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[spurionage]

certified official spurionage comm post !

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[mullermilkshake]

A train to the future

Part 48 <- Part 49 -> Part 50

It's time. No time like the present.

Yandere!Jinwoo Sung x Fem! New mom!reader

<<< For more Dark/Yandere content, click this link to go back to the Masterlist! >>>

<<< Or back to this fic's Master list. >>>

A/N - I have only watched the anime and haven't gotten round to reading the manhwa yet. Please refrain from spoilers.

APOLOGIES FOR THE LONG WAIT EVERYONE!!! I aim to get this fic done by the end of the year!!

“Hey, it’ll go just fine.”

Jinwoo linked his hand with yours. Fingers laced together over the vibration the train gave as comfort, however it did not seek you out for a warm embrace. 

“I know. It’s just…” You sighed, shaking your head at yourself. “I promised them we’d never be apart.. And I’ve already broken it. What sort of mother am I?”

“A fantastic one.” He said.

"But I made a promise."

"And you're keeping it. While the doctor is out there, we can't be a family in peace. We're doing the right thing."

“I hope they’re alright. What if they miss us, Jinwoo? They’re too young to understand that we’re coming back-we should have brought them with us.”

“Woah, woah, hang on.” Jinwoo squeezed your hand and turned as you focused on the landscape zipping past from the window. “We’ll only be a few hours, baby. Igris and Beru are with them and I’ve put my other shadows on patrol. We’ll be back as soon as you know it.”

Fighting the tears threatening to explore your cheeks, you turned to him too. “But-”

“It’s okay. I don’t know if they’d be okay with my exchange either. And you wouldn’t want to risk that, right? And we can’t risk bringing the doctor back by train, it’ll be impossible to get her back without someone taking notice. So we take that luxury away from her.”

It made sense, of course it did. However, it did not remove the plunging sickness that spread through your body like a disease. You and your babies were separated and anything could happen. That had been made clear when a knife found its way into your stomach.

But, Jinwoo had a point. Putting your children at risk of Jinwoo’s exchange was foolish.

Just a few hours, and I can see them again.

“Yeah, you’re right. I uh, I’m sorry. I never anticipated this. Any of this. God, this is so fucked up. I hate this.”

Were you having a change of heart? Absolutely not. Did you wish this was all over so you could enjoy life with your family? Yes.

The end game was worth it. Your children were worth it. When you got your hands on that doctor, she’d suffer. And there were multiple times daily where you found yourself fantasising about how you’d do it, how you would torture the woman who tortured your family for money.

For fucking money.

Strangulation was a good one, maybe a broken bottle to her neck. Perhaps throwing her into an incinerator and seeing how she liked it. Listening to her screams of agony, burning alive with every nerve ending dying. Painfully. In a way she could come back and curse a golem town based on this mother's rage. Any way, as long as she suffered.

“I know. It’s been difficult. But we’re about to right that wrong.”

“Let’s go straight to her, I don’t want to wait about in a hotel for the right moment. Let’s nab her and call it a day.” Your hands shook, cracked knuckles along with the anticipation of the final train stop. 

"I'm glad you mentioned that." Jinwoo said, leaning back in his chair so that your head nestled closely. "Because I was gonna suggest the same thing."

For the remainder, You and Jinwoo sat in comfortable silence, resting on his shoulder for a quick nap you managed to scrounge up to make the time pass. And it worked, right to the hard stop, the train carriage ended abruptly.

“Baby, we’re here.”

You stretched, arms up and tight. “I can’t believe I managed to sleep…” Then it dawned on you. “Are the twins okay-I can’t believe I slept-”

“They’re fine. They’re fine. I know they’re sleeping right now.”

Audibly relieved, you sunk back into the seat. “Thank god.”

Jinwoo climbed to his feet first, grabbing the small backpack he came with and slung it over his shoulder. “Let’s get going. We’ll go straight to her.”

Over to the hotel, you and Jinwoo remained in silence, walking hand in hand while you fought the urge to check up on the doctor. To see where she was currently, was a gift. It soothed your anxiety and stopped your mind wondering to the possibilities of her get away. 

She knew you were coming for her, hence why she paced back and forth in the middle of the night, muttering to herself. Whether she knew you were close was a separate matter, and the closer you got, the more you wanted to see her squirm before you forced your way into that room and left without a trace.

No evidence left behind.

No body left behind either.

You wanted to see what she was doing right now before she only saw four glass walls in the basement, because she’d never see the light of day ever again. An eye for an eye and all that.

The urge. The urge to watch her made everything difficult-

“Okay, one more time.” Jinwoo stopped you outside of the hotel, its looming presence weighing over you like thunder. “Find out where she is one more time, and then please try to let it go, baby.”

He rubbed your cheek, pulling away a strand of hair that had stuck to your lip. “I can’t lose you again.”

The nose bleed, the vast amount of energy it was taking from you each time you checked. So much energy. It was as though it sucked every amount of nutrition from your body which had to slowly restore itself each time. Or perhaps it was a full night of no sleep, forced to work the next day and left you reeling without a nap until the following night.

Soul draining.

“Okay.”

He took your hands in his and you focused, thinking of all the things she put you through. It tugged on your entire heart, thinking of your babies and what they were doing right now.

My babies. All that time apart.

And there was the doctor. She was looking out of the window like some rotten princess who had been spoiled with riches and gold and still wasn’t satisfied. Anger. Impatience.

“No, they won’t come here… they won’t find me. There’s no way. There’s no fucking way… I’ll be long gone before those fuckers ever catch wind of me.”

“I’ll give her something to be angry over.”

“Hm? What are you seeing?”

“She’s up there.” Deep breaths did not stop your body from shaking. “She thinks she’ll get away with this.”

“Like hell she will.”

“You’re telling me.” You let go, storming off through the front door on a mission.

You ignored the staff and made a line right to the main desk. “Excuse me? I have a package I need to deliver.”

The man separated by the desk held up his finger dismissively, tapping away on the computer keyboard. “Please wait, I’m dealing with another customer. You'll need to wait.” He didn’t have the decency to even look at you.

“Listen.” Jinwoo growled. “Put whatever you’re doing on hold and listen to what she is asking. Understand?”

“Well uh, there’s a line. She has to wait.”

She? Like you weren’t even there. And it made your blood boil.

“And she.” Jinwoo addressed you, and mentioned the doctor's name in the same sentence. “Has a delivery for that doctor.”

“It’s from the new Chairman. Sung.”

It took a moment for the idiot to piece it together when he pulled his head from his ass, but he did nonetheless. “Oh… oh- Oh!”

He stopped typing immediately. “I am so sorry-I really am! P-Please allow me, I can take it to the room, personally."

“That won’t be necessary. I’m under strict instructions to deliver it myself.” Holding back the red you were seeing through, you lent in closer. “It’s official association business, you’ll be awfully helpful if we take this up, as it’s confidential.”

“Uh…” He looked between you, head darting back towards the elevator.

Jinwoo leant on the counter and flashed him the sweetest smile you’d ever seen when he wasn’t looking at you or the twins. “I promise you, you’re doing the right thing.”

“Well… Okay. But only one of you. Will that do?”

Fuck. Though before you could object, Jinwoo smiled again and agreed. “Of course. I’ll wait here while she delivers it. Maybe I could get a drink?”

"Of course, Chairman Sung!"

“O-Okay.” You said, unsure of how to get the doctor to him without causing a scene, but how Jinwoo acknowledged you, he must have put his trust in you.

Wouldn’t it have been better he go and take her back and have you take the train home? Of course not, you assumed he wouldn’t want you travelling home on your own. The thought you couldn’t bear actually. Further time away from your children.

Turning away, you approached the elevator with nothing in your hand and waited until the doors closed to see the doctor behind your eyes despite Jinwoo's request. You couldn't help it. She was still pacing, murmuring random things and watching the bedroom door with paranoia.

It was like she was waiting. Waiting for you. And you waiting for her. And after the floor blinked on the wall panel, the warm drip over your lip gave your body a reaction enough to notice.

Blood. All over your sleeve and a drop over your shirt. So much energy wasted, but worth it.

One door, then another, and one more before you found yourself just standing out of sight by the door in case she happened to glance through the peephole. You hated the sight of the numbers, knowing they were under her name as though she was someone who earned notable respect.

Wouldn’t that be a sight? The person you thought you had murdered, came back to life and stood staring right back through the peephole of the hotel room you were hunkered up in.

Knock Knock. “Housekeeping.”

It was more believable than room service.

And holy shit, it actually worked.

Fucking idiot.

“No thank you-holy shit.”

You rammed your foot in between the wall and door and pushed yourself through. She wasn’t exactly strong, though her desperation never wavered. With a bit of back and forth, silent shoving and panic, you closed the door behind you. You weren't able to get purchase on her clothing to keep her close and she moved back and out of the way.

She had the fucking audacity to back away like you were the murderer.

“H-How… How did you-holy crap! Look, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry-I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t mean it!” It was a pretty big change to the anger you saw not long ago.

After all that time waiting for this moment, to confront the woman who ruined everything, what could you say now that your brain had gone blank?

Fuck her, fuck her, kill her, fuck her!

“Please! I will run away. You’re alive, you have your babies back so let's just leave things as they are!” She kept glancing over your shoulder, wincing at the obvious red blush of fire across your cheeks.

“Leave things?” You said, a huff of sheltered amusement you never got to endure sticking to the back of your throat. “Just leave things? You killed me. Took away my children. You think I can just leave things?”

"Leave things?!"

“It all worked out for you. What more do you want from me?! I’ll have Sung on my ass for the rest of my life whenever he finds me. Is that not enough?!”

The raw emotions died down to quiet as soon as the hotel door opened once more.

“I found you.” 

“H-Hunter sung… Oh- oh my god!”

Storming up to her before she could break out of the shock when she saw Jinwooo enter the room, you yanked her away from her corner by a fistful of her hair. She kicked at the floor and knocked the coffee table with her feet, trying to scream.

“Shut up, bitch.”

With a slam to the mahogany table to her face, she quietened before she could empty her lungs. She sobbed, though she still tried to pathetically get away. Not that she ever would with a man like Jinwoo Sung nipping at her heels.

“Please. Please don’t do this-”

“You should have thought about that when you decided to steal my children and take my life.”

Jinwoo took a hold of your hand, tight with the hate and visceral shake at his knuckles. He ignored the doctor, tugging away at you as though you would let her go if she tried hard enough. 

“Let’s go home, baby.” He watched you with something other than the fury he entered with, as though melting away under your gaze. “Exchange.”

“No, no, no, no!-”

The hotel room sat empty, and it would do so under the name of the doctor. For she would never step foot in it again.

Not after you were done with her.

Part 48 <- Part 49 -> Part 50

Thank you for reading and all of the support on this fic! ❤️ Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated and I appreciate you all! See you next time 🤗

Tag list - @bubera974 @snowy-violet @sky2lar @starrynights23x @kamiliora

@yessirr7 @qmabailor @yihona-san06 @mashiromochi @daiyanomochi

@justatimidcreator @alia-17 @otomegamesforlife @m00n-estelle @towomatos

@stormnightingale @johnnysactualgf @solarisstarrsolomonsbeloved @johnnysactualgf @notleclerc

@minkuro @misakicchi @lovingyeet @soft-dots @gina239

@sabrina-senpai @tsukimoon-chan @afkmylajah @livelaughlovekuni @keiva1000

DISCLAIMER - Crossposted from my AO3 - I do not own any of the characters or anything from the anime or manhwa. This is a work of fan fiction and is absolutely not representative of the views or intentions of the original creator(s).

Also please don’t post any of my work, thank you!

[lunaisadoll]

Dom Caine! x Fem Assistant Reader - Part 1

♡ The Ringleader's Assistant ♡

{ Hey readers , it's me, Luna :3 Here again, with another crazy fantasy about a fictional character! Holy shit this is SO long. It took me two full fucking days to complete. Quick disclaimer : My NSFW writing is cringe, but so is simping for a fictional character. So I've already come this far, and if you're reading this , so have you. }

☆This will involve some suggestive themes. Minors DNI ♡

☆ There's going to be two parts for this post because of how stupidly long it is. The next part will contain the NSFW :>

♡ ♡ ♡

Summary:

You get pulled into the world of the Digital circus by slapping a headset on your head. Oh noes! You meet the gang, and you happened to become Caine's personal F̶u̶c̶k̶t̶o̶y̶ Assistant. Uh, oh, spaghettiOs! The following content includes: DDLG and BDSM, powerplay, spanking, stalking and manipulation, praise kink, degradation kink, also excessive teasing. And, of course, the hanky panky ;).

Boredom had become a constant companion. Day after day, I spent countless hours scrolling through my computer, searching for a spark of interest that never seemed to come. With a frustrated sigh, my gaze landed on the brand new VR headset my mom had gotten me for Christmas.

It sat in the corner, a promising device I was too nervous to even touch. My small, dimly lit room offered no sanctuary from the furniture I was sure to trip over while using such an immersive device. I let out a reluctant sigh, finally giving in. Today was the day I would stop avoiding the dreaded headset. I picked up the sleek device and ran my hands over its features, a decision made.

I dug through the box and pulled out the instructions, meticulously following each step. Cables were untangled, then plugged in. The pieces clicked and snapped together. After 20 minutes of fumbling and frustrated sighs, my new setup was finally complete. I settled back into the comfort of my chair, my focus returning to the computer screen. The soft light of the monitor illuminated my room as I opened Steam. I definitely wasn't in the mood for horror—I had no desire to scream and flail around while hooked into a headset. I just wanted something cute and simple, an experience that wouldn't require too much effort for my first time.

I was intrigued when a notification chime echoed from my computer. A small chat bubble popped up in the corner of my screen, its text a blaring neon sign:

"Welcome to the Digital circus, a magical place for kids and grown-ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to life."

My eyes narrowed with a skeptical frown, but against my better judgment, I clicked the link. Immediately, a download window appeared, and files began streaming onto my computer. "Shit! I didn't want you to download," I groaned, my panic rising. "What if it's a virus?" I watched, helpless, as the files finished downloading, then scrolled through a list of new assets that had installed themselves without my permission.

I had my computer scan the files, and a relieved sigh escaped me when they came back clean. My gut still insisted something was off, a quiet, nagging suspicion I couldn't shake. Despite the warning, I made the choice. I slid the headset onto my face, the world around me disappearing, and clicked on the game icon.

That was the last thing I remember. The feeling of my old body dissolving, a sudden, terrifying absence before I was yanked into a new one. A throbbing ache pulsed behind my eyes, and my vision swam as I fought to clear it. When the world finally came into focus, a dizzying jolt of color hit me. The walls screamed with overly saturated primary colors, and my eyes darted around the unsettling, whimsical decor of what looked like a circus tent.

A low groan escaped me as I clutched my head, the throbbing pain intensifying with every beat of my heart. The nauseous lurch in my stomach was almost as overwhelming as the sight before me. "What... where am I?" I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. My eyes finally focused, and I froze.

A group of bizarre, unrecognizable beings stood before me. A shriek tore from my throat as I flailed my arms in a frantic panic. My hands looked alien, a ghostly white against the terrifying surroundings. I stared in disbelief at my casual baggy clothes, which had been replaced by a glittering red suit with gold accents. My eyes travelling down spotted the matte black of my new opaque tights that was a striking contrast to the tailored wool of my pencil skirt.

"You okay there?" I heard a soft concerned voice ask, breaking the silence in the room. I turned to see a small girl standing before me, her appearance so vibrant it almost hurt to look at. Her outfit was a jarring mix of red and blue, a colorful, clown-like jester suit with yellow pom-poms on the collar and cuffs.

"I'm Pomni, welcome to the Digital Circus." She offered me a hand, her smile trying to be reassuring despite the chaos around us. "I know this is overwhelming, but we can take it slowly. We'll explain everything."

I hesitated for a moment, then took her hand. The gesture grounded me, and with her help, I managed to get back on my feet. Pomni’s explanation came swiftly, a series of devastating truths that landed like a punch to the gut: how I got here, why I was here, and, most chillingly, that there was no escape.

A blur of faces and personalities greeted me, each individual introducing themselves with their own unique flair. Some cracked jokes that made me laugh despite my terror, while others spoke harsh truths that left me even more bewildered and unsettled than when I'd first arrived. I was startled as a voice boomed across the circus tent, its words echoing from a floating entity. The creature, which seemed to be the ringleader, demanded the group's undivided attention. The conversation around me died instantly, some seemingly frustrated with his presence altogether.

I looked down at my own costume, a chaotic explosion of reds and golds, then up at his. It was like looking into a mirror. The palette and style of our outfits were so similar, we could have been designed by the same hand. "Caine, you can't scare me like that" Ragatha scolded, but Caine seemed to pay her little mind. A sleek black cane shimmered into existence beside him, as if to punctuate his name with a final, dramatic flair. His heterochromia eyes, one a piercing blue and the other a warm green, fell on mine, and his gaze became a heavy, silent weight that held me in place.

"And who might this delightful newcomer be? What's your name, little one?" His voice was unnervingly upbeat, too cheerful for the situation. I flinched as he seemingly vanished in a puff of smoke, only to reappear instantly at my side. I jumped back, a gasp escaping my lips, but his eyes followed me. I could feel his gaze on my body and my suit—a hungry, lingering stare he couldn't quite hide. I looked down at the floor, my face scrunching up in a frown as I tried to recall my name. My mind was a blank. No matter how hard I tried, nothing came to me. I shook my head in dismay and looked up at him. His hand traced my waist, a cold touch through my suit, before it moved to my shoulders, his fingers testing the fabric.

The others didn't react, their faces betraying no surprise at Caine's invasion of my space. It seemed this was simply a normal occurrence, a part of the twisted world I found myself in. "So...what exactly are you meant to be?" A periwinkle rabbit with a giant, permanent smirk stepped forward. His eyes crawled over me, examining every detail of my suit. My skin prickled under the collective stare of the group, and I felt a fresh wave of discomfort wash over me.

"She's mine. My assistant."

The words cut through the tension, redirecting everyone's attention to Caine. Jax's eyes flicked between the two of us, taking in the matching forms and outfits. A low snicker rumbled in his chest, and a wide grin spread across his face, mocking my predicament. "Oh my god, you're literally Caine's personal lapdog, that's hilarious." He threw his head back and let out a cackle, the sound echoing throughout the tent. The others looked at one another with confused and concerned expressions, their silence a stark contrast to his laughter.

The events were unfolding so quickly that I instinctively folded my arms over my chest, trying to calm my fraying nerves. Ragatha placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder, offering a sympathetic smile. "Ignore him," she whispered. "He's just joking." I nodded, forcing a tight smile as I watched Jax cackle, a stray tear of laughter rolling down his cheek. He seemed to find the situation genuinely hilarious.

The sharp snap of Caine's fingers echoed throughout the tent, and I flinched. A trapdoor materialized beneath Jax's unsuspecting feet and instantly swung open, swallowing him whole. "Is he gonna be okay?" I asked, my nervous voice cracking as Caine's attention snapped back to me.

"Fear not, my dear little Assistant, our friend Jax has gotten a headstart on today's adventure! Now, if the rest of you would follow me." His voice was a perfect mask, without a hint of the anger that had just been there. I watched him, a chilling realization dawning on me. He wasn't a man; he was a ringmaster, a master of pulling strings, twisting our very perceptions to fit his narrative. And I was learning that fact quickly.

I quietly followed the group, my eyes still aching as they tried to adjust to the blinding, kaleidoscopic colors that saturated the world. Ahead of me, Caine snapped his fingers again. He grabbed his cane and twirled it in his hand, a magical flourish that summoned a glowing, swirling portal.

"Today's adventure is Candy carrier Chaos! That's right, the Candy Carrier Kingdom has been robbed of their most valuable resource - Maple Syrup! It's up to you to bring the rotten bandits who stole it to sweet buttery justice!"

I watched the group step through the glowing portal, and with a mix of dread and curiosity, I moved to follow them. The moment I reached it, an unseen force slammed into me, knocking the wind from my lungs. I stumbled back and fell, a string of curses spilling from my lips as I clutched my aching head.

Ragatha turned, her face a mask of confusion and concern, as she watched me hit the floor. The portal shimmered just inches away, an impassable barrier. "What gives?" I snapped, pulling myself to my feet. The world behind me felt empty for a second, and then I felt Caine reappear, his hands gripping my hips. I flinched, but his touch lingered, making my skin crawl before I finally whipped around to face him.

"My apologies, my dear, it seems I wasn't clear the first time. You are my assistant, your role is here with me. You are not to enter adventures without my permission."

I shivered, the possessive edge in his voice sending a cold wave through me. He shoved Ragatha through the portal with a careless, violent motion, and with a final snap of his fingers, it sealed behind her. Then, there was only silence. It was just him and me, alone.

I quickly settled into the role of being Caine's assistant, completing routine of mundane tasks: fetching his coffee, sorting his papers, and cleaning his room, which would always somehow end up a mess despite his pristine, charming appearance. Over time, his loud and relentlessly optimistic presence became a strange sort of comfort, a constant in this chaotic world. He was always so polite, praising me for every task I completed. But his hands always lingered a moment too long on my shoulder or brushed against my thigh. Sometimes, he would pull me into a hug, his hands sliding down my waist and holding me in a tight, inescapable grip. He had me sit on his lap in the office as he reviewed my work, his gaze scanning through his latest ideas for an adventure. His hands rested on my hips in a firm, possessive grip—a silent declaration of ownership I felt down to my bones.

He so masterfully blurred the lines between being an assistant and being something more, that I found it almost impossible to question him. The final push came when he told me I might as well move into his room since I cleaned it so often anyway. With a casual wave of his hand, he dismissed my hesitation, and I found myself living in the same room where I slept beside him. I became his entire world. Every single detail of my life seemed to enthral him, a fact that my own naïveté spun as a simple interest in me. I never once suspected it was something much darker.

• • •

I woke up to a familiar emptiness beside me. Caine’s absence was a constant—he was always either staying up late or waking up early, lost in the work of crafting another adventure for the players. I slipped into my matching suit and headed toward the common room, desperate for a moment of quiet company before my duties began. I sat with Pomni, Ragatha, and Gangle—a rare moment of peace I'd been able to steal with the others. The gentle murmur of their conversation was a welcome relief from Caine’s constant presence.

"How have you been getting on with Caine?" Ragatha asked, a note of genuine concern in her voice.

I felt a tight, strained smile stretch across my face. "It's going fine" I told them, the lie feeling heavy and false on my tongue. The others watched me, their expressions a mix of relief and lingering doubt.

"Fine? That's a laugh. We barely see hide nor hair of you anymore. You're Caine's personal bootlicker."

Jax's words were a low jab, his grin never faltering as he settled in next to me. He draped an arm over my shoulder, the casual touch a stark contrast to his cruel words.

"Jax! Stop being an a$$h@le!" Ragatha snapped. The curse was instantly muted, sanitized by Caine's ever-present, family-friendly filter. Even with him nowhere in sight, I knew his watchful eye was everywhere, a constant presence we could never truly escape.

"No... it's fine... he's right..." I started, the words barely a whisper. I shook my head, unable to keep up the lie. "I know he's been keeping me busy. And yeah, the way he acts... it can be a little unsettling. I'm starting to feel like he's always hovering... it's honestly... overbearing."

My words were barely a whisper, but they cut through Ragatha and Jax's bickering like a knife. The two of them froze, their argument dying on their lips as they looked at me. A thick silence fell across the table, and they slowly slumped back into their chairs, defeated.

I regretted those words the moment they left my lips. I felt Caine's gaze, a familiar weight, settle on me, and a gasp escaped me as a pair of arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me into the air. My eyes met his, and a silent dread filled me as I tried to search his face, hoping he hadn't heard what I'd said.

"Good morning, fellow adventurers! I have an exciting new experience planned for you all, which will surely be my best one yet. Meet me centre stage in 10 minutes!"

His voice was a whirlwind of upbeat excitement. You never knew what to truly expect from him, but at least he maintained a routine with his adventures. As he finished speaking, he pulled me closer, holding me in the air. My heart hammered against my ribs, and my stomach dropped. I began to squirm, a panicked whimper escaping my lips as I silently begged to be let down.

"You and I are going to have a little chat in my office once I've finished up here, little assistant." His voice, though calm, left no room for argument. "I expect you to be ready for when I arrive."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in Skinner boxes

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

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

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And sued:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 — 

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

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

 — 

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

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

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

[scam-alerts]

Hey, could you do a post on the spacers.exe scam on discord please? I got hacked from it and a friend then got hacked by my account and it super sucks!

🔎Scam Exam(ination)🔍

Seen as: Free game / Try my game Scam Type: Malware / Password Stealer

Platform: Discord

Note: This post will contain a collection of data from across the internet, mainly reddit where people have figured out how this malware works and what it does at its core. I will do my best to explain to you what's going on behind the scenes.

Here's a video talking about this same type of scam by NTTS:

If you'd like my take on it, click read more and let's continue!

-----

1 - How it starts

The way this scam works is by a friend of yours, or someone in the same server as you, falling for this scam and downloading then opening the malicious file that their friend had sent to them. In a very long line of things, it's a chain reaction of them hijacking and using the stolen account to then scam someone else. And if you're not quick enough, it can and will steal everything on your computer/phone.

Not everyone on the internet is scam savvy, but that's what guides like these are meant to help with. :)

Here are two images taken from reddit on what it looks like when you're contacted by the hijacked account:

Immediate red flags:

I'm a developer. Try my game. Can you test my game?

Other reported red flags to look out for:

I need you to beta test my game. Download my game and try it for 4-5 minutes then write a review. Here's a free key/password for the game go to this link. I'm working on a project and need someone to try my game. I'll give you free items/vip if you try my game. Try this new mobile game <link> ** and I'll give you items. I'll pay you $ via PayPal or give you Nitro if you try it.

What it boils down to, is that for this scam to work, they need you to download the file they send you, or a file that's uploaded via a link to a file sharing website, and then you have to open the file.

Do not do this, obviously.

Do not accept any suspicious .exe or .jar files from your friends or fellow server members if you do not know what might be inside it.

** Sometimes they will send you an APK file or a link to the google play store for a mobile game, and sadly this too, is malware, and it will steal your passwords. Again, do not download it.

2 - The Malware/Virus

If you were someone who downloaded a file like this and then opened it, you have now infected your computer, and... unfortunately, all of your Passwords, addresses, Crypto info, and credit card information, have now been compromised.

Nothing is safe with this Malware.

A more in depth explanation of spacers.exe can be found here as well as how to remove spacers.exe:

Here's a second NTTS video explaining how the inner workings of this can work from the scammers point of view:

3 - The Goal

The goal of this malware, as noted above, is not just to steal your passwords, credit card info, but also your discord account.

There are people who will pay for this malware (it is being sold for others to use, which sucks) so that they can take over your discord accounts if you have certain badges or names.

If a scummy individual running this scam wants something they don't have that you do, they will try to take it from you.

Do be warned that if you fall for this, you may also receive threatening emails to have your personal information leaked if you don't pay a ransom/money amount after you got infected.

This is a scare tactic.

This was noted in this post from Dec 3rd 2024:

Game scam exe

Hello, Recently, I downloaded a zip from someone I knew on discord and opened the exe file. Stupidly I believed them, ran it and my discord

-----

Final Thoughts: All I can say is.. common sense should be a big factor here. Internet safety 101 and all that. You shouldn't be clicking links to anything or anyone saying something's 'free' or with the offer of you getting some reward from it. Nor should you go believing or downloading things from your friends if they start acting weird or weirder than normal.

Pro tip: If you get a message on steam or discord by someone asking you to 'visit this website' to 'vote for my friend in <thing>' that too is a scam and it will steal your login information.

If you're like me and your best friend on the internet is someone you've known online for 18 years, having him suddenly say 'I'm a developer try my game' would be a big indicator to me that his account was compromised.

If you can, try to make sure you're connected with your friends through other outlets like tumblr or bluesky. Or even through e-mail (as old as that seems lol.)

That way if something goes wrong, they can at least let you know about it.

[ali11125]

#also if anyone wants clarification on the mess of wips i have yk i do have an ask (^・ω・^ ) /lh /nsrs

Pc rpf wips 👀? I know you said /lh, but I'd love to know what "Photographs" or "I need you" may be about (whatever you want to share about it anyway), because they sound really interesting 😊

-📒

ok ok ok.

when it comes to "Photographs" i do have a wip of it. I'll put it under cut since idk about spoilers (a lot of these if not all of them are oneshots so its not like im spoiling my next big thing).

some context on it though and a quick summary of the overall idea, i got a link to those daily writing inspos and one of them happened to be photographs. My brain just went, "polycrashers polycrashers polycrashers" and i tried to fill in the rest.

A quick little summary:

the gang goes to a smash con anc vernais takes photos of them all. He does this a lot and he claims "its just for the memories" and while thats partly true he does it cause he like to be able to see his crushes friends and hangs them all up on the wall when he gets home.

anyways story and the idea for "i need you" are under the cut have fun!!

Photographs WIP

(fyi no proof reading and its not even close to the finish product but idc anymore and 📒 anon asked)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click!

The camera shuttered, and soon enough an image printed out in front of it. Vernias grabbed the little slip of paper and shook it in the air as the film developed. Slowly, and what felt like forever, the picture fully cleared up. He smiled warmly at the image, even if it was mere moments ago. It was just a simple photo, him, Nick, Sophist and Brent just standing next to each other. They met up again and at the last minute decided to go to a convention nearby. Nothing crazy, just some local smash tournament, but they did have some free time. Vernias continued to study the photo, immediately noticing some imperfections in the print job, but more focusing on the others. He saw the stupid grin Sophist always had, how slightly akward Brent was, how smug Nick looked. Vernias found it endearing, their stupid little characters shown in their own little way. He almost didn’t notice the slight blush on his face.

“Hey let me see it!” Nick’s voice immediately snapped Vernias back to reality. He let the camera fall, only to be held up by his slash, and stuck out the photo to Nick. He studied it too, though not to the extent Vernias did, instead simply nodded before running to catch up to Brent and Sophist, who apparently already ran off. 

Vern quickly realised the others left, and quickly–though with care to not crumple it too much–placed the photo in his pocket. “Wait for me!”

-------------------------------------------

Click!

“Why’d you take a backshot of us, bro.” Vernias just sighed as he reached in front of the camera to grab the printed image. The other two had their usual set of complaints to Brent’s joke, though neither took their eyes off the screen. Vernias once again carefully put the photo in his pocket and let the camera fall to his side, joining Brent inbetween the other two playing. 

It was an open console type thing, and even if it wasn’t Nick and Sophist didn’t seem to care. More than anything the two seemed to be fucking around, neither of which played on their main, just instead fucking around with bottom tier characters. As soon as Vernias realised good content wasn’t going to be found, he took the more recent of the photos out of his pocket to study it. Even with its poor quality–it was some cheap instant camera, but it was good enough for what he wanted–

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(anyways yeah thats all mb)

when it comes to "i need you" it was an idea i literally came up with today

is it good? no idea but i already lost all my pride fuck it

the idea came to me when i was watching sophist's new video (popucom) and he said "I need you" when talking to brent. obviously it had more in game implications but my rpf pilled brain went "gay."

i plan to make it wotc ish (aka general premise but not exact cause im too lazy to not have any plotholes or controdictions) (aka brent and sophist end up on opposite sides of the war and while they obviously still care for eachother they're different sides don't allow for it to happen) and idk this could be their final scene before they break up. ig ill write smth quickly to better explain it but i promise it ain't going to be good, just a proof of concept.

(note this isn't the beginning i just can't start this properly)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...

“I don’t need a king or a noble. I need you. I need my friend,” the final word came out like poison to both. “I need you more-” he paused, but at this point it was all over anyway, “ I need you more than a friend.” 

The silence that filled the room was deafening. Brent failed to find any words to convey his understanding, and Sophist just wanted to leave. 

“But if you don’t want that, then it's fine.” Sophist turned around, grabbing whatever hat he left lying around before making his way to the door. “I’ll just handle it on my own.” 

With the final words Sophist opened and closed the door before Brent could get the words out. He rushed to chase after him, to try and fix everything like he should’ve done the first time. He ran to the door, twisted the nob and desperately looked for him. Yet he was nowhere to be found. Either side of the corridor, which both stretched out to near infinity, didn’t hold Sophist nor any trace of him. 

All Brent could do is stand in the corridor. He felt the slightest breeze and prayed to whatever he would turn to see him, yet it was still an empty hallway. He felt his chest tighten with a pain he never understood before. 

Brent walked back into his room. He shut the door behind him, careful to not make any sound. He fell to the floor, the light from the sunset still shining in his room. All he was left with was a crown and the promise of night as he replayed the words he wished he said. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

wow ok as i said yes this is very shit but again i wrote this in a panic in like 10 minutes so ig it should be bad??? idk maybe ill revise these ideas

overall i think these ideas could work i just need a lot more tweaking and late nights panicking if it will ever work. Thanks for the ask anon gl reading all of this and thank you so much

[watchtheblog]

Loose Change

Hey hello, bonjour to all my people, my family (biological and metaphorical), my besties, my worsties (jk I used to have two haters but now I have none so if you have beef with me that’s so sad because I don’t know who you are!! I will pray for you. (“you” as a concept, I don’t think of you.)), anyone perusing tumblr in this big year, those of you who clicked the link in my bio most likely not expecting this, any person or persons who has/have been sent this link for any reason, hello. You too are welcomed. And any of you merely looking for a holiday wish list curation, or to know more about my capitalistic interests - or otherwise!

As always it’s time for me to dance for you, to tell a little tale, to share some words made into sentences, as an opening act to $1,000,000.00 worth of e-commerce links.

Without further nonsense:

~

“What piece of advice would you give your younger self?”

I find this question so funny because it’s exclusively posed to people perceived as successful or inspirational in some way. If that person is successful, why would you think they’d give their younger self advice that would inevitably alter the entire course of their life, and not simply follow everything they’d done to get right where they are - on stage, on tv, in front of a mic, in an interview - answering this question?!

Before I descend into mania, let me be clear that I understand exactly why the question is asked. I understand its primary purpose is to inspire others listening / watching / reading, but I find the question inherently flawed because if the person answering this question got to where they are without this advice, why would anyone be compelled to follow advice they haven’t taken?

Anyway, I’m going to do a 1500 word bit on this so just pretend that question isn’t rhetorical and I can’t fathom an answer.

(But sorry, just once again, I can fathom many answers. I swear. I’m using the question to highlight a contradiction and set up my critique!!)

Enter that universe with me…. Thank you. Enjoy the discourse.

~

A reflection.

First of all, the question is a bit rude. You’re blessed with the opportunity to speak to, for instance, Jeff Bezos, and you deign to inquire what advice he’d give to his younger self? Why? Did he not create Amazon fast enough? 

Did you need something overnighted in 1992, you ungrateful little bird?

What about this man’s success indicates that there’s advice he needed?? He built a trillion dollar company, revolutionized global commerce, put these cutie amazon vans that look like they were conceived by the mind behind the jetsons on our IRL american streets, and the question you’re asking is: how could you have done it better??

The question implies there was some flaw in the path taken. As if avoiding the mistakes is the goal. As if the blueprint he created should be revised.

As if the hurdles are not the very reason this man is 5’7 but 6’5 when he stands on his wallet!! As if the hurdles have not led us to this very moment in time where you can get taco seasoning, a hamper, and a pair of clogs delivered in 7 hours (likely within the same packaging which sometimes, unbelievably, is a bag?!)

You want to know what Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen would have done differently? Nothing. For a $500 tee shirt could only have been created through the unique symbiosis of excessive nicotine poisoning, unhealed family trauma, and having your first steps taken on the WB lot.

Like, what are you hoping to get from asking this question? That Drake’s answer would erase the Degrassi canon?!

And stay away from Mark Cuban, I’m so serious!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok that’s my first issue!

~

My second issue is how presumptuous it is to assume your younger self would take the advice. At 20 years old, you’re not listening to a God damn word anyone is saying, let alone a morsel of advice.

Imagine 2025 Elizabeth Holmes telling 2003-2015 Liz “Quick piece of advice from your incarcerated future self: Whatever you do, don’t. None of it. Mainly the blood stuff, that’s most important, but also kind of the turtleneck for other reasons. Also get a job at Pfizer and stay there until the second Trump presidency…. There will be two, yeah.” 

She would have been like, “Are you crazy?” in the deepest voice you’ve ever heard and pricked 2025 EH’s finger with a safety pin.

(wait, that’s actually someone we need to ask this question to.)

Thinking back to a time when I would have loved to give my younger self advice I wouldn’t have taken, I can see vignettes of myself engaging in behavior that would have me arrested in the Sims.

To give you an insight into the climate of my life when I was 22: I was drinking vodka like I held equity in Grey Goose, and running around clubs like they were obstacle courses in video games and the only way to gain points was by puncturing men’s feet with your heels, pouring drinks they bought you onto the floor, and telling incredibly elaborate lies. 

Here’s some advice I would have offered my younger self: Turn around and walk out of Westway (a club on the Westside Highway. RIP) before you meet a man who is going to try to ruin your life!! 

And here’s how I would have responded: “No! And on top of that, I’m going to date him for 2 years!!” 

Had I taken the advice, who knows where I’d be. I likely wouldn’t have moved to LA to free myself of that toxicity, which in turn led me to meet to two to three men who would try to ruin my life in different and ultimately more exhausting ways (jk we love them) meet a man with whom I would create a very prolific and robust digital athenaeum of little bits that would change my life.

~

Third issue.

The knowledge you have as a person being asked the question “what advice would you give your younger self” has come from the very mistakes said advice intends to mitigate.

The reason you have the knowledge of what to do differently is because you lived through getting fucked.

Because of that, the way people usually answer this question is like: Set boundaries. Know your worth. Don’t settle…

These are great pieces of advice. And yes, we need young people to hear this because we need to empower younger people to set a precedent for themselves. However, if I told myself in my twenties to hire a lawyer to negotiate a contract so that in 8 years I would be fairly compensated for the inconceivably comprehensive amount of IP that largely contributed to the success of a company, I wouldn’t have been part of that company.  (and btw someone did give me this advice, and it was my dad.) 

If I’d spoken up, someone would have told me to shut the fuck up… and sometimes there’s a time to shut the fuck up… and quite frankly, it might be when you’re 22.

You can’t come out the gate making demands, you’re not alec boss baby baldwin!!

No one’s handing you equity because Tik Tok told you to know your worth and you wanna stand on your business in a WeWork; They’re handing you more responsibility and less pay and waiting for you to be grateful for the opportunity.

The bliss and allure of youth is that you’re learning and exploring and people are giving you advice and you’re ignoring it, and so you make your mistakes and you navigate around them and the reward of that, is that eventually you get to be the person to whom this question is posed.

This is the time you’re working toward becoming someone who has the right to demand things, to stand firm in your boundaries, and to speak up for yourself. The silence of shutting the fuck up can be edifying if you’re pragmatic.

~

What advice would I give my younger self?

Bit aside, yes, I’m aware it’s a question intended to inspire those around you to heed advice (that you likely wouldn't have taken) so here’s mine: 

Recognize the blessing of being alive. Find something to be happy about every single day. Make joy a priority. Celebrate every win. Be kind. Be generous. Try to learn something new every day. At least pretend to read the contract. Get a lawyer. Be less shy. Get a good handshake going! Be quick to identify the lesson in the challenge. It’s okay to cry (not that much though omfg.). Be your own guardian. Love yourself first and best. Always do what feels right. Don’t stop.

Life is so beautiful and so full of perfectly timed miracles, and perceived catastrophes, little nothings, explosions of joy, minor moments of tumult, and huge blessings that all ultimately give way to some of the most expansive moments. Being able to realize this is a privilege.

The gift is the journey, so lock in.

~

ok, here is my wishlist!!!:

A gorgeous luggage rack. Of which I have found two, but please be aware I am open to others.

Rimowa luggage (putting this up top because if you act quickly I can have before I go to London and wouldn’t that be so nice for me!!) I have requested rimowa luggage before (and was blessed to receive!). However, I unfortunately, unknowingly asked for the genre that rly can only fly private. Revised asks: A trunk. Another luggage also a trunk. A carry-on. I think I think this is ugly (not sure) but maybe my ipad needs a straight jacket. Idk!

Some impractical boots I’ll pretend are for the snow. Maybe these could be for the snow tbh. Unlikely… Maybe these too and if not at least they kind of look like it’s a yes. Size 8!!!!!

A travel pouch. There are a few thank you. (LV calling them a packing cube is obscene.) (PSA: I will accept from therealreal.)

A reservation at Polo Bar that isn’t at 10pm on a Wednesday. I can’t believe I’m exposing the fact that I don’t know a single person who can pull this for me. How gauche.

Seven million dollars.

A Hastens. I can be more specific. Inquire within!

I bet you thought I was going to put that Max Mara coat on here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This watch. (heheheheh)

Urgently this dress.

Some things from my mytheresa wishlist! (This which is different.) Some of these are reasonably prices I stg. Not this in the grand scheme of things but…. In some cultures this is considered reasonable. Yeah these, too!

Tragically the Hermes bag (in black) that I wanted is no longer available. Oh actually all the bags are unavailable online. Ok. An attack on me.

This. They don’t make it anymore and that’s very annoying to me.

A gorgeana vase. Here are three options.

Yes, a luminous velvet throw. Yep.

Um, these… and also this. And this is insane. As is this. Sorry so many great affordable pieces!!

Sneaking this in here.

Speaking of (from issue 1).

[allgoodnamesrgoneee]

✨ New Patreon Upload! ✨

Hey everyone! I’ve just uploaded a new Trent fic on my Patreon, and you definitely don’t want to miss it!

Head over now to check it out and show some love! 🙌

📖 Link in bio! ✨ Let me know your thoughts after reading! 💬

Don't forget my Patreon is now available for $3 for the month of December; don't miss your chance to catch up on all the exclusive content before the month ends!

Sweetened Memories

Masterlist

𝒔𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚 — The one where he falls for you again.

𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 — Trent Alexander-Arnold x You

𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 — 5.8k

Warnings! FLUFF!! so much fluff, childhoodfriends!au, they're in loveee

Preview

**********

The coffee machine sputtered and groaned under your firm but futile grip, emitting a steaming hiss that served as the final exclamation point on yet another failed attempt. It's beyond saving, and deep down, you knew it.

Still, you gave it one last tap out of sheer stubbornness before stepping back with a sigh.

Your mum’s old bakery had seen better days, its equipment far from the shiny, state-of-the-art setups you’d seen on glossy magazine pages or Instagram feeds.

Yet, despite the peeling paint, creaking floorboards, and temperamental appliances, this place was home—a stubborn little corner of the world that had witnessed your happiest and hardest days. And for that you could never give it up.

You'll fight till the end.

The comforting hum of the bakery was broken by the cheerful jingle of the bell above the door, signaling a customer. Wiping your hands on your flour-dusted apron, you hurriedly finished up what you were doing before looking towards the sound.

“Be right there!” you called out automatically, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face as you turned toward the counter.

When your eyes landed on the figure standing just inside the doorway, your heart faltered, stumbling in a way that caught you off guard.

There, silhouetted against the warm glow of the morning sun streaming through the glass, stood Trent Alexander-Arnold.

His baseball cap was tugged low, shadowing his familiar features, and a hoodie hung loosely over his broad shoulders, doing little to disguise his unmistakable frame. But it wasn’t just him. A small girl clung to his hand, half-hiding behind his leg as her curious eyes darted around the bakery.

For a moment, your brain scrambled to connect the dots. Trent. Here. In your mum’s bakery. The realization hit like a splash of cold water, jolting you upright.

His gaze flicked toward you briefly, and at first, there was no sign of recognition. But as your startled expression softened into a knowing smile, something shifted in his posture. His brows furrowed slightly, and a flicker of uncertainty crossed his face.

“Hey,” he said cautiously, his voice quiet but instantly recognizable. “I just need a quick—”

“Trent,” you interrupted, your voice warm with amusement. His name felt foreign on your tongue after so many years, like an old song you hadn’t sung in ages. Yet, it came naturally, almost effortlessly.

He froze mid-sentence, his sharp gaze narrowing as he studied you more closely. And then, as though a veil lifted, recognition dawned. His eyes widened slightly, his expression softening as his features shifted from confusion to something bordering on disbelief.

“Wait… you're—” he began, his voice trailing off as the pieces clicked into place.

“The girl who pushed you into a puddle in Year Five because you made fun of my braces?” you offered, a soft laugh escaping you as the memory bubbled to the surface.

For a beat, he stared at you, then broke into a lopsided grin that sent an unwelcome flutter through your chest. “I was gonna say the girl who could never beat me in races on the playground, but sure, let’s go with that.”

You rolled your eyes, the teasing lilt in his tone instantly familiar. “Selective memory, as always. Some things never change.”

**********

-Bianca🌻