#I wrote 30 quotes

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

Something random to know about me is that, at least on desktop, it is entirely accurate to assume that I have at least 30 tabs open at any time, unless I happen to be preparing to shut down my laptop (which is a rare occurrence).

[theworldgate]

I have to explain what is going on in the UK, because it is absurd.

So, this is Gary Lineker:

He's known for a fair few things over here. He was a very good (association) footballer, playing for England in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, winning the Golden Boot in 1986, and managing to never get a single yellow card in his playing career. He played for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham, before finishing his career in Japan. But if you aren't in your mid 30s, you probably know actually know him him for a couple of other things. The first is the role of spokesman for another Leicester icon, Walkers Crisps (which are sort of equivalent to Lays, but hit different), as pictured above. Despite being a notably clean player, he used to play a cheeky serial crisp thief. I don't think he's done that for well over a decade, but his ads were on the telly a lot when I was a kid and it's a bit like learning that the hamburglar was an incredibly clean (American) football player or something.

The second thing Gary is widely known for is having presented Match of the Day, the big football program on the BBC, the sort-of state broadcaster, since 1999. He is, incidentally, very well paid for this (though with a consensus that he could get even more if he went to one of the non-free-to-view broadcasters because he is very good at the job). He also has a twitter account. And political opinions. So, the UK government has got itself dead set upon doing heinous stuff that will totally somehow work to prevent people who want to come to the UK making the perilous crossing of the Channel (between England and France). By heinous, I mean "openly advertise that they won't attempt to protect victims of modern slavery" stuff. It's very obviously using a legal hammer to victimise a marginalised group of people in order to win votes. And, uh, I should clarify that by "legal" I mean "using the passage of laws" - the policy is, in addition to all the other ways it's awful, probably incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the UK's international law obligations. Gary, top lad that he is, objected to this. On Tuesday 7th March, he made a quote Tweet of a video of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, bigging up the policy, he wrote "Good heavens, this is beyond awful.". This got a bunch of backlash from extremely right-wingers, and then he made the tweet that really got him in trouble (with right-wingers): "There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?".

Now, I am not actually subjecting myself to watching a video of Suella Braverman bigging up a cruel policy to say whether the specific comparison of the language to 1930s Germany is accurate. But needless to say, Ms Braverman was amongst the many figures on the right of UK politics objecting to Gary's rhetoric. And here's the part where a fact about the BBC comes in: it is nominally neutral and impartial (and so, of course, is routinely accused of bias from all sides but particularly the right-wing), and has something of a code for its contributors to this effect. Now, that code has previously been applied to Gary Lineker, over a comment about whether governing Conservative Party would hand back donations from figures linked to the Russian regime. But it generally hasn't been applied too strongly to people like Gary, whose roles have nothing to do with politics (such as presenting a "here's what happened on the footie today" show), on the basis that, well, their roles have nothing to do with politics. However, when directly asked about whether the BBC should punish Gary Lineker for his tweets, government figures basically went "well, that's a them problem". But a couple of days passed, and it seemed like Gary's approach of "standing his ground because he did nothing wrong" was working and everything would die down. He was set to get 'a talking to' but not much more than that. The Conservative right, after all their fire and fury earlier, had gotten bored and moved onto something else. And then, on Friday 10th March, the BBC announced that he would be suspended from hosting Match of the Day this weekend. But it could still go ahead, because there are, like, other hosts! Except, well, funnily enough, when you take a beloved figure off air, for making a fairly anodyne tweet, no one wants to be the scab who actually takes up the role of replacing him. Gary's two co-hosts, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, said that they would not appear without him. People who (co-)host Match of the Day on other days followed suit. The net result is that Match of the Day is currently set to air without hosts, BBC commentary, or global feed commentary. And the solidarity shown to Gary Lineker, over what is very flagrantly actual cancel culture and an attack on freedom of speech (the logic implied is that institutional impartiality requires that no one say anything too critical of the government ever), has continued to grow. The BBC has pretty much been unable to run pretty much any live sports content today, and has resorted to raiding the BBC Sounds archive to fill the sports radio channel. And, as of 17:30 on Saturday 11th March, the situation shows no signs of improvement, though some are calling for the Chairman Richard Sharp, who is separately facing corruption allegations, to resign (yes I linked to the BBC itself there, there is nothing, nothing, the BBC loves more than going into great detail about how much the BBC sucks).

[burstinn]

THE EVERY GAY MANS DREAM READER

TALL, BUFF, BIG BOOBS AND ASS everything

Can't find no good pic for this so..

This post includes:Ghost, Graves, Price, Soap, Nikto, Riptide, Krueger, Konig, Alejandro, Rudy, Gaz, Horangi, Makarov, Velikan, Keegan, Roach. In that order

Yes I wrote all those, yes because I haven't written in a while

Notes:

- NSFW and SFW (Bottom male and top male reader mentioned)

-since y'all like the big buff n' tall male reader, made him bigger and taller basically mixed everything I wrote about male reader, tall, big buff, big cake, big boobs it's like a package in one this will probably be the last of this type of reader since running out ideas. It was hard making original headcanons 💔💔.

-Omg I haven't written in a while so like this might get idk boring?

- Yes again headcanons,you're favs

- strictly MALE READER not Gn rn

- readers age is ambiguous but if you can't think and want an age for reader my thinking is somewhere near late 30s or early 40s

- Some of the HCS have where y'all ain't in a relationship some HCS have y'all r in a relationship

- these headcanons definitely are mischaracterized but let me pretend for a bit 💔💔

- Tiktok got to me now I have brainrot language, so Trigger warning wooohh braiinroot

- can't believe this post was long enough to make my phone lag just a lil bit

- When he first saw you of course he was 😦😧😮

GHOST

- Like okay overkill, like you're taller, buffer and probably have a huger cock??? (Something he can investigate.. For purposes..)

Like you also got smoobs?? A plumpy ass??

Like save some for the rest Jesus 😒😒

- Nonstop staring secretly ofc, You be like in a room then you feel someone staring just to see Ghost somewhere in the corner of the room. You can't tell if he's staring or not but being that you are in an empty room.. Yknow it's kind of obv--

- BUT if you are not in an empty room you will not shake off the staring I mean holy shit look at you like 😨😨🍑✋

- You can literally hear him breathing heavily under his mask like how can he control himself when HE a person who is supposed to be looked up to literally and figuratively now has to look up at YOU?? do you know what does to a person??

-That's right it makes them freaky..

-Probably jerks off to you too

- I mean who doesn't want to get railed by a 7 ft tall man? Especially ESPECIALLY when you've been the supposed dominant person your whole life??

- OMG immediately Cumming to the thought

- I mean he won't mind topping you it also drives his own ego seeing a dominant man get absolutely wrecked, imagine the begging and whining

- plus he won't mind being the person who feels protected not always doing the protecting like 💔💔 he wants to feel protected too 😞

GRAVES

- Immediate gay awakening

- thinks making his western accent more prominent would make you think he sounds more hot

- Will dress up as a cowboy and will will ask (beg) you to do it as well

- because you know.. Hat thing.. Riding.. Graves grabs your hat puts it on his head or Graves grabs his hat puts it on your head, either way one of you is riding something and it ain't a horse

- because of the amazing quote on who ever came up w/ that is "save a horse ride a cowboy"

- Graves is obviously the type of guy to look at your ass and whistle maybe slap it, nah definitely slap it

PRICE

- He thinks of you like a bear

- like You're soo- big and cuddly? Definitely intimidating

- I mean you're near the same age bracket so it's not bad to have some.. Thoughts right?

- You're definitely hairy underneath or not but pls be he wants pubes to tickle his nose

- if you don't have a beard for reader then he would KILL to see have a beard like aughh perfect bear look, if you have a beard immediately cumming(/j) or (not /j)

- Like imagine you and price who are basically like bears like parent bears and and you the other 141 boys are like your children 🥺🥺

SOAP

- DEFINITELY became more gayer

- errrmmm.. Like his eyes are BASICALLY near like chest height

- bumping into you and his face touches your chest like omgg.. Such an accident 💔💔

- Obviously flirting about going to pound town

- like imagine You and Him? In a relationship? Having the most feral sex??? Like it's obv jokes (it's not)

- He would also do anything to see a big man whimper like a little bicth slut, who wouldn't want to see a demon of a man roll his eyes back and whine like a wheoeororoe❤, I mean if he tops I'd imagine him saying "cmon you're a big boy ain't cha'? You can handle a few more inches". While you are also getting the malevolent backshots.

- He would also want a big strong arm to man handle him as he takes the most vigorous backshots known to man

- Have you ever thought or seen a very tall wall like 10 or 11 ft high and you being you, Soap asks (demands) for you to carry him on your shoulder because he wants to see what's over the wall

NIKTO

- intimidating guy and intimidating guy typa relationship but your not in a relationship.. Yet.

- watch him watch you

- shows off his knife collection to you, yes I think he has a knife collection and he will show it to people that he wants to impress (he wants to get freaky with you)

- I like to think if he strips off the gear he gives the most desperate kind of touchy hug, to those he feels close with of course which is you

- lucky you

RIPTIDE

- Offers to teach you how to swim yknow just in case

- there is none, he wants to see you wet

- tells you to wear a white shirt and shorts because its Essential for training, it's a lie he wants to see the water wet your clothes making it stick to your body.. Yknow the white shirt showing whats underneath and the shorts outlining what package you've been hiding even though you weren't really hiding it

- He gets too distracted, the others are too, he forgets how to teach you

KRUEGER

- indefinite eye contact while your doing it

- likes staring into them, if you get shy and look away he will grab your jaw and make you have eye contact with him

- angry fierce ahh eyes

- he's an emotional grumpy guy, rip off his mask and aggressively kiss his face

- He wants the after sex laying on the chest while the other is rubbing their head, goes both ways.

- trace his tattoos and compliment them the bedroom will be locked the whole day, trust 🙏

KÖNIG

- The same as Ghosts

- Imagine being the one to get carried instead of the one carrying

- König would definitely come up to you and ask to be carried while you kiss his face multiple times❤❤

- Imagine how hard he gets because you have to look down at him to talk like HNGRHRRGGGRGRRR

- Definitely likes giving you homemade arts and crafts gear because you know.. The headcanon where König makes his own gear and what if he does it for other people too as gifts💔

- likes seeing you wear his mask it makes him imagine what people see when they see König definitely a change of perspective. He can see how intimidating you are and he gets hard.

ALEJANDRO

- will definitely compliment you in Spanish when talking about you with other people even when you're in front or behind him.

- I mean you don't understand Spanish right?

- if you don't, you're oblivious and only just watch curiously on what he's talking about. Buuut but but if you do understand you don't tell him you undeestrand this thing literally feeds your ego like Alejandro thinks of you this way? 🥺🥺

- Thigh riding type of guy idc who thigh riding

RUDY

- everytime I look at him he looks like a soft vanilla type

- I know he's a strong guy but look at him

- He wants soft sex 😞😞

- He also likes being complimented if you whisper a praise to him when he's doing ANYTHING. Imagine the babies you'd both have together.

- He likes toddlers and babies and if you do too a plus for him,makes him fall even more 💯💯

GAZ

- One time he Got injured and was sitting on the floor and then He saw you running towards him he simultaneously screamed in fear and how hard he got

- Likes to style your clothes, If he was off the military right now he really really likes fashion and if he sees you.. You can't fashion and he sees you wearing.. That, He's appalled, horrified, mortified I'm over exaggerating. But he is now in charge of your fashion now, But if you do know how to style you both will share tips with eachother. You can share different tips too ❤❤

- drags you in his barracks and strips you of your clothes except shorts.. And he's telling you this because he wants to "style" you.

- We both know damn well that's an excuse to get the boombayah freaky on.. He's just to shy to tell you upfront or he thinks it's fun to tease you like that before you get freaky

HORANGI

- gets freaky..

- Like he understands the women who get all giggly and nervous when they see a big man who can destroy them (ignore König 💔)

- is definitely not above thigh crushing, boob crushing, face sitting he'd do all at as long as it's you

- Like one time he pretended he broke his leg and won't let anyone else carry him until you came, acting all princessy and shit as you carry him bridal style to the medics

- He felt like a prince omg

- will definitely get on you and treat your real life size anime men boobs as a squishy toy

- How long is it and will he be able to take it??? Who knows he will find out!! Basically searched how long can someone's cock be if they are built like a god and is 7ft tall in Google

- someone gotta tell me Horangi's height and basic Google searching ain't doing it for me I'm too lazy to search for one line of a spicy headcanon line mb

MAKAROV

- You're basically ascary dog he owns

- You're tall and intimidating

- You can get information out of people quickly

- And he's not above telling you to torture anyone with a strength and body like yours

- most of the time you get the info done and folded

- Makarov uses you for intimidation and strength buuttt if you ever THINK of betraying him he already has a plan to get rid of someone like you

- Can and will turn you into one of those supersoldiers

- Will make you murder people right in front of him for entertainment and will rewward you!

- you know what reward it will be, Because when he asked what reward you wanted you got a bit to freaky you thought you be dead rn but nah he agreed actually he seems to enjoy it more than you do..

VELIKAN

- He's the dog in this one have you heard his voice?? Rough as hell imagine hearing him grunt

- Sounds cocky as hieeeellll too

- Would definitely like showing off to you since he wants to look cool in front of you

- Like you seen velikans skins?? Definitely wears the best ones to show you he can not only be a trained assassin But can also dress cool as hell

- If you compliment him it like makes his day, will not stop thinking about it

- Like a cool person complimenting a cool person like him? Ego boost (It's him feeling gay)

- This guys definitely a smoker (headcanon!!) Because voice sounds like he smoked 100 packs in 1 day and doesn't drink an ounce of water /jk I love him he's so hot.

- So if you want a smoke he purposely hides the lighter saying.. 'Oh no I asked someone elses lighter.. I don't have mine right now' or like 'my lighter ran out of fuel ohh

- So you have to put the cigarette in your mouth as you touch it with his cigarette to light ur own that type of trope 💫💫

- If you're not a smoker he will try his best to not smoke in front of you will use fresh mints to hide his breath of smoke

- after sex he will want a smoke, outside he goes or you both share the one cigarette

KEEGAN

- is it wrong to want to be choked by a big buff meaty arm?

- yknow the tiktok thing where girls put a ribbon on their boyfriends arm and the girls just put their face in the middle as their faces get squished??

- Yeah he wants that but gay

- will try to compare dick sizes even though yours is OBVIOUSLY the superior one!!

- Heads or tails on who's bottoming tonight

- Would like to be wrapped around your arms if you are hugging or sleeping keeps him warm

- Especially when it's snowing will force you to hug with him. ESPECIALLY when your in a mission and your in the tents he will definitely force you to hug it out with him

ROACH

- remember the other tall HC where the reader wasn't taller than König

- yes roach does the same thing here.. He's crawling on you like a tree

- If he wants a kiss instead of asking he crawls up to you and kisses you

- definitely likes to sit on your shoulders as you walk around, he feels tall like that

- this is like a distance relationship 💔💔

- Likes it when you bend over to talk to him also when you bend over when youre doing sum since it's slappable opportunity

- because bent over = double D cake will be slapped

- How will it fit? By the power of friendship of course!!

- probably more of say gex desperation but you get it

- Obviously switch switch

[snickerdoodlles]

one of my most formative fandom experiences was a comment i had gotten on a fic i wrote for a halloween themed fandom event.

this was for a manga/anime, so the fic was a general ghost story obviously set in Japan. the beginning of it involved a pizza delivery and while writing it, i had spent like 30 minutes just double checking tipping customs and the types of pizza they serve and even fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole looking up the history of pizza in Japan.

now, i just like the research part of writing, i do stuff like this because i have fun doing it. and while i was writing this particular fic, i had laughed at myself for my 30 minutes of googling that amounted to 2.5 offhand lines in a 3500 word fic. i didn't think anyone would care about or even notice those particular details except for me, especially since none of them were relevant to the ghost part of this ghost story.

except, when i had sent this fic to a Japanese friend, the first thing she said to me about it was "OH MY GOD YOU GOT THE PIZZA RIGHT"

and that was the moment when it had really clicked for me. what had just been 30 minutes of effort on my part had become a moment of relief for her. my friend was far more used to reading ethnocentric fic that ranged from unintentional ignorance to outright superiority against part of her culture (the original story's culture no less). and even with the "innocent" ignorance (heavy quotes on that) far outstripping any outright maliciousness, that's still so many people saying her culture was not worth learning about. the pizza in my story was a small detail, but i had cared enough to put in some effort to check it. and for her, coming from a fic experience where her norm was bracing for hundreds of inaccuracies born of ignorance, especially at that time after a flood of stories centered around "Halloween as a cultural holiday in the US" premises instead of the "Halloween is a commercial gimmick in Japan" reality, seeing someone put in some effort even for minor story details meant something to her.

this also throws me back to the discourse that arose in a french show fandom a few years ago because there were a lot of fic authors that wrote 'dollars' instead of 'euros'-- but when people brought this up as a prevalent issue across the fandom but an easy one to fic/watch out for, many of these writers instead pushed back to complain that they were posting stories for free and it wasn't that big of a deal. which really upset a lot of people, but then this upset was met with a new wave of indignation that people needed to 'get over it' because they're writing fic ~just as a hobby~. but, even if 'dollars' instead of 'euros' wasn't a big deal, by digging in their heels about the issue, they were saying "your culture isn't worth even five minutes of my time or effort."

I've been thinking about these things lately because the ethnocentrism in Thai drama fandoms is...staggering. just over the turn of the year, there were waves of Christmas fic for Buddhist characters. and just. Christmas in Thailand is a tourist thing at best. sometimes a pop culture gimmick for international audiences or maybe an offhand high school thing to blow off steam between midterms. it's not a cultural thing. and even if a character is a part of the Christian minority, a Christian Thai's holiday customs and culture are going to be vastly different than a Christian's customs in the Americas or Europe. and while the Christmas fic is at least finished for now, I'm already bracing myself for the Easter fic wave that also seems to pop up for Thai dramas. it's so frustrating to see this sort of cultural overwrite all the time, especially since most Thai drama holiday works aren't about Thai holidays.

but the thing that really got me bristling about all of this again was i saw a post the other day where op said that they weren't going to write [thai drama] fic because they don't know much about thailand.

what an absolutely appalling statement to make.

google is right there. wikipedia is free. you don't even have to leave tumblr or AO3 to learn more because there are Thai natives in fandom who write essays to explain common elements of their culture. hell, even just watching these Thai stories and considering the values and messages imparted by the narrative framework and story lens tells you something about that culture. the audacity to look at a culture different from your own and say "this is not worth my effort or time to learn anything more about," are you kidding me?!?

the messages and values of a story tell you about the writer's values, which are going to carry their cultural values, beliefs, and biases. Thai culture is going to be heavily relevant to any Thai story, even the ones that aren't explicitly about Thai culture/customs/etc. (hell, Thai bl/gl as a genre alone-- just the fact that queer Thai writers are making these stories in Thailand's current political climate is highly political, even the "fluffy" ones that don't seem to make outright political statements.) to approach any story like it was made in a vacuum is to remove the writer(s)' culture and values and to overwrite them with your own.

especially because this is fandom. these are the lowest stakes to learn! it sucks to see people say things like "but i'm scared i'll get something wrong" and hold up that fear as a shield to justify their ignorance. no one's expecting anyone to get every detail right, especially not for a culture that isn't theirs, just make an effort to learn something new about it. pick out something that caught your eye as different to learn more about and see where it leads you.

and for the record--making a mistake trying to broaden your horizons is a far, far better thing to do than to superimpose your culture on everyone else's because you're scared to confront your ignorance.

edit: check out this reblog thanks

[ef-1]

I see some confusion (both real and manufactured lol) about the authenticity of the claims reported by F1-Insider on the Red Bull seat.

There are two main claims in that article

That everyone, including "the Verstappen family" were told by Horner and Helmut that Sergio WILL be replaced by the next race in Zandvoort:

2. That the drastic change of course was the result of Liberty Media (the rights holder to all of F1) pressuring Red Bull not to drop Sergio during the break because it would cost Liberty too much money if the only Mexican driver, who is regarded a hero, is dropped before the Mexican GP- tanking the event:

There has been a lot of handwringing about how F1-Insider is not a reliable news source, this is only partially correct because they are not really AMuS (<- regarded as THE gold standard in f1 journalism and reporting) F1-insider mostly report on other people's interviews and sources, it is however a reliable Verstappen camp source. Ralf Bach, the owner of F1-Insider AND MORE IMPORTANTLY THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE is a career long f1 journalist (30 yr long veteran and is inducted in the paddock hall of fame) has been a Verstappen camp insider since 2016 (think of him as Erik van Haren-lite), if he says something about the Verstappens it is either from Jos or Raymond. He's also by extension close to Helmut (Helmut gave him all those exclusive interviews about how close Red Bull came to bringing Seb back into Red Bull after Ferrari refused to extend him). Most of F1-Insider's interviews are from Red Bull, specifically Helmut and camp Verstappen.

Ralf Bach and Jos are even closer than that because they're friends. In 2021, Jos complained to Bach about Lewis and Toto without knowing he was saying those comments on the record because he thought he was just chatting with Bach as a friend. When Bach wrote about those comments in F1-Insider, Jos tweeted that he doesn't know who F1-Insider is because he didn't know Bach had founded his own company and the website was still quite new. Bach then asked Jos to delete that tweet because it dented F1-insider's credibilty and Jos DID delete that tweet because didn't want to make his friend look like a liar and he HAD said those things to Bach lol. + Bach was only second to EVH when it came to reporting Jos' side of the story when they were trying to overthrow Horner after news of the allegations against him broke.

For Ralf Bach to say, and I quote ,"The Verstappen family were surprised [...] Horner and Helmut gave them a clear statement: Perez is gone" literally means only 1 of 2 things: This is coming directly from camp Verstappen, either from Raymond or most probably Jos given that's his friend and the way Ralf specifically made sure to say 'the Verstappen family' (girl who else? Sophie? Victoria?).

Whether both claims are true can be up for debate but what is a point of fact is that Ralf Bach is reporting what camp Verstappen is telling him they know. And they're telling him that they were verbatim told by both Horner and Helmut that Sergio will be booted on Sunday after the race. The heli ride with Daniel, Max, Jos and Raymond + the fact that camp Verstappen have no reason to lie about this point to at least most of this being true.

[sugarushwriting]

bad idea right? frat boy sunghoon, #3

part 1, part 2

“i only see him as a friend, biggest lie i ever said.”

hehe, here’s the dirty part. pure smut to the best of my ability. enjoy 🤍

not proofread. please share, reblog, like, comment all of it! pls do not repost or translate. ty!!!

wrote 97% while at work on break in 30 minutes.

₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ ₊˚⊹♡

“too bad peach, means you’re not getting fucked properly.”

your eyes widened and you stood frozen in your spot. towel tightly wrapped against your naked body, goosebumps appearing on your skin.

“uh—i, huh?”

“aww did i make you speechless?” sunghoon chuckled.

you nodded. you literally were speechless.

“didn’t you just say you weren’t trying to woo me into bed?”

“all i did was state a fact, peach. if you aren’t sore after sex, then the men you pick aren’t doing it correctly.”

you scoffed, “and what, every girl you’ve had sex with has been sore or trouble walking afterwards?”

sunghoon smirked, “yes, peach.”

“i don’t believe you.”

“then ask them yourselves for proof. i am sure some have pictures of my handprints and marks i’ve left.”

oh. “oh, uh—,”

“or my bite marks.”

you started to feel hot. everywhere.

“sunghoon—,”

“yes?” sunghoon was giving you lustful eyes, and continued to have a smirk etched on his lips.

“you—you can’t just say things like that!”

“you started it.” sunghoon shot back.

“huh? when did i ever bring up sex with you first?” you crossed your arms over your towel covered chest.

“that night you high jacked my bed. and i quote, you said, ‘would you have sex with me if i asked? or kiss me? would you even hug a girl like me?’” sunghoon had said back to you what you said that night you were drunk.

“i don’t remember that.”

“probably because you were drunk out of your mind and sad.”

“then it doesn’t count!”

“drunk words are sober thoughts, peach.”

you opened your mouth to shoot off a reply but sunghoon cut you off, “do you want to know my answer?”

“what?” you asked confused.

“after you asked me these questions you didn’t even give me time to reply. you answered for me and said that i wouldn’t. but do you want to know the truth?”

you swallowed. did you? did you want to know the truth? you did, so you nodded slowly.

“yes peach. yes i would have sex with a girl like you. yes i would kiss a girl like you. yes i would hug a girl like you.” sunghoon listed.

all during his answers, he walked closer to you, you not even moving, now you both stood toe to toe.

you could feel his breath, that’s how close you were standing. it seemed his breathing had picked up, so had yours due to the intensity of the conversation.

“actually peach,” his tone change a little darker.

you heartbeat quickened in anticipation of what he was gonna say next.

“i wouldn’t just have sex with you. i am going to fuck you.”

going to? was that a threat or promise?

it was both.

you squeaked before sunghoon’s lips attached to yours in a heated and hot kiss, his tongue immediately seeking permission to find yours.

you let his tongue meet yours, and felt his teeth bite your bottom lip.

sunghoon’s hands went to grab underneath your ass, to lift you up to where he was holding you, your legs wrapped around his waist. not once did the heavy make out session stop.

you both moaned into each other’s mouths, it seemed you two weren’t getting enough of each other as you pressed your body closer to his as possible.

sunghoon had walked you both to his room, and gently placed you on his bed.

he slowly removed his lips from yours, you whining at the loss, you unconsciously following his lips.

you sat in the bed in the towel, sunghoon leaning over you by having his arms on either side of you as he leaned down so his face was in front of yours.

he had a drunken smile on his face. licking his lips, his eyes flickered down to your towel and back up to meet your hungry eyes.

“you may not get on your knees for anyone peach, but you will get on your knees for me.”

you whimpered and grew wet at his words.

“get on your knees.” sunghoon all but growled in a deep tone.

you obeyed. you, without even thinking slipped off the bed, your eyes glued to sunghoon’s, and rested on your knees.

sunghoon had a proud smile. his hand came to cradle your cheek. “my good peach.” his thumb traced your bottom lip before he forced that thumb into your mouth and on your tongue.

reaching down with his free hand, he undid the towel so it slumped to around your lower half, revealing your naked body.

he removed his thumb, and both hands got busy to his belt and pants. first the belt came off, but he didn’t toss it. instead, he gripped it in one hand. then he continued on to unbutton his pants.

“unzip and pull them down.” he ordered.

your hands slowly did as he said. your hands went to pull his boxers down but he tsked.

“eager are we?” he chuckled. “did i say to pull down my boxers?”

you shook your head.

“words, peach.”

“no.” you pouted.

“on the bed all fours.” sunghoon stated and took off the remainder of his pants as you got up onto the bed and got into the position he wanted.

from behind, sunghoon took off his boxers and shirt as well.

sunghoon pushed your upper body into the bed, your cheek smushed against the comforter. from the corner of your eye you could see sunghoon was naked in all his glory.

and you saw what hung between his legs.

you snapped your eyes shut. holy fucking shit.

you had no time to think as sunghoon’s belt came to snap against your ass.

you screamed in both pain and pleasure, mixed with a loud moan.

you’ve never had this done to you in bed. why? why have you never done this? you got wet just from the slap, and even wetter at the thought of him using it again.

sunghoon’s lips met your ass cheek for a soft kiss then used his palm to soothe.

“i would use more peach, but i know your butt hurts from your falls on the ice.”

you felt a hint of teasing in his tone.

his body covered your backside, his lips meeting the nape of your neck.

“i will take my time with you, and admire your body. but first, i’m fucking you.”

sunghoon grabbed both your wrists to bring them to behind your back, using his belt to tie them together. your chest and right cheek were pushed into the bed.

his right hand held your hands that were tied together. “you yell red if you need me to stop peach.”

you nodded, and heard sunghoon shuffling through the table beside his bed. in no time, the condom was on, and his index and middle finger rubbed circles on your clit.

“while i please you, i want you to be vocal about it peach. i don’t care if the boys here you. i want to hear you.”

sunghoon wasted no time pushing his dick inside your slick cunt, your walls gripping him with ease.

“oh fuck.” sunghoon groaned under his breath, as you let out a moan.

just as you thought he was done, he kept pushing, until you swore you felt the tip of him hit your cervix. that’s how deep he felt.

you were sure you could possibly see a bulge in your stomach if positioned just right.

sunghoon’s hips snapped back before the ruthless thrust began.

“fuck, sunghoon!” you screamed.

he was right. you weren’t getting fucked properly. whoever you slept with beforehand was always too gentle. left you unsatisfied.

sunghoon was about to satisfy you in many ways in just under a minute.

“peach,” sunghoon moaned out breathlessly, “you feel so good.” he swallowed, trying to find words. “just right for me. fuck why haven’t i done this sooner? why haven’t i tried to get your attention before this?”

his hips snapped against yours, sounds of skin on skin, groans and moans only to be heard.

“hear that peach? that sound? it’s your cunt. all wet for me. all wet and taking me in.”

if sunghoon kept up with the dirty words, you surely were going to come sooner than you wanted.

you wanted to feel him inside you longer. maybe forever.

his hand kept a grip on your wrist, pulling you up a bit, where your body hovered over the bed.

“look at how your ass ripples from my fucking. so good.”

“so good, sunghoon.” you moaned out.

sunghoon forced your body to lie flat on the bed as he kept fucking you at a ruthless pace.

oh his tip was hitting the right spot. your cunt seem to moan for itself, you were so wet, it was squelching.

“listen to your pussy talking to me, peach.” sunghoon moaned out in a deep tone.

yep you were done for.

your walls squeezed him tighter. “oh sunghoon.”

“your pussy is clenching for me. begging for me. fuck, i should’ve fucked this pussy raw. to fill you up with my come.”

your thighs tightened. “sunghoon, i—i’m gonna come.”

“let go for me peach. come around my cock.”

with a loud grunt and moan, you came around sunghoon, you forcing your ass back to have him as deep as possible. sunghoon came right after you, riding out both your orgasms.

you buried your head in the pillow as you literally began to cry at how much pleasure you felt.

sunghoon pulled out, untied your wrists, threw the condom away, and rolled you over to your back.

his head came to nestle in the crook of your neck, as he left soft kisses against the length of your neck before he found a spot he liked, and began to suck.

you bit your bottom lip, now being conscious of your volume for some reason. his teeth, specifically his sharp vampire-like teeth, nipped and nibbled on your skin.

your legs went to wrap around his waist again. his bare tip rubbing against your aching and over sensitive clit.

“playing with fire, peach.” sunghoon laughed against your skin.

you smiled in a daze, wrapping your hands around his neck. you overcame with confidence, kissed his cheek, then lifted his face to above yours and pulled him into a heated kiss.

“mhm, what was that for?” he smiled after he ended the kiss.

you bypassed the question. “why do you call me peach?”

sunghoon smiled, hand twirling a piece of your hair before tucking it behind your ear.

“because one, you are like princess peach.”

“i look nothing like her.”

“i’m talking about always happy and excited. i don’t know just something.”

“oh.”

“also whenever someone says or calls you a peach, it means you’re a good person, and pleasing. you’re just, peachy. peaches are also juicy.”

sunghoon smiled and gripped your ass and you squealed in surprise with a laugh. sunghoon laughed with you and gave you a quick peck.

he rubbed circles on your hip, then pinched it. “mhm, i want you again already. not finished with you.”

you smirked. “gonna keep your promise or was it a threat?”

sunghoon sighed. “which one?”

you started to play with the hair on the nape of his neck. “fucking me so good that i’m sore. and fucking me raw.”

“oh peach, those were both promises. be careful what you wish for.”

sunghoon rutted his dick inside you, bare.

“mhmm,” you moaned against his lips. he used his tongue and licked your neck up to your chin, up to your lips.

“pussy still so wet for me.” sunghoon gripped each of your thighs that were wrapped around his waist, as he sat up. dick still buried in you.

your hands reached up above your head.

“want me to fill you up, peach?”

“yes please.” you moaned.

sunghoon, while still buried in you, kissed down your neck, to your chest, taking a nipple in his mouth, giving it a quick lick before biting down softly.

your back arched, your hair tugging on sunghoon’s strands.

he hovered his lips over yours once again. “don’t know if i want my dick or tongue in your pussy.”

you literally flexed your walls around him at the thought of his tongue, sunghoon smiled, pulling out.

“tongue it is, peach.”

wasting no time, sunghoon got to his knees, face hovering over your lower half. his tongue licked between your folds before diving right in. literally.

you’ve never been ate out so good. literally he just started.

he licked, sucked, nibbled, spat, and even used his heavingly fingers.

two of them. then three.

your walls began to tighten up as he used his free hand’s thumb to put pressure on your clit.

just as you were there, he stopped, removing his tongue and fingers, just to as quickly replace it with his dick once again.

“mhmm.” you moaned softly, gripping his back.

sunghoon—let’s say, never fucks a girl in missionary. he prefers doggy or reverse cowgirl. you’re the second girl he’s done missionary with.

(his first being an official girlfriend a few years ago).

he enjoyed the look of pure pleasure on your face knowing he was the reason for it. the way you squeezed your eyes tightly when your pussy clenched for him, the way you tried to contain your volume by biting on your lower lip, but failing.

he loved the way you dug your nails into his back, as he dug his into the flesh of your thighs. he was making sure to leave his mark.

in addition to the 2 marks he left on your neck.

at first, he only wanted to fuck you to get back at karina for the way she treated you. but then, he genuinely just wanted to fuck you.

he enjoyed his time on the ice with you, the way you made him smile and laugh when you fell or how cute and happy you got when you skated for more than 2 minutes without falling.

his peach.

he was making sure to mark you up so you’d remember him. you’d remember the way he made you feel.

“i’m close again sunghoon.” you moaned.

sunghoon leaned down to attach his lips to yours, heavy make out session, while his thrusts became sloppy, more skin on skin noises, your wetness leaking on to the bed, down your thigh, and covering sunghoon’s lower stomach and upper thighs.

his fingers dug deeper into your skin, your legs wrapped tighter around his waist, trapping him.

thank goodness you couldn’t get pregnant.

“peach—i have to pull out.” sunghoon groaned.

you shook your head. “in—in me, hoon.” you moaned pulling his body closer to yours.

the thought of accidentally impregnating you should scare him.

but it didn’t.

it only made him want to come in you more.

“fuck peach, you are just for me.” he whispered against your lips, as you came around him, and he followed soon after coming deep in you.

he held you down as he kept his dick buried in you as deep as possible. “mhmm peach, gotta make sure my come doesn’t drip out of you.”

he loved that you milked him dry.

you both, breathing heavy, stayed in that position for a while. sweaty bodies, sunghoon on top of you, dick still in you (slowly softening), your cunt still clenching around him.

breathing heavily in each others mouths, you kissed here and there, with tongue and without.

sunghoon put his head against your collarbone, and slowly pulled out, making sure you didn’t waste a drop.

he rolled over on the bed to his back, as you laid there unable to move.

suddenly exhaustion washed over you.

sex with someone never did that to you. pleasing yourself never did that.

how did sunghoon, of all people, make you exhausted like that?

without much thought, your eyes began to close and sleep took over.

︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

you awoke in a soft bed, your body dressed in nothing but a tee shirt and covered in sheets and covers.

opening your eyes slowly, you adjusted your vision as best as you could. next to you, sunghoon laid on his back, eyes closed, chest moving up and down, as he softly snored and slept.

you couldn’t help but stare and realize how attractive he was. you finally noticed just how attractive park sunghoon is.

no wonder karina and other girls fell to his feet.

your eyes widened.

karina! fuck! what kind of friend were you? wait, were you two even still friends? wait who cares?

you did.

you swallowed. sometimes you really did hate being a good person with a good heart.

you reached over to cradle sunghoon’s cheek, causing his eyes and lashes to flutter.

he yawned with a stretch opening his eyes. you didn’t take your hand of his cheek.

he smiled when he looked over at you.

“did i fuck you good peach?”

you giggled. “yes you did, hoon.”

with a smile he leaned over and kissed your nose. “mhm, love that nickname for me.”

fuck karina and fuck her feelings.

[renthony]

Coming of Age at 30: Musings on A Wizard of Earthsea

by Ren Basel renbasel.com

Having nerdy parents meant I grew up surrounded by plenty of classic nerdy literature. Our home was filled with iconic science fiction and fantasy, and what we didn’t have, my parents gladly helped me find at the library. I never lacked passion or access to books, yet somehow I managed to skip right over the work of Ursula K. Le Guin.

How this oversight happened, I couldn’t tell you. I devoured every book about hidden worlds with wizard schools I could find—and there were many on the young adult market in the early 2000s. Though I read a decent chunk of them, somehow I never stumbled across the book that did it first: Le Guin’s 1968 classic, A Wizard of Earthsea. No, I didn’t find my way to Le Guin’s wizards until adulthood.

A Wizard of Earthsea introduces Ged, a boy with magical talent. Over the course of the novel, he attends magic school, grows into a young man, and earns his wizard’s staff. While at school, he is nearly killed when a botched summoning spell unleashes a mysterious and terrifying shadow entity. From there the novel follows Ged’s adventures as he seeks a way to defeat the shadow before it can kill him.

The novel is ultimately a coming-of-age narrative, and though I am an adult, it resonates. Ged’s journey with the shadow forces him to accept the darkest, most painful parts of himself, and it’s easy to relate that to my own struggles as I enter my thirties.

In a 1973 essay titled “Dreams Must Explain Themselves,” Le Guin wrote, “Coming of age is a process that took me many years; I finished it, so far as I ever will, at about age thirty-one; and so I feel rather deeply about it.” That quote convinces me I came to A Wizard of Earthsea exactly when I needed it most. In 2024 I am a disabled person in a so-called “post-COVID” world, still following strict safety measures as the rest of the world moves on. Every day I must exist in a world that fills me with fear and anger, and grief at what could have been before things fell apart. I have had to mourn the things—and people—I lost, and find new things to fill the void.

Entering my thirties has involved learning to love the self I have and react to the circumstances I’m in, rather than obsessing over a hypothetical version of myself that might exist if things were different. Just as Ged had to name and accept the shadow as a part of himself, I have had to face my own anger, grief, and regrets, and choose to accept them as part of me. Neither suppression nor avoidance of the shadow—of those difficult emotions; of that pain—can make it go away. It must be seen, and embraced, and processed.

While I’m sure Earthsea would have been relevant, and wonderful fun, to my younger self, I’m glad I came to it at thirty. The magic of a good story helps make confronting shadows a little less terrifying, and it’s true at any age.

_

Written on commission, using the prompt, “500 words about an Ursula K. Le Guin novel.”

Like this essay? Tip me on Ko-Fi, pledge to my Patreon, or commission an essay on the topic of your choice!

[readanotherbook]

Read This Particular Book: The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

I was planning to record a bonus episode about this 30-year-old classic but then I got too intimidated and anxious so I am writing it here instead. For Now.

You know when you're asked what media you'd engage in again if you could wipe your memory and experience it fresh?

Please read The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. It is the first of six books in the Queen's Thief series, all of which take place in the Mediterranean-inspired (!) Little Peninsula, and are told through the eyes of varied, fantastic characters. This includes:

literally the most annoying man you have ever met, but it's endearing

a tired soldier who just wanted to make some money but then accidentally punched a sovereign and became a main character

a runaway who is actively translating not-Gilgamesh and shares it with This Guy He Definitely Doesn't Respect Or Care About on their homoerotic road trip

Together the six books lay out an epic. There is active mythology, intense political drama, and clever humor that my partner and I quote at each other daily. It set a standard for us; before I launched this podcast, I would rant to him about whatever book I was reading which was not The Thief and conclude with "Megan Whalen Turner would never."

I can't spoil anything. Please do not look this book up, because experiencing it without knowing anything the first time, and then reading it a second time and getting mad and astonished about things in retrospect is the best way to enjoy it.

I have copies of these books. I will lend them to anyone. Also I will buy you copies. Please tell me all of your opinions thank you very much.

(I wrote this post to submit to @meganwhalenturner's contest, wherein she is offering 5 signed sets of the new book covers. Please they are so beautiful).

[itwasntimethatdidit40]

On a razor's edge.

Gif credits

Pairing/Au: Joel Miller x F!reader, no outbreak.

Word counts: 3087

Rating: +18, MDNI, NSFW

Summary: Joel helps you shave. there.

Warnings: pov second person, no use of y/n, smut with very little plot, established relationship, soft Joel, Joel helps to shave your pussy (I also wrote it in the fic but I'll repeat it here, I don't mean to judge anyone's habits, I respect everyone's tastes and habits and everyone can do what they prefer with their body. Do you want to shave? Good. Don't you want it? Good too. For me it's enough that you are comfortable in your body and if you aren't I hope you can be soon), mention to reader's mom who is annoying about shaving, use of a razor, mention of a potential razor cut (it doesn't happen, there’s no blood), unprotected p in v (wrap it up IRL!), I didn't mention Joel or reader’s age but in my mind I imagine them both around 30/40, reader has hair, breasts and vagina, no other specific description of her is given, pussy pronouns, references to pussy as a flower, sex in the shower, oral (f receiving), cream pie, pet names (baby, honey), I think that's all, if by chance I realize I forgot something I'll add it right away.

English is not my first language, no beta, no proofreading, I already know I'm going to notice a lot of mistakes as soon as I post this and I will have to edit again and again because I'm like this, what can we do? 💀

Comments, reblogs and interactions are very much appreciated, please be kind.

Thanks to anyone who will read this!

You love Joel.

You really love him with all your heart and soul.

You also love your private time in the bathroom, that little time in your day that you spend alone doing skincare, face masks, tweezers your eyebrows, scrubbing your body and taking a nice shower with your favorite music playing in the background.

You just took off your favorites eye patches and you're ready to shave with your trusted razor when Joel knocks on the door.

“Honey, we’re going to be late, hurry up” His voice is muffled by the closed door but you can clearly hear a certain apprehension.

You hum as you take out your shaving cream and reply, “I’ll be right there”

Your neighbor invited you to his pool party the other day and of course you enthusiastically accepted.

It’s been so hot lately that being able to enjoy his pool for a while seemed like a dream.

Unfortunately, work kept you busy all week so you couldn't make an appointment with the beautician and you've arrived today with a few hairs on your legs and in your bikini area.

You're not particularly concerned when you can't wax and totally respect those who don't, hair removal is a personal choice and everyone should be able to do what they want with their own body.

Joel doesn't care if you have them or not, he's happy to have you either way and is feral with you regardless. In fact, you suspect he especially likes it when you have some down there but still he never stopped you from choosing for yourself and he never made inappropriate comments.

Anyway, today you planned to wear your favorite bikini and you wouldn't feel comfortable with hair sticking out from the sides of your bottoms.

The fact that a woman must necessarily be hairless down there is something that has been instilled in you since you were a teenager and as much as you manage not to care about it most of the time, when you wear a bikini you still have your mother's voice in your ears telling you to make those hairs disappear.

Ugh, your mother.

You shake your head, get in the shower and wash yourself, body and hair.

Then you spread the shaving foam well on your legs. You pass the razor carefully and rinse.

This neighbor is quite wealthy and Joel has heard that he would like to renovate his house so he is fully intent on offering him a quote with his construction company, which is why he is so worried about being late.

He needs some time to approach him until there are not too many people, have a casual chat and throw out the idea.

You also want to make a good impression since his wife is the head of the neighborhood committee and you want to ask her to convince the neighbor next door to cut down some branches that end up right in your yard filling it with annoying leaves. You tried to talk to him yourself but he is a cheap man and doesn’t want to spend money to have a gardener come and do the work. Joel tried too but to no avail.

Joel, on the other side of the door, is still impatient "baby, what are you doing?" you hear him ask after another 10 minutes have passed.

“I’m getting ready,” you say out loud from the shower as you check to make sure there’s no hair left on your ankles.

“You’ve been in there for an hour, what else do you have to do?”

You giggle, Joel will never understand how long it takes to be the way he always sees you. He’s in the bathroom for a maximum of 20 minutes when he decides to trim his beard, otherwise 10 minutes is more than enough for him to take a shower and come out with a towel around his waist looking as beautiful as a God. It’s so unfair.

“I'm making myself beautiful for you” you shout at him smiling at the thought of his answer which in fact comes exactly as you imagined “Love, you're gorgeous, you don't need to do anything, just get out of there”

“I'm almost done,” you reply as you begin to spread the foam on your bikini area.

“You said the same thing 10 minutes ago and yet you're still there,” he grumbles “and I don't hear water running so I don't understand why”

“You don't understand ‘cause you're a man darling, it's not your fault” you grin while you carefully run the razor to the right of your sex, at the point where your leg attaches to your pelvis.

You can clearly see him in your head rolling his eyes, hands on his hips, his weight resting on his right leg while his left leg is slightly jutted forward, his typical pose when he's annoyed.

“Cut me some slack, baby, you know how much I care about getting this job” he replies

“Yeah I know” you say sweetly “but I can’t come around like that, I need to be extra pretty next to you”

At this point he opens the door, just enough to enter and as he does so he replies "no one has a prettier girlfriend than me, I don't know how many more times I have to tell you"

You're all busy shaving so you don't even notice him until you hear his voice closer than before.

You look up and jump, almost cutting yourself with the razor. “Are you crazy?!” you yell at him. “Joel, I almost cut my thigh because of you!”

“And how was I supposed to know?!” his expression is halfway between embarrassed and horny, his eyes scan your body as if it were the first time he's seeing it, his pupils are dilated, his jaw muscles tense and his lips tight on the verge of curling into a smile, you can see it growing at the corners of his mouth.

Seeing you like this, leaning against the shower wall, completely naked and with nipples hardened from the fright he gave you, his nerves are going away.

“So, what? I have to finish, I certainly can’t go around with only a small part of my bikini area shaved, can I?” you rumble at him feigning irritation but oh, you like the way he's looking at you, hungry and feral. And you like that particular dark shade his eyes take on when they're lit up with desire.

He frowns and asks, “Can I help you?” rubbing his neck.

“Doing this?” you ask, raising an eyebrow, moving from the wall to the center of the shower, razor still clutched in your hand “Joel…”

“Let me try,” he murmurs hoarsely

“Joel, if you cut me…” you say feeling a shiver down your spine, your eyes fixed on his, sparkling in anticipation.

“I won’t. I promise” He is deadly serious.

“Okay” you say with a sigh and you immediately regret having said it.

Joel takes the razor from your hands brushing your fingers slightly and then drop to his knees fully dressed on the wet shower floor without even thinking about it, as if in some kind of lascivious trance. At least he’s barefoot.

The deal, the job, the money seem like a distant, faded memory and the neighbor’s tree? You’ll think about it another day.

His heavy breathing crackles on your skin as he brings the razor close to your skin with the most intent look you've ever seen him do.

He starts with small movements from the bottom up and shaves a small portion of the left side of your pubic area, his hand is firm and precise and he doesn't seem to have any hesitation, however he is proceeding with caution and you are grateful for it, you have been holding your breath since he started.

The razor seems so small in his hand, like a child's toy, yet it has sharp blades that could cut you at any moment if his movements were not precise.

He pulls it away from your skin to shake off excess shaving foam and rinse it under the flexible shower head and you catch your breath.

You flinch for a moment as he brings the razor closer again, “stay still” he tells you in a peremptory voice.

There is something deeply erotic in what he is doing, in his calm and dedication, in his deep knowledge of every curve of your body. It seems like he knows exactly how to move his hand so as not to hurt you.

He rinses the part, then proceeds to take more foam and spread it tickling your skin with his calloused fingers. You're even impressed that he didn't put too much on, just a thin layer, so he can see the part and have full control of what he's doing.

His jeans are now soaked and stuck to his legs and you can see a bulge growing in his crotch.

He stretches your skin with his fingers and runs the razor over you, still in small motions, shaking it, finishing the sides of the top of your pubic bone.

“I need you to lay down, baby, I have to do the bottom part” he says tilting his head to one side to look better at what he has just done.

Joel himself wanted this shower to be big enough for two people, it's his job and he knows how to be far-sighted in this.

It is wide enough for you to lie down and for him to sit between your legs without difficulty.

You bend down and lay your back on the floor “spread your legs” he tells you “keep them raised”

The floor is cool and wet against your skin but you still feel heated.

You crane your neck to look at him and his eyes are focused, deciding how to position you to do the job.

He takes your ankles and bends your legs slightly, if it was a moment when you wanted to laugh you would say that you look like a frog but now you feel like a rose of flesh. A bold, cheeky flower that has blossomed for him.

“Stay like this, can you?”

You nod because you can’t do anything else, you don’t know what to say, you’re hypnotized by his deep breathing and his eyes.

You feel a pulse between your legs.

A heat that starts to rise from below.

He smears a thin veil of foam on the inside of your thighs near your pubic area, he runs his fingers almost absentmindedly near your folds, you know that every movement is thought out, he's purposely ignoring your pussy so he doesn't lose his concentration but you can feel desire creeping through the air between you.

It's thick, heavy, and smells of your perfume that invades your nostrils now that you're playing the obscene dancer for him, with your legs bent as if you had to warm up your muscles before a show.

He draws your edges with the razor, rinsing continuously, you feel the blade glide over you, darting across your skin, only slightly resisting to your roughest hairs.

You feel a glimmer of clear drool dripping between your petals, all the way down to the crack of your butt, that gives away your eagerness.

A couple more gentle swipes and he's done.

You can hear him swallowing nervously, your throat is dry too.

“All done” he whispers, running his fingers over your smooth skin.

You sit up, legs at the sides of his body and tug at his shirt to give him a kiss. You suck his bottom lip between yours, tasting his minty flavor.

You dwell on that ecstatic feeling for a while before you let go of his lips and take a breath back into your lungs.

“Do you want me to shave it all off?” Sometimes you do, you like it when you feel just the soft, just that, that tingles every time he runs his tongue over it.

Shiny as egg white, voracious, naked luscious lips ready to salivate and swallow until they’re full.

But now you can't wait and you know he doesn't care, they're short hairs anyway, you keep them trimmed.

It's just a little line that surrounds your flower to browse.

“No baby, I need you”

The razor is lying on the shower floor, you pick it up and place it on the steel shelf that Joel installed for you to put your things on.

“Mmm tell me what you want” He asks, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes sparkling with lust.

He already knows the answer.

“Fuck me” you plead, voice trembling with excitement “fuck me with your tongue and fingers, please. Fuck me with your cock. Fuck me until I see white and I’m a mumbling mess underneath you”

You put your hand over his bulge, running slowly to his zipper strained and you fiddle your fingers on his button.

You feel him squirming, his eyes feral and mesmerized by your touch and your words.

You open his jeans as he takes off his water-spattered shirt and throws it on the floor outside the shower.

Sitting like this, you notice even more the softness of his belly, that little bit of flesh that you love to bite.

He gets up to get rid of his jeans, now soaked, annoying, heavy, he throws them on the floor and they land with a dull thud.

His boxers are damp and have a big stain on the front, but it's not water. It's his pleasure dripping.

He’s rock hard leaking profusely.

He leans down and gives you a long kiss, looking at you. His hands slide slowly over your arms, slipping onto your hips, squeezing your flesh and your body arches towards him, your tongue quivers on his, every fiber of you reacts and bends gently to him.

He brings a hand to your cheek, deepening the kiss, eagerly licking the inside of your mouth, tasting you.

You moan into his lips as you feel his other hand move up and rest on the side of your breast, his long fingers reach your nipple and trace its contours, they move circling it, he does it first with his thumb and then with his index finger. He passes them over your bud, titillating it, making it harden under his fingertip.

He makes space between your knees again, makes you lay down on the floor, caressing your torso, going down to your ribs, he touches the area just below and whispers “you look beautiful here”.

You like that he appreciates everything about your body, even those parts that others ignore, he sees the overall harmony and knows how to notice the details. He knows the map of your scars and every shade of your skin. He goes down, brushing your navel and then unexpectedly goes back up and takes your lips again.

He sucks.

He tastes.

He drinks.

He lowers himself and leans over your opening. He breathes hard as he gives the first lick, with his tongue flat, crawling from bottom to top, lingering on your clit. He spreads your folds a little with his thumbs and looks at you for a moment whispering “God, baby, you have the most beautiful pussy I’ve ever seen” he inhales your scent “and she’s so wet…” and he licks again “so sweet” another lick “and she tastes so good”

You throw your head back, squeezing your eyes shut, wrapping one hand around the back of his neck, pushing him against you.

He keeps his mouth glued to your slit, his tongue seems everywhere, meticulous and insatiable, it seems he can never get enough.

You listen to his movements with your whole body, as if he were speaking to you, using a language unique to yours.

You feel his hand resting on your hip, you grab his wrist and bring him back to your tit, you don't need to ask him to touch it, he silently takes your nipple between his fingers pinching and twisting.

Your ribcage expand for air, you gasp with your mouth wide open and a long moan leaves your lips rising from deep inside you.

You lift your head to see him, looking disheveled and grateful, his beard glisten with your fluids as two of his thick fingers slide into you.

He traces with his tongue that little stripe of hair he left you, which frames your lips, he caresses them, takes them in his mouth, sucking lightly.

His strong aquiline nose is hitting your clit now, fingers curl to find that perfect spot, the one that makes you see white, like you asked.

You moan in disarray “your cock – God – I want your cock, please Joel”

He gives a couple more licks and then moves, towering over you, kissing you with lips that taste of salt and lemon, of you. It’s your taste, all over his mouth.

He lower his boxers and the tip of his cock presses against your hole, slowly making its way in.

You throw your arms around his neck, giving him sloppy kisses on his sultry skin.

He grunts as he thrusts into you, you wrap your legs around his waist as he slides a hand behind your arched back, pushing you, anchoring himself to you so you don't slip on the wet floor, his knee braced on the floor.

You stammer senselessly yes yes yes, you're both close to your peak.

You feel disarmed, completely enveloped by him, by his body, by his scent.

You're sweaty, even though your skin is still wet, your body contracts against his, waves of pleasure modulating your breathing.

Your orgasm explodes in a long sigh, then it goes silent, you bite your lips, you are overwhelmed.

He takes your hands, intertwines them with his and brings them above your head, sinking relentlessly inside you, hitting again and again, deeper and deeper until you feel thick, sticky stems filling you, painting your walls, dripping from inside you onto your thighs.

His hair is plastered to his forehead, his eyes searching yours as he fills his hands with your ass cheeks, giving the last hard thrusts before he pulls out of you and lets himself go on the shower floor next to you.

You take deep breaths, trying to come back to your senses, your bodies completely exhausted.

“Well,” he says after a while, “we’re officially too late to go now.”

“Do you mind?” you ask, rolling onto your side, tracing his broad chest with your fingertips.

“No,” he replies without even thinking.

You burst out laughing together.

No, this is definitely more important.

[kiefbowl]

I was reading an opinion piece on Kate Middleton's cancer diagnosis on CNN by Jamal Baig about the increasing rates of cancer in patients under 50. As far as 5 minutes of googling and JSTORing can lend me to believe, there's nothing illegitimate about Dr. Baig. However, I found this bit in his opinion interesting:

Now, I'm always dubious when reading anything that attributes a very broad generalized idea that changes in diets have caused an increased in cancer, because more often than not it's not pointing to an exploration of, say, increased pesticide use, but the author's personal bias against the quote unquote "unhealthy", especially those who are deemed "fat" by the medical industry.

That being said, I was curious what source he linked, half expecting it to lead to just another op-ed from some other doctor from who knows when, but I was pleasantly surprised! Written by a man named Michael Donaldson, it was an evidentiary review published in a scientific journal called "Nutrition and cancer: A review of the evidence for an anti-cancer diet."

Now I wasn't going to give the whole thing a read, but I stopped in each section, gave a quick skim to get a general vibe, moved on to the next section, etc. I was immediately suspicious that the very first line in the abstract was "It has been estimated that 30–40 percent of all cancers can be prevented by lifestyle and dietary measures alone" as that seems to be a bananas statistic to just posit, but it still had the air of scientific integrity, so I did my skim.

The first handful of sections had things that gave me some moments of pause, that this article was in fact another doctor simply cherry picking data to confirm his own biases, but nothing so egregious as to do a spit take. That comes in a few minutes. The first section that made really go hold the phone was when we got to his Flax Seed section.

Compare how he writes about Red Meat...:

(that's all he wrote, btw)

...with how he starts writing about Flax Seed:

Did I just enter a Flax Seed commercial? Does this guy work for BIG FLAX SEED? on and on he writes about Flax Seed, and I start getting a sense that perhaps this man has a Flax Seed Agenda. In any case, he eventually moves on and I quickly skim to get to the end (because it's boring among other things).

So, who exactly is Michael Donaldson?

Girl are you kidding me

The Hallelujah Acres Foundation is a FOR PROFIT company that sells a """biblical""" based diet program called the hallelujah diet and also sells supplements on said site.

Now, in case you forgot where I started with this, this was the link provided as a "source" to a legitimate doctor's claim in an op-ed about cancer that "at least part of the answer" of why cancer is increasing in under 50 patients are the "changes to nutrition and lifestyle that took hold in middle of the last century." Dr. Baig did not read this article, or if he did was not concerned that it was written by the employee of a company that profits from unscientific research it uses to sell supplements and diets. Which is worse, I don't know.

The point I'm making is that you absolutely need to be vigilant all the time. You need to understand that doctors can not only have biases, but agendas. Researchers can have biases and agendas. Scientists can have biases and agendas. And that magical thinking about real health issues that can affect your future can permeate the scientific community because weirdos write convincing enough evidence that support their already determined world view.

This kind of shit is the reason why women go into doctor offices complaining about pain in their abdomen and get told to go lose weight and come back in 6 months. This is why ideas like moralizing eating have huge effects on women's health and influence medical misogyny, and why it's a feminist issue.

[joannechocolat]

Content Warning: contains scenes of graphic kindness; wokery; tolerance; profanity.

A few days ago, I posted a little Twitter poll, asking readers (and authors) what they thought of trigger warnings. I followed this up with a short thread, outlining my own thoughts on this, and how they have changed over the years.

The Daily Mail immediately seized the idea, and without contacting me, or asking for further clarification, published an article quoting my words, under a headline that was both inflammatory and untrue: Trigger warnings should be put on EVERY book to make readers feel 'safe', Chocolat author Joanne Harris says.

Predictably, this caused a frenzy of reaction from Daily Mail readers and Twitter trolls, including accusations of censorship and “pandering to moronic snowflakes”. Several people (who I suspect, have never even picked up one of my books) swore never to read them. One charmer wrote: “Fucking pathetic. What a dick the author must be.”

I don’t blame the writer of the article; most clickbait headlines are added by someone else - in this case, by someone who couldn’t even be bothered to read the article, let alone my original thread. It has since been quietly changed, presumably in response to my comments, although once again, without any communication with me. But as a result of these comments (and some more polite ones from people asking about the poll), I think it’s time I made it clear, both where I stand on trigger warnings, and why the public perception of them, fuelled by culture wars debates, is both skewed and inaccurate.

First, the result of my poll: about 35% of the people who answered were in favour of some kind of content warning. About 30% were against, and the rest were undecided, curious about the result. To me this suggests that most people are generally positive or undecided on the subject. From the comments, it seemed to me that many of the people who were against trigger warnings were afraid they might lead to censorship, or spoilers, or editing of the classics, or stopping people from reading the classics, or authors losing the right to free speech.

But here's the thing. Trigger warnings are nothing to do with those things. Here’s why people have been misled, and why it matters to put things straight.

First, this expression; “triggered.” Like “woke” and “snowflake” it has been weaponized to mean something like “upsetting the libs.” Reader, that's not what it means. The concept of triggering only applies to someone with PTSD or some kind of serious psychological trauma. That makes it irrelevant to politics. Anyone can have trauma. Anyone is potentially vulnerable to mental illness. And that’s why trigger warnings exist; to warn people who might suffer a relapse, or some other kind of serious harm, if exposed without warning to certain images, scenes or narrative strands. Some of the obvious ones might be sexual violence; graphic images; mental illness; eating disorders; suicide. I’m sure there are lots more. But we’ve had content warnings (if you prefer) on films for decades without any resistance, and TV shows routinely flag up scenes with flashing images, etc. that might trigger (that word again) an epileptic seizure in anyone susceptible.  

And yes, it makes sense. I mean, why would you want someone to have a seizure if you could just warn them against it? Who but a sadist would argue that people with epilepsy should be forced to have seizures, or that having regular seizures will make them more resilient somehow, or that people afraid to have seizures should just stop watching films and TV altogether, or that warnings against flashing lights would somehow spoil other people’s enjoyment of the show? And yet those are all things that people have said to me recently about content warnings.

To me content warnings in books are like content warnings on packaged food. Most people don’t read them, unless they have a special interest or need to know. Why do they need to know? There might be any number of reasons. Maybe they’re vegan, and want to avoid eating animal products. Maybe they have a religious dietary restriction. Maybe they have a mild allergy to peanuts or to shellfish. Or maybe it’s a more a serious allergy that could even result in their death. Either way, details are useful. Content warnings in books are the same, except that instead of triggering a physical attack, certain things trigger a mental one.

I'm not talking here about things that might simply cause offence. I sometimes use profanity in my books; I sometimes write about topics that people may find challenging. That's not going to change. I won't add content warnings for swearing, or nudity, or paganism, or LGBT issues. None of those things cause trauma, though I'm willing to believe they may in some cases cause offence.

But mental trauma is just as real as any physical injury. It’s not just “in your head”. It requires adjustments in the same way that any other condition may require adjustments - whether that's a wheelchair ramp, or subtitles on TV, or studs on the pavement to help the blind.

And yet, the culture wars narrative – led by a right-wing media - is leaning increasingly towards a “survival of the fittest” mentality; repeatedly encouraging able-bodied people to question disability, white people to question racism, rich people to question poverty, and urging those who have never experienced mental trauma to dismiss the needs of those who struggle with it daily. Empathy and kindness are presented as political gestures, earning “woke points” (whatever they are), rather than the elements of basic human decency. And of course, people who talk about “decency” in the context of nudity, LGBT issues and profanity often see no problem in labelling themselves “anti-woke”, or sneering at the “Be Kind brigade”, or making dismissive judgments about the lives of people they will never know. Somewhere along the line, somehow, basic human kindness has been reframed as a tool of the left, and those who hold right-wing opinions are encouraged to reject it.

Well, fuck that. People are better than this. Some people need content warnings, and it’s not up to you or me to decide whether their need is valid or not. That’s why, from now on, I’ll be adding including content warnings to my books, and to my author website. Ignore them or not, as you choose.

But to those who are offended by the concept of inclusion, here’s a trigger warning just for you: Contains tolerance; scenes of moderate kindness; depictions of graphic wokery. Read my books at your peril. Or don’t. Isn’t freedom marvellous?

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

In April 1933, Einstein discovered that the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities.[129] Historian Gerald Holton describes how, with "virtually no audible protest being raised by their colleagues", thousands of Jewish scientists were suddenly forced to give up their university positions and their names were removed from the rolls of institutions where they were employed.[131] A month later, Einstein's works were among those targeted by the German Student Union in the Nazi book burnings, with Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaiming, "Jewish intellectualism is dead."[129] One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged", offering a $5,000 bounty on his head.[129][132] In a subsequent letter to physicist and friend Max Born, who had already emigrated from Germany to England, Einstein wrote, "... I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise."[129]��After moving to the US, he described the book burnings as a "spontaneous emotional outburst" by those who "shun popular enlightenment", and "more than anything else in the world, fear the influence of men of intellectual independence".[133]

A quote from the Wikipedia page of German-American Jewish scientist, Albert Einstein.

What's notable here is how academics and intellectuals raised almost no protest to the systematic purging of Jews from universities in Germany. This is because, as historian Niall Ferguson has noted, that German academics had been promulgating the intellectual basis of Nazism during the 1920's (and probably beforehand).

What we can see here is that rather than defending the dignity and liberty of the individual, academics and intellectuals were the first in line to accept, permit, and collaborate with tyranny. They believed and invented lies. They turned a blind eye to mounting crimes against humanity.

When we look at today's college campuses and see a rising sea of hatred against Jewish students; when we see thousands of non-Jewish students showing little to no concern whatsoever for the rise in antisemitic hatred; when we see academics who glorify Jew-hating mass murderers, we should not be surprised.

What has been is what will be.

The academics who have promulgated anti-Jewish hatred (or stood by and allowed it to spread) today are betraying the same spirit as the German academics who allowed German Jews to be purged and threatened with death by the Nazi regime. And, like the German academics of the 20's and 30's, they believe that their betrayal of justice and liberty are all in the public's best interests.

Of course, they have been wise enough to change their official scapegoat from the Jews to "Israel".

But the net result is the same: Jews-- no matter how great their achievements, like those of Einstein-- are being purged from academic spaces and polite society, once again, to virtually no protest from their peers.

[obessedwithfictionalmen]

Finals season

Callum Turner X Female! Reader

Summary: Callum spoils his girl as she studies for finals.

Warning: None

Word count: 500 words.

A/n: I wrote this for myself, I'm studying and working my butt of for finals. I'm going to try to keep posting, but yeah. :)

Books were displayed on the table; her laptop was opened, and empty cups of coffee were all over the table. Y/n was studying for her finals, and she was tired. She’d been at it since 8:30 this morning, it was 23:15. Callum entered their house, he’d been away all day for his press tour. He knew that his girlfriend was studying hard, and he decided to buy her a gift. He bought her flowers and a ring. Not for a proposal, but she spotted the ring a few weeks ago and she loved it. The ring was gold and had a small aquamarine stone on top of it. It was really simple, but it was pretty. When he came in the kitchen, he smiled at the sight of his girlfriend, she was a mess and looked so tired. ‘’Hey love, how are you?’’ he asked as he kissed her on the cheek.

Y/n looked up to him, she had dark circles under her eyes, her hair was held by a hair clip, and she was dressed in sweats. ‘’I’m okay, how was your day?’’ she asked, her voice sounded so tired. ‘’Great, how long have you been at it?’’ he asked, pointing out her books. ‘’Since this morning’’ she admitted. He sighed as he sat next to her. He pulled out the flowers and handed them to her. ‘’What are they for, thank you’’ she smiled, looking at the flowers and him. ‘’Well, you work so hard, and I have another surprise’’ he said, taking the box with the ring out of his pocket. ‘’I’m not proposing, but remember a few weeks ago? When you saw a ring’’ he said, opening the box, showing her the ring. ‘’Cal, it’s too much’’ she smiled. ‘’It’s not enough, you work so hard my love. I’m so proud of you and you’re so smart and amazing’’ he praised her. Y/n’s eyes filled with tears, she was so tired, she needed to hear those words.

‘’I’m so scared of failing, I feel like I’m forgetting everything’’ she says, looking at the books on the table. ‘’What are you working on?’’ he asked, getting closer to her. ‘’I have to write this paper on the impact of disinformation on kids. I have to quote a lot of stuff, hands all the books. And I have to find so many statistics and it’s driving me nuts’’ she blurts out. Callum places a hand on her back, in support as he looks at what she wrote on the laptop. ‘’Hey, you got this, you’re the best.’’ He kissed her cheek. She leaned her head on his shoulder, taking a deep breath. ‘’Thank you for the flowers and the ring. I really appreciate it and I needed it’’ she whispered. ‘’You’re welcome, I’m really proud of you, love. You got this, I know how hard you’re working and it’s going to pay off. I’m sure you’ll get straight A in your exams. I love you, Y/n’’

[correlance]

Remember that one fan theory I wrote about Alastor having a rivalry with Thomas Edison in the 1920s? Well, I decided to do a bit more research; it turns out that, not only was I right, but Edison really hated radio. He loathed it so much that he wrote not one, but several articles railing against the "radio fad" in 1926, to the point where an anonymous person wrote "letters to the editor" to argue with Edison.

Gee, I wonder who it could be doing that in the Hazbin-verse? /s

GIF and art originally by karumkin on Twitter/X (2019).

There was also a slew of increasingly aggressive telegrams sent back-and-forth between Edison and radio proponents, with Edison penning thinly-veiled insults that offended even mild critics of the "Wizard":

"The radio is a commercial failure, and its popularity with the public is waning. Radio is impractical commercially, and ethically distorted, and is is losing its grip rapidly in the market and in the home. There is not 10% of the interest in the radio that there was last year.

Radio is a highly-complicated machine in the hands of people who know nothing about it. No dealers have made any money out of it. It is not a commercial machine, because it is too complicated. Reports from 4,000 Edison dealers who have handled radio sets show that they are rapidly abandoning it; and, as for its music, it is awful.

I don't see how they can listen to it. Thousands of people have signed a petition asking that sopranos be kept off the air. Of course, most of them don't know that the soprano voice distorts the radio. The phonograph is coming into its own because people want good music. The fact is that the radio never had a high peak of popularity.

In towns where 25 or 30 dealers were handling radio sets, only one or two are now handling them. A farmer 5 miles from town buys a radio, perhaps on the installment plan. A wire becomes loose. The dealer has to arrange to fix it. This happens time and time again. The business becomes unprofitable for the dealer to engage in. He does not make any money out of it. None of them has. They are giving it up as fast as they can. It is not a commercially successful machine, because it is too complicated.

Static is awful, and the difficulties of tuning out--and now, they're stealing each other's wavelengths! It is too bad that the radio has to be too complicated. It was a big and interesting thing, and the people responded to it, but they want good music, and they found it is not to be had on the radio. That is why the phonograph is reclaiming its own."

Quote from "Edison and Radio", Radio News, December 1926, "in which the Editor takes issue with Mr. Edison's claim that radio is a failure; yet it is pointed out that the radio industry owes Edison a great debt; wherein facts are figures are given to show that radio is on a steady increase; granting that neither radio, nor the phonograph, is yet perfect; how the interest in radio is steadily increasing, and radio dealers are now making good money":

"Since the publication of the famous interview with Mr. Edison, the press, and particularly the radio press across the entire country, has been more or less agitated...I do believe that Mr. Edison has not been recently in-touch with radio sufficiently to appreciate fully the tremendous advances that have been made. Mr. Edison is a busy man, and a tremendously busy inventor. It would be well-nigh impossible for him to be in-touch with all of the various commercial phases of radio all over the country; and, like other executives, he obtains his reports from his subordinates, and such reports often as not may be highly colorful, and even wrong...[thus, the radio industry is unwilling to accord Mr. Edison anything]...as to Mr. Edison's remarks, the statements that follow are facts, which can be checked up by anyone who is unbiased."

Imagine Alastor and Vox with "Stayed Gone" in Episode 2, and Alastor and Lucifer with "Hell's Greatest Dad" in Episode 5, but happening entirely over letters and telegrams, because mass media and television didn't exist yet. The closest musical numbers would likely be "Farmer Refuted" and "Your Obedient Servant" from Hamilton.

Per the book The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World by Randall E. Stross:

Page 276: "[Edison's] phonograph business faced a challenge in the 1920s unlike any that had come before: the advent of commercial radio stations, and the wide availability of free music broadcasts and other entertainment. By the end of 1921, an estimated 1 million listeners had access to radios, and listened to programs broadcast from the Eastern seaboard. A single station in Roselle, New Jersey, which offered the voices of operatic stars among its musical programs, had a broadcast range of a thousand miles, covering New England and the mid-Atlantic states, and reaching as far west as Missouri. A contemporary newspaper account explained to readers not yet acquainted with the phenomenon that those who owned radio sets could enjoy entertainment that was 'literally as free as the air'. Charles and Theodore Edison [proposed a combination phonograph-radio]...their father need not feel slighted because the vacuum tube, a key component of the radio set, was a modern descendant of Edison's experimental work on the incandescent lightbulb. Edison did feel slighted, however; such, at least, was the opinion of Thomas Cowan, a former Westinghouse employee...[who conducted experiments in radio broadcasts with the aid of a phonograph Edison was willing to loan him in 1921]. Cowan had several conversations about radio with Edison, who became upset and recalled the loaner when he heard the Westinghouse broadcasts...[Edison's sons were embarrassed, humiliated]."

"Edison calls radio a 'failure for music', thinks phonograph will regain its own": The New York Times, 23 September 1926. Underlining the usefulness of radio for purposes other than musical programs, Edison did tune in to a radio broadcast of the Dempsey-Tunney fight in 1926, which he was too deaf to hear. He had to rely on family members [usually his wife, Mina] to summarize what had transpired at the end of each round.

"Radio satisfactory on bout, Edison says": The New York Times, 24 September 1926. Defending the quality of musical broadcasts, the radio industry offered expert testimony to rebut Edison's claims [in the next week's newspaper]. See: "Broadcasters disagree with electrical wizard", The New York Times, 3 October 1926.

The "radio fad": A few months later, [after much outcry from the radio industry], Edison was willing to grant that radio might not disappear, but he had a new criticism: listeners' aesthetic sense would be damaged. "Undistorted music, in time, will sound strange to those brought up on radio music," he predicted, "and they will not like the real thing." See: "Thomas A. Edison sees a menace for music in the radio", Musician, January 1927.

"Edison's fears [about the Edison Company not succeeding in the radio business] were realized, though it had been Edison's intransigence (refusal to change one's views) that put the company at such a great disadvantage as a late entrant...on 9 October 1929, Charles Edison prepared a report for his father that showed a loss of $1.3 million due to start-up costs for the [Edison] radio...he could not know that, two weeks later, the stock sell-off would begin with Black Thursday, on 24 October, followed by Black Monday and Black Tuesday...a few days later, Thomas A. Edison, Inc., announced that it would cease producing [music] records [altogether], and refit the factory for the production of radios. The announcement was accompanied by a mention of regret, as the phonograph was 'one of Mr. Edison's favorite inventions'."

"An employee reported observing Harvey Firestone tearfully explaining to Edison that the collapse of business due to the stock market crash of 1929, and the Great Depression, meant that he could no longer continue to financially support Edison's laboratory. Edison was heard, sneering, 'He's a Goddamned lightweight.'" ("I saw your fiasco on the picture show, and I just couldn't resist. What a performance! Why, I haven't been that entertained since the stock market crash of 1929, hahaha! ...so many orphans.")

Edison's death at the age of 84 on 18 October 1931 was also, ironically, commemorated through radio broadcasts: "[The next] night, two radio networks, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBC), jointly broadcast an 8-minute tribute that ended on the hour, when listeners were asked to turn out the lights. The White House did so, and much of the nation followed, more or less together, some a minute before the hour, others on the hour. On Broadway, 75% of the electrified signs were turned off briefly. Movie theaters went dark for a moment. Everything seemed connected to Edison: the indoor lights, the traffic lights, the electric advertising, everyone connected via radio, which Edison now received credit for helping to 'perfect'. In the simple narrative that provided inspiration for posterity, one man had done it all..."

Some numbers provided for how much radio was making:

1922: $46.5 million (~$860 million in 2024)

1923: $120 million (~$2.2 billion in 2024) (156% increase)

1924: $350 million (~$6.3 billion in 2024) (186% increase)

1925: $449 million (~$8 billion in 2024) (27% increase)

1926: $520 million (~$9.1 billion in 2024) (14% increase)

Overall, per another source:

1922: $60 million (a little more than the previous statistic)

1929: $842.6 million

From here, we can tell the biggest gain was in 1923-1924. Per another source: "Total cost was about $120.00 to buy a new radio in 1926; in today's money, that is about $1,500 to own a radio." That would mean that 7.6 million radios were sold by 1926; an impressive feat, considering that the United States only had a population of a little over 117 million people at the time.

Percentages of United States households with radios:

1925: 19% (5 million households)

1929: 35-40% (200% increase)

1930: 12 million households

1939: 28 million households

The number of licensed broadcast stations surged from just 5 in 1921 to 500 by 1924, per yet another source. In the early years, household radio ownership was highest in the Northeast and on the West Coast. In large sections of the South, Midwest and Great Plains, stations and radio sets were scarce. However, there were notable exceptions.

There were 732 radio stations total across the country by 1927, and the average radio was on 2 hours and 25 minutes per day. People who couldn't afford radios purchased them on installment loans, through which the full price of a new radio could be paid over time. Radios had even more advertisements for washers, dryers, and refrigerators, causing people to use even more merchant credit and installment loans to purchase these shiny, new technological devices.

However, radio sales also took a hit with the Great Depression, as average income levels fell from $3,270 per year in 1920 ($53,300 in 2024), to $2,300 per year by 1929 ($41,500 in 2024), then to $1,500 per year by 1932 ($35,500 in 2024). However, buying a radio also became cheaper, dropping from a costly $200 ($3,200 in 2024) in the early 1920s, to just $35 ($630 in 2024) by 1929-1930.

By the time Alastor died in 1933, 3.6 million radio sets were sold that year alone. By the mid-1930s, 67% of American households had radio sets, and by 1939, about 80% of Americans—over 100 million people—owned radios. Radios were in almost every house, and some Americans even had radios in their cars. The Golden Age of Radio lasted from the 1930s to the 1940s, before being eclipsed by television in the 1950s. Radio hosts went from being paid $10 per broadcast in 1921 ($180-200, 1-2 hours per night, 3-4 nights a week, for a weekly salary of $720-800; monthly salary, $2,900-$3,200; annual salary, $34,800-$38,400; modern-day annual salary range for a radio show host is $30,000-100,000, depending) to making triple-figure salaries in the later 1930s.

Another source lists the following salary ranges for radio hosts:

$2,500-2,700 a year to be an announcer in 1927* (~$45,000-$48,000 range in 2024)

$2,400 a year to be a dramatic director (~$43,000 in 2024)

$4,000 a year to be a program director (~$72,000 in 2024)

New Orleans' first radio broadcast was on 31 March 1922, with WWL. The station wasn't started as a commercial one; but rather, "more of an experiment, started as an interest in wireless communication picked up nationally". The station did not go commercial until 1929, meaning that Alastor also probably had at least one other side job.

Also see:

"Early Radio Announcers Invented Their Profession in the 1920s"

"The History of the Radio Industry in the United States to 1940"

"'A Godlike Presence': The Impact of Radio on the 1920s and 1930s" by Tom Lewis

American Babel: Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age by Clifford John Doerksen (see excerpt here)

Race and Radio: Pioneering Black Broadcasters in New Orleans by Bala James Baptiste (Note: The earliest Black broadcast in New Orleans was in 1945, meaning Alastor was white-passing.)

"Golden Age of Black Radio - Part 1: The Early Years" (Note: The first Black radio announcer, Jack L. Cooper, hosted in 1929.)

"How African Americans Entered Mainstream Radio" by Bala James Baptiste, the author of Race and Radio: Pioneering...

[pseudowho]

I’ve been silly at 3:30 am doing this—

The drabble was soooo 🤌 it felt like it needed to be framed so I did✨

I hope all the Haitch babies are doing okay and that both you and Mr. Haitch are not burning yourselves out too much 🫂

Love xx

Okay, that's fine, just make me cry I guess. That's so beautiful-- who wrote that?! Crying.

If you'd like to read Diamond, where Nanami Kento witnesses your boyfriend treating you badly, and then tells you how he treats precious things, please find it here.

@anonimusunnoaniswriting is another one that puts Haitch quotes to pictures. You guys are lovely.

Babies are a-okay! Hopefully a peaceful Sunday for us tomorrow...but I suspect not 🚫

Love as always,

-- Haitch xxx

[mesetacadre]

Hello! In one of your posts you mentioned Anna Louise Strong's The Soviets Expected It, where she describes that Belarusians did not turn on their Jewish neighbors when Nazis invaded the USSR. Then you said that in 30 years the USSR managed to extirpate antisemitism from the general population. Was this something Strong said in the book explicitly? I'm interested in the topic and I was wondering whether Strong's book is worth reading for her analysis on how the USSR managed to eliminate antisemitism or whether she only mentions it briefly. Thank you!

Hello! After searching for it, @komsomolka helped me find this quote. It wasn't by ALS as I remembered, but rather by Vic L. Allen in his book The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism:

It was German practice as they entered Soviet territories to encourage the local populace to engage in pogroms against the Jews as a first stage in their genocidal policy. They had some success in those areas which had become part of the Soviet Union since 1939 but in the Soviet Union proper there was no evidence of spontaneous anti-Semitism. A Jewish historian commentated that "In Byelorussia, a conspicuous difference is evidenced between the old Soviet part of the region and the area which had previously belonged to Poland and was under Soviet rule from September 1939 to June 1941. Nazi and anti-Jewish propaganda drew a weak response in the former Soviet Byelorussia: we encounter complaints in Nazi documents that, "it is extremely hard to incite the local populace to pogroms because of the backwardness of the Byelorussian peasants with regard to racial consciousness" Another view of the cause of the racial attitudes in Byelorussia was given in a secret memorandum by a collaborator to the chief of the German army in August 1942. He wrote: "There is no Jewish problem for the Byelorussian people. For them, this is purely a German matter. This derives from Soviet education which has negated racial difference... The Byelorussians sympathize with, and have compassion for the Jews, and regard the Germans as barbarians and the hangman of the Jew, whom they consider human beings equal to themselves...".

The Russians are Coming: The Politics of Anti-Sovietism (pages 144-145), Vic L. Allen, via ebook-hunter.org

This book goes into some detail regarding jews in the USSR, the sixth chapter, in part II, is dedicated to this.

Anna Louise Strong also wrote about antisemitism in the USSR, although just like almost any other subject in her books, she tackles it through a collection of anecdotes and observations, though I still think she paints a clear picture that's corroborated by Allen's book, for example:

Acts of race prejudice are severely dealt with in the Soviet Union. Ordinary drunken brawls between Russians may be lightly handled as misdemeanors, but let a brawl occur between a Russian and a Jew in which national names are used in a way insulting to national dignity, and this becomes a serious political offense. Usually, the remnants of national antagonisms require no such drastic methods; they yield to education. But the American workers who helped build the Stalingrad Tractor Plant will long remember the clash that Lewis and Brown had with the Soviet courts after their fight with the Negro Robinson, in the course of which they called him “damn low-down nigger.” The two white men were “deported” to America, disgraced in Soviet eyes by a serious political offense; the Negro remained and is now a member of the Moscow City government. The devotion of long-suppressed peoples and their willingness to die for their new equality is the prize that the Soviet national policy won for the present war. The Jews in the Soviet Union especially know that they have something to fight for as they see beyond the border Hitler’s destruction of the Jews and the anti-Semitism that spreads from country to country. When I last visited Minsk, which under the tsar was a ghetto city, and under the Soviets was the capital of the Byelo-Russian republic, with more than one-third of the population Jews, I asked the young Intourist guide, “Don’t you yourself, as a Jewish woman, ever encounter racial feeling in your daily contacts?” “I haven’t for years,” she answered. I wonder what she encountered when the Nazis entered Minsk.

The Soviets Expected it, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

I recall across the years one of the Birobidjan leaders who went on the same train with me to Moscow. His energy and teasing laughter made him the life of the train. He frequently sat in the compartment with two Red Army commanders, joshing them about the quantities of edibles they consumed and declaring that he would have them arrested for upsetting the food balance of the country. Later he told me that these two commanders gave him more delight than anything on the train. He told me of his own early life in the Ukraine amid constant pogroms. He repeated the discussions with the two Red Army commanders. They had been asking whether the Red Army gave adequate help to the Jewish settlers. “We hear they made you a road. Was it a good one? Do they help you properly with your harvest? How are relations developing between the Red Army and the new immigrants?” “Can you imagine what those questions mean to me, a Jew of Birobidjan?” he asked. “No, you can never imagine it, for you cannot live my life. Those Red commanders are the sons of the Cossacks who used to commit the pogroms! And now it is all gone like a dream! They want to know if they help us adequately! They are too young even to remember pogroms. But I remember; I am old enough.”

The Soviets Expected it, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

How much discrimination there was against Jews in educational institutions is hard to tell. It was never general but certainly there was some. It was evasive and struggles always developed against it. My best friend felt for a time undermined in her university job because she refused to yield to the anti-Semitism which seemed to be promoted by the Party secretary at the university. One day she came home exultant. “Now I know the Party doesn’t stand for anti-Semitism,” she said. “They removed A… He was in charge of universities here for the Central Committee and was behind much of this anti-Semitism.” This anecdote shows the confusion that existed. Anti-Semitism was sometimes promoted by people high in office, but always with evasion. The basic law that made it illegal was never attacked, challenged or revoked. The disease of anti-cosmopolitanism passed, and anti-Semitism with it. Not by law or decree, but because of three facts. In 1950, the USSR reached the highest production in its history, with comparative abundance of goods. The USSR also attained the A-Bomb — the threat of America’s monopoly was gone. And, also in 1950, the Chinese People’s Republic was established in Peking, and at once made alliance with the USSR. The sick, excessive patriotism bred by the cold war could not survive close contact with an eastern, equal ally, whose inventions began a thousand years before Russia’s, and whose present intelligence and achievements even the most successful Russians had to acclaim.

The Stalin Era, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

In simple oratory the worker and peasant deputies to the new National Assemblies told of their tortured past and of their happiness when the Red Army arrived. Women told how in former days young boys had been held on anthills by landlords’ agents in order to break the spirit of rebellion, how a mother picking up fuel in the woods to heat water for a newborn baby had been caught by the lord’s forester, beaten, and afterward turned over to the attack of fierce dogs. It was a gruesome account of medieval conditions. Deputies from Grodno told how the Jewish and ByeloRussian workers of the city had organized their own militia before the Red Army came and had rushed out and helped build a bridge for it into the city under the fire of Polish officers. “As soon as the Red Army came,” said a carpenter from Bialystok, “we asked them to set up Soviet power for us. But they told us: ‘Soviet power is the power of the people. Organize it yourselves, for now you are the bosses of your lives’.” A simple peasant women deputy said: “Let the priests pray to God for Paradise, but for us the daylight is already come; the bright sun is come from the East.” Letters telling a similar story reached America from Jews in the occupied regions. They especially commented on their rescue from death, for they had been threatened both by German bombing and by anti-Semitic bands of Poles. “If the Red Army had been a day later, not a Jew in our town would have been left alive,” wrote a man from Grodno. Other letters marvelled at the new equality. “To the Bolsheviks everyone is equal; there is no difference between Gentile and Jew.” There was a grimmer side to the story. Poles in fairly large numbers were deported to various places in the Soviet Union. Letters received by their relatives in Europe and America showed that they were scattered all over the U.S.S.R.; the sending of the letters also indicated that they were not under surveillance but merely deported away from the border district. The Soviet authorities claimed that former Polish officers and military colonists had done considerable sabotage and kept the people disturbed by rumors of imminent invasions by Rumanian and British troops. After the conclusion of the Soviet-Polish alliance against Hitlerite Germany, these Poles rapidly joined the Polish Legion under the Red Army High Command. Most of them then stated that they fully understood the necessity of the Red Army’s march into Poland.

The Stalin Era, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

The new people’s government of Lithuania had appointed as governor of Vilna an able Communist, Didzhulius, not long since out of prison. Prison had injured his health and he had gone to a rest home, but had not been able to take the time to get well. People were needed for Vilna, and so he came. When I saw him he had held office only three days. “We must end this evil process whereby first Poles suppress Lithuanians and then Lithuanians suppress Poles,” he told me. “Under Smetona only thirty thousand people here had the vote. We have given it at once to everybody. “There were one hundred thousand unemployed here. We at once began road-building and other public construction; we are setting up public relief. The old Polish pensioners had buildings and funds which Smetona did not let them touch. We have made their possessions available to them for the relief of those most in need. We have done more to relieve the misery of starving people in three days than Smetona did in six months.” One of the first decrees passed was that government officials must hear citizens’ requests in whatever language the citizens choose. For this purpose officials are sought who can speak as many languages as possible. Schools also are to be in all the local languages. “Under the Poles education was only in Polish; under Smetona it was only in Lithuanian,” said Didzhulius. “Now we shall have to have schools in our languages since there are four chief languages in this district: Polish, Jewish, Lithuanian and Byelorussian.”

The New Lithuania, Anna Louise Strong, via redstarpublishers.org

Overall, I think the picture ALS paints is a nuanced one. The USSR made a lot of progress removing racism and nationalism from its population, although it was not perfect and some decisions like the deportations were negative for the moved population (though not as genocidal or malevolent as most like to paint it), they did an outstanding job at the task of removing prejudice from their society at a time where that was not happening anywhere else, and this was reflected both in laws and in action. We have a lot to learn from their policies, both their many (even to this day) unparalleled achievements as well as from their flaws.

To these third party accounts I'll also add Stalin's own words:

In answer to your inquiry: National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism. In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty. J. Stalin

Anti-Semitism: Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States . J. V. Stalin, 1931. First published in the newspaper Pravda, No. 329, November 30, 1936