#I mean you can also just buy them digitally
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how does the manga compare to the original novels for Otherside Picnic? I'm debating looking up where to read the novels since I'm caught up with the manga
The way most people talk about Otherside Picnic adaptations is like this: the anime is mediocre, the manga is good, and the books are amazing. The manga is very good but it struggles to capture Sorawo’s internal monologue, which is the most fascinating part of it all. I could talk forever about how much Sorawo’s thoughts and limited perspective on everything are important to Otherside Picnic, but other people have said it better than me a hundred times. I have read all 8 books twice and I only learned about Otherside Picnic in summer of 2022. And I know I will be rereading them many times in the future. They’re so good I can’t begin to get across just how good they are. Again, the manga is very good, but it’s honestly more enjoyable to me after reading the books because I know what Sorawo is thinking the whole time
#if you want to know how to read them you can dm me and I’ll help#I mean you can also just buy them digitally#from J-Novel club. idk how much the whole set costs though#if they made all of them in print in English I would love to buy them#otherside picnic
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damn sorry about the lack of asks (<- lying /j) Im working on number 26 right now but i spent a lot my time earlier messing around with my dvd player instead. Oops. I will probably regret wasting my time like that.. BUT i have two key frames done and the third one sketched out... if im counting right theres three more (Same pose with minor tweaks, but still a unique frame nonetheless) before i get around to the minor animations and gluing it all together. I could probably do these faster if i didnt like doing gifs so much. Somebody stop me!!! anyways goodnight.
#(paragraph in the tags. I got excited dw about it.)#I GOT A CHICKEN RUN DVD!!!!! FROM 2006!!! SO IT HAS ALL THE FUN FEATURES!!! THAT OLDER DVDS HAVE!!!!! LIKE GAMES N SHIT#IT HAS A SCREENSAVER AND LIKE... “digital pets” OR SOMETHING..... AND A CALCULATOR... YOU CAN DOWNLOAD ON YOUR COMPUTER....#And i got all my favorite films burned onto physical dvds#which was a goal of mine to get!! YAYY!!! I can watch them a million times in the background while i work now#especially because my taste in movies includes some obscure ones i cant find dvds for. actually. like anywhere.#Arashi no yoru ni. Klaus. Invader Zim: ETF. things that i cant buy physical things of. which is so fucking lame.#ive seen them so many times so it was about time i got them on dvds#sorry rambling lmao#im just super excited to have media i love as a physical item for me to use whenever#so so so nice#ALSO i got a fucking xbox 360????? i want to get PVZ garden warfare for it i love that game so much#.... & maybe rayman....#SORRY GOODNIGHT I MEAN IT NOW
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idk looks pretty clearly posted to me, kinda seems like you just. didnt read the rules and then broke them lmao
Today's sponsored post is to inform everyone that Reddit's r/Art community is run by pigs with no lives. At best, I was mildly annoying initially. They just slung mud. If this is what a community touts as its “best,” it's trash.
#sub names on reddit work similarly to usernames on other platforms‚ where shorter‚ more easily SEO-able things are highly#sought after and kind of gauranteed large userbases#r/art has over 22 million subscribers#and in popular subs you need to be prepared for extremely tight moderation. thats just. how the site works#they are in essence a digital museum and in order for museum to like. run smoothly‚ guests need to respect the rules#'dont discuss the art here as products' is their version of 'dont touch the paintings'#you dont have to like it and im sure you didnt mean any harm but for all they know comments like that are from spambots about to link a#bootleg version of it#also most mods will be forgiving if you show like. any amount of willingness to work with them#i have gotten posts removed from subs before because i didnt read the rules fully and when i responded 'oh sorry i missed that in the rules#wont happen again' they were fine with it#however if you are rude (and yes‚ i do mean rude‚ not ''lightly annoying''. you were rude first before they responded insulting you)#they might just be rude back#and seems like you know this based on the defensive-ass 'lol i didnt even want to be here anyways😂' final response#like. that is 'whatever ur ugly anyways'-in-response-to-being-turned-down-for-a-date tier#and you paid money to show people it?#also no you may not have explicitly asked for a way to buy it as a sticker but like. you can see how 'id love to buy this as a sticker'#is close enough as to make no nevermind right?#like. that is a way people ask for links. you may not have meant it that way but that generally is what ppl mean when they say that#and in a world where phrases like that can trigger bots to rip the art to generate you a link#mods need to be careful#the advertising gunk of that kind of phrasing is to digital art curations as the oil on your fingers is to irl paintings#you may not mean to get it on there but best practice is to avoid touching it in the first place yknow?#and if you ignore the signs and try to touch it anyways‚ you'll probably be escorted out#origibberish
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“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”
20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:
https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html
I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:
https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/
I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:
WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.
Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.
But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer
Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.
This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war
Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:
https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/111528162905209453
Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/
20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.
But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification
But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process
Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.
These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.
This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).
Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:
https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership
Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!
But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.
The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.
Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.
Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":
https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill
Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
#pluralistic#playstation#sony#copyright#copyfight#drm#monopoly#enshittification#batgirl#road runner#financiazation#the end of ownership#ip
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A Romantic and Incomplete Guide to Tokyo
12 Days of Christmas: Day 8, January 1st, 2025
STAYC’s Yoon Seeun x Male Reader
3.7k words
Christmas Masterlist
The chilly air courses through your body inside Narita—thought it’d be warmer inside the building. You rub your hands, seeking just a tiny amount of warmth. Fuck, how cold is it?
The weather app shows a single digit temperature. Even the three-layer clothing you’re wearing doesn’t help, really.
Fuck.
“So, we’ll match you into pairs. For those who are already in a group–” you can’t quite focus on what the guides are saying. You’ve barely slept on the plane. The cabin croaked and cried all the way. God, it’s going to be another bad first day.
You’re too focused on your predicament to hear the voice of a woman beside you.
“Hey.”
Fuck, this place is cold.
“Hey.” Her voice is finally processed by your mind with a tap on your shoulder. You’re jolted out of your trance. Beside you is a somewhat tall (well, as tall as you), smiling woman. She doesn’t seem to be that much of a talkative person, judging from how she fully buttons her coat. You can handle that.
Her eyes are gorgeous. It’s a pair that might hypnotize you somewhere along the trip. Her face is more on the wider side. She looks beautiful nonetheless. Fuck, you forgot to say something. Did you just stare at her like that? Good grief, first day and it’s over for you!
“Yeah, I get it. I didn’t sleep last night either,” she says with a chuckle. What a relief.
You blink to refresh yourself from the fatigue. “Y–Yeah, hi!”
You tell her your name. She tells you her name—Seeun. She tells you that people often misread her name as See-un, which is funny because she happens to have a friend named Sieun. Both of you are from the same city, though you two have probably never met each other.
“So, what do you do?”
“I’m in the entertainment industry,” she answers with a shy smile.
With a face like that, yeah, she probably is.
—
“Definitely, Maybe.”
“What, did you watch it at fourteen or something?” Seeun asks with a chuckle. “I thought it was like–a three-star movie.”
“Yeah.”
“I see.”
The two of you are treading aimlessly inside Tower Records (the Shibuya one), trying to find a few albums to take back to your homes. You’ve picked up a few. She has picked up a few.
“That feels a bit–condescending,” you say with a forced smile, a little disheartened. Come on, Seeun, you don’t have to be so rude!
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I mean–mine’s not much better either,” she apologizes, guilt looming in her voice.
“What is it?”
“The Last Jedi.”
You halt your movements, shocked by her answer. Sure, The Last Jedi still have a lot of supporters, but you didn’t expect her to be one of them.
“Really?”
She stops walking along with you, doubling down on her answer. “Yeah.”
“That’s brave,” you say.
She chuckles. “What? Are you going to say that I’m tasteless or something?” She walks past your face to pick up Good Riddance. You also have one back at your home from your trip a few years ago, the deluxe one.
“I gave it four and a half stars,” you reply. That’ll definitely impress her.
“That’s cool,” she says, eyes still focused on the album. Her expression seems happier, though. “What do you like about it?”
You lean in closer to Seeun to look at the back of the album with her. It’s the deluxe version, sixteen songs. If she wants to buy one, this should be it. “I love a movie with a vision.”
A smile escapes Seeun’s lips. She’s clearly impressed by your answer. “Says the one who has a two-thousands romance as their favorite,” she playfully teases.
“Fourteen is a crucial age in human development,” you scoff. “What did you watch back then?”
“Award winners,” she says, putting Good Riddance on top of a stack of Souvlaki, Pet Grief, Charm, and a few more albums you’ve never quite heard of. Unlock My World? Titanic Rising?
“I had a lot of free time during the summer before my ninth–or tenth grade, so I kinda just watched whatever was in the award-winner section on Netflix.”
She counts the stack. It’s at six albums, for now. “But yeah, I particularly love The Last Jedi because Rian did what Jeffrey didn’t, or wasn’t brave enough to. Star Wars can be too safe a lot of times.” She continues walking into the G aisle, and you have to catch up with her.
“I get that,” you say, glancing around for potential candidates for your stack, nothing as of now. “So, just The Last Jedi, or–”
“Steel Magnolias,” she cuts you off sternly, confidently. You’re not surprised (both with the choice and how she cut you off). They really scream her.
“That feels more like you.”
A small laugh escapes her lips.
“You could’ve just asked for my Letterboxd, you know?”
—
The ramen shop is filled with tour group members. No loud chattering, of course. The tour guide explicitly asked for that. It might disturb the other visitors.
You and Seeun are sitting with two other fellow travelers. The two of you are too shy to say a thing, though, so you just let Yeonjun and Miyeon shoot questions at you for the whole dinner. These two look so damn good. It’s as if they’re idols or something.
You learned about Seeun a little more. She has a younger brother. She was raised in Pyeongtaek. She has two cats at her parents’. You notice the way she keeps scrunching her nose. She looks so cute doing so.
She seems to love Shoyu ramen, but judging from a single order doesn’t seem fair. She eats with her mouth closed; that’s a good sign. Her mannerisms are just too perfect for a person. Her time in the industry probably teaches her a lot of this.
You trade contacts with Yeonjun and Miyeon as you finish the meal. It seems that they really are idols, after all.
“Maybe we can meet again soon? Like–after the trip,” Yeonjun asks.
Miyeon laughs softly, “You’ll have to be a bit conservative with your clothes, though. We don’t want any attention on us.”
“Sure,” you answer, and that’s a date.
—
“So, how about we keep switching every day? Four nights, that should be two for each.”
In front of you is a double bed.
A double bed.
You cannot fathom the idea of sleeping next to a person who you've known barely a day. It’s going to be awkward. You cannot do this!
“Y–You said you work in the entertainment industry, right?” You can’t risk her back just for your own comfort. Don’t be an asshole! Help her!
“Yeah, and?” she makes a slightly puzzled expression.
“Well, I don’t want your back to–”
“Do you know you can just ask them for a cushion?”
“Oh,” you utter. That was embarrassing.
“I’m not going to be a snobby bitch over a bed, you know?” she says with a giggle.
—
You cannot sleep that well last night, even with the cushion. Now, you’re walking along a road in Harajuku, a little fatigued, a little tired.
You take in the atmosphere around you, trying to inhale some clean fresh air. The trees are more than abundant. What an atmosphere. It feels so cozy, so comfortable. God, you just wish you could live here forever.
Seeun seems to notice the exhaustion that’s creeping up on you, though.
“Good sleep?” she asks, trying to gauge your current state. You’re tired, of course, but you can’t let her know that.
“Y–Yeah.” Well, the stutter in your voice is evident. That’s bad.
She chuckles, patting your back softly. Your body shudders at her apparently friendly touch.
“Well, it’s my turn tonight.”
The two of you trod along the streets of Harajuku. You take a few pictures. She takes a few pictures.
—
Well, you’re feeling a little guilty now. The bed is just feeling too comfy. Seeun is probably hurting her back down there.
You keep shifting and turning on your bed, unable to sleep. A lot is going through your head right now.
“Seeun?”
No answer.
“Seeun?”
Still no answer.
You lean your head over the edge, only to find Seeun already in slumber. A small smile is painted on her face. It’s probably a good dream.
You should just let her sleep.
—
“So.”
It’s Yokohama day. You’re sitting at a Starbucks under some tower, while the others seem to be enjoying themselves somewhere else. The chilly wind blows on your face.
“How about we–uh,” you pause, trying to gather the courage to say the next words.
“You’re making it look like it’s something bad,” she says, chuckling. A cup of hot latte rests in her hand idly.
“I’d argue that it’s pretty weird.”
“And I’d argue that I won’t be mad at you, like–how bad can it be?”
You take a deep breath, gathering the courage to say the next words.
“Can we–Can we just–sleep on the bed together?” you ask, avoiding her eyes. The last few words come out a bit too fast, but you believe that the message was delivered, nonetheless.
She lets out a smile. “Sure, why not?”
You do a double take. You’re shocked that she’d say yes to it as easily as that. “That was easy.”
“My back fucking hurts.” And you two let out a laugh together.
—
She smells good.
It’s already one in the morning, but you’re still shaking in the dripping anxiety of sleeping next to her. And with that smell. You just can’t sleep.
Fucking hell.
“Seeun.”
“Yeah?” she answers immediately. God, hasn’t she slept yet?
“What perfume do you use?” And you hear a giggle come from your side.
“Dior’s Sakura,” she says.
“Can I–uh–see it?” you ask.
She grabs the bottle. You’re expecting her to hand you that, but suddenly, she sprays it on her wrist.
“Wh–Wha–”
She gives you her wrist, and the smell reaches your nose before you can say a word. You close your eyes. It’s so intense, yet so fresh, like spring.
“O–Oh.”
“How was it?” she asks with a giggle.
“It was–uh–pretty good.”
Seeun bursts out a laugh. “Come on, it’s definitely better than pretty good. Like–look at your face!”
It’s definitely better than pretty good. “Y–Yeah, it’s–heavenly, Seeun.”
“You want some more? C’mon, grab my arm. It’s yours,” she invites you, and to be honest, there has never been any arm you’d want to take in its scent more than Seeun’s.
With your instinct, you pull Seeun’s right arm closer to your nose, before taking a deep breath full of her scent, eyes closed. It wouldn’t be a lie to say that you’re in heaven right now.
You hear Seeun laughing from the left. It’s a bit weird to sniff a woman’s arm like this, really, but you couldn’t care less right now.
“I don’t think you should stop just there, baby,” she suddenly blurts out.
The word spurs you on. You immediately go over Seeun’s body to have her below you, all smiling and blushing. She’s avoiding your gaze. She’s shy, but she wants this. She’s craving for this, and so are you.
“What should I do with you, Miss Yoon?” you tease her, drawing a line in the middle of her chest with your index finger, making her keen softly.
“A–Anything, baby. I need you–right now.”
You immediately latch your lips with hers, invading her mouth aggressively. She tastes like strawberry. The wet sound of kissing rings over your ear.
“So–So good,” she mutters into the blazing kiss. Her hands quickly pull down your pants, revealing your throbbing cock underneath. She then starts jerking you off with her filthy hand. She wants to milk you dry as quickly as possible.
You pull back from the kiss. A string of saliva connecting your lips is evident. That looks so fucking hot. Below, she’s still rubbing your cock up and down, making your whole body shiver in pleasure.
“M–My god, Seeun,” you groan.
She only chuckles, before drawing her hand back, leaving you whining in the absence of her.
“Can’t have you cum outside of me, baby,” she whispers, unbuttoning her top. Her beautiful cleavage comes into view. Her nipples sit just around the edge of her shirt. You quickly swathe her shirt away, revealing her hard, dusky nipples. She’s ready for you.
Immediately, you latch your needy mouth onto her buds. The mixture of the salty taste of her sweat and her scent of spring are mixed into an aphrodisiac. Her raw, unfiltered moans fill your ears.
“Yes, yes, fuck!” she mewls. Her hands pressing your head onto her breasts. God, what a feeling.
You lavish her tits, hands trying to get rid of her shirt. She lifts herself up from the bed slightly to give way, and finally, the obstructing shirt leaves her taut body, exposing her upper body in all glory for you.
Still, it’s not enough. You need more. You need more. Your mouth travels down her toned tummy, making her moan is pure pleasure. Finally, you reach the edge of her pants, and you slowly, so, so slowly, pull them down, exposing her wanton cunt. Fuck, she’s already wet.
“Nghhh~” Seeun groans, a hand reaching down to rub her drenched folds by the sensitive nub. Her body jolts as she touches there. She’s moaning, and you can only watch.
“Goddamn it, Seeun. Thought you need me,” you utter.
Seeun giggles through her moan. “I–I’m waiting. J–Just need something i–inside me.”
Hastily, you unbutton your shirt, making you bare above her wanting body, before throwing the shirt to god knows where. You’re so ready to fuck her with your cock.
“Ah–will you just–ah–p–put it inside me already?” Seeun mewls, hand busy rubbing her cunt.
With sheer force, you flip Seeun so that she’s above you. You’re going to have her ride you until you’re dry.
“M–My god, you’re gonna have me do all the work?” she asks, her hands resting on your chest, almost clawing your skin.
“I–Is that okay?”
“Mmm, only if you cum inside me,” she answers sultrily, biting her finger.
You smile, lining up your cock against her pussy. She slowly sinks down, and–
“Ah!” the two of you moan in unison.
The feeling of Seeun on your cock is unreal. Her walls graze your cock, making you moan erratically. She ever so slowly sinks down on your cock, making you watch yourself disappear into her. Fuck.
She pushes her cunt down until you’re buried up to the hilt. You then languidly draw your cock out of her, before you thrust straight back into her pussy.
“Fuck!” she cries out.
You catch your tempo, starting to move in a steady rhythm into her needy pussy. Both of you groan in pure pleasure. God, this feels so fucking good.
“D–Do you know STAYC?” Seeun asks, trying to catch the rhythm of the debauchery.
STAYC, Star to a Young Culture. You’ve heard of them. A few hits have passed your ear. SO BAD, STEREOTYPE, Bubble. A pretty decent group, you’d say.
“Y–Yeah, have heard a few songs,” you reply, unsure where this conversation would go. She’s still moving up and down on your cock majestically. Her breasts sway with the movement. She’s beautiful. The sight of your cock disappearing into her pussy only brings pleasure to you.
“Well–” she grabs onto your shoulders, leaning in closer “–I’m one of them.”
What the fuck?
You shoot a confused expression towards her, before slowly turning into a laugh. “Ha–r–really?”
“Didn’t g–get this abs and thighs by a miracle,” she answers. Yeah, she does look good.
“Goddamn,” you exclaim, still shocked by the revelation. She’s an idol, a pretty popular one. “Well, it’s an honor to be engaging in a coitus with you, Miss Yoon.”
She bursts out a loud laugh. Her back arches. Coitus is the funniest word you could think of, and that seems to work on her. “Oh my god, coitus? What the fuck was that?”
You cannot help but to laugh along with her. “Ha–sorry, d–didn’t mean to.”
“I–If I can’t cum because of this–I’m gonna be pissed,” she says, chuckling.
You touch her thighs, trying to feel her approaching orgasm, and it’s there. She’s tensing up. “Looks like my words have no effect, Miss Yoon,” you tease.
“You’re lucky today,” she happily replies, poking your nose softly, as she keeps bouncing on your length.
You keep thrusting your hips up to meet her thighs in the middle. Don’t want her to do all the work, after all. The wet sounds of your fleshes smacking into each other echoes through the room. The smell of your perfumes and sex are mixing into a concoction. It’s an aphrodisiac that only serves to drive you insane.
“G–God, you smell so good, Seeun,” you involuntarily utter, so lost in her scent of spring.
“T–Told ya, Dior’s Sakura f–for a Japan trip,” she says, voice almost moaning.
Your thrusting goes on, but the scent is just too hard to ignore. It’s making you crazy. You need her. You need her smell. Suddenly, you pull Seeun down towards you. She yelps in shock, before you take in the scent of the crook of her neck. Fuck, she smells like spring—so fresh, so clean. It’s so lively.
“Wh–What a freak,” she scoffs, but you’re sure that she’s enjoying this, judging by her moan.
“Guilty as charged,” you reply with a giggle, still inhaling her lively scent, pressing your lips on her neck from time to time. She tastes as good as she smells.
“G–God, you’re making me cum, baby,” she utters, grinding on your cock in an even more frantic motion. Her breathing becomes more erratic and seconds go by.
You pull back from her neck to roam over to her soft breasts above you. They feel so good in your hands. She cries out in the overstimulation you’re giving her—your hands on her chest, your cock digging into her dripping wet pussy. It’s heaven to her.
“Nghhh~ gonna cum, gonna cum, gonna cu–ah!”
Her entire body becomes rigid. A stream of her squirt leaks out of her already-drenched cunt. Her eyes flutter in ecstasy. Her walls contract around your cock. Her back arches, showing her nude body in all glory for you. Her moan hits high notes. God, she has a wonderful voice.
You properly fuck her through her seemingly-neverending peak. You keep pounding into her pussy with reckless abandon as her body spasms above you. Her pleasure-infused moan grows shakier at the overstimulation. Her body then falls on top of you, locking you in a tight embrace.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god. Y–Your cock is so f–fucking good!” she shouts, spurring you on even more. Your pace quickens, plowing into her spent cunt erratically, so determined to fill her with your cum.
The familiar tension coils inside your stomach. You’re ready to fill her up. You’re ready to paint her insides white. You’re ready to breed her. You’re ready to reach the precipice.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, gonna cum, gonna cum,” you grunt, thrusting into her pussy frantically. Her body limps on top of you, simply without energy to move anymore.
“N–Need you–b–breed me,” she whimpers, eyes barely opening, body getting ragdolled by your motions.
With any remaining energy, you’re so determined to fully breed her with your cum. You pound her pussy with your thrusts, chasing your own orgasm. It’s there. It’s right fucking there.
“Fuck!”
You reach your breaking point. Your entire body shudders at the peak. Your cock shoots cum into her wanton, needy pussy, filling her womb with your nectar. A guttural groan leaves your lips. You’re taking full pleasure in fucking her wanting body. Fuck, it feels so good.
You slowly come down from your orgasm. Your breathing finds its rhythm again, panting for air. Your hands cling to her body tightly, not wanting her to leave you. Both of you are blushing under this Tokyo moon, and you couldn’t be happier with where you are—under her, inside her.
“That–That was f–fucking good, b–baby,” she utters, stuttered. Her hands are caressing your flushing body, feeling every curve and contour.
“Y–You are too, baby,” you say, still trying to catch your breath under the gleaming moonlight. “Fuck.”
Seeun softly chuckles, slowly dragging herself off your cock. Your groan as her walls are grazing your sensitive cock. It almost hurts, but finally, you’re out of her wet cunt.
“I–I’ll go to the b–bathroom,” she whimpers before getting off the bed, limping towards the bathroom to wash your filths out. Your juices can be seen dripping down her meaty thighs, what a lewd sight.
As she enters the bathroom, you lie back down on your bed—tired, spent, waiting for her to come back. You think about what just happened with Yoon Seeun on this bed. You kissed her. You sucked on her breasts. You pounded her pussy with reckless abandon, then shot spurts of cum inside her. God, could tonight get any better?
“Babe!” Seeun shouts from inside the bathroom.
You lazily get up from the bed, thinking of what she could possibly want. You walk towards the door before opening it.
The sight of Yoon Seeun seductively biting her finger greets you. She’s leaning on the sink. Her breasts are resting on her chest gorgeously. Your cum is still dripping down from her used pussy, and you figure it out.
She wants another round.
“S–Seeun,” you say, leaning tiredly against the door. You don’t have the energy to go on anymore. You just want to sleep already.
Seeun giggles before walking towards you. There’s the sway of her hips. There’s the way she bites her finger. There’s the way she puts one leg in front of the other every step. And before you know, your cock is hard again.
You can go for another round.
She pulls her finger out of her mouth, biting her lip sultrily. She then plunges her bitten finger into your mouth, making you suck on it the same way you suck her tits. A chuckle escapes her lips.
“Think you can handle me again, baby?”
With her finger inside your mouth, you can do nothing but nod.
—
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NPMD Digital Ticket details!
Since not every can/can afford to/wants to buy the Digital Ticket for Nerdy Prudes Must Die (and the bonus material that comes with the purchase), for your inclusion purposes, here's a list of fun background details, funny moments and comments made in the track commentary, for you to use however you like!
Ruth doesn't actually need to wear her headgear anymore, but she wears it anyway because it makes her feel safe.
Jeff pitched a Nightmare Time episode about the problematic puppy from Steph's verse of High School Is Killing Me, meaning there is a story there.
In the line, "I learned that at the anti bullying assembly last month, fucknugget!" there's a long pause before "Fucknugget!" which really makes it sound like Max forgot to insult Richie and just threw the word out.
All of the little noises Ruth makes, she makes because she has more she wants to say, but she can't say them (presumably due to anxiety).
In the proshot, you can't see fully how low Richie goes while he and Ruth sneak up on Peter, but Jon is fully crouched down. He then uses Pete's pockets and elbows to climb up like he's climbing a mountain (he mimes using a pick or axe to get good hold).
While Steph is talking, Ruth and Richie try their best to hear through the phone by getting as close as they can to it.
The reason Max and Jason were in the Pasqualli's parking lot is that they were practicing their skateboarding. They do that at Pasqualli's instead of at school/at a skatepark because they don't want the smoke club and skater kids to make them look like noobs. (This was a cut bit from the Pasqualli's scene).
The line, "Some big... dumb... sexy... football star" is expanded. In the Digital Ticket, Grace says, "Some big... dumb... sexy... sweaty... hot... well-spoken... beautifully tall football star."
When they're in the boys bathroom, Steph jumps to see over the stalls.
Richie Naruto runs when they're going to Waylon Hall. Pete slaps his hands down, but after they pause to look at the house, Richie looks over his shoulders at Pete a couple of times before darting away from him, once again Naruto running.
Richie stops in the door at the Waylon Place, so Pete pushes him inside.
Ruth and Richie speak at the same time when they say, "I'm allergic to deodorant" and "I have overactive sweat glands."
Ruth goes straight to Richie to complain after the "pus in my pits" exchange with Steph.
When Steph suggests saying there's a party at the Waylon Place, Pete, Ruth and Richie all react negatively (mostly nervously groaning).
While Grace sings the "He's just a nerd in disguise!" line, Richie can be seen practicing the first move of the Bully the Bully dance.
After Ruth says, "We're gonna cut off his nips!" you can see Steph look confused and ask, "What?"
While Pete and Richie talk in the Waylon Place ("Am I reading as ghost or Lin Manuel Miranda" & "She came all the way out here just for you."), Ruth and Steph discuss and practice Ruth's skeleton moves.
Richie gets stuck in the dangling parts of Pete's costume when he says, "You could just hit it and quit it, bro!" He then aggressively detangles himself.
The line "He's just really fucking brave!" comes from Richie being jealous that he's not that brave.
Richie hypes Ruth up a bit after Max says her skeleton bit was really special.
Grace hides behind Ruth while Max is dying.
Richie rolls his eyes when Grace says "It was an act of god!" (Similarly, Shapiro sighs and looks away in disbelief when Grace later says "It was god's plan!")
Pete gags when Grace says "Hack all his limbs off." Richie can also be seen gagging and holding his stomach several times.
Ruth hands Max's nipples over to Grace after cutting them off.
Jeff Blim is the principal of Hatchetfield High. Not a character of Jeff's, just Jeff himself.
Brenda still seems quite judgmental after the two weeks have passed. She makes a lot of not-quite-friendly faces when the football team's talking about Richie smelling bad.
When Richie struggles to remove the Zeke the Fightin' Nighthawk costume, he accidentally removes his jacket as well, leading to Jon having to put it back on (which he also struggles with) (and which creates a funny situation, since Richie was supposed to go shower).
Richie seems to have hurt his leg by the second fall in Nerdy Prudes Must Die (the song).
After Steph tells Grace to "Leave Ruth alone!" in the principal's office, Ruth tries to grab Steph's hand.
The wig Joey wears when he plays Dan Reynolds isn't Dan's real hair. Dan Reynolds wears a toupée.
Trevor and Angela's drama student encourage each other after they finish rehearsing.
Additional line when Grace is lying to Shapiro: "Suddenly, I remembered a crucial detail that made everything make sense. A picture came flashing into my mind, like I was Enola Holmes!"
"My dad sells women shoe! Shoes!"
Angela misses the chair at Beanie's and falls on her ass, leading to her, Joey and Mariah (mostly Mariah) breaking character.
During The Summoning, Tinky focuses ONLY on Pete. The entire time, he looks like he's restricting himself from lunging out and attacking him. At one point, he points at the Bastard's Box while staring at Pete.
90% of the time during The Summoning, Pokey's staring at his own mask.
Steph facepalms after Max says "That's nasty! ... I like it!"
#yes a lot of these are richie and ruth#im hyperfixating dont mind me#starkid#hatchetfield#hatchetverse#nerdy prudes must die#starkid npmd#npmd#nerdy prudes must die digital ticket#npmd digital ticket#ruth fleming#ruth npmd#max jägerman#max npmd#richie lipschitz#richie npmd#pete spankoffski#pete npmd#steph lauter#steph npmd#jason jepson#jason npmd#grace chasity#grace npmd#detective shapiro#brenda npmd#dan reynolds#trevor lipschitz#trevor npmd#tinky hatchetfield
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ATEEZ STUCK IN THE FRIENDZONE
ot8 x gn reader
summary: they are down bad for their best friend
tw: mostly fluff, maybe angst. also alcoholic drinks and being drunk in yeosang’s and wooyoung’s. parts. (+ possible spelling mistakes since english is not my first language!)
a/n: friends to lovers > any other tropes lol also requests are open rn!!
part 2: hongjoong + seonghwa | yunho + yeosang | san + mingi (more soon!)
HONGJOONG
hongjoong felt helpless. he didn’t know if you were messing with him on purpose or if you were genuinely clueless to his feelings, but he is sure he’s about to lose his mind. how much more will he be able to take of your soft touches on his skin? or how close to his face you would get when you wanted to show him something on your phone?
everything would change if he just closed the distance between you two. or if he said those three dangerous words that had been appearing in his mind every time he saw you. three words. one kiss. or both?
“joong, are you with me?” you asked suddenly, pulling him out of his thoughts. he blinked rapidly and nodded “something about buying a new laptop right?”
you hummed in response, shoving your phone in his face while scooting closer. “i think i like this pink one, it’s so very cute, but do you think it will be able to take all the digital material for class and all my sims expansions? or should i just go with the boring one that has more storage?” you asked, looking at him. it took everything in him to not kiss you right then and there, so instead, he bit his lip, pretending to think about it.
“i mean, you can always personalize it with stickers so it’s less boring” he suggested. your eyes immediately widened, not having thought about that option. “hongjoong you are a genius! i can’t believe it didn’t cross my mind”
“i know you like the back of my hand y/n” he said in a whisper, but you heard him nonetheless.
“that’s why you’re my best friend, you always complement me” you said, smiling and returning to your seat beside him, as you started purchasing the ‘boring’ laptop.
hongjoong never wanted to bang his head against a wall more.
SEONGHWA
“so he told her that she was the crazy one! can you believe that, hwa?” you asked, crossing your arms as you walked beside him. you have been rambling non stop about what happened to one of your friends and her now ex boyfriend. “bold of him to accuse her of being crazy when he was the one that cheated with her cousin” he answered, turning his head towards you and smiling.
“right, thank you! that’s exactly what i told her!” you exclaimed, throwing your arms in the air dramatically. “i swear guys are so dumb these days”
“the dumbest” he said, chuckling.
“not you of course, you are always the exception whenever i talk about men and their stupidness” you said, patting his shoulder lightly in a friendly manner. seonghwa’s heart skip a beat. he wanted to be an exception, he wanted you to realize his feelings so bad and for you to reciprocate them.
“trust me, i would not be friends with a dumb man” you continued, now grabbing his arm and leaning your head against it. “i genuinely think you are the only exception”.
he was about to start jumping from joy, were you about to realize how meant to be you both are? how you both were each other’s ‘exceptions’?
“i think you’re an exception too” he said, testing the waters as he stopped in his tracks, causing you to lift your head up to look at him. you smiled, and he swore his heart stopped beating for a second.
“of course i am! that’s why we’re best friends, hwa!” you exclaimed happily. in contrast, he internally screamed, hope slipping through his fingers slowly.
YUNHO
it was a sort of tradition to have game night every week in order to de-stress, followed by a slumber party of two. you would bring snacks and drinks, and yunho would provide the tv, playstation and games. it was the perfect arrangement.
tonight was no different: you were lying on the coach with your legs resting on top of yunho’s lap, as you quickly pressed on the buttons of your customized controller that he had gifted you for your last birthday. meanwhile, he played with his spider man joystick, silently cursing whenever he got hit by enemies.
“noo yunho i’m down! come and revive me!” you groaned when your character died. he chuckled in response “you are really bad at this game, y/n”.
you playfully hit his arm and rolled your eyes “i would be better if someone covered for me instead of running off!” you said. “i was getting supplies!” he complained, making his character bring you back to life. before he was done though, another player killed him. “what were you saying about my gaming skills, baby?” you asked, playfully.
yunho.exe stopped working, as every time you called him that nickname. he knew that you were just being friendly, but he couldn’t help how fast his heart would start beating each time. for you, it was just a word. but for him? the nickname meant everything: hope. hope that someday you will use the nickname in a way that would trascend friendship. hope that someday, you will realize his feelings and reciprocate them.
maybe if you used the word often enough, you would soon realize it.
YEOSANG
the first time you kissed was a drunken mistake. you both took one too many shots at san’s birthday party, and one thing lead to another and you ended up straddling his lap as you hungrily kissed him. despite his *very* drunk state, yeosang was over the moon, hoping this would change the direction of your friendship.
he realized how wrong he was when he woke up the morning after with a text from you that said “i hope that last night doesn’t change anything between us, i’m sorry”. he knew you were probably spiraling into the worst case scenarios, so he thought it would be healthier to just leave it there, for now at least. “we’re still friends, don’t worry” he texted back, hating himself for being a coward.
the second time was a dare at some party you attended of a mutual friend. he was the designated driver, and you knew he would have a hard time dragging his drunk friends back back to the car, so you offered to stay sober with him. he told you that it wasn’t necessary, earning a warm smile from you as you replied “that’s what best friends are for”.
the music was loud and the place was filled with drunk people, some making out in corners of the room, others engaging in incomprehensible conversations. yeosang and you were gathered in a circle with your friends as you played some sort of truth or dare game. it was mingi’s turn to spin the empty bottle of beer, having just finished his dare. to your misfortune, it landed on you.
“truth” you answered, earning groans from your friends, complaining about how ‘boring’ that option is. “y/n you picked truth last time! it’s dare time” mingi said in between giggles. “ugh fine, dare then i guess” you said, rolling your eyes as a smile creeped on your face.
“i dare you to kiss someone from this circle” he said, quickly glancing at yeosang, who immediately paled. you blushed, meditating your options for a moment before turning to your best friend. “we kissed once and remained friends. please don’t let this change”, you said, crashing your lips against his.
and he was, once again, over the moon, choosing to ignore the last part of that sentence.
SAN
“sannie!” you exclaimed, running up to him and throwing your arms around his neck. his arms immediately wrapped around you, holding you in place as he hid his face on your neck, inhaling your scent in discretion. it’s been too long since he last saw you, felt you near him. “i missed you so much, san! tell me everything about the tour”
you spent the afternoon talking about his adventures while on tour, showing you pictures of different places and telling you funny anecdotes of his members. each time he finished a story, you would smile so big and radiantly he found himself trying to control his heartbeat from racing. you also told him about how you were doing, of course! he wanted to know every new detail in your life, even though he knew many of the updates since you both regularly texted.
“i missed this” he confessed, before adding “i missed you”. your eyes softened at his words, taking his hand on yours. “i missed you too, sannie. it’s hell not being able to see your best friend every day as usual” you said. unbeknownst to you, you had just broken his heart a little with that last part. he just nodded, giving you a small smile.
on tour he felt your absence in words he couldn’t describe, always reaching for you when you weren’t there or aching to just grab his phone and call you. so, he decided he had enough of that. he was determined to tell you his feelings.
“actually, i bought something for-“ he started saying, but got interrupted by your phone vibrating beside you. “sorry, hold on” you said, before picking up. a smiled immediately appeared on your face, lighting up your whole aura as you talked back to whoever was on the phone with you. san couldn’t be more in love with you.
“sorry sannie, i have to leave. i thought my date cancelled tonight but apparently will be able to make it on time. so i have to leave right now to get ready for it” you explained.
his heart broke once again, letting go of the silver necklace he had bought for you. maybe another time, or maybe he was already too late.
MINGI
you were starting to get annoyed, and mingi knew it. you stood in front of him, crossing your arms as you looked at him questioningly. “i just don’t understand why you won’t let me read your songs”, you complained.
mingi sighed in response, leaving his notebook on the table beside him. “because it’s personal, y/n”. you rolled your eyes in annoyance, not believing a single word that came out of his mouth. “oh so now it’s personal? wasn’t it also personal when you, without my knowledge may i add, read my diary?” you argued back.
“that was different and you know it! i literally didn’t even know it was your diary” he said. “plus you forgave me for that!”
on normal circumstances, he would let you read his song notebook as many times as you wanted, hell, he would even sing/rap the verses for you. but ever since he realized that the meaning behind those songs revolved around you, about how you, his best friend, were his main source of inspiration, he decided to never let those songs see the light of day. unless until he was ready. what if you were repulsed? what if you decided he was creepy and distanced yourself from him? he didn’t even want to think about those scenarios.
“yes i did, but that doesn’t change the fact that you still read about my deepest thoughts and-“ you started saying, before your eyes widened and your voice started stuttering “wait. do you- do you actually not trust me? do you think i would leak the songs to the media?”
mingi honestly couldn’t believe what he was hearing. or worse, what you said next: “is this also why you’ve been avoiding me?”. mingi felt like punching himself, had he been avoiding you unconsciously? he knew he started keeping his distance a bit more, not replying as quick and not visiting as often as before. but he thought the changes were not noticeable by you.
you stared at him, tears forming slowly but surely on your eyes, as you tried so hard to keep them from falling. mingi was looking down, too lost on his thoughts. you waited a few moments, before muttering a low “i would never do that to you, mingi”.
he realized you were gone when he heard the door closing behind you.
WOOYOUNG
“if looks could kill, that guy would be long dead” yunho said, wrapping an arm around wooyoung as he smiled teasingly. he huffed, not taking his eyes from you and the random guy that had been keeping you entertained for longer than appreciated.
you were just getting drinks from the bar, but a random guy approached you suddenly and stole your attention before wooyoung could do something about it. you didn’t look uncomfortable, so it’s not like he could just walk up to you and steal you away. you weren’t even “his” to steal to begin with, his official title being “my bestest friend in the whole world” as you would say. a title that he, in fact, despised.
“you can always intervene you know? i mean they were supposed to get you a drink” yunho pointed out before sipping from his beer can. wooyoung looked at him. then looked back at you. his decision was made the moment he saw the man reach for your waist.
“love, what’s taking my drink so long?” he asked as soon as he approached you at the bar, stealing you away from the man and wrapping his arm around your waist instead. you turned to him, unknowing of his true intentions “oh my god woo i forgot! here it is, i’m sorry”
but wooyoung’s eyes didn’t leave the man, who immediately averted his gaze. “i didn’t know you had a boyfriend” the man said, glancing back at you. “he’s actually my best-“ you started saying but wooyoung interrupted you.
“boyfriend, yes. i think you should leave” .
JONGHO
jongho felt your arms wrap around him from behind the coach, pulling him back and stilling him in his place. he looked up at you and smiled softly, as you looked down with the same kind of smile. then, both of your attention was drifted back to wooyoung, who was dramatically telling a story about how hongjoong almost lost his laptop again.
“correction: someone stole it the first time, i didn’t lose it” hongjoong pointed out, earning a laugh from you. as cheesy as it seems, jongho truly believed that it is his favorite sound.
actually, you were his favorite everything: favorite person, favorite singer (despite only hearing you sing in the car or shower), favorite cook. the sound of your voice and laugh was his favorite, along with the way your face expressed clearly how you were feeling at the moment. to him, you were an open book, his favorite book.
the only problem was that he wasn’t sure if he was yours. yes, you were closer to him than with the rest, often confiding in him with your deepest secrets. you built an irreplaceable bond with him, one that he was truly afraid to break if he told you about his feelings. so for now, he settled with enjoying the skinship you offered.
getting too entertained by the dramatic scenery displayed in front of you, neither of you noticed mingi looking at your small, almost unconscious, interactions.
“hey how come we never get to hug you without getting kicked, jongho?” mingi asked, making everyone take notice of the way you were hugging and resting your head on jongho’s, as he traced his fingers along your arms.
“best friend privileges” you answered, noticing the way jongho flinched while he tried to think of a quick way to answer. what you didn’t know, was that your explanation made him want to scream. “oh really? isn’t it because-“ mingi started teasing, only to be interrupted by jongho abruptly standing up to kick him jokingly as he screamed, trying to block what he was trying to say.
he was willing to die with the secret that he had fallen deeply and stupidly in love with his favorite everything.
#ateez headcanons#ateez imagines#ateez scenarios#ateez x reader#hongjoong imagines#hongjoong x reader#hongjoong fluff#seonghwa x reader#seonghwa imagines#seonghwa fluff#yunho imagines#yunho x reader#yunho fluff#ateez fluff#yunho scenarios#yeosang imagines#yeosang x reader#yeosang fluff#choi san x reader#choi san imagines#mingi imagines#mingi x reader#mingi fluff#wooyoung x reader#wooyoung imagines#jongho x reader#wooyoung fluff#jongho imagines#jongho fluff
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What is Dataflow?
This post is inspired by another post about the Crowd Strike IT disaster and a bunch of people being interested in what I mean by Dataflow. Dataflow is my absolute jam and I'm happy to answer as many questions as you like on it. I even put referential pictures in like I'm writing an article, what fun!
I'll probably split this into multiple parts because it'll be a huge post otherwise but here we go!
A Brief History
Our world is dependent on the flow of data. It exists in almost every aspect of our lives and has done so arguably for hundreds if not thousands of years.
At the end of the day, the flow of data is the flow of knowledge and information. Normally most of us refer to data in the context of computing technology (our phones, PCs, tablets etc) but, if we want to get historical about it, the invention of writing and the invention of the Printing Press were great leaps forward in how we increased the flow of information.
Modern Day IT exists for one reason - To support the flow of data.
Whether it's buying something at a shop, sitting staring at an excel sheet at work, or watching Netflix - All of the technology you interact with is to support the flow of data.
Understanding and managing the flow of data is as important to getting us to where we are right now as when we first learned to control and manage water to provide irrigation for early farming and settlement.
Engineering Rigor
When the majority of us turn on the tap to have a drink or take a shower, we expect water to come out. We trust that the water is clean, and we trust that our homes can receive a steady supply of water.
Most of us trust our central heating (insert boiler joke here) and the plugs/sockets in our homes to provide gas and electricity. The reason we trust all of these flows is because there's been rigorous engineering standards built up over decades and centuries.
For example, Scottish Water will understand every component part that makes up their water pipelines. Those pipes, valves, fitting etc will comply with a national, or in some cases international, standard. These companies have diagrams that clearly map all of this out, mostly because they have to legally but also because it also vital for disaster recovery and other compliance issues.
Modern IT
And this is where modern day IT has problems. I'm not saying that modern day tech is a pile of shit. We all have great phones, our PCs can play good games, but it's one thing to craft well-designed products and another thing entirely to think about they all work together.
Because that is what's happened over the past few decades of IT. Organisations have piled on the latest plug-and-play technology (Software or Hardware) and they've built up complex legacy systems that no one really knows how they all work together. They've lost track of how data flows across their organisation which makes the work of cybersecurity, disaster recovery, compliance and general business transformation teams a nightmare.
Some of these systems are entirely dependent on other systems to operate. But that dependency isn't documented. The vast majority of digital transformation projects fail because they get halfway through and realise they hadn't factored in a system that they thought was nothing but was vital to the organisation running.
And this isn't just for-profit organisations, this is the health services, this is national infrastructure, it's everyone.
There's not yet a single standard that says "This is how organisations should control, manage and govern their flows of data."
Why is that relevant to the companies that were affected by Crowd Strike? Would it have stopped it?
Maybe, maybe not. But considering the global impact, it doesn't look like many organisations were prepared for the possibility of a huge chunk of their IT infrastructure going down.
Understanding dataflows help with the preparation for events like this, so organisations can move to mitigate them, and also the recovery side when they do happen. Organisations need to understand which systems are a priority to get back operational and which can be left.
The problem I'm seeing from a lot of organisations at the moment is that they don't know which systems to recover first, and are losing money and reputation while they fight to get things back online. A lot of them are just winging it.
Conclusion of Part 1
Next time I can totally go into diagramming if any of you are interested in that.
How can any organisation actually map their dataflow and what things need to be considered to do so. It'll come across like common sense, but that's why an actual standard is so desperately needed!
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theorising : us in parallel worlds
୨୧ ; you and jake sim are in completely different orbits! how did you defy the laws of physics and end up with him?
pairing! physicalsciencesmajor!jake x historymajor!reader | wc. 0.8k | warnings: possibly incorrect science and uni terms, attempted humour, probably cringe EN-
🖇️ : jake version is out now!! this was so cute to write and the reader is so me i can’t do maths and physics either ㅠㅠ need jake to tutor me frfr
so you see
you’ve never been maths and science smart
you’ve always been better at the humanities subjects and the languages, even from middle school
you are the history, geography and literature ACE.
well, jake’s the opposite
he devours maths equations and quantum physics papers for breakfast and proceeds to choke over basic history — more under cut!!
“when did the first world war end?”
“uh, i dunno. BUT did you know something can be a wave and a particle at once?”
jake was the kid that memorised the digits of pi FOR FUN.
he’s the guy who understood organic chemistry and quantum physics when he was nine
like you didn’t even have a consciousness when you were nine how tf was jake understanding quantum physics
of course jake’s a physical science and engineering major
you meet him at uni in your history department because he was waiting for his friend to come out of lecture
and DAMN he’s a lil cutie
you just watched him leaning on the hallway wall whilst you were sitting on that one random really comfortable sofa in the corner
you were NOT expecting him to suddenly stroll over to you
like why is that guy walking over to the sofa WHY IS HE LOOKING AT YOU
he's just here to ask you where the hell the lecture hall for the class that teaches history about people who died a lightyear before is
and you’re just like “oh, you mean ancient history? it’s right over there, room 204.”
he shoots you the most beautiful smile you've ever seen and says "thanks" before leaving
you're just kind of sitting there staring at his retreating figure
WHY IS HE SO SO CUTE????
it might not show but jake's also silently thinking about that
how did he not notice someone like you sooner?
like you're perfect it doesn't matter that the campus is huge and you two are different majors HOW HAS HE NEVER NOTICED YOU
you never even got to know that guy's name and you're scared that you won't ever see him again
you're just mentally kicking yourself for not asking for his name (and number)
you only manage to find him through intensive, if not obsessive internet research with your best friend
you learn that this cute guy's name is jake sim and that he's double majoring in physical sciences and engineering bc he's a lil crazy
how is his skin glowing with that kind of schedule
you always look for him in the university hallways YOU EVEN GO TO THE SCIENCES DEPARTMENT
but you never find him (it's because jake's poking his nose into every history lecture hall instead of being in his department trying to get a glimpse of you)
like he even goes to the philosophy lecture halls bc you sometimes go to them for fun
it’s giving zeno’s paradox omfg ITS GIVING PAULI EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE (except yall aren’t an electron)
but in one of your university's annual festivals you get to see him again!!
you were just in line to buy some lemonade with your friend when he lines up behind you
he recognises you straight away and gives you that smile that's been embedded in your memory for the past month and says a little hello
your friend just leaves because she's been getting daily updates about this guy named jake sim with pictures included
you're just left alone with him and you're so busy staring at him that you don't hear the lemonade stand cashier ask what you want to order
jake buys you a cup of lemonade SUCH A GENTLEMAN
you two have so much fun together at the festival
jake evens wins you a plushie with the darts at one of the stalls
"how're you so good at that? those games are designed to make you lose."
"you just need to understand the science behind it."
turns out jake is really easygoing which you didn't think was possible from an engineering major
you two make plans to meet up together and study at the science department library
tell me why the science library is so much better than the one you go to.
the sofas are so much more nap friendly and it just looks prettier yk
jake helps you with your maths and science studies
you thought you would be free of maths and science once you graduate from high school but turns out basic classes are in the core curriculum
it was a very big disappointment when you found out WDYM YOU STILL HAVE TO DO CALCULUS
you barely managed to do long divisions in primary, you can't do this shit anymore
it's okay, not only is jake really really smart, he's also really really patient
in return, you help jake boost his shitty core humanities grade
he's been barely scraping by
"y/n, i swear, i can memorise dates and all that stuff but i can't with the essays."
jake confesses to you during one of your little study sessions
he sends you a cute heart on the desmos graphing calculator (such a nerd omg)
you two are THE power couple
you get As in your maths and science now and the professor doesn't give you dirty looks anymore
jake managed to boost his grade as well DREAM COUPLE FRFR
✉️: @icyy-hoon
#엔하이픈#제이크#enhypen#enha#enhypen jake#jake#enhypen fic#enhypen x reader#enhypen fluff#enhypen soft hours#enhypen drabbles#enhypen scenarios#enhypen headcanons#enhypen thoughts#enhypen smau#jake fic#jake fluff#jake smau#jake soft hours#jake fanfic#jake drabbles#jake imagines#jake scenarios#jake headcanons#heeseung#jay#sunghoon#sunoo#jungwon#ni-ki
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just some over-affectionate yan!sato blabbering
yandere satoru hasn't really snapped at you, he just doesn't. always playful, always an embodiment. waking you up with peppers of kisses, making sure you have your favorite breakfast, making sure you relax around him. he even indulges in your silly little hobbies, all for the sake of making his baby comfortable. if you like painting, he is going to buy you all the colors there are, premium quality canvas boards and everything you'd ever need to bring your imaginations into reality. digital art? then you have an ipad with procreate and a pencil, anything and everything you need.
he doesn't say it but he is extremely observant, he even notices things like your skincare before you were kidnapped, and goes out of his way to upgrade it if needed. he can be a little pesky at times. what if his baby is using the wrong skin-care? probably going to fly you to the skin and beauty land 'korea' to have your skin checked, and then buy you the 'recommended' skincare.
same with aesthetics, you like wearing a certain type of fits, you have them littered in your closet room. he prefers changing styles and wouldn't mind upgrading/donating your wardrobe when you're also bored with the same ol' things.
your room is a mixture of everything you are, and trinkets of satoru in it. you are really not allowed to sleep in your room though. it's your space, just your happy corner. it doesn't have a bed. it has plush couches that are better than most beds, neon-light which speaks of your name and scented candles, perfect desks with the perfect desk mats. you just need to sleep with satoru.
he gets specifically testy when you really don't want to give him company at times. why? hasn't he done enough? most people would kill to be in your place. that's when you can see the cracks in his carefully calibrated persona he harbors for you.
he is usually very mellow, clingy and would be so playful you often forget how strong he is. "baby- but i want cuddles!" satoru whined, pulling you close to him while you squirmed when you weren't in the mood. satoru hasn't really pushed himself sexually, but he treats you like a pet in other stances. meaning - if not huggable why so cute? so you can't really escape from him during those times.
if you really, really try hard. his laughter, soft eyes, all of it drops. the usual high-pitched excitement too... "i will count to three. if you don't really come to me, there would be consequences." you haven't really checked on what the consequences are because that sets you straight instantly.
satoru HATES when you fear him, some part of him snaps so hard at that he ends up scaring you more. this happens when he's pissed about something and you flinch/wince at his tone. he hasn't done anything to make you scared... yet? though sometimes the way he comes home... reeking of dead curses, reeking of torment and torture. you automatically end up fearing him.
there was one time you took things too far, taking his leniency too far and going out without asking him. he hasn't locked the doors like a barbarian and you're making him question if he should... that's when he took you to one of his missions. shaking, quivering as you cling to him while the curse in front of you begged for death, for being exorcised while satoru made sure it healed and then continued his torture. blaming it on you as you sobbed, anxiety and palpitations all over you. "see, this is what i do... when you don't behave. you cause pain from me to others." he just wants you to know he is/can be fucked up.
would eventually feel extremely bad when you throw up from the gore and anxiety and finish the job, bringing you home and forcing you in his arms, crying with you at how bad it makes him feel to see you like this. how he would kill himself than making you cry, though a part of him is grateful that you wouldn't really go against him for a long, long while.
whenever any action done by him fucks you up, satoru takes responsibility of undoing it. even if sometimes he needs to make sure you stay with him, no matter the consequences... he would try his best to make up for it. always pestering, always kissing you, praising you for being so good to him even if you're not, behaving like an ideal boyfriend to the point where even you start suspecting if the problem is you.
he loves so sickeningly hard you end up deluded enough to consider yourself the 'toxic' one. :3
#gojo satoru#yandere gojo#yandere gojo satoru#yandere jjk#yandere jujutsu kaisen#jjk#jujutsu kaisen#gojo imagines#gojo hcs#jjk imagines#jjk hcs#gojo x reader#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jjk fluff#gojo fluff
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Teaching tech. | Soldier Boy x Reader
Summary: Butcher tasked you with the job of teaching a freshly thawed Ben, aka Soldier Boy, how to use technology. First off you started with teaching him about the iPhone.
Warnings: bit of Solider Boy being Soldier Boy but otherwise, mostly fluff.
“Dammit!” [Y/N] heard Ben’s voice from the other room and she sighed. Next was a smash and that made her rush back into the bedroom. Immediately Ben’s eyes lifted up to see her coming in and he scoffed. “I didn’t break the cocksucking thing this time.” He stated plainly. “Good,” she answered. “I don’t have the money to buy you a fourth phone.” She moved to sit on the bed next to where he was currently sitting. “This shit ain’t a phone, it’s a thin ass rock with futuristic shit inside. Phones have a base and a receiver or they were these massive bricks with buttons—not whatever the fuck a touch screen is-“ Ben ranted, but [Y/N] just laughed. “Yeah, they were those things once but this is 2022. Life’s changed a lot and eventually you’re gonna need to learn all these things.” She spoke, picking up the phone that was on the bed between them, swiping up to unlock it. Bits of her [Y/H/C] hair covered her face while her attention focused on the screen. Ben just watched, a grumpy expression on his facial features. “How’d you get stuck doing this anyway? Where’s the Cum Guzzler or the Cheerio?” She laughed, Ben’s nicknames for people were always pretty humorous. “Hughie is scared of you and Butcher can barely explain anything in the entire history of life’s existence.” Ben gently laughed at her answer. Fingers moved across the screen, making selections that she didn’t think were necessary to explain to him at the moment. “So, the bean pole’s afraid of me huh?” He asked, not really expecting an answer. However it did bring up another question. “Why aren’t you scared of me?” His tone seemed indifferent but there was a hint of something more inside his eyes. Something she was oblivious to since her own were focused on the screen of the phone in her hands. Though, she slowly gazed up from it for a moment. “Honestly,” she began with a pause directly after. It was as if she was attempting to think about how to answer him. “I was at first, a little bit, but I just try to sympathize.” He scoffed almost immediately. “You sympathize with a piece of shit like me? No wonder it’s so easy to get you women in the sack. Jesus Chris-“ She turned her head and shot a glare at him. “You can sympathize with people without wanting to fuck them, for starters.” She rolled her eyes, moving her gaze back to the phone in her hands. “No one’s perfect, not that it’s excusing.. well everything. Despite all that, no one here has any real room to judge too harshly.” Ben quirked a brow at that. “That so? Don’t tell me a pretty lil’ thing like you has baggage!” Part of him was sort of mocking her, though he was getting curious. “Moving on, I made the email for you and set up an account for you to use the phone.” She began to explain, looking over to him but finding a confused expression on his face. “E-what?” He asked plainly, green eyes gazing into her own. “Right, I forgot you have no grasp on the basics.” She turned towards him now.
“Email is pretty easy, it’s like sending letters to people—only digitally and in a much faster time period. It used to take y’know, days, weeks for those to be delivered. Now it just takes seconds—also instead of a home address you just need their email address. Does that make sense at least somewhat?” Her voice was gentle, not sarcastic or cruel. [Y/E/C] eyes meeting his green ones as he was silent for a moment. “Yeah, I guess.. I mean it seems straightforward enough—though doing that stupid shit is gonna be harder than understanding what the fuck it is.” He answered. “Well, yeah, but we’ll get there.” [Y/N] offered a half smile at him. “No one’s asking you to be Steve Jobs after a day,” she tried to encourage him but his face was blank yet again. “Who the fuck is that?” He asked, to which she sighed gently. “…never mind, it’s not important. What I meant is that none of us are expecting you to know how to use it all within the blink of an eye.” She replied before moving her gaze back to the phone. He peered over at the phone while knitting his brows together. None of it made any sense to him. Now the screen was black again, before the stupid symbol popped up. “..the fuck is it doing now?” He asked, moving his glance to her face. “It’s updating the software,” she spoke before shifting it to an analogy he’d understand. “..which is like maintenance on a car kind of—it makes sure everything’s working and also is.. replacing the parts in a sense. Fixing things that weren’t working and replacing them with things that will work and hopefully work better.” It took a second, but the analogy did help. “Makes sense I guess.” He spoke, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes watched for a moment before he became bored, so, he did what he usually did and turned his attention to whoever was occupying the space with him. “So tell me, how’d a gorgeous gal like you get tangled up with a fucker like Butcher anyhow?” She laughed softly but she didn’t look up at him this time. Mostly to hide the fact that she was blushing just a little. [Y/N] knew that she shouldn’t be feeling this way, by all accounts this man was still Soldier Boy. He wasn’t a good person, but the more she spent time with him the more she realized he was letting her see the man behind the persona and maybe.. maybe there was more than what he’s done in the past. After all she was preaching sympathy just moments prior. “Flattery will not get you out of the tech lesson, but since it’s updating you’ve got a little wiggle room.” She took a gentle breath before beginning to tell a very condensed version of events. “Becca, Butcher’s wife, she was my mom’s best friend. When my mom got killed in a car wreck, Becca sort of.. became my maternal figure.” Ben nodded, feeling some of the strings attached to his heart pulling. “I’m sorry about that, doll.” It was the least he could say. “Where the hell was your dad?” He asked, not knowing subtly if it were to bite him on the ass. She sighed gently. “Couldn’t tell you, never met him.” Ben could sympathize with that in a way, his own father being a piece of shit and all. “Sorry ‘bout that too.” He spoke, keeping his gaze on her own. She simply nodded before the phone’s screen lit up in the bright colors again, signifying that the software update had been completed. Picking the phone up, [Y/N] swiped up to begin the process of actually setting things up. “Okay, back to this-“ she spoke but was immediately cut off by Ben’s loud groaning. “Fuck sakes, is this really necessary?” He grumbled, which caused the woman next to him to roll her eyes. “You already know the answer to that.” Again he grumbled, acting like a mix between a grumpy old man and a stubborn child. “If this was forty years ago and some fine piece of ass was trying to tell me I had to do somethin’..” She turned and her [Y/E/C] eyes met his face with a pointed glare. There was a momentary pause as Ben contemplated whether or not to continue.
However, he was mischievous by nature and so he opted to continue on with his train of thought. “..I’d have grabbed her by her pretty little chin and talked her into getting on her knees so I could show her a better way to use that mouth.” [Y/N] again rolled her eyes. “Anyway,” she brushed it off and moved on immediately though Ben was wearing a little smirk. “Picturing it, aren’t ya’?” He asked, clearly attempting to make the woman flustered. She turned her gaze back towards him with a blank expression upon her face. “Picturing me, punching you in the face? Absolutely I am.” She answered, which had Ben’s smirk fall completely. “You new age women, chicks in my day would’ve been creaming their panties at the chance to get with Soldier Boy.” Ben grumbled, irritation showing on his face. It was amusing to [Y/N] that he thought he’d get her to crumble so easily. Pushing herself up into a better position she’d lean the phone towards the Supe. “Alright, so I made two emails—one has the Soldier Boy name on it, just in case there’s.. I don’t know people that have business offers or something. Granted, that’s if we all live and you don’t get thrown into jail or whatever they do to other Supes and the other is for, well, more personal shit. That’s the one I was telling you about when I mentioned it initially, the one that’s tied into everything on the phone. I downloaded some stuff but now you need to try it.” She handed the phone over to Ben, praying he wasn’t gonna break this one. It was clear that he was trying to hold it gently, which would’ve made her giggle out loud—however the man was in an overly sensitive state and she wasn’t going to push that. “Alright, so tap the icon that says ‘App Store’ and wait for it to open.” [Y/N]’s voice was gentle and Ben nodded, putting his finger over the square with that name underneath it. However he left it there and so the apps began to all shake. “What the fuck is happening?!” He exclaimed, to which she gently moved her hand and pressed the button labeled ‘done’. Now the apps went back to being still and she sighed. Gently she grabbed his index finger and lightly pulled it towards the screen again, Ben wanted to grumble but he was too distracted by how her fingers felt against his own. Where his skin was rough, battle tested and calloused.. hers was soft, maybe a scar here and there but nothing compared to his and the contrast? It was more enjoyable than he’d ever admit out loud. [Y/N] pulled his finger down toward the screen and gently tapped it against the screen to open the app. “You just gotta tap, see.” She spoke, letting go of his finger. “Huh.” He replied, but it wasn’t very loud. “Now typing on these things is probably gonna annoy you, it annoys us all and we’re used to the technology. Just.. try to not freak out and break it yeah? Shit is easy for you to snap, given y’know..” After she said that, she couldn’t help but to chuckle. When she did Ben felt himself smirking just a little. There was a split second where their eyes met and lingered, before she spoke up again. “Alright, so if you just click on this one it’ll take you to the place where you can download them. I think most things that are necessary for now are already there but I wanted you to know how to do it, so.. you like sports right?” She asked, tone kept gentle. “Uh, yeah, obviously little less on the up and up these days.” He replied, to which she nodded. “Alright well type in ‘MLB’ right there in that search bar, click it first though.” [Y/N] explained and for a moment Ben just stared at her, as if she had three heads. Eventually though he moved his gaze to the phone and tapped the screen over the search bar, which brought up the keyboard. “So.. these fucking things are called apps?” He asked, typing the three letters slowly into the bar and then she pointed to the blue button labeled ‘search’, which he tapped before looking up at her again.
“Yeah, they have one for just about everything these days.” She replied, pointing to the button that said ‘get’. Ben tapped it and the symbol to signify it was downloading appeared. Once it had finished, she smiled slightly before reaching underneath his arm for a second. “So, to close an app, you just swipe up like this.” Gently she placed her thumb on the screen and swiped upward to bring the phone back to the Home Screen. “Now, that closes it for the moment. Swiping up in a short motion brings up all the open ones like this-“ she explained, demonstrating. “Once they’re up like this you can swipe up again and fully close them.” She closed all of the currently open apps to demonstrate to him how to do it. “You really think I’m gonna remember all this shit?” He asked, almost glaring when he looked in her direction. It was a lot of information to take in, so she took a gentle breath and locked the phone. “Okay, fair, let’s take a break then.” [Y/N] placed Ben’s phone on the bed between them and slowly pulled out her own. He couldn’t help it, curiosity took hold and he glanced over. “You can put pictures on that thing?” He asked, noticing her Lock Screen photo of a drawing of the moon. Quirking a brow for a moment, she then figured out what he meant. “Oh, yeah! You can. Did you wanna do that on your phone?” Her voice was sweet as their eyes met yet again, bringing back the slight tension that continued to linger between them. “Fuck it, shit looks better than whatever the fuck it comes with.” He replied after a moment or so of silence. “Do you have anything specific you want?” She reached up with her free hand and tucked some of her [Y/H/C] hair behind her ear. Ben’s expression was pensive for a moment or so as he tried to think of anything he’d like to have as a background on the phone. “I dunno, just find something badass—none o’ that girly shit.” She shook her head before thinking herself, trying to figure out something she could use. “I’m gonna go take a leak.” He spoke up, pushing his frame up and off of the bed before grumbling about something and making his way over to the bathroom door. Once he’d closed it, she thought for another second before smiling to herself. Lifting the phone up at a decent angle, she quickly opened the camera app and primped herself slightly—snapping a couple of pictures of herself right after. Flicking through the few she found the one she liked the most and made it his Lock Screen wallpaper. Thumbs darted across the screen and within another two minutes or so, spent entirely on Google, she’d found a nice photo of Ben’s shield. It worked well for a Home Screen.
It wasn’t long after that [Y/N] heard the toilet flush and the sink turn on, seconds passing before the door was pulled open and Ben re-entered the bedroom. Lifting her gaze up to meet him, his green eyes held something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She gently laid his phone onto the mattress and kept her attention on him while he sat back down onto the bed. “Are we doing more of this shit? ‘Cause I think my fuckin’ brain might implode.” His voice was deep, housing a distinct rasp to it. [Y/N] couldn’t help but to chuckle at the old man antics he was displaying before answering the question. “No, I think we’ll save some lessons for another day. After all, there’s much more than just the phone you’re gonna need to learn.” After she’d spoken, he groaned for what felt like the millionth time. “It’s amazing how you bounce between acting like a senior citizen and acting like a teenage boy.” Her voice held a humorous tone as she again chuckled, it was Ben’s turn to now offer her a pointed glare but there was definitely a layer of amusement behind it. Just as he was about to offer up a retort, the bedroom door was pushed open and Butcher popped his head in. “Oi [Y/N], need ya’ to come help Frenchie with a little project.” His accent was thick and his eyes held a wild expression that was pretty standard for the man. [Y/N] sighed and slowly pushed herself up from the mattress, but turned towards Ben with a gentle smile. “If you have any questions just.. come find me.” He nodded, because his brain wasn’t sure how to react to the little smile on her lips. Sure there was a lot of unholy and downright vulgar thoughts swimming around in his noggin about her, there had been since he laid eyes on her—however there was something more that lingered and that was causing a short circuit in his mind. She turned back to the Brit and groaned. “This better not be anything messy because the last time-“ she was cut off by Butcher’s laugh. “It ain’t, I swear.” [Y/N] rolled her eyes as the two left the room, closing the door behind them. After a couple of minutes Ben remembered [Y/N] lecturing him about locking the goddamned phone, but she had left it unlocked. Pushing the button he heard the clicking noise, but tapped onto the screen to make sure he hadn’t accidentally turned it off somehow—and that’s when he saw it. There underneath the time and the other bullshit, was a picture of her and her smiling face. Since he was by himself, he didn’t have his guard up and his lips curled upward into a smile. “Pretty lil’ lady.” He spoke out loud, his heart feeling something he’d not felt in quite some time.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Hi guys! I am soooooo sorry about how long this took. Between writer’s block and my fear of it sucking, I was just struggling for a while. This is my first attempt at writing for Ben so if it’s bad, I’m sorry! He’s a more complex character to nail in writing and hopefully I’ll get better at it over time. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!
• —– ٠ tag list: @roseblue373 @mrsjenniferwinchester @stillhere197 @xx-spooky-little-vampire-xx @aylacavebear @ladysparkles78 @globetrotter28 @jc-winchester ✤ ٠ —– • ·
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Eddie asked Steve to help with his oral fixation, and Steve agreed.
tags: rimming, a dash of daddy kink & breeding kink
"You want me what?" Steve turned away from the TV to squint at his roommate.
"I have this thing call oral fixation," Eddie explained easily. "Which means I need to get my mouth busy all the time."
Steve hummed noncommittally and nodded in understanding. "I see, we can buy lollipops–"
Eddie cut him off with a chaste kiss that turned heated quickly.
"I think you're already sweet enough for me, angel." Eddie whispered once they parted with a transparent thread connecting their lips.
Blushing, he laughed weakly and pushed Eddie away. "Alright, I'm gonna help you, dude. Don't need to butter me up like that."
"I know you're my favorite for a reason, Stevie," Eddie grinned, all sunshine and rainbow again when he wasn't trying to shove his tongue down Steve's throat.
And Steve was too eager to help that it never crossed his mind friends didn't made out with each other and called it a day.
Since then, Eddie would just sidle up behind him every time he was in the middle of something, bend him over any surface that was available at the moment, tugged his shorts down, and eat him out.
Once Eddie was done, he would clean Steve up nicely, tucked him in, and walked away as if nothing had ever happened.
Leaving Steve staring in bewilderment and arousal.
They never talked about it. They just treated it as this special thing between them, their little secret.
It also helped that they lived together. More convenient for Eddie whenever his craving decided to act up.
Gradually, it became their routine, they could be watching TV on the couch and Eddie would flip him over, burying his face into Steve's ass before digging into it.
Steve never thought having someone rim him would be cozy.
But Eddie always managed to surprise him most days, and this was no exception either.
Sometimes, he'd get so comfortable that he just dozed off and then woke up feeling floaty with Eddie's fingers combing through his hair gently.
Or occasionally, he'd simply read a book while Eddie lapped at his hole for hours.
It felt almost domestic if he dared to say.
Things remained like that until one day, when Eddie kept licking at that bundle of nerves, Steve didn't even have time to react before he came.
His moan was loud and high-pitched, and Steve blushed terribly once he realized what just happened.
"Did I just...?" He glanced back at Eddie, wide eyed and disbelieved.
"You just did, baby boy," Eddie grinned at him like a shark, red tongue tracing the pearly canines that always painted reds and purples on Steve's cheeks and thighs.
Steve didn't know what to do. He had grown to enjoy the feeling of Eddie's tongue fucking him so much that he just had an orgasm due to it.
It should give him shame and
embarrassment, but all he felt was a burning need to fill the hollowness inside him.
He wanted to be full.
"Can I ask you something?" Steve licked his lips nervously.
"Yeah? What is it?" Eddie stroked his lower back soothingly, but those eyes were dark and heavy as they pinned him in place.
"Can you give me more?" Steve breathed slowly, the air was so charged that it was almost suffocating.
"More what?" Eddie raised a curious brow while petting his hole temptingly.
"More than your tongue," Steve bit out, muscles pulled taut and heart racing.
He couldn't help but arch his ass toward those calloused fingers, seeking and craving for more.
Without warning, Eddie slipped a finger inside him and proceeded to pull out and push in slowly.
"Like this?"
Steve gasped and tried to clench down on the thick and long digit.
Granted, he had fingered himself multiple times, but when Eddie did it, it just hit different.
Surreal, thrilling, and exciting were all he could sum up.
"Eddie," he moaned, breathless and needy.
"Yeah, baby?" Eddie added another slicked finger and if Steve wasn't too horny to care, he'd definitely remember that they didn't stash lube anywhere nearby.
"Fuck me," he rolled his eyes back as Eddie stroked that spot again. "Bet y– your cock would reach deeper, feel better."
"Jesus," Eddie let out an amused huff. "When did you become such a slut, hm?" He crooked his fingers, making Steve see the fucking Milky Way. "What did you do to my good boy who'd blush prettily every time I teased him?"
"Your good boy is asking you to fuck him," Steve whined and undulated his hips to chase after that toes-curling pleasure.
"Is that so?" Eddie chuckled and retreated his fingers.
Before Steve could complain, he felt something hot and thick slowly breached his loose hole.
By the time Eddie was seated fully inside him, he was drooling and cross eyed, being stuffed full and stretched to the seams.
"Still good?" Hot lips brushed against the shell of his ear.
"Y– Yeah," he slurred. "Sooo good."
Eddie was nothing he imagined. Somehow, Eddie was better than tongue and fingers could ever be.
"Gonna fuck you til you cry," Eddie murmured huskily, full of promise and hunger. "Gonna ruin you for good."
Steve couldn't say anything, mouth agape as the source of heat inside him started moving, dragging every little noise and breathy moan out of him.
He felt drunk, high, and stupid. If only he didn't chicken out every time he was about to confess to Eddie, then they could've had this sooner.
He'd have been railed to his heart's content, would've been allowed to taste Eddie's cock, would've had Eddie in his bed instead of having to jerk himself off roughly in his room after being eaten out by Eddie every time.
He had wasted so much time, missed so many chances.
"Love you," he mewled into his folded arms. "Love you so much, Eddie. Love your stupid cock, love your stupid tongue, love your stupid smiles."
Eddie cursed quietly and stopped moving. The lack of motions got Steve whine his complaint loudly.
"Did you mean it?" Eddie nipped the tip of his ear, voice so low and raspy that it almost sounded like a growl.
When Steve took too long to answer, Eddie snapped his hips and punched out a chocked-off moan out of him.
"Did you mean it, Steve?"
"I m– meant it," he nodded blindly.
Eddie pulled out and carefully flipped him on his back. "Say it again."
Now, they were face to face, Steve suddenly felt shy. He made grabby hands at Eddie, needing close contact to soothe his nerves.
Eddie's features softened visibly as he gathered Steve into his lap.
He cupped Steve's face gently and placed tender kisses on it.
Meanwhile, Steve couldn't stand the emptiness inside him any longer, so he grabbed Eddie's cock and impelled himself on it once more.
The new angle knocked his breath away, making him dizzy and delirious.
"I love you," he sighed softly, feeling more settled when he was full.
"Love you too, sweetheart," Eddie held him securely and kissed him fondly. "My pretty cock slut, aren't you?"
"Mhm," he wrapped his arms around broad shoulders and met those brown eyes, so sweet and loving. "All yours, daddy."
That was the last coherent thing he uttered.
Because as soon as he let the title slip, Eddie had railed him within an inch of his life until he forgot his own name.
At some point, he had convinced Eddie to take off the condom.
"Don't you want to knock me up, daddy?"
Apparently, Eddie was a huge perv and more than on board with Steve's baby fever.
Needless to say, they had had spent a long time in the shower later to help Steve wash out the cum.
But in Steve's opinion, it was worth all the trouble when Eddie got on his knees and ate him out until he cried and squirted messily on the tiled floor.
Afterward, once they both left the bathroom in fresh clothes and climbed into bed together, they had talked and kissed and giggled before drifting off in each other's arms.
Who would've thought helping out your friend would lead you to your happiness?
Definitely not Steve.
Not that he would complain when it led him to Eddie, though.
———
Anyway, I live for free use!Steve who's only available for Eddie.
Steve: *simply exists*
Eddie: Oh my god, all of this goodness just for me?
#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#eddie always said 'thanks for the meal' every time he finished eating steve's cake#sionewritesatmidnight
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Code Green
A game for 3–7 players, about being where you're not supposed to be.
Last night, you were suspended in a tube of brightly coloured goo in an underground research facility, operated by an organisation whose three-letter initialism's meaning is strictly need-to-know. This morning, someone noticed your tube was empty. Nobody has determined how that happened yet, and you're not inclined to stick around until they figure it out!
Or, in other words, it's been nearly a whole week since I got that massive revision to Space Gerbils out the door, and apparently my brain has decided that's enough of a break. This thing was written start to finish in under 12 hours, so let the circumstances of its authorship guide your expectations. Special thanks go once again to Caro Asercion, whose micro-RPG Dwindle introduced me to the design space I'm fucking around with here. Go buy their stuff.
Anyway:
What You'll Need
Code Green is a tabletop RPG for one game moderator (GM) and up to six players. Each player will need a copy of the Profile Grid, below, as well as three tokens of some sort: dice, coins, beads, etc. You'll also need at least five six-sided dice (for the whole group, not per player, though it's fine if each player has their own set). If you're using dice for tokens, it's recommended that the dice you plan to roll be visually distinguishable in case they land on someone's Profile Grid.
Rolling Dice
There are two ways you'll be asked to roll dice in this game: rolling d66, and rolling a dice pool.
To roll d66, roll a six-side die twice, reading the first roll as the "tens" place and the second roll as the "ones" place, yielding a number in the range from 11 to 66. For example, if you rolled a 3 and then a 5, your result is 35. You may also be asked to flip a d66 roll; to do this, take your result and swap the digits without re-rolling. In the preceding example, if you flipped your roll of 35, your new result would be 53.
To roll a dice pool, pick up the indicated number of six-side dice, roll them, and take the highest individual result. Duplicates have no special significance. For example, if you rolled a pool of three dice and got a 2, a 4, and a 4, your result would be 4. If you would ever roll a pool of zero or fewer dice, roll two dice and take the lowest instead.
Character Creation
Each player should create their own character. There are three things about your character which are always true:
You are newly born into the world. You may know things about the world (e.g., from your programming, having read them on a computer terminal, etc.), but you haven't experienced them.
You are implausibly good at remaining inconspicuous; unless you're deliberately drawing attention or doing something which requires a dice roll, humans will almost always fail to spot you.
You are not human. You can decide what that means.
To find out what else is true about your character, roll or choose three times from the Form table, and three times from the Function table, placing your results into the correspondingly labelled slots on the Profile Grid, below, in any order you please. Your three results from each table should be different; if you elected to roll and get the same entry multiple times, flip your result, and re-roll if it's still a duplicate.
Think about what your three Form traits and three Function traits imply about your character's physical makeup, but don't set anything in stone just yet – you'll see why not in a moment.
Finally, roll a six-sided die five times, and record the results in the order in which they're received. The resulting five-digit number is the only name your character has when play begins.
Table 1: Form (d66)
11–12. Blood 13–14. Bones 15–16. Brain 21–22. Claws 23–24. Ears 25–26. Eyes 31–32. Guts 33–34. Hands 35–36. Heart 41–42. Hair 43–44. Legs 45–46. Lungs 51–52. Nose 53–54. Skin 55–56. Tail 61–62. Teeth 63–64. Tongue 65–66. Wings
Table 2: Function (d66)
11–12. Accelerated 13–14. Autonomous 15–16. Auxiliary 21–22. Cryogenic 23–24. Cryptic 25–26. Elastic 31–32. Electric 33–34. Entropic 35–36. Invasive 41–42. Invulnerable 43–44. Kinetic 45–46. Magnetic 51–52. Phasing 53–54. Polymorphic 55–56. Projectile 61–62. Pyrogenic 63–64. Telescopic 65–66. Toxic
Playing the Game
Play proceeds in a series of scenes. In each scene, the GM will set the stage: a challenge to overcome, a peril to escape, a mystery to investigate, etc. Given the nature of your characters, most things will be mysteries to you!
Initial Token Placement
Once the stage has been set, place each of your three tokens on a different square on your Profile Grid. If you have no preference, you can roll d66 for each token and place it in the square whose marked numeric range contains the number you rolled, flipping or re-rolling your result if you get a square which already contains a token. The placement of these tokens represents your initial state when the scene opens. Depending on the nature of your character, this may be reflected by a shifting of internal focus, or by a physical transformation.
Participation
To participate in the scene, simply tell the GM what your character does; the GM will describe how the world responds, and ask what you do next. Whenever you wish – or are forced – to do something more than lurk and observe, you are obliged to make a test.
Making Tests
To make a test, first choose a pair of traits – one Form trait, and one Function trait – with which to face the challenge. For example, if your Form traits are Legs, Tail and Teeth, and your Function traits are Cryptic, Invulnerable and Phasing, you might test your Invulnerable Legs against the trouble at hand.
Next, count the number of tokens present in the rows extending from each of the chosen traits. The illustration below shows which squares would be consulted in the preceding example:
Next, roll a dice pool containing a number of dice equal to the number of tokens present on squares extending from the chosen traits. Do not count a token twice if it's on the square where the two traits intersect (e.g., the green square in the illustration above). In the event that no tokens fall on squares extending from appropriate traits, remember that you are allowed to roll a pool of zero dice by rolling two dice and taking the lowest rather than the highest.
Finally, compare your result to the following table:
1–3. Less than human. Whatever you'd intended to try still happens, but it cannot overcome human opposition (or adversity which would challenge a typical human), and any lasting effects are transitory and easily explained away. 4–5. Mostly human. Your effort can contend with human opposition (or circumstances which would challenge a competent human), and its lasting effects make it obvious that someone (or something) has been interfering with matters. 6. More than human. Your effort easily brushes aside any human opposition, and its lasting effects are impossible to rationalise as anything other than the intervention of inhuman forces.
Without Applicable Traits
In the event that you're forced to make a test and no possible pairing of your traits is applicable, you don't get to roll anything, not even with a pool of zero dice; simply resolve the outcome as though you'd rolled a result of 1–3. Other characters may attempt to preserve you from this fate by assisting you, in which case you roll one die per assisting friend; see below for more details.
Assistance
If you wish to assist another character in making a test, consult your own Profile Grid, considering only those squares which contain tokens. Only the specific pairs of traits represented by the squares on which your tokens fall are eligible for assistance; for example, if one of your tokens falls on the intersection of Cryptic and Teeth, you may assist with Cryptic Teeth, but not any other pair of traits involving Cryptic or Teeth unless those squares also have tokens on them.
If you're able to identify an eligible pair of traits that seems applicable to the test at hand, explain how you're using it to help, and hand the player making the test one extra die. Any number of characters may assist on a given test.
Providing assistance neither requires nor permits your character to adapt (see below) – it needs to be your own test for that!
Adapting
After resolving a test, your character adapts, shifting focus or form to reflect what they've learned. Take one token of your choice from your character sheet, and move it to a different square which doesn't already contain one. You can move any token you wish, but it must end up on a different square than the one it started on unless no valid destinations are available. Adapting is not optional, and must be carried out after every test.
Suffering Strain
If whatever you're making a test against is particularly strenuous or dangerous, you might suffer strain as a consequence. Strain will often be incurred on a result of 1–3, and rarely on a result of 4–5; only the most foolhardy efforts will incur strain even on a result of 6!
To incur strain, roll d66, and place a small X on the square on your Profile Grid whose indicated numeric range contains the number you rolled. If there's a token on that square, immediately move it to an empty square of your choice, unless fewer than three unmarked squares now remain; in that case, simply remove the token entirely.
For the remainder of the scene, tokens may not be moved to any marked square. In addition, if you suffer further strain, and the square indicated by your d66 roll is already marked, your character is incapacitated, and may not participate in tests at all until they recover.
All strain is cleared – and any discarded tokens restored – at the end of each scene. Incapacitated characters also recover at this time.
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Billionaire-proofing the internet
Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.
During the Napster wars, the record labels seriously pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.
It's hard to overstate how badly the labels behaved. Like, there was the Swarthmore student who was the maintainer of a free/open source search engine that indexed files available in public sharepoints on the LAN. The labels sued him for millions and millions (the statutory damages for digital copyright infringement runs to $150,000 per file) and, when he begged for a settlement, said that they would accept his life's savings, but only if he changed majors and stopped studying Computer Science.
No, really.
What's more, none of the money the labels extracted from teenagers, grandparents (and the dead) went to artists. The labels just kept it all, while continuing to insist that they were doing all this because they wanted to "protect artists."
One thing everyone agreed on was how disgusted we all were with the labels. What we didn't agree on was what to do about it. A lot of us wanted to reform copyright – say, by creating a blanket license for internet music so that artists could get paid directly. This was the systemic approach.
Another group – call them the "individualists" – wanted a boycott. Just stop buying and listening to music from the major labels. Every dollar you spend with a label is being used to fund a campaign of legal terror. Merely enjoying popular music makes you part of the problem.
You can probably guess which group I was in. Leaving aside the futility of "voting with your wallet" (a rigged ballot that's always won by the people with the thickest wallet), I just thought this was bad tactics.
Here's what I would say when people told me we should all stop listening to popular music: "If members of your popular movement are not allowed to listen to popular music, your movement won't be very popular."
We weren't going to make political change by creating an impossible purity test ("Ew, you listen to music from a major label? God, what's wrong with you?"). I mean, for one thing, a lot of popular music is legitimately fantastic and makes peoples' lives better. Popular movements should strive to increase their members' joy, not demand their deprivation. Again, not merely because this is a nice thing to do for people, but also because it's good tactics to make participation in the thing you're trying to do as joyous as possible.
Which brings me to social media. The problem with social media is that the people we love and want to interact with are being held prisoner in walled gardens. The mechanism of their imprisonment is the "switching costs" of leaving. Our friends and communities are on bad social media networks because they love each other more than they hate Musk or Zuck. Leaving a social platform can cost you contact with family members in the country you emigrated from, a support group of people who share your rare disease, the customers or audience you rely on for your livelihood, or just the other parents organizing your kid's little league game.
Hypothetically, you could organize all these people to leave at once, go somewhere else, and re-establish all your social connections. Practically, the "collective action problem" of doing so is nearly insurmountable. This is what platform owners depend on – it's why they know they can enshittify their services without losing users. So long as the pain of using the service is lower than the pain of leaving it, the companies can turn the screws on users to make their lives worse in order to extract more profit from them. This is why Musk killed the block button and why Zuck fired all his moderators. Why bear the expense of doing something nice for users if they'll still stick around even if you cut a ton of headcount and/or expensive compute?
There's a way out of this, thankfully. When social media is federated, then you can leave a server without leaving your friends. Think of it as being similar to changing cell-phone companies. When you switch from Verizon to T-Mobile, you keep your number, you keep your address book and you keep your friends, who won't even know you switched networks unless you tell them:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/
There's no reason social media couldn't work this way. You should be able to leave Facebook or Twitter for Mastodon, Bluesky, or any other service and still talk with the people you left behind, provided they still want to talk with you:
https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook
That's how the Fediverse – which Mastodon is part of – works already. You can switch from one Mastodon server to another, and all the people you follow and who follow you will just move over to that new server. That means that if the person or company or group running your server goes sour, you aren't stuck making a choice between the people you love who connect to you on that server, and the pain of dealing with whatever bullshit the management is throwing off:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies
We could make that stronger! Data protection laws like the EU's GDPR and California's CCPA create a legal duty for online services to hand over your data on demand. Arguably, these laws already require your Mastodon server's management to give you the files you need to switch from one server to another, but that could be clarified. Handing these files over to users on demand is really straightforward – even a volunteer running a small server for a few friends will have no trouble living up to this obligation. It's literally just a minute's work for each user.
Another way to make this stronger is through governance. Many of the great services that defined the old, good internet were run by "benevolent dictators for life." This worked well, but failed so badly. Even if the dictator for life stayed benevolent, that didn't make them infallible. The problem of a dictatorship isn't just malice – it's also human frailty. For a service to remain good over long timescales, it needs accountable, responsive governance. That's why all the most successful BDFL services (like Wikipedia) transitioned to community-managed systems:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/10/bdfl/#high-on-your-own-supply
There, too, Mastodon shines. Mastodon's founder Eugen Rochko has just explicitly abjured his role as "ultimate decision-maker" and handed management over to a nonprofit:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/mastodon-becomes-nonprofit-to-make-sure-its-never-ruined-by-billionaire-ceo/
I love using Mastodon and I have a lot of hope for its future. I wish I was as happy with Bluesky, which was founded with the promise of federation, and which uses a clever naming scheme that makes it even harder for server owners to usurp your identity. But while Bluesky has added many, many technically impressive features, they haven't delivered on the long-promised federation:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast
Bluesky sure seems like a lot of fun! They've pulled tens of millions of users over from other systems, and by all accounts, they've all having a great time. The problem is that without federation, all those users are vulnerable to bad decisions by management (perhaps under pressure from the company's investors) or by a change in management (perhaps instigated by investors if the current management refuses to institute extractive measures that are good for the investors but bad for the users). Federation is to social media what fire-exits are to nightclubs: a way for people to escape if the party turns deadly:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes
So what's the answer? Well, around Mastodon, you'll hear a refrain that reminds me a lot of the Napster wars: "People who are enjoying themselves on Bluesky are wrong to do so, because it's not federated and the only server you can use is run by a VC-backed for-profit. They should all leave that great party – there's no fire exits!"
This is the social media version of "To be in our movement, you have to stop listening to popular music." Sure, those people shouldn't be crammed into a nightclub that has no fire exits. But thankfully, there is an alternative to being the kind of scold who demands that people leave a great party, and being the kind of callous person who lets tens of millions of people continue to risk their lives by being stuck in a fire-trap.
We can install our own fire-exits in Bluesky.
Yesterday, an initiative called "Free Our Feeds" launched, with a set of goals for "billionaire-proofing" social media. One of those goals is to add the long-delayed federation to Bluesky. I'm one of the inaugural endorsers for this, because installing fire exits for Bluesky isn't just the right thing to do, it's also good tactics:
https://freeourfeeds.com/
Here's why: if a body independent of the Bluesky corporation implements its federation services, then we ensure that its fire exits are beyond the control of its VCs. That means that if they are ever tempted in future to brick up the fire-exits, they won't be able to. This isn't a hypothetical risk. When businesses start to enshittify their services, they fully commit themselves to blocking anything that makes it easy to leave those services.
That's why Apple went so hard after Beeper Plus, a service that enhanced iMessage's security by making conversations between Apple and Android users as private as chats that were confined to Apple users:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/07/blue-bubbles-for-all/#never-underestimate-the-determination-of-a-kid-who-is-time-rich-and-cash-poor
It's why Elon Musk periodically freaks out and suspends users who list their Mastodon userids in their Twitter bios:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/15/elon-musk-suspends-mastodon-twitter-account-over-elonjet-tracking/
And it's why Meta will suspend your account if you link to Pixelfed, a Fediverse-based alternative to Instagram:
https://www.404media.co/meta-is-blocking-links-to-decentralized-instagram-competitor-pixelfed/
Once upon a time, we had a solid way of overcoming the problem of lock-in. We'd reverse-engineer a proprietary system and make a free, open alternative. We've been hacking fire exits into walled gardens since the Usenet days, with the creation of the alt.* hierarchy:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/altinteroperabilityadversarial
When the corporate owners of Unix started getting all weird about source-code access and user-modifiability, we didn't insist that Unix users were bad people for sticking with a corporate OS. We reverse-engineered Unix and set all those users free:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Project
The answer to Microsoft's proprietary SMB network protocol wasn't a campaign to shame people for having SMB running on their LANs. It was reverse-engineering SMB and making SAMBA, which is now in every single device in your home and office, and it's gloriously free as in speech and free as in beer:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/samba-versus-smb-adversarial-interoperability-judo-network-effects
In the years since, a thicket of laws we colloquially call "IP" has grown up around services and products, and people have literally forgotten that there is an alternative to wheedling people to endure the pain of leaving a proprietary system for a free one. IP has put the imaginations of people who dream of a free internet in chains.
We can do better than begging people to leave a party they're enjoying; we can install our own fucking fire exits. Sure, maybe that means that a lot of those users will stay on the proprietary platform, but at least we'll have given them a way to leave if things go horribly wrong.
After all, there's no virtue in software freedom. The only thing worth caring about is human freedom. The only reason to value software freedom is if it sets humans free.
If I had my way, all those people enjoying themselves on Bluesky would come and enjoy themselves in the Fediverse. But I'm not a purist. If there's a way to use Bluesky without locking myself to the platform, I will join the party there in a hot second. And if there's a way to join the Bluesky party from the Fediverse, then goddamn I will party my ass off.
Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/14/contesting-popularity/#everybody-samba
#pluralistic#federation#decentralization#bluesky#free our feeds#mastodon#activitypub#reverse engineering
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IYHM ask replies! (1/3)
🌸 @daniluvz asked:
I am so happy, I got your book and I am excited it's finally next in my to be read pile!!!!!! I know this is way to soon to ask but will you be making another book? (I had to ask, I know you literally just came out with this one not to long ago, but I love your art and it has inspired me to continue my journey in art and graphic novel) sending all the love and well wishes❣️❣️❣️
wahhh thank you so much!!!! oh my gosh, while it's not a sequel, i AM making another book! i feel like i'm the type to keep big projects close to my chest until the moment i can reveal it to the world, but i have to confess i'm very excited about this one... AH i can't wait!
wishing you well too, i'm so excited for your journey omg!!! sending you all the luck and love in the world!!!!! 💖💖💖
🌸 @perseusrising asked:
my girlfriend and i read your book together! it was absolutely spectacular! thank you so much for sharing such a beautiful story
oh it makes me so happy when i hear about people reading it together!! especially couples! what a wonderful experience to share. thank you <3
🌸 @ggwweenn1 asked:
I work at a library and read "If you'll have me" because I saw it in our new book delivery and thought "oh hey I know them from Tumblr" and then immediately was like "ok ok where can I display this prominently so every 16 year old girl can read it!?!?!" xoxo
AHH i only want the best for everyone who works at libraries!! thank you for all your hard work!!! 😤 also OMG YES... i wish that every girl who needs this book may find it... tysm! xoxo!!
🌸 @elihoneybee asked:
my girlfriend got me iyhm for christmas im so happy thank you for this beautiful book
oh thank you so much!! ;_; i'm always so touched when i hear it's been given as a gift. i think books are such good presents! and giving them is such a sweet gesture <3
🌸 @mythicalphoenix14 asked:
I recently read your book and wanted to tell you how incredible the art was and the story.
oh my gosh. that means so much! thank you forever ♥
🌸 @animaestr0 asked:
me and my friends went to the bookstore a couple montsb back and i SAW "IF YOU'LL HAVE ME" on the shelf and i straight up screamed and yoinked it because I was late to the iyhm preorder chain and couldn't find it anywhere for a while BUT!!!! I HAVE IT NOWW WOOOOOOOOO
OMG YAYYYYYYY i'm so happy to hear that!!! YIPPEEEEE 💕💕 honestly i should've reblogged the preorder link more but i'm so slow to act and afraid of being annoying 😩 i wanna try harder next time!!
🌸 Anonymous asked:
I saw your sneak peak scene on twitter and i just fell in love with your artstyle in a heartbeat, the colors, your way of setting the scene and i just wanted to tell ya i ordered if you'll have me! ps: i'm from germany! :)
you are so wonderfully sweet oh my gosh! ;0; thank you so much for your kind words!! may it get to you safely~
🌸 Anonymous asked:
i saw iyhm in a store today! i'm in australia so i was going to buy it online but i was so moved seeing irl :') it's on my bookshelf. congrats on getting published, i'm so excited to read it!
oh my goodness, thank you! SAME every time i see it in a store, my heart skips a beat 💓 i feel very grateful to have physical copies out in the world, especially with the state of digital media preservation today... thank you again!!
🌸 @unfortunatelyem asked:
read the iyhm graphic novel in one sitting and almost cried!!! thank you for the food🙏
wahhh thank you so much for reading and enjoying!!!!
🌸 @dancingcoder28 asked:
Just wanted to tell you that I saw your book in my local library! I am so happy and excited to see it because it’s such a good book, and definitely deserves to be put out there 💜💜💜💜
AHHH yessss we love libraries!! omggg thank you so much for this lovely message, that means the world 💛💛💛💛
🌸 Anonymous asked:
HI HELLO i just wanted to let you know that my friends and i went to the big barnes and nobles in NYC recently and i recognized If You'll Have Me on display and ofc i HAD to have it so I picked it up right away and absolutely adored every page of it and thank you sososo much for giving us such a lovely story <33 it made me smile so much !!!!!!!
OMG THANK YOU AHHH!!!!! oh i wanted so much for it to make someone smile!!! T_T my dreams are coming true... i hope it felt like a warm hug <3 <3
🌸 @cosmonautchan asked:
SAW YOUR BOOK AT MY LOCAL WATERSTONES!!! IT'S SUPER COOL!!!
THANK YOU AHHH HOW WONDERFUL!!! i would love to visit a waterstones someday!!
🌸 Anonymous asked:
Hiii I'm in the middle of reading IYHM (digital version cuz I don't trust my local post office sorry 😔) and it makes me feel so uwu. I'm happy to see wlw works out there (I've read mostly mlm so far). Momo is so relatable it almost hurts, I too overthink absolutely everything. Congratulations on the release!!! Here's to many more! 🎉 🥂
totally understand omg rip 😔🙏 but yayyyy i'm so thrilled! the overthinking is so real for me too. also uwu is EXACTLY the feeling i wanted to capture 😂 the uwus and the doki dokis... i wish i had even more time to show the girls being cute and fluffy with each other! maybe next time hehe. thank you so much!!!
🌸 @hyper0bject asked:
heyyy i just got a copy of IYHM in! excited to read it, been following the mini comics for a bit now and pulled the trigger on it a couple days ago :) even just looking it over it looks super quality, print and heft! thanks!
ahh i'm so happy to hear that! thank you so much!! i'm still so pleased with how the physical copies turned out. i like paperbacks because of how they feel to hold, but i was amazed to find out the hardback has the art printed right onto the cover! i totally wasn't expecting it. ty again! :>
🌸 Anonymous asked:
I just wanted to let you know I remember seeing art of momo and PG when I was in seventh grade (the "you're the cute one" art) and today I saw them on the cover of a book at my library and I almost couldn't believe it!!! I finished it within that same afternoon, and I gotta say I'm so happy you were able to publish these girls. I love them to bits. keep up the amazing work!!!
omg it's been so long since i drew that!! it's amazing that you remembered them and that they came back to you like this!!! thank you so much aw... this is so incredibly sweet... i wish i had more words to say thank you <33
🌸 @lemonbaristas asked:
Happy book birthday!!! 🎉
thank you so much!!! 🥺💕
part 2 is on its way~
#iyhm#replies#lemonbaristas#cosmonautchan#hyper0bject#dancingcoder28#unfortunatelyem#animaestr0#mythicalphoenix14#elihoneybee#ggwweenn1#perseusrising#daniluvz#anon
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@ianwaite replied to your post “Does Al also make you paranoid? Look at this...”:
Why do you assume that AI artists are not interested in their cause? What do you think of digital art?
There are no Al artists, there are Al prompters. If you've ever been interested in something then you must know that the object of your interest is what really counts. You want to know more about it, you want to fully experience it. You want to be a writer, you sit and write, you develop your skills, find new techniques of writing and telling stories through written words. If you don't want to write, you're not a writer. You can tell stories but that doesn't mean you're a writer. You can have ideas but that doesn't make you a writer. If you tell another person or a machine to write you something you're not a writer. If someone else composes words for you, you're not a writer. You are not a carpenter when you tell a machine to make you a table in a rococo style. You're not interested in carpentry, you just want a table and want people to clap saying "wow, what a beautiful table, you're such an amazing carpenter" and then to buy it. This is what they're interested in. Al prompters are interested either in the technical aspects of Al, or the final "product" that can give them money or a pat on the back, or a short lasting pleasure of seeing their wife's head on a supergirl body. Tell me the difference between prompting and image searching? There is none.
What do I think about digital art? It's great and beautiful. Graphic programs artists use are another medium. Graphic programs don't lead your hand, don't magically pop images like Al. You draw lines with a stylus on tablet the same way you draw with a pencil on paper. Every medium has different properties. With oil paints you can do impasto paintings, watercolours react beautifully with water, Clip Studio allows you do draw on layers. There is no dark magic but Al prompters see a sped up, edited screen recording of a digital art proces and they think the drawing magically appears on screen without a physical input of the artist. They don't see work, just pats and some "product". I love digital art because it allowed me to share my art with other people much easier. I admire digital artists who can create amazing art pieces. I hope they won't give up when Al people constantly steal from them.
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