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fans4wga · 1 year ago

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26 July update from WGA's Chris Keyser

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From the WGA: With SAG-AFTRA now on strike and new levels of solidarity across all Hollywood unions, we are witnessing the spectacular failure of the AMPTP’s negotiating strategy. In this video, WGA Negotiating Committee Co-Chair Chris Keyser lays out what this moment means and how we move forward. To learn more about the WGA strike, visit https://www.wgastrike.org.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Fellow members of the WGA East and West. It's been a while since our last video and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. So on behalf of the negotiating committee and leadership, I wanted to give you an update on where we are and what the near future at least is likely to bring.

We've been walking side by side on picket lines in New York and Los Angeles for a little over 12 weeks now. Only now we're joined by thousands upon thousands of members of SAG-AFTRA who, like us, have finally had enough.

This is the endpoint and the fruit of the AMPTP’s game plan. For 11 weeks, they negotiated with everyone but us. They claimed it was just practicality, that they could only do one thing at a time, which is not normally a point of pride. But events have made clear what we knew from the start: that not only was it a strategy, it was their only strategy. Negotiate a deal with a single guild and impose that deal on every other guild and union in Hollywood, whether it addresses the needs of those unions or not, all with the implicit threat: if you want more, strike for it.

Wow. It’s their 2007-8 playbook applied to 2023 as if nothing has changed, as if the accumulation of economic insults and injuries inflicted on us over the past decade would be borne in perpetual silence, as if the giant of labor had not awakened. But it has. And you only need to look as far as the front gates of every studio in LA and New York to see the evidence.

Two unions on strike willing to exercise their power, despite the pain, to ensure their members get the contract they deserve. For us, that means addressing the relentless mistreatment of screenwriters, which has only been exacerbated by the move to streaming; the continued denial of full MBA protection to comedy variety and other appendix A writers when they work in streaming; and the self-destructive unsustainable dismantling of the process by which episodic television is made and episodic television writers are paid.

It means addressing the existential threat of AI and the insufficiency of streaming residual formulas, including the need for transparency and a success-based component. All of these will need to be addressed for there to be a deal because in this strike it is our power and not their pattern that matters, not their strategy. Their strategy has failed them. Now they're in the midst of a streaming war with each other, an admittedly difficult transition. And as they face the future, their interests and business models could not be more different from Disney to Sony to Netflix to Amazon.

We root for their success, all of them. They root for each other's failure. We are the creative ammunition through which they will succeed. They are each other's apex predators. And yet, in a singular shared dedication to denying labor, they have shackled themselves together in what increasingly seems like a mutual suicide pact, as the 2023-24 broadcast season and the 2024-25 movie schedule and its streaming shows disappear, melt away week by week.

So what does this mean? What does it mean going forward? How do you play chess against an opponent who insists on screaming checkmate at every move regardless of how the board looks and the game is going?

You stay firm, you stay resolved, because our cause is no less existential than when we started and our leverage is increasing every day. Alone we withheld our labor with the support of our union siblings and the Teamsters and IATSE and the Crafts, we were able to delay the vast majority of production. Now with SAG-AFTRA on strike, those few studio projects that remained have also shut down. And it's not just the obvious delays. If this strike drags on, it's the actors with conflicting obligations and the directors and the double-booked studio facilities and release date chaos that the companies must now also contend with. Some of their most valuable product could well be delayed for years.

Add to that, no promotion of movies or television shows and famous faces on the picket lines and social media speaking directly to their customers. For the tech companies and the mega corporations, that should be their nightmare scenario: WGA and SAG-AFTRA side by side. Our bargaining agenda may not be identical, but our cause is the same. Our army of labor, defending labor has increased 17-fold in the past two weeks alone.

Even so, even with all this wind at our backs this negotiation won't happen overnight. It's not because the negotiations themselves are so complex. Once the companies fully engage, it could go very quickly, but because their strategy of many decades has just fallen apart and they didn't see it coming, and it's going to take them a minute to regroup, 'cause the companies have things to work out internally, and saying no to labor in unison is a lot easier than saying yes. So either together or separately, as their divergent interests might suggest, they will come back to us, despite their understandable concern about how they've navigated this transition to streaming, which is on their heads and not ours; and their worries about costs and their worries about Wall Street; despite this being a season of doom and gloom, none of them are walking away from the riches of this business, and certainly not over the equitable minimum compensation to writers.

They didn't get the deal they wanted; that's fine, it happens all the time. They're not taking their ball and going home over it. And since we know they come from union families themselves, and since they've denied that “even-in-Hollywood-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me” ugliness of threatening to starve us out and leave us homeless (which we assume they understand also means making our children homeless,) they will come back to us. Although I will say they took a long time to deny that statement, longer than I would have had it been ascribed to me.

But what does it matter? You can starve a labor force slowly or quickly. The effect is the same. It's not like day rates for comedy variety writers and endless free drafts for screenwriters in exchange for a single paid one in four-week mini-rooms isn't cruelty. It's just cruelty written in contract language instead of a press quote.

So what can we expect from the companies as all of this plays itself out? They will try to convince Wall Street that taking a strike, prolonging it unnecessarily, losing their content stream in the process—that all of that is just smart business and no reason for investor concern. We will be talking to Wall Street too, and reminding them that for all these companies, all of 'em including Netflix, the bill, the price for making nothing, will eventually come due. And Wall Street is listening already. Here's Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush on Yahoo Finance the other day: “I think the studios are completely wrong on this one. Content is their lifeblood. They're feeling really foolish about this."

Wall Street isn't the only one listening. We've been talking to union pension funds too about the risks the companies are taking. We talked to CalPERS, the largest public pension plan in the country, talked about the loss of programming and the cost to the industry, and we heard strong support from its board for our struggle and the promise that the companies will be hearing from them, from CalPERS, and demanding answers on behalf of its 2 million members.

To us, of course, they will continue to plead temporary poverty, but we know the drill. These companies support billions into the streaming wars and taken short-term losses these past three years, because they know that to the winner will go the spoils. We're patient, will they share that with us when the time comes? What are the chances?

Since 2017, the last time the studios negotiated with us outside of COVID, the big six companies alone have made $150 billion in profits off our work, while they slashed our pay and degraded our working conditions. Maybe if they had shared a tiny piece of that then, made $1 billion or so less, this year wouldn't seem so costly. As it is, there is no iron law that these companies are entitled to record profits every year, and it isn't some great travesty if their shareholders or their CEOs get a slightly smaller slice of the massive profits we helped create if some balance is restored.

Look, no one denies that corporations exist to make a profit and no one wants our employers to be profitable more than we do, but the singular pursuit of corporate profits to the exclusion of their social and human cost is a real problem in this country—it’s a real problem. A corporation's bottom line is not the same as the world’s, and there is nothing in our studio's bottom lines today that accounts for the quality of our lives or for our dignity, for the comfort of our retirement or the security of our families. Their numbers have no conscience, but the people who report them as victories ought to.

In their refusal to recognize that, these companies have also extracted an awful price, which is laid at their feet and for which they are responsible. Losses to the economies of New York and Los Angeles and everywhere that film and television are made, terrible losses that mount every day, thousands of people out of work; not just us, all the crews, the crafts, the janitors, the drivers, the businesses that thrive when Hollywood thrives, the restaurants, the stores—for what? For nothing. So they could avoid coming to the table to negotiate the deal they will one day give us. Measured today that is the painfully mixed legacy of our employers, weighed against every beautiful piece of work we have made with them.

And if history is a guide, they have only temporary stewardship over a kind of national trust, which is Hollywood. Our story, our sometimes conscience, our public conversation, our diversion of the worst and best of times, our greatest export, the repository of our imagination. They have some obligation to more than just their shareholders to behave accordingly.

Unfortunately, it seems big tech, mega corporations, and some of the people who run them, as the saying goes know the price of everything and the value of nothing. So they have built a business model that no longer works for human beings who cannot be paid minimum for 10 to 20 weeks a year and make a career out of that, be paid for one draft of a screenplay that demands a year of labor, be paid a few episodic fees for a show about which to take years to decide be paid a daily rate.

And now we have a first glimpse of what they offered our actor colleagues. We are not 170,000 Willy Lomans to be used and then discarded. We know what the companies believe they have the power to do. We know what they think machines can do and do without any of us. Oh yeah, we've seen the writing on the wall and it's plagiarized.

The thing is this: the difference between what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do is the greatest single difference in the world. Knowing that is the only real protection we have against a dystopian future. And if the companies sometimes forget that, writers will do it for them.

I can't know exactly how long it will take this revolutionary moment, and you've heard again and again what is happening today has not happened in 63 years, but I know that's not always how it feels, revolutionary and defining, even though we celebrate that on picket lines together, which is the right thing to do. That's not always how it feels when you go home at night. I know how tough this is: to strike, to hold the line. I know it gets tougher every day even with SAG-AFTRA marching beside us, how hard it is to face the uncertainty of when it will end, when we'll get back to work, how we'll pay the bills. I know it's hardest for those who've just gotten started, for those for whom the world opens doors more reluctantly, battled their whole life just to get here; but hard too for those struggling to maintain their long careers, who find work tougher and tougher to come by, or those with families with children or parents to take care of.

These companies understand the cruelty of what they're doing. It's their plan to starve us just a little, to exact as much pain as they can so that we wish more for the pain to end than for the better life we dreamed up. That we're more afraid of the uncertainty of the present than the certain devastation of the future. It's societally acceptable economic torture inflicted by management on labor every day, then blamed on labor for daring to fight back, for refusing to be complicit in its own mistreatment.

Here's how I know that's not going to work. Not with us, not with the writers, because we haven't come all this way, fought to have these careers in the first place, all the adversity, and marched together for all these months, only to let it slip away on our watch—because there is no point in rushing back to jobs that may not be there in a year or two anyway. Because the business, as the companies have twisted it, is now untenable, unsurvivable for so many of us, because even success is not enough to keep going, because this guild is younger than it's ever been and more diverse. And this young diverse membership knows from hard personal experience the system is broken and that it will not be fixed unless they fix it. And those of us who came before them will not let them down, because we and the writer's guild are the beneficiaries of all those who came before us who gave up everything for us.

Like the writers of 1960, the year I was born, who struck for 22 weeks and who gave away all the TV residuals for all the movies they had ever written so that we could have a health insurance and pension plan and residuals from that date forward. $15 billion flowed to writers and their benefit plans because of that sacrifice. Because writers are brave, because now it's our turn.

So what's our job? Even as we welcome SAG-AFTRA to our side, we are still responsible for our own deal, and so we must remain focused and diligent. We must continue to march, picket signs in hand. But we should also remember this and with pride, that before there was SAG-AFTRA, before even the Teamsters and IATSE and the laborers and the electrical workers and the musicians and the plasterers came to our side, there was the writers. Alone then, we looked at the blank page and began to imagine the future. With no net but each other we typed the words, what if?

And then we took a step into the darkness and found that it was light. And then we were joined by the crews and the drivers and the actors. The actors got a bit more fanfare when they showed up, but that's okay, we wrote the script. The WGA, still small, not alone anymore after all these decades. Hollywood labor has finally linked arms and found its voice, and that voice says enough. There is no road to longterm prosperity that burns a path through your own workforce. We are not your enemies. We are not merely a cost to be borne. We are your partners and your greatest asset. And we are, as you acknowledge yourselves, irreplaceable, but by accident or design and it doesn't really matter anymore, the business you are running no longer works for those who work for you.

What is the point in continuing to deny that? Why deny it when everyone else in the business to a person tells you it's true? Do you think it's a coincidence that two unions are on strike against you for the first time since Eisenhower was president? You can't exactly accuse us of being quick on the trigger. The effect has a cause, it has a cause. And there is no profit in insisting on the answers to the past for the questions of the future.

But if you want instead to invest in something that will reap you fortunes, I have a tip. And if you are visionaries, envision a solution, not a stalemate. Because this isn't a war we're in, it's a negotiation, it's just a negotiation. There is no face-saving here for either side, because there is no winner or loser. It's just a deal. And when you come to remember that again we will be here as we have been here all along.

And at this point with 170,000 writers and actors aligned against your intransigence, that is as generous as I can be, as close to an olive branch as I can offer. But if you insist instead on the same threatening rhetoric, on saying you would rather starve us than pay us, I would remind you of this: You are fighting for a dollar, we are fighting for survival. We are fighting for our home: writing is where we live, and we will defend that home with a bravery and stamina and ferocity that you will come to understand someday, which is why you cannot break us. You cannot outlast us, you cannot.

And not just because we have the will, because we have power. Nothing in this business happens until we start to write. And we will not start to write until we are paid.

Union now. Union forever.

#sag-aftra strike #sag strike #actors strike #union solidarity #i stand with the wga #wga strong #wga solidarity #fans4wga #Youtube #wga strike #writers strike

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justdavina · 2 months ago

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Hari Nef

She made her runway debut at New York Fashion Week Spring 2015, walking for both Hood By Air and Eckhaus Latta, and subsequently became the first openly transgender woman signed to IMG Models. She became the first openly transgender woman to appear on the cover of a major British magazine.

Schiaparelli jacket and skirt. Cartier earrings. Dior ring. Jimmy Choo pumps.

End Gender Specific Clothing!

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honeylations · 6 months ago

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HUH YUNJIN x FEM!READER

Prompt: With Le Sserafim in New York and you coincidentally having a runway show, she makes the time to meet up with you

Warnings/Notes: G!p Yunjin, eventual smut, model reader, golden retriever Yunjin

“So I have a confession to make” Yunjin randomly blurts out during game night in some New York Hotel.

Sakura had just rolled the monopoly dice and took hold of her cat piece. “What is it?”

“You’re gay?” Eunchae sarcastically question, earning an eye roll from the American.

“We’ve established that already, yes, but no that’s not what I was gonna say”

“It better be worth pausing this Monopoly game because I am becoming richer by the second” Chaewon smirked and showed off her buildings in majority of the board.

“So I have a girlfriend” Yunjin breathed out, feeling the weight roll off her shoulders.

The red head doesn’t know why she felt the need to keep it a secret from her girls. It wasn’t like she was scared that they wouldn’t support her, it was more of the fact that she gets nervous about almost anything.

And Eunchae may also be a little of bit of a big mouth.

Once a small detail goes through the maknae’s ear, the whole kpop industry suddenly knows.

“Oh? Congratulations Yunjin!” Kazuha applauded excitedly, even giving her member a quick hug.

“I’m surprised you can even pull” Chaewon teased, feeling a wad of monopoly cash slapped in her face. “Ow!”

“Eat shit. Anyways, she’s super awesome~”

This particular side of Yunjin was an easy way for the members to bully her love struck puppy personality and Yunjin knew she wouldn’t be able to defend herself.

“What’s her name?” Eunchae was the one to ask, already planning on texting Kyujin about the news.

Yunjin fiddled with her fingers and giggled like a school girl. “Park Y/n”

All girls sat up on their knees with eyes wider than saucers. “WHAT???”

“THE MODEL?”

“THAT HOTTIE?”

“Kill yourself Yunjin, there’s no way you’re dating THE PARK Y/N”

Yunjin slapped Chaewon with the monopoly cash again, tired of her teasing. “If you don’t believe me, she’s having a runway show tomorrow night. You can come with if you’d like. She can get us front row seats”

The eyes have gone wider and jaws were dropped.

“FRONT ROW TICKETS TO A RUNWAY SHOW?!?!” Sakura jumped up and about, squealing so high that the windows shook.

“I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll message Y/n and let her know” Yunjin said with a smile.

“It’s a coincidence that you both are in New York right now” The leader hummed and took her turn in rolling the dice.

She did a small fist pump when it landed on a double 6.

“Yeah I know, I’m just as surprised as you are. I’m planning to take her out on a date here soon and even introduce her to my family”

“Awwww our Yunjinie is such a good girlfriend~” Sakura smirked and playfully shook the taller member around.

Kazuha did a small applause. “I can’t wait to see her on the runway!”

The following night of the said Runway Show…

“Yunjin can you sit still?” Chaewon had hissed.

Chaewon could’ve been louder but she’d make a total fool of herself in front of the entire audience as the show was going. Well, not much of a fool as Yunjin right now.

The red head was fussing about in her seat, trying her best to get a clear view of whenever your turn was.

Which was literally in a second.

As you began strutting down with you beautiful model face, Yunjin squealed and started shaking her sign around that read: ‘I LUV Y/N <3’

“Wooohooooo! Go baby! You look so beautiful! Oh wow yayyyyy!~”

The Le Sserafim girls looked at their American member in disbelief. Did she suddenly forget she was an idol too?

“Huh Yunjin just how unprofessional are you gonna get?! Give me that and sit still!!” Chaewon growled, snatching the poster from Yunjin.

“Whatever. My girlfriend’s turn is over anyways” The red head grumbled before pursing her lips and waiting for the rest of the show to finish.

It felt like hours for Yunjin, but within minutes you had your bag over your shoulder and approaching your girlfriend and her group.

“Bebby!~” Yunjin made grabby hands and ran to you like an actual puppy seeing its owner.

Which was not much of a surprise for anyone.

“Must you be so loud whenever I’m on the runway? Be professional next time” You scolded but also melted into your girlfriend’s embrace where her large hands rested on your small waist.

She was squishing her cheek against your head and slowly pulled back with imaginary flat guilty ears. Her boba eyes grew wider and your body melted further. It was hard trying to maintain your nonchalant personality when your girlfriend was this fricking cute.

“I’m sorry bebby. I couldn’t help it. You look so pretty…I mean you always look pretty hehe”

You tried to be annoyed by her unprofessionalism but your smirk ruined it.

And Yunjin’s abrupt peck to your lips. “Mwah! Love you bebby”

“Ugh Yunjin quit being a love sap and introduce us to your girlfriend” You heard Chaewon hiss from afar.

“Right. Bebby, this is Kim Chaewon, our leader. Her temper is as short as her height-OW!”

“Piece of shit” The short blonde gritted her teeth when she slapped the back of Yunjin’s head.

“This is Miyawaki Sakura, the eldest. Then there’s me, your cute adorable girlfriend. And then Nakamura Kazuha, our Samoyed”

“Samoyed?” You repeated in question with a smile.

“Apparently that’s how my personality is” Kazuha shrugged and grinned, letting you slowly see why she got the title.

“Last but not least our baby girl, Hong Eunchae! We spoil her with love”

You softly pinched the youngest’s cheek and smiled at her giggle. “Definitely deserves to be spoilt. It’s a pleasure to finally meet Le Sserafim” you spoke calmly.

“Congrats on your runway event Y/n, you looked beautiful” Kazuha complimented sweetly.

“Thank you Kazuha, I’m glad you liked it. Yunjin told me you’d all be in New York so I thought it would be nice to get you girls a gift” you said with a smile and your manager instantly appeared with 4 bags of designer items that you collaborated with.

“Oh wow these are limited edition! Thank you so much Y/n Unnie!” Eunchae squealed with eyes as bright as the sun.

You would’ve thought she was Yunjin’s sister from how big her smile was. “You’re welcome Eunchae. Enjoy your time in New York”

“I will Unnie, I really will!”

“I’ll be going out with Y/n tonight for our date, I’ve already informed Manager-nim” Yunjin quickly reminded to Chaewon specifically in hopes she wouldn’t go ballistic but the leader hummed and nodded anyways.

“No worries. We’ll get going now. Oh and Yunjin-ah” Chaewon quickly called.

Yunjin’s brow raised in curiosity. “Hm?”

“Don’t stay out too late okay? We got content to film”

Yunjin saluted like a dork. “Ay ay captain!”

“Idiot. Take care and it was lovely meeting you Y/n!”

You waved at the girls but could feel Yunjin’s puppy eyes on you again. “What are you staring at?”

“Just how beautiful my girlfriend is. I love you bebby” she said and kissed your temple.

“Ugh. I love you too. Now where are you taking me tonight hm? You look so handsome” you smirked up at her and adjusted her blue button up long sleeve which was open at the collar.

“It’s a surprise bebby. This night will be memorable”

Well Yunjin wasn’t technically lying when she said memorable. She took you to a beautiful Italian restaurant, then surprising you with a bouquet of roses, and finally taking you on a walk by the beach where the moon shined bright.

Of course it wasn’t gonna just end there.

Because now you found yourself riding your girlfriend’s big cock in your hotel room. Both of your clothes thrown somewhere you’d have to dig through later but right now you were focused on milking your sexy girlfriend and the way she was STILL looking at you with those boba eyes.

“F-Fuck, stop looking at me like that” you moaned.

“Mmm, can’t help it. My girl is just so pretty riding me”

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as you clawed onto her shoulder harder, feeling the tip of her dick reach deeper into your pussy. “You drive me crazy, baby”

Not needing to say another word, Yunjin quickly admired the hickeys she scattered all over your neck and collarbones, then giving into her cravings of your lips. She made the kiss slow, letting her tongue work around yours and felt the movement of your hips falter.

But your tone got louder, shamelessly moaning into your girlfriend’s mouth that some of your saliva went down your chin.

“Tired, Princess?” She whispered into your mouth.

You nodded at her, being enough of a sign for Yunjin to lift you up and make you lay face first and ass up. You supported your balance by leaning on your elbows and looking back at your girlfriend who rubbed your ass and inserting her fat cock back inside your sopping cunt.

“A-Ah!”

“Always tight for me aren’t you, Y/n? My good girl”

You moaned into the sheets from the use of your name instead of her usual nickname for you. One of the things you loved so much about Yunjin was how different she was during sex. She can be vanilla if she wanted to, but Yunjin thought where the fun was in that?

She loved making you wither under her touch. Hearing you cry for her name and beg for her to please you in all the right ways.

“Mmhm right there baby!” You screamed at the inhumane pace Yunjin was going at, the slapping sounds echoing throughout the room (and probably even outside the entire hotel).

Yunjin towered her body over your back and trailed kisses at your jaw, feeling her smile against your skin. “Your pussy is sucking me in so nice, baby. Gonna fill it up with so much of my cum. You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

You nodded, clearly too tired to properly answer and the abrupt hold on your jaw made your eyes go wide. Yunjin squeezed your mouth open. “Open up and tongue out, darling”

Doing so, the red head spat on your tongue and forcefully closed your mouth before holding your throat. “Swallow.”

She hummed in satisfaction at your obedience, the knot in her stomach growing. “Hmm fuck, gonna cum Princess”

“Yes yes please cum in me, Yunnie” you mumbled with tears.

Yunjin was panting in your ear before releasing an aggressive groan, her hips snapping in a harsh but slower pace as she reached her peak. You felt the warm flood of cum fill your needy pussy to the brim, Yunjin then slowly pulling herself out to watch your creamy pussy leak.

“So hot” you exhaled, using two fingers to scoop the liquid and popping them into your mouth. “So tasty”

Yunjin guided you to lay your body down with your head on her chest, then pulling the covers over your sweaty bodies. She kissed your head and spent a few minutes helping you calm down by rubbing circles on your back. “You okay, bebby?”

“Yeah. We haven’t fucked in so long, I almost passed out”

“I missed you so much, bebby. Sorry we haven’t been going out lately”

You shook your head and placed multiple kisses on your girlfriend’s face. “Don’t apologise, my love. We still call all the time so just hearing your voice brings me satisfaction”

Yunjin smiled at your words. “Did you want to join us tomorrow? We won’t show your face on the cameras. As long as I’m with you, I don’t care about anything else”

“You know I have a photoshoot tomorrow, babe and plus I think your fans will go on a killing spree if they see us together”

Yunjin pouted. “I won’t let them touch you, bebby. I’ll use my magic force field to protect you”

You laughed into her neck and pinched her sides. “You’re such a dork”

“A dork you’re super in love with, am I right?” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“Yes. A dork I’m super duper in love with”

#gxg #wlw #le sserafim x fem reader #le sserafim x reader #le sserafim #le sserafim smut #huh yunjin #yunjin x reader #yunjin smut

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grison-in-space · 20 days ago

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wondering about whether you could rec some "romance is a social construct" texts? ofc it is, but i like having books and articles to reference/learn specifics from/see how these ideas have developed.

Sure! Here's a quick reading list. Bear in mind that I am not a professional historian and my reading on this subject is a little diffuse. I'm not tackling the behavioral ecology stuff right now because a) I don't have a more direct book rec off the top of my head than Evolution's Rainbow, which is not technically focused on social monogamy, and also b) I approach that whole field with my eyes wide open for people letting their own perspectives and cultural views get in the way of their observations of animals, and I do not have the energy to go deal with it right now.

If you're going to read two books, read these two:

Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: how love conquered marriage. 2006. All of Coontz' work, having to do with the social construction of the family, is relevant reading to this question (and I'd also recommend The Nostalgia Trap, because the historical context of how we conceptualize families is a major part of the construction of romantic love), but this one is most focused on the social construction of romantic love specifically and what it has replaced. Coontz is, I will disclose cheerfully, a major formative influence on my thinking.

Moira Wegel, Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating. 2016. Exactly what it says on the tin; focuses more closely on the modern invention of dating and romance.

Other useful readings to help inform your understanding of different ways that various people have conceptualized sex, sexuality, society and long-term connection include:

George Chauncey, Why Marriage? 2015. Chauncey is best known for Gay New York, which also offers a useful history of the way that relationship models and social constructs for understanding homosexuality changed among men having sex with men c. 1900 to 1950. This book, published just before Obergefell v. Hodges, is a discussion of why contemporary queer rights organizations focused on same-sex marriage as an activism plank in the wake of AIDS organizing. I find it really useful to read queer history when I'm thinking about how we understand and construct the concept of romantic relationships, because queers complicate the mainstream, heteronormative concepts of what marriage and romantic relationships actually are. More importantly, queer activist organizing around marriage has played a major role in shaping our collective understanding of romance and marriage in the past twenty years.

Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Celibacy, 2000. In order to understand how various cultures construct understandings of marriage and spousal relationships, it can be illustrative to consider what the people who are explicitly not participating in the institution are doing and why not. I found this an interesting pass over historical and social institutions that forbid (or forbade) marriage with a discussion about general trends driving these institutions, individuals, and movements towards celibacy.

Eleanor Janega, The Once and Future Sex, 2023. This is a very pointed historical look at gender roles, concepts of beauty, and concepts of sex, attraction, and marriage among medieval Europeans with an extended meditation on what ideas have and have not changed between that time and today. I include this work because I think a deep dive into medieval notions of courtly romance is useful, partly because it is an important origin of our modern notion of romantic love and partly because it is so usefully and starkly different from that modern notion! Sometimes the best way to understand the cultural construction of ideas in your own society is to go look at someone else's and see where things are the same versus different.

It's a mish-mash of recommendations, and I'm reaching more for books that have stuck with me over the years than a clean scholarly approach to the subject. I hope other folks will chime in for you with their own recommendations!

#reading #history #rec lists

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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When Facebook came for your battery, feudal security failed

When George Hayward was working as a Facebook data-scientist, his bosses ordered him to run a “negative test,” updating Facebook Messenger to deliberately drain users’ batteries, in order to determine how power-hungry various parts of the apps were. Hayward refused, and Facebook fired him, and he sued:

https://nypost.com/2023/01/28/facebook-fires-worker-who-refused-to-do-negative-testing-awsuit/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

Hayward balked because he knew that among the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger, some would be placed in harm’s way if Facebook deliberately drained their batteries — physically stranded, unable to communicate with loved ones experiencing emergencies, or locked out of their identification, payment method, and all the other functions filled by mobile phones.

As Hayward told Kathianne Boniello at the New York Post, “Any data scientist worth his or her salt will know, ‘Don’t hurt people…’ I refused to do this test. It turns out if you tell your boss, ‘No, that’s illegal,’ it doesn’t go over very well.”

Negative testing is standard practice at Facebook, and Hayward was given a document called “How to run thoughtful negative tests” regarding which he said, “I have never seen a more horrible document in my career.”

We don’t know much else, because Hayward’s employment contract included a non-negotiable binding arbitration waiver, which means that he surrendered his right to seek legal redress from his former employer. Instead, his claim will be heard by an arbitrator — that is, a fake corporate judge who is paid by Facebook to decide if Facebook was wrong. Even if he finds in Hayward’s favor — something that arbitrators do far less frequently than real judges do — the judgment, and all the information that led up to it, will be confidential, meaning we won’t get to find out more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

One significant element of this story is that the malicious code was inserted into Facebook’s app. Apps, we’re told, are more secure than real software. Under the “curated computing” model, you forfeit your right to decide what programs run on your devices, and the manufacturer keeps you safe. But in practice, apps are just software, only worse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/23/peek-a-boo/#attack-helicopter-parenting

Apps are part what Bruce Schneier calls “feudal security.” In this model, we defend ourselves against the bandits who roam the internet by moving into a warlord’s fortress. So long as we do what the warlord tells us to do, his hired mercenaries will keep us safe from the bandits:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

But in practice, the mercenaries aren’t all that good at their jobs. They let all kinds of badware into the fortress, like the “pig butchering” apps that snuck into the two major mobile app stores:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/pig-butchering-scam-apps-sneak-into-apples-app-store-and-google-play/

It’s not merely that the app stores’ masters make mistakes — it’s that when they screw up, we have no recourse. You can’t switch to an app store that pays closer attention, or that lets you install low-level software that monitors and overrides the apps you download.

Indeed, Apple’s Developer Agreement bans apps that violate other services’ terms of service, and they’ve blocked apps like OG App that block Facebook’s surveillance and other enshittification measures, siding with Facebook against Apple device owners who assert the right to control how they interact with the company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

When a company insists that you must be rendered helpless as a condition of protecting you, it sets itself up for ghastly failures. Apple’s decision to prevent every one of its Chinese users from overriding its decisions led inevitably and foreseeably to the Chinese government ordering Apple to spy on those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

Apple isn’t shy about thwarting Facebook’s business plans, but Apple uses that power selectively — they blocked Facebook from spying on Iphone users (yay!) and Apple covertly spied on its customers in exactly the same way as Facebook, for exactly the same purpose, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The ultimately, irresolvable problem of Feudal Security is that the warlord’s mercenaries will protect you against anyone — except the warlord who pays them. When Apple or Google or Facebook decides to attack its users, the company’s security experts will bend their efforts to preventing those users from defending themselves, turning the fortress into a prison:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Feudal security leaves us at the mercy of giant corporations — fallible and just as vulnerable to temptation as any of us. Both binding arbitration and feudal security assume that the benevolent dictator will always be benevolent, and never make a mistake. Time and again, these assumptions are proven to be nonsense.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_%2841118890174%29.jpg

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

[Image ID: A painting depicting the Roman sacking of Jerusalem. The Roman leader's head has been replaced with Mark Zuckerberg's head. The wall has Apple's 'Think Different' wordmark and an Ios 'low battery' icon.]

Next week (Feb 8-17), I'll be in Australia, touring my book *Chokepoint Capitalism* with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We'll be in Brisbane on Feb 8, and then we're doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 9. Next is Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I hope to see you!

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

#pluralistic #manorial security #feudal security #apple #mobile #apps #security through obscurity #binding arbitration #arbitration waivers #transparency #danegeld #surveillance lag

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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It’s the most startling thing I’ve seen in this year’s presidential campaign – the astoundingly large gap between how young men and young women plan to vote this November. Among women under age 30, an overwhelming 67% plan to vote for Kamala Harris, while just 29% say they’ll back Donald Trump. But among young men, a majority – 53% – plan to vote for Trump, while 40% say they’ll support Harris, according to a New York Times/Sienna College poll. That’s an astonishing 51-percentage-point gender gap.

It’s easy to understand why so many young women favor Harris – she has an inspiring life story, champions reproductive freedom and would break the biggest glass ceiling of all by becoming the first female president. But I’m mystified why so many young men back Trump.

Many of them seem to like Trump’s machismo. They like that he talks tough. They see him as an icon of traditional manhood. But all this raises an unavoidable question: should Trump be looked to as an icon of manhood considering that he boasted of grabbing women’s genitals, was found liable for sexual assault and had an affair with an adult film star soon after his wife gave birth? That shouldn’t be anyone’s model of manhood.

Many young men seem to admire Trump’s king-of-the-jungle vibe: he roars, he bellows, he boasts that no one can ever beat him (unless they cheat). But when you cut through Trump’s tough talk and look at the record, it becomes clear that Trump did very little for young men in his four years as president.

Whoops, I should note that if you’re a young man making more than $1m a year, Trump did do a lot for you, thanks to his colossal tax cuts for the richest 1%. But for the more than 99% of young men who don’t make $1m a year, sorry, Trump didn’t do diddly for you, other than cut your taxes a wee bit, a tiny fraction of the tax cuts that he gave to the richest Americans.

I recognize that many young men feel uncomfortable about the Democratic party, partly because some Democrats unfortunately treat men as a problem – and sometimes as the problem. If the Democrats were smart, they’d see that young men – like every other group in society – have problems that they need help with, problems like affording a home, finding a good-paying job, obtaining health insurance, affording college and having enough money to raise a family.

Regardless of how you feel about Harris, the truth is that her policies will do far more for young men than Trump’s policies will. It’s not even close. She is serious about lifting up young men and young women, and she has plans to do so.

Unlike Trump, Harris will help with soaring rents and home prices. She has pledged to build 3m new homes to help drive down housing prices. In another big step to make housing more affordable, she plans to give a $25,000 subsidy to first-time home buyers. Unlike Trump, Harris is also attacking the problem of high grocery prices – she has promised to crack down on price-gouging at the supermarket.

For many young men, health coverage and high health costs are a problem. On those matters, Trump will only make things worse. He has repeatedly promised to repeal Obamacare. That would be a disaster for millions of young men and women because they would no longer be able to be on their parents’ health plan until age 26. What’s more, repealing Obamacare will push up healthcare prices.

Many young people complain about their mountains of student debt. Trump won’t help on that; he has condemned the idea of forgiving student loans. In contrast, Harris wants to expand Biden’s debt cancellation program, which is hugely popular with young Americans. What’s more, Trump backed huge cuts in student aid – a move that would make it harder for young people to afford college. Harris is eager to make college more affordable by increasing student grants. Not only that, she is looking to what Tim Walz, her running mate, has done as Minnesota’s governor. He has made Minnesota’s state universities and community colleges free for students from middle-class and lower-income families.

If you’re a young man frustrated by how little your job pays, you should know that Trump – doing a big favor for his corporate allies – did nothing to raise the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage. Harris strongly supports raising the minimum wage.

Trump has made two big promises to make your life more affordable. Without giving details, he says he will cut auto insurance prices nationwide in his first 100 days in office. He also says he will cut energy and electricity prices in half during his first year in office. If you believe those far-fetched promises, then you’ll probably believe me when I say I have a bridge to sell you.

If you’re a young father or if you hope to have a family someday, you should know that Harris’s policies will do far more for you than Trump’s. Recognizing how expensive it is to raise a family, Harris has called for creating a children’s tax credit of $3,000 per child per year and $6,000 for a newborn.

To improve work-family balance, Harris has long pushed to enact paid family and medical leave so that people can take much-needed paid time off to spend with their newborns or care for sick parents or children. (Most Republicans oppose a paid leave law because their corporate donors oppose it.) Trump doesn’t have similar pro-family policies – his main policy proposals are huge tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-rich and large tariffs on imports that will dangerously push up inflation.

Although many young Americans don’t realize it, Biden and Harris have worked hard to create good-paying jobs for those who don’t go to college. Biden and Harris fought to enact three important pieces of legislation – an infrastructure bill, a green energy bill and a computer chips bill – that will create about 1m construction jobs, factory jobs and other jobs across the US, many of them unionized jobs with strong benefits.

If you’re one of the many young people at Starbucks, REI, Apple or elsewhere who support unionizing as a way to increase your pay and improve your working conditions, you should know that Harris is a strong supporter of unions and enthusiastically backs legislation to make it easier to unionize. But billionaire Trump dislikes labor unions. When he was president, he and his appointees did dozens of things, large and small, to weaken unions and create roadblocks for workers seeking to unionize.

There’s no denying that Trump’s tough talk makes many young men feel good. But tough talk is cheap. It won’t help anyone pay the rent, afford college or raise a family. Harris doesn’t talk as tough as Trump, but her record and her policies make undeniably clear that she will do far more for America’s young men and women than Trump will.

I don't agree with every point he makes here, and I also don't think a lot of young men are voting based on rational and objective things like whose policies will benefit them most. But I still thought this was an interesting read.

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atomicami · 1 year ago

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the perfect fit

model!abby anderson x fashion designer!reader

- summary: it’s the start of your new job working for armani as a fashion designer, and your first assignment is to design and create a suit for an upcoming runway event. despite the fact that you can’t stand your chosen model, you also can’t help but find her very attractive too.

- content: smut MDNI, no outbreak/modern au, nyc living, reader has a degree in fashion design, reader is a bit of a perfectionist, model!abby, abby’s a little cocky, work sex, fingering & strap usage (r!receiving), abby refers to her strap as her cock, size kink, and i think that’s it but lmk if i missed anything

- author’s note: so i was highly inspired by this abby x model!reader fic that i decided to try to write out a fic of my own with this new pairing!! i hope y’all like it :)

also dedicating this one to my girl @whore4abby ily darling 🤍

New York City was always known to be the place where one’s dreams were meant to fly as high as the skyscrapers that rose in its urban atmosphere. It was known to be the perfect capital city for all professions, including fashion.

Living in New York had always been the dream for you, and although you were now residing there for school, you weren’t exactly fulfilling your dreams just yet. So when you had called your parents one day to break the bad news to them, you knew that they weren’t going to be on board with your sudden change of plans.

“You’re switching majors? But why?” your dad asked through the phone. “I thought you wanted to study law.”

No, you didn’t. Your parents had been telling everyone they knew in your small town that you were going to major in law after high school and become the best lawyer to walk the streets of New York, and as a result, you couldn’t help but select that major just to please them.

“I don’t, Dad…If you had listened to me in the first place, you would know that I never wanted to do that,” you tell him.

“Well, that’s alright, law school isn’t for everyone now.” your dad told you before continuing. “What are you going to study instead? Medicine? Psychology? Business?”

You took a deep breath before continuing. “Fashion design…” you mutter back to him.

You can already imagine the outburst he was going to have. It was almost as if you could feel the anger bubbling within him through the phone.

“Fashion?! Are you seriously out of your mind?!” your dad exclaimed back at you. His reaction was so uncalled for that you had to take him off of speakerphone.

And after a long lecture from him later, he simply told you that he wasn’t going to pay for your tuition anymore before hanging up the phone.

Even though you were expecting that kind of reaction from your parents, your father more specifically, you still couldn’t help but feel so…discouraged. You’ve been wanting to be a fashion designer ever since you were little, and your parents’ lack of support did nothing but steal your happiness in fulfilling your dreams.

But at the same time…you felt determined to prove them wrong. You wanted to show them that you weren’t making this change just take the easy way out, you were doing it because you’ve been wanting to pursue this career your whole life. You wanted to show them that you were meant to be working in a fashion studio, not a courtroom.

Fast forward to now, and you’ve graduated from Parsons at the top of your class with a fashion degree, only to soon land a job working as a fashion designer at one of Giorgio Armani’s establishments right here in New York City.

Once the first day of your new job came around, you needed to give the best impression there, making sure to arrive before your boss did. After all, if it weren’t for Tess selecting you as one of the potential candidates as a fashion designer for that establishment, you’d probably still be job hunting by now.

You sat at your desk, eyeing the surroundings of the large studio you were in at this moment. All of the fabrics, mannequins, tools, and machines just waiting to be used. It still felt like a fever dream to you.

The sound of the opening doors of the warehouse startles you, causing you to and some of the designers in the studio to turn around, while the others are still chattering.

Tess walks into the studio and stands in the middle of the room before bringing everyone’s attention. “Alright everyone,” she shouts with a loud clap of her hands, causing the rest of the room to quiet down. “I have decided to put you all in charge of creating the looks for Armani’s upcoming winter fashion show. Each of you will be given a model to work on, and you are welcome to create whatever you’d like, as long as it meets the requirements for the show.”

“But, isn’t the winter fashion show only a month from now?” one of the designers asked.

“Yes, Yes it is, actually,” Tess replies with a nod. “So I expect to see the best work done by you all within the time being. I’d like to see how well my designers can work under pressure.”

You let out a sigh in frustration and held your face in your hands. How the hell were you going to have a look ready in just a month?

Tess checks the time on her watch before looking up at the clock for reassurance. “The models should be arriving any minute now, once they get here I’ll be assigning them out to everyone, and we’ll start today off by taking their measurements and sketching out designs. When you are finished, I—“ Her words are cut off by the sound of the warehouse doors opening again.

You look over again with the rest of the designers to see another staff member enter the room with a variety of models trailing behind her in a single file line. She then approaches Tess to talk to her for a brief moment before soon exiting the warehouse by herself. “Alright everyone,” Tess shouts out again, looking down at the clipboard that was in her hands. “When I call out your name to your assigned model, I would like you to stand up from your desk so they know who you are.”

As Tess begins to assign the models, the sound of a chair swiveling over to your left makes you turn your head, and you see that it was Dina scooching closer to you. “See anyone you might like?” she whispers over to you, her eyes still fixed on the line of models in the room.

“I honestly could care less about who Tess puts me with,” you whisper back to her, leaning back against your chair and crossing one of your legs over the other. “As long as they don’t give me a hard time, I should be good.”

Dina nods in response, she opens her mouth to respond but is cut off by the sound of Tess calling out your name. As a result, you rise from your seat and stand behind your desk.

“You’ll be working with Anderson as your model,” she tells you, and you watch as Tess looks over to your model and points at you, indicating her to walk over to where you were.

Intimidation strikes through you as she approaches your desk. You can’t really put your finger on it, but from the first impression, you’re quite convinced it's because of her broad figure that stood out from everyone else. You look over to Dina, to which she looks back at you and simply mouths a ‘good luck’ on your end.

Tess soon does a quick check around the room, making sure each designer has a model to work with. “Alright, now that everyone has an assigned model, you can all get started. Remember now, the winter show is a month from today, so I hope you can all make the best use of your time.” and with that, she exits the studio, leaving you and the rest of the designers to be.

Abby has her side resting against your desk, watching you draw out some looks on your sketchbook. “Just so you know…” she starts, leaning in closer to your right side. “I’m like, the biggest model here, so don’t be surprised when you run out of fabric for that pretty outfit you’ve planned out for me.”

You look over to Abby and roll your eyes before setting your pencil down and opening the side drawer of your desk. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” you tell her as you take out the soft tape measure from your drawer and stand up from your seat. “Come on, let me take your measurements now.”

Based on that first interaction alone, you knew that Abby was going to be a distraction for your project, and boy you were right.

This past month has felt like hell for you, and Abby’s cocky, conceited persona wasn’t making it any better for you.

Things were fine at first, at least enough for you to manage. But it wasn’t until the second fitting that she’s been starting to really get on your nerves.

The fitting room in the Armani establishment was spacious, each designer/model pair had their spot to do the fittings and make any adjustments if needed.

Abby walks over to your side of the fitting room fully dressed in her runway outfit. You had beautifully created a navy blue suit that complimented her freckled skin and blue eyes perfectly, and the entire outfit had Swarovski crystals sewn all over the place. It was a timeless and classic look for the show.

It’s a shame that your model has to be so arrogant for the time being.

You look over to her and snap your fingers. “Stand over there,” you tell her, pointing over to the small, round altar that was next to you. Abby simply obliges and stands up on the altar to face you, both of her hands crossed at her front.

You notice this and walk over to her, grabbing at her hands. “I need your hands at your sides, you’re a model, not a security guard.” you tell her sternly, separating her hands so each one is at her side. You then sit down on the stool behind you, bringing yourself down to face her lower half so you can check the fitting of her suit pants.

Starting at the bottom of her pants and making your way up, the pants seem to fit well on her so far. Given Abby’s large build, the fit is as snug as can be, but not too tight to where it would make her uncomfortable when walking. If you had made it any tighter, you’re convinced that the fabric might rip.

However, it wasn’t until you look at the waistline of the pants. For some reason, that area looked unusually tighter than it was compared to the last fitting. The zipper on her pants looked like it was going to burst. It’s almost as if she was hiding something underneath…

You tap the side of her thigh to get her attention, causing her to tilt her head down. ”What’s this?” you ask, pointing at the slight bulge that was sticking out of her pants.

She simply smirks back at you and shakes her head. “Wouldn’t you like to know…” she mumbles out, looking back up.

Your eyes were still fixed on her face, and you grabbed at her crotch, causing her to slightly jerk back. You knew damn well what it was that she had in those pants.

“Jesus,” she says, looking back down at you. “Chill out, will you?”

“Take it off,” you tell her sternly, standing back up from the stool. “I’m not going to have my look completely ruined as a result from one of your little games.”

You were close to having an outburst in the middle of the fitting room since you were starting to get some looks from some of the other designers and models in the room, including Dina. It was a good thing that Tess wasn’t there to see it though.

Abby simply rolls her eyes at you and clears her throat before stepping off of the altar and exiting the fitting room to go change. The two of you were being quite immature about this, but you were seriously in need of your look to be perfect for the show, and Abby was keeping you from doing so.

A couple more weeks pass by and before you know it, the day of the show is just right around the corner from now.

Your shift at the studio had just ended, and people were starting to gather their things to leave, while you still sat by your large mannequin, making adjustments and adding touches to your look.

Dina walks up behind you and taps your shoulder, causing you to pull out one of your headphones from your ear and turn around.

“Hey,” she says. “Some of us are going to head out to Dalton’s for drinks. Wanna come with?”

You shake your head in response. “I can’t, I really have to finish this look in time for the show, I have to make sure everything’s perfect.”

You hear her let out a sigh and nod. “Alright well, just don’t stress yourself out, okay?” she asks, gently squeezing your shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” she says, and you nod back at her as you watch her put her bag over her shoulder and exit the studio.

Once she leaves, you notice Tess at walking towards you at the corner of your eye. “Hey kid,” she says leaning against your desk with her arms crossed, keys jingling in one of her hands. “You plan on leaving soon?”

You let out a sigh and turned your head to face her. “Just let me stay a little longer, Tess…I promise I’ll be out of here soon.”

She sighs back and hesitates for a moment while rubbing the back of her neck. “Alright, I’ll give you an hour, but that’s it. I don’t want you spending the night here.” She then gets off your desk. “I’ll see you tomorrow, the doors will lock automatically once you leave.”

You nod in response and thank her before watching her walk away from the dim lighting that shined on your side of the studio. You were instantly relieved to be able to have some time for yourself to work on the suit.

However, that doesn’t last long when another set of footsteps enter the studio and begin to approach you from behind once again.

A large hand grabs at your shoulder, this time causing you to jump up and turn around in fear for a moment before realizing who it is. “Jesus, Anderson…you scared the hell out of me,” you say, trying to catch your breath. “What are you even doing here? Your final fitting isn’t until Friday.”

Abby lets out a chuckle at your frightened reaction and shakes her head. “I just came here to get my car keys,” she says, grabbing them off the shelf where she had left them. “I left them last time I was here.”

You rolled your eyes and stood back up to face your desk and away from her. “Well, now that you have your keys, can you go now? I need to keep working.”

As you were about to put your headphones back on, Abby began to speak once again. “What’s your deal?” she asks you.

You let out a huff and set your phone down before looking back at her. “My deal is that I’ve had to deal with your arrogance this past month and it’s been driving me insane. All I want right now is to have this time to myself so I can finish this suit in time for the show.”

The smirk that was growing on Abby’s face right now was so big you could practically see it from your peripheral vision. She then begins to walk around until she’s behind you on your desk. “It seems like you could loosen up a bit, you know…” she tells you as she slightly leans in closer to your ear, trapping you between your desk and her chest. You could already feel a familiar bulge poking at your lower back. It was that same bulge that you were just grabbing at in the fitting room not too long ago.

You roll your eyes at her in response. “Is that so?” you whisper back to her, just enough so she can hear you. “And what might that be, exactly?”

Her hands make their way down to your waist, grabbing you and turning you around so you are now face-to-face with her. “How about I show you, yeah?” she whispers to you, to which you nod desperately.

Despite how much you couldn’t stand her, you really couldn’t help but be into her at the same time, and not only has she also been aware of it, but she felt the same way with you too.

You feel her hands move from your waist down to the buttons of your pants, and you look down at your lap as a result. “Let’s see what we have here now…” she murmurs, slowly undoing your pants and sliding them off your legs and to the ground. Once your pants were fully removed, she helped give you a boost so you could sit up on your desk.

Abby instantly opens your legs the second your ass hits your desk, immediately eyeing the visible wet patch that was seeping through your black underwear. “Well well well, what do we have here…” she mutters out, hooking a finger underneath your underwear and shifting it to the side, causing your wet pussy to be exposed to her and the cold air of the studio. “This all for me?” she asks, looking back up at you.

All you can simply do is bite your lip and nod as you try to resist the cold air hitting against your pussy. “Fuck, yes, Abs…it’s all for you…” you whine out to her.

“That’s what I thought,” she mutters back. Two of her fingers make their way into your cunt without warning, causing you to jerk back and involuntarily close your thighs shut. However, her other hand makes her way into the middle just in time before you do so. “Nuh-uh, don’t get shy on me now, princess,” she says, forcing your legs back open to stand in the middle. “You’ve been so bold with me this past month, so you’re not backing out of this now.”

Her fingers successfully go into your pussy the second time around, causing a moan to escape from your mouth as a result. Abby’s fingers were huge, to say the least, but they managed to stretch your pussy out so well. There’s no way that your pussy can’t take anything bigger than this.

But what Abby was about to pull out next was going to prove you wrong.

As Abby’s fingers continue to pump inside you, she begins to undo her jeans with her free hand, effortlessly getting them open and slightly pushing them down to her thighs. She then digs that same hand into her boxers and pulls out her black strap-on, causing your eyes to widen at the immense size. She was fucking huge.

“A-Abby…” you stammer out to her, quickly shaking your head. “That—That’s not gonna fit…It’s too—“

“Yes it will,” she says, cutting off your words. “My cock’s gonna fit. You’ll see.”

Her fingers quickly slide out of your cunt, leading you to whimper at the loss. With both of her hands now, she rubs her cock against your folds, collecting some of your wetness before sliding it into your tight hole. The stretch of the strap was a bit uncomfortable at first, but after a moment, you were shocked to see how well your pussy was easily taking it from the tip down to the base. It really was the perfect fit.

Abby smirks as she looks down at the piece of silicone that connected your bodies. “See? I told you it’ll fit,” she mutters out, bottoming out completely inside you. “This fucking pussy was made to take my cock.”

You were already starting to feel dizzy over Abby’s cock nestling inside your pussy. You were desperate for some movement.

“A-Abby…” you whine out to her, squeezing her bicep. “N-Need you t-to move…”

“What’s that, princess? You want me to move my cock?” she asks, to which you nod in response. “Need me to thrust my big cock in that desperate little pussy of yours? Don’t worry, baby, I’ll do just that for you.”

And with that, she begins to slowly thrust inside you. You could practically feel it all within her movements, the girth, the veins, hell, even the tip would kiss at your cervix every time she bottomed out into you.

Abby grabs at both of your thighs, slowly starting to speed up her pace. “I think I can go a little faster now, don’t you think? Your pretty pussy’s already doing so well for me, angel…”

“Fuck, y-yes, Abby…f-faster…” you slur out as you throw your head back in pleasure, gripping both of your hands onto your desk while she continues to thrust inside of you.

One of her hands leaves your thigh and grabs at your jaw, tilting it down to face her. “Look at that now, my girl’s getting so cockdrunk for me…I bet it feels good, doesn’t it?”

Abby’s gaze soon brings down to your chest, smirking once she notices your hard nipples poking through your shirt. She then lets go of your jaw and pulls your shirt up to your tits, watching in awe at the mere sight of them. “No bra?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t take you to be such a slut like that…It’s almost as if you were waiting for this to happen.”

At this point, your brain was losing focus, and you couldn’t figure out what Abby was saying to you right now. Once she sped up her pace again, all you could think about now was getting to your release.

Abby now has her gaze focused on the sight of your pussy, watching as it squeezes and contracts around the strap with every thrust. “Looks like you’re getting close, princess. Are you gonna come for me? Gonna be a good girl and cum on my cock?”

“Y-yes, f-fuck! I-I’m getting close…” you whine back to her, leading her to thrust even faster inside of you, your moans soon getting loud enough for them to practically echo inside the whole studio.

It didn’t take long for you to reach your peak. Your cunt pulsed a few more times around Abby’s strap before cumming completely with a loud moan of her name, causing a white ring to form around it.

As you began to catch your breath, Abby slowly pulled herself out of you, groaning as she saw a thick white string of your cum connecting between your pussy and the tip of her strap before soon breaking. She then ran her fingers through her length, collecting all of your release before soon sticking them inside of your mouth while it was still agape.

After sucking her fingers clean, she pulls them out of your mouth and tucks her strap back into her boxers before putting her jeans back on. You watch as she briefly gets down onto her knees and brings her face into your fucked out pussy, gently licking and sucking it clean, savoring each bit of it as she did so.

Once you were all clean, Abby rose back to her feet, helping you with your underwear and with the rest of your clothes as well. Her hands then moved from the button of your pants back down to your hips, guiding you off of your desk and back on your feet. You stumble a little bit into her at the sudden movement.

“Hey, you okay?” she asks softly, catching you in her arms.

“Y-yeah, yeah I’m okay…just a little worn out.” you pant out to her as you gain back your composure to turn around towards your desk and gather up your things to leave.

“Well, at least let me give you a ride back to your place,” she insists, grabbing her keys off your desk. “It’s already late outside, and I don’t think it’s quite safe for you to be walking around out there at this time.”

You hesitate for a moment at first. You’d honestly hate to inconvenience Abby to give you a ride home, but given that she was the one offering, you didn’t seem to mind too much about it. In all fairness, it was already late hours in the city, and given the damage she’d done to your legs, there was no way you were going to last walking for five minutes down the street. So you end up accepting her offer.

“Yeah, sure…I’m not stopping you, honestly…” you tell her with a chuckle as you put your bag over your shoulder, ready to head out.

You then follow along beside Abby as the two of you exit the establishment and make your way to wherever her car is situated. Abby opens the passenger door to let you in first before letting herself in on the other side. She then starts up her car before merging into the city’s busy roads.

The ten-minute drive flew by surprisingly fast, and before you knew it, she was now parked in front of your apartment complex. She leans in to give you a quick kiss before soon pulling away. “So, I’ll see you on Friday, then?” she asks.

You can’t help but smirk back at her, even though you were biting your lip to hide it. “I’ll see you on Friday, Anderson.” you tell her with a nod before opening the door to let yourself out.

But Abby doesn’t leave just yet. Instead, she makes sure that you get into your apartment safe and sound. Once your lights were on, that was her cue to go.

You watch from your apartment window as she drives back into the busy roads, soon disappearing from your view.

And for the first time this month, you have to admit that you’re now actually looking forward to seeing her again.

a/n: i hope you guys liked this fic!! i might make another part if this goes well?? but aside from that my next fic will be bfm!abby for those who are waiting, i promise 🤞🏼 lmk if you’d like to be tagged for when i post it!!

(also ty for 700, i love you guys 🫶🏻)

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unabashegirl · 7 months ago

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Bella Hadid || Instagram Blurb

Author's note: Hello everyone! Here is a new instagram blurb. I hope all of you enjoy it. Also let me be clear my inbox is open so leave your request!

masterlist

liked by harrysfan98, yourbestfriend and 70,496 others

yourinstagram I really wish we could have been everything I dreamed we would be

view all 5039 comments

harryfan304 did they break up?

harrysfa928 why does she look like she has been crying?

yourfan20 he doesn't deserve you! You are too good for you.

yourbestfriend I'm coming over.

liked by harryfan398, harryfan294 and 50,083 others

tmz_tv Harry Styles seen with a mystery woman only days after alleged breakup with super model Y/N Y/L/N. Multiple sources close to the couple say that the breakup ended in good terms and that it was Y/N who ended things with Harry. What do you think?

view all 10,487 comments

harrysfan20 I doubt it. She is nothing without him

yourfan12 she was a model before him.

yourfan376 good for her. we all know that he would enventually cheat. Look how quickly he moved on. and he was in love with her?

harryfan194 he is allowed to move on

liked by jacobelordi, neymar and 15,285 others

yourinstagram back at Vogue's headquarters 📍

view all 2958 comments

jacobelordi 👀

yourfan48 stop cause they would be the hottest couple ever

yourbestfriend how the hell can you manage to look like that? 🙄

sabrinacarpenter hott 🔥

liked by harrystyles, harrysfan56 and 8948 others

yourbestfriend wish I could take your place and give you a second without pain. I love you. 💕

view all 2406 comments

yourinstagram having you here gives me enough strength💜

yourfan48 so worried abt her

yourfan295 pls tell her that we are here for her

harryfan395 what's going on with her? is she sick?

yourfan184 she suffers from a cronic disease

liked by yourbestfriend, harrys948 and 40,294 others

enews Harry Styles has been seen flying back from England to New York. Close sources have reported that he is in New York to see Y/N Y/L/N due to the delicate state that she is currently on. The model has been fighting with a rare chronic disease that hasn't been disclosed to the public. Last week, her best friend posted a picture of her state which concerned the majority of her fans. We hope the model recovers soon and send our best wishes.

view all 20,857 comments

harryfan398 pls leave them alone.

y/nismyfavorite stop following him. only you people would take advantage of the situation.

liked by harrystyles, ariannagrande and 70,396 others

yourinstagram There has been of speculation about my health online lately. I just wanted to come on here and let everyone know that I am doing well and slowly recovering. I also wanted to clarify that I won't be disclosing any details about my disease and I would appreciate some privacy in the matter. Please stop calling my family and interrogating them. Thank you for all your messages. I will hopefully be back soon. 💖

view all 30,582 comments

ariannagrande love you! I can't wait to see you 💜

niallhoran stay strong 🥹

kendalljenner we miss you terribly ✨

harrystyles ❤️

yourfan he is definitely checking up on her and with her.

liked by jeffzoffs, pillowpersonpp and 2,583, 958 others

harrystyles Your blue-green eyes are driving me insane.

view all 30,583 comments

yourinstagram ♥️

harryfan937 finally 🙏🏼

harrys092 so she isn't sick anymore?

pillowpersonpp cute 🥰

liked by niallhoran, yourbestfriend and 108,485 others

yourinstagram educating this man. spicing up that dresscode 💁🏻‍♀️

view all 6980 comments

harrystyles i'll admit they are comfortable…

birkenstock ITS HAPPENING!! CALM DOWN PEOPLE!

yourbestfriend spicing up? ugly. 👎🏼

yourinstagram shut up. i've seen you wear them.

yourbestfriend aren’t they the same ones that make the Jesus chanclas?

niallhoran you are late to the trend mate 🤦🏻‍♂️

liked by yourinstagram, mitchrowland and 4,693,385 others

harrystyles educating her. zero sense of fashion. I am the model.

view all 20,857 comments

yourinstagram get off the internet dofus! 🛑

harrystyles no. make me.

yourinstagram i dressed you last night

harryfan20 isn't she the model?

yourfan38 cute shoesss

adidas we love you both 🥹

mitchrowland harry doesn't know how to dress himself. he always calls y/n for her opinion.

harrystyles shut up mitch! 😡

yourinstagram I told you!

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contemplatingoutlander · 4 months ago

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Finally, The New York Times Editorial Board says Trump is unfit to hold the Office of the President of the United States!

This is a "gift🎁link" so you can read the entire, HISTORIC editorial by The New York Times Editorial Board stating in no uncertain terms that Donald Trump is unfit for office.

Below are some excerpts from the five subsections of the editorial: I Moral Fitness, II. Principled Leadership, III. Character, IV. A President's Words, and V. Rule of Law

I. MORAL FITNESS MATTERS

Presidents are confronted daily with challenges that require not just strength and conviction but also honesty, humility, selflessness, fortitude and the perspective that comes from sound moral judgment. If Mr. Trump has these qualities, Americans have never seen them in action on behalf of the nation’s interests. His words and actions demonstrate a disregard for basic right and wrong and a clear lack of moral fitness for the responsibilities of the presidency.

He lies blatantly and maliciously, embraces racists, abuses women and has a schoolyard bully’s instinct to target society’s most vulnerable. He has delighted in coarsening and polarizing the town square with ever more divisive and incendiary language. Mr. Trump is a man who craves validation and vindication, so much that he would prefer a hostile leader’s lies to his own intelligence agencies’ truths and would shake down a vulnerable ally for short-term political advantage. His handling of everything from routine affairs to major crises was undermined by his blundering combination of impulsiveness, insecurity and unstudied certainty. [...] The Supreme Court, with its ruling on July 1 granting presidents “absolute immunity” for official acts, has removed an obstacle to Mr. Trump’s worst impulses: the threat of legal consequences. What remains is his own sense of right and wrong. Our country’s future is too precious to rely on such a broken moral compass. [color emphasis added]

Below the cut are excerpts from the other four subsections.

II. PRINCIPLED LEADERSHIP MATTERS

Republican presidents and presidential candidates have used their leadership at critical moments to set a tone for society to live up to. Mr. Reagan faced down totalitarianism in the 1980s.... George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act.... George W. Bush, for all his failures after Sept. 11, did not stoke hate against or demonize Muslims or Islam.

As a candidate during the 2008 race, Mr. McCain spoke out when his fellow conservatives spread lies about his opponent, Barack Obama. Mr. Romney was willing to sacrifice his standing and influence in the party he once represented as a presidential nominee, by boldly calling out Mr. Trump’s failings and voting for his removal from office. These acts of leadership are what it means to put country first, to think beyond oneself. Mr. Trump has demonstrated contempt for these American ideals. He admires autocrats, from Viktor Orban to Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-un. He believes in the strongman model of power — a leader who makes things happen by demanding it, compelling agreement through force of will or personality. In reality, a strongman rules through fear and the unprincipled use of political might for self-serving ends, imposing poorly conceived policies that smother innovation, entrepreneurship, ideas and hope. During his four years in office, Mr. Trump tried to govern the United States as a strongman would, issuing orders or making decrees on Twitter. He announced sudden changes in policy — on who can serve in the military, on trade policy, on how the United States deals with North Korea or Russia — without consulting experts on his staff about how these changes would affect America. Indeed, nowhere did he put his political or personal interests above the national interest more tragically than during the pandemic, when he faked his way through a crisis by touting conspiracy theories and pseudoscience while ignoring the advice of his own experts and resisting basic safety measures that would have saved lives. [...] A second Trump administration would be different. He intends to fill his administration with sycophants, those who have shown themselves willing to obey Mr. Trump’s demands or those who lack the strength to stand up to him. He wants to remove those who would be obstacles to his agenda, by enacting an order to make it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with those more loyal to him. This means not only that Americans would lose the benefit of their expertise but also that America would be governed in a climate of fear, in which government employees must serve the interests of the president rather than the public.... Another term under Mr. Trump’s leadership would risk doing permanent damage to our government. [color/ emphasis added]

III. CHARACTER MATTERS

Character is the quality that gives a leader credibility, authority and influence. During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump’s petty attacks on his opponents and their families led many Republicans to conclude that he lacked such character. Other Republicans, including those who supported the former president’s policies in office, say they can no longer in good conscience back him for the presidency. “It’s a job that requires the kind of character he just doesn’t have,” Paul Ryan, a former Republican House speaker, said of Mr. Trump in May.

Those who know Mr. Trump’s character best — the people he appointed to serve in the most important positions of his White House — have expressed grave doubts about his fitness for office.His former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, described Mr. Trump as “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” Bill Barr, whom Mr. Trump appointed as attorney general, said of him, “He will always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest.” James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general who served as defense secretary, said, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try.” Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s vice president, has disavowed him. No other vice president in modern American history has done this. “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Mr. Pence has said. “And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.” [...] It may be tempting for Americans to believe that a second Trump presidency would be much like the first, with the rest of government steeled to protect the country and resist his worst impulses. But the strongman needs others to be weak, and Mr. Trump is surrounding himself with yes men. The American public has a right to demand more from their president and those who would serve under him. [color/ emphasis added]

IV. A PRESIDENT’S WORDS MATTER

When America saw white nationalists and neo-Nazis march through the streets of Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and activists were rallying against racism, Mr. Trump spoke of “very fine people on both sides.” When he was pressed about the white supremacist Proud Boys during a 2020 debate, Mr. Trump told them to “stand back and stand by,” a request that, records show, they took literally in deciding to storm Congress. This winter, the former president urged Iowans to vote for him and score a victory over their fellow Americans — “all of the liars, cheaters, thugs, perverts, frauds, crooks, freaks, creeps.” And in a Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire, he used the word “vermin,” a term he has deployed to describe both immigrants and political opponents.

What a president says reflects on the United States and the kind of society we aspire to be. In 2022 this board raised an urgent alarm about the rising threat of political violence in the United States and what Americans could do to stop it. At the time... the Republican Party was in the middle of a fight for control, between Trumpists and those who were ready to move on from his destructive leadership. This struggle within the party has consequences for all Americans. “A healthy democracy requires both political parties to be fully committed to the rule of law and not to entertain or even tacitly encourage violence or violent speech,” we wrote. A large faction of one party in our country fails that test, and that faction, Mr. Trump’s MAGA extremists, now control the party and its levers of power. There are many reasons his conquest of the Republican Party is bad for American democracy, but one of the most significant is that those extremists have often embraced violent speech or the belief in using violence to achieve their political goals. This belief led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and it has resulted in a rising number of threats against judges, elected officials and prosecutors. This threat cannot be separated from Mr. Trump’s use of language to encourage violence, to dehumanize groups of people and to spread lies. A study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, released in October 2022, came to the conclusion that MAGA Republicans (as opposed to those who identified themselves as traditional Republicans) “are more likely to hold extreme and racist beliefs, to endorse political violence, to see such violence as likely to occur and to predict that they will be armed under circumstances in which they consider political violence to be justified.” The Republican Party had an opportunity to renounce Trumpism; it has submitted to it. Republican leaders have had many opportunities to repudiate his violent discourse and make clear that it should have no place in political life; they failed to. [...] But with his nomination by his party all but assured, Mr. Trump has become even more reckless in employing extreme and violent speech, such as his references to executing generals who raise questions about his actions. He has argued, before the Supreme Court, that he should have the right to assassinate a political rival and face no consequences. [color/ emphasis added]

V. THE RULE OF LAW MATTERS

The danger from these foundational failings — of morals and character, of principled leadership and rhetorical excess — is never clearer than in Mr. Trump’s disregard for rule of law, his willingness to do long-term damage to the integrity of America’s systems for short-term personal gain. As we’ve noted, Mr. Trump’s disregard for democracy was most evident in his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to encourage violence to stop the peaceful transfer of power. What stood in his way were the many patriotic Americans, at every level of government, who rejected his efforts to bully them into complying with his demands to change election results. Instead, they followed the rules and followed the law. This respect for the rule of law, not the rule of men, is what has allowed American democracy to survive for more than 200 years.

In the four years since losing the election, Mr. Trump has become only more determined to subvert the rule of law, because his whole theory of Trumpism boils down to doing whatever he wants without consequence. Americans are seeing this unfold as Mr. Trump attempts to fight off numerous criminal charges. Not content to work within the law to defend himself, he is instead turning to sympathetic judges — including two Supreme Court justices with apparent conflicts over the 2020 election and Jan. 6-related litigation. The playbook: delay federal prosecution until he can win election and end those legal cases. His vision of government is one that does what he wants, rather than a government that operates according to the rule of law as prescribed by the Constitution, the courts and Congress. [...] So much in the past two decades has tested these norms in our society.... We need a recommitment to the rule of law and the values of fair play. This election is a moment for Americans to decide whether we will keep striving for those ideals. Mr. Trump rejects them. If he is re-elected, America will face a new and precarious future, one that it may not be prepared for. It is a future in which intelligence agencies would be judged not according to whether they preserved national security but by whether they served Mr. Trump’s political agenda. It means that prosecutors and law enforcement officials would be judged not according to whether they follow the law to keep Americans safe but by whether they obey his demands to “go after” political enemies. It means that public servants would be judged not according to their dedication or skill but by whether they show sufficient loyalty to him and his MAGA agenda. Even if Mr. Trump’s vague policy agenda would not be fulfilled, he could rule by fear. The lesson of other countries shows that when a bureaucracy is politicized or pressured, the best public servants will run for the exits. This is what has already happened in Mr. Trump’s Republican Party, with principled leaders and officials retiring, quitting or facing ouster. In a second term, he intends to do that to the whole of government. [color/ emphasis added]

#trump #unfit for office #2024 elections #moral fitness matters #principled leadership matters #character matters #a president's words matter #rule of law matters #the new york times #editorial board #gift link

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shantechni · 9 months ago

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The Redemption of Slash

Seriously, can I take up 33 seconds of your time to share how in love I am with this? Slash was influenced by Raph's constant frustrations with Leo back then, and his mutagen fueled mind was so satisfied when he sent the kid flying across the roof of the building. He wasn't just telling Raph to join him because he was his long time companion and confidant, but because he also used to believe a lot of the things Raph said about his brothers, one of which being that Leo did a terrible job of leading.

By the next season though, he amazingly pulls a complete 180.

I know he technically redeemed himself in Newtralized!, but it wasn't until Battle for New York that he finally tried to make things right with the entire team, and of course Leo isn't so willing to put any faith in him or his abilities (he's such a hypocrite btw, he tried to argue with Slash over Pete being used as bait like Mikey isn't right there lol, tbf Mikey's hardly sent in as bait by this point of the series anymore, but still). They expectedly go back and forth quite a bit for a majority of the first part, wherein Leo is repeatedly doubtful of Slash's leadership and causes the snapper to become frustrated with the treatment he receives. Raph even steps in on one occasion to defuse the situation.

Leo's mind eventually changed near the end of the episode though when he watched Slash defend Pete from a laser blast, and he realizes Slash doesn't truly view Pete as the meat shield of the team. He expresses how impressed he was by the result of Slash's leadership skills, and Slash brightens up over the compliment before proudly responding that he's changed from the turtle that bruised up him and his brothers nearly a year ago (this hits even harder when remembering that he starts to believe Leo's words of doubt for a minute after the Kraang captures them later on).

And the cherry on top of all of this? When both teams reunite after bringing all of the humans back to New York, Leo comes around to rightfully apologize for the way he's been treating Slash, even going so far to refute his earlier words by saying he deserved a second chance after all. And Slash tells him to his face that he was his role model, this is peak cinema fr-

#analysis #sorta idk #i could /easily/ get into how raph never gets on leo's case for not trusting slash despite how often leo got on him for not trusting karai #i'll save that for a rainy day (probably idk lol)#tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2k12 #tmnt leonardo #tmnt raphael #tmnt slash #tmnt leo #tmnt raph #2012 leo #2012 raph #2012 slash

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grandhotelabyss · 1 year ago

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Advice/hard truths for writers?

The best piece of practical advice I know is a classic from Hemingway (qtd. here):

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Also, especially if you're young, you should read more than you write. If you're serious about writing, you'll want to write more than you read when you get old; you need, then, to lay the important books as your foundation early. I like this passage from Samuel R. Delany's "Some Advice for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" (collected in both Shorter Views and About Writing):

You need to read Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola; you need to read Austen, Thackeray, the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy; you need to read Hawthorne, Melville, James, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner; you need to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Goncherov, Gogol, Bely, Khlebnikov, and Flaubert; you need to read Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edward Dahlberg, John Steinbeck, Jean Rhys, Glenway Wescott, John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens, Angus Wilson, Patrick White, Alexander Trocchi, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Vladimir Nabokov; you need to read Nella Larsen, Knut Hamsun, Edwin Demby, Saul Bellow, Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, John Barth, Philip Roth, Coleman Dowell, William Gaddis, William Gass, Marguerite Young, Thomas Pynchon, Paul West, Bertha Harris, Melvin Dixon, Daryll Pinckney, Darryl Ponicsan, and John Keene, Jr.; you need to read Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Richard Powers, Carroll Maso, Edmund White, Jayne Ann Phillips, Robert Gluck, and Julian Barnes—you need to read them and a whole lot more; you need to read them not so that you will know what they have written about, but so that you can begin to absorb some of the more ambitious models for what the novel can be.

Note: I haven't read every single writer on that list; there are even three I've literally never heard of; I can think of others I'd recommend in place of some he's cited; but still, his general point—that you need to read the major and minor classics—is correct.

The best piece of general advice I know, and not only about writing, comes from Dr. Johnson, The Rambler #63:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

I've known too many young writers over the years who sabotaged themselves by overthinking and therefore never finishing or sharing their projects; this stems, I assume, from a lack of self-trust or, more grandly, trust in the universe (the Muses, God, etc.). But what professors always tell Ph.D. students about dissertations is also true of novels, stories, poems, plays, comic books, screenplays, etc: There are only two kinds of dissertations—finished and unfinished. Relatedly, this is the age of online—an age when 20th-century institutions are collapsing, and 21st-century ones have not yet been invented. Unless you have serious connections in New York or Iowa, publish your work yourself and don't bother with the gatekeepers.

Other than the above, I find most writing advice useless because over-generalized or else stemming from arbitrary culture-specific or field-specific biases, e.g., Orwell's extremely English and extremely journalistic strictures, not necessarily germane to the non-English or non-journalistic writer. "Don't use adverbs," they always say. Why the hell shouldn't I? It's absurd. "Show, don't tell," they insist. Fine for the aforementioned Orwell and Hemingway, but irrelevant to Edith Wharton and Thomas Mann. Freytag's Pyramid? Spare me. Every new book is a leap in the dark. Your project may be singular; you may need to make your own map as your traverse the unexplored territory.

Hard truths? There's one. I know it's a hard truth because I hesitate even to type it. It will insult our faith in egalitarianism and the rewards of earnest labor. And yet, I suspect the hard truth is this: ineffables like inspiration and genius count for a lot. If they didn't, if application were all it took, then everybody would write works of genius all day long. But even the greatest geniuses usually only got the gift of one or two all-time great work. This doesn't have to be a counsel of despair, though: you can always try to place yourself wherever you think lightning is likeliest to strike. That's what I do, anyway. Good luck!

#creative writing #literature

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modelsof-color · 1 year ago

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Gordon Parks, in full Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks, (born November 30, 1912, Fort Scott, Kansas, U.S.—died March 7, 2006, New York, New York),

Not only was Gordon Parks the first African-American to direct a major motion picture, but he was also the first Black photographer on staff at Life Magazine from 1948 to 1972, where he shot Black families and individuals in their everyday lives as they faced poverty and racism, particularly in the Jim Crow South. In the '40s, he also worked as a freelance fashion photographer and developed a style of shooting models in motion rather than in poses. In addition to photography, Parks achieved notoriety as a musician, writer, and painter.

It could be said that Gordon Parks took fashion as seriously as he took documentary and photojournalism, which were undoubtedly Parks’ greatest achievements over the course of his memorable career. To the renowned photographer, the two focuses, from fashion to poverty, acted as different ways of bearing witness. “I had been given assignments I had never expected to earn, Once, crime and fashion was served to me on the same day. The color of a Dior gown I photographed one afternoon turned out to be the same color as the blood of a murdered gang member I had photographed earlier that morning up in Harlem.” Parks said . In fact, it was Parks’ readiness to work constantly on fashion shoots that ultimately opened doors to other possibilities. Parks was one of the first photographers who preferred to shoot his models in real settings, their dramatic yet fluid gestures animating the clothes they wore. He didn’t necessarily focus on showcasing the clothes, but rather on giving a sense of the stories women could live out in them. Often, he photographed models through one or multiple apertures imbuing the images with a sense of voyeurism

Parks was a co-founder of Essence Magazine

#people of color in fashion history #he did so many great things #fashion world was just a chapter of his career #i hope y'all google his work

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simply-ivanka · 3 months ago

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A Minnesotan Sizes Up Tim Walz

During his tenure, student achievement has slipped, crime has surged, and state residents have fled.

By Scott W. Johnson - Wall Street Journal

St. Paul, Minn.

Tim Walz has such a bad record as Minnesota’s governor that I was astonished when he landed on Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist. As Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment has documented, under Mr. Walz Minnesota has become a high-crime state. Student achievement has tumbled as spending on schools has skyrocketed. Per capita gross domestic product has fallen below the national average. Minnesotans have joined residents of New York, California and Illinois in fleeing their home state.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—also on Ms. Harris’s shortlist—made sense to me. Pennsylvania is a key state. Mr. Shapiro seems to be a man of substance and would give liberal Jews a reason to vote for Ms. Harris without a guilty conscience. As a Jewish supporter of Israel, I worried that Mr. Shapiro would give the animus throbbing in the heart of the Democratic Party cover. Indeed, that animus drove a nasty intraparty campaign against him.

But Tim Walz? I’m a conservative Republican. I don’t completely understand Democrats’ ways. As an observer of Minnesota politics, however, I understand how Mr. Walz became governor. Having served six terms in Congress from a rural district, he challenged the endorsed DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) candidate—a liberal metro-area state senator, Erin Murphy—in the 2018 DFL primary. Ms. Murphy was also challenged by another metro-area liberal, Lori Swanson, then state attorney general. With Ms. Murphy and Ms. Swanson dividing the liberal urban vote, Mr. Walz and his far-left running mate, former state Rep. Peggy Flanagan, won the primary with 41%.

On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.

Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)

During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.

Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.

Among the 70 defendants charged to date, 18 have pleaded guilty. In April the first of the cases to go to trial had seven defendants; five were convicted. The remaining cases have yet to be tried. In all, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the payout of $250 million to reimburse fictitious meals. The nature and scale of the fraud are staggering. Mr. Walz tried to blame state district court judge John Guthmann, who in April 2021 handled a case regarding the department’s processing of applications for reimbursements. According to Mr. Walz, Judge Guthmann ordered the state to continue payouts to the alleged perpetrators of the fraud even after the state Education Department discovered it.

In September 2022, Judge Guthmann authorized a news release titled “Correcting media reports and statements by Gov. Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.” The release concluded: “As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

In November 2022 Mr. Walz was elected to a second term, and the DFL won majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. In the preceding two years the state had accumulated an $18 billion budget surplus. With the DFL in full control, Mr. Walz and the Legislature have spent the $18 billion surplus on infrastructure, education and other programs that will burden the state for years. They have also raised taxes.

Mr. Walz and his DFL colleagues have backed measures establishing Minnesota as a mecca for abortion and a “trans refuge.” The legislation prohibits enforcing out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants and extradition requests for people from other states who seek treatment that is legal in Minnesota. It also bars complying with court orders issued in other states to remove children from their parents’ custody for authorizing hormone treatment or surgery to alter sex characteristics.

Like so many Democrats who have kept up with the demands of the progressive agenda, Mr. Walz has “grown” in office. In his second term, he has been the most left-wing Minnesota governor since the socialist Floyd B. Olson (1931-36). I doubt that Mr. Walz could be elected to Congress in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. The idea that he can appeal to voters who don’t already support Ms. Harris seems far-fetched.

Mr. Johnson is a retired Minneapolis attorney and contributor to the site Power Line.

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