keys and his gun. Youβre not sure why heβd need his gun, but before you could ask, he was halfway out the door while yelling at you, demanding you keep the lights off and the doors locked.
That was the last time you saw both of them.
You spent the rest of that night blocking all the windows. You didnβt know if that would stop the heat, but it was worth a try.
You kept the TV on the entire time, trying to catch any information that might help. While listening to the news at the lowest volume, you heard some other, if not more horrific, news.
Alien-like humans. Monsters. The reporter landed on the word visitors.
Why visitors?
You stayed sat on the couch, waiting for one of your grandparents to come home. Being alone was starting to stress you out. Hours flew past, and soon the adrenaline in your body died down. You fought the sleep as best you could, but suddenly you woke up, not remembering when you had fallen asleep.
You looked at the windows that youβd covered. Through the black fabric, you could see that it was daytime, and nobody had returned.
Every step you took felt heavy, not just from the sweltering heat, but from the mental strain that had you overcome with anxiety. Time felt unbearable to comprehend. The thought of perception or the very action of thinking about anything at all was suddenly too strenuous. Did the heat melt your brain like it was now trying to do with your skin?
You knew this would be survivable. You checked the thermostat, and it was 30Β°C in the house. It wasnβt the worst youβd been through, but suddenly you felt like you were being hot-boxedβjust bathing in your sweat as it cooked you like ham. You kept pressing your finger on the dial until it reached the lowest temperature it could go, praying the heat hadnβt destroyed the AC.
You ran the water in the bathroom, hoping to start a cold bath, but it was already steaming. Even though you wanted to cry, the heat made you too exhausted, and you ended up just turning the water off and whining your way to your bed.
You could only imagine how hot it was out there. If only you could gather yourself enough to take a look outside. Then again, you realized that one look might be enough to burn your retinas permanently.
You only managed to get out of bed once. For a while, you laid on the floor after stripping off your pants. The fabric was damp, and your thighs felt cool from the moisture that had been stuck to your skin. Maybe you were being a little dramatic, but it really felt like it was getting hotter. Being in 30Β°C weather outside was manageable. When you biked, you had the privilege of feeling the cool air that hit you every time you went downhill. However, there was nothing to cool you off in your tiny room.
You stayed on the floor for hours, eventually falling asleep. Once you woke up, you noticed the air was slightly cooler. You looked at the clock, and it was now 10:36 at night.
You got up to look around for your grandparents. Your back was damp from being on the carpet. After a look around the house, they still hadnβt come home. You decided now would be a good time to peek out your curtains. In hindsight, you truly had no idea what you wouldβve seen; if you had the option to know, maybe you would have hesitated.
All across the road were the crisp bodies of those who had cooked in the sun. One of those could have been your grandparents, but it wouldβve been hard to tell, since everybodyβs skin was practically evaporated in the heat. You could only wonder how bad it smelled out there.
You noticed that people were starting to walk around. Some awkwardly averted their eyes from the bodies. Others looked normal as they continued their daily lives, just at night. You wondered how they could already adapt to such a horrific situation. You took a step back from the window, making sure to pull the curtain back into place. You felt you needed to come up with a plan because you doubted you could stay here forever.
As you stood in place by the window, someone suddenly knocked on the door. You jumped from the sound and, for some reason, didnβt hesitate to make your way to the peephole.
It was a young woman, maybe around your age. She looked eerily normalβnice straight brown hair, clean face, healthy eyes. She smiled through the peephole like she was actually looking at you.
βHello? I saw your face through the window.β She announced with a clean smile.
What the fuck type of greeting is that?
Her teeth were dramatically white. Like, supermodel white. It made your stomach ache.
You didnβt give her a reply, but instead kept staring at her through the tiny glass. In your head, you wondered where she came from and why she picked your house.
She inched her face towards the peephole and searched through it, all with that same smile.
βI see you!β She cheered.
You shot back from the door in horror. She began knocking violently as you staggered back. Your legs trembled, and with every bit of strength you had left, you hid back in your room, hoping that she would eventually just leave.
Luckily for you, she did.
It became completely silent after an hour of hiding under the covers. You felt like how you did when you were a kid. Just an anxious little girl on the brink of tears, hoping Momma would come soon to wrap you in her warm arms and soothe your fears.
You sobbed again, thinking of your mistakes and how if you hadnβt done what you did, maybe you wouldβve been able to hug your mom or at least not be alone.
You knew you couldnβt stay here. Soon, more would come back around and target your house again. But where would you go? It was already almost midnight; you would have about five hours left before youβd start to roast.
I need to find someone to stay with.
You gave it some thought. In reality, there was no way youβd make it out of this situation alive. You would either die here, starving to death, have your house broken into, or die in the daytime trying to make it to shelter. Survival, at that point, was slim. But truthfully, if you had nobody, was there really a point? You had no idea if your parents back home were still alive, and the possibility of them actually being such seemed incredibly low.
You curled your body up more under the blanket, and suddenly, you felt so small and fragile. How could it be that your entire world could collapse in a week? Everything that youβd ever knownβjobs youβve had, mouths youβd kissed, hands youβd held, experiences, good and bad, they would all be discarded soon. There was nowhere to store them; no capsule to put them in. No one to tell all of your experiences to, and hope they keep your memory alive. Youβd lived your life, and suddenly you felt that there was nothing to show for it.
Nothing. There would be no proof of your existence except for your charred skeleton. And then where would that skeleton go? Who would know that skeletonβs name?
You cried as you slowly unraveled yourself from your cocoon. You looked around your room, deciding what to take. It was hard to tell which items were which because your tears blurred your vision.
In the end, the only things you packed were clothes, a journal, and a picture of the last family trip youβd taken.
If nobody would remember you, at least youβd die remembering yourself.
You changed and then left for the last time. You wondered whether anyone would cherish this house the way your grandparents did. At some point, it will probably be burned down. It terrified you to think of that.
You looked out every window; there were noticeably fewer people out. The dwindling numbers intimidated you for a minute. Where did most of them go?
You couldnβt sit on it because time was running out. You hadnβt listened to the radio in a while, so you figured that maybe there was a survivorβs camp nearby, and thatβs where everybody went. Going out the side door, you picked up your bike and locked the door behind you. The air was incredibly stiff. You felt slightly suffocated as you kicked the break up and began your journey out of the neighborhood.
Not to mention, it smelled horrific.
Your senses made it feel like you were prey. You tried to calm yourself down by telling yourself the worst thing that can happen to you is getting locked out in the sun.
You had no idea what was really out there, because there was so much worse.
There wasnβt a lot outside. For the most part, it was just groups of survivors walking. Some were playing; others were acting pretty normal. It felt like a busy night. One thing you noticed was how many were knocking on doors, asking to be let in. They looked terrified and on guard. You could understand, for the most part. The sun was literally about to come out in a couple of hours. But, they were looking behind themselves, like they were searching for something, or someone.
You continued down the road until it was completely empty. You were on a new path to a neighborhood you hadnβt been to yet. The road was semi-clear, if not for a couple of bodies. You looked out into the field on your right and gazed at the uncut grass, which swayed in the warm breeze.
Your eyes widened.
What the fuck is that.
There was a freakishly tall man in the weeds. He had this thick white smile, almost as white as his entire body, and was looking directly at you. You almost crashed into a body on the road while keeping your eyes on him. You passed with no issue, but it shook you up. You knew he was the person whom the people knocking on those doors were scared of. Suddenly, you didnβt want to be out there any longer.
You kept on and soon entered a new neighborhood. The houses were farther apart, and you could see the residential apartments in the distance. You slowed your bike down as you surveyed each house. There was one in particular that caught your attention. It was a white family home, and by god, you hoped there was a family.
You rolled your bike up to the door, shaking a bit. You looked behind your shoulder. There was no one, but the stretch of land that connected to the field where you saw that man still made you question if there was really nobody in your field of vision.
You parked your bike on the side of the porch. You knew this was probably the last time youβd see it, because unlike your house, this one had nowhere to hide it.
You walked up to the door, and with one shaky breath, you awkwardly knocked. It took you a second to get an answer. You were starting to get a little antsy when a manβs voice spooked you.
βYea?β He said through the door.
βIβm from two neighborhoods down. I just need somewhere to stay before the sun comes up.β You knew you had more to say, but you kept tripping over your words.
You involuntarily kept looking back. Your heart was beating so fast it almost hurt to breathe.
He said nothing for a beat. At some point, you wondered if he had just left.
Then the door opened.
It was a man who looked to be in his late twenties. He had short brown hair with a high hairline, and he was wearing a blue turtleneck with the sleeves pulled up and grayish slacks.
And he looked annoyed.
I definitely chose the wrong house.
He motioned you in with his fingers, and you hurried in. It felt good to finally be in a home where you werenβt the only one inhabiting it. You closed your eyes and just breathed. It still smelled sour, but now the scent was dulled by the smell of wood and cigarettes. Youβd take that any day over dead bodies.
βShow me your teeth.β He suddenly commanded.
You turned back to the man and noticed a rifle in his hands. You started to panic as he came closer. He squinted his eyes at you and made a confused expression.
βWhy?β You squeaked.
Was he a serial killer? Did he collect teeth?
He stopped.
βI need to know if youβre a visitor or not.β He replied.
You remembered the news mentioning the visitors, but you couldnβt remember exactly what it said. Was this the ultimate test?
You trembled as you brought your hands to your mouth and pulled your lips apart. Your saliva was warm, and you could taste the salt on your fingers.
He glanced at your teeth for a moment and then scowled.
βFucking white.β He began to lift his rifle.
You removed your fingers and shielded your face with your hands. He smacked your left hand away. You cried out as the pain stung your knuckles.
βYouβre screwed.β The man mumbled as he shoved his rifle in your face.
The grooves of the cool metal sank into your sweaty face as the pressure from his gun forced you against the wall. You could still see his agitated face through your cheek fat now being pressed up against your eye. He was about to blow your head clean off for having white teeth of all things.
βPlease. You canβt justβ¦β Your voice began to falter as the fear froze your body.
You felt him reposition his gun in his hands, and instinctually, your hands began searching against the wall for something to hold.
βTheyβre slightly yellow!β You sobbed.
The tears from your eyes began to soften where the barrel made a suction on your cheek. You felt your body give out. It was like you were a baby bird, desperately scratching at the trunk of a tree, hoping to fly. You began to regret leaving your home. If you knew some freak wouldβve pulled a gun on you, you wouldβve stayed put under those covers and rotted.
βOne chance. Please.β You croaked.
You closed your eyes, ready for the worst, and then he put the gun down.
You looked at his face and knew your reaction had shaken him. You had a feeling that he was going to shoot, but couldnβt find it in himself to pull the trigger. You fell to the floor with your back still against the wall. All of your senses were heightened. Youβd nearly died, and now every sight, sound, and smell was about to make you throw up just by how overwhelming it was.
He dropped his gun on the ground abruptly. It made you yelp out. Before you could say anything, he rushed down the hallway and slammed a door.
@nasharnirahart (For the inspo about their names!)
Warnings: Beginning of Yandere, Platonic Yanderes, mention of death and dead people. Heavy Christian themes. Nameless person dies, talks of nausea and throwing up. I hope I did everyone's dialogue okay. Sorry not sorry but some characters die! Cannibalism / distinct flesh eating.
Characters Featured: Homeowner, Bar Guy (Yesenin), Coat Guy (Yevgeniy), Ballerina Lady, Wireface, Cashier Girl, Bald Prophet, Neighbor's Daughter, Twins, Amogus guy.
3.7k words. Y'all are spoiled! I think that is the most I have written and most of it was in one sitting!
Eve 1;2: "The angel was wanted by many, for their holiness and need to be taken care of was desirable by most. Even those who initially did not desire to take care of someone began to need to. After all, the angel was sent to be taken care of. Still, man had to believe that it was theirs and theirs alone, and began to become corrupted. Even the angel could not save them once they were corrupted."
The previous scripture has been marked out, claimed to be untrue by priests. The new scripture found below is told to be the true version.
Adam 1;2: "The angel was wanted by many, for their holiness and need to be taken care of was desirable by most. Even those who initially did not desire to take care of someone began to need to. After all, the angel was sent to be taken care of."
It is suffocatingly hot, that much is certain as you wake up. The next thing that hits you is the stench of iron, much like from the other house from last night. Much like from the body of the person that maniac killed.
It's time to think of other things now. You look down and see that the cat is still there, purring away with a content smile on it's face. You pet it and begin to look around the room more. There is a couch to the right of you with the lanky man and cold man sitting upon it, and cabinets. You can see a lucky cat and a few little things you can't make out right now upon the shelves, and as you look at the walls, you see nothing but a cross.
Resting upon or rather, leaning on, is the gangly woman. She's stooped over and has green skin, oddly enough. She has on a black cropped tank top, as if it's too small for her, a below-knee length red plaid skirt and white socks that come right above her ankles. She looks at you with a wide smile, perfect white teeth poking out from her lips. You look to your right, back at the couch, and take in the lanky man.
He's got a swollen face, topped with short brown hair, and his skin is lightly tan. He wears a clean white button-up dress shirt, black shorts, tan socks, and brown flip-flops. Next to him is the man in a coat, with a brown winter coat, beige pants, a green sweater, and a green scarf. His skin is a sickly pale blue, and his hair is mixed between medium and a short messy black.
You're already sweating, and the cat has still yet to leave, so you lightly tap at it. "Hey buddy." You prod at it, checking it's alive. It opens an eye at you and grumpily gets off. You instantly feel relief from the lack of a heavy object laying upon you, and you stretch a little.
Something pops as you stretch and there is no relief from it, which is a bit disappointing, but alas. You shake your arms and legs to wake them from their sleepiness (it was an uncomfortable position to have kept your body in), and wince at the static rushing it to replace it.
"Morning, or afternoon. Who knows in the hellhole." The man to the left on the couch says. "Morning, or afternoon, to you as well." You say to him as you nod in deference. You yank at your clothes to leech them off yourself just a bit to perhaps ease the heat, "It's hot."
He nods, "Yep. It's hot to everyone. Except for him. Coat guy, that is." He points his thumb at the man in coats, shivering. "My name is Yevgeniy." Yevgeniy, the guy in the coats, seems annoyed at the pointing out of his coats, and looks away from the man beside him. You give out your name back at Yevgeniy, as a sign of respect. You then both look at the man beside him, silently asking for his name. "Yesenin. Not that it matters." He states with a shrug.
Then the rest of you look at the gangly woman. She stares back. "Your name?" You prod at her, "No name. Ball-arena. Name not needed." It's a bit odd, but seems about the same to the two men, as they no longer focus on her.
You take a deep breath in, the iron stench hitting you again, and you gag slightly. "Smells just like last night." You say to yourself, although Yevgeniy heard as he tilts his head to you. "Last night?" You look away. "Don't worry about it."
He frowns at that, not happy with the lack of response, and goes back to rubbing his hands on his shoulders for warmth. You get up from your chair, standing up and stretching fully again. No pop this time, but your body feels better now that it isn't sitting down.
You exit the room, not noticing the stares from everyone else in the room you just left, and look around. Nothing in the hallway has changed, except for the date on the calendar, it says it's now the 4th,but no one is out and looking around. You begin to walk around, going to the kitchen and noticing that the grumpy man who was there last night is gone, replaced with trash bags already swarming with flies.
You gag again, acid catching in your throat as it burns. You turn away quickly, almost running into the door frame in your hurry not to be in the same room as the body. Someone exits the room next to you, the closet, and rushes to your side.
"Are you okay? Ziv blf lpzb?" He says something, it's the wired man from last night. You suppose he got the wires out somehow. As he speaks to you, it's like someone is speaking over him in a badly dubbed movie. You can still hear him speaking in his original tongue, as you can recognize it isn't your own, but the words translate themselves somehow and you can understand him.
"Yes, I'm okay. I just... didn't expect to see a dead body in the kitchen. That's unhygienic. Bvh, R'n lpzb. R qfhg... wrwm'g vckvxg gl hvv z wvzw ylwb rm gsv prgxsvm. Gszg'h fmsbtrvmrx." You chuckle to yourself, and he seems to light up at finally speaking to someone who understands. "Wait, you understand me? No one else in this country does. Dzrg, blf fmwvihgzmw nv? Ml lmv vohv rm gsrh xlfmgib wlvh."Β
Your head begins to spin from the stench still invading your nostrils, and he takes you into the closet and pushes you down gently onto the floor next to the woman curled up. You hold your head to stabilize it, which doesn't do anything as the spinning is within your mind and not your body actually moving. He crouches down to your level and looks sadly at you, softly putting his hand on your shoulder.
You slightly smile at him, as the world begins to go back to what it is supposed to be. "Thank you. Gszmp blf." He smiles back and nods. "It is disgusting to see. I'm sorry that is what you saw. Rg rh wrhtfhgrmt gl hvv. R'n hliib gszg rh dszg blf hzd." The lady next to you on the floor unfurls from her fetal position as she looks at you with wide eyes.
"You can understand him?" She questions, tilting her head at you. You begin to take her in before you answer. She wears a plain blue t-shirt, brown pants, and lacks shoes, being barefoot instead. She has short red hair dressed as a bob cut with a short fringe. She is small, although her right shoulder is lifted up as if it's pulled by strings. Looking at her face, she seems meek and scared, and her eyes are green with a red sclera that has got a black spot on it. She begins to lift her hand at you, she has dirt under her nails, trying to get your attention again. "You understand him? She twitches as she gestures to the man who just helped you, and you nod. She nervously grins, perfect white teeth shown off as she does. "I don't, I don't think he's from here."
You look at him; He has wavy purple hair, there's earring poking out from within, with a sort of matching purple shirt and an orange jacket tied around his shoulders despite the fact that the colors don't go together very well. Looking at his face, the main thing to stick out, besides his scarring from the wires, is his wide buggy eyes and arched brows. In his eyes, the iris is green as well, but he's missing the bloody sclera that she has. As you twist your head to look at the hand he still has on your shoulder, you can see the blood still on them, likely from the pulling of his wires.
You tilt your head at a semi-45 degree angle and ask him, "Are you from here? Ziv blf uiln sviv?" He shakes his head, retracting his hand and resting them on his neck as he speaks: "I was visiting a friend when this happened. The situations is fucked, no other word for it. R dzh erhrgrmt z uirvmw dsvm gsrh szkkvmvw. Gsv hrgfzgrlmh rh ufxpvw, ml lgsvi dliw uli rg." His teeth are yellow and bloody from the stitches, which is unfortunate, and the door bursts open by the homeowner.
You stare at him, shocked by such a violent surprise, and he walks to the woman on the floor. He's got short brown hair and pale skin, with a sort of tall stature as he questions her. You want to look at his face, but as you do, a sharp searing pain enters your eyes and something enters your mind without thinking of it.
YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE.
So you stop trying to see his face. Only a few features are defined, the rest of his face is muted and blended together like watercolor when it hits water. His eyes are teal, and his teeth are straight and sort of white. His outfit is a simple blue turtleneck with gray pants, which is what you remember him wearing last night when he let you inside of his home.
The foreigner, or wired man as you have unfortunately taken to calling him, pulls you up and pushes you out of the closet as you watch the homeowner grip his gun tight. The closet door slams closed and you stand still for a moment.
What was that?
You decide to listen to what is happening inside of the closet, hearing the woman speak although you can't hear the words before you recognize the sound of a gun cocking. You hear that blasted sound again, the BOOM! from the gun and your ears begin to ring. You stumble away from the door as it opens and you grip your ears.
It's the homeowner, standing between the doorway and the hallway. He grips the gun with one hand, his other on the door handle. The ringing has stopped in your ears and you take your hands away from your ears as he looks at you and his eyes are so piercing you immediately look away from his penetrating gaze. You lock onto the background of the room he was just in, and the body of the woman you were speaking to just moment prior.
Somehow, her body is pixelated and hard to make out what happened to the top half of her body, but she remains in the position in which you saw her on the floor. The homeowner seems to stop staring at you as he closes the door and walks towards you. He walks with heavy purposeful steps, and you begin to scramble backwards until you hit the wall next to the kitchen door.
You crouch down and begin to cry. You don't want to be stuck in a house with a maniac killer! He's just like the man from last night, isn't he? He stops in front of you and grabs your wrist, yanking it aggressively towards him. He stares at the gloves you have on and takes off the one on the hand he's holding close to him.
He says nothing as he stares at the angel wings marking your hand. He drops your hand and glove from his grip, and yet, there's no change in the expression on his face. He stares at you blankly as you hurry to put on the glove back onto your hand to hide the mark.
You're scared of what he may be thinking. Perhaps he wants to sell you, or abuse you instead. Maybe he simply now views you as something he has to keep, like a precious card or trophy.
He crouches down to your level, dropping the gun on the floor and takes your hands into his now. "You're okay now. I know you must be scared. You're okay. Do you know what the angel mark means?" You shake your head, still struggling to speak and gather your nerves.
He frowns slightly at this and gently leads you up from the ground. "Okay. Do... you know what's going on outside?" You shake your head again, and he takes the lead with walking. He leads the two of you into the sitting room, the one without the people.
He gestures to you to grab a seat, and you sit in the couch to the right, farthest from the door. He sits in the armchair next to the couch and watches as you curl up in the same position you fell asleep in last night, knees tucked to your chest. "Angels... are from a different world. They were sent here to be protected and taken care of. No one really knows why, but it's what we're supposed to do." You nod, listening, although not by much.
"You are an angel. You need to be taken care of now. I don't know why you're here, but it's what is supposed to happen. Right now the world has gone to shit." He chuckles at what you can only think of as the absurdity of the situation, and continues talking. "There are these things called visitors, and they pretend to be human before killing people. The sun is deadly hot and burning up the landscape of the earth as we know it."
Your voice wavers out, "So the world is apocalyptic and I'm supposed to be taken care of? What does that even mean?" He shrugs slightly, "I'm not sure, there hasn't been an Angel for a long time, and I never really thought I would have the honor of taking care of one." You nod although you're unsatisfied with the answer. "Look, I know it's scary to be in this situation, so I'll let you be, but I didn't kill her for no reason. She was a visitor."
You swallow thickly and look away from him. "Okay." You say nothing more but you can feel he wants to correct what he did to you. Not to the woman he killed, but to you. You take off the gloves from your hands and stare at the markings, tracing them with your eyes.
He gets up and seems apologetic that he startled you with his sudden movement and leaves the room, slowly closing the door behind him. You turn away from the door and let yourself dive into your thoughts.
A real Angel. In my house. I have a real Angel in my house. How am I supposed to take care of an Angel and deal with this? I already let a visitor slip into the house!
Vitaliy, or as you would know him, the homeowner, walks over to the gun he left on the floor and picks it up. He's tired already and checking her for visitor signs took a lot, he just wanted to be sure before he shot her. He goes into his bedroom and sits down on the bed, and before he knows it, he's waking up to the night sky peeking through the blinds covering the window.
Was I really that tired? I suppose talking to people can also deplete my energy. He can hear knocking at the door and he groans as he stands up. He doesn't want to deal with people right after waking up, but he has to help people into the house.
He walks to the front door first, gun in his hands. He looks the peephole and sees the bald man from before. "I would tell you to let the cat inside, but you already have. Perhaps the angel has set time askew. After all, FEMA was supposed to arrive tonight. We seem to be off by a night or two. Alas. I will see you when I shall." And the bald prophet walks away. Again. For the second night in a row, the bald man has shown up, said nothing productive, and walked away.
He looks away from the peephole and waits for another knock. He looks and it's the neighbors daughter. He lets her in without much talking, he knows she is okay and tears in her eyes tell of a much bigger story than anything else.
The next person to show is a woman with a twin. "Hello. Oh, here, lean on me for a bit. Do youβ¦maybe have room for us?" "Are you both sick? Or just one of you?" He asks, looking at the twin hanging off of her sister. "We all suffer from depression to some degree. We knew where things were headed even before all of this trouble with the sun. Have you been following the news? It's all been leading up to this. But I don't think the sun's gonna actually explode." He hums, "What are you going to do next? "I have to find somewhere my sister can feel a little more comfortable. Then we'll create a new life for ourselves. They say our lives are overβ¦ But I disagree. If anything, things should get easier from here on out." He waits a bit in silence and then unlocks the door and lets them through.
Then it's a man with a shirt that says 'amogus' on it. "Yoooooo! You been seein' all the shit goin' on? Fuckin' crazy! You holdin' up okay in there, bro?" Vitaliy already doesn't like him. "What do you want?" "Nothin' really. I'm just curious, y'know. But hey-I've got a dope-ass way for you to rake in some easy cash. Wanna hear it? Since everyone else's busy bein' pussies about the sun, you can make fat stacks without liftin' a finger. All these chumps are shittin' their pants when they should be honin' their grindset!" The homeowner frowns, but thankfully the man on the side of the door cannot see it. "Why are you here?" "Right down to business! I like that! I like that! Everyone thinks you're up to somethin' in here, bringin' in all these people. Stirrin' some shit up. So I say let's roll with that-and host the party to end all parties! End of the fucking worldapalooza, bro!" He doesn't like it, but he lets him in, "Fuck yea, my dude! That's what I'm talkin' about! Finally, someone with half a brain."
Vitaliy waits for another knock, and yet he hears nothing. He can tell no one is coming for the rest of the night. He looks out the window closest to the door, bodies spread across the street in a massacre with one body missing a head. It must have been the pale stranger. Then, he does to the window next to the kitchen, and he can see the pale stranger he just thought of.
He's holding the head of the soldier that was seen but a few moments ago. The visitor has a sickeningly happy smile on his face, as if he's pleased to have killed and disrespected the body. The homeowner gags on the inside and leaves the window fast. He finally looks outside the last window and he can see why the neighbor's daughter is here and not at home.
There is no home for her be at.
It's burnt down to a crisp. The black ash sticks out from the night sky as void sucking the stars away.
He hates it. Visitors must have gotten them. At least she's safe now. He leaves the window and goes back into his room, but not before stopping in the room where he left you. He can only hear a faint whisper, but he leaves as he can't comprehend what you're whispering about.
I'm so hungry. My flesh wants to turn in on itself and eat my bones if I cannot get something to eat. I hunger so bad it burns my insides as if my stomach acid has flooded through to my intestines.
I need to eat. I don't care anymore.
I slip out through the door, no one is awake enough to hear me walk through the house. I can smell the dead, rotting flesh of kin. It's a shame he saw through her disguise and killed her. Although she wasn't aware she was one of us. I skip the sitting room, no one sits there yet, and I can smell two people in the kitchen.
I can smell their blood and flesh, I can hear their hearts beating with a rhythm I lack now. I walk through to the kitchen, a man and a girl. She smells of ash and salt, and the man of sweat and strangely enough, confidence.
I choose him. I tear off the head first, not out of mercy, but out of necessity. If I start anywhere else, then he shall awake and alarm everyone of his death. And I'm too hungry to fight off everyone.
I ingurgitate myself tonight, feeling satiated in the meat I have ripped from the man and feasted upon. My stomach aches with fullness and yet I still want more. But I stop.
I scurry back to where I must be, the room with the cross and two other people. I must satisfy myself with the life I have taken and ingested into myself.
When is the next chapter of your No, I'm Not a Human story coming out? It was so good, and I can't wait to read the new chapter!
This is hilarious, I'm writing it right now! I'm just trying to make sure that the timing makes sense within the game because well, I'm having a hard time remembering when each character can show up, like Seductive Woman shows up on night 4 and onward, but Kindergarten Teacher shows up on night 5 or later. The research is really the most time-consuming part!
Reminds me of Jason Kander, former Missouri Secretary of State. When he went to the VA hospital to treat his PTSD, he told the nurse that Obama told him he should run for president, and she thought he was delusional.
I think I'm gonna make this my go-to story. It's not the worst I've ever heard, which is an asset because people won't believe you if you tell them the actual bad stuff those people do. And it just perfectly sums up the casual arrogance everyone working in mental health seems to have. The way they treat you as inherently Lesser for being in their care.
If they can't even handle basic, easily verified shit like "I'm a lawyer" they are never going to believe you when you tell them that you know how to manage a condition you've been dealing with for decades better than they can or will.
And then there's Alexander Morris, who was put in a straitjacket, called racial slurs, and denied treatment for his potentially life-threatening heart condition when he told them he was the lead singer of the band he was lead singer of.
The lead singer ofΒ the Motown groupΒ the Four TopsΒ hasΒ filed a federal lawsuit againstΒ Ascension Macomb Oakland HospitalΒ in Warren, Michigan,
There are multiple parts of that article that are Jae droppingly awful but this one really gets me:
They almost let this man die in a straight jacket simply because they were too racist. And then when they realize their "mistake", they tell him that his life is worth a 25$ supermarket gift card. Of course he's suing them for $75,000 as he should but like. Can you imagine how insulted he must've been. The 4 Tops were one of the top Motown bands of all time. You can be at the top of the music scene and still, they'll kill you because you're black. And they'll use fake claims about mental illness and "aggression" to justify it
Hello, my name is Shannon aka Moffy
I am sharing this fundraiser to help my mom with p⦠Shannon Mears needs your support for Help Shanno
It's been a tough time over here at Moffy's house, moms still waiting on therapy and I have a suspicion the previous therapist was refusing to work with her. Long story short she's left and the new PT promises to get mom on therapy. It wasn't moms fault btw, this woman was a horrible person and never had any compassion or understanding towards mom's depression
Still, we could use donations to pay for therapy itself. While insurance covers some, and has been it's own hurdle (ughh 'merica) I would like to be able to pay out of pocket soon or in the future for additional PT/OT once mom is home. If nothing else, these donations cover rent and keep me housed, which means I can continue making content for you all
If you do not wish to donate though gofundme, please donate though one of the following and add a note about mom so I know what it's for! (You can also commission me for content if you'd like!)
Still needing donations! We have a possibility of mom coming home and be transferring to being her caretaker, but that requires certain equipment etc and I could use any help!!
Rewatched Riddlerβs Reform today, and itβs got me thinking about the tragedy of Eddie in this show.
Now, yes, he isnβt as blatantly sympathetic as someone like Mr. Freeze or Two-Face. But this episode explores how mentally unwell he is, imo. Batman is correct when he says, βBut you and I both know I'm going to put you away because you can't help yourself. You can't stop.β
Eddie could have a normal, successful life in this episode, but he canβt because he is compelled to self-sabotage at every turn by continuing his game with Batman. You really do get the sense itβs not something heβs fully in control of.
And thereβs something very sad and realistic about that.
I love all your hannibal content (either NBC or silence of the lambs )
so may you pretty please write something , anything about either fandom
your fics are incredible and a great comfort
Leaned heavy into the comfort cause I was having a sad "boy" night. Also I went with Silence of the Lambs because I miss Papa Hopkins! Is guilt complex something I should warn about? I don't know so... guilt complex warning, I guess.
Guilt
Dr. Lecter's office is a bit cluttered. It always is. Not messy. Just cluttered. It makes you feel even more uneasy. You could tell from the slight tilt of his head that he didn't understand where you're coming from, why you're so upset at yourself.
You did everything you could to ever gain forgiveness for your past wrong doings, you tried for even the small ones. You forgave yourself and acknowledged that some of your past situations weren't your fault. Still... the anxieties continues. Like a knife tapping against your ribs, a drowning feeling in your lungs, a dropping of your heart, and a heat from panic that you can't make go away.
Guilt persists.
You don't know why or how to fix it. You just want it to go away. Objectively, you know you're a good person, but that ringing in the back of your head whispers that guilt on repeat in your quietest moments.
Speaking of quiet, the silence has dragged on for a while. You stare into space while Dr. Lecter watches you almost unblinking.
You take a deep breath and finally find your voice. "I'm not making any sense, am I?"
"You make perfect sense, child. I simply can't comprehend how someone so sweet can see themselves in such a cruel light." He tells you without missing a beat.
"It's not that I don't know that I'm a good person... I know I do good things, but I feel like a- a..."
"It's all a lie you tell yourself to feel better." He answers for you.
Your heart seizes and your eyes grow wet far too quickly making you feel embarrassed.
"I can tell you now it is not a lie. You are in fact a good person."
"But how do you know that?" You ask shakily. "I mean, you're my therapist but I don't tell you everything."
He tilts his head a little, kind of like before, just a small quirk most people miss. "Even if you do not tell me everything I know you quite well. Every time you have ever done something even remotely wrong you express remorse and do your best to remedy what you have done. That is proof enough."
You remain silent, hearing him say it feels nice but you still hold doubt.
His expression becomes stern. "Do not doubt me, dear."
"I'm not trying to." You whisper out.
"Tell me," He leans forward in his seat. "Have you thought more about our conversation from your last session?"
He changes the subject so quickly and easily that you're caught off guard, unable to stay on your previous course of the conversation.
"I have." You murmur.
You remember that conversation clearly. Age regression. A psychological oddity where a person mentally reverts back to a younger state of mind. Something that could be both involuntary and voluntary. Something that could be used as a coping mechanism.
Something that you already do. Something you're still hesitant to tell Dr. Lecter that you already do despite him recommending you try it.
He calls out your name gentle but stern. "Focus on me, not your thoughts."
Your eyes land on him and you can see a small, minute, smile grace his lips.
"Good. Now did you try it?"
Emotions scrape at your chest like a saw. "I'm sorry." You choke out.
He remains silent, waiting for you to elaborate, blue eyes watching you intensely.
"I shoulda told you when you recommended it, but I was too embarrassed, and now I'm even more embarrassed, and I'm so sorry, but I already do regress sometimes by choice sometimes not, and I get really small, and I know it's not something to be embarrassed by but I am, and I just didn't know how to say it, and-" Before you can finish your rushed out, rambled, apology and explanation he interrupts.
His voice is soothing. "It's alright, little one."
Your words die in your throat.
"I recommended it because you already acted as a regressor would. I do appreciate that you've told me the truth. I'm very proud of you."
"How can you be proud! I lied!" You cry out.
Tears start to dribble down your cheeks.
"By omission. Yes, you did. However, you came clean and told me the truth almost immediately, pushing aside your fear in order to do so." He says quiet and almost... fatherly.
You rub at your wet cheeks. "Don't- don't talk like that."
Dr. Lecter stands and kneels in front of you. "Like what, little one? Like I care? Because I certainly do."
"You- you can't just..." Your words trail to nothing. You don't know what to say.
You clench your fists and screw your eyes closed as you feel that unwilling slipping in your mind. Not now, you think, just not now.
"It's okay. You're safe, child. You're doing so well." Dr. Lecter encourages.
Your quiet tears turn into loud sobs. "No! No! 'm not doin good! 'm bad!"
He hardens just a bit and takes your hands. "Do not let your anxieties lie to you. You are a very good child." He pulls you down and into his arms.
He rocks you softly side to side, ignoring how you try to push him away. He hushes you softly and whispers gentle affirmations to you.
"Such a good baby." He coos ever so quiet.
"I'm so proud of you, little one." He murmurs against your hair.
"That's it, let it out." He rubs your back.
"Such a brave little lamb." He holds you closer.
"You're safe here." He reassures.
When you calm down he continues to speak soft but steady. "Can you tell me how little you feel?" He questions.
You stiffen and let out a whine, hiding your face in his chest.
"I see."
Dr. Lecter scoops you up and sits with you in his armchair. He continues his soft rocking motion as he cradles you close. He pulls out a pacifier from somewhere you don't even see. Carefully he offers it to you, ensuring you take to it. Once you do he smiles a bit to himself.
Finally he drapes his suit jacket over you. "Finally right where you belong - in papa's arms"
Yandere!Older!Superbat x Fem!AlreadyKidnapped!Reader
(A/n: You guys LOVED the first chapter so yk I HAD to bring it back <3 Please enjoy! And let me know what you think!!
ALSO IMPORTANT NOTE: from the poll, it seems like most of you either are okay with or would prefer a Fem! reader for this series, so that's going to be how we continue from here. WAYSOWM will stay GN!reader, but this series will have a female reader so if that's not your cup of tea, please feel free to check out my other work :))
They've already gone through the work of taking you, now they just need to figure out how to keep you. But what can you do against two of the worlds greatest heroes, they're still Superman and Batman at heart. Retirement only means they have more time to spend with you.
Masterlist
Pt. 2
TW: Forced Bathing/Washing, Accusations of intended Rape/Non-Con (nothing actually happens, however reader will keep bringing it up), Threats of sedation, possible other TWs not listed here, proceed with caution!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After your meltdown, both Clark and Bruce decided it was best to get you "settled", which really meant the two of them sitting on either side of you, one gently wiping your blotchy, snotty face, and the other trying to coax some chamomile tea and buttered toast into your churning stomach.
With a handkerchief that probably cost more than your monthly rent, Clark dabbed at your tearstained cheeks, endlessly patient. He'd occasionally take care to tuck any hair that had fallen into your face behind your ears, all soft and projected movements, careful not to startle you.
Bruce had rested your tray of food on his knees, cutting up your toast into bite-sized pieces, then cutting them again after taking another look at you. He would spear a piece with your force and hold it up to your mouth, watching intently as you chewed at the food and following the bite down your throat with each swallow. If you so much as cleared your throat after a bite, he was there with a hand gently stroking at your back and the cup of tea raised up to your lips. He looked at you expectedly to take a sip and waited until he was sure that you weren't actively choking to give you another piece of your toast.
To your credit, you were trying to behave. You didn't love the way the way they were babying you currently. You didn't love any part of this situation. You had been kidnapped by the world's richest man and his pulitzer-winning husband, the whole situation was terrible and bad and if you thought too long about it, you'd spiral into another panic attack.
However, the slight glint of a needle in Bruce's sleeve, catching the light every time he went to spear you another piece of toast, was the only reason you tried to fight against the urge to curl up and start wailing again. An unconscious you was a defenseless you, and while, admittedly, a conscious you wasn't any more in-control of this situation, you weren't going to willingly allow these creeps to be around you like that if you could help it.
But could you help it?
No, thinking that way wasn't good for you, instead of giving up so soon, you had to fight, kicking and screaming and clawing at their too-blue eyes. Maybe if you gouged one out, they'd realize you weren't worth the effort to keep around.
But also, you would not allow yourself to die in this place, another statistic of a missing girl abducted by rich old men and never seen again. You had to stay alive, which meant any kind of fight was a last resort, so for now you'd resolved to play your cards wisely.
So you let them hover. You let Clark press a scratchy kiss to your forehead when he deemed your face clean enough. You let Bruce cradle your face between two large hands and stare at you with an indecipherable searching gaze before ruffling your hair and letting you go.
You let them. Because the more they thought you were coming around, the more they'd start to let down their guard.
You weren't dumb, but neither were they. Your performance would need to be Oscar-worthy for them to fall for it, but you could pull it off.
You had to.
~~~~~
They'd tucked you in after that, rearranging the stuffed animals along your wall and pulling the blankets up close under your chin. You were genuinely exhausted after the stress you'd been under, and knowing that you were most definitely being watched from somewhere in the room, you made the choice to close your eyes and try to hold out from drifting off for as long as you could.
Maybe you didn't want to be unconscious via sedative around them, but you had to sleep at some point, and you might as well try to get it in while they were giving you any semblance of choice. Plus, your past in the foster system meant you were an extremely light sleeper. If someone so much as cracked open the door to peek in, you could trust yourself to jolt awake.
It was the safest time for you to get some shut-eye, so you did.
~~~~~
When you woke back up, it was early the next day, and you felt like absolute shit. There was crust in your swollen eyes from all your crying, your head felt heavy, you felt dirty and greasy and would do anything to go back home to your apartment.
Sleeping under Bruce's ridiculously comfortable Egyptian cotton duvet on his memory-foam mattress did wonders for your back, but it wasn't yours. That meant that any amount of sleep on would never be enough to itch that little part inside of you that had grown fond of the scratchy bedsheets you'd spent weeks mending and the patchwork quilt your old neighbor had gifted you when she'd moved out.
You weren't alone with your thoughts for very long before your door was pushed open, this time by Bruce. The second he locked eyes with you, looking an absolute mess in the pile of bedding, he seemed to deflate, face fixed with a bemused smile.
"You're up. Sleep well, sweetheart?" He asked, sitting down next to you and trying to smooth down your bedhead.
You blinked at him owlishly, "Yeah, fine, I guess." Your voice cracked from the sudden dryness in your throat, but Bruce only tutted, before procuring a water bottle from somewhere and handing it to you.
You looked it over for a second, noting the sealed cap in particular, then looked back up at Bruce. He was still giving you that sickeningly fond look.
"Safe, I promise. Now, take a drink, Clark's bringing up breakfast for the three of us, we'll eat in here with you."
You only shrugged before popping open the seal and taking greedy swallows of the water, still acutely aware of Bruce tracking your swallows and patting you on the back when you pulled away coughing, too much water too fast.
Whether or not you liked to brush your teeth before breakfast didn't matter, since just then Clark, ever dutiful, came in with the breakfast spread: fluffy pancakes, three cups of coffee, cut seasonal fruit, hot biscuits, clotted cream, syrup, jam, ect.
It was a lot, but Clark managed to balance it all, while Bruce shifted aside your blankets and cleared a space for the massive tray in the middle of the bed. Clark took the spot across from the two of you and handed you your coffee cup.
It was exactly the way you liked it, sweetness level perfect and just the right level of hotβnot enough to burn, but you could feel it going down. It was better than perfect and that was enough for you to pause before taking your next sip and meet his expectant gaze over the rim of your cup.
Clark looked at you just like Bruce hadβendeared by your messy state.
"Is the coffee okay? I tried to make it the way you liked, but," He looked slightly bashful, "I wasn't exactly sure what brand was your favorite so we used what was on hand."
So that's why it was so good, even when you made it yourself at the dining halls, it never tasted like this. You could taste the quality difference in their probably expensive espresso.
"Heads up, your's is decaf, so if you start to get a headache from the lack of caffeine, that's okay, just let me or Dad know, 'kay kiddo?"
Decaf was slightly upsetting, but to be honest you were a little surprised they were giving you any coffee at all. You just nodded and went back for another sip.
You weren't sure how old they saw you as. On one hand, they hadn't shied away from talking about your life in college or minded any of the cussing. But the constant pet names and the hand-feeding and the hovering wasn't how people you age were meant to be treated, either.
Then again you weren't supposed to kidnap anyone of any age, so was that really applicable in your situation?
At the very least the food was good, and you'd seemed to have proven to Bruce over the last few meals that you could be trusted to eat on your own without choking to death, so he kept his focus on breakfast as well.
The three of you ate in silence, with your captors looking up at you every now and then.
Soon enough, you were full and breakfast was wrapping up. And this time Bruce shuffled your plates out of the room, while Clark was content to just squeeze up next to you on your side of the bed.
Clark was touchy. Not a weird way (at least, not yet, that didn't mean you were going to wait around and find out), but in a way where he liked to run his hands through your hair. Currently, he'd tucked himself into the space between you and the wall, propped up against the headboard of your bed. It was closer than you'd been to either of them since you'd woken up, and there was a growing buzz under your skin, a frantic 'away-awa-GETAWAY'.
You didn't exactly like being touched by your kidnappers, but still you let him settle in, taking deep breaths. You knew he noticed it too, your form, coiled up with tension, basically glaring daggers at him. He just kept beaming at you.
Bruce came back into the room, but didn't join his husband, instead standing at the threshold of your bed, giving Clark a look that you couldn't understand.
Clark, however, clearly understood it, because he turned his body to face you. He took a second before opening his mouth, wrestling with how best to phrase his next words.
"Honey...we know you're not fully situated yet, but it might be for the best that you get refreshed, hm? Get out of those clothes and into something a little more comfortable?"
No, no fucking way, what the fuck.
He winced at the way your jaw dropped.
"How about a bath?""
You ignored the sinking feeling in your stomach, the earlier breakfast threatening to come back up.
"I- I can do that, just point me to the bathroom."
Bruce responded, face impassive, "You're still weak, you could slip and injure yourself."
You had to shove down the wave of nausea.
Clark immediately tried to soothe you again, "No one's gonna touch you if you don't want us to, one of us just needs to stand in the room, make sure you don't get hurt."
Another wave of nausea,
"Who do you want, me or Dad?"
Your mouth was dry, eyes darting between the two of them, one looking at you gently but in a way that told you he wasn't going to budge and another that kept his face carefully blank, only the slightest sign of worry in his eyes.
"You said this wasn't a sex thing. You said I'd be safe, what part of this is safe? Fuck this, fuck both of you. Go to hell." You hissed at them, slightly hysterical and tugging at your scalp.
Suddenly being stuck in between the both of them felt twice as suffocating as it did a minute ago.
Bruce climbed on the mattress, settling in front of you. He sent Clark another look you couldn't decipher, and gently untangled your hands from your hair.
"You are safe, I promise. No one's going to touch you, understand? Nod if you understand."
You just stared at him with wide, wet eyes.
He exhaled heavily, but he didn't back down.
"You'll feel better after the shower. You'll understand what we mean. Now I need you to choose, me or...Pa?" His nose wrinkled slightly on the last word.
Between the two of them, Clark seemed more at ease with the whole situation. You wouldn't be surprised if 'Pa' decided he wanted to take a hands-on approach to getting you clean.
Bruce, though still obviously on-board, didn't touch as much. You trusted him more.
Was that stupid, seeing as he was the one who took interest in you in the first place? Probably.
But the alternative was being stuck with Clark, a greater unknown.
As a Gotham native, you knew more about Bruce than his Metropolis boy-toy.
All that to say you were still basically taking a shot in the dark when you looked Bruce in the eye and whispered, "You."
Your captors shared another look, before Bruce nodded at you and climbed off the bed, motioning for you to follow him. Clark, instead, headed to your closet, pulling out a towel and change of clothes: soft Superman patterned pyjama pants and an oversized Gotham Knights sweatshirt. You looked away when he reached into another drawer.
Bruce started the bath for you, checking the temperature regularly with a dip of his hand. When he deemed it warm enough turned towards you, still hovering near the door to the en-suite.
"Its ready. It'll stay warm for as long as you'd like, but you need to get in now."
You sucked in a breath, and steeled yourself. You could do this, granted Bruce stayed true to his word.
"Fine, but turn around. I'll get in on my own."
He just nodded and dutifully turned to face the wall, chin up, back straight and arms crossed across his chest.
Still in his new stance, he called out one more time, "Tell me when you're done, I'll bring you your towel and clothes."
You only answered with a hum, but since you didn't want him to turn around and tell you to hurry up, you started to get undressed.
You folded your old clothes into a pile and left it on the ground near the wall.
The bathtub was in the opposite corner of where Bruce was, and so you backed away slowly, keeping your eyes on him and making sure he wouldn't whirl around when your back was turned. You climbed into the tub, and Bruce was right, the temperature was pleasantly hotβnot scalding, but you liked your baths warmer.
Settled in, it was time to get to work. You cleaned yourself diligently, internally grateful that you were allowed to take a shower at all, most kidnapping victims didn't get that privilege. Most kidnapping victims didn't get most of the privileges you'd had thus far, but you'd die before thanking one of your captors for their 'generosity'.
You tried to ignore the fact that all your toiletries were the same ones as you'd had at home. They didn't try to hide that they'd been to your apartment, but it was still jarring to see just how much they'd brought over to this place.
"Okay, I'm- I'm done, can I get my clothes now?"
Bruce stiffened, "Did you wash your hair?"
Ah.
So no, you hadn't, because shampooing, rinsing, conditioning, detangling, and re-rinsing your hair would take a while, and you were on a quest to get out of the tub as soon as possible.
But realistically, Bruce would have known that it would take you a while and gotten suspicious when you hopped out so early.
Fuck.
"Um, no, I don't- it's a hassle to y'know wash and dry it and then- it just takes a while," you floundered.
Bruce just sighed, deeply and resigned.
"Sweetheart, you need to clean your hair, I know it takes a while, but I can't let you neglect your hygiene. If you won't do it, I will."
And boy, did that send you into a panic.
"No! No, I can do it, I just need a second."
Bruce clicked his tongue, "I don't know if I can believe that. I gave you a chance, sweetheart, I think you need to give me one now."
"What, you- you said you'd stay over there. You said no one would TOUCH ME-"
"I won't. I promise, just your hair, nothing more. If I help you, we can speed this up, you want to get out of the bath quickly right? If we work together we can make it happen."
You gripped your bottle of body wash for dear life, ready to lob it at his head.
On one hand, you really didn't want Bruce anywhere near you like this. You didn't trust him, he knew that.
On the other hand letting him help your hair was the quickest way to get it done with, and the first step to getting him to trust you. You'd had your hair washed for you before, by friends, nurses, or the occasional foster mother when you were really young.
But Bruce was different, he was a strange old man that had kidnapped you.
But also a strange old man that had kidnapped you and seemed desperate to have you trust him.
You didn't think he would hurt you.
You couldn't be sure.
You worried your lower lip as you wrestled with yourself.
One part of it was that taking care of your hair was the least invasive way you could make a big show of handing over any amount of trust.
You could do it, right? Plus, should it come down to it, you'd throw the glob of body wash you had hidden in your palm into his eyes and make a run for it, sudsy hair and all.
"Okay."
Bruce stiffened again, "Could you repeat that, (Name)?"
"Okay, you...can help me with my hair. But, nothing else, keep your hands off my skin, I don't- I don't like physical contact."
Bruce tutted but nodded, still facing the wall.
You pulled your knees to your chest and hid partially under the water.
"Alright, you can turn around."
He turned slowly, projecting his movements before actually committing to them. The man kept his eyes firmly forward as he walked towards the tub, not ever sneaking a glance down at you. Instead he just passed you and reached for one of the cabinets under your sink, grabbing a comb and small cup.
He dragged a stool behind you, and sat down, but didn't immediately start grabbing at your scalp like you'd expected.
Instead he spoke again, the deep timbre of his voice closer to your ear than it had ever been.
Right, out of the two of them, Clark was more touchy, Bruce kept a physical distance.
"I'm going to touch your hair now and I'll do my best to avoid your neck. I'm going to try and be quick about it, but I need you to work with me, tip your head back when I ask you to, I don't want you getting shampoo in your eyes."
You only nodded, keeping your eyes towards the opposite wall, not even risking a glance backward at him.
Bruce was true to his word, he made an effort not to touch your skin, and moved efficiently.
He massaged a healthy amount of shampoo into your scalp, alternating between rubbing heavy circles with the pads of his fingers and scraping lightly towards the crown of your head with his nails.
If you weren't so keyed up you would have nodded off. More than once you flinched when Bruce worked the shampoo into the base of your head.
When his fingers hovered over the baby hairs at the very base of your skull, now working the first rinse through your hair, you jolted away again, and Bruce went very still.
"If you'd rather take over from he-"
"No! I mean- no it's- I'm fine. I just-," you sighed, about to give away more than you would like to about yourself.
"When I was a lot younger, I had a foster father who was always drunk and angry. One time, he saw me throwing away an empty old beer can and thought I was pouring out his drinks, so he grabbed me by the neck and slammed me against the wall. I'm not very good about fingers near my neck because of that, I think. I'm sorry, its not you, you're being nice."
You didn't expect to admit that, not in a hushed tone over the steam of your bathwater, but you could reason with yourself that it wasn't the worst thing to say.
For one, Bruce, clearly convinced he was trying to help you, would likely keep his hands off your neck, and hopefully as far from you as possible.
Secondly, while it made you seem even more defenseless in their eyes, you knew somewhere that you couldn't reason with these people. You could prove your competency a thousand times, it didn't mean they were going to let you go. It was better to stick with the plan, to keep making yourself seem harmless, then running like hell the second they gave you an inch.
Bruce paused, the next cup of water hovering over you. He tilted your head back again, but before placing a hand over your forehead like he'd been doing before, he looked you in the eyes as he said, "I'm very sorry that happened to you, it will never happen again. I said you were safe here and I meant it."
And with that he cupped your hairline and went back to washing your hair.
But the air felt different in the room, less stiff.
You'd done your part for the day, participated in the exchange. You'd gave and been given. Somewhere inside, you felt something unfurl.
At the very least, maybe Bruce wasn't so bad.
Clark on the other hand had not proven anything to you yet.
~~~~~
Bruce had made quick work of the rest of the process, detangling your hair with a gentleness even you never cared to show it.
He brought you your towels and the change of clothes you'd seen earlier, and you very much did not gag at the fact that they had undergarments in your size stocked up.
Drying your hair was approached with the same meticulousness he'd shown you before and soon enough you were done, feeling clean and warm.
There was such a gap between the way you felt mentally and physically that it almost hurt to think about it. Mentally, you were exhausted, tired of trying (and repeatedly failing) to keep up a charade. You still felt that buzz of 'dangerdangerDANGER' along your nerves, but Bruce was rightβyou did start to understand after your bath.
He didn't seem likely to hurt you in the way you were thinking.
Did you trust him? Absolutely not.
But did you still want to gouge his eyes out every time you saw him?
....okay yes you still did.
Okay but, you understood that he really was deluded. He truly thought he was doing the best for you.
That was almost scarier than the idea that the ditzy billionaire had no idea what he was doing was wrong, because it meant he knew exactly what the moral objections were to this whole situation, but he went for it anyway.
~~~~~
Despite the hiccups, you were done in about half an hour, clean, dried, and being transported downstairs under Bruce's careful gaze.
While he shuffled you through the manor, you noticed that he very deliberately didn't name any of the rooms or give you any specific landmarks about the house. You had no mental map of the place, and ended up even more disoriented about where you were than when you first woke up. The place was huge, you'd needed to take multiple hallways and flights of stairs before Bruce opened the door to your intended destination.
After your impromptu confession, he'd given you a wider breadth, letting you stay within a three step radius, where you guessed he'd rather you just hold his hand instead.
Apparently you were going to join Clark in the glass solarium in the garden. You'd seen the solarium before in Gotham Architectural Digest, but the photos paled in comparison to the actual thing.
There, sat in the middle of the soft yellow beams of shifting, refracting sunlight, was Clark, with a stack of books next to him and a crossword book in hand.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(A/n: Whoooooo, this one is a loooong chapter, 4k words if you can believe it. Anyway, there's part 2 done, let me know what you think and if you have any feedback, I LIVE to read it :P )
ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds
I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study
after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines
et voila
and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)
my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on
this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg π
BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos
the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise
ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!
Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this π₯Ή
we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos
the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you
power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,
the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis
and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day ππ) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.
Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp
thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.
Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.
But... Stochastic Parrots.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.
