#5.15 - power

[boosoonhao]

highways: in defiance

hoshi x reader 6.7k words dystopian au sexism and totalitarian regime warning

soonyoung figures out, quite early into your marriage, that you’re a pretty impressive actress. actress is not the world he should use, really; the female form of the masculine ‘actor’. one doesn’t use feminine forms of occupations anymore. but when he looks at you, at the massive shift in your attitude once the wedding is done and over with and you’re both situated in what used to be soonyoung’s home – it is still soonyoung’s, for all intents and purposes; you’re not allowed to own property, after all, but your presence is so huge, so imposing that it feels shared nonetheless – it’s the feminine form of the word ‘actor’ that comes to mind.

he’ll grant you that; that tiny, private nod of respect. illegal and dangerous as it might be, he can’t quite help it. in retrospect, that’s probably the first sign of what the high judges would call ‘suspicious influence’.

during the pre-marriage sessions; recorded meetings in dull, grey rooms at the center of the golden circle, you had seemed like the perfect picture of the kind of woman soonyoung’s supposed to be with. agreeable, pretty, good genes. demure, but not without personality; nothing of that dead, distasteful glare that seems a genetic trait of people from the middle districts.

where you’d been reserved but susceptible during the interviews, you are now cold; eyes shimmering with visible disdain as soonyoung comes in during the quiet, soft yellow hours of the morning. there’s a layer of sweat hidden beneath his trained exterior, a smell of gasoline sticking to his fingers. he glances at the clock right above the entrance to the living room. 5.15 in the morning. he hadn’t expected you awake already, had thought he’d be able to slip inside unnoticed and wash the evidence of his illicit nightly adventures off before falling under your scrutiny.

you’re observant, he’s noticed; quick to pick up on his habits and his preferences. you make him breakfast, cook him dinners; coffee ready on the table every morning, even though he can tell that you despise it. that your fingers twitch with the want to dunk the hot liquid that you’re not allowed to drink yourself right in his face.

he wonders if you think he’s cheating; that his nightly escapades are of the sexual nature. ‘men are creatures of the flesh’, soonyoung’s father used to say. ‘if denied their right in the home, who can blame them for seeking satisfaction somewhere else?’. soonyoung thinks this was meant as a jab towards his mother, who meant that women had one job, and one job only. in any case, the idea never sat right with him. not even now, not even when you sleep fully clothed at the very edge of your shared bed.

and if you do think that’s what he’s doing; do you care? does the slight downwards pull of your lips come from the idea of him entangled with someone else during secret meetings in the night, or does it come from the disdain of the walls that surround you on every side like a lavish, pretty jail cell?

soonyoung can’t tell which option he’d prefer.

(he can’t even tell if any of them are preferable at all.)

____________________

the scariest thing about you, soonyoung finds, is how outspoken you are. he’d heard about it, of course; about the silver tongued rebels of the middle districts. he’d always questioned it; like, would they not be easy to spot, easy to pluck from the normal people and place in their proper places of gallows and cells? evidently, such a line of thought was too simple, too idealistic; here you are, right in front of him, speaking in tones that could only be described as vulgar, illegal.

this thought, soonyoung admits with reluctance, is strangely exciting.

“you smell like whisky,” you murmur when soonyoung comes home from meeting his three closest friends. drinking alcohol is frowned upon, for sure, but not illegal. not for him. still, he feels a sort of guilt tug at his spine. a magical power of yours, that; making him squirm and question everything he’s been so sure of before. you divert your gaze, stare out the window. your voice is nothing but a murmur when you open your mouth again; “must be nice.”

bitterness does not make itself scarce in your expression, nor in your tone, and soonyoung’s jaw tightens. “do you want some?”

he surprises himself by being completely serious. you twist your head back to look at him, watches as he produces a half full bottle of burning, brown liquid from the bag slung over his shoulder. looking for the signs of a test, no doubt; for any traces of challenge. you blink, surprised to find none, soonyoung supposes. he steps quickly over to the cabinet, finds two glasses there and sits himself down on the chair left of yours. you do not take your eyes off of him, not as he shifts to make himself comfortable, not as he pours the liquid into the two glasses.

the only sound in the room is that of whisky being poured, the only smell the strong stench of liquor. he’ll break this one law, he thinks, without giving it too much of a thought. you’ve already presented your cards, already complained and opposed, already made yourself vulnerable. he hopes, with a thud of his heart, that you won’t make him regret this lapse of judgement.

you hum, reach for the glass, twirl the liquid around in the clear glass. “might as well,” you relent at last. “maybe alcohol is what it takes to make this district survivable.”

soonyoung chokes on whisky.

“you’re quite bold,” he murmurs, not without reluctant admiration in his voice. “what’s to stop me from reporting you to the enforcers?”

you tilt your head, watch him with dangerous eyes. “ah,” you breathe, lean your head against the knuckles of your hand. “to the rebellious future enforcer choi seungcheol?” you tap your fingers against your cheekbone, lip curling into something not quite – but close, very close – a smile. amber liquid swirls around the glass, splashes against the rims in something that soonyoung can’t describe as anything but a show of power. “or to boo seungkwan, future brainwasher in command?”

it could be a coincidence that those are the names you choose to mention, of course, but there’s cleverness visible in the arch of your brows, and when you sit back upright in the chair, it’s with the intimidating, powerful aura of any high judge soonyoung has ever met. people used to say – at least people say that people used to say – that men went for women who reminded them of their mothers. of course, people don’t say it anymore; men do not go for women at all, they let the soulmate system choose for them. but in that moment, soonyoung thinks he understands what people used to mean.

“leverage,” you tell him, chug down the last bit of whisky in your glass, looks very little like the image of a ‘proper lady’ that soonyoung has grown up with. you put the glass down on the flat surface of the table, bring your hands up in front of your face, curl your fingers into a fist and flick your wrists in a gesture that soonyoung recognizes only because he’s done it himself countless times. “vroom vroom,” you add, as if he needs the audio to understand what you’re implying. a shiver climb soonyoung’s spine, makes his head tingle. “that’s why you’re not going to report me to the enforcers.”

he stares, throat thick with something that feels a hell of a lot like fear. it’s not something soonyoung feels particularly often, not since he lived with his parents. not since they shut down his dance studio and interrogated him for suspicions of rebellion. he hadn’t been one, then. sometimes he wonders if that was what did it. maybe he’ll ask what you think; you seem to be an expert on the subject of resistance.

“don’t look so shocked,” you murmur, tone a hair’s breadth from mockery. “you always smell like gasoline.”

____________________

“my mother wants to have us over for dinner,” he tells you, watches as you try to keep your emotions under wraps. soonyoung might not have known you for very long, might not actually know you very well at all despite your name tattooed at the top of his wrist, but he recognizes your tells, by now. a twitch at the edge of your lips, a quick, tense rise of your shoulders. to your credit, you do not break eye contact.

things have been… different, since the evening he shared his whisky with you. for one, soonyoung can’t quite help looking over his back when he leaves to ride his bike, can’t help the feeling that you’re always watching. and second, you’ve been far less hostile, though still as loud and assertive in your trash talk. he wouldn’t call it friendly, would hesitate even over ‘amicable’. but he feels it is a win, nonetheless. third, it happens again. it becomes a pattern. for weeks, soonyoung shares his whisky with you, until the bottle is empty and the distance returns.

he knows this, though; there is no mistaking the wave of absolute disgust that paints your otherwise pretty face at the mention of his mother.

he imagines what she must represent to you; a woman born in freedom, who willingly, gladly traded her — and in some small part, every other woman in palatium’s — rights away for a place in the new elite. soonyoung’s father was a nobody before; barely even worthy of living in the high district. soonyoung’s mother, on the other hand, created the soulmate method of marriages. for that, she’s allowed some small, secret perks. books, food, alcohol. clearance to the golden circle. except, soonyoung suspects, it’s not as secret as the elite might think.

“why are you staring at me?” you question at last, defiance blatant and on display in both your tone and your expression. “surely i, the subservient wife, have no say in matters like these.”

“you’re anything but subservient,” soonyoung mutters, mostly to himself. the glare you shoot him is enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand. he clears his throat. “i can make up an excuse,” he tells you; the reason he brought it up in the first place. a choice. soonyoung is starting to realize that even in his perpetual state of nodding his head and playing along, he’s taken his freedom for granted. “if you don’t want to go.”

you inhale through your nose, stare at soonyoung from your position by the kitchen counter. in truth, soonyoung had considered not even bringing the invite up, had considered just politely declining the offer and continue putting the inevitable encounter off. but then he’d remembered the bitter commentary you’d made during one of your illicit evenings of soft buzzes and heated almost-arguments; the biting comments about your lack of choices.

he kinda wishes he could have presented you with a better one.

“no,” you tell him, quieter than he expects. he never seems to quite get used to the few and far between moments where you don’t seem to get sick at the mere sight of him. “no, it’s fine,” you sigh, drag a hand through your hair, can’t seem to settle on somewhere to look. “let’s just get it over with.”

____________________

he catches you eyeing the bookcase in the hallway of his mother’s home; something that looks like a cross between envy and resignation ghosting over your features. he wouldn’t even have noticed, had he not been looking for it.

he hopes no one else notices.

“soonyoung, darling,” soonyoung mother enthuses, brings her arms around his neck to envelop him in a bone crushing hug. to the uninitiated onlooker, it must seem like a heartwarming reunion; a mother and a son together again. soonyoung knows better, though, has been on the receiving end of his mother’s overbearing affection enough times to know the truth behind it. soonyoung’s mother might not have a whole lot of power, despite her innovative ideas and her rows and rows of books, but she sure knows how to assert it.

the word for it used to be ‘matriarch’, he knows. of course, that word has disappeared into the box of forgotten things, just like ‘actress’ and ‘queen’.

“it’s good to see you again, my boy,” she goes on, pats soonyoung’s shoulders with long fingers, their nails painted red. a bold move, that, considering nail polish is supposed to be outlawed. then again, rules never seemed to work the same way for the people residing in the golden circle. “and your wife is here as well,” she says at last, notes your presence as one would make note of a new haircut, a new pair of shoes. specifically, a less favorable haircut. soonyoung clears his throat uncomfortably. you refuse to respond.

(it’s the start of a very slow, very painful dinner.)

soonyoung’s mother, despite her active role in the marriage, seems adamant in her blatant ignoring of your presence.

“how’s everything going so far?” she asks, eyes trained right on her son. soonyoung feels the need to hide, to fill his mouth with potatoes and steak and hinder himself from being able to talk.

“it’s going fine, mother,” he replies vaguely, cowers from her inquisitive glare. he glances instead to his right, where you’re picking at your own food, eyes fixed on your maltreated potato. soonyoung’s mother hums, as if that answer has something secret hidden between the words that only she understands.

“it’s been three months,” she goes on, swirls a glass of something that looks like red wine between her fingers. “can i expect grandchildren soon?”

never one for small talk, that woman.

soonyoung hears, somehow, how you stiffen in your chair, the very mention of children a sore, taboo subject between the two of you. you’ll talk, at length, about the unfairness of society and your distaste for the inner circle, but you tastefully avoid subjects that pertain to your marriage, or the expectations that come with it. a part of your newfound almost-amicable relationship, soonyoung suspects.

“only time will tell,” he murmurs, feels two sets of intimidating female gazes heavy on him. he takes a large gulp of his whisky.

she hums again. “she’s not getting any younger, you know. the true purpose of the woman is to provide the man with a child.”

soonyoung doesn’t dare looking over at you. he’s sure the expression he’d find there would be enough to make him sweat. he’s always known that his mother was a bit of an extremist, even as far as the elite goes. he knows his mother is the very definition of a true believer. somehow, these things had been much easier to ignore before. he opens his mouth – to agree? to protest? he doesn’t know – but his mother chooses that moment to address you, finally, directly.

“isn’t that right, dear?” she asks sweetly. the following silence feels sort of like a death sentence. soonyoung wants to intervene. he doesn’t.

“of course,” you reply, voice flat and submissive in a whole nother way than how he’s used to. your subservience has been a mockery, before, a sort of inside joke on soonyoung’s expense, a proof of your opposition. there’s nothing of that present now, and when he finally manages to force his gaze over to your seat, your face is deathly pale. you still have not touched your food, but you still have the distinct expression of someone with a bad taste in their mouth.

you do not speak again the rest of the night.

____________________

after the dinner at soonyoung’s mother’s, there’s a tangible, heavy silence hanging over the kwon jr. household. you won’t speak to him, not when he buys a new bottle of whisky and tries to lure you into the sitting room to join him, not when he starts dropping small hints about his adventures during the night.

not even when he wakes up extra early to try – and horribly fail at – making you breakfast do you say a word to him, though you do push him aside to try and salvage the burnt eggs stuck to the dark pan on the stove. soonyoung feels helpless, in a completely unfamiliar, overwhelming sort of way. he’s always seen himself as a pretty empathetic person, even when being empathetic was not a good thing to be. he buried it when he had to, but it was always there, tucked inside his ribcage.

he’s not sure ‘empathy’ is enough to adequately describe how he feels as he watches you flitter around the house like a ghost.

it seems to boil over inside of you, five days after the dinner. he returns from watching mingyu fight in the underground, the smell of gasoline and of cigarettes sticking to his clothing and tugging at his skin. he loosens his tie and slinks up the stairs towards the bedroom. he doesn’t expect you to be awake.

you twist your head around when he enters, look at him with the same dead sort of gaze that has been haunting him for days and days now. the familiar feeling that’s not quite empathy, that tastes an awful lot like guilt, tugs on his chest. he used to think you were very loud. maybe that’s just another one of those things he took for granted.

you rise from your side of the bed, dressed only in your pale, white nightgown, and take a few determined steps towards him. you grasp at the front of his shirt, fingers doing quick work of his top buttons. soonyoung panics at your sudden aggression, takes a rushed, clumsy step back, but you only follow, wordlessly, keep working on the buttons of his clothes.

“hold– hold on,” he stutters, tries to grasp at your hands. you only press further, until he’s backed up against the door, eyes focused on the shirt and on the skin revealed by every button you undo. “what the hell are you doing?” your head snaps up at that, gaze hard and mouth set in a thin line. soonyoung feels exposed, vulnerable, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

“my job,” you reply, with a voice that sounds both eerily like your own and someone else’s entirely. you grip at the fabric of his shirt, try to pull it off of his shoulders. soonyoung’s own fly up to wrap around your elbows to stop you. “a woman’s only purpose is to provide her husband with children, and all that.”

“i don’t–” soonyoung starts, doesn’t quite know how to continue the sentence. i don’t think that. i don’t want that. somehow he doesn’t think any of the options would be particularly soothing, despite his efforts. your fingernails dig into his clothes, make crescent moons along the skin of his chest. it looks like you can’t decide whether to cry or to scream.

“do you know what happens to women who refuses to sleep with their husbands?” you ask, a sort of pathetic, fragile stuntedness to your voice. your fingers are still tightly clutched at the front of his unbuttoned shirt. they shiver; in fear or anger, soonyoung doesn’t know. “they get sent to the lower districts, branded for being ‘barren’.” soonyoung circles his hands around your wrists, tries to pull your hands away. your grip at his clothes tighten, and you stare him right in the eyes. “of course, most of the time it won’t come to that, because men have the habit of taking what they want whether the woman want it or not.”

there’s no word for it anymore, but the old one, the one that starts with an r, still echoes in the back of soonyoung’s head. he feels sick, feels the impulse to push you away from him and run away. his throat feels thick, mouth full of ashes.

“that won’t happen to you here,” he says, voice kept stable only by the conviction with which he says it. he presses his thumbs into your skin. your head is bowed; in shame or in disbelief, soonyoung can’t know. “nothing you don’t want will happen as long as i’m here.” he lets go of your wrists and they fall limply to your side. he takes hold of your face, feels ridiculously bold for doing so, guides your face up so you can see how much he means what he’s saying. somehow, he feels more honest than he’s done ever before. “i swear i’ll do anything to make you happy.”

in the old time, the time when you married someone you loved rather than someone whose genes matched your own, they used to have these beautiful ceremonies. soonyoung remembers overhearing talks about them during meetings when he was a child. something he always was especially entranced by was the concept of ‘vows’, of promises to keep and to honor. they got scrapped for something far more technical, of course, but the idea was especially appealing to soonyoung. this one will have to do, he thinks. there’s not a lot more he can promise, considering the circumstances. your eyes are wet. he finds that he wants to press his lips to your forehead.

he doesn’t. instead, he says, “i’ll sleep on the couch tonight. please get some rest.” and he leaves the room. he hears a sob through the door, and he swears something inside him cracks painfully.

and that is why he ends up in front of his mother’s bookcase once again a mere week later.

____________________

“what’s this?” you ask when he puts the book down in front of you on the table. soonyoung feels strangely disconnected to his own body; almost as if he’s standing in the corner of the room, watching himself present you with the book. people have gone to jail for less than this; people have been hanged.

but then, he participates in illegal races at night, attends betting matches in the underground once a month. he tells himself that’s why despite the rush of fear coursing through his veins, soonyoung does not hesitate once to give you the worn paperback. “it’s a book,” he replies lamely; knows it’s a mistake as soon as the words fall out of his mouth.

“obviously,” you bite back, the exclamation almost more a hiss than a word. soonyoung knows better than to talk down to you, by now, but he finds that old habits are hard to break. and you’ve been tense ever since visiting his mother, too, much easier to anger. he wonders if you still hear her words in your head when you close your eyes. the thought makes him nauseous. “what am i supposed to do with it? fold paper cranes?”

soonyoung blinks, gaze falling down to where your fingers lie curled and interlaced with each other on the surface of the table. you have pretty hands, he notice; prettier than he would have expected from the middle district. “can you?” he looks back up at your face, finds you squinting in his direction as if you’re loathe to even look at him. “i mean–” he amends, clears his throat. sits down on the chair on your left, folds his hands. he can’t quite look you in the eyes. “you want to learn to read, don’t you?”

you blink; scrunch up your nose as if in disbelief and mouth pulled down in a very distinct frown. soonyoung thinks you might be trying to play down how true his assumption is, but the light dust of red that appears at your cheekbones give you away. soonyoung feels awkward, as if his mouth is full of syrup. “i’ll teach you,” he tries, desperately needs for you to react in any way at all. when you don’t, he swallows, breathes out heavily. “if you want?”

it seems as if you’re silent for an eternity; trust still non-existent and doubt still lingering in every corner of your shared home and in every line of your face. hesitant fingers reach out to touch the front of the book, almost as if you’re afraid of breaking it. there a small twitch at the edges of your lips that might be a smile.

“thank you,” you whisper, and something in soonyoung’s chest seems to bloom.

(it becomes a routine. soonyoung points out letters, pronunciations, coaches you through the longer words and sentences. sometimes you’ll make attempts at reading entire pages out loud, eager to learn and thirsty for knowledge. sometimes he’ll read to you in bed, almost too distracted by the new sort of closeness and the way your eyes flit over the pages to even know what he’s reading.

it’s just a simple novel; a story he’d been obligated to read multiple times in school, but you eat it up, entranced by every word. one night you fall asleep with your head against his shoulder. that night, he’s supposed to meet up with seungcheol, mingyu and seungkwan for a race.

he finds that he can’t quite get himself to move.)

____________________

you’re a quick learner. much quicker than soonyoung was, much more proficient than he could ever hope to be. he tries to tell himself that the sense of pride that comes with your impressive learning curve is an innocent thing. tries to tell himself that the way he leans back and focuses fully on your voice, on the way your fingers clutch at the coarseness of paper doesn’t have anything to do with the soft tingle in the pit of his stomach.

“they work so hard to maintain this intellectual high ground over the lower regions,” you rattle on, uncaring for the fact that soonyoung can’t keep up even if he tried. probably you could make anything and everything into an hour long rant, he thinks, but not without affection. “‘the poor can’t be smart, they lack the education’, ‘women can’t be equal, can’t have any substantial thoughts; they can’t even read!’” you run a finger along the spine of the book. when soonyoung follows your finger, he notices that it’s shaking. your words sounds an awful lot like what he used to learn to be treason when he was a child; but then soonyoung is starting to realize that you commit treason with every intake of breath, every twitch of your brow.

then maybe he’s a traitor, too, for being so engulfed, so committed; for the way he hangs on to your every word as if they were holy. he’s surprisingly okay with that thought.

“but the elite are the ones keeping education away from us,” your finger stops moving, and soonyoung forces his gaze up to your face, pauses at the pinkness of your cupid’s bow, at the arch of your nose. every day, he’s finding details in your face that he wants to jot down in his journal, commit eternally to memory.

“honestly,” he murmurs. “even without the education, you’re probably ten times smarter than me.” it’s easier now, to spill sacrilege from his lips, to disregard his teachings for these secret truths between a man and his wife. sometimes he has to look over his shoulder before saying them, too scared of a housekeeper peeping or an enforcer storming the doors. it’s more worth it each time he does it; genuine smiles painted on your features as a reward for his morsels of genuiness.

you hum quietly, something dangerous flickering in your eyes. “that’s actually a pretty popular theory.”

“that women are smarter than men?” soonyoung finds the claim far less outrageous now than he would have six months ago. it’s impossible to be as staunch and sure as men are supposed to be in their own superiority, when he is so overexposed to your brilliance.

“no,” you reply with a laugh. “that i’m smarter than you. specifically.”

a joke, soonyoung registers. like the ones his father used to tell at dinners and during house parties. though, kwon sr. used to prefer the jokes about sex traitors, about women in high positions. soonyoung’s mother’s lip used to be very tight during these loud retellings. soonyoung finds that he prefers your joke; one that’s private and that puts you on a pedestal rather than pushes you down, that makes you refer to him as a friend rather than someone you’re stuck with.

he also finds that he wants to kiss you. that feeling he buries.

____________________

“soonyoung,” you murmur one night, quietly and carefully from your side of the bed. the divide has gotten smaller, for sure, but there’s still something invisible and terrible that seems to keep you sleeping with your back against him, that keeps him from daring to reach out and touch your hair while you sleep. he opens one eye, peers at you while you twist around in the bed to face him. he can barely make out your silhouette in the darkness, but he still knows exactly what you must look like.

“what is it?” he prompts when you seem to be hesitating. you exhale, and he feels the air on his face, resists the urge to shiver.

“you said–” you pause, shift slightly on the bed. he thinks you’re embarrassed, somehow. “you said you’d do anything,” you don’t finish the sentence, don’t need to. maybe the word ‘happy’ is too foreign on your tongue. soonyoung’s skin tingles. “did you mean it?”

“yes,” he replies, doesn’t even stop for a second to reconsider. truths never used to fall out of him so easily before. nothing is quite like before, he feels, with a sort of terrifying warmth at the pit of his stomach. you must be gathering up the courage to ask for something, he realizes. “is there?” he asks. “something i can do?”

silence. for one, two, three– “take me out,” you whisper, almost reluctantly; as if you have to force the request out of your mouth. “on your bike.”

soonyoung sits up, and you follow; the bed jiggling under the sudden movements. his first thought is to refuse, to protest. too daring, too dangerous, too many risks. but as his eyes adjust to the darkness and he’s able to see your face more clearly he sees the uncertain, bare expression that lingers there, and he finds that refusal is an impossibility. so instead, he whispers back, “okay. now?” watches with delight as the tension leaves your body and is replaced by relief.

“please.”

(he holds your hand as he drags you after him to the garage where soonyoung and his friend keeps their bikes, can’t help looking back every so often to remind himself how your fingers intertwined looks. something scary, something amazing sizzles underneath his skin. he knows what it is, but somehow he can’t quite remember the name.)

he doesn’t take you to the underground where the nightly fights are held, nor does he show you the streets everyone use for races. somehow, he doesn’t think that’s what you’re really interested in, even with how much you’ve probed him about it. instead, he takes you to a secluded hill, his private, secret little spot. it’s not much; nothing really is anymore, but it’s more than the house, more than the dull, brown walls you’re used to staring at.

your neck cranes backwards as you take in the sight; bends so far back that soonyoung has to instinctively put a hand at your back to make sure you don’t fall over. the stars are bright, here; twinkling and clear and alive in a way that soonyoung haven’t been able to spot anywhere else. sometimes you’ll gasp, or inhale as if you haven’t been able to breathe for months, and when you turn to thank him, the shimmer of your eyes seem to outshine every star in the night sky.

(love, he realizes, as you’re holding onto him, arms wrapped securely around his torso as you head back to the garage. the feeling is called love.)

“soonyoung,” you call after him when you’re back in the house, stopping in the middle of the hallway. soonyoung swears he’ll never get used to how his name sounds in your voice. he turns around, takes note of the uncertain look in your eyes. “i’m–” you frown, take a step towards him. for a moment, you seem to weigh your options, to ponder how to go about whatever it is you’re trying to express. an inhale, an exhale. “ah, fuck it.” and then–

then your lips are on his, his face pulled forcefully to meet yours. your fingertips claw at his face, body pressing itself against him, and for a second soonyoung thinks his brain might have exploded. you tug at his face again, urge him to either respond or pull away.

soonyoung chooses the first option. he grabs your hips, digs his fingers into the fabric of your clothes and pull at your body as if he’d die without the contact. your mouth opens, tongue slipping out to lick at his mouth, and soonyoung groans, feels the vibrations of it through his whole body. he takes a few steps, presses you against the wall, and you bite down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. soonyoung can’t decide if the sensation is painful or pleasurable, he can’t remember his own last name. all he knows is that you rotate your hips, grinds against him in a way that makes him dizzy.

“upstairs,” you pant, and soonyoung takes the opportunity to explore your neck; bites and nibs at your skin and relishes in the reactions it gives him. your exhales are loud, shaky, and your fingers burrow into his shoulder in what seems more like a steadying action than anything else. “bed,” you add, as if you’ve forgotten how to construct proper sentences.

here, soonyoung falters. “you don’t have to–” he says, voice hoarse with something he can’t describe as anything but ‘lust’. another sin to add to the tally, he supposes. he pulls his head back, searching your face for anything to imply that you’re acting out of a sense of obligation. he finds your cheeks; reddened beyond anything he’s ever seen before. he finds your mouth; already swollen and hot pink against your skin. he finds your eyes; wild and alive and more than ever reminding him of the night full of stars.

he does not, however, see any doubt. still, he feels the need to reiterate; “i don’t expect anything.”

you laugh, at that, a breezy, easy thing that sounds almost like a symphony. you take his face between your hands, squish his cheeks and press a chaste, quick kiss to his lips.

“i know. i want to.”

and there’s something in the almost prideful way you say that, that you emphasize the word ‘want’, that makes soonyoung think he couldn’t ever deny you anything.

____________________

soonyoung stares. he leans on his arm, fingers splayed against soft linens and body cushioned by thick duvets. on the other side of the bed, you’re sleeping.

before – that is to say, before you realized that soonyoung was not your enemy, that he could even be your ally – you used to sleep with a body language so tight and rigid that soonyoung sometimes wondered if you ever actually slept at all. fully clothed in your heavy dresses and knotted corsets, arms stiff and legs curled at the very edge of the bed. it almost felt like sharing sleeping quarters with a heavy, big stone.

the sight that now greets him every morning before he has to leave to perform the mundane tasks that are expected of him, is something almost bizarrely opposite; something that makes his head spin even when he’s seen it time after time after time. your arms are stretched across the bed, reaching for the warmth of the space that soonyoung occupied mere minutes ago. sunlight puts an impossible sort of glow over your exposed skin and makes the back of soonyoung’s neck tingle. he reaches out, curls a lock of your hair around his finger.

a calculated mistake, so to speak. your eyes open. a slow, lazy action; even waking up has become a completely new, changed thing, unrecognizable in contrast to the eyes-wide-open, fully alerted way soonyoung has become accustomed to.

for a moment you just watch him, impassively; eyes barely open and fingers clutching at the white linens right by soonyoung’s thigh. you do not lean after his touch, nor away from it. this new, tentative closeness between you feels fragile at all times, and soonyoung worries, not for the first time, if he’s crossed a line.

“are you staring at me?” you ask, sleepiness tugging at your vocal chords. the sound makes soonyoung’s chest tighten with something he doesn’t quite recognize. it’s a warm, fuzzy feeling. the tip of soonyoung’s tongue tastes of the same illegal, dangerous thing that seems to surround everything involving you. soonyoung feels a surge of courage sizzling through his veins, lets his hand disappear fully into the mess of your hair. your eyes flutter close, a low rumble of a hum slipping past your lips.

“yes,” he admits, his thumb flitting along your cheekbone. your eyes open again, observe him carefully. soonyoung has known, probably ever since he started teaching you how to read, ever since you started letting your guard down and your mouth speak freely, that he is in love with you. he’d told you as much; that he’d do anything to ensure your happiness. he feels it now, though, harder and clearer than ever before in the pale sunlight and the soft glow that surrounds you both. it almost feels like peace, like freedom. “i love you.”

you inhale, raise your hand to glide along his thigh and reach for his burgunder tie. the silence feels overwhelming. and then you tug, almost forcefully enough to make soonyoung fall over you. he has to catch himself with his arms, cages you in between them, and your fingers reach, clutch at his face. he feels your breath over his mouth, and the anticipation is almost as deliriously wonderful as when your lips finally connect with his own.

the first kiss you shared, technically, was at your wedding. it was a standard procedure sort of thing; a nod back to other times where marriages were a free, voluntary thing. just the barest touch of lips against lips. you’d grimaced afterwards, and soonyoung had pretended not to noticed.

the second time– soonyoung can’t quite stop thinking about the second time. he finds that he struggles to put a name to it, to the rush of emotion and stress and confusion and relief, to the mess of it all. it had been a beginning, he now knows, though at the time he’d felt so overwhelmed that he’d thought it was an ending.

this; this lazy, casual press of lips, makes every nerve underneath soonyoung’s skin do somersaults. your arms wind around his neck, he lets himself fall against your body and against the softness of the bed, noses squished together and fingertips itching to touch. your own fingers move to ruffle his hair, to undo every attempt he’d made at making himself look presentable before leaving the house. he finds that he struggles to care.

“soonyoung,” you murmur, just a hair’s breadth away from him. he feels the vibrations of your voice through his entire body, shivers with the way his name sounds coming from your mouth. “i’m not–” here, you falter, and soonyoung’s throat feels constricted. you watch him, for a moment, fingers gliding along the skin of his face as if you’re trying to commit every line to memory. “i’m not bringing a child into this world.”

soonyoung’s breath stutters. even with the vagueness of the statement, the meaning is clear. he might have been the one to teach you how to read, but you’ve taught him how to read between the lines. hesitation twinkles in your eyes when soonyoung fails to immediately respond. he leans back in, presses his lips against yours; quickly, with an intake of breath. “i guess,” he murmurs, peppers your face with kisses. his hand clutches at the fabric of your shirt, right above your stomach.

“we have to make some changes to it, then.”

[tdcloud]

Happy May! Figured I'd do a pre-order this time for my next itchio exclusive novella, and this time, it's for the sweaty sapphic fans out there.

Laelia Naevius is cursed by the goddess Venus. She’s eighteen, well past the usual marrying age for those of her social standing, and despite her father's fervent prayers and endless work, every single suitor she finds herself betrothed to dies before she can make it to the altar. She supposes she should be upset by this—the gods know her father is—but she can't help but thank the Goddess for throwing her a bone. She doesn't want to get married at all. She's too busy staring at another girl.

The girl in question is another noble, a Persian woman fighting as a ludia, a gladiatrix, in the arena. Lady Jihane is a skilled warrior, one of the best, and watching her fight makes something awaken in Laelia that she has never felt before. It’s an easy thing to beg her father to let her spend time with this strong noblewoman—if he believes it might put her on a proper path, the path of a dutiful wife, then so be it—but training in swordplay is far more enticing than homemaking lessons could ever hope to be, and Jihane is far more skilled in the former than the latter, even if she is a stern teacher. There is power in what Jihane does, in how she lives her life and clashes with others in the arena, and Laelia can’t help but want to be a part of it, no matter how many bruises or late-night training sessions it takes.

Of course, Laelia just wished she knew how to combat this strange, exhilarating feeling growing in her stomach before it leads her down a road her father definitely wouldn’t want her to take.

If you're into courtship via muscle gains, rom coms, and historical pieces, you'll enjoy this!

Pre-Order to get it 5.15!

[posttexasstressdisorder]

If you want to see what the GOP has in store for the rest of America, visit the Old South

Thom Hartmann

June 27, 2024 5:42AM ET

Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash

Today is the first Biden-Trump debate and many Americans are wondering how each will articulate their ideas for the future of America.

Republicans have a very specific economic vision for the future of our country, although they rarely talk about it in plain language: they want to make the rest of America look and function just like Mississippi. Including the racism: that’s a feature, not a bug.

It’s called the “Southern Economic Development Model” (SEDM) and has been at the core of GOP economic strategy ever since the days of Ronald Reagan. While they don’t use those words to describe their plan, and neither did the authors of Project 2025, this model is foundational to conservative economic theory and has been since the days of slavery.

The SEDM explicitly works to:

— Maintain a permanent economic underclass of people living on the edge of poverty, — Rigidify racial and gender barriers to class mobility to lock in women and people of color, — Provide a low-cost labor force to employers,

— Prevent unions or any other advocates for workers’ rights to function, — Shift the tax burden to the working poor and what’s left of the middle class while keeping taxes on the morbidly rich extremely low, — Protect the privileges, power, and wealth of the (mostly white and male) economic overclass, — Ghettoize public education and raise the cost of college to make social and economic mobility difficult, — Empower and subsidize churches to take over public welfare functions like food, housing, and care for indigent people, — Allow corporations to increase profits by dumping their waste products into the air and water, — Subsidize those industries that financially support the political power structure, and, — Heavily use actual slave labor.

For hardcore policy wonks, the Economic Policy Institute(EPI) did a deep dive into the SEDM last month: here’s how it works in summary.

Republicans claim that by offering low-cost non-union labor and little to no regulatory oversight to massive corporations, they’re able to “attract business to the region.” This, they promise, will cause (paraphrasing President Kennedy out of context) “a rising tide that lifts all boats.”

Somehow, though, the only people who own boats that rise are those of the business owners and senior executives. The permanent economic underclass is key to maintaining this system with its roots in the old plantation system; that’s why Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina have no minimum wage, Georgia’s is $5.15/hour, and most other GOP states use the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour and $2.13/hour for tipped workers.

It’s thus no coincidence that ten out of the 20 Republican-run states that only use the federal minimum wage are in the Old South.

Anti-union or “right to work for less” efforts and laws are another key to the SEDM; the failed unionization effort last month at the Alabama Mercedes factory was a key victory for the GOP. Unions, after all, balance the power relationship between management and workers; promote higher wages and benefits; support workplace and product safety regulations; advance racial and gender equality; boost social mobility; and have historically been the most effective force for creating a healthy middle class.

Unionization, however, is antithetical to creating and maintaining a permanent economic underclass, which is why, as EPI notes, “while union coverage rates stand at 11.2% nationally, rates in 2023 were as low as 3.0% in South Carolina, 3.3% in North Carolina, 5.2% in Louisiana, and 5.4% in Texas and Georgia.”

Unions also make wage theft more difficult, essentially forcing government to defend workers who’ve been ripped off by their employers. That’s why Florida doesn’t even have a Department of Labor (it was dismantled by Republican Governor Jeb Bush in 2002), and the DOLs in Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina no longer bother to enforce wage theft laws or recover stolen money for workers.

Another key to the SEDM is to end regulation of corporate “externalities,” a fancy word for the pollution that most governments in the developed world require corporations to pay to prevent or clean up. “Cancer Alley” is probably the most famous example of this at work: that stretch from west Texas to New Orleans has more than 200 refineries and chemical plants pouring poison into the air resulting in downwind communities having a 7 to 21 times greater exposure to these substances. And high rates of cancer: Southern corporate profits are boosted by sick people.

Between 2008 and 2018, EPI documents, funding for state environmental agencies was “cut [in Texas and Louisiana] by 35.2% and 34.8% respectively.… Funding was down by 33.7% in North Carolina, 32.8% in Delaware, 20.8% in Georgia, 20.3% in Tennessee, and 10% in Alabama.”

To keep income taxes low on the very wealthy, the SEDM calls for shifting as much of the taxpaying responsibility away from high-income individuals and dumping it instead on the working poor and middle class. This is done by either ending or gutting the income tax (Texas, Florida, and Tennessee have no income tax) and shifting to sales tax, property taxes, fees, and fines.

Nationally, for example, sales taxes provide 34.4% of state and local revenue, but in the SEDM states that burden is radically shifted to consumers: Tennessee, for example, gets 56.6% of their revenue from sales tax, Louisiana 53.3%, Florida 50.9%, Arkansas 49.6%, Alabama 48%, and Mississippi 45.5%. Fees for registering cars, obtaining drivers’ and professional licenses, tolls, traffic and other fines, and permits for home improvements all add to the load carried by average working people.

Republicans argue that keeping taxes low on “job creators” encourages them to “create more jobs,” but that old canard hasn’t really been taken seriously by anybody since Reagan first rolled it out in 1981. It does work to fill their money bins, though, and helps cover the cost of their (tax deductible) private jets, clubs, and yachts.

Another way the SEDM maintains a low-wage workforce is by preventing young people from getting the kind of good education that would enable them to move up and out of their economic and social class. Voucher systems to gut public education, villainization of unionized teachers and librarians, and increasing college tuition all work together to maintain high levels of functional illiteracy. Fifty-four percent of Americans have a literacy rate that doesn’t exceed sixth grade, with the nation’s worst illiteracy mostly in the Old South.

Imposing this limitation against economic mobility on women is also vital to the SEDM. Southern states are famous for their lack of female representation in state legislatures (West Virginia 13%, Tennessee 14%, Mississippi and South Carolina 15%, Alabama and Louisiana 18%), and the states that have most aggressively limited access to abortion and reproductive healthcare (designed to keep women out of the workplace and dependent on men) are entirely Republican-controlled.

Perhaps the most important part of the SEDM pushed by Republicans and Project 2025 is gutting the social safety net. Wealthy rightwingers have complained since FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s that transferring wealth from them to poor and middle-class people is socialism, the first step toward a complete communist tyranny in the United States. It’s an article of faith for today’s GOP.

Weekly unemployment benefits, for example, are lowest in “Mississippi ($235), Alabama ($275), Florida ($275), Louisiana ($275), Tennessee ($275), South Carolina ($326), and North Carolina ($350)” with Southern states setting the maximum number of weeks you can draw benefits at 12 in Florida, North Carolina, and Kentucky, 14 in Alabama and Georgia, and a mere 16 weeks in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

While only 3.3% of children in the Northeast lack health insurance, for the Southern states that number more than doubles to 7.7%. Ten states using the SEDM still refuse to expand Medicaid to cover all state residents living and working in poverty, including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas.

The main benefit to employers of this weak social safety net is that workers are increasingly desperate for wages — any sort of wages — and even the paltriest of benefits to keep their heads above water economically. As a result, they’re far more likely to tolerate exploitative workplace conditions, underpaid work, and wage theft.

Finally, the SEDM makes aggressive use of the 13th Amendment’s legalization of slavery. That’s not a metaphor: the Amendment says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” [emphasis added]

That “except as punishment for crime” is the key. While Iceland’s and Japan’s incarceration rates are 36 for every 100,000 people, Finland and Norway come in at 51, Ireland and Canada at 88, there are 664 people in prison in America for every 100,000 people. No other developed country even comes close, because no other developed country also allows legalized slavery under color of law.

Fully 800,000 (out of a total 1.2 million prisoners) Americans are currently held in conditions of slave labor in American jails and prisons, most working for private prison corporations that profitably insource work and unfairly compete against normal American companies. Particularly in the South, this workforce is largely Black and Hispanic.

As the ACLU documented for the EPI, “The vast majority of work done by prisoners in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas is unpaid.” Literal slave labor, in other words. It’s a international scandal, but it’s also an important part of this development model that was, after all, first grounded in chattel slavery.

The Christian white supremacist roots of the SEDM worldview are best summed up by the lobbyist and head of the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, Vance Muse — the inventor of the modern “right to work for less” model and advocate for the Southern Economic Development Model — who famously proclaimed in 1944, just days after Arkansas and Florida became the first states to adopt his anti-union legislation, that it was all about keeping Blacks and Jews in their places to protect the power and privileges of wealthy white people.

So, if you want to see what Republicans have in mind for the rest of America if Trump or another Republican becomes president and they can hold onto Congress, just visit the Old South. Or, as today’s MAGA GOP would call it, “the New Model.”

[dailyanarchistposts]

J.5.15 What attitude do anarchists take to the welfare state?

The period of neo-liberalism since the 1980s has seen a rollback of the state within society by the right-wing in the name of “freedom,” “individual responsibility” and “efficiency.” The position of anarchists to this process is mixed. On the one hand, we are all in favour of reducing the size of the state and increasing individual responsibility and freedom but, on the other, we are well aware that this rollback is part of an attack on the working class and tends to increase the power of the capitalists over us as the state’s (direct) influence is reduced. Thus anarchists appear to be on the horns of a dilemma — or, at least, apparently.

So what attitude do anarchists take to the welfare state and attacks on it?

First we must note that this attack on “welfare” is somewhat selective. While using the rhetoric of “self-reliance” and “individualism,” the practitioners of these “tough love” programmes have made sure that the major corporations continue to get state hand-outs and aid while attacking social welfare. In other words, the current attack on the welfare state is an attempt to impose market discipline on the working class while increasing state protection for the ruling class. Therefore, most anarchists have no problem defending social welfare programmes as these can be considered as only fair considering the aid the capitalist class has always received from the state (both direct subsidies and protection and indirect support via laws that protect property and so on). And, for all their talk of increasing individual choice, the right-wing remain silent about the lack of choice and individual freedom during working hours within capitalism.

Secondly, most of the right-wing inspired attacks on the welfare state are inaccurate. For example, Noam Chomsky notes that the “correlation between welfare payments and family life is real, though it is the reverse of what is claimed [by the right]. As support for the poor has declined, unwed birth-rates, which had risen steadily from the 1940s through the mid-1970s, markedly increased. ‘Over the last three decades, the rate of poverty among children almost perfectly correlates with the birth-rates among teenage mothers a decade later,’ Mike Males points out: ‘That is, child poverty seems to lead to teenage childbearing, not the other way around.’” [“Rollback III”, Z Magazine, April, 1995] The same charge of inaccurate scare-mongering can be laid at the claims about the evil effects of welfare which the rich and large corporations wish to save others (but not themselves) from. Such altruism is truly heart warming. For those in the United States or familiar with it, the same can be said of the hysterical attacks on “socialised medicine” and health-care reform funded by insurance companies and parroted by right-wing ideologues and politicians.

Thirdly, anarchists are just as opposed to capitalism as they are the state. This means that privatising state functions is no more libertarian than nationalising them. In fact, less so as such a process reduces the limited public say state control implies in favour of more private tyranny and wage-labour. As such, attempts to erode the welfare state without other, pro-working class, social reforms violates the anti-capitalist part of anarchism. Similarly, the introduction of a state supported welfare system rather than a for-profit capitalist run system (as in America) would hardly be considered any more a violation of libertarian principles as the reverse happening. In terms of reducing human suffering, though, most anarchists would oppose the latter and be in favour of the former while aiming to create a third (self-managed) alternative.

Fourthly, we must note that while most anarchists are in favour of collective self-help and welfare, we are opposed to the state. Part of the alternatives anarchists try and create are self-managed and community welfare projects (see next section). Moreover, in the past, anarchists and syndicalists were at the forefront in opposing state welfare schemes. This was because they were introduced not by socialists but by liberals and other supporters of capitalism to undercut support for radical alternatives and to aid long term economic development by creating the educated and healthy population required to use advanced technology and fight wars. Thus we find that:

“Liberal social welfare legislation … were seen by many [British syndicalists] not as genuine welfare reforms, but as mechanisms of social control. Syndicalists took a leading part in resisting such legislation on the grounds that it would increase capitalist discipline over labour, thereby undermining working class independence and self-reliance.” [Bob Holton, British Syndicalism: 1900–1914, p. 137]

Anarchists view the welfare state much as some feminists do. While they note, to quote Carole Pateman, the “patriarchal structure of the welfare state” they are also aware that it has “also brought challenges to patriarchal power and helped provide a basis for women’s autonomous citizenship.” She goes on to note that “for women to look at the welfare state is merely to exchange dependence on individual men for dependence on the state. The power and capriciousness of husbands is replaced by the arbitrariness, bureaucracy and power of the state, the very state that has upheld patriarchal power.” This “will not in itself do anything to challenge patriarchal power relations.” [The Disorder of Women, p. 195 and p. 200]

Thus while the welfare state does give working people more options than having to take any job or put up with any conditions, this relative independence from the market and individual capitalists has came at the price of dependence on the state — the very institution that protects and supports capitalism in the first place. And has we have became painfully aware in recent years, it is the ruling class who has most influence in the state — and so, when it comes to deciding what state budgets to cut, social welfare ones are first in line. Given that such programmes are controlled by the state, not working class people, such an outcome is hardly surprising. Not only this, we also find that state control reproduces the same hierarchical structures that the capitalist firm creates.

Unsurprisingly, anarchists have no great love of such state welfare schemes and desire their replacement by self-managed alternatives. For example, taking municipal housing, Colin Ward writes:

“The municipal tenant is trapped in a syndrome of dependence and resentment, which is an accurate reflection of his housing situation. People care about what is theirs, what they can modify, alter, adapt to changing needs and improve themselves. They must have a direct responsibility for it … The tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those obviously sensible ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal affairs is still stuck in the groves of nineteenth-century paternalism.” [Anarchy in Action, p. 73]

Looking at state supported education, Ward argues that the “universal education system turns out to be yet another way in which the poor subsidise the rich.” Which is the least of its problems, for “it is in the nature of public authorities to run coercive and hierarchical institutions whose ultimate function is to perpetuate social inequality and to brainwash the young into the acceptance of their particular slot in the organised system.” [Op. Cit., p. 83 and p. 81] The role of state education as a means of systematically indoctrinating the working class is reflected in William Lazonick words:

“The Education Act of 1870 … [gave the] state … the facilities … to make education compulsory for all children from the age of five to the age of ten. It had also erected a powerful system of ideological control over the next generation of workers … [It] was to function as a prime ideological mechanism in the attempt by the capitalist class through the medium of the state, to continually reproduce a labour force which would passively accept [the] subjection [of labour to the domination of capital]. At the same time it had set up a public institution which could potentially be used by the working class for just the contrary purpose.” [“The Subjection of Labour to Capital: The rise of the Capitalist System”, Radical Political Economy Vol. 2, p. 363]

Lazonick, as did Pateman, indicates the contradictory nature of welfare provisions within capitalism. On the one hand, they are introduced to help control the working class (and to improve long term economic development). On the other hand, these provisions can be used by working class people as weapons against capitalism and give themselves more options than “work or starve” (the fact that the attacks on welfare in the UK during the 1990s — called, ironically enough, welfare to work — involves losing benefits if you refuse a job is not a surprising development). Thus we find that welfare acts as a kind of floor under wages. In the US, the two have followed a common trajectory (rising together and falling together). And it is this, the potential benefits welfare can have for working people, that is the real cause for the current capitalist attacks upon it. As Noam Chomsky summarises:

“State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because it offers (weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. Governments have a fatal flaw: unlike the private tyrannies, the institutions of state power and authority offer to the public an opportunity to play some role, however limited, in managing their own affairs.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 193]

Because of this contradictory nature of welfare, we find anarchists like Noam Chomsky arguing that (using an expression popularised by South American rural workers unions) “we should ‘expand the floor of the cage.’ We know we’re in a cage. We know we’re trapped. We’re going to expand the floor, meaning we will extend to the limits what the cage will allow. And we intend to destroy the cage. But not by attacking the cage when we’re vulnerable, so they’ll murder us … You have to protect the cage when it’s under attack from even worse predators from outside, like private power. And you have to expand the floor of the cage, recognising that it’s a cage. These are all preliminaries to dismantling it. Unless people are willing to tolerate that level of complexity, they’re going to be of no use to people who are suffering and who need help, or, for that matter, to themselves.” [Expanding the Floor of the Cage]

Thus, even though we know the welfare state is a cage and part of an instrument of class power, we have to defend it from a worse possibility — namely, the state as “pure” defender of capitalism with working people with few or no rights. At least the welfare state does have a contradictory nature, the tensions of which can be used to increase our options. And one of these options is its abolition from below!

For example, with regards to municipal housing, anarchists will be the first to agree that it is paternalistic, bureaucratic and hardly a wonderful living experience. However, in stark contrast with the right who desire to privatise such estates, anarchists think that “tenants control” is the best solution as it gives us the benefits of individual ownership along with community (and so without the negative points of property, such as social atomisation). The demand for “tenant control” must come from below, by the “collective resistance” of the tenants themselves, perhaps as a result of struggles against “continuous rent increases” leading to “the demand … for a change in the status of the tenant.” Such a “tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those sensible ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal affairs is still stuck in the grooves of nineteenth century paternalism.” [Ward, Op. Cit., p. 73]

And it is here that we find the ultimate irony of the right-wing, “free market” attempts to abolish the welfare state — neo-liberalism wants to end welfare from above, by means of the state (which is the instigator of this individualistic “reform”). It does not seek the end of dependency by self-liberation, but the shifting of dependency from state to charity and the market. In contrast, anarchists desire to abolish welfare from below. This the libertarian attitude to those government policies which actually do help people. While anarchists would “hesitate to condemn those measures taken by governments which obviously benefited the people, unless we saw the immediate possibility of people carrying them out for themselves. This would not inhibit us from declaring at the same time that what initiatives governments take would be more successfully taken by the people themselves if they put their minds to the same problems … to build up a hospital service or a transport system, for instance, from local needs into a national organisation, by agreement and consent at all levels is surely more economical as well as efficient than one which is conceived at top level [by the state] … where Treasury, political and other pressures, not necessarily connected with what we would describe as needs, influence the shaping of policies.” So “as long as we have capitalism and government the job of anarchists is to fight both, and at the same time encourage people to take what steps they can to run their own lives.” [“Anarchists and Voting”, pp. 176–87, The Raven, No. 14, p. 179]

Ultimately, unlike the state socialist/liberal left, anarchists reject the idea that the cause of socialism, of a free society, can be helped by using the state. Like the right, the left see political action in terms of the state. All its favourite policies have been statist — state intervention in the economy, nationalisation, state welfare, state education and so on. Whatever the problem, the left see the solution as lying in the extension of the power of the state. They continually push people in relying on others to solve their problems for them. Moreover, such state-based “aid” does not get to the core of the problem. All it does is fight the symptoms of capitalism and statism without attacking their root causes — the system itself.

Invariably, this support for the state is a move away from working class people, from trusting and empowering them to sort out their own problems. Indeed, the left seem to forget that the state exists to defend the collective interests of the ruling class and so could hardly be considered a neutral body. And, worst of all, they have presented the right with the opportunity of stating that freedom from the state means the same thing as the freedom of the market (so ignoring the awkward fact that capitalism is based upon domination — wage labour — and needs many repressive measures in order to exist and survive). Anarchists are of the opinion that changing the boss for the state (or vice versa) is only a step sideways, not forward! After all, it is not working people who control how the welfare state is run, it is politicians, “experts”, bureaucrats and managers who do so (“Welfare is administered by a top-heavy governmental machine which ensures that when economies in public expenditure are imposed by its political masters, they are made in reducing the service to the public, not by reducing the cost of administration.” [Ward, Op. Cit. p. 10]). Little wonder we have seen elements of the welfare state used as a weapon in the class war against those in struggle (for example, in Britain during the miners strike in 1980s the Conservative Government made it illegal to claim benefits while on strike, so reducing the funds available to workers in struggle and helping bosses force strikers back to work faster).

Anarchists consider it far better to encourage those who suffer injustice to organise themselves and in that way they can change what they think is actually wrong, as opposed to what politicians and “experts” claim is wrong. If sometimes part of this struggle involves protecting aspects of the welfare state (“expanding the floor of the cage”) so be it — but we will never stop there and will use such struggles as a stepping stone in abolishing the welfare state from below by creating self-managed, working class, alternatives. As part of this process anarchists also seek to transform those aspects of the welfare state they may be trying to “protect”. They do not defend an institution which is paternalistic, bureaucratic and unresponsive. For example, if we are involved in trying to stop a local state-run hospital or school from closing, anarchists would try to raise the issue of self-management and local community control into the struggle in the hope of going beyond the status quo.

In this, we follow the suggestion made by Proudhon that rather than “fatten certain contractors,” libertarians should be aiming to create “a new kind of property” by “granting the privilege of running” public utilities, industries and services, “under fixed conditions, to responsible companies, not of capitalists, but of workmen.” Municipalities would take the initiative in setting up public works but actual control would rest with workers’ co-operatives for “it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism.” [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 151 and p. 276–7] Thus, for example, rather than nationalise or privatise railways, they should be handed over workers’ co-operatives to run. The same with welfare services and such like: “the abolition of the State is the last term of a series, which consists of an incessant diminution, by political and administrative simplification the number of public functionaries and to put into the care of responsible workers societies the works and services confided to the state.” [Proudhon, Carnets, vol. 3, p. 293]

Not only does this mean that we can get accustomed to managing our own affairs collectively, it also means that we can ensure that whatever “safety-nets” we have do what we want and not what capital wants. In the end, what we create and run by ourselves will be more responsive to our needs, and the needs of the class struggle, than reformist aspects of the capitalist state. This much, we think, is obvious. And it is ironic to see elements of the “radical” and “revolutionary” left argue against this working class self-help (and so ignore the long tradition of such activity in working class movements) and instead select for the agent of their protection a state run by and for capitalists!

There are two traditions of welfare within society, one of “fraternal and autonomous associations springing from below, the other that of authoritarian institutions directed from above.” [Ward, Op. Cit., p. 123] While sometimes anarchists are forced to defend the latter against the greater evil of “free market” capitalism, we never forget the importance of creating and strengthening the former. As Chomsky suggests, libertarians have to “defend some state institutions from the attack against them [by private power], while trying at the same time to pry them open to meaningful public participation — and ultimately, to dismantle them in a much more free society, if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 194] A point we will discuss more in the next section when we highlight the historical examples of self-managed communal welfare and self-help organisations.

[mitamicah]

Gig report: Allihoppa 3/3 - Gothenburg 5.2.25

Having a train at 5.15 to get to Gothenburg means that although I am home and in bed just about midnight I still only get about 3 hours of sleep. Luck has it that I meet Due in the lobby so after quickly grapping the breakfast bag I’d been offered by the hotel, we run into a taxi to the station. Five hours later when we arrived in Gothenburg I find another group of people I can share a taxi with to the venue, where we’ve greeted with the shortest queue of the entire mini tour; even though it is already 10 pm I get number 17 in the queue which I joke about being very ironic since today is definitely the day I have the least amount of voice (most of the day I sound like a sqeaky toy).

Quite a few of the people at yesterday's concert either take the day off or arrive later so for a while we are only a tiny group trying to keep warm in the harsh Gothenburg wind. I am offered to get my bag into a hotel room and when we later go to get it again I accidentally run into Jere’s soundguy Sami at the hotel. Not having a bag policy today I keep my fanny pack on me which is nice now that it is a little harder getting “rid off” the stickers given the shorter queue. I will say this venue definitely wins for the best way to handle a crowd given that we’re let in at five to scan our ticket and check id and then we can from then line up our queue indoors without worrying about the struggle of the ticket scanner working or the security check taking forever. While inside I also take the chance to go down the line and give out stickers.

As I’d expected I get barricade at today’s concert. Having been left to the stage at both Viking Grace and Fållan I go to stand to the right this time, closeish to the middle. I have one of my less proud moments when some finnish people a few lines back hands me their emptied glass to put in front of the barricade (the barricade is so small that there’s only enough space for photographers to squeash through and so there’s no place to put drinks) and I look so uncomfortable with it and take forever to put it down – however despite my obvious discontent 20 min later they hand me yet another set of drinks this time three times the amount. The poor fan next to me tries to help by giving me advice what to do with the drink but I snap which I immediately regret I apologize. Luckily my frustration dissolves somewhat quickly and by the beginning of the concert I feel better again.

Given I’ve been worried whether I’d even have any voice for this concert as soon as I see Jere again it is like I am filled with renewed energy and stamina making me have just enough power to get through the concert. The crowd is just as good as the last two days if not a tiny bit more locked in, which makes Jere seem even more in the zone as well. I decided to keep myself from singing along as much as possible during Autiomaa and as a result this turns out to be one of the times the song hits me the hardest (only beaten by Warsaw because of the hearts and Jere crying happy tears).

We are a little handful Danish people at this concert which is quite surprising now having been used to being the only one amongst so many swedes and finnish people. This results in Jere pointing out our flag since we have a few of those at the balcony.

Today Jere locks eyes with me in the same way I remember Bojan doing in Kultuuritalo day 2 which makes me happy stim quite violently. His smile softens even more seeing my happy outburst. He also sees and reads my sign aloud until he reached the last word (whenever) where he then jokes that “no he is not gonna share the song he made with the bojan what are you talking about”. At the end of the show, we again have a Jere that doesn’t want to get off stage so when we keep chanting for an encore, this time Jere looks pleadingly at Jesse that then nods back: we are allowed an encore.

However Jere wants our full attention this time so he asks us to put away our phones and surprisingly everybody does. What follows is probably the best Cha Cha Cha I have been a part of to date. Everybody is just feeling it. At the end of the second verse Jere even leans out, lock eyes with me and nose to nose we scream the lyrics in each other’s faces(!!!).

Given that Pustervik is a nightclub we are not thrown out after the concert this time -instead the big discoball is lowered and the pit is turned into a dance floor. I go to the merch again however to give Mikke the promised sticker, and when he sees me he lights up and waves. He end up getting the last sticker (lucky number 100) and I get myself a Käärijä cap. I tell him how much I appreciate him and the crew and how they are all way too kind to me sometimes (still thinking about Jere screaming in my face at this point and so much more). After that I get to say hi to the other merch guy again who is surprised I do indeed still have some of my voice left. When the crew starts to load I go and meet some lovely new finnish friends on the dancefloor until we all get too tired so we go out and sit in the corridor. Jesse comes by counting how many of us are left, but to my knowledge Jere doesn’t show that night. I end up being too exhausted in the end anyways so I start to go home before being hijacked into the bar next to the venue where a good amount of fans are sitting and enjoying themselves. In my sleep deprieved state I start verbally thinking about how this might be my last Käärijä concert of the year since I heard somebody mention that H and Mikke said there’s a good chance that there won’t be a Europe tour this year. I may have killed the mood a little because of that, so to not go too sentimental – and also because I was zoning out hard – I said goodnight and went home only to give myself a scare when I couldn’t find the keys for a minute. However I still couldn’t relax when I finally got inside since I got a dm that I’d forgot my Joker Out beanie at the bar so I went back to get it and almost got cornered by some guys at the way back again (not the nicest way to end the night but I got home at least).

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Thursday, August 29

Buffy: I You guys seem down with the slayage, all tricked out with your walkies and everything. Cordelia: Yeah, but the outfits suck. This whole Rambo thing is so over. I'm thinking more sporty, like Hilfiger maybe.

~~Dead Man's Party~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Watching (Angel/Cordelia, G) by Apache Firecat

Kiss (Buffy/Giles, G) by The_Crazy_Knight

Those Who Hold With Fire (Buffy/Spike, PG-13) by Dirtyaim

[Chaptered Fiction]

Evil Friends, Chapter 2 (Andrew/Warren, M) by JohnnyB

Supporting Loki (And Thor), Chapter 1 (Crossover with Marvel, M) by SomeMeaninglessName

Mysterious Destinies, Chapter 6 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by EnchantedWillow

To All We Guard, Chapter 28 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by simmony

Keep You Ghosted, Chapter 11 (Buffy/Spike, R) by hydranjenna

Something Lost Something Found, Chapter 13 (Buffy/Spike, R) by Safire

Dungeon Designs and House Keeping, Chapter 40 (Fantasy crossover, FR18) by MistofRainbows

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork:The Weight of the World by tmcarlee

Manip:Buffy and Willow Collage by gamerrat_13

Manip: Collage #109 Song: The Night- Exitmusic by thedecadentraven

Sculpture: [polymer clay sculpture] by simongablelundmark

Artwork: hell's bells - anya deserved so much better i am currently kissing her on the cheek... by mistyintherivers

Artwork: for kairenn-n by magicinavalon

Artwork: The fleet of ships commissioned by a captain with great taste. by lilibethdrawsreylo

Artwork: design for Spike by captain-ghost

Artwork: [ref sheets and designs for cat-ified BTVS characters with more in reblogs and tags] by captain-ghost

Wallpaper: Scooby Gang by revello-drive-1630

Icons: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S01E08 — I Robot... You Jane by nostalgc

Icons: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S01E08 — I Robot... You Jane by nostalgc

Icons: Alyson Hannigan in Buffy - 1x09 (The Puppet Show) by nostalgc

Meme: buffy text posts!! by youhavethesun

Gifset: Buffy Meme: [5/5 Songs] Key - Devics by lovebvffys

Gifset: 7x05 | “Selfless” by clarkgriffon

Gifset:5.15 — "I Was Made to Love You" by dailybtvs

Gifset:buffy & angel + season two part one by ptieuca

Video: Buffy summers - Figure You Out by juliaroxs241

Video: BUffy Summers - Half Life by juliaroxs241

Video: Buffy and Spike - Hostage By Billie Ellish by Naki-a Littlejohn

Video: abby ♥ | bed chem! #bangel (mildly NSFW) by lostlcve

[Reviews & Recaps]

I Robot, You Jane Fashion Part Three by theoverlookedoneedits1997

I Robot, You Jane Fashion Part Four by theoverlookedoneedits1997

The Puppet Show Fashion Part One by theoverlookedoneedits1997

The Puppet Show Fashion Part Two by theoverlookedoneedits1997

Buffy the C̶h̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶P̶r̶e̶d̶a̶t̶o̶r Vampire Slayer | 7x6 "Him" | The Normies Group Reaction! by The Normies

Buffy The Vampire Slayer 7x02 - "Beneath You" REACTION! by Big Time Knights Reacts

Buffy S02E21 "Becoming (Part 1)" Spoiler Review by LGRN - Entertainment

Showtime: Buffy 7x11 Reaction by Dakara

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 4x5 & 4x6 REACTION | Buffy goes Stone Age & Oz meets Trouble! by The Horror Bandwagon

Podcast: Buffy S7E8: Sleeper by Booze & Buffy

[Community Announcements]

WIP Big Bang: Finish Your Sh*t ⋮ Round 4 of the Regular WIPBB art claims is live!

[Fandom Discussions]

[found footage episode concept] by elliesgaymachete

[Academic essay: Good Slayers are Powerful in the Streets and not in the Sheets] by secretsofthewilde

[Spike's changes between seasons 5 and 6] by nicollekidman

[Buffy/Angel was NOT forced in 7x21] by zalrb

the very specific flavour of feminism in buffy [and about Xander Harris] by lordsfromelsewhere

the line “i loved him” —past tense lol—and making that the basis of proof [for a ship] by littlenastieswewhispered

[about Tara and Willow but no spoilers past mid S5 for OP] by lesbianmarrow

if season 3 Buffy was just super open and blunt with Faith. by imsorrythatusernameistaken

how angel looks... running a law firm... by figsandfandoms

[discussion of cat-ified BTVS characters with photos of real cats] by uss-genderprise and captain-ghost

... and why did they think that was the best catalyst for Spike seeking out a soul? [Seeing Red - with more in tags and replies] by boogiedown

one thing that bothers me about the sexual assault in seeing red... by suncaptor

Willow getting treated with such tenderness and support... by raisedbythetv89

[how people react to seeing vampires drinking blood] by lesbianmarrow

[podcasts and shipping goggles and show reviews] by lesbianmarrow

sorry sorry sorry but spike's behavior in season 5 so far is sooooo funny by lesbianmarrow

-.- — I could write in my BA paper about how the death of Miss Kitty... by krimreader

and then i glance up and see Buffy reading the card with the flowers from Brian... [The Body - with more in tags and replies] by alchemistc

I love that Willow and Anya end up becoming good friends after starting out disliking each other... by 5bi5

What If: Faith died? by multiple authors

Are the quirky, blunt characters on Buffy really just autistic? by multiple authors

Buffy's mates suck by multiple authors

Is season 7 better than season 6? by multiple authors

Am I the only one who was hoping Oz would come back in season 7? by multiple authors

https://www.reddit.com/r/buffy/comments/1f4ciaa/what_exactly_were_they_going_for_with_riley/ by multiple authors

Harmony: The Ultimate Arch Nemesis by multiple authors

Cordelia by multiple authors

Whose wardrobe from Buffy would you steal? by multiple authors

Do you think Buffys inconsistent strength can be explained by her powers being tied to her state of mind? by multiple authors

Slayers questions by multiple authors

Wonder how much insurance they would cost in Sunnydale by multiple authors

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

[juridical-angel-blog]

Furthermore, I remember those who read, for those who have the desire and time, that this evening at around 5.15 pm CET on Mediaset 20 (Digital Terrestrial channel 20) there will be the first viewing of the sixth season of Supergirl. Characteristic of the season is not only the final clash between Superman's nemesis and his cousin Supergirl (played by the excellent Melissa Benoist); but that Lex Luthor (played by the multi-talented Jon Cryer) with the combined powers of the Levatian Aliens will accidentally re-divide the Prime Universe into a New Multiverse! However, the episodes themselves will be available for free (starting today) for a week on Mediaset Play 😉

[priteshwemarketresearch]

Global Oscillator Coil Market Share Analysis & Forecast 2035

Oscillator Coil Market: A Complete Overview of Growth, Trends, and Industry Insights

The Global Oscillator Coil Market is anticipated to grow significantly, with its value expected to rise from US$ 1.86 billion in 2025 to approximately US$ 5.15 billion by 2035. This growth represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.3% over the forecast period from 2025 to 2035. The upward trajectory is largely fueled by the rising demand for electronic devices across a wide range of industries.

The Oscillator Coil Market is becoming a vital segment within the broader electronics industry, driven by the rising demand for high-frequency components across modern technologies. From smartphones and laptops to vehicles and industrial automation, oscillator coils are essential for ensuring stable frequencies and precise electronic control. In this article, we provide a complete look at the Oscillator Coil Market, including its scope, size, growth potential, and key industry insights.

Request Sample PDF Copy : https://wemarketresearch.com/reports/request-free-sample-pdf/oscillator-coil-market/1676

Oscillator Coil Market Overview

The Oscillator Coil Market Overview reveals a dynamic landscape shaped by rapid technological advancements. Oscillator coils are used to produce repetitive electronic signals, often forming the heart of oscillators in circuits. Their importance lies in their ability to maintain frequency stability, which is critical in devices like radios, transmitters, GPS systems, and medical instruments.

As industries continue to push toward digitalization and miniaturization, the relevance of oscillator coils continues to expand. These components are not only fundamental to existing electronic systems but are also crucial in emerging technologies such as 5G, IoT (Internet of Things), and autonomous vehicles.

Oscillator Coil Market Scope

The Oscillator Coil Market Scope extends across various end-user industries including telecommunications, automotive, aerospace, healthcare, consumer electronics, and industrial automation. This broad applicability gives the market a significant edge, making it resilient to fluctuations in any single industry.

Moreover, manufacturers are focusing on developing application-specific oscillator coils, which widens the Oscillator Coil Market Scope further. Customization, miniaturization, and enhanced frequency control are the primary areas of innovation, making oscillator coils more versatile than ever.

Oscillator Coil Market Size and Growth Prospects

This positive trajectory is indicative of strong Oscillator Coil Market Growth, particularly in Asia-Pacific, North America, and parts of Europe. Countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States are investing heavily in research and development, boosting the production and application of oscillator coils in cutting-edge technologies.

Key Oscillator Coil Market Trends

Understanding Oscillator Coil Market Trends��can help businesses and investors stay ahead of the curve. Some of the most notable trends include:

Miniaturization: As devices become smaller and more powerful, there's a high demand for compact oscillator coils that maintain performance without taking up space.

Integration with IoT and 5G: The surge in smart devices and high-speed networks is driving the need for precise frequency control, pushing demand for advanced oscillator coil designs.

Eco-Friendly Manufacturing: There is increasing emphasis on sustainable practices in component production, pushing manufacturers to adopt greener processes.

Customization: OEMs are increasingly looking for coils tailored to specific applications, spurring innovation in coil materials and design.

These Oscillator Coil Market Trends indicate a future that values precision, sustainability, and adaptability.

Oscillator Coil Market Insights and Analysis

Recent Oscillator Coil Market Insights suggest a shift towards higher performance requirements in compact formats. The demand for surface-mounted devices (SMDs) and multilayer coils is increasing due to their enhanced efficiency and suitability for modern electronic assemblies.

When diving deeper into Oscillator Coil Market Industry Analysis, it becomes evident that leading companies are investing in automation and smart manufacturing. These strategies not only improve production output but also reduce costs and waste. Additionally, global supply chains are becoming more localized to mitigate risks from geopolitical instability and raw material shortages.

Competition in the market remains strong, with key players focusing on expanding their product portfolios and entering strategic partnerships. Smaller firms are finding success by targeting niche markets and offering customized solutions.

Oscillator Coil Market Share Distribution

In terms of Oscillator Coil Market Share, Asia-Pacific dominates due to its advanced manufacturing infrastructure and strong demand for consumer electronics. China alone contributes a significant portion of global output. North America follows closely, especially in sectors like aerospace and defense where precision electronics are paramount.

Europe, with its emphasis on automotive and industrial automation, is also a key player. The Oscillator Coil Market Share is likely to become more balanced as other regions continue to invest in electronics manufacturing and infrastructure development.

Future Outlook: Where is the Oscillator Coil Market Heading?

The future of the Oscillator Coil Market looks bright. With the continuous rollout of 5G networks, the increasing adoption of electric vehicles, and the expansion of industrial IoT systems, oscillator coils will remain in high demand.

Related Report

Solar Blanket Market

Coal Gasification Market

LNG Infrastructure Market

Conclusion

The Oscillator Coil Market is a thriving industry segment with deep ties to some of the most advanced technologies of our time. From its wide-ranging market scope to its consistent growth, trends, and increasing market share, oscillator coils are set to play a central role in the next wave of technological innovation.

[wpnulledthemepro]

Javo Directory nulled theme 5.15

The Javo Directory nulled theme is an excellent choice for anyone wanting to create a feature-packed directory or listing website without the premium cost. This nulled version gives you full access to all the powerful tools, beautiful templates, and customization options that make Javo Directory a favorite among WordPress users. Whether you’re building a local directory, travel site, or business listing platform, the Javo Directory nulled theme delivers everything you need — completely free. It’s easy to install, highly flexible, and offers the same seamless functionality and modern design as the paid version. With the Javo Directory nulled theme, you can launch a professional, user-friendly website in no time, all while enjoying the advantages of a premium product at no cost. Start building your dream directory site today with confidence and ease!

[galateaknife]

I just wrote a few hundred words of my sampreg abortion fic!

It’s just Sam waking up in the panic room post-5.14, but it’s a good start. I’ve got the beginning of the story planned, the end of the story, and the character arcs. Now I need to refresh my memory on what happens in 5.15 and figure out how I want to integrate the plot points that come with the premise of the fic into the plot of 5.15-5.22.

I think it’s going to wind up being alternating Sam and Dean POVs because I really want to explore a few of Dean’s issues from inside his head, but we’ll see — I find Dean’s voice very hard to get right.

Also also, neither of the Wincest-y factions of people who are absolutely convinced that they are right about the dynamics of the bizarre mishmash of power and gender that tumblr users love to Discourse about are going to like the fic lol. At least, I don’t think so. Good thing one person going insane about the fic will make me very very happy and I don’t care about more than that.

[vincentstlouis]

THE BIG KAHUNA

PROJECT REQUIRES 8,590 TOTAL PIECES OF CONTENT for Year One

THIS INCLUDES:

REPOSTS (Content reposted from one platform and/or Creative Entity to another platform and/or Creative Entity for integrated content sharing)

3,118 Pieces

36.29% of the TOTAL

REMAINING 5,472 pieces of ORIGINAL CONTENT

THIS INCLUDES:

REOCCURRING CONTENT (Content to be reused in perpetuity year after year, example: holiday posts)

1581 Pieces

28.89% of the REMAINING

HERE IS A BREAKDOWN OF THE PLAN

Overarching Phase A: Patrick’s Responsibility

140 Pieces of Content

2.55% of the REMAINING

REASON: Solely Patrick’s responsibility, Vincent cannot help with any of this content

COMPLETED:

0 Pieces

0%

Overarching Phase B: Haddonfield marketing (Michael Myers cosplay content)

64 Videos

1.16% of the REMAINING

REASON: These videos can be filmed at any time while the other phases are being accomplished

COMPLETED:

34 Pieces of 64

37.5%

PHASE ONE:

PRE-KAHUNA

(Back To The Future Quantum Flux, various holiday content)

161 total units

Of which at least 38 are playlists

This compromises 5.15% of Back To The Playlist

REASON: Provides a continuity thread throughout Back To The Playlist. Drives BTTF fans to the playlist concept. Reinforces the stand alone concept if need be. Showcases Spellweb Concepts and the creative writing offerings Vincent St. Louis can provide.

COMPLETED:

1 of 161

0.62 %

PHASE TWO:

HADDONFIELD FAN FICTION & PODCAST

Unknown units

REASON: Provides author credentials to Vincent St. Louis and showcases music by Padraig Graywolfe. Drives eyeballs to Mary’s Gate. Provides an intangible benefit to finishing a project 15 years+ in the making. Showcases the creative writing offerings Vincent St. Louis can provide. Showcases 4and26 Podcasts.

COMPLETED:

TBA

TBA %

________

PHASE THREE:

Finish Back To The Playlist

738 pieces of content

13.48% of the REMAINING

REASON: This compromises the majority of Reoccurring content and will never have to be done again. This also can be a stand alone project with or without other support.

COMPLETED:

32 Pieces

4.34%

PHASE FOUR:

Busy Work

(Graphics, misc posts, logos, filler)

2,840 pieces of content

51.90% of the REMAINING

REASON: Requires little effort of brain power, compromises the vast majority of total content.

COMPLETED:

8 Pieces

0.28%

PHASE FIVE:

Secular Sunday School Video Series

**POSSIBLE PODCAST

60 Pieces

1.09% of the REMAINING

REASON: This portion of the project requires added brain power and focus and will be time consuming

COMPLETED:

0 Pieces

0% COMPLETED

PHASE SIX

Cravendale

Unknown pieces

Unknown %

REASON: This portion of the requires the most brain power and focus, will be time consuming, and will compromise the bulk of content for Year 2.

COMPLETED:

0 Pieces

0%

NEXT:

Begin Plotting Year Two with New Metrics

Integrate Year One and Year Two plans with a Real World Calendar

[howzitsa]

JBL Bar 9.1 True Wireless Surround w Dolby Atmos® Feel like you're right in the scene with 3D surround sound. The JBL Bar 9.1 soundbar brings the audio experience of a movie theater into your home with two detachable surround speakers and the added punch of Dolby Atmos® and DTS:X™ 3D sound. With 820 watts of total system power, you can enjoy every Oscar-worthy performance through powerful, crystal-clear audio. Turn up the 10" subwoofer for pulse-pounding bass or turn it down and relax with Chromecast and AirPlay music streaming. Immerse yourself in the latest blockbuster or re-live your favorite movie or sports scenes. The most incredible home cinema sound experience is here. The Ultimate 3D sound experience Upgrade your viewing or gaming experience from ordinary to extraordinary. Built-in Dolby Atmos®, DTS:X™ and four up-firing speakers bounce sound up to the ceiling back down to you for an awesome, true 3D sound experience. Real surround sound in a second Instantly enjoy a true, cinematic 9.1 surround experience. Simply place the two detachable surround speakers behind you. No extra wires, no extra power connections so no extra hassle. 820W Output power With 820 Watts of system output power, you'll hear your movies, games and music like never before. Let the immersive, powerful sound take your viewing or gaming experience to the next level. Thrilling bass Punchy, precise bass from a mighty 10" wireless subwoofer brings the action to your action movies and the emotion to your music. Ultra HD 4K Pass-through with Dolby Vision™ Incredible 4K video resolution deserves incredible sound. The JBL Bar 9.1 soundbar makes the ultimate dynamic duo when paired with your TV. Chromecast and AirPlay 2 built-in Built-in Wi-Fi and compatibility with Chromecast and Airplay 2 mean you can stream all your favorite online music in high clarity with a simple finger tap. Bluetooth Wireless Streaming Not in the mood for a film or game? No problem. With the JBL Bar 9.1 soundbar you can also enjoy wireless music streaming via Bluetooth from your mobile or tablet. Detachable speakers that go anywhere Built-in batteries mean audio freedom. Place the two detachable surround speakers anywhere in your room to enjoy an incredible audio experience. After 10 hours of playback, simply dock them to the soundbar to recharge. Technical Specifications: Sound system: 5.1.4 channel Power supply: 100 – 240VAC, ~ 50/60Hz Battery charge time: 3 hours Total speaker power output (Max. @THD 1%): 820 W Main Soundbar output power (Max. @THD 1%): 400 W Surround speakers output power (Max. @THD 1%): 2 x 60W Subwoofer output power (Max. @THD 1%): 300 W Soundbar transducer: 4 x racetrack drivers 2 x up-firing full-range drivers 3 x 0.75" (20mm) tweeter Surround transducer (per piece): up-fring full-range driver + 0.75" (20mm) tweeter Subwoofer transducer: 10" Operating temperature: 0°C – 45°C Video: HDMI In: 1 HDMI eARC: 1 HDMI HDCP version: 2.3 Audio: Max SPL: 103dB Frequency response: 34Hz~20kHz Audio inputs: 1 Optical, Bluetooth, Chromecast, AirPlay 2, USB USB: USB port: Type A USB rating: 5 V/500 mA Supported file format: MP3 MP3 codec: MPEG 1 Layer 2/3, MPEG 2 Layer 3, MPEG 2.5 Layer 3 MP3 sampling rate: 16kHz – 48kHz MP3 bitrate: 80kbps – 320kbps USB Port: (USB playback is available in US version. For other versions, USB is for Service only.) Wireless: Bluetooth version: 4.2 Bluetooth profile: A2DP V1.2/ AVRCP V1.5 Bluetooth frequency range: 2402MHz – 2480MHz Bluetooth Max. transmitting power: 13dbm (EIRP) Modulation type: GFSK, π/4 DQPSK, 8DPSK Wi-Fi network: IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz/5GHz) 2.4G Wi-Fi frequency range: 2412 – 2472MHz (2.4GHz ISM Band, USA 11 Channels, Europe and others 13 Channels) 2.4G Wi-Fi Max. transmitting power: 20dBm (EIRP) Modulation type: DBPSK, DQPSK, CCK, QPSK, BPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM 5G Wi-Fi frequency range: 5.15 – 5.35GHz, 5.470 – 5.725GHz, 5.725 – 5.825GHz 5G Wi-Fi Max. transmitting power: 22dBm (EIRP) Modulation type: QPSK, BPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM, 256QAM 5G Wireless frequency range: 5180.0 – 5240.0MHz (Except Europe), 5725.0 – 5825.0MHz 5G Max. transmitting power: 13dBm (EIRP) Modulation type: QPSK Dimensions (W x H x D): 8.84 x 0.58 x 1.20cm (soundbar); 1.73 x 0.58 x 1.20cm (detachable surround speaker, per piece); 3.05 x 4.40 x 3.05cm (subwoofer) Weight: 3.70kg (soundbar); 0.75kg x 2 (detachable surround speaker); 11.14kg (subwoofer) Dimension (Packaging) Dimensions: 10.32 x 3.82 x 4.88cm Gross Weight: 20.00kg Power consumption: Off mode: N/A Standby for Soundbar (when all wireless connections are deactivated): < 0.5 W Network standby (Soundbar): < 6.0 W Network standby (Subwoofer): < 2.0 W Time to standby:

[creativeera]

CNG Compressors Market Propelled by Growing Adoption of Natural Gas Vehicles

The global CNG compressors market is primarily driven by the growing demand for natural gas as an automotive fuel owing to its lower operational costs and environmental benefits compared to gasoline and diesel. CNG compressors play a vital role in fuelling stations by compressing natural gas for dispensing in vehicles. These compressors help in boosting the pressure of natural gas from low- to high-pressure natural gas. CNG compressors are used across light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicle segments including passenger cars, buses, trucks, and others. The growing fleet of natural gas vehicles worldwide is augmenting the demand for CNG compressors. The CNG compressors market size is expected to reach US$ 5.15 Bn by 2030, from US$ 3.79 Bn in 2023, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.5% during the forecast period.

CNG compressors help in providing cleaner fuel for transportation and power generation at affordable prices. Their corrosion resistant design allows reliable performance in harsh industrial environments. Additionally, they reduce operating costs by increasing the gas pressure thus improving the engine performance while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Key Takeaways Key players operating in the CNG compressors market are Atlas Copco, Ariel Corporation, Siemens Energy, Galileo Technologies, Bauer Compressors, Ingersoll Rand, ANGI Energy Systems, Clean Energy Compression, CIMC Enric Holdings Limited, J W Energy Company, Elliott Company, CandB Pumps and Compressor LLC, GE Oil and Gas, and Associated Compressor Engineers. The growing CNG Compressors Market Demand for natural gas as an eco-friendly automotive fuel from light to heavy-duty vehicle segments is driving the CNG compressors market. Various government initiatives and policies promoting natural gas vehicles further boost the demand. Global expansion of key equipment manufacturers into developing regions through partnerships and new production facilities will expand the outreach of CNG compressors. Rising environmental awareness and stringent emission norms especially in Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa are some prominent drivers. Market Key Trends The increasing adoption of natural gas trucks and buses for both public and commercial transport across regions like Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific is a major trend propelling the CNG compressors market. Natural gas provides significant operational cost benefits for fleet owners and reduces dependency on costly diesel. Stringent emission standards as well as tax exemptions and other incentives by governments encourage the shift towards CNG Compressors Companies CNG vehicles. This in turn augments the demand for CNG compressors from OEMs and fuelling stations globally.

Porter's Analysis Threat of new entrants: The CNG compressors market requires large capital investments and established distribution channels. This poses significant barriers for new companies. Bargaining power of buyers: Buyers have moderate power as CNG compressors have different production sizes and applications. However, established brands offers quality products. Bargaining power of suppliers: A few large suppliers dominate the global compressor manufacturing industry. This grants them significant influence over prices of compressor components. Threat of new substitutes: No direct substitutes exist for CNG compressors. Alternatives like electric and hydrogen vehicles are still niche. Competitive rivalry: The market is concentrated, with top players holding major shares. However, price and technology differentiation increase competition. Geographical Regions North America currently holds the largest share of the global CNG compressors market, both in terms of value and volume. Stringent emission norms coupled with tax incentives for natural gas vehicles support the regional market growth. Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing regional market through 2031. Rapid infrastructure development and government initiatives to popularize natural gas as an automotive fuel stimulate demand across developing nations like China and India.

Get more insights on CNG Compressors Market

Choose the language that suits you best.

French

German

Italian

Russian

Japanese

Chinese

Korean

Portuguese

Vaagisha brings over three years of expertise as a content editor in the market research domain. Originally a creative writer, she discovered her passion for editing, combining her flair for writing with a meticulous eye for detail. Her ability to craft and refine compelling content makes her an invaluable asset in delivering polished and engaging write-ups.

(LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vaagisha-singh-8080b91)

[smnet]

H3C WA6120 New Generation Access Point

Dimensions (excluding antenna connectors and mounting accessories) 32 × 180 × 180 mm (H x W x D) Fixed port 1 × 10/100/1000M electrical port PoE 802.3af Local power supply 54V DC Console port 1 Built-in antenna Internal Omni-directional antenna 3dBi antenna gain @2.4GHz 4dBi antenna gain @5GHz Working frequencies 802.11ax/ac/n/a: 5.725 GHz – 5.850 GHz; 5.47 GHz – 5.725 GHz; 5.15 GHz…

[zapmoney]

What is repo rate? How does it affect your loans?

Interest rates on bank loans, including personal loans, are directly impacted by the Reserve Bank of India’s repo rate. Bank rate adjustments may not result in an instant correlation between the interest rate on a personal loan and the repo rate. 

A decrease in interest rates on personal loans might help borrowers feel less pressured financially and obtain credit. Additionally, it might make personal loans more popular. Conversely, an increase in interest rates on personal loans makes credit more expensive for borrowers, which may lower their spending power. “How does the repo rate influence changes in personal loan interest rates?” is now the key query that might come up. To receive a response, you must understand what repo rate is. 

What is a Repo rate? 

The interest rate at which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lends loans to commercial banks is known as the Repo Rate. 

Repurchase Agreement or Repurchasing Option is the full form of Repo Rate. Banks sell eligible securities to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in order to acquire loans. 

The RBI has set the current repo rate in India at 6.50%. According to the most recent information, the repo rate did not alter from what was declared on June 7, 2024. 

An agreement would be reached between the commercial bank and the central bank, or RBI, to repurchase the securities at a predetermined price. This is what banks do when they are short on funds or need to maintain liquidity in the face of volatile market conditions. The RBI uses the repo rate to control inflation. 

How Does Repo Rate Work? 

Interest is charged on the principle amount of each loan you take out from a bank. The cost of credit is what we call this. In a same vein, banks must pay interest to the Central Bank on any money they borrow from the RBI during a cash constraint. We refer to this interest rate as the repo rate. 

Repo is a term for “repurchasing option” or “repurchase agreement” in technical terms. Under this arrangement, banks give the RBI acceptable securities, like Treasury Bills, in exchange for overnight loans. There will also be a contract in place for their repurchase at a set price. The bank receives the money, and the central bank receives the security. 

In the event of a cash shortage or as a result of certain statutory actions, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lends money to Commercial Banks at the Repo rate in order to maintain liquidity. It is one of the RBI’s primary instruments for controlling inflation. 

What is the reverse repo rate? 

The repo rate and the reverse repo rate are the opposite. It is the precise interest rate at which the Reserve Bank of India borrows money or takes in liquidity from commercial banks using government assets as security. Another important component of the RBI’s monetary policy initiatives is the reverse repo rate. The reverse repo rate is currently 3.35%. 

Current Repo Rate in India 

The current Repo Rate in India has been fixed at 6.50% as per the announcement made by the government on 7th June 2024. 

Repo Rate of the Reserve Bank of India  

The most recent repo rate and reverse repo rate are as follows: Repo Rate Today 6.50% Reverse Repo Rate 3.35% Bank Rate 5.15% Marginal Standing Facility Rate 6.75% 

What Effect Does the Repo Rate Have on the Interest Rates on Loans? 

Interest rates on loans, particularly personal loans, are impacted by changes in repo rates. Commercial banks must pay higher interest rates to their customers as borrowing becomes more costly when the RBI hikes the repo rate. This implies that as a borrower, you will ultimately pay higher interest rates on your personal loans, which may put a strain on your finances. 

Conversely, commercial banks can now borrow money at a lower cost thanks to the Reserve Bank of India’s reduction in the repo rate. They might then lower the interest rates on personal loans to pass the savings on to their clients. This will lessen your interest costs and make loan repayment less stressful for you.This implies that the interest rate on personal loans is directly impacted by changes in the repo rate.

Conclusion: 

In conclusion, the interest rates on bank loans are affected by the RBI’s monetary policy actions and modifications to the repo rate and reverse repo rate. Prospective borrowers can make a more informed choice if they have a thorough understanding of repo and reverse repo rates as well as their implications for retail lending rates. 

FAQ:

How does the repo rate affect loans? 

The repo rate, set by the central bank, directly impacts the cost of borrowing for financial institutions. When the repo rate increases, banks may raise their lending rates, making loans more expensive for consumers. 

What is the relationship between the repo rate and loan interest rates? 

The repo rate serves as a benchmark for banks to determine their lending rates. A higher repo rate typically results in higher loan interest rates, while a lower repo rate may lead to lower loan costs for borrowers. 

How does the repo rate influence the availability of loans? 

Changes in the repo rate can affect the availability of loans in the market. A higher repo rate may lead to tighter credit conditions, making it more difficult for individuals and businesses to access financing.

Can the repo rate impact the overall economy through loans? 

Yes, the repo rate plays a crucial role in shaping the economy through its impact on loans. Changes in the repo rate can influence consumer spending, investment decisions, and overall economic growth.