something rlly unnerving about the overwhelming surge of porn bots on tumblr rn is,, the pfps. these pics are... presumably of real people, right? there are just So many of them. and its not just profile pics, sometimes headers too, sometimes a spam post or two. um. something something jump in logic here bc i Dont know much abt these things but: are we not terrified abt where these pics r being scraped from? (literally anywhere on the internet) like. hello. pictures of u (and your loved one(s)) are likely being used to front these bots to others. dystopia reality dystopia reality
came across this disturbing promotional article (my first thought was 'psychotic'). did you know you are all just data? data data data. a fucking goldmine. data is capital. it's not paranoia, just reality. you're just not in on it.
yeah here's the second chapter of that thing i posted that one time. I have PLANS for this trust me
Chapter 2: Hounds
"How are you today?
What seems to be the problem?
Well, I don't think that's the case,
Something is wrong, and it's all your fault."
~~·~~
His eyes adjusted to the darkness, the cold having wrapped itself around his skin and soaked deep into his bone. He tried to remember how he'd gotten here: him and his brother were assigned a job and told to arrive at a specific location, and when they'd gotten there, he was jabbed with something and put to sleep… And now he was here, in some kind of dog cage… Damn it. He should have known something was wrong from the moment he'd been given the location. And now he was in danger, and if he'd just listened to his brother for a second instead of just dragging him along…
He stuck his hand through the bars, just far apart enough to fit most of his forearm. He tugged at the lock, but it was no use. It would not give under his stubborn grip. He could barely sit up in this thing, the iron bars pressing at his scalp when he tried. He knew why he was here. They knew what he was. They'd been waiting for him and his brother to show what they were capable of, and instead of needing to hunt them down, they'd had them in their grasp all along, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to do… Whatever happened to people like him.
The door opened.
"The doctor will see you now."
Ness awoke with a start, the feelings of terror and guilt slowly subsiding. His hand on his head, he caught his breath, and wiped the sleep from his face. It was still dark out. Of course. He had no clue what that dream was about, or why his hands were so pale in it, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd stumbled upon something he was never meant to see. It was just a dream though, and he couldn't remember much about it anyway. Just a nightmare induced by the stress of the situation, or maybe Giygas's influence… Who knew. In any case, he dusted the dirt and bits of leaves off of himself and exited his shelter to see that the fire had already been put out. "Hey guys, what's going on?" he asked, seeing that Jeff seemed to be busy helping someone he didn't recognize at first– Right, that was his friend, whats'isname… Tony, take down a tent.
"We're leaving," Poo said calmly, yet sternly. "We can't leave a trace. If anyone finds us, they'll kill us, or worse." Or worse? Ness did not like the sound of that one bit, and quickly began to take his tent down as well (Thankfully, there wasn't really anything in there anyway.) After he shoved the folded-up rods in his bag, he helped Poo take down his tent, which he had been struggling with thanks to having only half the hands most people did. When the coals were drenched and buried, and any trace of settlement had been erased, they departed west, to what Ness guessed had to be Twoson or Threed. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him– Everywhere he went, everywhere he looked, there were eyes, whether he could see them or not didn’t matter… he could feel them, and they weren’t staring with the curious wariness of any normal animal, one that either saw you as a threat or source of sustenance (whether that be through hunting or you feeding them voluntarily, it was the same drive anyway.)
The grass and leaves crunched under their feet. It was the only sound in these dead woods. There was no wind to rustle what leaves were left on the trees, no birds singing, not a single one of them dared to speak, to break the silence, to stand out, as if hunted by the nothingness itself. Then they heard it. A long, agonized, canine cry. It chilled them to the bone, wracked with grief and longing, a high wail descending to a groan, eerily human-like, but still enough of a howl to be recognized as belonging to some kind of beast. Ness froze with terror, while Jeff and Tony both pulled out small handguns and Poo pulled out his sword. Paula tugged at his sleeve. “You don’t want to be standing around doing nothing,” she said, a flame at the tip of her finger, lighting the area. “Stay close to us… And don’t feel bad for them when you see them.”
Uncomfortable stillness and silence gnawing at his amygdala for around fifteen long seconds, he reached for his bat. Then he saw it, a swaying, near-aimless pair of dim, red slits, accompanied by ragged, labored breathing. Jeff took a shot at the creature, and it wailed again, leaping at Paula and snapping at her, but she sidestepped to let Poo slash at it, leaving a clean mark on its flank. Now that it had landed, Ness could really get a good look at the creature. It was a dog… Or, well, it had been at one point. Its limbs were stretched to unnatural lengths, as were its teeth, and its back was about as high up as Ness’s chest, and it held its head down to its knees, the length of its neck making it seem almost mule-like. Its claws had grown much too thick and long for its paws, caked in the creature’s own blood… And perhaps the blood of other creatures as well. Its mouth was dripping with a black substance, and its eyes glowed a dim crimson. He swore he could see something move underneath its skin.
He didn’t have much time to behold the creature’s rottenness before it swung one paw at him and left a deep mark in his leg. It stung more than it should have, but he had no time to think about that, as he slammed his bat hard into the skull of the animal. The monster staggered backwards, and Paula finished its sorry existence by frying it with a white flash of electricity. Its body convulsed on the ground and then it lay still, the red fading from its eyes. Ness put his bat away and squatted down to get a better look at the creature, wincing at the pain in his leg. “What… IS this thing?” he asked. Tony put his gun back in his pocket. “We call them longdogs,” he said, “because they look like dogs… And also, they’re very long.” He nudged Ness gently with his heel. “Come on, we have to keep going. If there’s one, there are always more.” He took Jeff’s hand in his and kept walking, and the others followed him.
~~·~~
It wasn’t long before they found a brick wall. Or part of it. This place looked mostly empty. The remnants of conflict still remained, bones of some kind of large rodent long picked clean by what Ness hoped were vultures, the blood which soaked the concrete around the wall, stray weeds with pitiful, drooping flowers growing out of where wall and floor met, fed by the thick, burgundy substance beneath. They were, of course, not here for the bones or the bricks. The wall was a short distance away from the remains of a convenience store, which is where Jeff had been leading them. Here, he had hoped to find some kind of sustenance– A bag of peanuts, some unopened, flat drink, a pack of stale crackers.
Ness sat down and examined his leg… He hadn’t thought to heal it at the time, because adrenaline and the need to get the fuck out of there as soon as possible don’t look back don’t look back had clouded his mind, fearing that doing anything but going forward would cause him to lock eyes with the creature once again, feel its sickly warm breath against his skin, but now that he’d has time to rest and get a good look at it… The wound looked pretty bad. It wasn’t bleeding, in fact it looked as though it were cauterized. Bright red blisters lined the surface, and they stung to the touch, but they weren’t bleeding… At least not now. The flesh looked almost like blood given solid form, the meat raw and exposed. Though he really hated the idea of touching it, he pressed a hand to this extremely vulnerable facet of his body, pain jolting through his nervous system, and let the warm light surround the hole, regrowing flesh and then finally making the pain stop.
He stood up and realized the others had entered without him, so he entered the store, a flickering light above him busting and showering sparks. With the many lightbulbs having given all they had to offer long ago, most of the building was dark. He opened his bag and stepped over to a shelf which didn’t have much left. This shelf was almost completely bare, stripped of its goods by many scavengers that came before them. Ness almost completely zipped his bag back up, disheartened, when he saw one last remaining granola bar. He jerked his hand toward it in a desperation previously foreign to him, cramming it into his backpack. It was his, it might be the last one here… He had to take it NOW, before anyone else did. Then he wondered why he was thinking that way… It wasn’t a thought process that normally crept its way to the forefront of his consciousness. This place must already be doing things to me, he worried. He couldn’t keep it for himself after thoughts like that… He worried that he might become like one of those rabid animals wandering the woods. Someone else would probably be more hungry than him anyway.
He looked around for anyone else, but it was hard to tell in the shade of the crumbling ceiling. He noticed the glint of glass, a square bit that had to be moving, and could only belong to Jeff. He hurried over, nearly crashing into him. Jeff held up a hand to stop the impact, grabbing his shoulder. “Careful,” he said. “There are shards of glass all over the place, and we don’t want to use any more of your ability than we have to. I’m not sure how accessible fresh food is where you’re from, but it’s quite scarce here…” Ness shrugged. “Guess that makes sense… Refrigeration has probably stopped working here.” Jeff handed Ness a jar of… Something, it was difficult to see in the darkness. “Pickles. We’re actually quite lucky to find that much,” he said after a moment of his friend trying with much confusion and in vain to identify the foreign objects. Ness stuck the jar in his bag and took out the granola bar. “I found this, if you want it,” he offered, hoping maybe it would make up for the hostility earlier… He still hadn’t entirely forgiven Jeff for letting that other him steal his life, but these people were his only company now.
Jeff took the bar in his hands, unwrapping it, the sugary, sticky smell of peanut butter filling his nostrils. “Oh…” he vocalized softly. Ness leaned forward onto his toes, getting closer but not enough to make the situation awkward. “What, are you allergic or something?” Jeff wrapped it back up. “No… But Tony is, and… Well, you know how close we are, I’m sure.” Close? What did he mean by that? Did they have some kind of weird allergy suicide pact going on? He didn’t feel like prying any further though, so he just took it back and stuck it in his pocket. He’d eat it later when everyone else was eating… Actual food, he guessed. Or maybe not, as Jeff HAD said they were lucky to find a jar of pickles. “So, where’s everyone else?” he asked while swinging his arms back and forth. Jeff sat down, which worried Ness for a second considering he had said there was glass everywhere just moments ago, until he realized he was sitting on a box elevated from the ground where glass crunched under his feet.
“Well, we were going to meet back up at the entrance… They’ll call if they’re in danger. And if they are… We know how to handle most situations. Not all, but a decent enough amount.” Ness nodded; he’d seen firsthand what they were capable of in his home timeline, and they could decimate a dinosaur in minutes. He figured that the versions of them here must be at least comparable to that, if they’d survived here for as long as Jeff had said. The two of them waited for a bit, talking back and forth about the differences between their worlds– Normal was not something they could agree on anymore. Jeff listened intently as Ness told him about how they had traveled all over the world together, and how they’d fought against powerful, fantastical creatures, but that wasn’t what pulled Jeff in, that wasn’t the reason his normally attentive and alert gaze glazed over with daydreams.
He questioned things that, to Ness, seemed entirely mundane… That people just let him and his friends stay in rooms without attacking or stealing from them, that there were small communities of creatures that showed not a hint of hostility, that people knew he and Paula were psychic but didn’t try to kill them for it. Jeff sighed, closing his eyes and imagining, just for a second, what it would be like to wake up, mind clouded with nothing more than a mild annoyance of the bright, golden sunlight shining in his eyes instead of the terror of knowing that he might not have woken up that day if not for those closest to him keeping watch over him. He imagined the sunlight glittering off of a lake, refracting through icicles, tiny birds that ate nothing but bugs and seeds zipping through the trees, wrapping their song between spruce branches, knocking snow off, not a care in their tiny little brains…
“Hey Jeff, you still awake?” The boy was jolted out of his fantasy and back into reality, and he nodded. “You’re just… A really good storyteller, you know that?” He said, looking behind him to see that the others had regrouped and were heading back towards them. Ness looked back and ran over to them, Jeff following suit. They had, in total, 1 jar of pickles, 1 granola bar, 2 sleeves of crackers and 1 bag of beef jerky. According to Paula that would somehow be enough for a week… However they measured weeks around here. Ness wondered how these people even had the strength to run for as long as they did, much less take down those creatures roaming the woods. In any case, that wasn’t their biggest concern at the moment. No, right now they had to find somewhere to stay, until it was time to run off again.
"You stay away from me!!" Rose screamed as she jumped out of bed, grabbing a lamp. "You touch me and I'll kill you!!" The woman didn't realize that the danger she saw within the Doctor was from her nightmare and that it wasn't the reality of the situation
